The night nurse was so unfazed by my misery (though very compassionate and attentive) that I could tell it's not uncommon. Horrid, though! I would not wish it on others.

I started watching the Great Performances Twelfth Night last night with Mom (the one with Lupita and Sandra Oh and Peter Dinklage) and it was great but I definitely passed out somewhere in Act Two, so we'll have to pick back up with it again tonight. But very fun!

Oh nooooooo (but Kahlua pork is amazing, would happily eat your aunt's Xmas roast)

I feel like this is why a lot of potluck thanksgivings are so good: at the best ones, people make what they feel confident making, and nobody's trying to make everything, so the overall food quality is just so much better.

Well dang, that was a great mini-essay

Anyway gonna bake some peanut butter blondies to take next door tomorrow.

Also, I let all the leaves in the beds stay put, and I'm not touching the backyard leaves at all, really! But the front yard leaves will turn into a slick mess in the driveway & on the paths when it snows if they aren't dealt with, so I always deal with the front yard.

Diaz's interest is less in these supposed Great Men and more in the women around them, but that comes out in the novel in initially subtle (then much clearer) ways. Also, clearly, in the precarities and peculiarities of finance. A really smart, engaging read. 🖋️📚💙

Finished Hernan Diaz's Trust this morning. (He was at our campus for a couple of events this past month.) A really fun read, & also a great evocation of the era of the early 20th century tycoons. The 4 competing narratives play off each other satisfyingly. 🖋️📚💙

The way I went "AHA!" because I immediately knew which book this was

I immediately wrapped it tight and put it in the freezer when I got home because I bet post-surgery, toasted with Kerrygold butter, it will be *healing*.

No flannel pajamas for me, and not even a flannel duvet cover. Too warm!! I wind up cracking the window open when it's 20° out.

Rather than linger on the bad, here's part of the good: one of my students baked me this gorgeous sourdough loaf as an end of semester gift. Our last class day is Monday but she'll be traveling, so she gave it to me today, and it smells and looks spectacular.

The chapter on Nausicaa, for instance, winds up being mostly on Penelope; the chapter on Penelope spends a lot of time speculating on the location of Homeric Ithaca. The focus on enslaved women is kind of scattershot. The idea has such potential but the execution left me wanting. 💡📚💙

I wanted to like Emily Hauser's Penelope's Bones: (Very Long Subtitle), but I found it very frustrating. Kate Cooper does something similar with Queens of a Fallen World, but her focus is tighter & there's greater depth; this tries to cram in everything and all the treatments are too brief. 💡📚💙

Their raincoats are so gorgeous. One day I might save up for one and splurge.

One of my favorite stories by A. S. Byatt involves a character who is painted by an artist, & at the end she marvels at the experience of seeing the result of someone else looking at you so closely for so long & I feel that so strongly. How strange & moving to have someone look at you like that.

Zojirushi I know has cookbooks to go with their rice cookers, and a lot of the recipes are vegetarian or easy to turn vegetarian!