Arduinna

December 01: the_shoshanna: I'd love to just hear about how you've been filling your time, what's been interesting you lately (or challenging you, if you want to talk about that), your basic Christmas-letter kind of update, I guess?

What a perfect prompt to start the meme off with! <3

Now let's see if I can think of anything that I've been doing. It's all a blur of just getting through. I'll go with categories to make it easier.

Work

Work has been busy. When I posted in April I said I thought my job was safe but that my boss might be told to take retirement; both those things turned out to be true. Unfortunately, my boss did a fair chunk of our little team's work, and the woman who took over for him, while a good manager, doesn't have the time to do much of the actual editing. So the editing load has gone up on me and my other co-worker, while at the same time I've been tasked with some labor-intensive project work. I like the project work a lot, and it's something I volunteered for, but it does keep me hopping.

Media

I have been watching what feels like endless media, mostly tv, mostly not terribly fannishly. It's generally either older procedural-type shows that I can just pay surface attention to, documentaries that are interesting but not research, so again with the mostly surface attention, or fannish shows that do take attention.

therienne, mollyamory, and I watch an episode or two of something together most nights, most usually one of the procedurals. In the last year or so we've gone through 7 seasons of The Closer, 5 seasons of Major Crimes (which I inevitably call Criminal Minds even though they're nothing alike, because apparently my brain thinks it should be "The Closer and 3-syllable-phrase". idek.), a season and a half of Medium (because the actor who played Joe the husband was in something new and fannish, and identifying him reminded us of Medium right when we needed a new mindless show), a few episodes of Ghost Whisperer when Medium was feeling too grim (but then Ghost Whisperer was too - hmm. it's not that I didn't like it? But it feels like a Lifetime Christmas Movie every episode and I can only take a bit of that at a time), and some other things I'm not thinking of right now. Off in my office on my own later at night I've been watching Saving Hope, Time Team, and documentary movies of various sorts.

Fannishly, I'm still in love with Good Omens, although the pandemic put me right back into fannish stasis again so I haven't actually done that much about it, which is a little annoying. But also, it's the hugest fandom I've ever been in and I'll just be over here in a nice quiet corner by myself, thanks. ahem.

The three of us are watching Mandalorian, which I love -- the original trilogy is my Star Wars, and the show is such a love letter to that. <3 I know I'm missing tons of references by not being up on Clone Wars and SW Rebels and whatnot, but I don't care; I'm enjoying the hell out of it all.

We're also watching Star Trek Discovery, which I was not expecting to love after bailing on first season after the first few eps. But mollyamory and therienne stuck with it and I wound up seeing some of second season with them last year then catching up on that whole season, and we're caught up to live right now. That's good stuff.

Oh! And therienne and I are slowly watching Chicago Typewriter, after I was reminded of it when I was sorting vid downloads and rewatched Our Ghost by ryfkah. I'm not really fannish about it, but I'm enjoying it.

It feels like everyone I know is into Guardian and related shows, but I haven't dipped a toe there yet. I may not be doing much in GO fandom, but it's still my warm fuzzy blanket and I want to just enjoy that for a while before being pulled in another direction. (It seems like a safe bet that I'll fall hard for Guardian.)

We spent Thanksgiving weekend watching the LotR trilogy extended editions, which I haven't done in ages and which was a blast. It's seriously hard to believe it's been 20 years since Fellowship came out. It's been years since I read the books, too, but in RotK when they're in the Houses of Healing a woman walked past and my brain instantly went "oh, Ioreth!" so I think that my many many years of annual re-reads is still in there somewhere. (OTOH she was too young to actually be Ioreth, but still. Go brain.)

We watched Hamilton when it was released in July. 💖💖💖 Still love that so much. They did an amazing job bringing it to film.

Life beyond media

Life has been really fast and really slow all at the same time. I've assembled some storage cabinets; done a whole lot of weeding; done some lopping of small branches (I bought a lopper! so much fun); organized a couple of small sheds; organized all the random cables I could find lying around and separated them into clear plastic drawers with labels on them so we could find what we needed (I bought a labeler! I am turning into my mother at an accelerating pace); organized my vid downloads, tapes, and dvds - you may be sensing a theme. Creating order in a chaotic time is very soothing.

Anyway. That's kind of it? It's just been life in a pandemic, with not enough brain for lots of focus, but plenty to things keep myself occupied, even if it's mostly on autopilot.

And now I'm going to stop typing and go find some string cheese to use to lure the dog in from outside, so I can get to bed at some sort of reasonable-for-me hour...


Go here for the full list of prompts and open dates -- more post prompts always welcome!