Topic: What are you doing right now?

[6pairsofshoes]

Drinking morning tea.  I have had insomnia a lot lately, so I'm inhaling various sci fi books.  Last week I read the first of the Kithamar trilogy Age of Ash by Daniel Abraham.  Now I'm on to Network Effect, one of the murderbot novels by Martha Wells.  They're both worth reading.  I guess I'd call Age of Ash more of a fantasy novel as it relies on some vague medieval historicism instead of flying through outer space.  Abraham is half of James SA Corey, the compound author behind the Expanse series.  He's also collaborated with George RR Martin on various projects.

I am eating a vanilla Balducco panettone that we warmed up in the oven for breakfast, the insomnia is interfering with my regular baking of morning pastries.  Cream scones are on the list of projects this week for sure.

[goldshirt*9]

preparing to go to wwork

[Beatrix]

Age of Ash sounds pretty good :$
Thanks Six, I’m glad to have a moment to enjoy nature about once or twice a week.  We have a skatepark here in town and I spend a lot of time there with kids. 
Our apartment is ready for us to move in Friday, thank G0d
: ) glad to be around

[6pairsofshoes]

Glad you have a new apt lined up and hope it will suit your needs for a long time, since moving is such a drag.  I'm on my second cup of strong tea.  More insomnia means there's not enough caffeine in the world.

Still plodding my way through Network Effect.  Narrator is murderbot, but s/he sounds basically like a snarky human, so the continual "can't stand the way humans do this, that & the other" kind of rings hollow, since the bot is so anthropomorphized.  I guess it's too much to ask that the narrator imagine themselves to be a human-designed machine that doesn't sound like a human.  That would be truly original.  It's engaging writing but I don't know that I'd feel compelled to read any more novels by this author, at least in this series.  It got a Hugo award.  I have been looking through the list of Hugo winners and picking novels that sound interesting.  They're great reading for late at night when you can't sleep.

[6pairsofshoes]

Not sleeping

City That Does Not Sleep

    In the sky there is nobody asleep. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is asleep.
The creatures of the moon sniff and prowl about their cabins.
The living iguanas will come to bite the men who do not dream,
and the man who rushes out with his spirit broken will meet on
                    the streetcorner
the unbelievable alligator quiet beneath the tender protest of
                    the stars.
     Nobody is asleep on earth. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is asleep.
In the graveyard far off there is a corpse
who has moaned for three years
because of a dry countryside in his knee;
and that boy they buried this morning cried so much
it was necessary to call out the dogs to keep him quiet.

     Life is not a dream. Careful! Careful! Careful!
We fall down the stairs in order to eat the moist earth
or we climb to the knife-edge of the snow with the voices of
                    the dead dahlias.
But forgetfulness does not exist, dreams do not exist;
flesh exists. Kisses tie our mouths
in a thicket of new veins,
and whoever his pain pains will feel that pain forever
and whoever is afraid of death will carry it on his shoulders.

     One day
the horses will live in the saloons
and the enraged ants
will throw themselves on the yellow skies that take refuge in the
            eyes of cows.
     Another day
we will watch the preserved butterflies rise from the dead
and still walking through a country of gray sponges and silent
                    boats
we will watch our ring flash and roses spring from our tongue.
Careful! Be careful! Be careful!
The men who still have marks of the claw and the thunderstorm,
and that boy who cries because he has never heard of the
                    invention of the bridge,
or that dead man who possesses now only his head and a shoe,
we must carry them to the wall where the iguanas and the snakes
            are waiting,
where the bear’s teeth are waiting,
where the mummified hand of the boy is waiting,
and the hair of the camel stands on end with a violent blue
                    shudder.

     Nobody is sleeping in the sky. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is sleeping.
If someone does close his eyes,
a whip, boys, a whip!
Let there be a landscape of open eyes
and bitter wounds on fire.
No one is sleeping in this world. No one, no one.
I have said it before.
No one is sleeping.
But if someone grows too much moss on his temples during the
            night,
open the stage trapdoors so he can see in the moonlight
the lying goblets, and the poison, and the skull of the theaters.

—Federico García Lorca
Lorca and Jiménez: Selected Poems, translated and edited by Robert Bly
Beacon Press, 1997

[smokester]

I'm not sleeping either but that's because of the magnitude of work I have to plough through every night. When I finally hit the sack, I'm out!

Then just a few hours later it starts all over again ...

[smokester]

Did my practical test today and I think it went ok (won't know until Friday). The next 2 days - which are my last at the training centre - are all written tests so I'm swotting again.

To be honest, I'm more worn out than when all that I did was physical.

That plan of having an easier life in a classroom didn't check out.

[goldshirt*9]

And to think you have no unruly kids around 

[dweez]

Smokes is the unruly kid

You say that like it's a bad thing.

[smokester]

Smokes is the unruly kid: he has had detention already!

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Yeah, they're just lucky there aren't any Bunsen burners around. No wait! There were lots of them around. Damn, missed a trick ...

Interestingly, it was Bunsen who invented the system of using gas for heat instead of for light. God knows how may people he's saved from certain death due to CO poisoning.

This last week we've had a different tutor who doesn't have much time for the one that kept me behind. He's a bit stone faced but is more accommodating when asked for help. Hopefully he'll get me through tomorrow which is crunch time.

[goldshirt*9]

Smokes is the unruly kid: he has had detention already!

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Cannot say things like that anymore 
A challenging child would be better

[goldshirt*9]

 

When I was in secondary school we blew the doors off the school gas plant, by lighting the gas direct from the tap instead of interposing a Bunsen burner.

you rebel

[smokester]

When I was in secondary school we blew the doors off the school gas plant, by lighting the gas direct from the tap instead of interposing a Bunsen burner.

Apparently, when some at the centre have been doing their practical tests on a gase fire, the hose on their u-gauge has come off mid test and created a flame thrower from the gas testing point. They have emergency shut off valves dotted around but most of the time the students are in such a panic they forget about them. Scary stuff.

Better than CO, though

Oh, and by the way: I passed all of my five exams and now can start building my portfolio ready to take the big one (CCN1) in 10 or so weeks time.

[6pairsofshoes]

That sounds promising (the tests, not the gas flame throwers).  I know someone who had to go to fire fighting school.  They'd put on an asbestos suit, walk into the fire with a hose while the people behind them sprayed them with water to keep the temperature of the suit down.  They have a special building that they regularly light on fire with some kind of fuel and the students go into that.  Sounds like some of the students at your place could use one of those suits.

[goldshirt*9]

well done smokes