Photo on left is a postcard with the words From a volunteer who believes that your vote matters. Photo on the right is the opposite side showing the message which encourages the voter to update or renew their vote by mail and gives a phone number to do so.

I've been doing some postcarding again. This is a campaign run by Postcards to Voters encouraging Florida voters to check on their Vote By Mail status. While Florida allows voting by mail, people have to renew every 2 years to stay on the list. ("Sue" is my postcard name.)

I've been slowly working on my website pages, trying to clean up the HTML/CSS and make it all more semantic and LEGIT, improve on the alt descriptions and check on links. I really feel like I do some goblin coding and that if people in my 32 Bit Community looked at my code and knew my process then I'd be kicked out. I mean, they really wouldn't do that (I think some of them might be goblins, too) but it's the Imposter Syndrome speaking.

Oh, what is my process? Keep in mind I come from the days of nested tables, spacer gifs and all the deprecated HTML. I type out my pages in Notebook (not ++, just plain old Notebook). If I want to make changes, I open up the current page in Mozilla Firefox Developer. I make my changes there and if it comes out good and the html checks out (I use this HTML checker) then I copy/paste that all into my html file which I have opened up in Notebook. If this is a new page I'm starting, then I'll just pick an existing page to open in Developer and then do my copy and pasting. Best Son likens my process to sand mandala creation and I can't say that it doesn't feel like it sometimes!

NatiSythen, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Listening

Some podcasts I've listened to this week:

Reading

Well, last week I started Treaty Planet by Anne McCaffrey and Jody Lynn Nye, the third Doona book and, after a few days, I DNF'd it. It was just not very good and I did not feel it was necessary to try and spend any more time with it.

I wasn't sure what to read next. It's not like I don't have books on hand - aside from the whole library via the Libby app I also just recently bought 2 Humble Bundles, one with books by Tad Williams and one with books by Michael Silverberg. I read Silverberg's Majipoor books back in the day (the Lord Valentine series was published between 1979 and 1995) and I remember liking them. I also got a whole ton of books in that bundle I wasn't familiar with. And I have already read a lot of the Tad Williams books but I thought I'd grab some legit copies for my personal e-book library. It's almost like I have too much to choose from!

I really liked Williams Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series (it's SO good!) so I decided to read the Shadowmarch series, which is said to be very similar. And I started reading and kept thinking WHY does this sound so familiar? Oh, you all know where this is going. I already read this series starting in the summer of 2024. Gah!

Best Son had recommended a book to me, The Water Knife. Libby had copies available so that's what I'm currently reading. The book was published in 2015 and is about how the effects of climate change have led to the drying up of the Colorado River. So, these days not fiction but life, especially for people in Arizona who depend on the Colorado River for their drinking water. This is happening right now.

Water politics is a tangled beast and Arizona has very junior rights. Currently Upper and Lower Basin states (and probably Mexico because they are entitled to the water, too) are legally fighting over how to apportion the water and no one can agree on anything. As a sign of how dire things are, Arizona is facing a 77% cut of the water it receives from the river, which accounts for 36% of our total water source, the rest coming from groundwater (which is drying up), other rivers (which are drying up) and reclamation. The other Basin states are facing either a 6% cut or no cuts. Thank you for coming to my TED talk on Arizona water problems.

Watching

I finished All Creatures Great and Small this week and it was so good. I really wish there were more than 6 episodes in a series! No surprises or even really very much drama because with cozy shows you know where things are headed. I do feel conflicted about Mrs. Hall and Siegfried. I know in the books she was older and there was no relationship but they keep teasing something on the show and then throwing other characters in the way. Poor Mrs. Hall.

Acorn has a series co-starring Brooke Shields, You're Killing Me, and I checked out the first episode. She plays a mystery writer investigating a murder (because that's what mystery writers do) and she reluctantly joins forces with a younger writer. I'm loving the humorous bits due to the generational gap between the 2 writers. Brooke Shields is only 4 years older than me so I'm really seeing myself in what's going on! (The generational gap, not the murdering.) I'll definitely watch the rest of that series.

Silo has started its new season but I'm going to let the episodes pile up before I start watching that.

Link Lagniappe

All right, that's about it for this week!

When I first started using Zonelets I had Disqus set up as a commenting system but it looked obnoxiously ugly and I ditched it. Some people are happy to not have blog interaction but I'd love to hear from you if you have any thoughts you want to share! You can respond through my guestbook or email. If you found this link on Discord or the 32-Bit Cafe Discourse, you can message me there or leave a message on my Neocities profile page.