The Moon in June
06/06/2020 10:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
izmeinaToday is officially the full moon but it has been cloudy all day so not much more to see than a pale shapeless blob in the skies tonight
I resorted to catching a ferry across the river and back, this being the easiest way to get an unobstructed view of the south eastern horizon. Nothing to be seen at all until around 40 minutes after moonrise when a pale grey blob appeared among the blanket of clouds.
But not many folks have bothered to come out to watch it. They are all too busy partying
Today in the Wild West is the first day since Monday 23rd March that the pubs and bars are open again along with a majority of restaurants. The restaurants were given the green light on Monday 18th May but with a maximum of 20 diners, very few of them were viable so they just stayed closed until today
One of my regular lurking grounds, the Secret Garden Cafe was packed with people even at 3pm. So crowded that I figured I will stick to my usual Tuesday when it is more likely to be almost empty
In some strange way, it was rather reminiscent of New Year's Eve. Because there have been so few new cases of Coronavirus over the last month or so, it seems very unlikely that there will be any sudden clusters or outbreaks after all of today's partying
For me, the big news is that the Zoo, art galleries and museums are all now open as of today. I still have not replaced my zoo annual pass since my purse was stolen back in January
I guess I should wait a week or two until all the crowds are gone.
One other amusing casualty of the COVID-19 lockdown has been a local Dystopian book club
Two days ago, I got an email from the organizer and just had to cackle evilly when I got to the lines
"It's been a lovely three years running this book club, but I have decided that it's time is over. This is mainly because, as the world becomes more and more dystopian, I find that reading dystopian fiction is less of the escape that it used to be."
Again, I am reminded of the teenagers who have "Station Eleven" on their school syllabus and suddenly it is all a bit too close for comfort
The newspaper story about that book had a different effect on me than on the usual readers I suspect
First thought - another book to add to the bucket list
Second thought - I heard rave reviews about it on the radio years ago
Third - I picked up the book for next to nothing at a charity shop years ago on account of that review
And last but most importantly - it's lurking in the Lair somewhere but I have absolutely no idea where to find it and it would likely take less time to go get it from the library than to try find it
So that was the trigger that made me realize that it is time to impose some sort of order on my ridiculously large collection of books.
While I have specific rooms devoted to various topics - gardening, cooking, environment and such are all in the dining room along with The Shrine devoted to certain political and historical figures and Goblin Porn ie economics, corporate crime, mobsters etc, the room upstairs with the Big Mac has all the witchy and geeky stuff, mythology, alchemy, the occult, conspiracy theories and books about the mind or psychology, the spare bedroom is for history etc etc - I don't have any particular location for fiction.
If I were to follow the Queen of Clean - Mari Kondo's guide to sorting - it would require me to put every single book on the floor and then pick them all up one by one and decide - thumbs up to stay or thumbs up to go. It would make it impossible to move from one room to another as every square millimetre of floor space would be covered in book covers.
All the charity shops have been closed over 2 months now so at least there has been no temptation all that time and it has given me room to get started.
The first rule, like all attempts to convert chaos into order, is to sort all new stuff coming in so that it does not add to the issue and to then gradually catch up with the backlog
Slowly plodding along inch by inch, it is surprising how much progress I have been able to make
I resorted to catching a ferry across the river and back, this being the easiest way to get an unobstructed view of the south eastern horizon. Nothing to be seen at all until around 40 minutes after moonrise when a pale grey blob appeared among the blanket of clouds.
But not many folks have bothered to come out to watch it. They are all too busy partying
Today in the Wild West is the first day since Monday 23rd March that the pubs and bars are open again along with a majority of restaurants. The restaurants were given the green light on Monday 18th May but with a maximum of 20 diners, very few of them were viable so they just stayed closed until today
One of my regular lurking grounds, the Secret Garden Cafe was packed with people even at 3pm. So crowded that I figured I will stick to my usual Tuesday when it is more likely to be almost empty
In some strange way, it was rather reminiscent of New Year's Eve. Because there have been so few new cases of Coronavirus over the last month or so, it seems very unlikely that there will be any sudden clusters or outbreaks after all of today's partying
For me, the big news is that the Zoo, art galleries and museums are all now open as of today. I still have not replaced my zoo annual pass since my purse was stolen back in January
I guess I should wait a week or two until all the crowds are gone.
One other amusing casualty of the COVID-19 lockdown has been a local Dystopian book club
Two days ago, I got an email from the organizer and just had to cackle evilly when I got to the lines
"It's been a lovely three years running this book club, but I have decided that it's time is over. This is mainly because, as the world becomes more and more dystopian, I find that reading dystopian fiction is less of the escape that it used to be."
Again, I am reminded of the teenagers who have "Station Eleven" on their school syllabus and suddenly it is all a bit too close for comfort
The newspaper story about that book had a different effect on me than on the usual readers I suspect
First thought - another book to add to the bucket list
Second thought - I heard rave reviews about it on the radio years ago
Third - I picked up the book for next to nothing at a charity shop years ago on account of that review
And last but most importantly - it's lurking in the Lair somewhere but I have absolutely no idea where to find it and it would likely take less time to go get it from the library than to try find it
So that was the trigger that made me realize that it is time to impose some sort of order on my ridiculously large collection of books.
While I have specific rooms devoted to various topics - gardening, cooking, environment and such are all in the dining room along with The Shrine devoted to certain political and historical figures and Goblin Porn ie economics, corporate crime, mobsters etc, the room upstairs with the Big Mac has all the witchy and geeky stuff, mythology, alchemy, the occult, conspiracy theories and books about the mind or psychology, the spare bedroom is for history etc etc - I don't have any particular location for fiction.
If I were to follow the Queen of Clean - Mari Kondo's guide to sorting - it would require me to put every single book on the floor and then pick them all up one by one and decide - thumbs up to stay or thumbs up to go. It would make it impossible to move from one room to another as every square millimetre of floor space would be covered in book covers.
All the charity shops have been closed over 2 months now so at least there has been no temptation all that time and it has given me room to get started.
The first rule, like all attempts to convert chaos into order, is to sort all new stuff coming in so that it does not add to the issue and to then gradually catch up with the backlog
Slowly plodding along inch by inch, it is surprising how much progress I have been able to make
