Hooray!

Waterstone's drops silly Amazon tie-in. I hated that. You may recall that I hate Amazon. And while of course we like independents the best, I am quite fond of Waterstone's. And I love online shopping. So this pleases me enormously.

I'm sorry, I realise this isn't exactly the spice of blogging life, but it's good news — very good news, for me — and I like to share. Apart from anything else, it makes it so much easier to get knitting books. Hooray!

Must now sit on fingers in desperate bid to avoid shopping... I may have overdone it a little lately.

What season is this again?

Autumn crocuses. Huh. Who knew?

Ahnoldt, the car manufacturer's wurst nightmare

So California's getting all gung ho about climate change. That's nice. And it's tackling it by... suing the bastards. Well, it's the American way, right?

Now, I haven't been to the US, ever, not even a little bit. But I hear things. For instance, I hear that in a lot of American cities (Houston is often mentioned), it's practically impossible to get around without a car. Not just because of the distances, and the lousy public transport. More because there aren't actually any pavements (sidewalks, to the Yanks). Roads are for driving on. Cities are for driving in. Wouldn't it be a good idea to give the citizenry an actual option before slamming the car industry?

O'course, San Francisco and LA do appear to have functioning public transport systems (so I gather from my blogroll), so maybe going after the cars is *completely* sensible. What do I know.

Slave to the meme

Luckily it's just a quickie.

"There have come fogs, too — yellow fogs and brown fogs, and fogs so black they might be liquid soot — fogs that seem to rise from the pavements as if brewed in the sewers in diabolical engines. They stain our clothes, they fill our lungs and make us cough, they press against our windows — if you watch, in a certain light, you may see them seeping into the house through the ill-fitting sashes. We are driven into evening darkness now, at three or four o'clock, and when Vigers lights the lamps the flames are choked, and burn quite dim."

Well, it was supposed to be quick. Dang, Sarah Waters writes long sentences.

That's from Affinity, and it's actually page 125. Because p123 is entirely taken up with "Part Two".

So here's how it is: you grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 123, go down five sentences (note to RaJ: "scrolling" down five sentences only works for your eBook, not so much with treeware), type out the next three for our reading pleasure.

Then you tag three people. Always with the viral stuff, these memes. Thing is, though, there surely aren't three people reading this. So: you! Gosh, thanks. (I would really like one of those three to be Extemporanea, because I'm sure she's got something fascinating at her elbow, and one to be Starmadeshadow, because I'm hoping for a little microeconomic edification. Oh yes. Hey, if Strawberryfrog is out there, you'll come up with something fun too, won't you?)

Good news, bad news

Good news: "At this year's fashion week, models as thin as Esther Canadas will be offered medical treatment."

Bad news: recent warm weather means more spiders around.* Ewwwww.

How weird is it that the good news comes from the fashion world?**

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* No link yet, I just saw this on the BBC and can't find any online stories.
** In other good fashion news, I've been tempted to blog a little about how happy I am that tops are finally longer, but try as I might I can't find a way to make that interesting.

No.

I'm sorry. No. I am not going to replace my coffee habit with a tea habit. Nuh uh. I love tea, but somehow tea in the office *always* tastes disgusting. I don't know why. So I'm going to have to find another way to manage my coffee problem. (It's a problem when you get withdrawal headaches all weekend. All four days of your weekend. Because you drink coffee for just the three days in the office. I'll leave you to figure out just how much coffee I must be drinking in those three days to have this effect.)

In other news:

...oh. I have no news. All work and no play makes Scroobious a very dull blogger.

Look, don't complain too loudly or I'll start talking about knitting.

Look! Fluffball!

On ageing

Well, Antisocial September started with a little twist or three. Nasty stinking lurgi. (Note to self: next time you find yourself sandwiched between two colleagues both with colds for a few days, try taking the echinacea early, okay?) Which definitely boosted the antisocial quotient*, and got me out of running the 10km race for which I was most certainly not prepared, but didn't do much for the productivity.

Second twist: turns out I have a prior engagement next weekend that I'd forgotten all about. Well, okay. I had counted on one social activity for the month, so I guess the universe has just bumped it from one weekend to the next.

Third twist: suddenly I have a bunch of freelance work. More than I had anticipated. This is always good news, but it will really cut into my knitting time.** (Not to mention the hoped for productivity on other fronts.) Ah well. Time to test that new feng shui, eh?

Anyway. All that bed time, plus a couple of truly delicious long conversations with faraway friends, plus considering other recentish conversations with less faraway friends, and I have been pondering some Happy Thoughts. Bear with me.

Growing up rather rocks.

Starmadeshadow recently mentioned, casually, that she noticed she was much more unflappable now than, say, five years ago. As for instance, getting on the wrong train and ending up in a very wrong and unfamiliar place... then: Eeep! Now: *shrug* Okay. Dealing.

And I thought, yes. Quite. And a related point: now, we have a bit more cash, which also helps with the problem solving. We may not be exactly free from pecuniary distress, but parting with an unbudgeted tenner doesn't hurt so much. This is, when you think about it, a really rather great pleasure.

Plus, you find out that there's more to you than you thought. You can look back and think, huh. Ten years ago, I never would have imagined I would [run a race/move to another country on a moment's notice/get married/start a business/like wearing high heels/insert your own surprise discovery here]. I wonder what I'm going to surprise myself with in the next ten years?

You get a bit of perspective. You realise that, no, you aren't quite the exceptional [knitter/writer/business genius/insert your own secret ambition here] you thought you might be, there are others who have way more talent than you and are doing more with it, but hey: you can still do your thing, your way, and that will be Just Fine.

And there is also the sudden discovery that, while you may not be doing anything that will make headlines, somehow you have developed a respectable career while you weren't looking. Suddenly you feel a bit proud of where you are and what you've done. And even more strikingly, who you know. They're just the same old friends you've had for a decade, but hang on, what happened here... they are published poets, awardwinning journalists, entrepreneurs, publishers; your actual Success Stories. It's most peculiar.

So here's to us, friends. We done good. Here's to being 30-something. (And for the 20-somethings reading this: trust me. You have a lot to look forward to. You may not be able to see how you'll get there from where you are, but that's the beauty of it: it will happen anyway. Relax and enjoy the journey.)

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* Would you believe Beloved won't let me kiss him at all when I'm sick? Not even a little bit. He also gets all grouchy about me "breathing on his pillow". I mean, aren't lovers supposed to share everything? EV-erything? Germs included?
** After waaaay too long working on ridiculously tiny needles, on projects with a halflife of approximately a century***, I have now cast on for a huuuuge chunky coat that's just whizzing by. Cast on: Monday. Progress so far: one sleeve and half of one front. Oh yeah. That's more like it.
*** One of them has reached the sewing up stage - for a second time - and I am pondering its Divers Imperfections and considering tossing the whole thing. Grrrrr.