So in advance of an upcoming followup appointment with my cancer surgeon, I had to go get some blood drawn.

Normally I would take a train to the clinic, but due to *waves hands around* the trains aren't running early or often. And I wanted to go as early as possible, to avoid *waves hands around* people.

So I called a rideshare. And when I got in the car, the driver wasn't masked, and pretended she didn't hear me the first couple times I asked if she had a mask. And then she said she didn't need a mask because "it isn't airborne". And I said, "Of course it is, who told you that," and she said, "Donald Trump."

Lucky for me she hadn't started driving yet. I argued with her, and then she said her gps wasn't working and told me to get out of the car. Then I had to wait like another 20 minutes for a ride because it was ass-crack in the morning.

And at the bloods lab, one of the two phlebotomists didn't have her mask pulled up over her nose. Good thing she's not sitting very close to *checks notes* SICK AND VULNERABLE PEOPLE ALL DAY.

I'm...already basically Done With Everything and it's not even 6:30am.

ONE THING: Soooooo what happened is, a couple days ago I sprained my ankle. I was trudging home with a million other worker ants, took a bad step somewhere among the terrible uneven concrete across the street from my workplace, and BLAMMO I and my stuff were sprawled all over the road. In the rain. With a bunch of people standing over me.

Ugh. Sometimes I think the secondary embarrassment is almost neck-and-neck with the actual ankle pain. (But then I have a flashback to the terrible noise my ankle ligament made, and I stop thinking that.)

It took a couple minutes for the initial pain to subside enough for me to tell it wasn't broken, and then the kindly bystanders gathered my belongings, hoisted me up, and put me into a cab. I've been Resting/Icing/Compressing/Elevating like a mofo, although unfortunately I've also had a long couple of workdays since then, one of which was twelve hours long.

On the bright side, it could have been SO much worse. With a good Ace bandage and care in moving around, plus UberXs/cabs to and from work, I managed my workdays okay, and it's looking much better and increasing in mobility. I've had much worse sprains in my day, with crutches and whatnot, and I'm grateful this wasn't one of those.

Still no fun, though. And I have another very demanding workday coming up later this week, probably 13 hours, with a lot of standing and moving around. So I'll be RICEing all week in the hope that it'll continue to improve at this pace.

ANOTHER THING: While I'm sitting in my chair with the foot propped up, my fancies have turned to thoughts of Yuletide nominations. Just a week to get my noms in! Hmmm. What are you nominating?

I haven't even started to parse my final choices--see above, re: ankle and stressful work schedule--but it does seem that the Aubrey-Maturin novels, as well as the Master & Commander movie, is all safely under the limit, so that's a possibility. Now that I've finished the books and am re-reading them all again, I'm starting to feel delightfully immersed. (And of course the movie is engraved on my brain lobes, so.)

Another thing that leaps to mind is Shetland, the BBC Scotland show that sakana17, klia, and thevetia turned me on to. Well-written, beautifully-filmed detective drama set on the islands of the Shetland archipelago, and I adore the main character (other characters as well, of course, but, ♥ JIMMY ♥ ).

Rejseholdet|Unit One again, I think, to make sure it gets in there.

Shockingly, even though Black Sails looks to be just over a thousand stories on AO3 alone, using the yuletide bookmarklet on them reveals that there are actually fewer than 600 that are in English, complete, and over a thousand words long! Add that to the hundred-and-thirty-some that are on ff.net, and it still looks eligible!

I'm not sure I feel ready to write Black Sails (and by the way, I finished season 2 last week! I'll give that its own post, hopefully tomorrow), but if I'm not, it still might be nice to ask for.

That's four fandoms, though, and I can only nominate three. I have some mulling to do, for sure.

You know, it always seems to be a boy and a girl, or a man and a woman. And the boy is "pretending" he's about to shove the girl onto the train tracks, or into heavy traffic, or off the bridge. And the girl is screaming and scream-laughing and trying to hold onto him, while he muscles her around, lifting and pushing and ha ha ha pulling her back just in time.

And you know, I don't find it a funny joke. Not one bit.

I don't think it's a coincidence that (at least the literally dozens if not hundred times I've seen it in my life) it's always the boy "pretending" he's going to kill her, and the girl screaming in fright while also being forced to laugh at oh how funny he's being as he shows her how he could kill her.

(Brought to you by seeing yet another instance of this today. It went on longer than usual, in a crowded Metro station, to the point where I was starting to weave through the crowd toward them, planning to play the Grouchy Scolding Middle-Aged Lady card. It stopped, and the train arrived, but it's been bothering me ever since. It always leaves me unhappy and kind of ill. It's just such a goddamn microcosm.)

Sometimes I get in a mood to read historical novels, especially mysteries. And I'm interested in World War One and the British home-front and the aftermath.

So, I've been reading the first in a series of mysteries by Jacqueline Winspear, "Maisie Dobbs", which starts about ten years after the war and deals with the lingering physical and mental effects of the war on all kinds of people (including Maisie herself, who had been a nurse at the front and is now a private detective of sorts).

I just wish I liked it better. Because there's a series! If I like the first book of a series, it's like winning a book-lottery, with a treasure trove in front of me. Buuuut, not so much. It's not a bad book by any means, and I like the acknowledgement of the lingering scars the war left on people and how they're still dealing with it a decade later.

But there are some style choices that, for whatever reason, I find myself unable to get past. First and foremost: THE NAME PROBLEM. People use each others' names ALL THE TIME, as does the narrative voice. You'd think no one had ever heard of PRONOUNS.

For instance, second paragraph of Chapter 24 (TWENTY-FOUR, so it isn't like we need to be introduced to either our main character or her faithful sidekick anymore!):

Billy Beale sat in the chair in front of Maisie Dobbs, his hands working around and around the fabric on the perimeter of his cap, which he had taken off when he came to answer Maisie's call. Maisie had lost no time in telling Billy Beale why he had been summoned, and how she needed him to help her.

I mean COME ON. He doesn't go by the full "Billy Beale" as a stage name or something, like an inverse Cher. And Maisie's first three dialogue sections after this paragraph all go:

"Yes, I do, Billy. [...]"

"Billy. You don't need to be a toff. [...]"

"It's taken care of, Billy. [...]"

(And "It could be risky, Billy" and "The sooner the better, Billy". OH GOD WHAT'S YOUR SIDEKICK'S NAME AGAIN I MIGHT HAVE FORGOTTEN.)

Sometimes I think the British class system is the best thing that could have happened to this author, since then she has a great excuse for constantly having Billy (Billy Beale!) end every line to Maisie with "Yes, Miss", "Thank you, Miss", "Can't say as there is, Miss".

Sigh. I'm up to page 246 out of 292 and I know nothing is going to change, but I guess I imagined I might get adjusted to it. (SPOILER: NOPE.)