incidents and accidents, hints and allegations

The icon discussion meme has come around again. telophase asked me about the icons behind the cut. If you like, ask me about more icons, or ask me to pick some of your icons and then talk about them in your journal (leave a link to the post here).

( six icons )

telophase rocks and has coded that 1930s marital rating scale as an internet quiz:

23 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Poor (Failure) Take the test!

In contrast:

79 As a 1930s husband, I am Very Superior Take the test!

Ask me about some (up to five, say) of my icons, and I'll tell you about them. Or, ask me to ask you about some of your icons, and then when I do, post in your own journal—because we picked our icons for a reason and talking about them is fun.

yhlee asked me about these:

( icons )

Wiped out for no obvious reason today, so no new panel reports. Here's a poll to help me decide which to do next:

Also, the "tell me which fictional character I am" meme is very much fun, even if I absolutely suck at coming up with answers. (I've been thinking about it on and off most of today, and the only person I've decided on is veejane, who hasn't even asked and might not appreciate my answer anyway.) But the accumulated results are like the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen game that went around a few years ago: yhlee is Iskierka from the Temeraire books, and oyceter is Fuu from Samurai Champloo, and I am Kate Somerville from the Lymond Chronicles [*], and together we fight crime! In the person of . . . someone who has unleashed a plague of locusts, because they would all be very upset at the wrecking of the food supply.

Okay, I said I wasn't very good at this.

[*] According to rachelmanija, but if you have another idea, go ahead.

And now I go off to gather strength for the morrow by reading Qwan.

• Abruptly it was spring this afternoon, as in bright bright sun and 65 degrees Farenheit. I have no idea, but I'm not complaining.
• Via tnh's Particles, troll bingo cards.
• There's only one movie left from the silly guessing post, so have some more IMDB plot keywords:

  Pudding, Brain Surgery, Tortoise, Weevil, Pursuit

• GIP (because the booklog doesn't have a place for usericons, even appropriate ones).

Earlier in March, we went to New York City on the occasion of relatives' birthdays and saw a musical called The Drowsy Chaperone about which I intend to write more, really, I promise. Getting half-price same day tickets makes for a really long day, but if we got tickets ahead of time, going down for a matinee would be quite workable, so we'll have to keep that in mind. Any particular recommendations? I should note that Chad's not much on musicals unless they're metafictional or have some other reason for people bursting into song.

We've also booked our Japan flights and hotels. All we need is the rail pass (90 days ahead) and our flight seat assignments (ditto; not that I have any great hopes of getting an exit row, but we'll try). Now I need to start thinking about learning the language . . .

And as discussed previously here, I started taking a yoga class. It's certainly exercise, but I haven't decided if I'll take another one; the instructor hasn't been very useful in telling me which exercises I should avoid or modify because of the bursitis in my hips, and I'm not suited to the less-concrete parts of the class. On the other hand, having a scheduled class is a good thing for a procrastinatory Kate. We'll see when it's over.

Last weekend we went to Boston. We spend all day Saturday at the Museum of Science, as it was hosting the Darwin exhibit that originated at the American Museum of Natural History. It had all the stuff you would expect, documents of Darwin's and fossils and specimens, all of which were informative and interesting—plus two Galapagos tortoises that I found terribly comic in how very slow and deliberate they were. As a complement, we went to the IMAX movie on the Galapagos, which includes some great underwater footage. After a break at Papa Razzi, a local chain Italian place, we just wandered around the Museum. Lots of the hands-on stuff still needs fixing, alas, but we still found plenty to entertain ourselves before having dinner with prince_eric and spouse. Sunday morning we put in an intense two hours at the Museum of Fine Arts: Japanese Bamboo Art, Tsutsugaki Textiles, really cool marbled paper made by Sufis, and a fascinating exhibition called "Women of Renown: Female Heroes and Villains in the Prints of Utagawa Kuniyoshi." According to information in the exhibit, the MFA has thousands of Japanese prints and is starting to digitize them; you can see some online.

Finally and very belatedly, papersky tells me that I am Bapchild. I have what is "thought by many to be one of the finest Village Halls in Kent"; a cricket club (with fantasy cricket!); and a spring named after St. Thomas a Becket. I was the site of the Synod of Baccanceld in 694, and am currently involved in a controversy over the construction of a Kent Science Park.

(And now to post this while the borrowed wireless connection has faded in rather than out, since our DSL went out last night and Verizon doesn't know why . . . )

Time for the holiday wishes meme again? You can find the instructions here. Once again, so very optional.

( My wishes, cut for modesty )

Please post links to your own lists in comments! (Also see holiday_wishes.)

Cruise in review coming tomorrow or the next day, but a couple of silly things now just to get them out of the way. First, ( a playlist version of guess the song: )

My paternal grandmother died Thursday before last; she was unresponsive when my grandfather went to wake her late morning and then slipped away before she got to the hospital. She'd suffered (I use the term advisedly) from chronic illness for years, but I was still surprised at the news—beyond the usual shock that it was this day, I had rather expected an acute crisis rather than a quiet passing. She had always been very good to me, but she was neither healthy nor happy, and hadn't been for some time. So while I am sad (and guilty about not seeing her more often), it is not a fierce grief. The funeral was a week ago today, and was uneventful, which is a good thing when it comes to funerals as far as I am concerned.

I didn't post about it at the time because the mis-mash of reaction made me feel unequal to dealing with reader reaction, if that makes sense. (Also because I was trying to push work aside for the funeral trip.)

Everything else was work or Boskone. A report on the latter will be done today, because I won't have time the rest of the week. But the snow seems to have stopped for the moment, and I really need to get out of the house before I fall asleep—I've already wasted the morning dozing or catching up on Internety things. So before I head out for a few errands, I will leave you all with six things I've done that you probably haven't.

( I couldn't come up with ten. )

( sheepage )