{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:graculus","title":"A festival of humdrum chit-chat","subtitle":"Graculus","author":{"name":"Graculus"},"link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/data\/atom"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"service.feed","type":"application\/x.atom+xml","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/data\/atom","title":"A festival of humdrum chit-chat"}}],"updated":"2017-04-17T14:36:44Z","entry":[{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:graculus:420686","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/420686.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=420686"}}],"title":"It's not you, it's me...","published":"2017-04-17T14:36:44Z","updated":"2017-04-17T14:36:44Z","category":{"@attributes":{"term":"lj is full of fail"}},"content":"Like a lot of people, I'm a little perturbed by the recent change in TOS here so I've decided that I will no longer be updating this account, though at present I have no plans to delete it - I'm still active (after a fashion) over on Dreamwidth<\/a>.

Please let me know if you're making the move to Dreamwidth too, as I'm trying to avoid duplication between the two sites in terms of who I'm following, both in terms of individual accounts and communities. I'd hate to lose track of anyone!"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:graculus:420524","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/420524.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=420524"}}],"title":"Spring has sprung...","published":"2017-03-26T11:16:57Z","updated":"2017-03-26T11:16:57Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"college"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"work"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"fencing"}}],"content":"I have an assignment due in tomorrow, so of course I'm dicking around online instead. ;)

It's not too bad, I've done most of the work but just need to pull it together and then find some references to back up why I've done what I've done. It's all about using technology for learning, so I've been running an Instagram group with one of my classes and that's provided a lot of source material to talk about - they also gave me some written feedback about their experiences, since I'd deliberately chosen one of my smaller but more adept classes to do this with!

From conversations with other folks on my course, the general feeling seems to be that pretty much everyone is bored, not just me, so that's kind of a relief I guess? A number of the sessions seem to be 'research this while you're here and tell everyone else about it' which seems kind of lazy when used as a method repeatedly. Do some bloody teaching, earn your money! We're almost at the end of the first year, thank the elder gods, though I still have two observed teaching sessions to get through. Those are a pain, not because of doing the teaching but because of all the paperwork I have to provide justifying why I'm doing X rather than Y or Z, with references of course!

In terms of work, I'm rapidly heading towards the Easter break with just 2 weeks left - one of my classes finishes next week but the other two don't and I've also got exams to do for my own class and a few for other people. And then a couple of weeks off, coincidentally when my fencing club is also closed! *runs around waving her arms in the air*

I think I'm also about to make myself a little unpopular with my boss as we're heading towards the time of year when she timetables the classes for September onwards. As I'm sure you can imagine, there's not a massive queue of people wanting to teach on a Saturday morning and I'd kind of felt last year that it was my turn to do it. It didn't make much difference for me in terms of any other commitments, so why not? Because fencing competitions often seem to put women's foil on the Saturday, that's why not! Aaaargh. In the coming academic year there'll be at least 2 extra Saturdays I won't want to work and that means either finding extra dates to accommodate the replacement classes or finding someone to cover those dates but also hoping I don't have to cancel any because of sickness. Naturally, those competitions have also not yet finalised their dates for 2017-18 because why should they?

Also posted at my Dreamwidth account<\/a> - happy to receive comments on either post.<\/span>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:graculus:420199","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/420199.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=420199"}}],"title":"A miscellany","published":"2017-03-06T11:22:32Z","updated":"2017-03-06T11:22:32Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"domestic trivia"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"fanfic"}}],"content":"Ugh, norovirus. Well, that was Saturday - I had lots of things planned for my class but spent pretty much all day in a small circuit between bed and toilet, which was not fun at all. I thought it was food poisoning at first, but on the rare occasions I come down with that (last time, it was eating yoghurt without checking the Best Before date), as soon as I puke I feel much better. This time, not so much. I literally couldn't keep anything down at all on Saturday and even drinking water was debatable at times.

So that means I need to try and find another Saturday to catch up that missed class, since most of the folks on it are paying for themselves, but that's a job for later this week when I can check which Saturdays the building is open. It also got me out of college tonight, because you're supposed to stay home for 48 hours, but I could have done without the reason for it!

In other news, I'm currently struggling a bit with finding good fanfic to read. I've been reading all sorts of stuff but the majority of it doesn't really strike me as good enough to rec and there's only been a few exceptions to that rule (since it's always lovely when someone whose writing you like gets sucked into your fandom, hello \"[personal<\/a>przed<\/b><\/a><\/span>!). That ice-skating anime seems to have infected lots of people but I'm still catching up with Legend of Korra<\/i> for the first time, so the chances of me getting that particular bug are slim to none.

However, I did stumble across some stonkingly good original fic and would like to recommend it - The Course of Honour<\/a> by Avoliot. Lots of slow burn angsty arranged marriage stuff and updating regularly, currently 9 chapters in and still going strong. *sighs happily*

Also posted at my Dreamwidth account<\/a> - happy to receive comments on either post.<\/span>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:graculus:419983","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/419983.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=419983"}}],"title":"Not everything's about you, buddy...","published":"2017-03-04T17:48:56Z","updated":"2017-03-04T17:48:56Z","content":"Spent much of the morning throwing up, so ended up cancelling my Saturday class and spending much of the day in bed - this coincided nicely with two cycle races, one women's and one men's, so that was lovely. Of course, the women's got significantly less coverage (no surprises there!) and while it wasn't won by someone from the team I support, the winner was clearly the strongest woman in the race.

But this isn't about the race, it's about what happened next.

It's pretty common for riders to be met at the end of the race by family members, loved ones, as well as representatives of their team. However, I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like what happened this afternoon. The winning rider crosses the line, gets round to where a couple of people are waiting for her (maybe the woman was her mother, given the age difference) and her boyfriend immediately grabs her face and starts excavating her tonsils. It was real teenage 'this is my girlfriend' dominance behaviour. He couldn't have been more territorial if he'd peed on her leg afterwards.

It reminded me of that nonsense at the Rio Olympics where a male Chinese swimmer (diver?) gatecrashed his girlfriend's medal ceremony so he could propose to her.The woman just won something significant, back the hell off for two minutes! And that was all over the news with some people gushing about how 'romantic' it was, others (myself included) thinking about the kind of self-absorption required to think that was okay.

Also posted at my Dreamwidth account<\/a> - happy to receive comments on either post.<\/span>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:graculus:419642","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/419642.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=419642"}}],"title":"Next verse, same as the last...","published":"2017-02-20T09:43:45Z","updated":"2017-02-20T09:43:45Z","category":{"@attributes":{"term":"college"}},"content":"I'm currently in my 4th trip around academia, having started a teaching qualification last September which is (alas) going to continue for another 18 months because it's technically 'part-time'. Which would be fine if I wasn't already bored out of my gourd by pretty much everything to date. I managed to get a student loan to pay for this course, since I'd never had one before, which pretty much means that it's free since the chances of me ever earning enough in the future to start paying it off aren't great.

Anyway, the course is run by a local college in conjunction with a local university (so at least the piece of paper I'll get at the end has a nice header!) and the first part of it at least seems to be serving as subsidised in-house training for their teachers who've been employed cheaply to teach a variety of (mostly) non-academic subjects. Most of it has been deeply mind-numbing, except for one exceptional session where I ended up being that gobby student who corrected the person up front because he'd come out with such utter BS I just couldn't not<\/i> say something. And I know, yes, this is in character for me but I'd been trying so hard not to keep my trap shut and I couldn't help it. *sigh*

At least there's only an 80% attendance requirement, so that means if I get really hacked off (see last Monday) I can stay at home and binge-watch TV instead, thus using my time much more productively. As long as I pass the assignments and get a decent grade on my observations, neither of which should be a problem, it's just a case of doing my time. I'm reduced to crossing off sessions, like a prisoner scratching lines on a cell wall...

I have a tutorial today - another example of make-work sessions that actually don't really do anything productive but can count as 'face time' or whatever inane term is in vogue this year - and have had to fill in ridiculous amounts of paperwork in preparation for 20 minutes of a lecturer's time. I wonder if she will ask me what I was doing the other week instead of coming to class? I wonder if I will tell her the truth? ;)

Also posted at my Dreamwidth account<\/a> - happy to receive comments on either post.<\/span>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:graculus:419361","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/419361.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=419361"}}],"title":"Whose bright idea was that?","published":"2017-02-12T09:03:30Z","updated":"2017-02-12T09:04:04Z","category":{"@attributes":{"term":"fencing"}},"content":"Okay, so time for a recap on yesterday's first competition - those of you reading the previous posts may recall that, in a moment of masochism, I'd signed up to do both the beginners (fencing less than 12 months) and intermediate (less than 3 years) categories and therefore committed myself to a day of jumping about and waiting about, not necessarily in that proportion. I'd been dosing myself up with cold medicine most of the week as I'd started sneezing and that seemed to work to keep me from coming down with something just in time for being inside a fencing mask for a couple of hours!

It was really nice having other folks from the club there after I'd pestered\/begged<\/s> persuaded them into signing up too, though the guy who was doing men's foil definitely had a tougher hill to climb - there were 4 times as many men as women signed up. Overall, it was mostly foil, a few men's epee but no women's epee at all and absolutely zero sabre, though apparently this is pretty common for this event since (according to my coach) people tend to come to sabre after trying the other two weapons first. I'm not sure whether the others enjoyed it as much as I did, so I guess we'll get a proper post-mortem on it when it's club night again on Thursday...

Anyway, there were 7 of us in the beginner women's foil, including 2 from a local university where they can apparently fence every day if they want to. I ended up 3rd in the pool anyway but lost in the semi to another student, so that was my first medal of the day. In this one, the two aforementioned students came first and second.

The intermediates turned out to be 5 of us, the four medallists from beginners and one other. I came 3rd in that pool too, having got the measure of one of the students (who I'd nicknamed Hoppy McStabbypants, as she pretty much relied on one attack, an odd hop-lunge combination) who only just beat me 5-4 this time. I also beat the fencer who'd beaten me in the beginner's semi 5-2, which I was very happy about. That pool position meant I was getting a medal anyway, but I won my semi fight this time (15-12, so it was a pretty close one) and got into the final, I did quite well for the first 3 minute period, finishing that just 9-7 down, but then didn't get back into it after that pause and lost 15-7.

It ended up with the same woman winning both beginners and intermediate, though neither victory was by any means a walkover, which also means she can't enter either competition again next year. I was a bit underwhelmed by how she yelled if she got a point against me, which I thought was a bit sad given the level of the competition - dude, it's a regional low-level competition, not the Olympics! I'm sure it was meant to intimidate me, but I just thought it was kind of pathetic.

After that, I went home with my medals and practically inhaled a greasy cheese-laden pizza, as I'd barely eaten anything all day, and then fell into my nice warm bed with a book. And now I ache all over, but not that much more than I usually do after a club night. All in all, I'm pretty happy with how I did and also that the work I've been putting in at the gym in terms of my overall stamina paid off - the issue in my final fight was with my fencing (loss of focus, I think, as much as a skill issue), rather than me puffing like a steam train, which would have been the case even a couple of months ago!

The overall verdict? Yes, I think I'll compete again but it's about finding the right event so I get more practice fighting people rather than getting annihilated early on. More practice first, though, and more time in the gym.

Also posted at my Dreamwidth account<\/a> - happy to receive comments on either post.<\/span>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:graculus:419134","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/419134.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=419134"}}],"title":"The final countdown...","published":"2017-02-03T10:03:24Z","updated":"2017-02-03T10:03:24Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"holidays!"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"fencing"}}],"content":"Sorry, this blog is probably going to be quite fencing-heavy for a while now. *shrugs* For some reason I'm finding it hard to concentrate on books and nothing has really grabbed me, while other than the \"[profile]<\/a>picfor1000<\/b><\/a><\/span> challenge I've signed up for again, no writing is going on. I've started booking my trip to Finland this summer, so perhaps more on that later?

So, an update on the club competition - my team lost by one hit<\/i>. I'd been told it was close but hadn't realised quite how close it was! I could have been sharing the very ugly team trophy this time around (and yes, it's really hideous, it's a glass thing of indeterminate shape rather than a proper cup or something) if not for that one hit.

The regional comp is now a week and a day from now and I've finally succeeded in my quest to get some of my fellow newbies to enter too. I'd been badgering them for weeks, as I didn't really want to go on my own (not that I wouldn't, but I'd rather have company!) and finally a combination of pleas and pestering has carried the day. So there's going to be 4 of us in all, maybe even 5 if someone else gets his arse in gear in time. \\o\/

Of course, since a foil competition is coming up soon, our coach decides that last night was an ideal time to start teaching us epee instead. Which is basically 'where would you like to stab your opponent today and it's okay if he stabs you at the same time, it totally still counts'. None of this ridiculous right-of-way and who attacked first business, so much easier to referee in that you just see whose light goes on. I'd been thinking about doing epee some time this year anyway, since there seem to be a lot more competitions, but I wasn't really thinking quite yet!

Anyway, more news after the competition next weekend. ;)

As mentioned above, I've also started booking stuff for my trip to Finland in the summer. As well as going to Helsinki for WorldCon, I've booked a hiking trip beforehand (including bear watching) and then a few days in Turku as well. So far I've booked internal flights and my Turku and Helsinki hotels, so just the main flight and Turku-Helsinki train to go. Though at the moment July seems a long way away and I'm currently trying to decide if I want to go anywhere before then, even if just for a few days.

Also posted at my Dreamwidth account<\/a> - happy to receive comments on either post.<\/span>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:graculus:418831","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/418831.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=418831"}}],"title":"First club competition, bruises and all...","published":"2017-01-15T12:13:02Z","updated":"2017-01-15T12:16:07Z","category":{"@attributes":{"term":"fencing"}},"content":"Yesterday, it was our club competition, which was a new and interesting experience for me. I realised that one of the reasons I'm enjoying fencing is that it's just about me, rather than me-as-part-of-a-team which had been my main experience of sport before - I'd also played tennis before, but only on a casual basis, no real competition. But while yesterday was technically a team competition (of which more shortly), it was also about me fighting the other beginners - three of them, anyway, since there were only four teams - as well as<\/i> being part of a team.

We're a three-weapon club, so we have folks who fence foil (like me, though I'm probably going to try at least epee at some point), epee and sabre, with some fencing all three though most folks have a preference. The competition was for randomly-chosen teams of three with one person fencing each weapon. There's a coin toss to decide who gets to choose order of fencers in each bout and all the teams fence each other, with the first match being first to 5 hits, the second match first to 10 and the final being first to 15. So, for example, the final match we fought, our first fencer lost 5-2, I fought next and put us back in the lead at 7-10, and then our final fencer fought and we lost 15-13 overall.

And then there's some arcane calculations that decide which team has won overall, which I won't try and explain since I don't really get it. Anyway, we won two of our matches but lost the third and came second even though we beat the team that won. I just wish there'd been a couple more teams, since I could happily have fought a few more people!

I'd decided that the best defence was a good offence and had been fighting quite aggressively all the way through, so now have the bruises to prove it. I have a particularly fine mark on my upper sword arm which I think will be with me for a while and another couple on my legs. I know I probably wouldn't have got away with it with more experienced fighters (so that's going to be different for the real competition in a few weeks) but it was definitely effective, if only in putting the wind up the others.

The regional competition is a month away, so more time at the gym and more practices between now and then, not to mention that I'm also still trying to get a couple of other folks to enter that one too, so I'm not wandering in there on my own. Not that this is going to stop me, but it'd be nice to have company...

Also posted at my Dreamwidth account<\/a> - happy to receive comments on either post.<\/span>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:graculus:418725","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/418725.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=418725"}}],"title":"The obligatory books & TV post, now in 2017!","published":"2017-01-06T18:19:51Z","updated":"2017-01-06T18:19:51Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"tv stuff"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"books"}}],"content":"I'm pretty much still exclusively reading SF and Fantasy, with the occasional non-fiction book thrown in (but very occasional) and these are the best of what I read in 2016:

  • Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor, a first contact novel set in Nigeria
  • Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee
  • The Obelisk Gate by NK Jemisin (though you need to read The Fifth Season first)
  • A Gathering of Shadows by VE Schwab
  • Archivist Wasp by Nicole Kornher-Stace
  • Conspiracy of Ravens by Lila Bowen
  • Updraft by Fran Wilde, which finally came out in paperback in the UK
  • City of Blades by Robert Jackson Bennett
  • Uprooted by Naomi Novik, which subsequently went on to win the Nebula and World Fantasy Award
  • The Silver Tide and The Iron Ghost, both by Jen Williams

    There is also ongoing love in my heart for Saga, Ms Marvel<\/i> and Unbeatable Squirrel Girl<\/i>.

    More detailed commentary is available at my     Booklikes blog<\/a> if you're interested in any of the above.

    Meanwhile, on the idiot box, this is how it falls out at the moment...

    Still watching (though in some cases massively behind)<\/u>: Brooklyn Nine Nine, Elementary, iZombie, DC's Legends of Tomorrow, Arrow, Vikings, Lucifer<\/i>

    Got bored and\/or annoyed and wandered off from<\/u>: Sleepy Hollow, Blindspot, How to Get Away With Murder, Empire, The Blacklist, Jane the Virgin<\/i>

    Unexpectedly enjoying<\/u>: The Good Place<\/i> (and I usually loathe US 'comedy', so that's saying something) and Pitch<\/i> (even though I know less than nothing about baseball!)

    Happy to discuss any of the above in the spoiler-laden world of comments!

    Also posted at     my Dreamwidth account<\/a> - happy to receive comments on either post.<\/span>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:graculus:418510","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/418510.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=418510"}}],"title":"A follow-up post...","published":"2016-12-29T15:21:11Z","updated":"2016-12-29T15:21:11Z","category":{"@attributes":{"term":"fencing"}},"content":"An update to this post<\/a>: My boss has kindly rearranged my class schedule so I can<\/i> enter the regional beginners competition in February, so that's going to be my first ever experience of fencing outside the club environment. I'm trying to get my fellow newbies to enter too, so I'm not completely alone there. I've decided to bite the bullet and enter both the beginners and intermediate categories, as it's only a little more expensive and I figure every bit of experience helps!

    We have our club competition in a couple of weeks, so at least I'll get an idea of how it all works before rolling off somewhere for the real thing. That should be fun, as it's a 3-weapon random team competition. Us newbies are fencing foil and we get paired with two other folks (one fencing epee and one sabre) at random, best team all-round performance wins the thing.

    Like most sports, I guess, I go through phases of thinking I'm getting better and then realising I'm possibly not. I don't have much of a frame of reference since it's been a while since I played organised sports and then it was team sport rather than something individual. In the last practice before Christmas, I ended up fencing one of the coaches and it was pretty brutal - I kept going, though, even though it was all but hopeless on my part and did eventually<\/i> score a point off him! And then I quit the match, because I was knackered and the experience wasn't going to get any better (for me, at least). ;)

    Also posted at     my Dreamwidth account<\/a> - happy to receive comments on either post.<\/span>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:graculus:418073","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/418073.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=418073"}}],"title":"RIP Milo (2009-2016)","published":"2016-12-05T08:54:59Z","updated":"2016-12-05T08:55:38Z","category":{"@attributes":{"term":"ferrets"}},"content":"No surprises here, really - Milo, who'd been a lone ferret for 2 years, passed away in his sleep this weekend. I was pretty certain he was 2 when I got him and that was back in 2011.

    After our trip to the vets at the end of September, I'd been resigned to the idea he could go pretty much at any time and he'd been getting scrawnier and scrawnier as the weeks went on. However, as long as his quality of life was okay, it wasn't worth stressing him out with unnecessary trips back to the vet which wouldn't be able to help him anyway. He was just very elderly in ferret terms, there was nothing they could do about that!

    Which means I'm currently ferretless for the first time in longer than I can remember.

    Also posted at     my Dreamwidth account<\/a> - happy to receive comments on either post.<\/span>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:graculus:418014","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/418014.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=418014"}}],"title":"A minor fencing conundrum","published":"2016-11-29T13:58:13Z","updated":"2016-11-29T13:58:13Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"domestic trivia"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"fencing"}}],"content":"Help me, flist, to make up my mind about something...

    So, I've bought my first pair of fencing breeches with my unexpected backpay, which was great - I recently also bought some new court shoes (since tennis or squash shoes basically double as fencing shoes, for half the price) and some nice dark blue socks to match them. I'm now about 6 months in to learning to fence and enjoying it a lot, though I'm not always sure whether I'm actually improving<\/i>. Part of what we do on a Thursday is that the beginners fence for an hour and then, if we like, we can stay on and have the opportunity to fight the more experienced fencers.

    Anyway, in January we've got the annual club competition and for over 14's that's a team one - it looks as though how it'll shake out is the beginners all fencing foil and the more experienced fencing either \u00e9p\u00e9e or sabre, so a team will be a randomly-selected group of 3 with all weapons represented. I'm a bit nervous and this isn't helped by it being on a Saturday afternoon so I'll basically be finishing work at 12.30 and potentially fencing at 1pm.

    But that's not the dilemma. Nope. I've also been given an entry form for the regional beginners & intermediate fencing competition, which is in February. A beginner is someone who's started fencing since August 2015 so I'd qualify for that and the intermediate is a longer period, so ditto (and for the next 2 years by my reckoning). I could borrow the relevant equipment from my club so that's not an issue but I would need to get the day off because, again, it's a Saturday but it's in the next town and I'd need to sign in for beginner's foil at 9.30am. It's probably not going to be a massive competition - last year there were 5 women beginners at foil.

    Here's the thing: if I don't fence the beginners competition in February, I won't be eligible for that category any longer by the time it rolls around again, I'll have to go up to intermediate. If I wait to see how well I do in our<\/i> competition, I won't be giving my boss enough notice to get cover for the one in February. If I do enter the beginners competition, I could still get my arse handed to me and finish bottom of the list.

    Also posted at     my Dreamwidth account<\/a> - happy to receive comments on either post.<\/span>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:graculus:417783","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/417783.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=417783"}}],"title":"I think I'm getting worse at doing updates, rather than better...","published":"2016-11-19T19:50:50Z","updated":"2016-11-19T19:55:26Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"college"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"domestic trivia"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"work"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"ferrets"}}],"content":"Okay, what's been going on since my last post way back in September? Well, the weasel is still alive, though I swear he gets scrawnier every time I look at him - still, as long as his quality of life is okay, I'm not going to complain.

    In work news, we got a bizarre email last week going 'oh, btw, you should have got a pay rise 18 months ago but we forgot, so you're getting it and your resultant back pay in the next pay packet' which led to a few raised eyebrows. I'm still teaching 3 courses, though the second of my 6-month courses (which is due to start in February) may well end up being whatever level is needed for demand. I'm also hoping to negotiate a slight time change so that I get more than a 30 minute turnaround to get one lot of learners out, shove some lunch down my neck and be ready for the next lot to come in the door. Fortunately that only happens one day a week but it's a real pain.

    I also got my first plagiarism of the academic year this past week. I'd asked for my folks to write something about an interesting place they'd been, only for one of them to give me something that was very obviously<\/i> culled from Wikipedia. So I made a few choice comments to the group as a whole and also gave her some written feedback and hopefully that won't recur. Full marks for trying, though!

    I've also just started at a new gym, which is based in my local high school. It's not open all day but the location and not having to pay parking charges makes up for that. I've had a year's free membership with the council gym but wasn't going to any classes other than Pilates once a week, which I want to continue, so I've saved money from not paying parking and just the sheer aggravation of driving into town. I'm a little annoyed that the people who're supposed to be supporting me from the council scheme apparently forgot I exist a few months back and I'd had nothing to say what should happen next, so I think a terse email will be heading their way next week. I didn't really need it, but I hope other people who need more support than me get a better service!

    In college news, it's all a bit tedious at the moment, interspersed with the people who know the least about teaching apparently being the ones with the most opinions on the subject. Naturally, when faced with the prospect of a 2,500 word assignment, my response as a fic writer was only 2,500?<\/i> - I've started work on it and it's already past that but I figured cutting it back would be easier.

    Finally, I'm still making progress with the fencing lessons. Passed Grade 1 Foil a few weeks back and I understand the coach is keen to get those of us who're currently having lessons through Grade 2 before Christmas so he can then take on a new lot of learners in January and use us as examples as and when required. Or something like that. I have a continuous set of bruises on my leading thigh but am about to order proper fencing breeches (thanks, unexpected back pay!) which I hope may reduce that a little. My only regret is that, because of their location, I can't show off my bruises to the folks at work! :P

    Also posted at     my Dreamwidth account<\/a> - happy to receive comments on either post.<\/span>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:graculus:417131","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/417131.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=417131"}}],"title":"Oh, titles are the worst","published":"2016-09-30T18:29:38Z","updated":"2016-09-30T18:29:38Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"college"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"work"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"ferrets"}}],"content":"I'm now a couple of weeks into the routine of the academic year, so I'm getting used to regular times and days once again. Two of my classes are nearly full, which is excellent, while the other is struggling a bit so it's not currently clear if that will continue or not - half-term is the date for a decision on that, so we'll see what happens. In other, work-related news, I've been freed from the tyranny of the time-sheet at last and so don't have to account for myself all the time, just in time to deal with the college course!

    That's going to properly start this coming week, after a couple of introductory weeks where we haven't achieved a great deal and I've eyed up the folks I think are going to struggle. Shortly we have to do a 20-minute teaching session that's observed and for peer feedback and that could see the wheels come off the wagon for a couple of people. Personally, I just want to get on with it since I have 4 teaching observations and various assignments to do and can't be bothered with endless ice breakers and the like.

    Meanwhile, in the land of pet-owning, we've had a bit of drama. I'm now down to the last, elderly remnant of my ferrets - I did the maths and think he's 7 now, which is positively geriatric for weasel-kind. Recently, he's developed a lump on his neck which he's now had a good scratch at, so I took him off to the vets earlier this week to get an opinion on said lump and options for removal. The view overall was that the lump was eminently removable but that he probably wouldn't survive the surgery - I'd been asked to starve him in case the vet decided to go ahead with the operation and he was very poorly looking when he was there. We discovered that he also has quite a large cyst in his innards, which the vet drained at the time but I wasn't even convinced he'd survive the rest of the day. And then he perked up suddenly and started eating, so who knows?

    In slightly cheerier news, I'm still learning to fence and have the bruises to prove it! Last practice of the month is always Fight Night, where we get the electric scoring kit out. I got to fight 5 different people last night, including one left-hander (which is always a source of entertainment) and the U15 regional silver medallist (who usually fences \u00e9p\u00e9e so it was fairer than it sounds and I took a couple of points off him). In the former match, I managed to slap my opponent's sword down onto my own leg and now have a 6\" x 2\" bruise as a memento of the occasion.

    Also posted at     my Dreamwidth account<\/a> - happy to receive comments on either post.<\/span>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:graculus:416817","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/416817.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=416817"}}],"title":"Staring down the barrel of yet another deadline...","published":"2016-08-23T10:21:50Z","updated":"2016-08-23T10:22:25Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"domestic trivia"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"work"}}],"content":"Okay, that sounds much more dramatic than is actually the case, but it's as good a title as any so we'll go with it! Yes, it's the summer holidays (so that, in the UK at least, means torrential rain alternating with days which are quite nice) and I have 3 weeks left before I have to actually start trying to teach something to someone. Which means schemes of work and lesson plans - slightly complicated by the fact that for one course I need a scheme of work for the entire year and have never taught a course that lasted more than two terms, and for the other I'm teaching at a level I've not taught before.

    I'd had a couple of speculative enquiries from the firm where I temped last year as to my availability (both over the summer and in the autumn term) but was uncharacteristically realistic with myself in terms of what I already have going on. Sure, money is great but so is not losing the plot because you're trying to do too much! And then there's the little matter of starting at college myself too, which I'd pretty much forgotten till I looked at my calendar for September and saw a not about enrolment. *headdesk*

    For the courses I've taught before, a new issue also arises in the form of returning students. How it works in my particular subject is that folks need to pass three exams (Speaking & Listening, Reading and Writing) before they can move on to the next level courses and it usually takes people a year to do all three. Sometimes a little longer if they're really struggling with one of the units - usually Writing is the hardest of the three, though occasionally we get people who can write grammatically but then the tenses fly out of their head when talking. Because I just finished teaching two Entry 2 classes which were less than a year, I now have the pleasure of at least 3 learners in my Entry 2 class who've already been through some of the material I'd normally use and in recent months to boot. Which means finding other stuff I can use so that I don't make life too easy for them!

    In other work-related news, one of my former students who messed me about a lot (not turning up and then insisting he was better than he actually was) pestered his way into doing a Speaking & Listening exam while I was away - I'd put him in for it then he promptly disappeared, having attended less than 30% of the classes, only to state he'd 'missed a few'. Is it wrong of me to have laughed like a drain when I discovered that he failed it?

    In non-work news, after just about recovering from bronchitis, I then went to Nine Worlds and got con crud, so I've been living on cold relief stuff again since getting back last week. At least I got to do what I wanted there, which was as much catch up with people (including some fan-girling of two particular authors) as go to panels. It's hard sometimes to balance the 'oh, we've already discussed this to death in fandom' aspect with other people's enthusiasm for what is new-to-them and so some panels I might have gone to ended up being ones I knew I could quite competently do<\/i> and so avoided. The panels I went to were interesting though, so I didn't feel like I'd missed out too much - this year the location meant they were much closer together and I only missed out on one I wanted to go to because I arrived too late to get in.

    Next year, of course, is WorldCon in Helsinki so it's fairly unlikely I'll be going to Nine Worlds as well (since it's the weekend before) as if I'm going to Finland, I want to get a chance to see more than just the capital. Now I have my timetable, I know that I'm finishing classes earlier this coming year and so I could go out before the con for a couple of weeks, but that's still a decision to be made - I need to have a look at where I want to go and get some costings, as it might be cheaper (in terms of flights and hotels) to finish<\/i> with WorldCon than have it be the start of my trip. Helsinki! \\o\/

    Other than that, stopped writing a while back and have been too lazy to get my arse in gear since - once I broke my streak on 750Words I didn't get myself going again. Knowing the way my brain operates though, I fully expect that once I'm back in a routine and at all under the cosh in terms of time, my creative side will suddenly start wanting an outlet. That's usually what happens, never when it's convenient of course! :P

    Also posted at     my Dreamwidth account<\/a> - happy to receive comments on either post.<\/span>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:graculus:416555","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/416555.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=416555"}}],"title":"I left my lung on a Scottish island...","published":"2016-07-31T13:43:26Z","updated":"2016-08-01T08:14:18Z","category":{"@attributes":{"term":"holidays!"}},"content":"*sung to the tune of 'I Left My Heart in San Francisco*

    Yes, I have returned and (in the time-honoured philosophy of going on holiday after a hectic period of work) managed to get sick while I was on Mull. Which wasn't too bad for the first couple of days but then I developed a delightful chest cold which led to me coughing up green phlegm. In the end, I decided a week in that camping probably wasn't helping much either, especially after a delightful night of coughing and a massive nose-bleed combined, and spent the last 3 nights in hastily-arranged B&B. I have a tendency to get (usually minor) nosebleeds whenever I get any kind of sinus pressure from colds but normally it's not in a tent late at night. I have no idea what my 'neighbours' on the campsite thought was going on and really didn't want to ask!    <\/a>

    As expected, the weather ranged from absolutely baking through rain and midge swarms to 'a combination of all of the preceding' but at least I got to do most of what I wanted to do regardless. I'd organised to go on a trip out specifically looking for otters and spent about 5 hours watching said critters quite close to where I was camping. I'd already seen one by pure chance earlier in the week, but only for about a minute, whereas this was the real thing. Fortunately, at this stage I wasn't coughing too badly. Said critters were too far away for my camera to get a good shot but here's one of them from the people I went with:



    I also got to go and visit the puffins on the Treshnish Islands where, as the guy running the boat trip says, they've been involved in studying Homo Sapiens for quite some time. You can literally sit and they'll land or waddle around within a couple of feed of you, which makes (hopefully!) for some great pics when I get through all of them. Pic spam to follow...

    So, in short, good holiday which probably would have been much improved by my not being ill, also more consistent weather (but hey, it's Scotland so that's a bit much to ask). Also, I like the countryside but this has reminded me why I also like wi-fi and 24-hour supermarkets. ;)

    E.T.A.<\/b> Can't believe I forgot to mention one of the other highlights of the trip, namely being in a tent in the middle of a massive thunderstorm. We'd already watched the first part of the storm roll over and lightning strikes on the coast opposite, only for the next bit to be literally overhead. It was like being inside a drum, with massive flashes of light pretty much constantly - awesome!

    Also posted at     my Dreamwidth account<\/a> - happy to receive comments on either post.<\/span>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:graculus:416322","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/416322.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=416322"}}],"title":"Freedom! Well, for a bit...","published":"2016-07-17T09:03:47Z","updated":"2016-07-17T09:04:23Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"holidays!"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"domestic trivia"}}],"content":"Finished everything in terms of work on Friday, now to get off on holiday. Tomorrow I'm off to the Scottish island of Mull for about 10 days, though given the weather forecast it's quite possible I may decide to come home before then, as I'm camping and the forecast is Not Great. Still, as long as I have coffee and books, I shall struggle on heroically and see how it goes!

    I've got a couple of trips planned, but didn't want to over-organise myself and I'm also hoping to use my newly-refreshed navigation skills at some point - I've actually used them already, since I went out to the Peak District and got slightly turned around so then had to use map & compass to re-orientate myself. For map nerds like myself, discovering WH Smith were doing a sale on Ordnance Survey maps was just too much to resist, so I now find myself the proud owner of maps covering the entire Peak District National Park and also Mull (for obvious reasons).

    Today is packing day as I'm leaving early tomorrow and driving up to Scotland, though I also need to go and see Ghostbusters<\/i> this morning and drop the lone ferret off at the local pet place - they're looking after him and the woman who helps run it is so<\/i> excited about having him. She has ferrets herself but this is the first one they've had to board, after a false alarm a few months back when someone called about boarding a parrot and she misheard them. It's literally over the road from the local vet, so if old and cranky turns into old and sick, he's as close as possible. All my washing is done and I want to pack the car tonight, though I'm still wondering if I've chosen enough books for if I do get stuck on a waterlogged island! ;)

    Photo spam on my return, assuming that I didn't spend the majority of my trip underwater! :P

    Also posted at     my Dreamwidth account<\/a> - happy to receive comments on either post.<\/span>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:graculus:416229","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/416229.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=416229"}}],"title":"Another generic update...","published":"2016-06-30T07:49:52Z","updated":"2016-06-30T07:55:02Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"holidays!"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"work"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"various and sundry"}}],"content":"Nearly at the end of term, thank heavens.

    First off,     the student teacher<\/a> did not come back. I'm hoping it's been suggested to her that perhaps teaching is not really her thing and she ought to consider something else, but I have no idea if that's the case or not. I'm currently in the middle of organising and managing exams, not to mention encouraging folks to sign up for classes in September (with 4 of my students joining one of my classes already, which means I'm 25% full on that class with people where I already know what they can and can't do, which makes my life much easier).

    I've also managed to snag a few more hours from September of what was going spare, though I didn't want to take on too much and also wanted to keep a day off in the week if I could - in order to manage both of those aims, I've agreed to teach a Saturday morning class, but at a higher level than I've taught before so that's going to be interesting. It's very grammar-heavy at that level, which is no issue for me, except making sure that I know how to explain the rules (which I've discovered is quite a different thing from knowing if something is right or not when I read it). Teaching on a Saturday means that I will now have Thursdays off completely and also no teaching commitments on Mondays before I head off late afternoon to college for a few hours each week.

    I realised a few weeks back that if I didn't get a wiggle on, I wasn't going to actually have a holiday this year (since going to Nine Worlds doesn't really count, even if I sneak off to a museum or two instead of going to panels now I'm going to be in central London) so I've been organising to go to Mull for 10 days before the schools all break up. I'm also going to be camping, though camping when you have a car is a little less Spartan since you don't have to carry everything with you wherever you go. I've booked a couple of trips when I'm there, but tried not to organise myself too much just in case - my main plan is books, coffee and beer, and wandering about. It's prime otter territory, apparently, but that's what they said about Skye too and I never saw any otters there!

    I also recently took a refresher navigation course, since I live very close to the Peak District National Park but haven't really explored it properly. I'd done map and compass navigation many years ago but had forgotten most of it, so I went off the other Saturday and spent the day re-learning how to do stuff and also would like to get back and do more later on in the year - the same guy does navigation in poor visibility training, which could be very useful in the coming dystopia. ;)

    You may notice I have not, to this point, mentioned the referendum. I'm really not sure what there is to say about it, other than that one side was vigorously campaigning on what's turned out (to the surprise of nobody on this side of the situation) to be a tissue of lies and half-truths at best. It's also validated the views of a small bunch of horrible people who now think that the majority agrees with them about 'foreigners' and people who are British but not White, making them feel bolder about being arseholes in public. The folks who 'won' clearly didn't expect to, because they had no plans on what should happen next, so we're stuck in a bit of a limbo at the moment while political power games carry on and everyone on both sides of the House try and jockey for position.

    It's all a bit pathetic but also quite worrying because nobody really knows what's going to happen - the referendum was, after all, advisory (another thing that seems to have been glossed over by and to the folks who want to leave the EU) so could be ignored by government if they want to do so, though that would probably require significantly more backbone than most politicians possess when faced with unpopularity. Whether or not I'll have folks to teach in the longer term is another matter, but for now nothing has immediately changed, so we'll have to see just how deep we're all in the shitter.

    Also posted at     my Dreamwidth account<\/a> - happy to receive comments on either post.<\/span>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:graculus:415794","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/415794.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=415794"}}],"title":"Yikes!","published":"2016-06-08T16:55:25Z","updated":"2016-06-08T16:56:16Z","category":{"@attributes":{"term":"work"}},"content":"I'll be the first one to admit I have an issue with second-hand embarrassment - it's something I absolutely hate seeing as a plot-line in TV or movies and will happily turn off a show if it goes down that route - so how much worse when it's working out right in front of you at work?

    I've had a student teacher with me one morning a week for the last few weeks. She's nearly at the end of her course and has been spending time with myself and a couple of other teachers, getting an idea of different levels of learners and also some of the subjects we teach adults. As part of this placement she had to do some actual teaching and, since she seemed keen to do it, I agreed she could take the lesson this week - I'd suggested a subject area my learners haven't tackled yet (namely, how we talk about future plans) and said I'd be more than happy to see anything she prepared, give her feedback and so on.

    My first hint that this was going to be a bit of a train-wreck should have been when she emailed me last week and seemed to say she was going to teach something else, so I replied and reminded her what I'd asked her to cover. She didn't, however, send me anything more about what she was planning. Probably because she didn't really have anything planned and was hoping to kind of 'wing it', which is a tactic that rarely works all that well unless you are massively knowledgeable about your subject, have a bundle of confidence and learners who'll go along with what you're doing because they understand what you're talking about. Today was a perfect storm of none of the above. *headdesk*

    Anyway, that happened. At one point, after my manager had left (since she was observing the lesson as well in an official capacity) I had to point out that what this person was teaching was actually wrong and the example she was giving didn't use the tense she was trying to illustrate. Bad enough that I'm going to have to do a lesson next week on the same area, to deal with this and try and restore some confidence on the part of the learners (not tomorrow, that'll be too soon, the dust needs to settle!), but then she asked me at the end of the lesson if I was teaching the one next week! Fortunately I was in the middle of a conversation with someone and managed to bite back my almost-instinctive response that she'd done enough... she'll be having a conversation with my manager on Friday so I guess I'll see if she even comes back next week!

    In other news, also work-related, I've been offered a place at college from September to get my teaching qualification. Yep, the course I couldn't start last year because the sky had fallen will be starting this year instead. Back to academia for the 4th (and last!) time, because I still have a good chunk of my working life ahead of me (alas) and need the options this qualification will give me. I've already asked my boss to keep reminding me of this when I inevitably start grumbling and, at least, I would have to work very hard to make any observed lesson I might have could match the one I cringed my way through this morning! ;)

    Also posted at     my Dreamwidth account<\/a> - happy to receive comments on either post.<\/span>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:graculus:415587","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/415587.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=415587"}}],"title":"Let's talk about podcasts...","published":"2016-05-22T08:53:43Z","updated":"2016-05-22T09:03:19Z","category":{"@attributes":{"term":"various and sundry"}},"content":"Maybe it's because I don't have a commute as such any more, but there's very few out there which can get and keep my interest beyond an episode or two - listening to something sat on your butt at the computer is a very different experience than listening while driving or whatever. I've not tried listening to spoken word stuff at the gym, so if anyone does that can you tell me what it's like for you?

    Anyway, these are the ones I'm listening to at the moment, a select bunch:

  • Welcome to Night Vale<\/a> - yep, it's still going strong!
  • Fangirl Happy Hour<\/a> - fangirling about SFF & popular culture from a feminist perspective
  • Dan Snow's History Hit<\/a> - short talks on all sorts of historical subjects
  • Making History<\/a> - more short history sections, this time from BBC Radio 4
  • The History of English<\/a> - regularly-updated podcast on the English language, starting with proto-IndoEuropean
  • Life in the Peloton<\/a> - ever wondered what it's like to be a professional cyclist?

    Anyway, looking for recommendations of similar subjects to the above, particularly new(ish) ones that I might have missed! Also especially looking for history podcasts on non-Western parts of the world...

    Also posted at     my Dreamwidth account<\/a> - happy to receive comments on either post.<\/span>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:graculus:415465","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/415465.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=415465"}}],"title":"Books and stuff","published":"2016-05-15T09:23:55Z","updated":"2016-05-15T09:24:40Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"tv stuff"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"books"}}],"content":"Since I've been mostly blathering about what I've been up to in my personal life, I thought I'd also do a post about what I've been consuming in terms of media, since it's been quite a lot.

    So, first off let's talk about books - I'm pretty much exclusively reading SF and Fantasy now, with the occasional non-fiction book thrown in (but very occasional) and these are the best of what I've read this year so far, mostly newly published but a few older books too:

    A Gathering of Shadows<\/i> by VE Schwab (loved the first book, loved the sequel)
    The Iron Ghost<\/i> and The Silver Tide<\/i> by Jen Williams
    City of Blades<\/i> by Robert Jackson Bennett (boy, this series is so good!)
    Uprooted<\/i> by Naomi Novik (which won the Nebula Award for Best Novel yesterday)
    The Watchmaker of Filigree Street<\/i> by Natasha Pulley
    Down Station<\/i> by Simon Morden
    The Grace of Kings<\/i> by Ken Liu
    The Grass King's Concubine<\/i> by Kari Sperring
    Lagoon<\/i> by Nnedi Okorafor
    Europe in Autumn<\/i> by Dave Hutchinson
    City of Bones<\/i> by Martha Wells
    Ombria in Shadow<\/i> by Patricia McKillip

    More detailed commentary is available at my     Booklikes<\/a> blog if you're interested in any of the above. The only books I've given 5 stars to this year so far have been Uprooted<\/i> and City of Blades<\/i>.

    Meanwhile, on the idiot box, this is how it falls out at the moment...

    Still watching (though in some cases massively behind what's currently airing)<\/u>: Brooklyn Nine Nine, Elementary, Orphan Black, iZombie, Person of Interest, Vikings, Turn, The Americans<\/i> (season 4 starts on UK television this week!)

    Got bored and\/or annoyed and wandered off from<\/u>: Sleepy Hollow, Blindspot, How to Get Away With Murder, Empire<\/i>

    Unexpectedly enjoying<\/u>: DC's Legends of Tomorrow<\/i> (considering I ditched The Flash<\/i> fairly early on, this one has stuck mostly because of the combo of Sarah Lance and Leonard Snart) and Limitless<\/i>

    Feeling ambivalent about<\/u>: Arrow, The Blacklist<\/i> (which I mostly watch for Spader but...) and Jane the Virgin<\/i>

    Happy to discuss any of the above in the spoiler-laden world of comments!

    Also posted at     my Dreamwidth account<\/a> - happy to receive comments on either post.<\/span>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:graculus:415134","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/415134.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=415134"}}],"title":"graculus @ 2016-05-14T08:40:00","published":"2016-05-14T08:04:13Z","updated":"2016-05-14T08:04:13Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"holidays!"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"domestic trivia"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"work"}}],"content":"I managed to lose my house keys yesterday so had to call a locksmith, which I don't recommend not because said locksmith wasn't a really nice guy (he was) but because it cost a load of money. Since he couldn't pick the lock, he had to drill it out and replace it. And I'd just picked up my car from its MOT and was rejoicing over the fact that it had passed without needing anything done to it. Knowing how my income works, all I could think was 'well, that's x hours teaching'. :(

    I'm very much enjoying working part-time but the drop in overall income is not so enjoyable - I used to travel a lot more, but now what with teaching in term time and the money thing that hasn't really happened. However, we have a couple of people retiring in July so their hours should soon be up for grabs. We run a load of ESOL courses every week (weekday mornings, afternoons, late afternoons, most evenings and even Saturday mornings) at various levels and in four different centres so I'm really glad I'm not the one who has to timetable it all!

    I'm trying to get out more on my day off and also really want to have a proper holiday at the end of our year (the week before the schools break up), to the point where I've been offered the possibility of more work by the university but they want me to do more training and I'm probably going to blow that off in favour of going to Scotland for a week. Going to conventions is nice but it's not really a holiday, you know?

    I also got invited to stay behind this week at fencing and train with the rest of the adults for the first time, so I must be making progress; that means I got out of warming up again, as I was still very much warmed up from my lesson! At the moment, there are only two women turning up regularly (both of us relative beginners), so that means I got to fence a couple of teenage boys this week in addition to my fellow learners - I don't mind losing, though it's frustrating, as long as I've given it a good shot and hopefully taken at least one point off them. I'm now about halfway through my first set of lessons so I can definitely see myself carrying on past that, though I plan to delay buying any equipment for as long as humanly possible.

    Also posted at     my Dreamwidth account<\/a> - happy to receive comments on either post.<\/span>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:graculus:414947","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/414947.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=414947"}}],"title":"graculus @ 2016-05-04T22:20:00","published":"2016-05-04T21:21:21Z","updated":"2016-05-04T21:22:52Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"movies"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"domestic trivia"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"work"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"books"}}],"content":"Apologies to the folks who find my recent foray into the world of fitness etc. of zero interest - in recognition of that, I've put the next part of my post behind a cut so you can skip onto me whittering about other things instead!

    Yes, I'm still going to the gym, though my previous plan to go regularly was somewhat scuppered by the fact that the building where I'd been going was suddenly shut down because the roof was about to fall in. They'd already known there was a problem, hence the surveyor being in to look at it with a view to repairs being done at some point (council finances permitting) but they got a worse report than they were expecting and that was that. I literally left the building at 6.30 after my Pilates class and got an email a couple of hours later to say that the building was going to be shut till an (at that point) undetermined date.

    In the end, it's probably not going to be as long as all that, as they're looking at late June at the moment, but it's massively frustrating. The only gym I can go to now is right the other side of town and so I had last week off as I was feeling sorry for myself and tripped out there for the first time this afternoon. Fortunately, I have a car so it was a pain but not as bad as it could have been if I was dependent on public transport. There is another, shinier and newer building with a gym in it but the scheme I'm on doesn't let me use it, as it currently stands - I can't really complain too much, given than I'm not paying for any of this (except through my taxes and council tax).

    Anyway, the first person I bumped into there was one of the guys from the gym I usually go to, who had been shipped off there to work and was decidedly unimpressed about how little communication there seems to have been about anything. He also managed to persuade me to try this bizarre machine which is a combination of a step machine and a nordic skiing thing - that seemed to be his mission in life this afternoon, as he spoke to at least three other people while I was there, getting them to try it as well. It's bloody hard work, whatever it is, so that might well get added in, we'll see.

    I have to say, this gym is much more spacious - not difficult, since the one I've been going to previously is in a windowless room in the bowels of a Victorian-era swimming baths - and it seems to attract many more men who wants to stare at themselves in mirrors while lifting weights. I'm trying to work on both my overall fitness and my strength, but that doesn't mean I don't have time to see what other people are up to!

    In other news, I get a week off fencing this week as it's a local election and the hall we use for practice is a polling station. I got my first fencing injury the other week, as I was fencing one of the other beginners and he kept hitting me on the bicep of my sword arm - not a valid target in foil, as you only get points for hitting your opponent's torso - and I told him \"stop stabbing me in the arm\" without any effect. Last week was Fight Night, which apparently happens on the last practice of the month, and they get the electronic scoring kit out so we get to wear yet another layer of clothing and also get tethered to the system like a dog on an extending lead. I lost both my bouts, which wasn't a great surprise, but I did get a couple of good hits in on both my opponents. I also managed to break a sword, which is another first!

    In short, I'm enjoying it a lot, hope I keep improving but know I need to work on my stamina. Not to mention going to the optician to get the arms on my glasses adjusted so they don't move so much when I'm jumping about. It was suggested that I could fence without them, but my eyesight is so bad I'm not convinced that would work at all, not to mention having wire mesh just in front of my face for me to focus on instead and therefore have even less chance of seeing who wants to stab me!    <\/a>

    In other news, well there's not a whole bunch to say. I'm still teaching two classes, though I've now been given a student teacher for a few weeks so she can see what life is like in adult education - she came today and I asked my learners to talk about their course and they immediately told her what a good teacher I was, which made me laugh a lot. I've been given an idea of what I'll be teaching from September and it's pretty much the same, unexpected funding cuts permitting!

    I'm also reading a lot (no surprises there) and went to see Captain America: Civil War<\/i> on Friday when it opened in the UK. It will probably come as no surprise to anyone who knows me that I loved it, though I still prefer the Russos' previous movie. Without spoiling anyone, since I know it's only opening elsewhere this week, I'd say that it probably tries to do too much but still manages most of it. Also Chris Evans' eyelash game is very strong. ;)    <\/a>

    Also posted at     my Dreamwidth account<\/a> - happy to receive comments on either post.<\/span>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:graculus:414586","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/414586.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=414586"}}],"title":"The pointy end goes where...?","published":"2016-04-07T19:32:38Z","updated":"2016-04-07T19:34:20Z","category":{"@attributes":{"term":"domestic trivia"}},"content":"Okay, so I'm no Arya Stark but I have<\/i> just come back from my first fencing lesson, which was good fun. The local club does lessons for adult beginners and I was delighted to discover that I'm not the only newbie in town - there's a guy attending who's done 3 weeks more and another woman who's done 6 weeks more. I was warned by the guy that my legs will probably hurt tomorrow but we'll see - I have faith in the 4 months' worth of gym work I've been doing before now (the leg press machine and squats, as suggested by at least one person reading this!) and hope to prove him wrong. Part of my telling people I wanted to do it was to make myself actually follow through, so I'd given myself a deadline of Easter to make enquiries otherwise I knew it might well come to nothing. I've committed myself for 10 weeks and then we'll see what progress I've made and if I want to carry on, but there's a structure there to do it in if I do.

    Part of my trying to be healthier was also about sorting out my diet a bit, though not ridiculously restricting what I eat as much as being a bit more aware of what's what. By just eating a little more sensibly in terms of more veggies and less carbs has seen me lose about a stone and a half since November (that's just over 10kg for those metrically inclined) without neglecting the odd cake or pizza. I've always been of the opinion that those ridiculously structured diets may work for some people but if I end up feeling like I'm being punished, that's never going to stick.

    I have to say, I've been quite happy with my gym experience as well, though the classes have been a bit more hit and miss. I started doing Pilates every week, but then the management apparently decided that class I was going to wasn't popular enough and began to mess about with it, before cancelling it completely - I've now joined a class on another day, but it's early evening, which I didn't really want. After a couple of weeks of being the only person turning up for another class, which meant one-to-one attention, I have now dropped out of that one and am committed to going to the gym instead.

    It probably helps a bit that my gym is at a council leisure centre, so I suspect that has an impact on the clientele being a bit more diverse and all shapes and sizes are usually present. To date I've had no hassle from anyone, even when I started using the weights recently, with that area being a bit stinky with testosterone and unwashed men at times. It probably helps that I have resting bitch-face and a set of headphones, as well as being that bit older, so the only thing that's happened is people wanting to move stuff for me if it's in the way!

    I've also found that, of all the cardio-related machines, I like the rowing machine the best. I was immensely amused the other day by the bloke who plonked himself down on the other one when I was midway through my second trip to that machine that afternoon; I could almost see him thinking 'if a woman can do it, then it can't be that hard' but there is<\/i> still a certain amount of technique involved which he couldn't quite seem to master. What with him and the guy who grunts when lifting like he's giving birth, there's always entertainment to be found...

    Also posted at     my Dreamwidth account<\/a> - happy to receive comments on either post.<\/span>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:graculus:414410","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/414410.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/graculus.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=414410"}}],"title":"On forgetting what I've done...","published":"2016-03-30T18:00:17Z","updated":"2016-03-30T18:00:54Z","category":{"@attributes":{"term":"fanfic"}},"content":"So, I've been using this website called 750words and it's really helped me to get a reasonable amount of writing done in terms of fanfic, and those days when I can't turn my hand to that I just blurt out whatever's in my head. I'm currently on 226 days and nearly 208,000 words written since August (which is cool!).

    Because of my previous computer dying and the fact that I'd backed up some of my fic-in-progress but not all of it, I had to go through the tedious process of taking out the other hard drive and putting it into a caddy so I could connect it to my 'new' PC and access the files. That proved significantly easier than I'd expected would be the case so it means I now have an extra external hard drive to save stuff on as well, which is cool. The way forward is definitely multiple copies of things! :P

    Because I have a very ad hoc system (which closely resembles and is in fact identical to 'not having a system at all') when it comes to the fic I'm writing, I'd completely forgotten what I had in progress and keep going 'oh, that's the fic where X happens' when I open up a file, which I find amusing. At the moment I'm about 18,000 words into a marriage of convenience fic (well, it started off like that and mutated a little!) and enjoying myself immensely with it - I've read a bunch of these and never got around to writing one myself, so that's something new. If anyone is actually interested in what I'm writing, please ask and I'll tell you more!

    One of the other things I'm trying to do while I'm off work is figure out the rest of the plot for a couple of incomplete stories which are up on AO3. I keep telling myself I won't post stuff as works in progress and then go and do it again, so I have a couple of things which I've just left hanging. Not good. Hence also my desire to finish off the various long things I'm working on before posting, rather than falling into that trap again (and again).

    Also posted at     my Dreamwidth account<\/a> - happy to receive comments on either post.<\/span>"}]}