Tock!

[j4]

Time passes. More stuff gets done.

Supermarket success: one bag of Taste the Difference Jersey new potatoes for only 60p in the end-bin, which will do nicely for lunches; a sweetheart cabbage (also reduced) and some bacon for dinner (a cabbage, bacon & cheese bake which we ended up combining with the leftover pasta, and very nice it was too if I do say so myself); and some little pears (reduced -- spot the pattern) as snack-food for work. Didn't impulse-buy anything unless you count the pears, and that's really to save me buying less healthy and more expensive things later.

I've been slipping a little on the not-spending-money front: bought two summer tops on the market (8 quid for the two of them) and henna from Lush (and some shampoo, but I need to wash my hair with something, and the Lush solid shampoos last longer). Also bought a "Saint" book on eBay, but that was only 99p (+p&p). However I still think I'm doing a bit better than I was before, and now I've transferred the cc balance to an interest-free one that's another 10 quid a month or so that I'm saving.

Started reading one of the books on my immediate to-read pile, Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones, and decided that it's not really worth finishing -- feels like DWJ on autopilot, perhaps it's just intended for a younger audience? Or perhaps it's that I find DWJ less convincing when she's writing about wholly/mostly 'fantasy' universes, and at her best when she's writing more explicitly about the points where the lines blur between fantasy and the 'real' world. (See: Fire and Hemlock, Witch Week, Homeward Bounders -- in a way they're all stories about the power of myth/story, which is something that appeals to me a lot.)

I must convince myself that I really don't have to read everything in the world, or even everything in the house.

Having said that I did get through most of the first chapter of The Muse in the Machine: computers and creative thought by David Gelernter. It's interesting, but a lot of it seems quite obvious to me.

I also made progress on my dress for Glastonbury.

Comments

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I have THB. I think there's only about 3 DWJs I don't have (all 'younger' ones like Wild Robert). I think TTOTG was one of the first ones I read, so maybe I view it differently because of that. There's definitely an element of really liking books you grew up with and not-so-much liking ones you find later on, especially when the projected age-range for the book is a younger one. I have read some 'modern' children's books and find them not as gripping as ones I read as a child, which I can still reread with no problem. Familiarity breeds comfort, not contempt.

The tops sound nice. I bought a loud red-green-white stripy sleeveless one yesterday because what I'd gone out in was just too hot (and I promptly got yoghurt on it but never mind). And I finally found cheap Italia shirts for me and smallclanger although mine came from the Men's section and his from the Girls', so there's a strong strike for gender-neutrality (he already wears some girls' clothes anyway, they often have nicer options than the boys do. Boys aren't meant to wear colours other than blue green or black, it seems). If we're going to be surrounded by England flags and football shirts, we might as well go 'with' the crowd while simultaneously being against it. ;-)