Happy Holidays for everyone

@PilgrimDan:
Is this a new movie? Where did you stream it? Or did you see it in a cinema? Sounds interesting.

@Dina:
Star Trek fan club!!! I would have joined you. I knew nobody who liked Star Trek. But I have realised a few years ago, that I was just unlucky to know too many people who didn't share my interests, be it Fantasy or science fiction. It was just a bubble and later I got introduced to other bubbles, so I knew I wasn't the weird one. THEY WERE. 

I hope your cousin's son talks a lot about his experiences in Brno. And also sad about the dog.


Today I have prepared the dips for our fondue tomorrow. My mother will come and maybe my brother-in-law. I have invited him, because his girlfriend broke up with him at the beginning of December and he will be alone at Christmas. But he told us, he already has a new one and not yet sure if the will spend the Holidays together. Ok, he is living his second youth or so, lol. He is 60.


We put up the tree today. The cats are extremely interested and I had to spray them with water several times because they would not stop trying to eat the branches and jump on them, lol. Now they are tired and my husband and the kids are starting to decorate the tree.

Just came back from my violin teacher. He is satisfied now that we have finally finished the book with the Christmas songs.
But he had to play almost blind, because he couldn't find his glasses, lol. He asked if it was normal for old people to forget for example where they have put their glasses, and I said sorry but yes, this kind of knowledge is widespread.
He sometimes is confused, but he has only two students at the moment. His partner and me.


Mini and I have watched the first two episodes of Percy Jackson and we liked it a lot. Most of it was almost like in the book. The new episodes will be out every Wednesday from now on. It looks like they are doing one season for each book, which I think is the best way to go about it. Also the actors will age with each season, which will be a bit like the Harry Potter cast aging with each film, just like in the books.


I have still not yet finished An Inheritance of Magic. It will definitely take me until after Christmas, because the days before there is usually not much time for reading, though I can do a re-listen of the DF while preparing for the holidays. I'm at Death Masks right now.

Today there will be one last pre-Christmas dinner with my husband's computer club, which is every year. They don't do much except this one dinner once a year any more, lol. But the club still exists officially recognised since their youth. It's funny, because I knew some of the members or their wives before.

The first book is definitely a little bit of Early Installment Weirdness like most people think Storm Front and Fool Moon do. I listened to the audiobook with I think Michael Kramer and Kate Reading? I definitely didn't love it, but I had free Audible credits and wasn't sold on the series yet.

LOL. I have mentioned this before. I could not continue listening to it. Kate Reading is great. She did the Codex Alera and I liked it a lot. But I did not like Kramer's way of talking. It didn't fit this kind of story and I was too annoyed with him so I could not bring myself to listen to more. I also had a free Audible credit. I guess Kate Reading does the female parts? Maybe I'll try again.
I also have the ebook. They synchronize with the audible version. So sometimes I switch between reading and listening, depending on where I am and what I do. I could read the male parts and listen to the female ones.

@Dina:
I noticed the similarity to Banderas at first sight, but then I wasn't sure if I was correct until he looked directly into the camera.
You told us about the Spanish actor in WoT. I liked him, but didn't know him before.

On the 20th there will be the new Percy Jackson series on Disney+.
Mini and me are very excited. We both loved the books but were disappointed by the movies. The author wasn't thrilled either, so he decided to play a more active role in a new adaption. In an interview he said, he was happy with the outcome. I'm looking forward to it.

We just watched Indiana Jones. Dina, you were right. It felt like one if the old movies. I also liked it. Funny: once they entered a building at night, didn't stay long and when they got out, it was day. LOL. May have missed something in between, but my husband also said: "didn't they go in at night?"
Did you notice Antonio Banderas? At first my husband didn't believe me, but it was him.

Ah, good, I'll see where I can find the film. Definitely want to watch it. Harrison Ford !!! 

WoT:

I just came home from a meeting with my violin teacher. Most of the time, he doesn't teach anymore, we just meet regularly to play together. We didn't manage to play all the Christmas songs yet, so we decided to meet again on Friday to play the rest. Because he said, they need to be played before Christmas, lol.

@Regenbogen:

Upon what do you base that?  Wizards still age… just more slowly.  It makes more sense for the “good copy” cell replacement to break down over time for wizards as they age… since they do age and will eventually die of old age… just a lot later than normals.  Consider River Shoulder’s worries about Listens to Wind because of LTW’s age…

Yeah, probably with extremely old age the process of cell renewal would be slowed. But we are talking about a wizard in this prime.

My theory: wizards age more slowly than vanilla humans. According to Butters, Harry's cells renewed themselves to more exact copies than usual. This means that the healing process of severe injuries appears quicker compared to vanilla humans, because a vanilla human doesn't heal completely.

Take severe burn scars for example: they never go away completely and patients often loose at least part of the function in the burned areas, which never heals completely. So they are never again near as healthy as they were before. Harry by now has full functionality in his burned hand. So severely burned that a doctor tried to convince him to let it amputate. If he wasn't a wizard, his hand would still lack a lot of functionality.

Wizard in his prime:
According to the impression I have from the books, young wizards seem to age at the same speed as vanillas up to let's guess their fifties or sixties. When they reached that age, they seem to age more slowly than before and stay in this phase of appearing 50/60ish for centuries until they slowly reach the 80/90 years and show signs of old age. I guess this is as individual as with vanilla mortals. Some age faster and die sooner than others. Only with wizards, the difference is counted in centuries not decades.
So a wizard in his centuries lasting 50s or 60s (one of those, I guess, Kemmler was) who ages more slowly than at a younger age, will therefore heal faster than a younger wizard, because his cells regenerate faster. Once he has reached a wizards old age after maybe 5 to 7 centuries, the healing speed will decline.

We did enjoy the food. Next year the restaurant won't open at noon anymore. They didn't say why. But I guess, there are not so many people eating there and it would cost them more to be open than they earn at that time of day.

Yesterday we watched the third Dr Who special. I liked how they let David Tennant
TV Wheel of Time was good. I have not read the books yet (the narrator and I preferred the Butcher- and Jacka- books in between), but I liked season 2 a lot. Looking forward to the book. I think I will read it after the new Jacka book. Which is also very good and the beginning of a new series.

An Inheritance of Magic: a young man, who has been taught a bit about drucraft (what wielding magic is called in this universe), tries to learn more about the craft and make a living with it. But obtaining knowledge is difficult, if you are not rich and privileged. And so he has to face some (dangerous) obstacles, including members of privileged drucraft families trying to throw stones in his way.

I like it a lot. It us a promising first book.
And the author also included a pun on Harry Potter and the Dresden Files, like he did in his first Verus book: the protagonist tried to make a drucraft sigl work and used words to try to activate it. The list included expelliarmus and forzare, LOL.
In the first Alex Verus book he mentioned a wizard in the USA who even advertises openly  in the phone book.
Another fun fact: Jim Butcher praises the first Verus on the cover and iirc Jacka said he believed that helped a lot with the sales. In fact, if you are searching for either DF or Verus on amazon, you eventually get both as a result.
To close the circle, there is a praise by Benedict Jacka on Peace Talks. At least it is on my version.


Edit spoiler tags

The snow is receding, but it will come back soon. Meanwhile we had melting snow which froze over night and ice rain, but not much. It vanished in the sun at noon.
Tomorrow I am going to the Greek restaurant in my mother's village. Yummy. She has a discount there she needs to use in 2023. What a pity, lol.

I finished TOA yesterday and am still browsing through the sub and reddit.

Jim's progress bar for the 12M is still at only 26%, so I don't think there is hope for the book in 2024. But I hope we can read it in 2025.
I mentioned this on purpose, because often there was a change after I complained.

I still have the new Jacka book to read and I have started "The Eye of the World". Next summer there will be a new Mercy Thompson book.
I tried The Eye of the World as audio, but the narrator annoyed me. He sounded like some overly confident arrogant guy, who thinks he is cool, but isn't. I couldn't continue. There was no emotions, no nuances. It always sounded the same.
But maybe I am spoiled with James Marsters. Even Jim himself in "The Law" was better than that, lol.