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 I just watched the last episode of the Amazon Rings of Power series, and am left overall with a feeling that the whole thing was very pretty, but somehow oddly small-scale, and full of missed opportunity. 

I'm not entirely sure how I would have felt about it if I'd just watched it on its own, rather than seeing it heavily trailered, discussed, dissected and panned for weeks and weeks, which inevitably has an effect.  I'm sure I wouldn't have noticed some of the weak points, such as the infamous printed-on scale armour. 

It also didn't help that I'd been part of a long Second-Age roleplaying campaign that made a lot more effort to fit itself around the maps and events recorded in the various books, and have also written a few things set in that long empty time period, which again, I feel, fitted themselves reasonably convincingly around the dates and locations.  Amazon was never going to tell the story the way I had told it to myself, and having made the timeline work for myself, I was never going to be happy with the idea of clumsily smooshing together the story in the interest of attempting to create a not-very-surprising surprise. 

But I'm fairly sure that the painfully awkward dialogue would have seemed painful all on its own.  And their Finrod.  Argh.  There are no words for how awkward his scenes felt, though I think Gil-galad was actually worse. Also the weird anti-halfelven prejudice against Elrond, which is nowhere in the text. Anything involving Valinor is complicated and difficult to do at the best of time, and I don't think they carried it off. 

There were good things.  Robert Aramayo made a surprisingly convincing Elrond, and I liked his friendship with Durin and his wife.  The Numenorean ships were impressively weird, though oddly few in number.  I liked the social darkness to the pre-hobbit Harfoot backstory.  I thought Arondir and Adar, two of the original characters from the storyline set in pre-Mordor, were both compelling characters. 

But apart from that... I don't know if I want to go on watching.  I might wait till the end and then dip in and out, I suppose.  

You must declutter! Why do you have so much stuff! How will buyers see the rooms in your house if they are full of Things????

Also moving house:

Was your double glazing installed in 2001, or in 2003? Please provide details of the last boiler service, and the boiler installation certificate! We will also need a copy of the certificate for the negative radon test from 2008, so I hope you kept that!

Arrrggh, Theo keeps getting out of the garden to visit the pair of little terrier ladies who are staying with their owner's Mum at the top of it. And he won't do it when I'm looking at him!

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In other news, walking back down into the village after my dog walk this morning, I saw a fluttering in the tree-shadows in the middle of the the road.

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Goodness. I haven't updated since February! I don't know why. I have been reading here, but not managing to comment or post so much. I'm probably only doing it now because I have a fic to write for a Friday deadline and I apparently have no energy for it. I should have written it when I first got the assignment. I did start it, but then I told myself I wanted to finish my Rexque Futurus chapter first, and that has not been flowing, and has apparently caused a word blockage. Bah.

Had a birthday last Saturday, and although Plague was looming, it didn't seem so close then, so we went to the beach with my Mum and Pp's Dad. And the hounds, of course. It was a bit chilly, but Theo had an excellent time, and I did too, almost as much. There's something very calming about the Sea. We ate chips and drank hot chocolate outside. Rather too cold for that really, but allowed for rather more Distancing than sitting in the warm inside the cafe.

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I've painted a few more things. Here's a dragon in a chair, ink /watercolour, painted very quickly because I felt it would be cheerful. ( Art in Here )

In other Art News, I picked up an art commission, painting a D&D party at the pub. Because I am nothing if not ambitious, I'm basing it on Caravaggio's 'The Calling of St Matthew' with a strong directional light and the characters all talking together. So far I've drafted it in pencil, sent the draft over for approval, and blocked out the figures and light.  It's going well!

I don't know what will happen out in the Wide World about the coronavirus and all the consequent panic and turmoil - well, I suppose nobody does. We are living in interesting times.  I hope the panic buying will recede soon. I get the distinct impression that a lot of it is social media fuelled. The more people see photos of empty shelves and posts about not being able to buy bread, the more panicked they get. But of course people want to talk about inconvenience and worries, and can't blame them for that, and nor can I blame people who can see their only source of income vanishing for maxing out their credit card while they still have one. Ack.

My asthma is playing up slightly and giving me a tightness in the chest, but I am sure that is psychosomatic / stress related (it would not be the first time!). My lifestyle is a fairly reclusive one at the best of times, so no matter how many undiagnosed people are about, would have be particularly unlucky to pick up the virus so soon. I may just have to limit my intake of news a bit.  Which might help with the writing!

I hope everyone reading this is keeping well. 

We did have some snow today, though it was very much just slush.  I've been slowly coming down with the cold that Pp already had and today I gave into it and just went to sleep on the sofa with small Gothmog curled up on my feet.   Fankil came to inspect me: I didn't move but merely observed, and apparently that passed the inspection.

Am annoyed with myself : I took the car in to the garage because the dashboard dials had stopped working. It was booked in and I told them what the problem was when I phoned to book it in, but when it came to actually handing the keys over, the guy who does the work was busy with something and the garage's Dad was there and said 'does he know what it's in for' and I, overcome with cold and without a voice nodded and pushed the keys gormlessly at him.

Anyway, I tried phoning a couple of times later to double check they actually knew what it was in for and make sure they had my number, but only got voicemail.  So tomorrow I shall have to try to extract car from garage, and I hope they will actually have done something about the problem, since a speedometer and a petrol gauge are pretty essential though the car itself is running nicely. 

Here are some photos of New Cat Nenya. 
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uuuurgh.  Snf. 

now the waiting begins.  Will he call back?  Will he turn up?  Will the repair require an Unattainable Part or cost £99999?

For future reference, the plumber I have phoned is DT Hunt, who examination of the faded business cards on the pinboard suggests we have phoned before.  Sadly, I cannot remember him or whether he did a decent job, but I'm gambling that Past Us would not have kept the phone number if he'd been a complete whittle.   I seem to have a plumbing tag in which I have recorded various leaks, but not actually useful information such as who did the fixing...

Well yes, but what *sort* of book?  Genre?  Author? Colour even, I'd settle for colour?!  Is there no hint...?

This is a problem I have created for myself, of course.  If I had diligently kept records of which of my roughly 9,000 favorite books I had previously bought for my sister, then I would at least have some idea what books not to buy for her again. 

She has moved to a different continent twice recently, so there's a decent chance that if it's a book I bought for her over 10 years ago, she will no longer have it and has probably forgotten I bought it for her, AND YET.

But still.  Scrolling through book lists looking for books that are Not Old Favourites is proving something of a struggle.  I know she likes cosy mysteries, has some tolerance for historical fiction and fantasy,  likes good writing, but is not a hard-SF person....

I used to be moderately good at finding books that didn't prominently feature covers of muscly torsos and where the writeup didn't immediately tell you about the protagonists' amber hair, but I am having no luck today.  Perhaps tomorrow will be a better bookhunting day.