Bearshorty's musings

Books

( Pillars of the Earth )

( Blood of Tyrants )

Reading now: Brief Cases by Jim Butcher - I'm really having fun with it and the short stories just remind me how much I missed these series and how I hope for the next book.

TV

Star Trek Discovery: Season 1
This series is a little slow in the beginning and loses some speed in the end. There are a lot of inconsistencies. They had such a great reveal at the end of Episode 12, but it was resolved and poorly at the end of the following episode and the series moved on. But the middle section was wonderful, especially Episode 7, which I just happened to watch on my birthday. And the characters really grew on me. I hope the show will find its voice and sticks with it in Season 2. I hope more characters will get explored - I don't remember the names of most people on the bridge. Michael is great though. I'm glad the War with Klingons story seems to be done - I'm tired of war stories. I was exploration stories from my Trek, not war stories. So overall I ended up enjoying this show enough even with all frustration. It was a very uneven season but it was also Season 1. TNG didn't hit it's strike until Season 3. I look forward to more.

Now watching Agents of Shield Season 5.

Today was very very cold, again. I had jury duty today, so I had to venture out in it. Bear left for work early and my Mom already came over by the time I got up at 6:45. I left at 7:30 to get to the courthouse by 8:30. It's a straight shot on a subway, so it wasn't terrible. But walking even 2 minutes from the subway to the courthouse was super freezing.

I had the shortest jury duty ever. I got to the courthouse, got in line to get in the building, waited about 10 minutes to go through the metal detector and then went downstairs to see if I could get dismissed as a caretaker since I'm home with Tanya most of the time. I brought her copy of the birth certificate and everything. And in about one minute they dismissed me for 2 years. So then I just left the building and went to take the train back home. I got home by 9:20am. Because of construction on the subway line, I did have get off a stop earlier and walk 10 minutes and that was super freezing. I had gloves on and my fingers still got frozen.

My Mom stayed until Tanya's naptime. She is much less than a pack rat than I am - I don't like to part with sentimental favorites like my old backpack. So I let her toss it - that really works for me, letting my Mom get rid of old clothes or things I know should go. So we sorted my make-up and cleaned out two old backpacks to throw out. I do have a brand new shiny purple one and I want to limit things for the move at the end of February. We also took some photographs and postcards from the bedroom wall.

For the last four days, Tanya actually wanted to nap in her own toddler bed, that is pushed next to my bed. She slept in the crib until she was about eight months old and then she totally refused to do so (my Mom was the first one to yield to her crying and pick her up and take her into her bed). So Tanya has been sleeping with me ever since - which really does work for us, since I could get sleep and not be a zombie at work, and Bear prefers to sleep in the living room so he can stay up later and not feel like he is disturbing anyone's sleep. We periodically did try to get her back into her own crib - we converted the crib into the toddler bed, but she really didn't want to. But this weekend I mentioned that the crib, where she basically keeps lots of her stuffed toys, will be baby's bed and we will get Tanya a whole new bed for her own room. She was like, "No, this is Tanya's bed." And she is staking the claim ever since. She still wants to sleep with me at night - she is comforted by my hair, but for naps she is all about her bed now.

While she was napping, I was reading my book - I finished Jemisin's "The Fifth Season" and Novik's 3rd Temeraire book lately - so I started non-fiction "The Last Days of the Romanovs" by Helen Rappaport. (In the evening, when it's dark I'm reading Strugatski brothers "It's Hard to Be a God" on my Kindle). Hoping to get these two more books in before the end of the year. And do some book review posts.

And after the nap, I left Tanya with her little video game, which she is allowed to play for 10 minutes a day, and called my OB's office for the results of the genetic blood test. Everything looks fine, which is great. I also found out we are having another girl! Now we just have to come up with a name. It was easy the first time, since we named Tanya after my grandmother and her middle name is from James' grandmother. With this one we are actually looking at name lists.