(no subject)

[the_rck]

Scott is going to see the Star Trek movie at 10 a.m. He thinks he’s going to shower and make pancakes and still get there on time. I think he’s going to shower and then realize that he has to leave right away or he won’t make the showing. At this point, he’s got forty five minutes before the showing, and he’s not out of the bathroom yet. I really don’t think he’s going to have time for pancakes.

Cordelia has been watching movies (DVD and Blu-ray) with us in the evenings. She says she wants to go through the movies she likes in alphabetical order, so we’ve done Alice in Wonderland (Disney animated), Avengers, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and Big Hero 6. It means that Scott and I aren’t getting through our Netflix DVDs, but it’s really, really nice to have some time with Cordelia actually in the room with us.

I forgot to mention yesterday— We got pizza Friday night. Our internet connection was so bad that I couldn’t order online. We had to call because the Cottage Inn website will make you start over if things take too long to process. The guy Scott got on the phone could not understand when Scott said his name. First the guy thought he’d said John; then he thought Scott had said Josh. We really can’t figure out how he got there. He did, fortunately, get the order right.

Scott ended up putting the bed back together last night. I had worn myself out with a long (for me) walk that I started about 9:45. If I’d remembered needing to make the bed, I would not have gone nearly as far. As it was, I went down by the church and then up into the science and nature center parking lot.

I pulled some more books off our shelves last night. I’m trying to decide whether or not it’s worth hanging onto the one children’s book in order to give it to the school library. It’s in quite good condition, and it’s a fairly popular/well known book (Neil Gaiman’s Coraline). I offered it to Cordelia, but she doesn’t want it.

I tried Stash’s Moroccan mint green tea this morning. I thought I could probably get away with mint this early in the day. It wasn’t bad at all. The mint rather overwhelmed the green tea which was a plus for me but might not be for someone else.

I also tried Stash’s premium green tea the other day. I think I got the temperature of the water close to right. I’m never going to love plain green tea, but I didn’t hate this.

Comments

[hamsterwoman]

In my case, I like the taste of green tea and dislike the taste of mint tea (I love actual mint, but it tastes weird to me as tea flavoring rather than real leaves), and the Moroccan mint green tea is still tasty -- the only mint-heavy tea that I drink. So I guess it's just a nicely balanced tea, or they add something else to it that makes it tasty to both you and me :)

I've been trying to get L to read something by Gaiman for ages as well. I think she might've actually read Coraline at one point but not been too impressed, and did nt want to finish The Graveyard Book. Now her friend and I are both trying to convince her to give Good Omens a shot...

[the_rck]

Good Omens is the only thing by Gaiman that I really love. I like "A Study in Emerald," but I think that's mostly for the cleverness as opposed to for the style. I've kept Stardust and, I think, Neverwhere, but I don't love either of those. Everything else of his that I've tried, I've disliked.

I'm not keen on Pratchett, either, except for Good Omens and Tiffany Aching. I've bounced off of every other book of his that I've tried, and I've tried about a dozen different ones in the last thirty years. (I think I keep trying Pratchett because I look at his backlist and think about how long it could keep me busy.)

The packaging for the Moroccan mint green tea lists the following ingredients: green tea, spearmint, lemongrass, and peppermint. I would not have expected lemongrass.

[hamsterwoman]

I think the lemongrass maybe is what makes it Moroccan, and maybe what makes me like it, too, when I dislike other minty teas. Because I also like this lemongrass-chamomile tea, when normally chamomile tea doesn't appeal to me either.

I really liked the Graveyard Book and American Gods, but the others (not counting Good Omens, which I love, but it's hard to tell how much of that is Gaiman vs Pratchett, who is one of my favorite authors) I've liked or enjoyed reasonably well, but not in the same way -- Neverwhere was fun, but there are better (though later) magical!London books out there, Stardust is cute, but I actually liked the movie more, Coraline has neat things going on, but not really my cup of tea. I did like Sandman, too, but really loved maybe 10-20% of it, the rest was interesting but didn't grab me to the same degree. Oh, but I do love the short story "Chivalry" (the one with the Holy Grail). I'm behind on his most recent books and collections, but have heard that they're similar to other books of his I read (though I forget the specifics), so haven't made the effort to track them down.

Pratchett, though, I love and have read all of the Discworld proper books and a few other things. But if you've tried multiple times and multiple points of entry and bounced off, that probably means it won't... I guess if the Tiffany Aching books work for you, the "grown up" Witches books might? But I'm assuming you've already tried that (i.e. Wyrd Sisters, Witches Abroad, Lords and Ladies, Maskerade, etc.)

[the_rck]

I think, as far as Gaiman goes, that my difficulty is that I don't enjoy things that veer into the creepy/horrific. I really loathed Sandman. I read a fair chunk of it anyway because all of my college friends loved it. I find the idea of the Endless generally and of Morpheus and his realm specifically really fascinating, but reading those books made me feel unhappy in a bad way. American Gods was actually worse than that for me.

Gaiman writes well, so I have trouble closing his books and forgetting about them.

I tried Wyrd Sisters when it first came out. I've more recently tried Lords and Ladies. I bounced really hard off of Going Postal. I can't remember which other books I tried, at least one focused on Death. I don't think I've tried any of the Watch books; they don't sound like quite my sort of thing.

I've read some Discworld fanfic that I quite enjoyed, mostly crossovers with other things, and I've got an idea of the general shape of the setting and know a bit about a lot of the characters. Fannish osmosis at its finest.

[hamsterwoman]

I don't particularly enjoy the creepy stuff in his work, either (though I didn't find American Gods or the Graveyard Book creepy; Coraline I did, though). Sandman does have a lot of horror elements in it, which weren't my cup of tea, either (though "24 Hours" -- the one with the diner -- is really masterfully done, for what it is. I just don't ever want to read it again, or anything like it.) I do like the Endless, though not so much Dream himself -- my favorites are Desire, Destruction, and Death, followed by Delirium.

Aww, Going Postal is my favorite of the Discworlds, actually, and Lords and Ladies is up there as well (though it really does benefit from being read after Witches Abroad). The Watch books are my favorite sub-series, actually, but I do think that if none of the other sub-series have clicked with you, it's unlikely that the Watch fill.

And Discworld does lend itself to a lot of great crossovers, yes! :) I'm glad you were able to enjoy them even though the series itself doesn't work for you.

[the_rck]

As far as Discworld, I'm pretty sure that there's just something in how I see the world that doesn't quite match up and makes me and the books miss connecting.

I'm perfectly willing to accept/acknowledge that Pratchett's work has genius. My not clicking with his work doesn't make me think it's bad or anything. There are a great many excellent things that I don't enjoy but that other people do.

I think that my tolerance for horror and violence and scary things is generally low and has decreased over the years. I can only watch about half of the current Doctor Who because it frequently gets beyond my comfort zone. I have severe anxiety (disabling), and reading or watching certain things makes that worse, so I end up being very conservative about it now.

I just finished a collection of short stories by Joan Aiken. I adored her books when I was in high school, but several of these stories left me feeling edgy in a way that I didn't like at all.

[i-love-freddie.livejournal.com]

The guy Scott got on the phone could not understand when Scott said his name. First the guy thought he’d said John; then he thought Scott had said Josh.

Wow, I can understand telephone connections being a little bit weird, but John and Josh don't really sound anything like Scott. Mind you, I ordered dinner the order day and the delivery guy could not understand the name of my road, despite me clearing saying it repeatedly - I finally had to actually spell it out for him. I don't have a clue where he went!

[the_rck]

I actually thought that the pizza guy must be messing with Scott because John and Josh are pretty ridiculously unlike Scott in sound.

I pretty much always spell out our street name if I'm calling to have something delivered. It's a little bit weird and isn't a street that most people have ever heard of because it only runs two blocks.