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Week in review: Week to 17 January
Jan. 19th, 2025 09:36 amInside Job, my random book for January, is one of an ebook bundle of Subterranean Press chapbooks I got a while back. It has a striking and atmospheric cover that completely fails to convey the tone of the contents; if I'd known it was a comedy, I might have skipped it, because historically I have not got on with Connie Willis's comedies. I didn't get on with this one, either; there's potential in the premise of a professional skeptic and debunker being forced to come to terms with two apparent impossibilities, but Willis's approach didn't work for me.
I also read a Bony novel, The Bachelors of Broken Hill, which I have mixed feelings about, and have started reading Down and Out in Purgatory: The Collected Stories of Tim Powers.
The annual Three Sentence Ficathon is on at![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
threesentenceficathon. I have consequently written six sentences of fic already this year, which is more than I wrote in all of 2024. (It might actually be seven sentences: I had to jam two sentences together to fit one of my responses into three sentences, and the result just doesn't flow right and bothers me every time I look at it. I'm thinking of changing it back to four sentences when I put it on AO3, if I get around to doing that.)
Board game club has started up again for the year. This week I played Deception: Murder in Hong Kong (I was the murderer twice, and got caught very quickly the first time but managed to eliminate the inconvenient witness and win the round the second time) and Mayan Curse (which I enjoyed and would like to play again, though I'm iffy about the way it uses some old-fashioned tropes).
I've signed up for a free trial subscription to AVCX, an online crossword thing that publishes a few new crosswords each week. I heard about it independently in two different places recently (one of the compilers was a guest on the Lateral podcast, and it also got plugged on a puzzle-related Youtube channel I follow), so I decided to take that as a sign to check it out. I'm enjoying the puzzles so far, and have been finding them to be at a satisfactory level of difficulty. (Not counting this week's cryptic crossword, which I've only got about three answers on so far because I've forgotten most of what I used to know about how cryptic clues work and haven't got around to brushing up yet. And I seem to recall I did better at cryptics when they were on paper and I could doodle possible solutions in the margins.)
Dance rehearsals have started for Guys and Dolls. I've had an easy time of it so far; my character moves around in time to the music, but doesn't do anything that rises to the level of Dancing.
I spent the entire week continuing to not play XCOM 2. I did occasionally find myself thinking that my mental state had improved and maybe I could have another go at it, but usually there was something I wanted to get out of the way first, or it was late enough in the evening to be too late to be starting a new campaign.
I also read a Bony novel, The Bachelors of Broken Hill, which I have mixed feelings about, and have started reading Down and Out in Purgatory: The Collected Stories of Tim Powers.
The annual Three Sentence Ficathon is on at
threesentenceficathon. I have consequently written six sentences of fic already this year, which is more than I wrote in all of 2024. (It might actually be seven sentences: I had to jam two sentences together to fit one of my responses into three sentences, and the result just doesn't flow right and bothers me every time I look at it. I'm thinking of changing it back to four sentences when I put it on AO3, if I get around to doing that.)Board game club has started up again for the year. This week I played Deception: Murder in Hong Kong (I was the murderer twice, and got caught very quickly the first time but managed to eliminate the inconvenient witness and win the round the second time) and Mayan Curse (which I enjoyed and would like to play again, though I'm iffy about the way it uses some old-fashioned tropes).
I've signed up for a free trial subscription to AVCX, an online crossword thing that publishes a few new crosswords each week. I heard about it independently in two different places recently (one of the compilers was a guest on the Lateral podcast, and it also got plugged on a puzzle-related Youtube channel I follow), so I decided to take that as a sign to check it out. I'm enjoying the puzzles so far, and have been finding them to be at a satisfactory level of difficulty. (Not counting this week's cryptic crossword, which I've only got about three answers on so far because I've forgotten most of what I used to know about how cryptic clues work and haven't got around to brushing up yet. And I seem to recall I did better at cryptics when they were on paper and I could doodle possible solutions in the margins.)
Dance rehearsals have started for Guys and Dolls. I've had an easy time of it so far; my character moves around in time to the music, but doesn't do anything that rises to the level of Dancing.
I spent the entire week continuing to not play XCOM 2. I did occasionally find myself thinking that my mental state had improved and maybe I could have another go at it, but usually there was something I wanted to get out of the way first, or it was late enough in the evening to be too late to be starting a new campaign.
