The Aviary

So. While on vacation, I watched a lot of the TNG with my mom. Which caused me to realize, again, that I have actually not seen a lot of TNG. I always think that I have, because my parents watched a lot of it when it was on for the first time and because it's essentially been around for as long as I've been alive and got replayed a lot, but literally every episode I watched on vacation was one that I couldn't remember having seen before.

So when we got home, I started watching some more TNG on my own. And it's totally fun and I love Star Trek and I have a whole lot of Trek novels that I downloaded a while ago, so I put a bunch of TNG books on my kindle. As well as a few random other things that looked interesting: some Mirror universe stuff, the first novels of a couple spin-off series, the first couple books of the DS9 relaunch.

You can see where this is going, right?

I did read a TNG novel! I totally did! And then I started reading Avatar and oh, Kira, hi, I love you, Kira! DS9 is the Trek of my heart*, y'know? I like other Star Treks - they are lovely - but they lead inevitably back to DS9.

I think I was somewhere in season five the last time I was watching. I should pick that up again.





*Which is really the problem that I have getting my mom to watch it. Because TNG is the Trek of her heart, so when we watch DS9 she is always thinking, "Well, this is lovely, but why are we not watching my show?"

Mom had her tonsils out on Monday and thus has spent most of the week on the couch, being lethargic and pitiful and all the other things that people recovering from surgery are allowed to be. So she has been using my laptop, mostly, and I have not.

Not that anything of great importance has happened that needed to be recorded, but I feel a bit odd if I go more than a day or so without posting. So here I am.

I did manage to make Mom watch the first episode with the Eleventh Doctor, which seems to have been a success. DS9 kinda crashed and burned with her*, but maybe we can do Doctor Who together instead. Fringe ends for the season tonight, after all - we're going to need another show to watch in its place.

(Not that I imagine I'll be watching Fringe tonight, since Mom's bedtime this week has been about 8, it comes on at 9, and I can't watch without her. The DVR'll get it - it'll wait till tomorrow.)

Also! I have been reading Persuasion, because toft posted about it a bit ago and I haven't read any Austen that isn't Pride and Prejudice and it's in public domain and thus cheap to read on my kindle. I'm about 3/4 of the way through and I love it, mostly because it's really nice to have a heroine who is shy and quiet and retiring and obliging to those around her, occasionally to her own detriment, and still (I'm assuming, because it is Austen) gets to have a happy ending without having to change herself. It's possible that I am over-identifying with Anne a bit. Which is nice, too, because it's very pleasant to read a story and go "This person is just like me!" without that story being written by Shirley Jackson.***

And those are my thoughts this evening.





*She doesn't like Kira. Which I don't understand. I mean, we only got about 5 episodes in and, yes, tastes differ and maybe I am blinding by my occasionally embarrassing crush on her** but...Kira. How does one not like Kira?

**Hey, she canonically ends up with a person who is essentially asexual, in humanoid terms. It could work out. (Another time, we will deal with the fact that the only fictional people I can think of who are asexual and not considered by canon to be in some way damaged are all aliens. Ah, well.)

***It's not a very comfortable thing, when the literary character one most sees one's self in is Eleanor from The Haunting of Hill House.

Things:

- Today was long. But it did contain excellent sandwiches made with homemade bread. Alas, the bread did not turn out to be what I would consider pumpernickel, so I must again go back to the drawing board. (Maybe the caramel color is actually necessary? Maybe I should add caraway seeds?) But it is still good, in a general sort of brown bread way, and I have enough dough in the fridge to make at least two more loaves. I plan to bake another loaf tomorrow morning, since the first one is now gone.

- The vest I have been crocheting for months is nearly done. I just have to finish the last row, weave in all the ends, and sew on the buttons. I'm terribly excited about this. However, I'm taking a little break from it, since I have apparently done something to my wrist. Hopefully, it'll be finished this week and I can wear it at least once before the weather gets too warm.

- While I've been working on my vest, I have been watching a lot of DS9. Now I'm more than half way through season two. Things I had forgotten: 1) how amazingly gorgeous Kira is, seriously, oh my god, 2) how much I genuinely do like Bareil, 3) how much Quark is Humphrey Bogart sometimes.

- The thing about watching DS9 is that it makes my brain go, "Hey, you could reread Millennium." I'm not at all sure if that's a good thing. I've read Millennium a couple of times now, but the nice thing is the urge tends to wait several years before hitting me again, which gives me time to completely forget the plot. Here is what I consistently remember about Millennium when I'm not reading it: 1) Kai Weyoun, 2) Miles O'Brien trapped in a Dyson sphere full of sand. Other things happen, I'm pretty sure, but those are my overwhelming impressions.

- I think it is time to go to bed, before I start filling my kindle full of DS9 novels.

Tomorrow, Rosie is leaving. I am dealing with this by thinking about taking her back to the breeder as a sort of...nursing home or assisted living thing. If a member of my family needed that sort of situation, I would be sad about it, but I would know that they were being taken care of by people who were better at it than me. This is the same sort of thing, except that it involves a farm*, other dogs, and hopefully chase-able rabbits. The amount of crying involved on my part would probably be the same, though. Stupid over-active tear ducts.

This is me using light-hearted chatter to keep myself from dehydration brought on by crying. It's working, a little bit.



Also working - distractions. Today's distraction is DS9, which is just as much fun as I remembered. Things I had not remembered: exactly how much of a doofus Julian is at the beginning. Oh, Julian. You make me alt-tab away in vicarious embarrassment. Also, the plot of Past Prologue. I know that I've watched that episode. I'm pretty sure that I've seen it several times. I just don't think that I've ever actually paid any attention to the scenes that Garak isn't in before. It's not a bad plot, really.

To be fair, I don't remember the plots of the most of the episodes in season 1. So that'll be fun to rediscover.







*An actual, non-euphemistic farm. There was a bit of an unfortunate miscommunication when we first tried to tell my sisters about this plan.

So. I have been reading Star Trek fic of late - mostly seperis' War Games - as well as Star Trek novels. And my worktime shelving stories often tend to reflect what I'm reading. So today it was a Star Trek story. And despite the fact that I'm reading TOS era stuff, my brain tends to default to DS9 when it comes to Trek, so my shelving story was full of the station and Bajorans and raktajinos and Vorta and Founders and holosuites and all that good stuff.

And now I need to watch all the DS9 ever. This is kind of a problem, since I only have seasons 3 and 4.

We'll see if the urge passes by tomorrow and then start working on Netflixing season 1.