Played some Zelda, did some drawing, read a lot. Gave up listening to an audiobook that I was more than halfway through because it had become a chore instead of a pleasure, and started a different one.

Pretty good appetite today and made myself a smoothie for breakfast and some nice little burritos for lunch and dinner. Nutrition!

Oh! The most important thing I did today was to finish fixing all my podcast feeds! Now every book in the “Kayray Reads to You” collection should show up in your podcast app with the chapters in the correct order. You’re welcome! Hit the link at the top of this page and subscribe subscribe subscribe.

In the story, in order to improve their camouflage, the Leopard gets his sandy-brown skin painted with spots and the Ethiopian gets his sandy-brown skin painted a beautiful black. The Ethiopian compliments the Leopard’s new spots, and the Leopard asks, well, if spots are so great why didn’t you choose them too? And the Ethiopian says, “Oh, plain black’s best for a n*****. ”

Well, now it reads like my childhood edition: “Oh, plain black’s best!”

Body-positive instead of offensive!

Here is the whole book, all 12 stories, in a zip file.
https://archive.org/download/kayrayreadstoyou9/Just-So_Kara.zip

You’ll see that chapter 4 is marked CLEAN, so you’ll know you’ve got the right version. You can also visit my archive page to stream the stories one at a time.
https://archive.org/details/kayrayreadstoyou9
Again, you’ll see that chapter 4 includes the word CLEAN in the title.

On this page you can find links to all the chapters plus a podcast feed:

http://kayray.org/rudyard-kipling/

I hope you will share these wonderful stories with your kids!

https://archive.org/download/kayrayreadstoyou9/OverSeaUnderStone_13_128kb.mp3

Mailed away my passport renewal this morning. I have no idea how long it will take to come back — months, I’d imagine. Luckily I have no international travel plans at present.

Very tired from last night’s insomnia but had a lovely day with Dave. The cheese-and-pickle sarnie plan got pushed to Wednesday so we had our usual Falafel Corner lunch today instead :) After lunch we lay around and worked on a couple of Cryptic Crosswords via The Guardian’s crossword app. Brutally difficult.

https://archive.org/download/kayrayreadstoyou9/OverSeaUnderStone_12_128kb.mp3

I found a cool website-and-app today: trakt.tv. “Trakt is a platform that does many things, but primarily keeps track of TV shows and movies you watch.”

Netflix and other streamers usually keep track of where you are in whatever series you’re watching, but when I watch stuff on my own hard drive I often have a hard time remembering where I am, especially on repeat viewings, so Trakt will be handy for that. I also like that it displays a list of the shows you’re in the middle of, so you don’t forget to watch the next episode; and it shows what’s airing next, for series that are currently airing; and it allows you to track multiple viewings of the same show/movie. I like DATA.

Pro-tip — when you make your account, add only what you’re currently watching, not everything you’ve ever seen. Otherwise your “up next” list will be all cluttered. I learned this the very hard way.

01 The Farm

02 Butternut Center

However, when I uploaded them to my archive.org collection,  I realized that I never finished “Over Sea, Under Stone” and the second book about a certain English nanny!  Oops.  I’ll try to remember to alternate.  Tomorrow it will be Susan Cooper’s turn. (Over Sea is my least favorite of the Dark is Rising series so it’s a bit hard to get motivated, but with Betsy as a reward I’ll get it done)

Slept fairly well, feeling fine today.  Migraine is gone. It’s warm and summery but not boiling.  I have excellent nectarines to eat.

Managed to climb out of my Pit of Despair long enough to get it done, yay me.