Feb 24: what’s been happening
Starting this week with a recap of last week. As usual.
The biggest thing was Friday Fun Night, wherein some friends gathered together, made simple foods, and hung out doing things. It's my favorite kind of gathering, but due to pandemic etc, I don't think I've had more than one or two here at the new house. (Which, 5 years in, doesn't really count as new, but I digress.)
There should be a better name for this kind of get-together. They are not potlucks where everyone brings dishes, cuz there’s collaboration on ingredient acquisition, but the cooking mostly happens on-site. That’s probably the closest vibe, though.
They aren’t formal dinner parties where everything is about presentation at the table, cuz a big part of the fun is everyone getting to play in the kitchen. And they aren’t party-parties, where the focus is on the socializing and the food & drinks are served to guests, cuz the other part of the fun is that there’s something planned for people to do together.
ANYway, whatever you want to call it, the food was tasty and the company was great. Saucy pasta, green salad, garlic knots & breads, and strawberry shortcakes were enjoyed by all, and then we played…The Daedalus Sentence, aka “Escape From Space Prison.” We all got recaptured, but much enjoyment was had. And the game board is gorgeous.
It was successful enough that discussion is underway for repeating it weekly when episodes of the Murderbot Diaries TV show air later this year.
Once upon a pre-pandemic time, this kind of thing happened a couple times a month at Herkes House. They started as summer Sunday BBQs + gaming nights w/ friends after we got our first house, but then people just kept coming over to share Sunday supper & game/TV through the winter with indoor foods. It went for years before that group of friends slowly drifted apart on the currents of life.
I love the idea of reviving that tradition of gathering together to Make A Food and Do A Shared Thing, whether the thing be a game or watch a movie, or whatever.
Other smol things:
The library closed early Wednesday due to power outage, so I had the night off. Did I do anything useful with the extra time? NOPE. There was an extra neighborhood stroll & lots of idle gaming. Very enjoyable rest day. Bonus, I apparently got paid for it since it was an emergency close. Wasn’t expecting that.
I finished my Stargate SG-1 rewatch, and it’s a good thing I did, since the very next day Prime Video told me I had to rent/buy the movies that had been free a day earlier & also reported that I had to subscribe to an extra service if I wanted to rewatch the series again. Big NOPE to all that.
I have reserved the Stargate movies from the library & ordered the series on DVD so I’m not beholden to streaming for future rewatches. Picked up Babylon 5 on blu-ray while I was at it, since the original discs sucked and they were remastered recently. But not the Babylon 5 movies, because they’re not currently available? Library FTW again.
A rewatch of Babylon 5 is definitely in my future, but first I’ma dust off my Farscape DVDs and do a rewatch of that. More Ben Browder/Claudia Black shenanigans, plus lots of muppet fun & other entertainment. For some reason I do not have the Peacekeeper Wars movies, but I have time to track them down. If all else fails, it’s streaming on Kanopy through the ‘brar.
I swear I do more than watch TV and play games. I also pet the cat! A LOT!
Completed my semi-annual title inventory and bought boxes of the 4 bigger sellers (Rough Passages, Relics From A Traveling Show, Weaving In The Ends & Controlled Descent) It’s well over a year’s worth of sales unless something startling happens, but…welp, I have the cash now, I have room to store them now that the house is put back together, the prices are due to go up substantially, and it isn’t like books spoil quickly. That’s my story & I’m sticking to it.
I took apart one of my shoji door panels as an experiment to see if I could rework 4 of them for use in the new office space. Experiment was a success! The proof-of-concept panel looks decent enough, but I was working with improvised tools, & I’d rather do it properly now that I know it’s easy. My fetch quest list now includes a 6” hobby saw w/wood blade & hacksaw blade, a batch of basswood slats, a new pair of needle-nose pliers, & wide painters tape.
In the process of the dismantlement research, I discovered my library has a Dremel rotary toolkit. So of course I immediately put it on hold. (I won’t get to play with it for some time yet, it’s apparently very popular.) Do I need a rotary saw/sander/drill/multi-tool thingamabob? Absolutely not. Do I want to learn how to use one anyway? YUUUUUUP.
General life observations:
‘Tis the season to be prowling around the yard, looking for signs of life from early bulbs, pruning back the shrubs n trees before the sap flows, and deciding what to dig up and move once the ground thaws. It’s brown, soggy, and dreary, but wherever I look close, I see all the newly-sprouted perennials lurking at ground level, tiny leaves protected by last year’s dead growth, all mashalled up and ready to burst forth once the light and warmth arrive in force.
It’s also the time of year I want to open the draft-sealed windows, because the warmer days make me want to believe the cold times are over. But I know better. I doubt we’ll see any more subzero temps, but there’ll be at least one more Big Snow, and plenty of arctic wind blast days.
Okay, that’s enough for one report. CAT PIC time! Pippin has claimed the big plush bean bag in the living room for himself. The Grand Canyon wool blanket is also his.
What’s on your bookshelf?
This is the part where I talk about my books.
Relics From A Traveling Show
The newest of the new! A collection of all my short fictions in one handy volume, available now from your favorite booksite or local shop.
Or! OR! if you like your local library, you could request a purchase. Free for you, sale for me, everyone wins.
Most libraries need the following info for ordering print books:
Title: Relics From A Traveling Show
Author: K. M. Herkes
ISBN: 9781945745201 (paperback)
Every library system does things a little differently, but most want their collections to serve their communities, so most of them are very responsive to patron requests.
If you like novels more than short stories, I recommend my series The Rollover Files for hopepunk tales of about an alternate world where moms with midlife crisis superpowers have been saving the world and making the military nervous since 1943.
I also have a completed, quirky slow-burn science fiction thriller duology with a romance chaser: The Stories Of The Restoration.
All my titles are available from Amazon, Apple, Kobo, Hoopla, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Overdrive and many other fine booksellers.
Support your favorite independent bookseller! Find a local shop via Indiebound
Be a potato.
" Fear is strange soil. Mainly it grows obedience like corn, which grows in rows and makes weeding easy. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground."
Terry Pratchett (Small Gods)