Katilina

I watched the new Agatha Christie's Seven Dials Mystery, and then reread the book, as I had only a slight recollection of it. The visual design and costumes charmed me, but I was baffled by adaptation choices. Then I watched The Residence, which was much better, and visually lovely as well, as expected from Shondaland.

I stopped reading the works of Freeman Wills Crofts - I read all I could find, but there are more that I haven't yet. The guy was quite prolific. Then I finally got around to reading John Dickson Carr's The Hollow Man, the last book I hadn't read on the bookclub list in Wake Up Dead Man. It was... okay. It did not revise my previously unfavorable opinion of JDC as a mystery writer. It's a fun enough and okay read, but it's not satisfying and the tone and style are... weird. I suppose if I want to articulate this better I'll have to read more of his work.

Anyway, I've been reading some other random early mystery novels since then - AEW Mason (pretty good but some Of Its Time issues), GDH Cole (the majority of the narration is by silly characters whose cluelessness the reader is presumably meant to see through, a narrative technique which makes me gnash my teeth), JJ Connington (better but loses major points for extended scenes of a dumb detective being dumb and his smarter boss being even smugger and more secretive about everything than Sherlock Holmes).

I also have experienced a change of heart, not about the NHL - it's still evil and its culture is toxic and most NHL hockey players suck - but about posting the unfinished hockey WIP with all the names changed. I didn't want to do that from 2016 until like, this month, but now I think I would be okay with it, provided I did finish it (I like the bit I have anyway). I can't at all explain why this feeling changed, though. But clearly we've all been able to process quite a bit about the nature of fanfiction with the names changed since the release of Heated Rivalry.

I keep thinking I want to write something about one of these things, but shingles is making it uncomfortable to sit up with the laptop and type and I keep going, "Fuck it, I have a moderately horrible ailment anyway right now, so lying down and resting is virtuous", and crawling into the flannel duvet tent against the radiator with Sipuli. It's nice in there. In fact at times it's so toasty that I forget it's chilly out in the rest of the house.

We made a simple oven pan of roasted root vegetables, chicken, and lemon, which we've eaten many times, but it came out extra delicious, partly just from a larger, juicier lemon.

This got me thinking. I love lemon bars and two near-identical recipes from my childhood for lemon tea cookies and lemon muffins. But I've never been really impressed with a lemon cake, and I wonder if it's just that it could be lemonier? The intensity of lemon meringue pie is nice, but I don't fully love the texture combination.

Maybe a lemon meringue cake? Or some other dessert that combines lemon curd or custard with something cake- or cookie-like?

cimorene: I actually was impressed enough with Francois Arnaud to go watch him in other stuff, but not enough to watch The Borgias.
waxjism: Would you watch some fuckass weird French Canadian arty movie? Are you willing to watch Xavier Dolan?
cimorene: I've heard of that, but I don't know who it is.
waxjism: That's what it is. French Canadian arty weird movie. I think it's blahblah from year, or year. And I think it's in French.
cimorene: Okay, definitely not.

Sgt. Sheepshanks
Superintendent Sheaf
John Weatherup
Alec Quilter
Ebenezer Peabody
Superintendent Goodwilly
Grosvenor Mairs