So I Took a Career Interest Test

The last time I did one of those was when I first moved to Texas and was unemployed. It took me so long to find a paralegal job that I began to wonder if I was barking up the proverbial wrong tree and by golly, I got mostly the kinds of things I already liked to do, like working as a librarian.

Same this time, frankly.

It started with this YouTube video from Doctor Mike. So I decided to take the Department of Labor interest assessment.

The careers with the brightest futures and the highest pay on my list are poets, lyricists, and creative writers; art therapists; music therapists; interpreters and translators; news analysts, reporters, and journalists; and mental health and substance abuse social workers. All of these are supposed to pay at least $5 more than my current job and it says that creative writing pays $32.70 per hour. Now, I don’t know if blogging is *creative* writing. Maybe it’s more journalism and reporting, which pays $23.70. So where’s my somewhere between $23.70 and $27.99 per hour?

I’m pleased that my post-retirement career of working as a foreign language translator (my real dream is to translate children’s books) is still in line with my interests, though.

So I guess I just keep going with my current plans — continue reading and writing and practicing my languages. Well, at least I’m not heading the wrong direction as fast as I can, right?

Now, where did I leave off on Gratuitous Amazon Links? I think I was on The Throne of Fire, by Rick Riordan. The Throne of Fire is the second book in the Kane Chronicles series and it concerns the search of Carter and Sadie Kane for the god Ra. Ra may be the key to defeating Apophis and the Kane siblings have to find him.

I have read the third Kane Chronicles book, The Serpent’s Shadow, and I have a copy around here somewhere. But damned if I know where. I’ve come to the conclusion that I must have books somewhere other than the four places I know of. So it’ll be a while until The Serpent’s Shadow will be my Gratuitious Amazon Link.

Wheel of Time Episode 6: The Flame of Tar Valon

Wait. What?

Augh!

Okay. You know the drill if you’ve been reading these posts for a while. I’m going to post an old image and below that, all spoilers are fair game, both from the series and from anywhere in the books, and we’re definitely talking about The Shadow Rising here.

The area around Grand Central Station is really congested and has this real “concrete canyon” vibe, so it took me a while to find place where I could get a decent photo.

We start this episode with a flashback to the childhood of Siuan Sanche, who at this point in the series is the Amyrlin Seat. Siuan leaves her home in Tear because the villagers near where she and her father live find out that she can channel. In Tear, it is illegal to channel, and girls who are found to have the ability are sent away immediately. I don’t know what happens to boy channelers who are discovered. I’ll look into it.

We get our first look at the Hall of the Tower, when the Amyrlin Seat calls a meeting of the Hall so that Alanna, Liandrin, and Moiraine can answer for their extrajudicial gentling of Logain. Siuan is very unhappy and tells Alanna and Liandrin that she’ll decide their punishments later. Then she demands to know why Moiraine has been out of pocket for two years, and Moiraine keeps insisting that she cannot tell her. They have a major confrontation over it, and Moiraine still insists that she cannot say.

And I’m, like, “Wait. Siuan knew about Moiraine’s search for the Dragon Reborn in the books. It was a whole plot that they’d cooked up between them. What’s going on here?”

Meanwhile, Moiraine has broken the link between Mat and the Shadar Logoth dagger (Wow! That was a fast subplot — blink and you’ll miss it!). Egwene and Perrin have arrived at the Tower and Moiraine visits them. The head of the Blue Ajah tells Moiraine that she has to remain in the Tower for now, which puts a kink in her Dragon Reborn plans.

We see Moiraine in a dress thing that has man’s dress shirt vibes. Lan complains about Moiraine masking the bond, then wishes Moiraine a good night and ends with “Give her my love.”

It turns out that not only are Moiraine and Siuan in on the search for the Dragon Reborn together, they are lovers. In the books, they were what was known as “pillow-friends,” meaning that they had a sexual relationship during their youth, but it’s kind of implied that it’s over. This is particularly evident in that both end up with men. Well, for varying definitions of “end up with.”

So. Since Moiraine and Siuan definitely seem to me to have a love relationship here, after Siuan gets stilled and is youthened to the point of being unrecognizable. Or, I guess, will she get stilled and youthened to the point of being unrecogizable? I mean, the Gareth Bryne plot is part of that, and I cannot see Siuan being all, “It’s over Moiraine. I’m in love with Queen Morgase’s ex-boyfriend.” It just doesn’t seem to fit the tone of the series. Or, I guess once Moiraine is presumed dead, maybe Siuan and Bryne will have a fling?

We’ll see what happens when it happens, I guess.

Siuan mentions a premonitory dream that she had about the Dark One and the Eye of the World and so after Siuan exiles Moiraine at Moiraine’s request (to get her out of the demand of the head of her Ajah), Moiraine gets the band back together and meets them at a Waygate. She tells them that they have to go to the Eye of the World so that whichever of them is the Dragon can hurry up and get the Last Battle over with.

I guess that if they’d only gotten the one season, they would have gotten the Last Battle over with and that’d be it, but they have had a renewal, so what will happen?

Then Mat says that he is having second thoughts and Moiraine says that there’s no turning back. The rest of them pile into the Waygate and Mat just stands there. They yell for him to hurry up, but he doesn’t come any closer. And then the Waygate closes.

This is the “Wait. What?” moment.

I’ve since done some digging and from what I can gather, this is when Barney Harris left the show. They shut down production for COVID-19 and something happened behind the scenes and they ended up having to recast Mat. I gather that they are going to reintegrate Mat into the show with the new actor sometime in Season 2.

Wheel of Time, Episode 5: Blood Calls Blood

I totally wasn’t sure what to expect from this episode going in. “Blood calls blood” is from Chapter 7 of The Great Hunt*.

I may end up going into more detail in the spoiler zone on exactly the circumstances, but maybe not. We’ll see what we see when we get there.

Original Statue of Liberty Torch
The original torch of the Statue of Liberty, which is now inside Fort Wood. Just underneath the flame, you can see the hinges of the door where people used to emerge from the statue to stand.

I loved New York City and if I ever win the lottery or hit that perfect “will translate for money” spot or whatever, I’m moving to Queens.

Why Queens? Because it’s the most linguistically diverse urban area on Earth. I mean, Papua New Guinea beats Queens by a mile (823 languages versus 138), but I don’t know if I can get my city on in Port Moresby, you know?

Where was I?

Oh, yes. Episode 5. I really am amazed at how much they can cram into a 50-minute episode here. I mean, we see the funeral for the people outside the cave and that Nynaeve couldn’t save. We see Nynaeve, Moirane, and Lan arrive at Tar Valon and get Nynaeve settled into a room in the Warders’ quarters and for Liandrin to track her down and be all friendlythreatening (she was like threatmantic, but less romance and more creepy phony friendship) at her.

We see Mat and Rand arrive at Tar Valon, Rand meet Loial, and Mat and Rand watch Logain being brought into the city. Later, Loial brings Nynaeve to Mat and Rand’s room at the inn, which includes more development of how sick Mat is.

We see Egwene and Perrin approaching Tar Valon with the Tuatha’an, where they are intercepted by Whitecloaks. Valda wants to detain Egwene and Perrin but the Traveling People refuse to let the Whitecloaks have them. The Whitecloaks catch Egwene and Perrin after all, and hold them hostage, insisting that Egwene is an Aes Sedai. Valda tells them that one of them will have to die, which leads Perrin to tell Egwene that he killed Laila. Egwene then channels for the second-ever time (the first being when she made Moiraine’s blue stone light up) and she and Perrin escape.

And there’s still plenty of time for two more death-related rituals. Kerene was one of the Aes Sedai who died when Logain’s followers attacked and her Warder, Stepin, returns her ring to the boiling pool of gold that they apparently make the Aes Sedai’s rings from (I actually wondered if it was going to be a self-immolation ritual).

Alanna has offered to bond Stepin and when Lan asks, Stepin says, “First you lose Moiraine and then you tell me how easy it is to jump from one woman to the next,” which is a nice bit of foreshadowing there.**

Then Stepin does end up committing suicide. Lan is on suicide watch and Stepin drugs him then leaves the room and disembowels himself. We end the episode on Stepin’s funeral.

And we still had time for scenery and emotion and the Whitecloaks to scrub Egwene clean before bringing her to Valda’s tent and for Valda to torture Perrin in a passage that was truly disturbing. All in 50 minutes.

Maybe Judkins et al. really will be able to do justice to the scope of the series.

A few questions remain. Does Moiraine know that the Mat and Rand are in Tar Valon (Nynaeve is at Stepin’s funeral, so there’s reason for Moiraine to know they’ve arrived)? Where are Egwene and Perrin? I mean, they could see the White Tower from where they were stopped by the Whitecloaks, and it sure looks to me like Egwene and Perrin escaped the same night as Stepin’s suicide. Granted, Valda sliced Perrin up pretty good, but the Whitecloak camp was still close to Tar Valon, I’d think. Did they manage to throw together a funeral for Stepin within hours of his death?

*Germane Amazon Link!

**In the books, at least, Moiraine knows that the bond between them will be broken and she also knows that this will happen before Nynaeve can become a full Aes Sedai and take Lan’s bond (because almost all married Aes Sedai are married to their warders). So she arranged for a sister named Myrelle, who is known for saving Warders from the death wish that comes with the end of the bond, to take Lan’s bond without consulting Lan first. I fully expect something like this to happen in the series.

Educated, by Tara Westover

Today’s randomly chosen book is Educated, by Tara Westover. I was going to flip through it to refresh my memory, but I can’t find it anywhere.

There are a lot of books that I can’t find. I’ve been messaging Alex to see if maybe he accidentally took them with him when he moved out, but I know there’s no way he has them. I texted Evelyn and Phoenix and neither have it. I must have books somewhere else in this house. Where, though?

Westover was raised in a strict Mormon family in Idaho and grew up helping her mother create herbal cures and her father at his scrapyard on their property. Since her father distrusted the public education system, her parents considered themselves homeschoolers. The schooling that Tara received was sporadic, at best.

After years of conflict and drama, her elder brother Tyler encourages her to take the ACT (a college entrance exam) and go to Brigham Young University. She gets a good enough score on the ACT to get into Brigham Young, but she feels that she doesn’t fit in.

Despite this, she finally rose above her upbringing and the neglect and abuse she suffered and earned a Ph.D. in history from the University of Cambridge.

All in all, this is an excellent book and it deserves all of the praise it got.

I just wish I could find my copy.

Hippos Go Berserk! by Sandra Boynton

Here’s the world’s shortest book blogger entry — my thoughts on a 16-page board book that I bought for Alex when he was a baby.

I love Hippos Go Berserk! I used to sit in the glider rocker with him when he was a baby, reading this to him and I can still recite big chunks of it from memory.

The plot, such as it is, is about, well, hippos. And counting. “One hippo, all alone, calls two hippos on the phone,” it starts. Our “one hippo” is having a party. We collect a total of 45 hippos in groups of, well, two, three, four, etc. Then in the morning, after the party, the hippos return home in groups of nine, eight, seven, etc.

And since it’s a Sandra Boynton book, the illustrations are friendly, lively, and full of details.

Gee, I love this book!

I leave you with Sandra Boynton and Yo-Yo Ma with special guest Weird Al Yankovic: Chanson Profonde

Content Creators: Safiya Nygaard

It’s always fun with these posts to try to figure out which was the first video/blog post/etc. that I saw from a specific creator.

I know the first time I ever saw Safiya Nygaard in a video at all. It was in the video where the Try Guys wore women’s pants for the day. Nygaard came on to talk about the history of women’s pockets and where they went once women changed from foofy dresses to pants.

Now, as for which of her own videos was first, I’m pretty sure it was when she bought counterfeit designer clothing in Hong Kong. I’m hardly a fashion maven or anything, but it sounded like a good time. And it was.

I’m stopping writing to rewatch in hopes of figuring out when I realized that Tyler wasn’t her cameraman but was, in fact, her fiance. I think it might have been when they talked about wearing a couples’ outfit.

I enjoyed that video so much (despite not recognizing half of the referenced brands), that I “sh-mashed that subscribe button” and then went through and watched all of her older videos.

One of the things she does is what she refers to as her “Franken” whatever videos. That’s when she takes as many of whatever as she can find and mixes them together. For example, she went to Sephora and bought every color of lipstick she could, then melted them together into one color of lipstick. The result, called “Berry Me in Lipsticks” in her collab with ColourPop is a nice, well, berry color. I have missed every time she has released the color, so finally I took a picture of it and went to HEB, where the makeup lady helped me pick out something very similar (L’Oreal’s Berry Parisienne). Evelyn, who is a fashion maven, approves, by the way.

Safiya and Tyler had a whole series of videos regarding their wedding, which happened in November 2019 (happy belated second anniversary, guys!) and then they disappeared for about a year. Part of it was COVID, but a lot of it was that having their family and friends visit for their wedding made it clear how lonely they were out in Los Angeles.

So, they moved across the country to Raleigh, North Carolina, where Safiya has returned to making videos. She and Tyler have also started a livestreaming channel where they try out kitchen gadgets, make strange food, and so on. They do their streams on Tuesdays at 5 pm Eastern time, and I’m at work then, so I’ve never actually caught one of their livestreams live.

For today’s Gratuitous Amazon Link, we’re starting Rick Riordan’s Kane Chronicles series (though I’ve lost the third book and so I don’t know when I’ll finish it). In The Red Pyramid, Carter and Sadie Kane have been raised apart since their mother’s death. Their father picks Sadie up for their annual visit, and dies in an explosion at the British Museum. This leads to the siblings finally living together under the care of their uncle Amos. And that’s just the beginning.

Solutions and Other Problems, by Allie Brosh

Solutions and Other Problems took seven years to write. Well, it took seven years to publish. I attended a virtual book tour for Solutions and Other Problems which was attended by Brosh’s mom and her mom said that the book took much less time to actually write, but getting up her courage to send it to the publisher took longer.

And that makes a lot of sense. Brosh went through a lot in those years. She took a long sabbatical from her blog not too long after publishing a two-part cartoon on her fight with depression. During those seven years, she also lost her sister and got a divorce. Her parents split up at some point during those seven years as well.

Hell, I haven’t gone through anything like that in the last seven years, and I’m still having trouble getting my courage up to put myself out there.

Brosh has a wonderful sense of humor and she’s an amazing artist (she actually works hard to make her pictures look that amateurish). Solutions and Other Problems is largely about how weird and maladjusted Brosh is. In showing us how weird and maladjusted she is, though, she shows us how weird and maladjusted we all are.

Or maybe it’s just me.

I hope it’s not just me.

Shower Thought on Wheel of Time Episode 4

So I was coming out of the shower today and it hit me . . . .

Lookout Mountain 1863
1863 lithograph of Lookout Mountain.

Okay, so they definitely seem to be hinting that Nynaeve is the child of Aemon and Eldrene, the last king and queen of Manetheren. The last thing that Nynaeve remembers her parents saying to her is the last thing that Aemon and Eldrene said to their children . . . ?

Now, maybe this is a red herring, but I think that might be where they’re going. Additionally, I’m pretty sure that if they did, it would be a way to make Nynaeve *way* stronger in the Power than any other woman in the modern era.

In the books, the number of novices is dropping significantly and modern channelers are way weaker than in the past. I believe it is Verin who suggests that the way things are working now, they may be culling the talent out of humanity. Or, at least, the parts of humanity that they’re in touch with.

Verin, or whoever, says that (a) Aes Sedai rarely marry and almost never have children, and (b) they gentle all of the men who can channel that they can find, and most of them end up committing suicide. I don’t remember if Verin actually follows the chain of thought so far, but probably the only people who can channel who reproduce are men and women who can be taught to channel or who are born with the spark but are so weak that it is never caught. *

There are other channelers, such as the Seanchan, and the Kin, but a similar thing applies there. The Seanchan clearly don’t allow their Damane to reproduce, and so the only channelers that can reproduce, again, are the Sul’Dam, the ones who can be taught. I’m surprised by how strong the freed Damane end up being, because the same thing should have happened in Seanchan.

And I don’t remember the Kin having descendants. They try to live by what they think of as Aes Sedai rules, so I’d think that their rates of reproduction should be pretty low. Also, the Kin are women who were put out of the tower, largely because they were too weak to advance. Some of the stronger of the Kin are ones who balked at the testing, but most of them learned just enough channeling not to hurt themselves and then they were sent away.

So if only weak channelers reproduce, the talent will get weaker.

If they want Nynaeve to be a valid option for Dragon Reborn, she would need to be incredibly strong. Like, up by where Rand is in the books. So, having the solution to the mystery of Nynaeve’s parentage be that she’s Aemon and Eldrene’s daughter would make her naturally way more powerful than the rest of the current Aes Sedai. She dates from an era when they weren’t culling their channelers.

As for how Nynaeve ended up so far in the future, maybe Eldrene had Foretelling as one of her Talents and she knew that Nynaeve would be needed, so she sent her to the future or put her in stasis or something?

It’s possible that I’m overthinking this, but Judkins is also a fan of the books, so maybe I’ve overthought this just the right amount. We’re going to find out who the Dragon Reborn is in Episode 8. It’ll probably be Rand, but you never know.

*D’you suppose there are men who are so weak that it just looks like, like, luck or skill rather than channeling? A silversmith who becomes rich and famous because he can make silver do things that silver just shouldn’t do? A trader whose ships just narrowly avoid the kinds of hazards that nearby ships get caught in? Would they also be affected by the taint, or is the amount of mental illness proportional to the amount of Saidin used?

The Wheel of Time, Episode 4: The Dragon Reborn

As always with these posts, there will be spoilers for the episode and also for just about any point in the book series. If you don’t want to be spoiled, just move along.

Today’s spoiler space image:

Cincinnati, from Covington, Kentucky
Cincinnati, August 1987, taken from across the Ohio River, in Covington, Kentucky.

Two of our three groups, Egwene and Perrin and Mat, Rand, and Thom (I’ve decided to list groups alphabetically) are still on the move.

Egwene and Perrin are with the Traveling People, who are traveling east. When they make camp for the night, Egwene dances with Aram after failing to convince Perrin to dance with her. Perrin gets the explanation of the pacifist Way of the Leaf that the Traveling People follow from Ila and this scene is one of the most beautiful scenes so far.

Ila explains that she follows the Way of the Leaf not because it will benefit her or even Aram, her grandson, but because someday her late daughter (Aram’s mom) will be spun out by the Pattern again and she wants to leave a better world for her.

Mat, Rand, and Thom spend the night at the Grinwell family farm. After Dana said that the fastest way out was a riverboat, and we established that they have money, I was expecting to meet Bayle Domon. Surprise! I guess.

Instead of being a boy-crazy teen girl, Else is a little girl who reminds Mat of his sisters. Thom tells Rand that he thinks that Mat might be able to channel because Thom’s nephew Owyn got surly like Mat is after the taint on Saidin got to him. Neither knows about the Shadar Logoth dagger.

The Grinwells are attacked by Trollocs and Mat and Rand escape with their lives. The last we see of Thom, he is fighting off a Fade with his knives, just like in Whitebridge in the books.

Don’t tell me we’re going to skip Whitebridge! OMG. It’s Whitebridge!

Based on the books, which is no guarantee, we won’t see Thom until next season now, since he rejoins the story in The Dragon Reborn*. Maybe Judkins et al. are still in negotiations with John and Taupin.

Okay. Now for the exciting part. Lan, Moiraine, and Nynaeve. First, just to throw this out there. We meet Alanna and she is very strong. I still don’t like her. I have my reasons.

We see the first real sign of the Lan/Nynaeve romance here. She catches him praying for Malkier and she shows him her ritual, the last words her parents spoke to her. They are in the Old Tongue, which she doesn’t speak. Lan tells her that the words she spoke are the words that the King and Queen of Manetheren told their children before they left for their final battle.

Are they telling us that Nynaeve is the rightful ruler of Manetheren? Has she been frozen in an iceberg for hundreds of years? How will this work out?

And then there’s the real spoilers. Like, Turn Back Now. I almost want to throw another spoiler space photo in here.

Moiraine takes a turn shielding Logain so she can see how strong he is, so she can hopefully eliminate Logain from the running as the Dragon Reborn. It turns out that he is very strong indeed, but not as strong as the Dragon Reborn is supposed to be. And she tells him so.

Then Logain’s followers attack the Aes Sedai camp. Logain uses the distraction to break free of his shields and everyone except Nynaeve dies. Lan’s death makes Nynaeve angry, and, to paraphrase David Bruce Banner, you wouldn’t like Nynaeve when she’s angry.

I half expected this to be the big balefire scene, replacing the one where Rand balefires Rahvin in The Fires of Heaven. And I’m thinking, what will happen to the Pattern if Nynaeve erases Logain from the timeline?

Instead, she heals everyone. So I guess she can heal death after all. Okay.

Logain decides then and there that Nynaeve must be the Dragon Reborn. O. Kay.

After they recover from their deaths, the Aes Sedai do an extrajudicial gentling of Logain.

*Germane Amazon Link!

New Plot Bunnies. Maybe I *Will* Write Fiction Again Someday.

In the last month or so, I’ve had two “plot bunnies” occur to me.

The first one I probably will never actually write, because I don’t know enough about the music industry.

When I was at the Yatra/Iglesias/Martin concert, Ricky Martin gave us this speech. I’m trying to remember the exact words, but it was about, like, putting the whole COVID thing behind us (not like living dangerously, but like not being afraid?) and looking forward to a new world and things like that.

I started pondering a singer who had the power of suggestion that could give his audience hope and determination to make a better world like that. Then I considered the certainty that the recording industry would at least try to abuse those abilities. What would make the singer make the break from the music industry? What would that look like? Would it be ethical to use those powers on an audience even if it were for a good cause? Would the attendees of the concert need to sign a consent form? Would that cause the fans to fall away or become more enthusiastic?

Way too many questions than answers for a situation like that. And, again, I know nothing about the recording industry, so I would only display my ignorance by trying to write this.

If anyone who reads this post would like this plot bunny, feel free. Some kind of attribution would be nice.

Then there’s the second “plot bunny.” This one I like and I may even take a stab at writing. It’s a reversed, or maybe even inverted, Hallmark Christmas movie-type story. And I have a bunch of subsidiary ideas that are in parentheses throughout because, like I said, I’m actually tempted to try this one.

Now, remember that I’m ace and probably more than a little aro, so . . . .

Our heroine lives in a small town where she runs a business (coffee shop? bookstore? independent pharmacy?). She’s been with her boyfriend since forever (high school?) and while she loves him, he’s self-destructive (meth? alcohol? reckless driving while on meth or alcohol?) and it’s killing her to watch him.

So she leaves. She breaks up with him on New Year’s Day and moves to the “big city” (Chicago? San Antonio?). We spend almost a year in book-time on her plans to move (what’s she going to do with her business and home in her small town? how will she find a new place in her new home?) and has her grand opening around Thanksgiving.

Then we watch both her business and her personal life grow. She meets a handsome guy in a suit, coded as possible romantic interest, but it turns out that he’s interested. She’s still mourning her relationship and isn’t interested. And when he won’t back off when she tells him to, she would never be interested. She ends up having to do something drastic (police? self-defense classes? public humiliation? a scary friend?) to get him to leave her alone.

Over the next few years, she opens a second location, develops a found family and gets a dog. Her found family gets together for Christmas. The end.

Originally, the pet was going to be a cat, but they always show women with cats and men with dogs, so why not switch that up a bit. Also, having a dog would give her chances to get out and meet people in a way that a cat wouldn’t.

I may also throw a bone to the “but she neeeeds a maaaan” part of the audience and have one of her found family members be the child of a matchmaker, either professional or avocational, and then if the reader wants to imagine Our Heroine in a relationship, there’s an opening for one someday.

Gratuitous Amazon Link time! Today we have Professional Troublemaker: The Fear-Fighter Manual, by Luvvie Ajayi Jones. I loved this book and found it very inspiring the first time I read it. In fact, when I bought tickets for the virtual book tour for Jenny Lawon’s Broken, it was very serendipitous that I had passed up Neil Gaiman and Judy Blume* for Luvvie Ajayi Jones. I didn’t know Jones from anything, but by the time the tour date came, I was almost as pleased to see her as to see Jenny Lawson. And as I wade farther into my planned writing and (hopefully!) proofreading businesses, I may need to reread this occasionally. I have it on my bed right now, waiting its turn after I finish Still Life.

*Put a pin in this idea — I need to write a post about Blume. As a former ace kid, I always kind of had issues. I’ll get into that later.