Running a bit late on this week’s notes as I spent the long weekend at Balticon, which was fabulous. It was so lovely to see so many of my friends and to meet new people and to just be part of the community. Lovely.

Reading/Watching/Listening

I read Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire last week and it was amazing. I loved every minute of it. As I said in my GoodReads review, when I finished it, I had the same feeling I had when I finished Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice, N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season, and Yoon Ha Lee’s Ninefox Gambit: the beginning of something extraordinary. It’s about diplomacy and where the boundaries of diplomacy are, how corrosively seductive empire can be, and how big (or small) our definitions of you, we, and, us are. It’s also about who gets to be a person–who is civilized and who is not. I can’t wait to read the next book.

I’m still working on Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing but have also started a book which is more on the popcorn side of non-fiction for me: Roma Agrawal’s Built, which is structural engineering for the layperson, more or less. And yes, I have a weird definition of popcorn non-fiction.

Work

I think this pretty much says it all:

Medical

It was kind of a hard week. My doctor’s appointments were fine. But then I had a paracentesis on Monday which pulled 3.5L of fluid out of my abdomen and on Tuesday I had bloodwork. A lot of bloodwork: 15 vials. Because apparently in order to find out what might be wrong with my blood, my hematologist needs all of it. I appreciate his thoroughness, but oof.

Productivity

I only had two full working days last week, so I had to cram a lot in. I was mostly successful, but this week is going to be a real endurance test–I’m running a bunch of training sessions on top of everything else I’m doing. We’ll see if I make it. Lists are going to be critical.