serpentine smiles

Previous poll review
In the Circus poll, 25% of respondents would like to be the knife-thrower, while 18.2% would prefer to be the acrobat. In ticky-boxes, eight hours' sleep beat hugs, 79.5% to 77.3%! Artistic poetry-reciting tigers came third with 54.5%. Thank you for your votes! ♥

Reading
Cetaganda by Bujold (read by Grover Gardner) is fun, but we're not getting through it very quickly for logistical reasons.

I started Ann Leckie's latest Radch book, Radiant Star, read by Adjoa Andoh my beloved, but I'm having trouble focusing. My usual method of audiobook listening is to surf the emotional wave, so to speak, and this is political, worldbuildy omniscient POV. Maybe I should try it in text instead.

I also have some Nghi Vo and the latest Amina al-Sirafi (Shannon Chakraborty) to catch up on, along with the entirety of the 520 Day Guardian Reverse Exchange collection, which went live this week, yay!

Kdramas
I'm super enjoying To My Beloved Thief, a historical that bears similarities to Knight Flower but manages to be crackier. The prince plays against type, which is great, and I'm hanging out for an enemies-to-lovers OT3 (not my usual flavour of OT3, but they're all so entangled). We shall see. No spoilers, please!

Also still into Absolute Value of Romance, though last week's episodes were a bit weird. I'm increasingly conspiracy-theorising that it's a stealth m/m show. Could it be? Surely they realise who their audience is, given the starting premise?! (I haven't been able to watch this week's eps yet. Please don't tell me anything, not even a hint.)

And last weekend, Andrew and our friend Ed and I semi-randomly started a supernatural mystery/thriller called Miraculous Brothers, which I was mostly interested in for Bae Hyun Sung (Hae Joon from Family by Choice). I have no idea where it's going, which is always fun.

Other TV
Pardon My Icelandic - Ari Eldjárn standup special on Netflix. Great linguistic humour, fun with accents. (Hilariously, it came up when I searched for British stand-up.)

Cunk on Earth - one episode. Did not click.

Scrubs (original flavour) has outstayed its welcome. I'm starting to actively dislike JD, and the male-gaziness is off the charts. (Sorry to people who like it!)

The Burroughs - three episodes of the Duffers' new show. It's a bit slow, mostly an exercise in "who's that actor?" but it's only 8 episodes, so we'll probably finish it. (Honestly, I don't think it needs the monsters.) My favourite part is Geena Davis and her younger love interest.

Audio entertainment
Writing Excuses, Better Offline, Tech Won't Save Us (episode: "The UK Government's AI Obsession is a Big Risk w/ Will Dunn" /o\), Cross Party Lines, Guilt-Free Pleasures ("Whitesnake's Here I Go Again"), Dreaming Against the Machine, about 20 minutes of Pod Save America, Keep It Steady episode 7 (timeline cleanse), a bunch of ChinesePod beginner lessons ("不好意思, 我先走了"), and half an episode of You Can Learn Chinese.

Online life
The 520 Day Reverse Exchange is live, yay!!! I'll post separately about my Utterly Delightful Gift and the thing I wrote. I haven't been very present on Dreamwidth, but I've been around a lot, modding and writing, which feels Dreamwidth-adjacent (at least to me).

Writing/making things
I spent an hour on Wednesday rewriting a single sentence in my 520 Day fic. That's sort of how it's going. I have 687 words of a flashfic that I started for the last fan_flashworks round (Avalanche), which I'm now planning to squeeze into this round (Late). Hopefully I'll finish it soon, so I can keep my "one fic a month" average steady. And then I'll get back to my Yuletide fic.

Life/health/mental state things
At some point pre-Covid, I had standing lunch dates every weekday, plus (at one point) multiple weekly language exchange meet-ups and TV-watching dates. These days, almost all of my socialising involves friends coming over here for lunch or dinner/TV. My sole remaining regular lunch-date-in-town friend moved away last year but has been commuting, so we've met up roughly every second week. But she's just taken a job nearer her new place. I still see people a reasonable amount, but soon I won't have regular reasons to leave the house anymore. I may need to do something about that...

Some bad attacks by middle-of-the-night brain weasels lately. Bah!

House
My IKEA shelves arrive next week. I'm trying to plan how to organise things so I don't just stuff them full and close the door. Maybe I should watch some home organisation youtube videos? *loses half an hour* Oops!

Language Learning
I'm still going on Duolingo and Hello Chinese. The former has given me 30 days of free Premium (I can say, 我的爸爸不去中文书店和韩国饭店，你的爸爸呢？-- though, ha, when I came back to it, I didn't recognise the characters for bookstore or restaurant, despite knowing the pinyin.) With Hello Chinese, I'm still on the free option, so I mostly practice the 10 most commonly used characters (这是和不在有一的了人) and 一 to 十) and take the pronunciation quiz. (Typing is still a work in progress, but I'm getting there.) Question: is vocal fry part of 3rd tone? It seems really common, especially when people are enunciating clearly.

NZ politics, argh
( Cut to spare you. )

Good things
520 Day, woohoo! The weather has been conveniently mild. I made lemony fish pie on Friday; it was yum. Imminent new pillow and shelves (both in transit). My car actually started on Friday. A friend is lending us an EV to go up the coast and have lunch with my parents.