eye_of_a_cat

Still no broadband. C'mon, BT. Meanwhile, though, thanks to the wonders of a patchy phone signal and an iPad, I'm at least not totally internetless. (Not that I mind being totally internetless when it's my choice, but work stuff has developed a nasty tendency this year to wait until I'm out of the office before slumping into crazy. Oh, how crazy.)

In tits absence, cross-stitch and Frasier DVDs and the Song of Ice and Fire books, which I'm trying to finish re-reading before the new one comes out in July. A Feast for Crows is proving a bit slow-going, but it's more enjoyable than I remember it being the first time round. Anyone else watching the TV adaptation of Game of Thrones? I'm liking it but fear I risk turning into one of the grumpy book purists in any discussion ("you aren't allowed to complain Jaime Lannister's one dimensional until you're familiar with Book Three!"), so I've mostly avoided them.

Searching through a list of births, marriages and deaths from an 18th-century magazine (I'm trying to track down details some of the minor nobility for work - <3 my job). Dry, official, in list form. Then this:

"At Cranbrook, Kent, Mr Zachariah Pearce, aged 21. - The following remarkable occurrences are communicated, not as superstitious notions, but as matters of fact, which can be attested by many person in Cranbrook. Mr W. Pearce, the father of the above Zachariah, died of a frenzy fever, Nov. 30. 1785. Some time before he died, a small bird, of the dish-water kind, came often every day, and pecked hard against the chamber-window where Mr Pearce lay sick: the window was set open to try if the bird would enter the room, but it did not; and means were used to catch it, but in vain. The bird continued to come and do the same till Mr Pearce died, and was buried, and then ceased to return. Since the above Zach. Pearce was taken ill, the same bird, or one of the like kind, frequented his chamber-window, and continued to do so occasionally to the time of his death. A similar circumstance occurred in the same parish about two years and a half ago. These are real facts. - Something not unsimilar to this is related in one of Howell's Letters, dated 1 July, 1684."

I say again - huh.

This was my grand idea back when my job was, er, somewhat less than certain: do Couch to 5K. After nine weeks, I'd have to have heard the news about whether my job was happening or not, but since there was nothing I could do about that one way or the other, I might as well do something that'd take my mind off the worrying and get me running a 5K in nine weeks' time, job or no job.

Anyway. I finished it! And it was good fun, and there's a real sense of accomplishment to knowing you did a substantial and hard thing, even if it's not really that hard a thing when compared to marathons and such. Plus, the 3.1 miles which I can now do fairly easily (not fast, mind - just easily) is a really nice length run to fit in at lunchtime, and I get to a) legitimately not be in the office, rather than guiltily eating a sandwich while I stare at the ringing phone and b) feel all virtuous about it. (Virtuousness further enhanced by going running in the weather we've had recently, which has been a bit on the apocalyptic side for May.)

Today, decided to beat my distance record of four-ish miles after work. That run was okay and I could definitely have gone further at the end, so four-and-a-half should be totally possible, five maybe if it's going well. Plan routes! Download podcasts! Prepare for mud! I had plans. I even got as far as picking up my running clothes to get changed. And then, I realised I'd left my running shoes at work.

Work is a 12-minute walk away. Pfft. That's ages! I'm lazy.

So anyway, most of this evening has been spent on the sofa with my feet up. And still feeling good!

If you're here about the latest round of Spiletta42 troll/sockpuppet drama, then please go here, which has all I'm planning to say about it this time round. (First time I've ever put an ETA after such a long time; man, this thing has shelf life.)

If you're here about anything else: you guys, I am moving into an actual house! Not a big house. A small house. And we're still renting. But whatever! It's a house. Specifically, it's a mews cottage. I shall post floorplans soon and you can all help me work out where the hell we're going to fit all these books.

Otherwise: well, if I'm going to be brought back to LJ by people sending me comments and messages about a fandom drama two and a half years ago, I may as well take it as a much-needed reminder than I have an LJ and I miss you people. Off to try catching up with the flist's journals!

Scotland's 2011 census form has arrived! I love the census (I have an inordinate fondness for filling in forms anyway), and I love the idea of some descendant of mine looking me up when it's publically available a hundred years from now. Although I imagine that family history research will look a whole lot different a hundred years from now, and they won't really need census data in the way we do now, but still. Hello, great-great-great-granddaughter! Feel free to add me on Facebook!

I've been getting really interested in family history over the last six months or so. Most of my ancestors and their relatives didn't travel far from the area they were born, which does make them easier to track even if it doesn't make for swashbuckling world-adventuring we're-secretly-the-heirs-to-the-throne-of-Norway stories. But their stories should count for something, anyway: whole generations working in the silk mills from the age of 10, parents losing 7 of their 9 children before their first birthday. Hard lives.

Other things I've found:

- my 8x-great-grandfather Thomas lived to 105 and turns up in some records for cases of violent crime;
- one side of the family, canal workers from fairly rural England, converted to Mormonism in the 1850s and moved the whole family (parents and eight children) to America in 1861, travelling to Utah via wagon train.
- the grandfather of that family, along with two of his brothers, got deported to Australia for theft. One of the brothers got a deportation sentence for stealing cheese. Cheese.

Tarantulas on the Lifebuoy

For some semitropical reason
when the rains fall
relentlessly they fall

into swimming pools, these otherwise
bright and scary
arachnids. They can swim
a little, but not for long

and they can’t climb the ladder out.
They usually drown—but
if you want their favor,
if you believe there is justice,
a reward for not loving

the death of ugly
and even dangerous (the eel, hog snake,
rats) creatures, if

you believe these things, then
you would leave a lifebuoy
or two in your swimming pool at night.

And in the morning
you would haul ashore
the huddled, hairy survivors

and escort them
back to the bush, and know,
be assured that at least these saved,
as individuals, would not turn up

again someday
in your hat, drawer,
or the tangled underworld

of your socks, and that even—
when your belief in justice
merges with your belief in dreams—
they may tell the others

in a sign language
four times as subtle
and complicated as man’s

that you are good,
that you love them,
that you would save them again.

- Thomas Lux

holy hell look what MetaFilter did.

How cool are we? We are that cool.