. Did some more weeding, around the back and far side of the house, and the part of the front that I hadn't done yet. One of the goals was to create clear space around the outdoor parts of the split-system air conditioning units, which was a good idea in any case but (see earlier post about self-motivated scheduling) had been given a boost by the landlord notifying me that there would an aircon tech around at some point to make sure all the units were working before summer sets in. I ended up clearing around the last unit in a hurry after receiving a phone call to say the tech would be there in half an hour; one of the brain weasels tried to make something of the fact that I'd put it off until the last moment, but was firmly rebutted by a more sensible part of my brain which pointed out that the important thing is I'd been organised enough to do most of it already on other days, so that there was less than half an hour's work left to do.
. All the air conditioners are, as expected, in good nick except for the one in the living room that squeaks loudly when it's running; the tech says that something's worn out and how quickly or cheaply it will be replaced depends on whether the replacement parts are still available for a unit that old (it may end up being easier, or necessary, to replace the whole thing).
.
The Hidden Almanac is a podcast that ran from Friday the 13th, September 2013 to Friday the 13th, September 2019. Each episode is a few minutes long and presents a couple of historical anniversaries, a potted biography of a saint whose feast day it is, some seasonal gardening tips, and a message from the episode's sponsor -- all of which are the product of the imagination of fantasy author Ursula Vernon. (Well, except for... let's say
many of the gardening tips, because Ursula Vernon is a keen gardener and knows what's what. Especially when it comes to the zucchini problem.) I fell off listening partway through the first time I gave it a try, but 2024 sees the return of Friday the 13th of September, which seemed like an appropriate occasion to give it another shot. This time I'm planning to stick to listening to one episode at a time, on the appropriate date, because from what I remember the problem I ran into last time was that I kept trying to catch up by listening to a whole bunch of episodes at a time and suffering from overdoing it. So far it's working much better at the intended pace; each episode is a bright moment in the day and doesn't outstay its welcome.
. At the boardgame club, I got to play my first game of
Captain Sonar, a game in which two teams take on various roles of crew members in a submarine, and each crew attempts to locate and sink the other submarine before the other submarine does the same to them. I had the role of planning our submarine's route to avoid giving away too many clues about our location or putting too much stress on the boat's systems; I did an all right job of it. The real MVP of our submarine was the crew member whose job was to collect clues about the other sub's activities and plot its possible locations; she made very detailed notes, kept her head at a point where I would probably have decided the sub had given me the slip, and managed to pinpoint its actual location just as it surfaced for repairs, allowing us to chase it down and put two torpedoes into it before it could do anything to stop us.
. The Songs of Penelope trilogy by Claire North is about the aftermath of the Trojan War from the point of view of the women whose views on the whole thing tend to be underrepresented in the epics. The central character is Penelope, wife of Odysseus, left to keep his kingdom together for years while he's off doing the Iliad and the Odyssey, with a supporting cast of women who mostly don't get mentioned in the epics at all. There are also a few high-profile guest stars: the first book of the trilogy revolves around the fate of Clytemnestra, the self-made widow of King Agamemnon, and the second gives an answer to the question of what happened to Helen of Troy after she was brought home from Troy that turns out to be more complicated than it first appears. Penelope gets an uncontested spotlight in the third book of the trilogy, which retells the last part of the Odyssey from the moment Odysseus arrived back on his native shore, with a lot more attention than the epic poets gave to questions like "How much did Odysseus really understand about the situation he was coming home to?" and "What kind of future is there for a husband and wife who haven't seen each other in twenty years and barely had a chance to get to know each other before that?"
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