The coat that fell through the Rift...

A few weeks ago I acquired a new coat from the laundry room. There's a place in the laundry room in my apartment building where people leave things they don't need or want any more - sometimes junk, sometimes wonderful and useful stuff. I've left many books and magazines down there.

So one day a few weeks ago someone left a coat, which I picked up. (The same thing had happened for maaboroshi a while before that.) It was fairly plain, dark blue, fit me well. I was pleased. A few days after that, I took advantage of having another coat to wear, to wash my somewhat-grubby Mountain Equipment Co-op down-filled coat. Not a bad idea, except that I threw it in the drier and it shrank. It still fits... sort of. It fits tightly enough to make me feel like Gargantuelle the Fat Woman¹ and not want to wear it.

So I've been wearing this new coat and was happy with it until today. In fact, I'd been wondering why someone got rid of it - it's comfortable, light, inelegant but not ugly - I concluded that they'd just got another, better coat, and didn't need it any more.

I realize today that they jettisoned it after a spell of cold, dry weather. Then we got a lot of damp weather, in which it was fine. (Waterproof, too.) Then today was cold and dry, and I discovered that the manmade material of the lining has a serious cling problem in cold, dry weather. A serious problem. I kept expecting some kid to say, "Mummy, why is that lady's coat trying to climb up her body and strangle her?"

Maybe spray-on anti-static stuff will help, but I suspect this is too much for any spray to cope with.

I do have another coat in my closest somewhere. Down-filled, safe, and it fits.

Pity, though. I liked the blue one.

~ ~ ~

¹ Which really I'm not - honest!

A mini-Christmas in January...

Yesterday was an extra Christmas for me, in terms of gifts. Nice surprises!

First, I had lunch with my friend Jacques, who unexpectedly gave me a belated Christmas gift -an ornament from "Carlton Cards Heirloom Ornament Collection". Not just any ornament: it's Storm from the X-Men. She's wearing this costume; the Jim Lee era, I think? It's very cool.

Jacques deals in collectibles, but not fannish stuff, and he's really very much a mundane. I was touched that he even remembered I was an X-Men fan. Full marks to him for cleverness. Mind you, he's known me since I was 13, and I've been an X-Men fan all this time - it just shows he has a good memory!

Then when I got home, I had a package in the mail: John Barrowman's new CD, Another Side. It's pop songs, not showtunes, which I would prefer; and for some reason Barrowman included "All By Myself", which must be the most boring song ever written. On the other hand, his lovely voice makes even the songs I don't much like sound lovely, so maybe I'll get a whole new appreciation of "All By Myself". Maybe.

On the way home, I picked up a package at the Post Office, and it was a pile of Christmas goodies from walkingowl. Now, there's a woman who's not in the least mundane! Delights such as the Heroes and Firefly graphic novels, and the TV Guides that have Heroes covers by top comic book artists: Jim Lee, Michael Turner, and Tim Sale. maaseru looked in surprise at the TV Guides and said, "Are they still publishing that in the States?" So it seems. We don't get it in Canada any more.

I guess I'll have to wait eleven months till my next Christmas, but this was a wonderful bonus!

I wondered if it were a special Saint's Day that would have some Christmas connotation, but looking up a possible connection, I found mostly a bunch of early Christian martyrs, and St. Kentigern. I always think of him as a Dunnett connection, because his nickname was Mungo, and he was associated with St. Ninian, and Dorothy Dunnett named her sons Ninian and Mungo. Classic Scots saints. Mind you, Wikipedia and other sources give his Feast Day as Jan. 13, not 14: maybe a saint with two names gets to have two Feast Days?

Torchwood: An overview of series 1...

Part 1: The Best Things about Torchwood series 1:

1. Captain Jack Harkness. The character is in every way a pièce de résistence by Russell T. Davies and Steven Moffat. A character who takes on attributes of archetypes - the superhero, the cowboy, the Wandering Jew, the unknown soldier, and so on - but does so without being stereotypical. Bonus points for his costume design - I don't know who came up with the greatcoat, the braces, and the floppy hair, but it's perfect. Add to this the Barroman looks, the dimples, the style...



2. The Pterodactyl. Myfanwy, at the risk of anticipating canon. How many fantasy-sf teams have a pterodactyl nesting in the ceiling? Okay, some others do, but they aren't as good!



3. The handling of sex and gender matters. Part of the story, part of the characters, part of the story.



4. Rhys, the perfect boyfriend. The mundane, the outsider. Occasionally something of a damsel in distress, but that's okay, they didn't overdo it.



5. Bilis. First-class mysterious time-travelling villain.



6. Detective Swanson. Kathy. We need more like her.



7. Catherine Treganna. Best writer on the show.



8. "Captain Jack Harkness" - best episode by far. Okay, so I'm a romantic, but it had the things all the episodes should have had: focus on the protagonist, a tightly written plot, a build-up of action and suspense in two connected plotlines, and great characterization. Yes, the best part was when Jack kissed Jack. But the second best part was when Ianto shot Owen. Go, Ianto!



9. Any and all references the show had to the Doctor, or to the continuity of Doctor Who: the Cybermen (and Cyberwoman) and the Battle of Canary Wharf, the chameleon circuit of the TARDIS making the invisible lift possible, the references to "the right kind of Doctor", and - especially - the ending of "End of Days".



10. The stopwatch scene.

( Part 2: The Things I would have liked to have seen done differently... )