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On the positive side, it all got fixed within a few hours.

I've been commenting lately that I felt like my home repair budget was fairly safe because I'd replaced every significant appliance in the house at some point since I acquired the house. (Fifteen years ago. 15! Can you believe it?)

Well, I forgot about the garage door opener. But it didn't forget about me.

I'd just gotten my bike out this morning, then when I went to close the garage door behind me, it made a lot of sad noises and declined to close. Examination showed that several of the side-rollers had jumped out of their tracks. (I'd known that one was out of the track for some time, but I couldn't man-handle it back in and it didn't seem to be causing problems.)

So. This calls for professional help. But first it called for securing the critical garage contents because the door was stuck open and I live on a well-traveled street. That having been done, I went on Yelp, located a relatively local garage door repair company, and got scheduled for a window within a couple hours. OK, good sign.

I solved my anxiety about the lack of door closure by doing yard work in the front yard until the repair guy arrived.

In addition to the roller misalignment (which is now happening on both sides of the door, thanks to my efforts to get it to fail closed) the cables (which evidently get winched up by a heavy-duty spring) are tangled on the spindle rather than being neatly wound on their designated place. So the immediate problem could be solved with brute force: prying the roller track open enough to force the roller back in; disconnecting the cables and rewinding in the correct place. That was going to be about $500 labor. Ok.

But, he says, look: these cables are corroded, and one of the heavy-duty springs is rusty. Furthermore, you really should use rollers with longer shanks, because these have a risk of popping off their sockets on the door. (I'm sure my description is not helping anyone visualize this.) So, he says, I'm going to recommend you replace pretty much all the door-lifting hardware. That's going to be a couple thousand.

I wince, but I can see the truth of everything he's saying. So he goes to work on all that and gets it all back in working order. And then he says, "So, you don't have to do this, and I don't get any commission or anything if you do, but the motor on your door opener is 20 years old, it isn't really as powerful as it should be for how much you use it, and it's probably going to fail within the next couple years.

So that was a couple more thousand. But now I have a fancy garage door opener that talks to my iPhone and includes a security camera. And maybe--just maybe--now I really have replaced the last appliance that came with the house when I bought it. Unless I've forgotten something else.

I think people who follow me on social media (especially here and fb) are aware of my habit of explicitly noting when I don't want "helpful" commentary/suggestions/feedback on something I"m describing--and, conversely, explicitly noting when I'm seeking input. But sometimes I worry that people take that as a signal that I don't want interaction at all. (Why in the world would I post things about my life if I didn't want any interaction?)

I'd love to have more actual conversations on social media. Back and forth, discussions of topics of mutual interest. But it feels like so few people stop to ask themselves, "Am I phrasing my participation in this conversation in a way that implies the original poster is ignorant or incompetent? Is there a way I could rephrase that makes it clear that I'm providing additional information for other readers, rather than implying this is something the original poster doesn't know? Or that I'm amplifying and agreeing with the post, rather than contradicting it or poking holes in it?"

Here's a generic example.

OP: [Interesting Fact]
Commenter: [Subsidiary Information that could be assumed to be known by anyone who already knows Interesting Fact]

Compare to:
OP: [Interesting Fact]
Commenter: What I love about that [Interesting Fact] is [Subsidiary Information].

The first implies the OP doesn't know the fact. The second shows solidarity by assuming the OP knows the fact and the commenter is sharing their love for it.

Now, one could object that people differ in their ability to communicate in nuanced fashions and some people just aren't good at analyzing on the fly how their comments might be taken. But from the other side, people differ in their ability to assume good will in the face of past experience. A mirror-world version of "I'm not good at reading social cues" is "I'm working very hard to read social cues and the false positives are abundant." Telepathy still hasn't been invented.

Anyway, I don't know why I'm whining about this (given that the inciting interaction was incredibly trivial).

I gambled that my authors would read their email and respond within a few days and held off on the On the Shelf podcast until I could include the announcement. Offers went out on the 6th, the podcast would normally have gone up on the 7th. As of this morning I still had one acceptance yet to come in, but I'd scripted the show and decided to go ahead and record. Then the final acceptance came in just as I was setting up the mic. (I wouldn't have uploaded the episode until everything was final, but it was unlikely I'd have to change the script.)

Once again, I'm pledging myself to get ahead of the game. I'll send out payments tomorrow and any suggested edits by the end of the week, along with requests for bios and pronunciation guides. I'll be doing all the narration myself this year. So I have half a chance of actually getting everything recorded well in advance. (But only half a chance, because inevitably I get distracted by something else, thinking, "Well, I have plenty of time.")

I bought five stories again this time, due to some short lengths, though I'm not sure whether I'll do a double-episode or use one as a special bonus fiction episode at some point. The podcast is having its 10th anniversary this year, which might make a natural context for that.

I forget whether I discovered the technique for turning artichoke leaves into cardoons earlier than last year. Having solidly learned the knack, I've started the harvest already (while the globes won't start showing up for a couple more months). The result is basically a slightly bitter "carrier" for other flavors, but they add bulk and fiber to a dish. They go well with marinara sauce, for example.

I actually got my act together to grow some "winter vegetables" this year and have a dozen cabbages thinking about doing something, as well as some assorted greens. Haven't checked to see if the peas have come up, but there are also onions that were started as seed last spring that have gotten as far as scallions now. This is the tricky time of year when I don't have the irrigation turned on, so I need to pay attention to whether it's raining often enough to keep things going.

I harvested all dozen or so of my grapefruit and they're chilling happily in the crisper drawer. (Some critter had gotten to a couple of them, so I didn't want to leave them on the tree.) I have a half grapefruit every couple of days, since the word is that they don't always play well with blood thinners and I don't want to overdo it, but that'll take me through the end of the month or so.

The juice oranges are mostly ripe and I'm picking one or two at a time. (I think there may be a couple dozen in total across three trees.) And it's time to Do Something with this year's Seville orange crop, which reminds me I need to reach out to the friend who wants some for marmalade. (I can never remember what the middle vowel in marmalade should be on the first try.)

Other than that, I need to spend a lot more time pruning and weeding during the wet-and-fallow season. But the first daffodil bloomed today, so there's that.

So today's adventure was going uptown to meet friends at the Cloisters and see the special exhibit (on sexuality in the Middle Ages) with them. I took the subway up then walked the last bit through the park with snow softly falling. As I'm walking along the path, a couple coming the other way stop to compliment my coat. (This is the long green redingote with the shoulder capes.) I thanked them and told them about how I loved to make historically-inspired clothing and we chatted briefly then went on our way.

So I saw the exhibit and the rest of the museum. Went to an early dinner with my friends. Then caught the subway back toward downtown, but because it's a weekend I had to overshoot my destination and double back from Columbus Circle. So I'm standing on the platform at Columbus and I hear this voice, "I'd recognize that coat anywhere!" It's the same couple (at the opposite end of town). We chatted some more while waiting for our trains and it turns out they both went to Berkeley for college. What a small world.

This is the sort of trip I never felt able to schedule before retirement: put together several purposes and just take a couple weeks to see people and do things.

I flew out on a red-eye because I always have this dilemma when flying east that I can either get up at an ungodly hour of the morning (which means either leaving my car at long-term parking, or getting an airport hotel room the night before), or I can arrive later in the evening than I want to be dealing with unfamiliar transit systems, or I can take a red-eye and have the logistics at both ends done at a reasonable hour of the day...at the expense of losing most of a night's sleep. I did sleep for several hours, but then spent most of yesterday vegging around L's appartment. (Which worked out because she had several online things to do.)

Today is L's big-number birthday celebration (one of the aforesaid "several purposes"). Then I have five days in NYC in which I have two items scheduled, which gives me a chance for more spontaneity than I usually have on trips. After that, it's up to Maine for the family part of the trip.

I was able to get all my blog/podcast stuff set up for the rest of the month--only need to switch things to "live" on the web--so any "work" I do on this trip can be on less urgent (i.e., actually writing on book projects). I think I've been managing better at avoiding having short-term deadlines rule my creative life, but somehow the non-fiction projects have called to me more strongly than the fiction. I suspect that's because the non-fiction is more in the revisions phased than the "creating text out of nothing" phase.

So yesterday I was checking my calendar to make sure I was keep track of things and had a "wait...what?" moment when I realized that I fly off to the east coast for a couple weeks...um...next Monday. And that means I"m popping down to Monterey for a family ting on Saturday. And that means...

So I spent a large chunk of yesterday evening drawing up my compulsively -detailed itinerary/schedule and making some additional reservations. I got the plane tickets months ago, but my plans also include some Amtrak travel, a rental car, and a motel room. I didn't want to leave any of that to chance (despite it being off season) but I hadn't previously nailed down exactly when I was doing the non-NYC parts of the trip.

The conjunction that inspired this trip is a friends large-number birthday (hi Lauri!), the Emma Stebbins exhibit at the Heckscher Museum (which I did a podcast interview for), it having been too long since I've seen my brother and family in Maine, and the chance to meet my grand-niece (also in Maine). Alas, the grand-niece contingent had since decided to do the snowbird thing for several months and won't be in scope on this trip.

So I'll be in NYC for 7 days (including two planned-but-not-yet-calendared events) then Augusta ME for 4 days. Currently it's looking like no blizzard, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed as that would make the driving parts annoying.

Unlike most NYC trips, I have plenty of unscheduled time this trip, and I'd love to meet up with folks if it works out.

Since I have another hour before heading off to a New Year's Eve party, I might as well bring the reading notes up to the current date. I read a lot of books in December, but only a couple were thoroughly enjoyable.

The Case of the Missing Maid by Rob Osler -- (audio) Sapphic historical mystery. Well-researched, but with a bad case of researcher's disease. There's too much showing off on details that a narrator wouldn't normally be expected to provide. The psychology of the characters is also rather anachronistic, or perhaps overly clinical. Also, the narrator regularly tells us about the protagonist's desire for women, but doesn't really demonstrate it in a believable way. Also, there's a possible scenario that is set up but then the character never acknowledges or explores it (i.e., that the Evil Suitor has kidnapped the victim and is lying about it). All in all, I spent too much time yelling at the book while listening to it.

A Plague on Both Your Houses by Susanna Gregory -- (audio) I picked this up in a series-sale on Chirp. Historical mystery focusing on a physician in medieval Cambridge. There was a time when historical mysteries were just beginning to be a thing when I'd read everything I could get my hands on. And then a time when there were enough of them that I felt like I was allowed to begin disliking some of them. Yeah, this falls in that category. Ugh. The writing is ok but OMG it drags, especially during the endless details of the plague. And it has a bad case of "this medieval doctor magically knows what treatments will eventually be proven effective by modern medicine." There's endless repetition of the clues and details of the mystery, though maybe that's a deliberate technique. I have three more volumes in this series, but I'm not likely to continue listening.

Saint-Seducing Gold by Brittany N. William -- (audio) Sequel to That Self-Same Metal, which I read a couple months ago. (YA historic fantasy set in the early 17th century.) Very enjoyable for the representation and worldbuilding. But it felt very repetitive, as if all the emotional beats needed to be hammered away at to make them stick. Maybe this is a YA thing? I enjoyed it, but I'm not necessarily eager to pick up the third and final book.

The next few books were read specifically to do an updated version of my "sapphic spin-offs of Jane Austen books" podcast, so I was reading some things that I was dubious about going in.

Emma: The Nature of a Lady by Kate Christie -- (text) I regularly mention that I’m very much not a fan of the approach of taking an existing public domain text and making only minimal changes or additions to create a new story. Which is exactly what this book does. As far as I could tell, we don’t run into any alterations to the original text until chapter 5, and I’d say that maybe 99% of the text is simply identical to Austen’s original. The premise is that Emma and Jane Fairfax were childhood sweethearts, sabotaged by Mr. Woodhouse confiscating their letters to each other while they were separated. The eventual resolution is for Jane to enter a lavender marriage with Knightley who much prefers male partners. If you like this sort of pastiche, this may be the sort of thing you’ll like, but I don’t, I’m afraid. (After checking past reading notes, I noticed that I had exactly this same reaction to this same approach for a previous Christie book.)

The Scandal at Pemberley by Mara Brooks -- (text) On the surface, Jane Bennet doesn't seem an obvious candidate for a sapphic take given how central her attachment to Bingley is to the original story, but Mara Brooks has followed that thread in The Scandal at Pemberley. I have a mixed reaction to this novella—maybe short enough to be a novelette? The prose is elegant and full of rich sensory imagery, but the plot is a bare skeleton on which to hang a series of erotic scenes. There are also a few logical holes in the plot where the characters have some unfortunately modern attitudes about public displays of affection between women in the Regency era. Really gals, it’s not actually a problem for you to be in each other’s bedrooms and even to share a bed! (See my trope podcast about the “only one bed” thing.)

The Shocking Experiments of Miss Mary Bennet by Melinda Taub -- (audio) This is far more ambitious than the other books I read in this Austen-spin-off binge. I confess this book utterly blew me away after an uncertain start. The cover copy misleadingly suggested that it might be a slapstick mashup of Pride and Prejudice with Frankenstein in the same vein as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but it was much more thoughtful and nuanced than I expected. It takes quite some way into the book before the sapphic thread is made overt, and the characters have a lot of obstacles to get past for their happy ending. (One of which is an additional fantasy twist that seemed to come out of nowhere, but I’m willing to go with it.) While the plot and trappings stray outside the realistic nature of Austen’s work, the social and psychological aspects of the plot rang true to the times for me, including the meandering path Mary and Georgiana take to recognize what they’re feeling as romantic love and to decide it’s worth fighting for.

The Lady's Wager by Olivia Hampton -- (text) Evidently a number of authors share my interest in seeing Mary Bennet get some love, because this is yet one more book that addresses that angle. This one gives Mary a secret life as an author and pairs her with an original character: a former governess struggling to make a living in London. While the set-up of the plot is clever and plausible, the execution stumbled on numerous points. The characters have anxieties about their budding friendship that are out of place in the early 19th century—a time when it was utterly normal for women to express appreciation for other women’s beauty and to engage in physical affection in public. It would also have been utterly normal for two spinsters to set up household together for economic reasons, so I found their subterfuge unnecessary. These are elements that really spoil a sapphic historical for me, when the characters have 20th century attitudes, anxieties, and reactions.

We move out of the Austen books for the last two.

Earl Crush by Alexandra Vasti -- (audio) I thought I'd give this a try, despite being so-so about Vasti's f/f Regency in the same continuum. (One of the characters from Ladies in Hating is a secondary character in this one.) Alas, this ended up being a DNF, though for idiosyncratic reasons that might be a strong plus for other readers. The story has some interesting ideas and characterization but around midway slides into about 80% sex by volume and I just got bored. Some authors can write such excellent characters and plot that my indifference to sex scenes is overcome, but the balance was too badly off for me in this book.

Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite -- (audio) This was a nice finish to the year's reading. Murder mystery on a colony ship where bodies are renewed from memory backups. So what happens if your backup gets erased and then your current body gets killed? Interesting chewy ideas. The protagonist is sapphic, but sexual orientation isn't a marked feature in this continuity so it's just background. (I've previously enjoyed Waite's sapphic historical romances.)

There. I'm totally caught up with my reading notes. My "in process" spreadsheet (which is where all these notes have been living) has a couple dozen titles in it that either need to be officially marked DNF or that I had put on the list as a to-do and then never read. I think I'll clean that up so I can start fresh.

Back to mostly audiobooks (except when that format isn't available).

Ladies in Hating by Alexandra Vasti -- (audio) While I'm delighted that we're getting more sapphic historical romances from major publishers, too often I'm disappointed about the execution. This Regency-era romance pairing two competing authors of gothic novels spent too much time on repetitive build-up (frustration, coincidences, longing), and not enough time on plot There were so many cycles of desire > sex > betrayal > grovel > forgiveness > repeat that I have little confidence in the stability of the relationship. On the other hand, the historic grounding was solid.

Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells, Exit Strategy by Martha Wells, Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells, Network Effect by Martha Wells -- (audio) Continuing my binge of the Murderbot series. I don't have specific reading notes on most of these other than finding them enjoyable. Network Effect was a re-listen as that was the one I read first from the series and bounced off at the time. On re-listen, I think my impression was skewed by listening to it out of order, because a lot of the interpersonal stuff makes more sense now that I have the background. But it's still definitely fairly heavy on the blow-by-blow fight scenes. I reiterate that I can see why the people who love these love them, but I'm just not quite the ideal audience.

Ochre, Quartz, or Ivy by Jeannelle M. Ferreira -- (text) (Read to blurb, not yet published.) Sometimes a story unfolds like a vision emerging from a heavy mist. Glimpses of shifting details appear then are obscured again, but gradually the mist thins and you find yourself in an unexpected landscape. Jeannelle M. Ferreira’s Ochre, Quartz, or Ivy is just such a story, embedded in a mythic early British setting, but not fully temporally bound. It takes a bit of reading for the characters, their relationships, and their fates to solidify within the poetry of the narrative, but when the plot has fully unfolded, as it dips in and out of the time-stream, the pieces fall solidly into place. I have consistently maintained that Ferreira’s prose is best read with a poetic protocol: allowing the imagery to build in its own fashion and this work is a solid example of that principle.

Angel Maker by Elizabeth Bear -- (text, audio) I started reading this in text but the heavy use of dialect meant that I ended up subvocalizing as I read, so I decided to simply switch to audio which worked much better.
The continuing adventures of Karen Memory. A fun romp through alternate history with all the steampunk bells and whistles but addressing real historic social issues as well.

A House with Good Bones by T. Kingfisher -- (audio) Horror fantasy about dealing with legacies of the past. Great for the sense of growing menace without feeling too scary. The awfulness of people, artfully depicted.

(This is the promised separate review of my favorite book from 2025.)

Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer is not simply my favorite book of the year, but is my candidate for Best Book of the Year overall. This is not simply a book about history but is a book about the process of history. It demonstrates the fractal messiness of the people, places, and events that we try to tidily sort into specific eras, and especially how all those people, places, and events are braided together into a solid fabric. Palmer doesn’t shy away from pointing out how thoroughly our understanding of history is shaped by the prejudices and preoccupations of historians; she embraces this aspect noting at every turn how her own take is shaped by her love of the city of Florence and especially its most controversial son, Machiavelli.

But what makes this book great is the humor poured into the cracks around the politics, violence, and art. (A recurring feature is little comic dialogues that summarize key events in a narrative style familiar to anyone on Twitter or Bluesky. I desperately want to see these presented in visual format, whether as live theater or animated shorts. It’s hard to pick a favorite line, but the top two are “Maria Visconti-Sforza: I’m standing right here!” and “King of France: You Italians are very strange.”)

The book concludes with what I can only describe as a stump speech for the importance to the contemporary world of studying and understanding history, embracing the necessary messiness of “progress,” and the hope that we can indeed continue the Renaissance project of reaching for a better world.

This is a very long book, though paced in manageable chapters. When I decided to read it and found that the audiobook was the same price as the hardcover, I went for audio (at over 30 hours!) and listened to it while taking the train home from the International Medieval Conference. The narration is top-notch, capturing the emotional range of the text perfectly. The side benefit is that the combination of material, voice, and length made it perfect to add to my “sleep-aid audiobooks” collection, which means I get to enjoy it over and over again (in the bits and pieces I consciously hear). But of course I bought the hardcover too, not only so I could get Palmer to autograph it, but because I needed to be able to track down my favorite bits and check out the footnotes.