if I could give you three things…

I.
I’ve just written a music quiz, inspired aby the one Mary did. It’s on my LJ, since that’s where I usually keep memes. I’ve also posted a short Lord Peter Wimsey fanfic there (it doesn’t actually have Peter in it, though he’s mentioned – it’s set a few decades after the short story Talboys, which in turn is 5-10 years after Busman’s Honeymoon. The story was originallywritten as part of a contest on the LordPeter discussion list. I’ve reposted it to make it public, because someone’s collecting a list of publicly available Lord Peter fanfic.

It’s always a balance for me between this site and the LiveJournal. I began the latter mostly to be able to have a friendslist to read and to be able to comment. These days, I still keep most entries here, but I generally put memes on LJ, as well as the little bit of fiction writing I do. I love the idea of having my very own site, and it’s certainly easy enough with WordPress, but LJ has much more community and I get a lot more comments there, so sometimes I’ll put something there if I really want feedback. LJ is much more of a community and that’s part of it, but another part is that while this site tells me if someone comments, but LJ also tells a comment if someone replies, so real conversations becomes possible. I should probably go looking someday to see whether there’s a WP plugin to enable that function.

II.
I’ve been wearing glasses since I was 3, and have had bifocals for a lot of that time, so I don’t really associate them with age. My current glasses aren’t bifocals, but I do just fine with bare eyes to look at tiny things, so that’s no problem. My glasses are small enough that it’s easy to look around them. However, my contacts aren’t bifocal either and with them in I do have a problem when I try to focus on small things close-up, like fine yarn or beadwork. my eyes get tired and strained. It’s always been a little uncomfortable, but recently it’s gotten worse, and if I keep trying to focus on small stuff for too long, when I focus further away I get a really interesting pixilated effect for a few minutes. yesterday I conceded the effects of age and bought my first pair of reading glasses. They’re only +1.0 magnification, but this does make me feel a little older.

III.
This evening should be interesting. It’s my women’s quad’s second time rowing together, but since the guy who coxed for us last time can’t make it, Rudder will be coxing. It’s humorous enough that he’s bigger and heavier than any of the rowers (not by much in Roeiste’s case) but the other cox was too (another husband). However, I have not warned the other women what a slavedriver he is. Most of the peopol ehere seem to do surprisingly little training, aside from lots of cycling. We do row some hard pieces, but generally only 10-30 strokes, even though we’ll be racing for 5km. Rudder’s already been talking about doing 3 minute castles (3 min at each stroke rate: 20, 24, 22, 26, 24, 28, 26, 30, and you’re supposed to pull hard even at the lower rates). Possibly I should warn my teammates.

I’m not too worried though; Roeiste is in stroke seat (nearest the cox) and will not be shy if he wants us to do something she disagrees with.