Week in review: Week to 20 September
Sep. 21st, 2025 07:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pedanther. Another milestone: I've now done one of these posts every week for an entire year.
. At board game club this week we played Deception: Murder in Hong Kong and Bang!. On the weekend, we also played Spicy, Psycho Killer, Let's Call the Exorcist, and Herd Mentality.
. I bought new walking shoes this week, which are much more comfortable than the old pair were after the soles started wearing out. Between that and the nice weather we've been having lately, I've gone on lots of walks, and achieved six walks of significant length in a single week for the first time since I started keeping consistent records. I'm not sure if that was actually a good idea - I have a vague feeling that perhaps you're supposed to start by wearing new shoes a little bit and gradually work up to hour-long walks - but it keeps getting drowned out by a much more definite feeling that it's a nice day to go out and walk around for a while.
. A while ago, I started reading Hesperides, a collection by the 17th-century poet Robert Herrick, partly because I'd read some interesting things about him as a person and partly because I was looking for a 17th-century book for a reading challenge. It's been heavy going; there's over a thousand poems in there, many of them very short (some of them are only two lines long), and not arranged in any apparent order. And, to be frank, in my view many of them are not very good; a lot of them are verse rather than poetry, and the kind of verse where the meter and rhyme scheme take precedence over the sense. I've been picking it up occasionally to read a few pages and then put it down again; this week I picked up for the first time in a while, read a few pages, looked with dismay at how many pages remained, and put it down for what I fully expect to be the final time.
. Among the podcasts I listen to, I'm working through the back catalogues of You're Dead to Me! and Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics, both of which offer humorous accounts of the lives of historical figures. A few days ago, I started up the next episode on my podcast queue and found it was about Agrippina the Younger, a significant figure in the reigns of several Roman emperors - which puzzled me somewhat, as I'd already listened recently to an episode about Agrippina the Younger. After a few moments wondering whether the podcast feed had gone wonky and given me the same episode again, I realised that what had happened was that the two podcasts had both done episodes on Agrippina, and I'd coincidentally caught up with them one after the other. It worked out well, because I got the episode of the more casual, anecdotal podcast first, and then the more detailed, responsible podcast to fill in gaps and tie up loose ends.
. Polimines has definitely reached a stage where it's completely useless to play as a casual time-filler, or indeed in any circumstance except when I want to quickly become frustrated and angry. So I've started another jigsaw puzzle.
. I didn't even try to write any detailed journal entries this week, just made notes about things to mention in the blog post. I also didn't make any 750 Words entries for most of the week, figuring it was better to make a clean break from the tattered remnants of the old streak. I did write an entry yesterday, noting down a story idea that had occurred to me, and then rambling for 500 words about something that had been stressing me out. I felt noticeably better afterward, but I don't know if that's going to become an ongoing thing.
. At board game club this week we played Deception: Murder in Hong Kong and Bang!. On the weekend, we also played Spicy, Psycho Killer, Let's Call the Exorcist, and Herd Mentality.
. I bought new walking shoes this week, which are much more comfortable than the old pair were after the soles started wearing out. Between that and the nice weather we've been having lately, I've gone on lots of walks, and achieved six walks of significant length in a single week for the first time since I started keeping consistent records. I'm not sure if that was actually a good idea - I have a vague feeling that perhaps you're supposed to start by wearing new shoes a little bit and gradually work up to hour-long walks - but it keeps getting drowned out by a much more definite feeling that it's a nice day to go out and walk around for a while.
. A while ago, I started reading Hesperides, a collection by the 17th-century poet Robert Herrick, partly because I'd read some interesting things about him as a person and partly because I was looking for a 17th-century book for a reading challenge. It's been heavy going; there's over a thousand poems in there, many of them very short (some of them are only two lines long), and not arranged in any apparent order. And, to be frank, in my view many of them are not very good; a lot of them are verse rather than poetry, and the kind of verse where the meter and rhyme scheme take precedence over the sense. I've been picking it up occasionally to read a few pages and then put it down again; this week I picked up for the first time in a while, read a few pages, looked with dismay at how many pages remained, and put it down for what I fully expect to be the final time.
. Among the podcasts I listen to, I'm working through the back catalogues of You're Dead to Me! and Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics, both of which offer humorous accounts of the lives of historical figures. A few days ago, I started up the next episode on my podcast queue and found it was about Agrippina the Younger, a significant figure in the reigns of several Roman emperors - which puzzled me somewhat, as I'd already listened recently to an episode about Agrippina the Younger. After a few moments wondering whether the podcast feed had gone wonky and given me the same episode again, I realised that what had happened was that the two podcasts had both done episodes on Agrippina, and I'd coincidentally caught up with them one after the other. It worked out well, because I got the episode of the more casual, anecdotal podcast first, and then the more detailed, responsible podcast to fill in gaps and tie up loose ends.
. Polimines has definitely reached a stage where it's completely useless to play as a casual time-filler, or indeed in any circumstance except when I want to quickly become frustrated and angry. So I've started another jigsaw puzzle.
. I didn't even try to write any detailed journal entries this week, just made notes about things to mention in the blog post. I also didn't make any 750 Words entries for most of the week, figuring it was better to make a clean break from the tattered remnants of the old streak. I did write an entry yesterday, noting down a story idea that had occurred to me, and then rambling for 500 words about something that had been stressing me out. I felt noticeably better afterward, but I don't know if that's going to become an ongoing thing.
no subject
Date: 2025-09-21 11:31 pm (UTC)I find the most value in 750 words when I treat it as a sometimes thing, and disregard the streak. Although I have a reasonable streak because often enough I ramble and get the streak fairy, which I think has helped with my persistence.
no subject
Date: 2025-09-22 02:33 pm (UTC)I had a look for Herrick to see in what sort of circumstances he was writing his poetry (i.e. was it the 17th-century equivalent of lift music, composed to suit the passing needs of a patron?), but didn't really get an answer, although he does sound interesting. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/robert-herrick
(It's also telling that after publishing this 'Complete Works' and receiving a dispiriting lack of response, he apparently never wrote poetry again: "From the beginning of that volume Herrick makes it plain that he expects his audience to read his entire book, to read it in the order in which it is printed, and, above all, to read it with understanding and appreciation"!)