Elizabeth Culmer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
edenfalling) wrote2020-09-05 09:31 pm
edenfalling) wrote2020-09-05 09:31 pm
oh god why (plus random thoughts on audiobooks)
Things done today:
1. The main downtown office was closed today for Labor Day weekend (...which I did not totally forget was a thing until halfway through yesterday, resulting in me trying to schedule a tour for Monday; that never happened, shut up) and I'm technically not supposed to be at that office on weekends, but I had two more South Hill units to stage, so I clocked in up there and did some quick un-staging, staging, and photographs. I am now entirely caught up until the next set of rooms are done with turnover -- and since at least two of them have some structural repairs going on, I don't expect that to be until Wednesday or Thursday.
2. Continued editing photos and floor plans. I didn't actually get many uploaded to our website, because the upload manager for the third-party software program we use to generate our website (among other things) was frozen all day except for one hour between 3pm and 4pm, during which it ran like it was shoving through a three-foot-deep trench of molasses. *headdesk*
3. Handed out keys to several incoming tenants.
4. Replied to an inquiry that led to a tour request, and I was good and said I could do a virtual Skype tour at 5:45pm even though that meant closing the satellite office early, walking back to my car, and driving back up to South Hill which was a pain in the neck. It is better to do things same-day if possible, you see, rather than putting someone off until Tuesday. Anyway, I think the tour went well. I suspect the prospects may actually rent units in a different building, but showing them the building they inquired about helped clarify what they want, so that's useful.
5. Wrote an email to the Right Relations committee of a UU congregation in NJ to ask if they have any advice on how to create a Right Relations covenant and form a Right Relations committee. We are trying to create a Right Relations team (nitpicky terminology difference because of governance structures, not important, ignore it) here in Ithaca, because reasons. Hopefully someone will respond before the Tuesday Board of Trustees meeting. (WHY did I get involved in church governance??? I mean, yeah, okay I was asked to stand for the Board and SOMEONE has to do it. And then nobody else was stepping forward to serve as clerk and, again, SOMEONE has to do it, but still!!!)
6. I haven't been posting my reading or audiobook listening lists lately, have I? In the case of reading, that's mostly because I have shifted my reading almost entirely to fanfic this summer. I am pretty sure that is a stress response. For audiobooks, I recently finished listening to The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander, which I had been meaning to read for years (since 2012-ish, I think? definitely since 2014) and kept not quite getting around to. Today I finished listening to Ten Drugs: How Plants, Powders, and Pills Have Shaped the History of Medicine by Thomas Hager, which I think I bought as an Audible Daily Deal selection... a year and a half ago? *checks* The text edition was published in March 2019, so yeah, that sounds about right. (I have a fair number of books in my Audible library waiting for me to download and listen.)
I have found that audiobooks are an excellent way to consume books that I've been meaning to read and not getting around to, because they are easy to work in and around my schedule in a way that printed text is not -- that is, I can listen to an audiobook while driving, while walking, while cooking, and while doing any number of chores. (Also while doing various tasks at work, such as NYSEG meter photos, apartment staging and photos, or just general walking around and checking on this or that.) The trick is that the narrator has to be someone I am willing to listen to, which is annoying because there are a LOT of audiobooks that are EXACTLY MY THING but I listen to a sample and the narrator's voice scrapes nails across the chalkboard of my soul. *shudder* So they go back onto the list of print books I vaguely intend to read at some unspecified point in the future. *sigh*
(Also they have to be nonfiction, but that's so fundamental I don't even bother opening fiction audiobooks to check on the narrator's voice. I cannot deal with audiobook fiction at all. I could barely even deal with my own dad reading aloud to me once I learned how to read on my own, and that was, you know, MY DAD sitting right next to me on our sofa or on my bed. I cannot be having with anyone less close to me than that trying to dictate my experience of a fictional narrative. (Also they always get the pacing and the emphasis wrong. ALWAYS.) Nonfiction is okay because it's like a university lecture or somebody explaining interesting facts to me, which is totally different. And radio plays/podcasts can sometimes sneak around that block by being specifically designed for an audio medium, so the performers' intonation choices and pacing and such are the POINT rather than an unwanted extra layer of interpretation between me and a source text.)
Anyway, my new audiobook is Supernavigators: Exploring the Wonders of How Animals Find Their Way by David Barrie. I will report back on it at some point, maybe.
8. Continued working on the rough draft of my NFE fic. What I'm going to post tonight will be a serviceable fic, but it is NOT the total of what I'm trying to write. It's more like part one of... three parts, I think? Structure is not my friend at the moment, by which I mean I have a plot but the formal division of scenes and themes is a bit fuzzy at the moment.
...
Okay, back to writing.
1. The main downtown office was closed today for Labor Day weekend (...which I did not totally forget was a thing until halfway through yesterday, resulting in me trying to schedule a tour for Monday; that never happened, shut up) and I'm technically not supposed to be at that office on weekends, but I had two more South Hill units to stage, so I clocked in up there and did some quick un-staging, staging, and photographs. I am now entirely caught up until the next set of rooms are done with turnover -- and since at least two of them have some structural repairs going on, I don't expect that to be until Wednesday or Thursday.
2. Continued editing photos and floor plans. I didn't actually get many uploaded to our website, because the upload manager for the third-party software program we use to generate our website (among other things) was frozen all day except for one hour between 3pm and 4pm, during which it ran like it was shoving through a three-foot-deep trench of molasses. *headdesk*
3. Handed out keys to several incoming tenants.
4. Replied to an inquiry that led to a tour request, and I was good and said I could do a virtual Skype tour at 5:45pm even though that meant closing the satellite office early, walking back to my car, and driving back up to South Hill which was a pain in the neck. It is better to do things same-day if possible, you see, rather than putting someone off until Tuesday. Anyway, I think the tour went well. I suspect the prospects may actually rent units in a different building, but showing them the building they inquired about helped clarify what they want, so that's useful.
5. Wrote an email to the Right Relations committee of a UU congregation in NJ to ask if they have any advice on how to create a Right Relations covenant and form a Right Relations committee. We are trying to create a Right Relations team (nitpicky terminology difference because of governance structures, not important, ignore it) here in Ithaca, because reasons. Hopefully someone will respond before the Tuesday Board of Trustees meeting. (WHY did I get involved in church governance??? I mean, yeah, okay I was asked to stand for the Board and SOMEONE has to do it. And then nobody else was stepping forward to serve as clerk and, again, SOMEONE has to do it, but still!!!)
6. I haven't been posting my reading or audiobook listening lists lately, have I? In the case of reading, that's mostly because I have shifted my reading almost entirely to fanfic this summer. I am pretty sure that is a stress response. For audiobooks, I recently finished listening to The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander, which I had been meaning to read for years (since 2012-ish, I think? definitely since 2014) and kept not quite getting around to. Today I finished listening to Ten Drugs: How Plants, Powders, and Pills Have Shaped the History of Medicine by Thomas Hager, which I think I bought as an Audible Daily Deal selection... a year and a half ago? *checks* The text edition was published in March 2019, so yeah, that sounds about right. (I have a fair number of books in my Audible library waiting for me to download and listen.)
I have found that audiobooks are an excellent way to consume books that I've been meaning to read and not getting around to, because they are easy to work in and around my schedule in a way that printed text is not -- that is, I can listen to an audiobook while driving, while walking, while cooking, and while doing any number of chores. (Also while doing various tasks at work, such as NYSEG meter photos, apartment staging and photos, or just general walking around and checking on this or that.) The trick is that the narrator has to be someone I am willing to listen to, which is annoying because there are a LOT of audiobooks that are EXACTLY MY THING but I listen to a sample and the narrator's voice scrapes nails across the chalkboard of my soul. *shudder* So they go back onto the list of print books I vaguely intend to read at some unspecified point in the future. *sigh*
(Also they have to be nonfiction, but that's so fundamental I don't even bother opening fiction audiobooks to check on the narrator's voice. I cannot deal with audiobook fiction at all. I could barely even deal with my own dad reading aloud to me once I learned how to read on my own, and that was, you know, MY DAD sitting right next to me on our sofa or on my bed. I cannot be having with anyone less close to me than that trying to dictate my experience of a fictional narrative. (Also they always get the pacing and the emphasis wrong. ALWAYS.) Nonfiction is okay because it's like a university lecture or somebody explaining interesting facts to me, which is totally different. And radio plays/podcasts can sometimes sneak around that block by being specifically designed for an audio medium, so the performers' intonation choices and pacing and such are the POINT rather than an unwanted extra layer of interpretation between me and a source text.)
Anyway, my new audiobook is Supernavigators: Exploring the Wonders of How Animals Find Their Way by David Barrie. I will report back on it at some point, maybe.
8. Continued working on the rough draft of my NFE fic. What I'm going to post tonight will be a serviceable fic, but it is NOT the total of what I'm trying to write. It's more like part one of... three parts, I think? Structure is not my friend at the moment, by which I mean I have a plot but the formal division of scenes and themes is a bit fuzzy at the moment.
...
Okay, back to writing.
no subject
Getting back to books through Chronicles of Narnia, heh. (Re-reading The Horse and His Boy. Sort of.) I really do need to get abck to books because I have lots and lots of them unread (courtesy of the open-air community library in last place of residence which most people seemed to be using to dump books rather than exchange them.)
no subject
The only ones I did get into on my own was a Czech fan reading of the Discworld books that one time I was super-immersed in re-reading some of them but also very excited to sew some things so an audiobook was the best solution... and even that fan got it "wrong" in terms of diction / sentence emphasis. But also mostly "right" in terms of doing the voices, which was probably the main reason why I got into it. :-)
no subject
My mom likes to listen to audiobooks in the car, which I am totally in favor of! I also use audiobooks to keep myself awake and alert when driving. The problem is that she likes listening to fiction (mostly mysteries), and I find her choices very difficult to sit through because of the narrators' pacing, diction, and character voices.
no subject
But otherwise I'm much likelier to listen to Dire Straits / Mark Knopfler when doing chores at home, than to spoken word... *shrug*
Plus, yes, I hadn't realised fully but there's a difference between audiobooks and radio plays for me as well, probably for the same reason you mentioned. :-)
no subject