Some stuff I have been enjoying lately!

The Dungeon Crawler Carl books are still holding relatively strong. I’m currently ~75% through number seven and having a medium good time. (They’re too long, like. Absolutely ridiculously too long and I don’t understand why or why that’s a convention of SFF in general, but I think we can try harder and do better. I think we can learn to believe in editing, in concision, in precision. You know? Don’t you believe in a better world?) But also they’re kind of zeitgeisty now and I find that, as always, annoying, so we’ll see how long I hold on. This book in particular (and the last one actually…) are full of exactly the kind of thing that makes video games and RPGs and SFF really boring to me, so here’s hoping the next one’s different!

I am learning as I become old and wise and learned that doing chores actually does improve my life, which seems obvious of course, but also I feel better when I do them. Isn’t that disgusting? Because I work from home now, I do my laundry during the day when I would have normally been taking breaks with my coworker and starting a load first thing when I come down to get settled feels like the most adult, accomplished thing I have ever done, and it is deeply humiliating, thank you for asking.

Now that we live in the land of 10,000 lakes, I have been wanting to get back in water and you would think with that particular notation attached that that would be a relatively easy goal, but despite there being a swim beach less than three miles away from me, the parks department really doesn’t want you to go anywhere near it until it’s too hot to want to be outside at a swim beach. Thankfully I found an indoor pool nearby that offers various pool-based classes and open swim hours and it’s been great! The class we’re taking is great and all the other participants are very sweet and it’s so close to our house it’s frankly a little outrageous. The pool water is 92 degrees fahrenheit which is, I’m sure, very good for your muscles, but is also anathema to me who is used to unheated outdoor pools and the Pacific Ocean. We persevere nonetheless! Being in the water is one of my favorite things in the world and maybe the only place my brain really turns off.

It is beautifully, gloriously green here in ways I have never experienced before. Of course I have been to some places that are green and California is no slouch of course (driving through the massive park near our house is like driving up the mountains when I was a kid except I get way less sick and there are a lot more people on bicycles) but after thirteen years in treeless, scrubby North Dakota I feel like some sort of lascivious plant pervert ogling the grasses and trees lushly blooming, the spring flowers (parks and planters and yards everywhere, right from the center of sprawling lawns! free and beautiful) and crabapples and cherry trees and serviceberries slathered heavy with blooms, the slower budding trees waiting their turn, the creeks and rivers and rippling, churning lakes, the sumac in the neighbor’s yard and the tulips peeling up from behind us, Lily of the Valley springing thick around the base of a tree we have to have removed soon lest it fall on our house ($20,000 into a house we’ve lived in for less than six months! What a kick in the teeth!) and peonies! Peonies everywhere around our property! And Solomon’s seal! And lovely purple phlox! The unfurling fiddleheads of ferns in our drainage garden! Everywhere green! Green everywhere!

Alright, that’s it! We recently donated to Women Against Military Madness, Open Book, and Liberation Twin Cities. As always, let me know if you’ve got donation suggestions! I hope your spring is also gloriously green and that you’re enjoying it!