Lathany

With Christmas trees popping up in shops even before Remembrance Sunday, it feels as though the charge to Christmas has begun. However, we're not even half way through November and winter weather seems a long way off. So far autumn has been mild, pretty but with a few train issues.

Work has become rather more challenging as I have picked up an area of work considered the worst in the team which has generally resulted in postholders moving on rapidly. However, my boss knows this and I have instructions not to work more than my hours. So, we'll see. As it is, there are various bits and pieces between here and the end of the year that should make it interesting including a team day and a full directorate day before the end of the month. Neither of my usual Xmas work events are in December this year, one is in the last week of this month and the other at the end of January – which will be something to look forward to as it often feels rather flat after the Christmas decorations come down.

As for the work bookclub; late summer we read Out of the Silent Planet by CS Lewis which I had read before and involves space travel. It's interesting, particularly compared to now when films like The Martian and plans to make the trip exist. A couple of weeks ago it was The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune which was definitely a gentle “cosy” read about a government official who monitored the housing arrangements for mutant children – I liked it and felt it was something I would want after a particularly unpleasant day. Next up, I think, will be Butter.

I have a prominent scratch near my eye which Reeve managed to do whilst purring and being happy when he woke me up this morning. Which, I suppose, is better than being in a rage. It's still a little sore though. Reeve definitely thinks the winter is approaching – he's inside much more and asleep for most of the time.

The twins have their birthday at the end of the month so the usual shopping, lists and questions about cake are in progress. We're on track with present season, I think. There's been a few mild illnesses in the household, plus something bigger that knocked Ryan out for a week. He usually sails through illness, but when he does go down it's quite hard.

Computer game-wise I've picked up Secret World again and have been playing the Halloween events. I'm also still on Dune Awakening and Strange Antiquities was as good as promised. All continue to be very satisfying.

I guess onwards to the festive season (proper).

A good year, I think, although I would have given a different review back in September or October when we were down a bathroom as well as a kitchen! After all, the second half of the year was somewhat dominated by the building work, but we do now have a shiny new kitchen to show for it. I wouldn't want to do it again any time soon – but also don't have to.

Time-off this year for me went well: I had a couple of relaxing holidays in the South Downs and Long Melford. I also had a number of interesting and entertaining work events. Many of my friend-colleagues are either taking time out or moving on next year and I'm going to very much miss them.

We finished Heresy, She Wrote which I thoroughly enjoyed. There is now Heresy in Paradise scheduled for next year. My 2024 also involved, much Darktide, plenty of SteamWorld Heist II and a bit of Return to Moria as well.

In general terms – overall I enjoyed the year and ended in a good place.

In detail
As per usual, a month-by-month breakdown.

January – It was a chilly, uneventful month. I worked, played Darktide and watched some films.
February – The Hatted One joined the twins and I for the Infinity Mirror Rooms exhibition at the Tate Modern. I had dinner with Liz W at Tas.
March – Uneventful, with a quiet birthday celebration.
April – There was a Kew trip. There was also some gaming: both video and roleplaying.
May – We saw The Kills at the Troxy at the start of the month and Dom ran an awesome, mad game for Alistair's 50th. We spent a week in the South Downs on a family holiday enjoying a castle, Marwell Zoo and Jane Austen's house.
June – We attended Martin and Ebee's civil ceremony day. I had a work awayday in London and at the end of the month Dom and I went to Gymkhana for my birthday meal (organised in March).
July - I watched the General Election online with Alistair. I attended Lesley's retirement do, meeting up with many former colleagues.
August - Visited Kew and saw my first Banksy. This is also when the building work started on the new kitchen.
September – Bea and I got cat tattoos together, I had a work trip to Edinburgh and Bea and I had a long weekend in Long Melford.
October – We celebrated 32 years together at Trinity, we visited Krys and Chris, we completed Heresy, She Wrote after 18 months and... I'm not quite sure how many sessions. At the end of the month I had a hospital appointment, but was declared clear of issues.
November – There was a work AwayDay housed at the Tate Modern. Gem and Olivia came over for board games and Bea and I had a sunny Kew Trip.
December – The kitchen work finally ended, I survived two back-to-back work Xmas dos and my mother stayed a few days over Xmas.


The Lists of Things
As is my tradition, here are my lists of things of 2024.

Twenty-one books read for the first time.
The Midnight Mayor - Kate Griffin
Magpie Murders - Anthony Horowitz
The Martian - Andy Weir
Moonflower Murders - Anthony Horowitz
Spinning Silver - Naomi Novik
Airs Above the Ground - Mary Stewart
The Neon Court - Kate Griffin
The Minority Council - Kate Griffin
Stray Souls - Kate Griffin
The Husbands - Holly Gramazio
The Word Is Murder - Anthony Horowitz
The Sentence Is Death - Anthony Horowitz
A Line to Kill - Anthony Horowitz
The Twist of a Knife - Anthony Horowitz
The Bookseller's Tale - Martin Latham
Network Effect - Martha Wells
System Collapse - Martha Wells
Artemis - Andy Weir
The Glass God - Kate Griffin
Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir
The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller

Favourites
1. Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir: I got this because I enjoyed the Martian and this one is even better. Science-heavy, surprising and with an engaging central character.
=2. Network Effect - Martha Wells: Frankly, the whole Murderbot series has been great, but of the two full-length books, I preferred this one. Engaging, fast-moving and I love the central character. This is more at the space opera end of sci fi.
=2. The Husbands - Holly Gramazio: This is one of the most thought-provoking, yet entertaining books I have read. A magic attic that provides different married life alternatives for the protagonist Lauren and shows how the rest of her life changes. Definitely recommended (and I'm planning to make it my pick for my bookclub).
4. Stray Souls - Kate Griffin: I think the best of her Kate Griffin phase (I met her writing as Clare North). It's something like the fifth book, but the others before it are also well worth it. It's London-based fantasy set in the present day. And there's a supernatural support group in it.
5. Moonflower Murders - Anthony Horowitz: I've read a lot of Horowitz this year, but I like this the best, in part because I like Susan the best of his protagonists. Interesting double detective story switching from a book detective (Agatha Christie like) to a life one (Susan).

Twelve novellas read for the first time.
Demon Daughter - Lois McMaster Bujold
When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain - Nghi Vo
On the Fox Roads - Nghi Vo
All Systems Red - Martha Wells
Vermeer to Eternity - Anthony Horowitz
What the Dead Know - Nghi Vo
Artificial Condition - Martha Wells
Rogue Protocol - Martha Wells
Exit Strategy - Martha Wells
Penric and the Bandit - Lois McMaster Bujold
Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory - Martha Wells
Compulsory - Martha Wells

Favourites
1. All Systems Red - Martha Wells: As above, the first Murderbot tale I read.
2. When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain - Nghi Vo: Like the Empress of Salt and Fortune this was well-written, engaging fantasy and not quite like anything else.
3. Penric and the Bandit - Lois McMaster Bujold: Solid Penric stuff, if not as good as some of them.

Nine computer games finished.
Home Safety Hotline
Ni No Kuni 2
The Case of the Golden Idol
Warhammer 40,000: Darktide
Firewatch
Tacoma
Steamworld Heist II
Incubus
Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria
Favourites
1. Warhammer 40,000: Darktide: This nailed the 40K atmosphere, the multiplayer was solid and fun. Also, not exactly beautiful, but excellent graphics.
2. Steamworld Heist II: Hatted bots saving the world in a turn-based strategy game that was fun, large and didn't require much computer space or power to run.
3. The Case of the Golden Idol: A rather good puzzle game that involves a lot of thinking and clues.

Twenty films I saw this year.
Marry Me
Ghostbusters: Afterlife
Orion and the Dark
The Lost City
Dune 2
Tales from Earthsea
The Lego Batman Movie
Paradise
Atlas
The Matrix Resurrections
Inside Out 2
Appleseed Alpha
Beverly Hills Cop Axel F
Glass
Bullet Train
The Adam Project
The Equalizer
Godzilla Minus One
Whisper of the Heart
Carry On
Favourites
1. Orion and the Dark: it had been described as Inside Out meets Being John Malkovich. The description was fitting and the film was great.
=2. Bullet Train: Thriller / comedy about a number of assassins who find themselves on the same Tokyo train. I would say it's not going to be on my best film ever list, but was unexpectedly watchable and entertaining (and apparently based on a book). Brad Pitt is a decent lead and has a good support cast. Also, cameos.
=2. Godzilla Minus One: This starts slowly, but turns into a very good film. Set in Japan around the end of the War and featuring the named massive monster.
4. Dune 2: Epic, cinematic. I didn't like it quite as much as I hoped, but still good.
=5. Inside Out 2: Not as good as the first, but worth a trip to the cinema.
=5. Carry On: Engaging, and I agree not as formulaic as some. Also a Christmas film. Die Hard isn't knocked off its pedestal, but at least this is something worth beating.

Eleven seasons of TV
Shadow and Bone - season 1
Altered Carbon - season 2
The Signal
Bodies
Yu Yu Hakusho
Fool Me Once
Cowboy Bebop
Supacell
1899
Travelers - season 1
Arcane: League of Legends

Favourites/ordering
1. Bodies: It involved multiple interesting characters, various mysteries and time travel. I wasn't too sure for the first two episodes (and there was a lot to follow), but got really hooked on the next two. Five and six were also great, then the penultimate episode was a bit poor but the ending was good. I particularly liked that the four main leads were all police officers in different time periods.
2. 1899: It's weird and has isolated seavoyage / ghost vibes. It was supposed to be three seasons, but was cancelled. It's from the creators of Dark and I would say is better and weirder. I think cautiously recommended - the questions in the first season are mainly answered - but you end up with a set of new questions at the end.
3. The Signal: A German science fiction mini series about an astronaut and her family. It was an interesting premise and good characters. I think it was also the right length for its story, so recommended.
4. Supacell: A British superhero television series set in modern-day South London. It is about a group of five ordinary black people, unified by family history of sickle cell disease. This was the “origins” equivalent of Heroes and quite good – but I found it hard to get into the story initially.
5. Cowboy Bebop: A live action series based on the 1998 Japanese anime television series. Interesting, sadly only ran to one season, but I liked the characters and the atmosphere.


So, 2025? Less kitchen work will be good and I already have several plans and arrangements lined up. I'm feeling cautiously hopeful.

Farewell 2024.

This is a picture of me at six months pregnant.



It's also about four days before I give birth, but I didn't know it at the time. We'd planned to take pregnancy pictures during the last trimester... and then it didn't happen. Therefore I think this is the only picture showing the bump.

My father passed away on Thursday 29 April. I feel sad and strange.



Here is a picture of him on his 80th birthday in one of his favourite places.

It's been a fairly good weekend. I've played several hours of computer games (Monster Hunter World, FFXIV and Hearthstone Battlegrounds). I've done some of the jobs (washing all the bedding, ironing, buying some new things for Bea for university). The weather has been OK, a bit wet but no longer hot. It both does and doesn't feel like August. This is because part of me expected to come out of lockdown before the summer. My work weeks are generally alternating between heavy and light (I have a number of meetings that are fortnightly, but all fall in the same week) and next week is a light week - this is a good thing.

Tuesday involved procurement training and a handful of meetings. In the evening I continued to work my way through House episodes. Bea did some more programming, Ryan some more school work and Dom was teaching the former and supporting the latter in and out of his own work.

Yesterday's big trial was Dom's shopping trip. Tesco contines to be weird with odd shortages. I took an assessment for creditation in civil service procurement. I eventually passed. Bea continued with computing and planning her last job on the student union. Ryan's new Switch arrived which he's pleased about as he can play with his friends online on it.

Today I applied for a season ticket refund. All the signs are that whoever goes back first, civil servants won't be in there. There are strong reasons for us to be last given that we, by and large, can all do this from home.

It still feels weird to me to be here. I'm OK most of the time, but having grown up in a village I'm continuing to not cope well with the lack of green. On the plus side, computer games are still a release. Also, my household has been good - Bea and I did nail painting yesterday.

Why do you have toilet paper squares in your bag Dawn?

About that....

There was an icebreaker session at work today. We were divided into five teams of seven and each team leader was given a toilet roll. We were told we would be sharing "personal details" with the rest of the team.

The instructions? To tear off a length of as many squares as you would use on a trip to the toilet.

There was silence. This was the sort of detail that no-one actually wanted to know about their co-workers. At all.

There were various mutterings about what sort of visit was this about?

Then eventually, each leader tore off a length of toilet roll and handed it round.

Next step? For each square, you tore off the square and told one interesting fact about yourself.

So I now have a bag containing some toilet paper squares which have been torn off.

I'd like to go back to the "which animal best describes you?" thing.

I was reading a post yesterday about parents and calories. It reminded me of a experience of my own - although somewhat different from that of the poster. And I thought that, as it’s about to be the season of dieting, I’d share it.

When I was at school I was overweight, the fattest girl in my class. So, I was on a diet from roughly age nine to age eighteen. My parents agreed I needed to lose weight - both were also on diets - and I entered the world of counting calories. It didn’t work too well and, until I reached university, I was constantly depressed about my weight and about all the negative comments I got. However, going off to university was when things changed. And, about a decade or two after I graduated, I put all the pieces together and worked out why.

There were two big reasons for the change. Both are somewhat linked to my mother taking up running in her early forties - pretty much as I hit my teens. Back at the start of her running career, I mean for the period that I was at home as a teenager, my mother progressed from fun runs to marathons.

As keen runners will know, running does interesting things to the rest of your schedule as you have to fit the runs in - particularly anything over ten miles. It plays havoc with meal scheduling. Combined with this, my mother was the cook of the family. At the weekend she would tell us that dinner would be at 1pm and then she’d go out for a fourteen mile run. She’d get back just before midday and have breakfast. 1pm would come and go and, about 1:30pm I’d get myself something to eat as I wouldn’t have eaten since a much earlier breakfast time. Then around 3pm, dinner would turn up. We had a plate-clearing policy and so I’d eat all that as well. This is the first of the two big reasons - I was eating more than three meals, particularly at the weekend.

The second big reason was something I mentioned near the start of my post. That my mother was also on a constant diet. The reason for this changed when she started running from wanting to look thinner to wanting to be thinner to run better times. And, consequently, whenever she dished up a meal, she always dished herself the smallest portion. However, size is a relative thing and so when she was hungry - usually following a long run - all the portions would consequently swell so that the smallest would satisfy her. And that “clear your plate” policy hit again here.

All this meant that when I left for university - and being away from home for thirty weeks of the year - I lost a stone without any dieting. When I moved to London after I graduated - I lost two more stone.

These days, I do keep an eye on what I eat and drink (I find I need less per day than when I was younger). All the early calorie counting is useful for this as I know what I’m consuming. It was also useful for the post-twins diet I went on to lose a couple of stone about fifteen years ago before going back to work. But I’ve never gone back to the depression of my teens.

Also, finally, I’d like to think that, had I gone back home after university, I might have become smarter about the situation. Taken over more of the cooking (which I also, much later, found out that my mother hated doing), ignored my mother’s announced times and gone with my own better judgement, had separate meal times and/or fought back much harder against the portion sizes and the clear plate policy.

It’s how long it took me to realise that strikes me now.

So, nearly there. 2017 is almost over and 2018 is just on the other side of the weekend. I'll write in more detail about the past 12 months in my usual end-of-year post, but I think it's fair to say this hasn't been one of my better years and I'll be glad to see it gone.

A couple of evenings back the question arose of which the good years had been. This was a bit of a tricky one for me. I discounted the pre-twin years as I've tended to become happier as I've become older and also for the slightly cheaty reason that I don't have pre-twin LJ entries so it's all a bit difficult to judge. However, the duo's early years were fraught with stress and worries about their health, so nothing before about 2006 is a winner either. Looking back over my LJ, I think that 2012 was the best year with 2014 and 2007 as runners-up (2014 would have taken it, had it not also been the year with the deaths of two friends).

The years could be summarised as this:
2012: Meteor, KrysCon, our twenty year anniversary and Dom’s 40th birthday.
2014: This year seemed to concentrate into small gatherings around shared interest and madness. Roleplaying, Writers' Triangle and Secret World.
2007: Things transformed considerably for me between the start of the year and the end, particularly work-wise. However, it has also been a good year for seeing people I haven't been in touch with for what seems like an age and, above all, I'll remember 2007 for being a fantastic roleplaying year.

Hmm. Not too bad, I feel!