The Dangerous Existence of Madame Lee

I'm surprisingly happy about being away from the Int0rbuttz. I did, nonetheless, write some entries, which are backdated. There is nothing of interest there, but go to town. You can pretend they are plastic Easter eggs, brightly colored and chock full of delicious stupid.

First of all--did a quick and dirty catch-up. Congrats to angeljuggalette on the new job (driving isn't that bad--you'll probably take to it better now that you're not a stupid teenager), pixelation on the iPhone get, and queen_lily_rose on the move, I love duokinneas, and if there's any other important stuff I must know about now, please to be telling me and/or linking me so I can look at it and respond appropriately. Oh, and anjala, I was going to ring you up and see if you survived the dentist, but it occurred to me that you might not be in any condition to talk, so I didn't. But I still hope you survived the dentist.

Also, it is mandatory that you visit tiye and read her incisive commentary on early Egyptology in the Age Of Schliemann (in those days, children, all we had was smash-n-grab archaeology and we had to walk uphill both ways in the scorching desert in order to get to the antiquities whilst carrying heavy loads of rocks and our entire native crew on top of that, and by God we were GRATEFUL for it). The grumpy Ra at the end of her Belzoni post really makes the whole thing for me.

( Right, so get to the 101 things, Lee. Warning for anyone offended by boring, self-indulgent navel-gazing: Contains a lot of that. )

I have been doinking about with some family history stuff and have noticed that apparently I have quite distant relatives (in the sense that we descend from a common ancestor in the 17th or 18th century) who are LDS (Mormons, you lot), judging by the records they've thoughtfully put on WorldConnect. There is a somewhat baffling (to me, okay) tag attached to some of them, and I know at least a couple of y'all are LDS. Would any of y'all mind explaining to me what baptism for the dead is and why it is believed to be necessary? Is it actual doctrine or is it more of a cultural phenomenon?

(I'm not taking the piss here. I really would like to know.)

Also, because I meant to bring this up before I went away and then forgot: pleasureblossom and strawberryjulia, would either of you mind if I dropped your old journals from my flist (assuming they're not being used anymore)? Nothing personal, just keeps me from getting horrendously confused. There is no obligation to drop me back if you're feeling lazy. :D

You may see me around intermittently for the next week or so since a bunch of you were born around late July/early August, but for the most part I'm planning to return to my regularly scheduled Outer Darkness.

The weather's gotten cooler, which means the pollen count is up, which means allergies, which means I've been hopped up on DayQuil for the past three days and really haven't been doing much in the way of breathing, so I'm only now getting around to comments and e-mails. I'll probably crash soon in any case. (forgottensanity, I'll do something about the FTP issue this weekend, I promise--I just wanted to let you know I did get your e-mail. ♥)

Not a whole lot is going on. Joy thinks I've lost weight (it could be that I was wearing a black shirt today, or it could be due to my patented eating-crap-and-never-exercising weight-loss plan).

Also, I finished reading the Stone of Light series by Christian Jacq; Jacq's historical novels are kind of like Lucky Charms for me, in that I don't give a shit about them when I'm not consuming them, but once I'm onto them, I can devour the whole damn series/box in one go. I was a bit disappointed in the series; I realize it's fiction, but it's based on a real place and several of the characters are real people, and so much more (and better) mileage could have been gotten out of them. The fictionalized Paneb the Ardent doesn't hold a candle to the real one, with all his flaws and all his talent. (Read Ancient Lives by John Romer; you'll see what I mean.)

Also, the identity of the traitor worked, in that I couldn't guess who it was and was totally shocked when he was finally unmasked, and was equally disappointing in that villains and evil in Jacq's books are never multi-dimensional. People do bad things for a lot of reasons--sometimes it is for money or personal gain or revenge, and sometimes people do wrong because they believe that it is the right, or at least the best, thing to do under the circumstances. It's not all a matter of cackling, "Bwahahahahaha! Bwahahahahahaha!" while lighting flashes in the background.

My new project is re-reading all the Balzac I've got, supplemented with stuff from the IU library that in some cases has been newly translated; in a lot of cases, I haven't read this since high school. This will be interesting.

I hope Cousin Bette, at least, has aged well. I also hope Beatrix has aged well, even if I felt cheated when Camille Maupin enters a convent I was totally not reading her as a lesbian so put that thought out of your head.