irrigation

Was mildly sick yesterday, and went to bed very early. Am feeling mostly better now, though still a bit sniffly.

Made hard-boiled eggs. Which is not particularly difficult, really, but I've never done it before so I was a little nervous.

Filled out and mailed my absentee ballot. I have done my duty as a concerned citizen, and if the wrong people win, I've earned my right to bitch about it for another four years. (I figure that if you don't bother to vote, you have no right to complain about the government, because you didn't even try to change things.)

Also wrote more Ekanu stuff. It still isn't finished, but it's inching along. And there is much digression by way of music and cultural stuff and irrigation and waterwheels and pumps. There are definitely times I think I have read too much history, anthropology, sociology, and particularly history of science and technology. Then I remember that I like this world at the beginning of a lazy and piecemeal industrial revolution, and I'm grateful I have all this random knowledge.

It's funny. I learned about Hawaiian irrigation techniques from a book on the comparative history of chiefdoms and the creation of political power -- which isn't something I'd expect to talk about agricultural engineering, but the farmlands and water controls proved very relevant to the political and ideological structure of native Hawaiian society.

It's good to read nonfiction. It's much more useful -- in terms of my own writing, that is -- than fiction.

the philosophy of pizza

Good pizza makes any day better.

[Fic] "Restoration" -- Harry Potter

This is the story I've been working on for the past couple months. It began as a response to 15minuteficlets word #67 (Pause), tacked on a response to words #69 and #70 (Building on Sand), and continued to grow from there. Somewhere along the line it acquired a theme and something that might be termed a plot, though its structure and time-flow remain fairly haphazard.

To forestall questions: no, I don't know the overall course of the war, nor how Harry killed Voldemort, and I don't particularly care. All that matters is that they did win, though not without a price, and life continues in the aftermath. Also, this is a one-shot. It is not the start of chaptered story.

(It will have a sequel, of sorts, but "Paint the Town" is a horse of a different color. "Restoration" is genfic. "Paint the Town" is very definitely not.)

Restoration (FictionAlley version)

Restoration (Fanfiction.net version)

I'd advise reading the FF.net version. It was posted several months after the FA version, which gave me the chance to revise it in light of some questions and comments from FA reviewers. The changes are most notable in Draco's section, "Second Chances."