To-read pile, 2025, June

Jul. 5th, 2025 08:00 am
rmc28: (reading)
[personal profile] rmc28

Books on pre-order:

  1. Queen Demon (Rising World 2) by Martha Wells (7 Oct 2025)

Books acquired in June:

  • and read:
    1. Playing for Keeps by K A Findlay (Kim Findlay) [7]
    2. The Charlie Method (Campus Diaries 3) by Elle Kennedy
  • and unread:
    1. Dying to Meet You by Sarina Bowen
    2. Sort Your Head Out by Sam Delaney
    3. The Pairing by Casey McQuiston

Borrowed books read in June:

  1. Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton
  2. The Domino Pattern (Quadrail 4) by Timothy Zahn [8]
  3. Judgment at Proteus (Quadrail 5) by Timothy Zahn [8]

Annoyingly, when I thought I'd cancelled my KU subscription in May, Amazon thought I'd suspended it for a month, so I got charged again in June. And as the above makes clear, I didn't really get my value for the month of it. The Timothy Zahn Quadrail series is really fun (Trains! In Space! And also galaxy-spanning conspiracy and action adventure with really interesting aliens!) and I'm glad I got to finish it, but I have now definitely and for real cancelled the subscription until further notice.

I don't expect to read much this month either, with the women's football Euros running most of the month. Farocation is running again and I didn't yet get through all the books from last summer, so I'm being even pickier about which ones I decide to pick up this summer.

[1] Pre-order
[2] Audiobook
[3] Physical book
[4] Crowdfunding
[5] Goodbye read
[6] Cambridgeshire Reads/Listens
[7] FaRoFeb / FaRoCation / Bookmas / HRBC
[8] Prime Reading / Kindle Unlimited

Rebuilding journal search again

Jun. 30th, 2025 03:18 pm
alierak: (Default)
[personal profile] alierak posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance
We're having to rebuild the search server again (previously, previously). It will take a few days to reindex all the content.

Meanwhile search services should be running, but probably returning no results or incomplete results for most queries.

Packing

Jun. 30th, 2025 10:03 am
rmc28: Rachel in hockey gear on the frozen fen at Upware, near Cambridge (Default)
[personal profile] rmc28

Regrettably, we have to go home again this afternoon. I am packing with the intention of leaving our luggage at the hotel while we do one last amble along Southsea beach.

Swag count:

  • 11 pens
  • 9 commemorative guidebooks (to the various ships, museums, and the dockyard as a whole)
  • 2 notebooks
  • 2 postcards
  • 1 travel mug
  • 1 fridge magnet
  • 1 birthday card from the Spinnaker Bar staff

Also some chocolate from the Lindt outlet store. My suitcase was fairly full when we came. I'm sure I can make it all fit ... somehow.

The seed for choosing Portsmouth for this getaway came from seeing a sign for "Explosion Museum" while driving a bunch of hockey players to Gosport rink back in May. I'm very glad I went with that impulse, it's worked out well.

Holiday fun

Jun. 28th, 2025 09:37 pm
rmc28: Rachel in hockey gear on the frozen fen at Upware, near Cambridge (Default)
[personal profile] rmc28

Friday:

  • Mary Rose, worth the admission fee all by itself, thoroughly absorbing exhibition of the many many objects found within the wreck, and amazing to see the preserved timbers themselves from lots of different angles.
  • lunch
  • dockyard boat tour, including a good look at the Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier currently in dock (I cannot look at aircraft carriers without Danger Zone playing in my head)
  • HMS Victory, audioguide version with dramatic retelling of the battle of Trafalgar. Very absorbing, impressive amount of the ship available to visit even while restoration is ongoing, very tiring.
  • back to hotel and flop for a little
  • walk, ferry, bus to Gosport ice rink, disco skate, bus, ferry and walk back to hotel; ice is rather worse than Cambridge, but ferry+bus beats 2x Cambridge buses any time

Saturday:

  • sauna and swim for me
  • walk to the dockyard, waterbus to the Explosion Museum of Naval Firepower
  • lunch
  • walk ~2 miles to Submarine Museum
  • walk through of HMS Alliance, also a look around HMS Holland 1 (the first ever Royal Navy submarine)
  • my body in full rebellion against "museum walking" by this point, we took the waterbus back to the main dockyard, got cold drinks, and got back on the dockyard boat tour - different guide, different focus, well worth it
  • little wander around Gunwharf Quays and a little shopping in the outlet stores; having forgotten to bring my ereader, I resorted to buying a newspaper and we sat quietly ignoring each other in a curry gastropub for a while. Eventually we ordered some curry, which was really rather good, and then toddled back to the hotel
  • I decided I'd had enough moving for the day, so now I'm lying on the hotel bed with Glastonbury on the TV, life is good

Tomorrow I think we'll do a couple of brief museum things at the historic dockyard, and then perhaps go for a wander through Southsea. I'm going to watch England v Jamaica tomorrow afternoon (I think R has less than zero interest in football, women's or otherwise) and we've a reservation in the Spinnaker Tower for sunset cocktails tomorrow evening.

physical issues My leg muscles, especially the ones that stabilise hips, knees and ankles, have been giving me some grief since I went clubbing after the Kodiaks won playoffs at end of May. I'm reasonably sure it's muscular fatigue and not joint/ligament damage. Rest helps, but so does gentle movement: if I sit still too long everything has seized up a bit when I stand up, but loosens up again as I start moving. Skating and hockey are fine once I'm warmed up. Yoga and general stretching seem to help, as do hot baths and sauna. Steady walking is a lot better for me than the stop-start of museum walking, as the last two days have made clear. I love museums but right now the spirit is willing and the flesh has Had Enough.

Hoodies

Jun. 28th, 2025 09:56 am
rmc28: (silly)
[personal profile] rmc28

I have been resisting buying a number of great hoodies from the assorted Historic Dockyard museum shops, on the grounds that I already have More Than Sufficient Hoodies, related to either ice hockey or musical theatre. R said obviously I need to wait for an ice hockey musical and get that hoodie.

Suggestions welcome for the topic / plot of such a musical.

Girls weekend: ships and skating

Jun. 27th, 2025 08:39 am
rmc28: Rachel in hockey gear on the frozen fen at Upware, near Cambridge (Default)
[personal profile] rmc28

Uni buddy R and I made it to Portsmouth last night, despite the best efforts of signal failures to scare us off. (Half the trains were showing as cancelled around 3pm; by the time we actually got to Cambridge station at 5pm things were looking better; by the time our train got to Finsbury Park it looked like service was nearly restored and we continued to change at Three Bridges as originally planned.)

I was working up until about 4pm, with a couple of colleagues very amused that a) I didn't start packing until a gap between meetings at 2pm, and b) my "girls weekend" consists of naval museums and ice skating.

We had an easy walk to our hotel in the midsummer twilight, and settled in to our respective rooms. I'm doing admin until R texts me she's ready for breakfast. And then: the Mary Rose! (who else has formative childhood memories of watching it being raised?)

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