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Entertainment for me, entertainment for the cat
The cat: One of our friends gave us a couple of plastic springs that their cat goes crazy for. It turns out our cat goes crazy for them, too. He has spent so much time batting them around, picking them up to trot around with, and then batting them around some more. No other toy has gotten this kind of reaction out of him. It's really cute!
Games: I picked up a couple of games from the Steam summer sale and have so far only had time to play one of them, KinitoPet. It's a horror game based on Bonzi Buddy, and while the writing was very predictable (Kinito is sooo lonely that he does creepy things to get you to stay with him!), the execution impressed me. There was one section that had me jumping, and while I've seen other horror games that do the 'your computer starts doing creepy [but actually harmless] stuff' thing before, this one pulled it off very well. ...except for when it tried to turn on the webcam my computer doesn't have, lol. I didn't feel like I needed to finish the secret ending (where, presumably, you uninstall him and it is very sad), but it was enjoyable to go through once.
Books: I have not gotten very much reading done lately for various reasons (well, reading of books; I did go on a Morrowind fic binge). But today I finished How to Say Babylon, which is the author's memoir of growing up in poverty in Jamaica in the confines of an increasingly restrictive Rastafarian household cult. This was one of those books where I really liked the first 95% of it, but not so much the last 5% because the arc of the author's escape turns meandering. I know that real life doesn't always make for a nice story arc, but I felt like this could have been written or edited better. There's a part about "and now I had to learn what it was like to be a black woman in America" that felt confusingly misplaced because she had not only gone there multiple times but spent years living there, and then a reconciliation with her extremely abusive father after he attempted to murder her, which was (obviously) extremely traumatic to both her and her younger sister, who witnessed it. And you might think, wow, that sounds interesting, how did she come to reconcile with him after something like that? But there's very little detail given to that reconciliation, especially compared to the account of her attempted murder, so you don't know why she felt okay spending a week alone with him next time she was in Jamaica, or if anything brought her father around beside the crushing loneliness of having his family abandon him.
Which is a shame, because while were a couple of aspects of the first 95% that I didn't care for (she sometimes gets repetitive in her descriptions, and personally I didn't care for the obvious artistic license in some of her memories), it is very compelling and vivid writing and often beautiful, especially when she is describing the environment around her or the metaphors of her internal turmoil. I had to put it down a few times because some of the scenes of her abuse were so haunting. For me, it was also interesting to read because I don't know that much about Jamaica. I would still recommend it even though I found the ending a little disappointing.
Garden: After the disappointment I had last year with my tomatoes - they did not taste any better than store-bought and all died of powdery mildew despite my best efforts - I just planted a bunch of eggplants instead. They have formed some weird patterns on their leaves that worried me some, but they seem to be growing well and making fruit, so I'm leaving them alone for now. I put most of my basil in pots because last year they also died of some sort of disease that I couldn't identify, and they have been providing a lot of leaves. I also grew green onions for the first time this year, and definitely growing them from now, they have so much flavor for no effort.
Games: I picked up a couple of games from the Steam summer sale and have so far only had time to play one of them, KinitoPet. It's a horror game based on Bonzi Buddy, and while the writing was very predictable (Kinito is sooo lonely that he does creepy things to get you to stay with him!), the execution impressed me. There was one section that had me jumping, and while I've seen other horror games that do the 'your computer starts doing creepy [but actually harmless] stuff' thing before, this one pulled it off very well. ...except for when it tried to turn on the webcam my computer doesn't have, lol. I didn't feel like I needed to finish the secret ending (where, presumably, you uninstall him and it is very sad), but it was enjoyable to go through once.
Books: I have not gotten very much reading done lately for various reasons (well, reading of books; I did go on a Morrowind fic binge). But today I finished How to Say Babylon, which is the author's memoir of growing up in poverty in Jamaica in the confines of an increasingly restrictive Rastafarian household cult. This was one of those books where I really liked the first 95% of it, but not so much the last 5% because the arc of the author's escape turns meandering. I know that real life doesn't always make for a nice story arc, but I felt like this could have been written or edited better. There's a part about "and now I had to learn what it was like to be a black woman in America" that felt confusingly misplaced because she had not only gone there multiple times but spent years living there, and then a reconciliation with her extremely abusive father after he attempted to murder her, which was (obviously) extremely traumatic to both her and her younger sister, who witnessed it. And you might think, wow, that sounds interesting, how did she come to reconcile with him after something like that? But there's very little detail given to that reconciliation, especially compared to the account of her attempted murder, so you don't know why she felt okay spending a week alone with him next time she was in Jamaica, or if anything brought her father around beside the crushing loneliness of having his family abandon him.
Which is a shame, because while were a couple of aspects of the first 95% that I didn't care for (she sometimes gets repetitive in her descriptions, and personally I didn't care for the obvious artistic license in some of her memories), it is very compelling and vivid writing and often beautiful, especially when she is describing the environment around her or the metaphors of her internal turmoil. I had to put it down a few times because some of the scenes of her abuse were so haunting. For me, it was also interesting to read because I don't know that much about Jamaica. I would still recommend it even though I found the ending a little disappointing.
Garden: After the disappointment I had last year with my tomatoes - they did not taste any better than store-bought and all died of powdery mildew despite my best efforts - I just planted a bunch of eggplants instead. They have formed some weird patterns on their leaves that worried me some, but they seem to be growing well and making fruit, so I'm leaving them alone for now. I put most of my basil in pots because last year they also died of some sort of disease that I couldn't identify, and they have been providing a lot of leaves. I also grew green onions for the first time this year, and definitely growing them from now, they have so much flavor for no effort.