october to-do list

House and Garden

Make pesto with last of basil

Take out garden

Wash windows

Swap screens for storms, sooner rather than later.

Rake leaves

Stack kindling

Turn compost

Errands

Wiper fluid

Outdoor windex

Cobbler

Watch battery

Pumpkin, if own pumpkin doesn't ripen

Reading

David James Duncan, Brothers K

Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

Alan Moore and Dave GibbonsWatchmen

José Saramago, Journey to Portugal

Bram Stoker, Dracula, on-screen

James Surowiecki, Wisdom of Crowds, audio

Mario Vargas Llosa, Way to Paradise

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Moving

Bike to work 20 days.

Swim 10K.

Run 30 miles.

Kinwork

SCP reading weekend

"Serenity" again

CKC's b-day, 10th

Game night, 21st

HAO's b-day, 27th

01:01

picture of dorian gray

I know Oscar Wilde only through plays and epigrams. I didn't know what I expected from a novel. Not much novel, anyway, lots of epigrams (which Lord Henry Wotton supplied in abundance*), melodrama, decadence.

It was better than I expected, and even lacked a goofy curse, spell, or other gimmick to explain the phenomenon. But just because it was 19th century does not mean it needed the faux science of Shelley and Stevenson and Wells.

I didn't understand the botany. First lilacs, then tulips; and iris bloomed before cherries were ripe.

* In abundance: deliberate "Rocky Horror Picture Show" reference, since that's how excessive I expected it to be.