liv | Reading

Bloods results from Friday afternoon came in. ( Read more... )

This afternoon, my phone got stuck in a boot loop. It was bad enough when I was looking at it with utter confusion, but when D finished work and I could ask him to have a look at it, he looked just as baffled. Uh-oh!

I missed it immediately: my day is so much easier to get through with podcasts or audiobooks to keep me company. I struggled more to eat lunch (leftover balsamic mushrooms, on toast) without the distraction. There was a nice "like in the old days" element of having to read my library book and being left to just Wonder if an email I was waiting for had arrived or not, but it was difficult when I didn't have anything to drown out ambient noise when I was trying to relax. I do understand why separate mp3 players are having a resurgence (though I'd want a podcast player as well as an audiobook player and that sounds Complicated).

When D and I went to walk Teddy, V was upstairs so I wanted to lock the door. I grabbed their keys instead of mine, probably because I'd done that yesterday when they and I had been the ones going out and D had been upstairs working. But this time, by the time we got back to our street, the Tesco van was in our driveway, earlier than the time slot we'd been given. Poor V had had to scramble and move stuff to open the kitchen door and the side gate, and pile all the groceries on the dining table. We got back in time to put everything away but they were clearly exhausted and I felt absolutely awful at having inadvertently locked them in the house (my keys were right near the door but they didn't know that so it didn't actually help) and made them deal with an extra hurdle because Tesco was so early and with no earning.

I slept very badly last night and had an early start, going with D to his latest dental hospital appointment, so by the time I finished work I was feeling really gross and thought I'd lie down for a bit. I ended up falling asleep and waking up only when D told me dinner was ready and he'd sent our apologies for queer club which had already begun by that point. Oops. But it was kind of a relief, not to have to go anywhere else today; I was feeling gross even despite rhe nap and being around people felt difficult.

After we ate, D said he suddenly had a craving for a root beer float, and I said that thinking about ice cream made me want ice cream all of a sudden. We couldn't get root beer on such short notice but we did drive to the Co-op and get Ben & Jerry's cookie dough ice cream. D had had a big day with another minor oral surgery so early in the morning, we'd been good and a treat seemed like a good idea. It'd been a while since we'd done something silly just because we can.

maju

I'm watching an old British show, The Royal, in which a song from 1964 is playing. The song is called Tobacco Road (by The Nashville Teens), and the lyrics are shown in the subtitles (which I always use). At one point, the original line is "in the middle of Tobacco Road", but the subtitle says "in the bathroom".

rachelmanija

The sequel to The Darkness Outside of Us. I enjoyed it! It's both interestingly different from the first book and is satisfying on the level of "I want more of this," which is exactly what one wants from a sequel.

Literally everything about this book is massively spoilery for the first one, including its premise. I'll do two sets of spoiler cuts, one for the premise and one for the whole book.

( Premise spoilers )

Stop reading here if you don't want to be spoiled for the entire book.

( Entire book spoilers )

silveradept

snowflake_challenge would like us to recommend to others a way in to finding a place in a fandom that we're already part of.

Challenge #14

Create a promo and/or rec list for someone new to a fandom.

The two of those things are quite different, I might note. The promo is about trying to get people into a fandom based on the strength of the canonical materials (whether the smart writing, the intricate plot, or the hotness of the actors), and the rec list is about getting people into a fandom (or at least the transformative fandom part) based on the fanworks that are available to someone. Neither of these methods are inherently wrong, but depending on your approach, someone might get into the fandom with radically different ideas of what the source material or the fandom is about. (This is not necessarily a bad thing, but approaching something from the fannish side might make you suspect there's more nuance and depth to the source material than there actually is.)

Anyway, since I am both not very good at collecting new fandoms and not very good at getting and remembering works in the fandoms I have, this would normally leave me in a pickle about what to do, except I have plenty of older fandoms and recommendations for you that will make up for my utter lack of newish fandoms for you to experience.

( Pern, RWBY, Into the Woods, In Other Lands, Long Live Evil )

Moooooood rejuvenated
Tuuuuuune "Weird" Al - Your Horoscope For Today

maju

The night before last I had a very unsettling incident in the middle of the night when I got up to use the bathroom. My basement room is fairly long, with the bed at one end with a chest of drawers next to it acting as a nightstand, then an L-shaped couch along the wall next to that, then behind the shorter side of the couch a short hall leading to the stairs up to the main floors of the house. On one side of the hallway is a bathroom/laundry, and on the other is the girls' art room. Some light comes through the two small basement windows so it's not completely dark in the part of the room where the bed is during the night, but over in the hallway there is hardly any light. So I came out of the bathroom at 2 am or whatever time it was and somehow veered into the open doorway of the art room instead of going straight along behind the couch, and suddenly I had no idea where I was because I was feeling around for the back of the couch and only encountering empty space. I was completely disoriented. I started to step forwards into the space and my foot felt the small step down (only an inch or so) and just as suddenly I realised where I was and was easily able to make my way back to bed. (But meanwhile I had bumped my forehead against the door frame of the art room - ouch.)

Three months ago I went to my Kaiser portal and changed my mailing address. At the same time I contacted the National Finance Center, the people who handle my premium payments, to let them know my new address. Three months later I discover that the Kaiser website is still showing my previous address, and also three months later I have still heard nothing from the National Finance Center about the address change and the change of health insurance planto one which operates in Connecticut, in spite of repeated emails plus sending them an actual letter in the mail three weeks ago. I am absolutely and completely fed up with the incompetence of both Kaiser and whoever is supposed to be handling my premium payments. I suspect that because the National Finance Center is part of the Federal Government, the person who was handling my case might have been fired, but Kaiser has no such excuse.

This morning I had a text from the real estate agent suggesting that I needed to buy some vacant house insurance and giving me a link to an insurance agent who works with his company. The issue of insurance had not occurred to me because I knew the existing house insurance policy had not expired, but turns out insurance companies don't like insuring empty houses. So it looks like this will be one more thing for me to have to pay for until the house sells.

forestofglory

Well I haven’t gotten very far with my pile of graphic novels from the library, and in fact I’ve put holds on even more of them so the pile is only getting bigger. But did finish enough things that it feels worth posting another media roundup.

Goat Magic by Kate Wheeler—Another graphic novel, this one with very cute goats. The art for this one was so cute and charming. I did feel a little bit frustrated with the politics, where there was some confusion about bad people vs bad systems. Also the romance kinda came out of nowhere (It didn’t help that I thought one of the main characters was like 12) Still a pretty fun book overall.

The Two Towers—Watched this with the kid and R, who as mentioned have recently finished reading the books. It’s fun to discuss the changes between the book and the movie with the kiddo! Also I forgot how good the armor details are in this! However a three hour movie with some chatting is a lot for me – at the end I was hitting sensory overload and needed to go sit somewhere quiet by myself for a while.

The Legend of the Demon Cat (2017)—I watched this movie with my group watch. It’s about a cat demon but also features Tang dynasty poet Bai Juyi and various other historical figures. It was really good, though I’m having a hard time explaining why. It has a really big emotional range – some bits are creepy (and there is a bit of gore), some bits are sad, but some bits are really fun. And Bai Juyi’s character in this is great!

Unboxing Libby by Steph Cherrywell—My kid’s school is doing an optional book club, and this was the most recent book. I’ve been reading the books along with the kid and this is the third book this year. It’s about robots made to be kids toys who end up being used to simulate a human community on Mars. I really liked it! the friendship stuff was complicated and good!

Remember how I was all like “I guess I don’t read much original fiction anymore but I’m at peace with it” in my post about my 2025 media? Yet somehow I have read 10 books this month? They are mostly graphic novels which are quicker and easier for me, but still books are books. I don’t really expect to keep this up but it's nice for now.

oursin

Thinking about the 'how can you do/think about normal innocuous quotidien things' while shocking horrors are going on -

(Am not actually going to invoke pet genre of 'look at all these novels being written at a time when World War 2 was just about to begin/beginning'.)

This was just a coincidental thing that occurred to me when I was talking about something tangentially related when being a Nexpert for a journalist yesterday.

Who wanted to know about a certain sex manual v popular in its day and its author -

In the course of which I mentioned that it was not prosecuted for obscenity** unlike Eustace Chesser's Love without Fear (1940). One would have thought that possibly people had other things on their mind in 1940 than maximising matrimonial happiness, particularly considering that families were being broken up by men being conscripted into service, women being evacuated with their children, etc etc, but anyway, it was published, and sold several thousand copies before, in 1942, it was prosecuted for obscenity by the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Again, one would think people had other things on their mind. Anyway, Chesser and his publisher decided to take the case to court and plead not guilty before a jury, bringing three medical witnesses for the defence. The jury was out for less than an hour before returning a 'not guilty' verdict.

***

Yesterday saw snowdrops appearing in the local park.

*WH Auden, Musée des Beaux Arts (1940)

**However, the Pope did put it on the Index.

squirmelia

A man asked me to take his photo next to some words he’d scrawled on the wall and said it was to send to his kids. I agreed as I hadn't put my gloves on at that point.

He thanked me and I walked on and overheard two people saying they couldn't believe they'd found a gold chain. Obviously I had got there too late!

The tide was coming in so I didn't have a lot of time.

Finds include:

A piece of glass that has gone kind of orange.

Melted medieval maltesers. I’m still unsure what these are really - suggestions on a Facebook group have included: grape shot, grinding media from a ball mill, iron ore.

(You need a permit to search or mudlark on the Thames foreshore.)

oursin

Happy birthday,

liseuse!

sorcyress

It's Monday!

We had a snow day today, which was very good. I managed to mostly not just play Stardew Valley the entire day straight, and actually do some grading. By which I mean, uh, about an hours worth total. Oh well. It's a start.

(I also did some nice things in Stardew).

Honestly the hour of grading I did was maybe the second most important hour of all of it. There's one more really important hour (actually enter comments) but now I'm in a much less dire place than I was. And yeah, there are several hours in between these two hours, but if they don't happen, they don't happen and everyone will live.

It is hard to care as much about Doing Good At My Job when like, fascism. Am I being kind? Am I hopefully teaching my students to be kind? I think that's probably more important than grading everything to the absolute pinnacle of my ability. Or so I'm telling myself. :/

After some grading and Stardew happened, Austin braved the Many Snow to come visit for regular Mondate! This is good! He showed me some of the things he worked on at Mystery Hunt, and we ate ice cream, and watched an episode of Leverage. It's the Grave Danger Job, which is mostly really good but the last five minutes where the team gets revenge on the drug cartel by using Homeland Security against them.......yeahhh that hits different in 2026 than it did in 2006. Blugh.

(Both Aldis Hodge and Beth Reisgraf are really good actors and able to put it on full display here. I do really like that part, and I like how good this episode is for the OT3 of all OT3s.)

Tomorrow is also a snow day, which is a very very good thing. I might walk Austin to the work shuttle, if I'm feeling very brave --I technically haven't left the house since arriving here Friday evening and it's probably time. The backyard is excitingly drifty! I don't think we have a sled anymore --I think someone borrowed it somewhere along the way and it never returned-- but fucking around on the bike path while wearing many gear seems like a noble pursuit. Maybe I will even bring a camera?

I hope you are staying safe and being kind to your neighbors and occasionally calling your politicians to yell at them. For what little it's worth, ICE's funding is going to run out unless the senate votes to extend it, so maybe like, call your senators sometime in the next day or two and tell them to fucking not?

<3
~Sor
MOOP!

lomedet

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

cosmolinguist

Today I:

woke up late. I, very unusually for me, was so tired when my alarm went off that I set a new one. For some reason, I decided to make it five minutes before my first meeting, my team's usual check-in. So yeah, I did not make that.
got dressed and downstairs eventually, triaged email and Teams messages.
did my morning chores: open the curtains, empty the dishwasher, make breakfast for me and a pot of tea for the household...
got halfway through the dishwasher when my work phon rang. Actually rang, not a Teams call. How odd!
remember as the guy starts talking that I agreed to do an interview but forgot to put it in my calendar
the interview is with rail industry press rather than my usual audiences of general public or politicians, so I got to drag some of the technical vocabulary out of my brain.
had a little cry at lunchtime about Alex Pretti
had two absolutely brutal meetings this afternoon, for a total of three hours: more technical stuff. I have looked at so many diagrams of train stations...and there weren't any breaks in that 2-hour meeting!
walked Teddy with V, as a nice antidote to all the thinking and trying to decipher engineering diagrams (some of which were labeled by hand).
made dinner by chopping all the veg in the fridge that needed using up and roasting it (some wrinkly peppers, half a head of rubbery broccoli, a few carrots I didn't know we had, mushrooms that were best before last week...) into a serviceable dinner
helped D do a Tesco order for tomorrow
read too much news
had a shower
went to bed late and now can't sleep

china_shop

Ughhhhhh! *hugs to everyone, all of you, so many hugs and then some more*

For those who need it,

troyswann linked to her art-blog post Gardening in the Rubble, about continuing normal life while the world is on fire.

*

Lately, I've been having trouble focusing on written words, so the fic edits are going verrrrry sloooowly. I don't think these are going to count as late

fandomtrees gifts anymore, but I'd still like to finish them!

I've also been continuing to mess around with art. ( Current status, for future reference. ) In conclusion: noses are the worst, followed by lips, followed by eyes. Ears are also terrible.

Aaand now my right wrist/base of my thumb is furious at me, owww, because of course I chose a new hobby that involved a ton of detailed/controlled handwork. Should've taken up singing instead. *poutsigh*

redbird

We got a lot of snow in the Boston area, but people seem to be coping fairly well. The building management company have sent people over here to shovel the walks, several times, so I was able to take out the trash and recycling. The forecast for the next several days is for cold, very cold once you count the wind chill. It turns out that I can wear Adrian's old snow pants, which will do a lot to protect my legs from cold and wind. The remaining problem is boots: even with the 3/4 insoles Adrian lent me, they're too loose, including at the front, so I may try putting in a pair of full-length insoles and see if that helps. The other possibility is to go out looking for a pair of snow sneakers, or at least waterproof hiking shoes/boots (though the forecast is for the kind of weather where waiting for two trolleys, and walking from home to trolley to store, is daunting.

I've been looking at Bluesky again, in large part for news and commentary about what ICE is doing in Minnesota and elsewhere. When I've had enough for a while, I click on the "astronomy" feed I subscribed to months ago, so the first things I see are an astronomical pictures.

I did a lot of PT yesterday, and a few exercises today. It feels like I haven't gotten a lot done today, which I think is because I'd been hoping to make some phone calls (not all of them political), and assumed I wouldn't be able to take the trash out today. (The alternative to that walk along the side of the building is a spiral staircase, indoors, but spiral staircases aren't good for me, and this one is tight enough that my joints really don't like it. Cattitude can deal with it when necessary, but he's already going up and down that stair regularly to do the laundry.)

wychwood

176 books read in 2025 - just under the long-term average (182) but my highest since 2020.

( stats ) ( awards )

My book of the year

A tough one! I'm not sure anything really stands out. But I think I've spent more time thinking about Augustine the African than the others, so maybe that.

watersword

Is it possible to post about planning my big trip later this year, and how beautiful the park looks in the snow, and the pistachio biscotti I baked, while Minnesota is under siege by the federal government, who have hired thugs qualified only to lick freezing-cold metal poles?

I hung some calligraphic art yesterday, which has Pirkei Avot 2:16 on it, right next to my desk, where I can see it every day as I email my reps ~~Carthago delenda est~~ ICE and DHS must be abolished.

Stand With Minnesota.

maju

It snowed some more overnight and we ended up with about 19 inches/48 cm of snow. My son in law and Violet both spent quite a lot of time outside shoveling the drive and clearing off the two family cars, both of which were sensibly parked right up near the road. My car, which is way at the back of the drive, is still deeply under snow and has many yards of deep snow between it and the nearest of the other two cars. (The drive is very long.)

I've been badly neglecting my car; I haven't driven it for about three weeks, and now I'm regretting that because it doesn't look as if I'll be able to get it out of the driveway for at least another week. I rarely need a car but it doesn't make sense to get rid of it because when I do need to go somewhere I need it; almost nothing is within walking distance here as it was back in MD, and there is no useful public transport as there also was in Maryland.

I had another bad sleep night last night; I was woken up by some acid reflux less than an hour after I went to sleep, and then couldn't get back to sleep again for another couple of hours or more. My son in law brought home some gluten free bread from Wholefoods for me before the weekend, when we were a bit worried about a bread shortage. It's different from the gluten free bread the rest of the family eats and which they can't eat because it contains eggs, and I'm afraid it's the cause of my acid reflux, because it only came on after I had my first piece of the new bread yesterday and nothing else in my diet is any different than usual.

Yesterday while I was working on a granny square for my next blanket project, Eden asked me if I could crochet a scarf for a doll. I said yes, I could, and she asked me to start making one immediately, and then kept asking me if it was almost finished yet. So today I've been crocheting my fingers to the bone finishing the doll's scarf. All the girls really like it, and I'm very happy they are so happy with it. It's made with a beautifully soft acrylic in a pretty off-white colour which they chose from the small selection of random balls of yarn in my stash. I was planning to use the same yarn for some of the squares in my blanket, but it turns out squares made from it are slightly smaller than squares made with my other two colours, so I'm thinking of using it to make a whole off-white blanket after I finish the coloured one since I've got several balls of it on hand. (It doesn't take long to acquire a stash even when you start from almost nothing.)

oursin

Should we sell our kidneys?

My feeling, on finding somebody who is apparently a reader in political theory at a well-respected institution of Teh Highah Learninz positing this, is that he may have read a lot of political theory, poor lamb, but maybe he should spend some time with dystopian science fiction if he's going to contemplate these sort of questions.

I suppose, with the Organ Donation register, there is an issue that a) it is Opt-In and b) presumably by the time many people reach that state when their organs come up for donation, those organs are probably past their Best Before date.

(I just now, in connection with an entirely unrelated transaction with a government body, was solicited to sign up with the Organ Donation Register. Already have, thanks, if anyone will want my tired old organs when the time comes.)

And on the intrusion of Commerce into this matter, has this person considered the sorts of things that have been happening - only, one admits, affecting the bodies of wymmynz? - over selling their eggs, or being surrogates, and the stories one hears are Not Pretty.

He might also consider Richard Titmuss' famous 1970 work The Gift Relationship: From Human Blood to Social Policy on blood donation:

[T]he author compares blood donation in the US and UK, contrasting the British system of reliance on voluntary donors to the American one in which the blood supply is in the hands of for-profit enterprises, concluding that a system based on altruism is both safer and more economically efficient.

(Also I am not sure about his understanding of the dynamics at play here:

In the 18th century, for example, some viewed being paid to sing as akin to prostitution, and professional opera singers, particularly women, could be deemed morally suspect. At that time, therefore, it might have seemed appropriate to subject professional singing to legal strictures, just like prostitution.

I really think this was - dependent upon local legal systems of course, but, really, don't get me started on that - much more about social stigma. Which adhered to publicly performing women for a lot longer, mate.)

(I'm also thinking - has this one cropped up on agonyaunt or have I seen it elsewhere - of that scenario in which member of a family - even an estranged member of family - is being heavyed into being a donor for a relative because they are A Match. Was it even child adopted but later traced?)

shewhostaples

Make an appreciation post to those who enhance your fandom life. Appreciate them in bullet points, prose, poetry, a moodboard, a song... whatever moves you!

Dear friends (mostly, but not all, on Dreamwidth) who...

... are really enjoying that ice hockey series
... are really enjoying playing ice hockey themselves
... are really looking forward to the Winter Olympics
... are reading that book that everyone is reading
... are reading that book that everyone read three years ago
... are reading books that nobody's read for a hundred years
... are reading things I wrote when I could string more than ten minutes together at a time
... are knee-deep in an obscure spin-off of something I saw once
... are singing or playing
... are listening to other people sing or play
... are going out and eating delicious things
... are cooking delicious things for other people to eat
... are going to interesting places and seeing interesting wildlife and sharing pictures
... are doing small things (or big things) in pursuit of a better world

... I am really enjoying reading about your enjoyment and activity, though I never manage to comment as often as I'd like. Thank you for keeping me in touch with the fandom world!

TALK ABOUT A COMMUNITY SPACE YOU LIKE. It doesn’t need to be your favorite, or the one where you spend the most time (although it certainly can be). Maybe it’s even one that you’ve barely visited. But talk about that space and how it helps support fannish community.

Having talked mostly about Dreamwidth above, I'm going to go super literal here and talk about the bandstand in my home town. It's set at the centre of a park next the river, and every summer Sunday afternoon a different brass band from one of the surrounding towns and villages turns up to give a free concert. Programme-wise, you always know more or less what kind of thing you're going to get: a march or two, some film music, an arrangement of some classic rock, and so on, but since it's never advertised in advance you don't know the specifics. There's always a mixed audience: people who know it's happening and have turned up deliberately; friends of the band; people who were just wandering past and stop to listen; kids playing on the slides. Some people stop for a few minutes and then move on; some stay for the whole thing.

I love the energy of live music, and it's so good to have something that's so very relaxed, so very - literally - open.

andrewducker

In a slightly more sensible world this would be a perfect time for the One Nation/Moderate Conservatives to say "Thank goodness all of the far right monsters have left the party, time to pull the party back towards the center".

But I'm not convinced there are more than a few of them left.

oursin

Happy birthday,

makamu!

silveradept

snowflake_challenge wants us to think about the places where we have come together in shared pursuit of our fandoms, or the same fandom, or many other ways of joining us together and showing us that we are not alone in our pursuits.

Challenge #13

TALK ABOUT A COMMUNITY SPACE YOU LIKE. It doesn’t need to be your favorite, or the one where you spend the most time (although it certainly can be). Maybe it’s even one that you’ve barely visited. But talk about that space and how it helps support fannish community.

( In community, we join, and nowhere else is that more evident than at convention. )

Moooooood sleepy
Tuuuuuune Jamiroquai - Soul Education

kaberett

Reading. ( Scalzi, Tufte, Duncan )

Writing. Introduction continues to take shape. Word count hasn't gone up much, but that's partly because I am doing a reasonable job of Whacking Down A Bunch Of Words and then reassessing and deleting...

Listening. More of The Hidden Almanac. I continue to fret about not keeping super great track of it, which is in part because I seem to be extremely prone to going to sleep if it winds up on in the car...

Playing. We are finding an Exploders Inkulinati run alarmingly straightforward. Learning Continues.

Sudoku also continues to eat my brain. :|

Cooking. Dinner tonight included: another attempt at the Roti King cabbage poriyal, this time with more coconut, which I think has worked v well; a... loose attempt at a generous interpretation of Dishoom's gunpowder potatoes (no lime, no spring onion yet, no leaf coriander, not new potatoes...); and some pomegranate molasses-tamarind-yoghurt-chaat masala goop to sit some paneer in.

Earlier in the week I ticked a couple more things off the Cook (Almost) All Of East project (kung pao cauliflower; mushroom bao); this evening I have also had a first stab at recreating the Leon spiced tahini hot chocolate, which was Very Acceptable.

Eating. Finally managed to get a meal at the Viewpoint restaurant at Whipsnade (we keep not going at a time when it's open); mildly disappointed by the sourdough pizza, probably because I have a vague memory of a previous incarnation having aspirations to Fancy Restaurant, which I think the current set-up doesn't. Still v pleasant to eat food I didn't cook sat looking out over the Downs, though.

Exploring. ZOO.

Growing. I do not understand where the sciarid flies keep coming from but I am so, so, so over them. I am SO over them. WHY is the lithops container SUDDENLY FULL OF THEM.

That issue aside: lemongrass continues to have Leafs! If (if!) it keeps going like this I'm going to wind up needing to dispose of a bunch of plants via Freecycle/Freegle, goodness. Physalis still not doing anything visible. Ancho chillis almost but not quite All The Way Ripe.

It is almost certainly time to start sowing More Things but I think perhaps I will hold off until after I've had a chance to apply some nematodes...

cosmolinguist

I had a dream about Gary last night so I miss him extra today.

But D and I saw many cute and happy dogs when we were out helping a family member, and we got home just in time to do our usual Teddy walk.

I miss my dog, but there are so many good dogs.

In the dream, I was showing someone who was frightened of dogs how carefully and delicately he'd take a treat from my hand (which is exactly how he'd do it in real life too). And the dream-person was happy about seeing this and it made her relax. It was really nice.

shewhostaples

two log cabins with snow on the roofs in a wintery forest the text snowflake challenge january 1 - 31 in white cursive text

Grant someone's wish from Challenge #5.

I answered a couple of requests for recommendations, and am copying my answers here for reference.

1. for someone who wanted to hear from people forty and up about shopping for clothes:

I hit forty last year, and what I've done is to keep on experimenting until I find something that works - whether that's a shape, a colour, a manufacturer - and then keep on experimenting with that. What that looks like depends very much on circumstances - at the moment I have quite a lot of unscheduled time and my small town has a lot of charity shops, so I'm mostly buying things second-hand and donating them back if they don't end up working. But when I was working full-time I did a lot more internet shopping. (Svaha and Joanie were what worked for me then, for what it's worth.)

I had a most illuminating conversation recently with a group of friends, most of whom like Seasalt. I said that Seasalt ought to work for me but never quite does, but that Fat Face is pretty reliable. Interestingly, most of the Seasalt fans said that Fat Face never quite works for them. I take from this the lesson that even makes that appear very similar at first glance will be more or less suited to different groups of people, so it's worth keeping on looking.

I also like the Who Wears Who blog for thoughtful prompts on style and experimentation with same.

2. replying to someone who wanted to talk about femslash

Femslash! Here are three of my favourite books with canon femslash ships:

- my oldest - The Count of Monte Cristo, a rambling but enjoyable French doorstopper tale of revenge, appeared from 1844 to 1846 and has canon femslash. And no bury your gays! (Obvious warning: it is, of course, very much Of Its Time.)
- my newest - I've just finished The Priory of the Orange Tree. Will it be one of my favourites of all time? Probably not, but it was a lot of fun - an ambitious fantasy novel that attempts to put a valiant number of belief systems and all the dragon lore on the page. And yes, canon femslash.
- the one that feels like it was written just for me - the Alpennia series by Heather Rose Jones. It includes many of my favourite tropes (fictional European country, swashbuckling, complicated power dynamics) and weaves religious practice into the way the magic works in a way that I've rarely seen done so effectively. And, for a third time, canon femslash.

ursamajor

Grateful for every update I see from Minnesota friends right now, affirming that they're ... okay isn't the right word; infuriated and joining with their neighbors and friends to stand up against evil in whatever ways they can is probably more accurate. Marching, recording, feeding people, sharing information. The rest of us, doing what we can from the outside, preparing for ourselves to be next. Sending love to you all.

And once that's done, I ( turn back to cooking. )

( finally succumbing to ebooks )

Speaking of scifi, we dropped Paramount after the latest season of Strange New Worlds, partly because of CBS's actions, partly because too many subscriptions and we're trying to cut back, partly because Amazing Race was yet another season of known-quantity reality stars instead of reasonably-believable normies. But we did get to watch the first episode of Starfleet Academy because they made it available on YouTube. And yeah, while I agree the preview made it look like "Star Trek: Dawson's Creek," as

hyounpark put it, I really needed to see a Starfleet captain stand up for justice; I needed to see people reaching across cultures from different backgrounds. I worry that the current environment is going to shift broadcastable storylines by next season; S1 was filmed mostly before Biden left office, while S2 is filming now, after CBS bent the knee. But I still found it promising enough to want to watch more; I just don't know how to watch it in a way that balances the scales for me.

Moooooood contemplative
Tuuuuuune let me name you, claim you

ofearthandstars

( a rough poetry drabble )

lannamichaels

What I knew before going in: this is serial-numbers-very-very-very-slightly-filed-off Sidney Crosby/Alexander Ovechkin RPF. There's a lot of sex scenes. There is a cup kiss on ice.

( Then I watched it )

oursin

Last week's bread held out pretty well.

Friday night supper: the hash-type-thing of boiled chopped up sweet potato, fried with chopped red bell pepper and chorizo di navarra.

Saturday breakfast roll: the adaptable soft rolls recipe, Marriage's Golden Wholegrain Bread Flour, maple syrup, sultanas.

Today's lunch: Scottish Loch Trout Fillets, poached like so, with samphire sauce, served with Ruby Gem potatoes roated in goose fat, sugar snap peas roasted in walnut oil with fennel seeds and splashed with tayberry vinegar, and padron peppers.

maju

At 1 pm it's -13℃/8.6℉ and it's been snowing steadily since about 7 am. The snow is so heavy that houses about three or four houses away are almost obscured. I think we've had at least 6 inches so far. So far we still have power so it's very cosy in here.

Violet and Eden walked through the snow to the house of some friends who live about two blocks away for what Aria described to me as a Lego party, which sounds like a good way to pass the time on a day like this.

andrewducker

The children pick their noses in front of infinity.
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

oursin

Happy birthday,

steepholm!

bella_luugosi

Challenge #12:

Make an appreciation post to those who enhance your fandom life. Appreciate them in bullet points, prose, poetry, a moodboard, a song... whatever moves you!

This is the closest I've got to deciding not to fill one of these prompts, because the dark side of appreciation posts is rejection sensitivity, and I have been there so many, many times, I hate being in situations where I have to decide who and what to appreciate and who and what not to mention. I always get it wrong and I always feel like I've hurt someone and I always, always drop back into the bit of my brain where no-one cares about me at all and I genuinely don't know if other people have that bit in their brain too, but I wouldn't want to contribute to anyone going there.

However. This project's got me nostalgic for The Way The Internet Was Back In My Day, and I want to appreciate a few people who apparently have never quite got to the point of writing me off. *g* I don't have a lot of people that I used to have on LJ because this is DW and my LJ is long gone, and I have done various iterations of "growing up" and moving away from fandom and fan spaces over the decades. I haven't even been in the habit of sharing when I do write fic here, which is going to change so I'll have to set up some filters for RL folk who just don't care. The me who found LJ and FF.Net in 2002 and the me of now have almost nothing in common, and I don't have any friends from school or university or childhood or 20s or 30s interest groups (apart from the TS) and I understand why, and I'm mostly sanguine about that now. And I am really bad at staying in touch with people.

And yet... and yet. There are

shirebound and

ancalime8301 and

rabidsamfan. I don't know when we first crossed paths but it's got to be 25-odd years ago. We were in a common fandom in the heady days when the LotR movies were coming out and it was frantic and brilliant and the internet wasn't evil yet. We wrote fic and exchanged plotbunnies and wrote drabbles that were exactly 100 words, and we were, I think for a lot of people, community that they struggled to find elsewhere. I've drifted through a lot of fandoms since then and had a lot of fallow periods where I haven't posted for literal years, and when I have it's just been to whine about how crap I'm feeling.

But you're still here.

Our interactions are different, because times change and interests drift, and I think I'm very bad at thinking things into the screen when you guys post but not actually hitting the keyboard, and I should work on that. But you're still there, and you care, and I think you understand when I'm enthusing about something that you really couldn't care less about, because fandom is its own language and you might not get the subject but you do understand the process. Maybe we don't swap writing challenges any more but you're there still there to enthuse when I'm enthusiastic and hug when I'm grumbling and I've only even met one of you in person! These are the oldest friendships I have, and there's something really beautiful about being able to retain that portion of a time that was so special - like catching the light of a star in a small glass bottle and taking it out to look at when things are dark.

<3

pensnest

Went for breakfast at the café by the river this morning, and looked at why the road is closed for two weeks. There is a remarkably deep trench going from some brand new buildings to, er, somewhere, with a very big digger parked next to it. Which explains things, really. Breakfast was tasty but a bit gluey—loaded hash browns, with sausage, bacon, melted cheese, a fried egg, and rather good mushrooms. I shall have an apple for lunch! Or possibly prunes.

*

I was doomscrolling yesterday afternoon and found a little video of a kitten making a lotta fuss. I turned the sound on, and Sable hurtled into the room with a face full of concern. She kept looking for the kitten in distress, and was most unimpressed when I showed her the phone.

Sometimes I wish she had a kitten of her own.

*

Yesterday we watched The Electric State, and I realised that I don't enjoy watching Chris Pratt. He always seems to play mostly-stupid, mostly-selfish characters who 'come good' at some point, and I find the type annoying. At least, I say 'always'—that probably isn't true, just the things I've seen him in. Is it type-casting? Is it pure coincidence that these are the things I've seen and I've missed the ones where he is a different kind of character? I don't know. Just, meh.

*

Things that made me LOL this week: Tom and Lorenzo describing Jason Statham as 'the gay porn version of Homer Simpson', which, yes. Yes he is.

*

Deke Sharon is coming to the UK. Deke Sharon is going to coach my chorus! Woohoohoo!

andrewducker

Woke up at 6:30 and it took me ten minutes to wake up enough to realise it's Sunday and my alarm would not be going off at 7. By which point I was too awake to get back to sleep.

sonia

I had a good day today. Biked to the farmer's market, and then went to the new year's party at my gym. I didn't know gyms had parties, but this one was fun. Friendly people, and several bodyworkers offering free 20 min sessions (I got a massage!) and free drinks from the cafe next door.

I biked over to the ad hoc Balkan and Georgian singing group that meets once a month, and we successfully sang a bunch of songs, even ones that were newer to us or that we hadn't sung in a while, like Tsmindao Ghmerto. Felt great!

Then I got home and caught up on the news. Augh! Via

redbird, I was reminded about the Stand With Minnesota site with lots of organizations we can support to help their anti-ICE effort. I donated some money to Just The Pill.

Adding Minnesota Indian Women's Resource Center via

ofearthandstars in comments. They are listed under Organizations Doing Work On The Ground.

On the plus side, I'm so glad we are collectively screaming about ICE, not just passively letting it happen. So grateful for the people bearing witness, physically resisting, and sending support from afar.

Liv's pals

My book of the year

Soundbite

Page Summary

Links

Expand Cut Tags

Subscription Filters