Week Notes 2021/19 + 20
Sun May 23, 2021
Introduction
Notes for the two weeks of 10th through 23rd of May 2021.
Week 19 was mostly work followed by a Sunday trip. Week 20 was a medium term work project coming near to its end.
The Notes
- Once again, The coffee for this week was Tin Cup’s filter blend sourced from Ethiopia.
- I also had a bag of coffee sourced from Costa Rica roasted by Clumsy Goat. It was fine, but not quite right for mine and Jen’s tastes.
- On Monday 11th, at lunch, I collected the copy of Bruce Sterling’s new short story collection “Robot Artists & Black Swans” from Blackwells. It’s a beautiful object, but one I’ve not started to explore properly.
- I finished reading M John Harrison’s The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again. A stunning novel that I’ll need time to fully process.
- Work things happened:
- A medium term project has started to close out and see some results.
- On Sunday 16th, I went up and over Lochnagar with the Cairngorm Club. It was a long and tiring day, but well worth it. The first Munro I’ve climbed since moving to Aberdeen in 2019, but won’t be the last. The data for that day can be found on [this Strava entry](https://www.strava.com/activities/5311179274.
- Apart from three days in week 19, I’ve managed at least one session of freewriting a day, often more. I’m still not getting enough time spent in doing these things, but I’m maintaining some momentum. I produced a nice short about the garden on Thursday lunchtime where I elided the existence of bluebells growing in our garden despite writing about the other blue flowers.
- My intention is to finish the first draft of a project I’m working on by the end of the month. It was only meant to be a quick diversion, but, well, I have a habit of spinning on side projects too long.
Running
- I stopped the running plan. I only managed 10km in week 19 due to finishing work late. In week 20, I went for a series of excellent trail runs. The weather has been awful and unpredictable and quite frankly I was tired of plodding along the same concrete roads week after week.
- I haven’t decided what I’m doing in the upcoming week. I will probably go back to running on the road, but with less set structure since while I have the start of a goal in mind, all I want to do at the moment is improve my 5km and 10km pace.
- Also, I really need to start going to the gym more to do some strength work.
Watched
- Star Trek: Deep Space 9 S6E25 “Tears of the Prophet”
- Star Trek: Deep Space 9 S7E1 “Image in the Sand”
- Eh. We close off what happens in the previous episode, but only by engaging in DS9’s worst dramatic habits.
- Star Trek: Deep Space 9 S7E2 Shadows and Symbols”
- Is is the honourable thing to make a star burp so it destroys a ship yard?
- Star Trek: Deep Space 9 S7E3 “Afterimage”
- An interesting Ezri and Garak episode. I’m always happy to see Garak.
- Star Trek: Deep Space 9 S7E4 “Take Me Out to the Holosuite”
- I remember watching this episode years ago and not enjoying it. However, now I’ve watched most of Deep Space Nine I’m of the opinion that it provides a nice moment of catharsis after a run of stressful episodes.
- Star Trek: Deep Space 9 S7E5 “Chrysalis”
- Fine. I’m not not enjoying any of the episodes we’ve watched recently. They’re all engaging, but maybe six episodes in as many weeks was a bad idea.
- Army of the Dead (Zack Snyder, 2021)
- This has zombies, some gory gags, some political commentary, and a slight tinge of grindhouse in a seventy million dollar film. It made me happy.