dmarley | Network

And one email and voicemail later, my pay didn't come in and nobody has responded yet. (I did wake up pretty late, but seriously.)

I'll call again in the morning, I don't care if it is a weekend, but....

*headdesk*

I don't know what I'll do for groceries if this isn't resolved by Monday, but I'll wait until Monday to worry about it.

dine

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jenab

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skygiants

The Ukrainian fantasy novel Vita Nostra has been on my to-read list for a while ever since

shati described it as 'kind of like the Wayside School books' in a conversation about dark academia, a description which I trusted implicitly because

shati always describes things in helpful and universally accepted terms.

Anyway, so Vita Nostra is more or less a horror novel .... or at least it's about the thing which is scariest to me, existential transformation of the self without consent and without control.

At the start of the book, teenage Sasha is on a nice beach vacation with her mom when she finds herself being followed everywhere by a strange, ominous man. He has a dictate for her: every morning, she has to skinny-dip at 4 AM and swim out to a certain point in the ocean, then back, Or Else. Or Else? Well, the first time she oversleeps, her mom's vacation boyfriend has a mild heart attack and ends up in the ER. The next time ... well, who knows, the next time, so Sasha keeps on swimming. And then the vacation ends! And the horrible and inexplicable interval is, thankfully, over!

Except of course it isn't over; the ominous man returns, with more instructions, which eventually derail Sasha off of her planned normal pathway of high school --> university --> career. Instead, despite the confused protests of her mother, she glumly follows the instructions of her evil angel and treks off to the remote town of Torpa to attend the Institute of Special Technologies.

Nobody is at the Institute of Special Technologies by choice. Nobody is there to have a good time. Everyone has been coerced there by an ominous advisor; as entrance precondition, everyone has been given a set of miserable tasks to perform, Or Else. Also, it's hard not to notice that all the older students look strange and haunted and shamble disconcertingly through the dorms in a way that seems like a sort of existential dispute with the concept of space, though if you ask them about it they're just like 'lol you'll understand eventually,' which is not reassuring. And then there are the actual assignments -- the assignments that seem designed to train you to think in a way the human brain was not designed to think -- and which Sasha is actually really good at! the best in her class! fortunately or unfortunately .... but fortunately in at least this respect: everyone wants to pass, because if you fail at the midterm, if you fail at the finals, there's always the Or Else waiting.

AND ALSO all the roommates are assigned and it's hell.

Weird, fascinating book! I found it very tense and propulsive despite the fact that for chapters at a time all that happens is Sasha doing horrible homework exercises and turning her brain inside out. I feel like a lot of magic school books are, essentially, power fantasies. What if you learned magic? What if you were so good at it? Sasha is learning some kind of magic, and Sasha is so good at it, but the overwhelming emotion of this book is powerlessness, lack of agency, arbitrary tasks and incomprehensible experiences papered over with a parody of Normal College Life. On the one hand Sasha is desperate to hold onto her humanity and to remain a person that her mother will recognize when she comes home; on the other hand, the veneer of Normal College Life layered on top of the Institute's existential weirdness seems more and more pointless and frustrating the further on it goes and the stranger Sasha herself becomes. I think the moment it really clicked for me is midway through Sasha's second year, when ( spoilers )

lightreads

There Is No Antimemetics Division

4/5. A short novel about what it would be like to be an organization fighting anti-memes (powerful eldritch somethings that can effectively erase information from the universe, including from human memory). How do you fight a war for humanity when you keep forgetting a war is happening at all?

A very interesting mechanism of a book. I enjoyed watching its strangely-shaped gears catch one to the next, partly because this is the sort of story that my brain would not have come up with given several centuries of work. Not just the story itself, but the entire odd structure that makes it go. I do think I fundamentally disagree with one of this books premises about how human beings work, but sure, okay, I’m willing to go with the idea that the people who work at this particular organization are odd ducks who will, for example, have an entire decade of life scooped out of their head by a cosmic horror and who will just kinda shrug and go about calmly reconstructing their life from the evidence left behind.

I will say as a point of flavor more than a warning: this book has that particular approach to character where people are extremely unembodied. Indeed, you could be forgiven for picturing the entire cast as brains in a jar that go about acting on the world and on each other without much affect at all. People do have internal lives, but we glimpse them at odd angles and through narrow pinholes, like when we only get to know about a marriage when one of the spouses has forgotten the other and reads the surveillance reports on them. It’s all definitely a vibe, and not my style, but here it works.

Content notes: Cosmic horror, other kinds of creeping horror of knowing you’ve forgotten something terrifying, violence.

oursin

Suddenly it seems like Christmas is more imminent than I thought - I was going, oh, it is only the beginning of December, and now we are nearly 2 weeks in and aaaaargh.

Anyway, I have managed to get off the book tokens for the great-nieces and nephews - I was waiting on my sister coming back to let me know that, yes, they are all still readers, and then looked again at her email in which she said, would let me know if not....

So I got on to that and I had clearly erased from memory how immensely tiresome Waterstones site is should you want to purchase physical gift cards for several people, you have to make a separate purchase for each one, moan groan, and quite soon reached point where credit cards went 'we are sending you OTP' as you put in details yet another time.

Am feeling a bit generally fratchy today after a night troubled with resurgence of hip issue - probably due to a certain amount of standing about at Institution of Which I Am Honoured to Be A Fellow's Party yestere'en.

Had a moderately agreeable time and pleasant conversation but am still irked that the email issue remains unresolved.

Also, having determined to ring opticians to confirm appointment for dilation test - after a very satisfactory, insofar as holding one's head in awkward positions and having lights flashed in one's eyes can be thus designated, eye-test on Wednesday, at which it was determined I did not need new glasses, hooray, hooray, person I was dealing with right at the end looked at my notes and asked how long it was since they did a dilation test, which resulted in booking me in for a week's time. However, did not get any confirmation, odd I thought since they had been inundating me with texts and emails reminding me of the eye-test. So I was going to ring them but then they rang, going ooops, we are actually closed that day for training, can we reschedule. So rescheduled.

goodbyebird

Well, that was a DUMB amount of scrolling. Remind me to keep up to date on fanart recs, BlueSky is not all too helpful. But I did get to make a variety of happy faces as i re-discovered some fanarts I'd forgotten about. We really are spoiled with IWTV. And to look forwards to: I pre-ordered the BLOOD & BROCADE fanart zine. Wanting to experience the first hand in physical format, I'll have to wait until February. And after that? Well, the rumor is s3 will premiere in April. At least, going by a verbal slip and a couple of deleted cast posts. Not too long now!

Anyways, have a bunch of fanart recs featuring pretty vampires.

❄️ ❄️ ❄️ ❄️
Rec-cember Day 12

( Be all the beautiful things you are, and be them without apology. For all eternity. )

Current Music: King princess - Girl Violence

regshoe

A Murder of Quality by John le Carré (1962). The second Smiley novel is a murder mystery rather than a spy story—the spy thing is only directly relevant because Smiley is dragged into the murder mystery by a former spy colleague—and I like murder mysteries better than spy novels on the whole, so I liked this. It's set at a public school and is very interesting as a portrayal of that setting in the post-war period, though it's not at all a school story, the major characters being mostly teachers and their wives. It's also very much About Class: the murder victim is the wife of a teacher from an unusually lowly background, and much of the dramatic backstory revealed as the murder is investigated involves the tension around the husband having done his best to forget his origins and integrate into the public-schoolmaster class while the wife did not (religion is part of this: they were both originally Nonconformists, but he converted to the CoE while she continued to attend the local chapel until her death). I was annoyed by how everyone, including characters from the Midlands, kept referring to the Midlands as the North, and disappointed by the lack of Mendel (does he reappear in any later books?), and also what's with saying at the start that the action takes place 'as the Lent Half (as the Easter term was called) drew to its close' and then it later becomes clear from various seasonal references that it's actually not only (the equivalent of) Lent term but fairly early on in Lent term, what term/half system is this place using?, but otherwise enjoyed this one very much as a well-constructed twisty mystery with interesting setting and themes.

The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless by Eliza Haywood (1751). A solid eighteenth-century brick following the adventures in London society and courtship of the young protagonist, who is kind, generous, good-hearted and not at all vicious but who is nevertheless rather—you'll never guess what Betsy's central character flaw is. (There is a lot of extremely unsubtle character naming in this book.) It's one of those books that I found interesting rather than liking exactly. Much of it is an illustration of a contemporary sexual morality which can accurately be described as victim-blaming and double standards and not much else; the early part of the book seems to shy away from portraying controversial subjects (one character attempts abortion but fails; another sets in motion legal proceedings to divorce his wife, but dies before the divorce can be completed), and later on there's a sequence which is kind of a shockingly bold repudiation of conventional morality and also kind of really isn't, which was a bit frustrating. Betsy is really a very likeable character, though, and there's a lot of enjoyable overwrought drama and fun eighteenth-century language. (Haywood consistently spells the possessive 'its' with an apostrophe, among other things.)

The Garden God: A Tale of Two Boys by Forrest Reid (1906). A strange, dreamy, virtually-textually queer book that isn't a school story at all despite being about the relationship between two boys at school and very little else. (We see almost nothing of other boys, teachers, lessons, painstakingly-detailed cricket matches or school affairs in general; the one time the book acknowledges the wider world it's to comment 'democracy, how ghastly' and then move straight on.) The writing style is strikingly modern. I enjoyed it, although neither the style nor the relationship development is the sort of thing I really get attached to. Also, a gay relationship beginning with one character confessing to the other that they've already met them in a dream as a child is a weird thing for a book like this to have in common with Carmilla.

Amateur City by Katherine V. Forrest (1984). I had to know what this lesbian detective genre was all about, but this book—in which lesbian police detective Kate Delafield solves the mystery of who murdered the world's worst boss in a big corporate office building, and also isn't the main witness in the case cute?—was a bit of a disappointment. I don't get on with Forrest's writing, I think; then police procedurals are not the kind of detective story I like, and the characters and relationships in this one were not appealing to me. (I can't say I was contrary enough to like Ellen's horrible girlfriend, who does treat her pretty badly, but I was annoyed on her behalf because Forrest was so clearly writing her as a cardboard villain and Ellen just blithely cheats on her and still hasn't come clean and/or broken up with her by the end of the book. That's not a happy ending!)

shipperslist

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spikedluv

I did not go downtown today because I planned to visit my aunt, which is in the other direction. I still went to the McD’s there and got some writing done; ~800 words on a new fic for

fandomtrees!!

I stopped at the Price Chopper there to get GCs for Christmas. (You get 6x the points on GCs this week!) And at a local diner for another GC. I managed to get a good portion of my GCs today, which is nice. (The same GC was not available at my usual Price Chopper OR this one – Texas Roadhouse. Must be everyone wanted to give some Texas Roadhouse love for Christmas? I hope more come in. It won’t be the end of the world if not as I can still get them from Walmart, but I won’t get the points.) I still have to order one (Etsy!) and pick up some at local businesses downtown.

I received a package that contained some Christmas gifts. Other than getting the additional GCs mentioned above, I need to get the package ready to send to Alaska!niece. Hopefully by tomorrow.

I did a load of laundry, hand-washed dishes, went for a walk with the dogs, baked chicken for the dogs' meals, prepared a deposit for the LLC, and scooped kitty litter. I also hit the library to return a book and Stewart's. I pan-fried cheese and garlic sausage for Pip because he was intrigued by the idea of sausage with cheese in it when one of his employees brought it in for lunch. I’m not sure I got the right thing, but he liked it well enough.

I watched the first three eps of The Pitt. It is so easy to marathon these eps!

Temps started out at 24.4(F) and dropped to 20.8 in less than an hour, then reached 23.0 for the high. o_O And that doesn’t take into account the wind, which probably makes it feel more like 10 out there. I got to shovel again; between getting a little more snow and the wind causing drifting, I had a bit to clean off the sidewalk.

Mom Update:

Mom was not doing too badly when I visited her. ( more back here )

Aunt Update:

My aunt was not doing well. ( more back here )

oursin

Happy birthday,

avendya,

cesy,

tazlet and

trude!

dine

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ysabetwordsmith posting in

followfriday

Got any Follow Friday-related posts to share this week? Comment here with the link(s).

Here's the plan: every Friday, let's recommend some people and/or communities to follow on Dreamwidth. That's it. No complicated rules, no "pass this on to 7.328 friends or your cat will die".

Current Mood: busy

thistleingrey

Threading seven strands of thin cotton yarn through a standard heddle and tying the three minimally required knots was enough hand-effort to knock out some night-time sleep. I'd guessed it beforehand and paused after the knots, such that there were only minimal negative effects.

(Since this heddle's holes are too small for a reed hook (which I don't have) or a crochet hook of a size to snag the cotton yarn, I used the Stoorstålka suohpan---a little nylon loop---included with its heddle. A US knockoff product is available, slightly cheaper for me than paying shipping individually from Jokkmokk.)

I still haven't begun weaving with those seven cotton strands because the Stoorstålka backstrap, as demonstrated by their rep, doesn't stay on me. There's a remedy for it, however!

I've unearthed a backstrap starter kit from my first dip into weaving and braiding, purchased more than 25 years ago (it refers to making a case for one's cellphone or pager). It's meant for kids and kid-reach. Its backstrap is a piece of thin nylon rope, affixed to a (useful) band-lock. I have to step into and out of it. But someone pre-warped it 25+ years ago, and I've used it slowly to weave a basic band.

That band could become a backstrap slightly better than the nylon rope, which is a backstrap-using weaver's equivalent of a coder's "hello, world". I'd rather practice, then make something a bit wider. The kit's strap, which is drying with its ends braided, is only 2 cm across.

It seems to me that the main difference between weaving a band (suitable as strap, belt, etc.) and weaving cloth is how strongly each row of weft is beaten, pushed into its neighbors. The tools or loom type used don't matter, except insofar as they aid or limit the implementation.

Like fishing and sailing (but not like knitting, which is far younger a craft), weaving has a lot of terms of art in English. I started making myself a list to check whether I'd understood things consistently across different texts and videos; by now it's longer than several of my recent posts together. That's next, after I drain it of some sidechat, and then I'll resume posting about non-weaving things.

festivids_mod posting in

festivids

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mergatrude

My handwritten daily journal is as empty as this DW one. I haven't really wanted to write about anything while dealing with the ongoing restructure at work. It's a lot of energy and emotions and attention. *breathes in pink, breathes out blue*

Reading: I noped out of two audio books recently. ( cut for rambling )

At a local bookshop I like browsing titles and then checking them out at the library. Recently, I was intrigued by The Seeker and the Sage, by Brigid Delaney. It's an introduction to Stocism, and listening to it has been a good reminder that I am the source of at least half of my suffering. *g* The audio book is enjoyable, even if I want to roll my eyes at the woman a good two thirds of the time.

I also browsed Plain life: on thinking, feeling and deciding by Antonia Pont, but I haven't managed to open it yet, due to all my reserves coming in at once (again!) and me being overwhelmed.

The only other book I have opened is one on making friendship bracelets. I want to make some as gifts for my work colleagues, given that we won't be working together once the changes are implemented.

Watching: Dude and I continue to inch our way through season 5 of Super Store, not missing Amy as much as we thought we might. We also watched Stranger Things 5, Part 1 and are okay with it. The Honest Trailers video is (as usual) pretty spot on.

Gaming: I haven't been playing much on my own. Dude bought Sonic Racing Crossworlds so we've been playing that (is it better than Mario Kart? Maybe?), as well as Sackboy: A Big Adventure. It's adorable! I've also been sucked back into Merge Dragons, though am avoiding spending money on it.

tielan

Well, darn.

I found a way to access my old LJ albums, but then discovered the pics I really wanted were stored on my personal website which...I think I relinquished access to back around 2012, and which was never archived...

DAMMIT.

I didn't think to download it before they went bye byes.

There's a part of me that wonders if I have the old HDs which contained photos from...oh, a decade ago, plus probably change.

Anyway, reading through my old LJ entries has been a blast. So many people, many of whom vanished from the intarwebs, some of whom may have renamed and just not kept up, some of whom I am vaguely in contact with...and some of who have migrated over to DW and are still here!

Amazing.

--

So cousin will not be doing Christmas at his place this year - it's an 'off' year with his wife's family. So we are no-go for Christmas Day.

My options are:
1. Quietly do nothing.
2. Volunteer.
3. Offer to host for 'orphans'

I will most likely end up at #1.

It's a bit late to volunteer, and I asked a friend (birthday twin) who has no family here in Sydney if she and her family would like to come around for Christmas lunch, but she has guests and a lot of things are up in the air for her. I might put up an invite for a local 'host a sister' meet up, but I doubt that anyone will want to meet with a stranger on Christmas Day.

It might be time to accept that the 'relatives Christmas' will only be happening every second year from now on and to plan accordingly. *sigh*

shipperslist

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tarlanx posting in

c_ent

Created for

sweetandshort December: This and That
Theme: Winter

Fangs of Fortune - Zhao Yuanzhou Snow Fall by Tarlan GIF

For info: I created the icons first then used www.funnyphoto.net to add the falling snow... but then had to crop and resize the output images back to icon size.

goodbyebird

The fixation is hyper y'all. Headvids. Brain zoomies. Giddiness at good characterizations (and, for this particular fandom, the characters being ~an appropriate amount of Bastard~ 🤌).

❄️ ❄️ ❄️ ❄️
Rec-cember Day 11

vein by vein by

morian (2,415 words). Not Lestat being jealous of the sun XD (don't let my comment trick you into thinking it's crack fic, excellent voices in this)
Before he died and was reborn as a creature, not a man, Louis preferred the night. In this city that stretches and groans and howls to life at dusk, he had no reason to favour the sun. His business was the night. People like him, that is to say pimps and grifters, came to bed long after dawn and slept past noon.

It wasn't until he lost the sun that he learned it was something that could be missed.

Though even winters in New Orleans are mild and summer nights leave shirt collars clinging to sweat-slick necks like desperate hands, there is a special kind of warmth in sunlight on the skin. It reeks of childhood and the garden and the roof, of sunrise with his brother.

“I don’t miss the sun,” he will say to a jaded reporter on the balcony of his Dubai altar a hundred years from now. “The reminders it carries.” And it will be true then. But here is a man who ran through the street and nearly burned to death on the first morning he carried the dark gift. And here is a man who grieves his brother, not just one life lost but a thousand possibilities with it.

More fic, vid, and icon recs below :DD

( Btw I'm going to need a vampire to greet Daniel with 'so you're the divorce papers I've heard so much about' in s3, thanks. )

Current Location: on the bus home from work, I read porn on the busssss

shipperslist

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oursin

This is rather news to me - I think of people protesting the enclosure of commons as doing this a) a lot earlier and in more rural parts: Today in London’s parklife: 1000s destroy enclosure fences, Hackney Downs, 1875:

The 1870s were a high point of anti-enclosure struggles in the London area, following on from a decade of (mostly, though not exclusively) peaceful campaigns to prevent large open spaces being developed in the 1860s. Wanstead Flats in 1871, Chiselhurst Common in 1876, Eelbrook Common (Fulham) in 1878, all saw direct action against fences, as part of long-running resistance against the theft of common land.
....
Many of these struggles were characterised by the large-scale involvement of radical movements, as London radicals, secularists and elements who would later help to form socialist groups made open space and working class access to it a major part of their political focus. Radical land agitation, notably through the Land and Labour League, was beginning to revive the question of access to land as a social question, and within cities this manifested as both battles to defend green space, and propaganda around the theft of the land from the labouring classes.

The struggle is not over:

Centuries of hard fought battles saved many beloved places from disappearing, and laws currently protect parks, greens and commons. But times change… Pressures change. Space in London is profitable like never before. For housing mainly, but also there are sharks ever-present looking to exploit space for ‘leisure’. And with the current onslaught on public spending in the name of balancing the books (ie cutting as much as possible in the interests of the wealthy), public money spent on public space is severely threatened.
Many are the pressures on open green spaces – the costs of upkeep, cleaning, maintenance,
improvement, looking after facilities… Local councils, who mainly look after open space, are struggling. Some local authorities are proposing to make cuts of 50 or 60 % to budgets for parks. As a result, there are the beginnings of changes, developments that look few and far between now, but could be the thin end of the wedge.
So you have councils looking to renting green space to businesses, charities, selling off bits, shutting off parks or parts of them for festivals and corporate events six times a year… Large parts of Hyde Park and Finsbury Park are regularly fenced off for paying festivals already; this could increase. Small developments now, but maybe signs of things to come. Now is the time to be on guard, if we want to preserve our free access to the green places that matter to us.

***

HEIR, the Historic Environment Image Resource:

HEIR’s mission is to rescue neglected and endangered photographic archives, unlock their research potential, and make them available to the public.
HEIR contains digitised historic photographic images from all over the world dating from the late nineteenth century onwards. HEIR’s core images come from lantern slide and glass plate negatives held in college, library, museum and departmental collections within the University of Oxford. New resources are being added all the time, including collections from outside the University.

***

Dragon’s teeth and elf garden among 2025 additions to English heritage list:

The heritage body publishes a roundup of unusual listings to draw attention to the diversity of places that join the national heritage list for England each year.
As well as the anti-tank defences, this year’s list of 19 places includes a revolutionary 1960s concrete university block, a model boat club boathouse built in 1933 by men who were long-term unemployed, and a magical suburban “elf garden”.

***

Art history is too important to be the preserve of the privileged:

The act of looking has become commodified as technology companies ‘mine and sell our attention like coal’, as Kee writes. Letting art history become endangered and drift further into elite status is not only unfair, it’s also perilous. ‘Art history gives you tools to interpret the visual world and makes you more of a critical viewer of political messages, advertising and a barrage of social media images,’ says Perry. ‘It’s dangerous if you can’t examine these things critically.’

omens

We have been absolutely DUMPED ON the last couple days here. Sooo so much snow. I have shoveled so much. The neighbour took pity and helped me with half of the driveway again (he has a snowblower - the entire street has snowblowers). Why do none of these snowblower people help me with the ton of snow compressed from the plow??? ;_;

Anyway, I went to two different grocery stores the day before the snow so we are STOCKED. It's snowing again on Saturday, though. :/

The sunlight through the ice and snow this morning is bringing me joy.

In media news:

I just finished the first season of Hilda, what a cute and fun show. Fun folklore. Nice animation.

Our ongoing kdrama is Beautiful Gong Shim which started out really strong (huuuuuuge ND4ND vibes, two of the most autistic leads ever) but seems to be wobbling around 8 or 9, and we're not halfway through. A 20 ep drama?! Pretty rare. I'm not sure they have the story for it, but we'll see!

An update!!! My other neighbour helped me chop up the plow snow and shovel it enough that my car can be moved. He also gave me all the hot neighbourhood gossip, hell yeah. 🥹

Current Mood: 🫠🤓
Current Location: ❄️🏘️❄️
Current Music: 🙂‍↕️✨

full_metal_ox posting in

c_ent

Watch on YouTube

Lyrics, as translated in the subtitles:

SCREAMING FANS: Bravo, Johnny!)

JOHNNY: I’m the singing killer
The singing killer is none other than me
When it comes to fighting and daring acts
Don’t belittle me
I’m the singing killer
Fist is a fist
Knife is a knife
Kung fu, judo, and karate
I specialise in all
If you dare,
Come and try me

The singing killer is me
I’m the singing killer
I dare to love, dare to hate
And most daring of acts
Don’t belittle me
I’m the singing killer
Pretty girls are pretty girls
Gold is gold
Girls and gold, though they’re fine
These in no way can compromise my heroism
If you dare,
Come and try

SCREAMING FANS: Johnny!

spikedluv

I had a chiropractic appointment this morning. I hit the Pharmacy for myself and Price Chopper to pick up some things for mom while I was downtown.

I stopped by mom’s briefly to delivery her groceries etc, but didn’t stay because of the snow. I also hand-washed dishes, ran a load in the dishwasher, went for several walks with Pip and the dogs, cut up chicken for the dogs' meals, e-filed the sales and tire tax for the garage, wrote out a check for my aunt, and scooped kitty litter. I made a wacky cake because I’ve been in the mood and put together the ziti for supper.

I got more Christmas stuff done: I placed two orders and made a list so I could make sure I was on track with GC purchases. The big thing will be if I get things wrapped or bagged ahead of time. I also watched some HGTV programs.

ETA: I forgot to tell you about a poll I saw on Tumblr today. Thinking about my answer to it made me chuckle. It was the last song you heard as a tattoo. I've been listening to the Top Gun CD so the last song I actually heard was the instrumental theme song, which would not make a good tattoo. But I got thinking, it would've been cool if it had been 'Danger Zone'!! And then I thought, it would have been appropriate if it had been 'Playing With the Boys', since that's what I do here on DW. *g*

Temps started out at 30.2(F) and reached 36.3. The snow started about 7:45am, but the roads were coated by the time I left downtown and picked up the dogs (on the way home so I didn’t have to make another trip). It was basically over at 3pm and we only got about 4 inches (out of a possible 8, so that doesn't hurt my feelings). The first time I shoveled the snow was pretty light, but by the second time it had gotten heavier, probably because the temp went up a bit.

Mom Update:

Please see this post for today’s update. I’ve since put in a cut for those who won’t want to read it when scrolling.

oursin

Happy birthday,

crookedeye!

dine

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princessofgeeks

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Current Mood: sad

tielan

Let me know if you want seasonal or unseasonal. I'm okay with either, but I can't guarantee the stamps will be neutral, I'm afraid.

I can send them in Jan when the stamps are back to normal, maybe? Let me know if you'd prefer that.

jenab

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schneefink

I played very little Silksong in the past 1-2 weeks and did pretty much everything I wanted to in my first playthrough (before the DLCs come out) so now is a good time to post the "epilogue" notes.

( Things I did after the true ending )

( Some more thoughts )

( LPs I watched )

I already know what I want to play next: Hades 2, of course. (But probably not this year, I have a huge backlog of books etc.)

oursin

What I read

Finished Saving Suzy Sweetchild, which has our protag not only dealing with the usual movie hassle but being called in to deal with the papers of a suddenly deceased in possibly suspicious circumstances academic, as well as (with the usual cohorts) trying to work out what exactly the game is with the apparent kidnapping for ransom of child star, who is beginning to age out of cuteness. We observe that the classic sleuths may sometimes have had two mysteries on their hands but very seldom had to multitask like this.

Some while ago I read an essay by Ursula Le Guin on the novels of Kent Haruf: I fairly recently picked up Our Souls at Night (2015), which is more or less novella length, as a Kobo deal, and it was well-written, and unusual if very low-key, and I daresay I might venture on more Haruf but am in no great rush to do so.

Then on to Upton Sinclair, The Return of Lanny Budd (1953) - perhaps not quite as good as the earlier entries in the series - some of it felt a bit info-dumpy - Lanny and his friends who are promoting peace face the problem of Soviet Stalinist Communism in the Cold War era. I can't help contemplating them and thinking that they are probably going to be sitting targets for HUAC in a few years' time, because they are coming at the issue from a democratic socialist perspective and I suspect their Peace Program is going to be considered deeply sus by McCarthyism. Also, Lanny jnr is going to be of draft age come the 1960s....

On the go

To lighten the mood, Alexis Hall, Audrey Lane Stirs the Pot (Winner Bakes All #3) arrived yesterday.

Up next

The new (double-issue) Literary Review

Also (what was in the straying parcel last week) Dickon Edwards (whom some of you may remember from LJ days?) Diary at the Centre of the Earth: Vol. 1.

cathrowan

Multiple appointments this week for various kinds of body work:

Monday - blood draw for Vitamin D levels
Tuesday - pedicure
Wednesday (today) - physio for strained calf muscle
Thursday - deep tissue massage

Nothing (yet) for Friday

I want to be as physically prepared as I can be for two days of dancing at Borealis' Yule feast this weekend. There's a social dance on Saturday and an extended dance practice on Sunday. I'm looking forward to the event!

spikedluv

What I Just Finished Reading: Since last Wednesday I have read/finished reading: And to All a Good Bite (Andy Carpenter Series) by David Rosenfelt and Framed in Death (In Death Series) by J.D. Robb.

What I am Currently Reading: The Serpent on the Crown (An Amelia Peabody Mystery) by Elizabeth Peters.

What I Plan to Read Next: I have a library book out, so hopefully that.

Book 108 of 2025: And to All a Good Bite (Andy Carpenter Series) (David Rosenfelt)

I enjoyed this book! ( spoilers )

I don't know why, but I have a soft spot for the Christmas-themed stories in this series. This one was very good; I'm giving it five hearts.

♥♥♥♥♥

Book 109 of 2025: Framed in Death (In Death Series) (J.D. Robb)

I enjoyed this! ( spoilers )

This was a good story and I'm giving it five hearts.

♥♥♥♥♥

spikedluv

I hit Walmart while I was downtown. (I got to see Baby A – should I change that to Toddler A now?!! *g* – again when I was at BK and Sister S was going through the drive-thru with her. Apparently she loves the hash browns. *g* They were on their way to PT, then school.)

I drove mom to her appointments, did two loads of laundry, hand-washed dishes, went for a walk with Pip and the dogs, cut up chicken for the dogs' meals, scooped kitty litter, and showered. I also hit the post office and the bank.

I ended up making a crustless broccoli and cheese quiche for supper. I'll put the ziti together for tomorrow instead.

I read the Amelia Peabody book and watched an HGTV program.

Temps started out at -3.3(F) (why so freaking cold already?!!) and reached 25.9 (that I saw). BRR!

Mom Update:

Mom was not feeling great today. ( more back here )

goodbyebird

I'm back at work for a couple of days, so throwing today's rec out early to avoid forgetting and ruining my ten (\o/) day streak.

Chosen by the very first hit of the Random Icon button... *drumroll*

❄️ ❄️ ❄️ ❄️
Rec-cember Day 10

Hawkeye / Thunderbolts
got me thinking she's so cool by

explosivesky (6,983 words). Cute, through and through. Since it's December and at one point presents are mentioned, do I get to put another notch under Christmas Recs?
“Yes, I know of Ikea,” Yelena says. “I have been all over the world. I know it is a furniture store.”

“Okay, but have you ever been inside one?” Kate pegs. She even leans closer, as if searching for the crack revealed by the question.

Yelena shifts between feet. “No,” she mumbles grumpily. “I have not been inside one.”

“They have meatballs. Swedish meatballs. They’re delicious. We can get you, like, maybe a bookshelf, or a corkboard, or - definitely a bedspread, I honestly thought that was a large decorative boulder for some reason–”

“You want to bring color into my room, Kate Bishop?”

Current Location: I'm on a boat motherfucker
Current Music: King Princess - Girls

oursin

Happy birthday,

cofax7!

adore posting in

c_ent

I recently watched this gorgeous C-pop performance.

Watch on YouTube

He's so charmingly expressive. Someone in the comments said 'elegance of a noble with the playfulness of a youth' and that's absolute BARS.

morbane posting in

yuletide

Yuletide is coming! If everything goes well, we will reveal works in the main collection at 9pm UTC on 24 December, two weeks from now. Madness works are revealed a day later.

(Default deadline is 9pm UTC on the 10th; posting deadline is 9pm UTC on the 17th.)

In Yuletide, it's important to leave a comment on your gift (or gifts) to thank your author.

If you think you'll be delayed in commenting until late in the anonymous period (ending 1 January) or maybe not even until well into the new year, you can use this post to OPTIONALLY let your author(s) know about that delay ahead of time. You don't need to give a reason, but an approximate time indication may be helpful. Please include your AO3 name.

Thanks everyone! Good luck with writing, and please consider the beta post or

yuletide_pinch_hits if you have capacity for beta jobs or pinch hits!

dine

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

shipperslist

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

fred_mouse

Well into 'it's not one thing after another, the damn things overlap' territory here

nominal deadline for my confirmation of candidature to have been submitted has passed without anything from my reviewers (one of three from our school has theirs)
Eldest's quilt has been somewhat abandoned, which is annoying me but I haven't had the cope
Instead I've been working on logistics of Youngest's quilt, which is very heavy in the planning stages (picture quilt, converting it from a photo)
Took a week at home on light duties last week, this week I'm back in the office. Did surprisingly well yesterday. Surgery site looks to have healed on the surface but the internals are still quite sore, so I'm still sleeping with the post-surgery bra.
Middlest and their partners have bought a house. They move in January. There was a messy blow up with the fourth housemate, who has since moved out, so they are learning how they fit together as a trio, and it sounds like things are going well. R's parents are providing lots of important support for the process.
Saw the nurse for follow up on Monday. They didn't like the wound support stuff I'd found in the pharmacy (because it is plasticky) and replaced it with a stiff fabric 'can be washed but blow dry it after' dressing that was so annoying/itchy I took it off last night (and it took off lots of ick; that area has an unsurprising build up of Stuff) and put the second piece of the wound support stuff on. That is so much better -- it is a clear plastic lattice that actually moves with the area, rather than digging in. Also, I'm not reacting to the glue.
My middle sibling and their partner are moving to Perth for two years. D has a job at UWA, K's job will allow 'remote' work from the Perth office. Amusingly, D described UWA as 'not restructuring' and Youngest laughed when reading that out. My comment was that from my perspective it has never not been restructuring, it is just the level that is changing. Plus, there was a leaked minutes from some meeting that suggested they were going to try and get a merger with Curtin, which I learned about when the Curtin Guild sent a 'not if we can help it' email out to all students. Pointed out to sibling that as they and I share a family name there is a non-zero chance they are going to get spotted as related.

tielan

I don't have social anxiety, I have acceptance anxiety. Like, even with friends and people I've known for years, there's a part of me that has major friendship imposter syndrome: "what if they discover that they don't really like me after all?"

--

Tressie McMillan Cottom is a joy:

Behold the decade of mid tech!

That is what I want to say every time someone asks me, "WHat about A.I.?" with the breathless anticipation of a boy who thinks this is the summer he finally gets to touch a boob.

--

I'm so so tired right now. Just in a permanent state of exhaustion.

Yesterday afternoon, I explained to my sister about 'climate change adaptation' and the phase that we're going into. She listened, but I don't think she really heard.

--

I'm in a bit of a bodily self-hating stage right now after putting on about 5kg during my trip. Everything works fine, but the abdominal fat is frustrating me. So is the fact that all the Reformer Pilates classes are taught by women who might weigh 2/3 of me if they were dressed in heavy clothes and soaking wet.

"No, I can't do that move, my belly gets in the way."

Unfortunately, I suspect the only way to lose those kg is through food restriction, which I hate. It would involve removing sugary things entirely, probably for a long period. Ugh.

"Diet starts after new year"?

--

A giant tree in my front yard may be dying. It doesn't seem to be re-leafing as smoothly as it usually does, particularly in the crown, and after a heatwave yesterday, it's dropped a whole lot more leaves, many of them green.

More than anything else, this is stressing me right now. I don't know how old the tree is, but it's been there since we moved in, a giant bulwark against the south and the west. Just on top of everything else, it's unnerving seeing the bare upper branches of it.

goodbyebird

Sooooo… if you read a spectacular fic but at the end see it has 880 whopping comments (🤯), is it still cool to add it to your rec list and assume there’s actually a person that hasn’t read it yet? Asking for a friend.

Toootally unrelated, I’ve been watching Welcome to Derry and my brain’s been having a great time being a bastard and making AUs where Claudia and Louis don’t make it to Europe but wind up in Derry instead. Bonus Armand in the sewers to be extra bastard about it.

❄️ ❄️ ❄️ ❄️
Rec-cember Day 9

Santa Clarita Diet
what all the troubles are for by

thegatorgood (1,961 words). Aw man I miss the Hammonds, and this had me laughing repeatedly.
Dad cleared his throat. "How's your foot, honey?"

"It's funny," said Mom, "but it reminds me of that time your mother took us out to that French restaurant right before we got engaged, do you remember? There was a cheese that tasted like this."

She chomped down on a toe. Abby decided it was time to check in with Eric.

"You did what?" he asked, when she told him about their latest run-in with the law.

Et tu, nerdus? "I don't get what's such a big deal about it. I mean, Dad pointed a gun at someone's head for the tenth time, but somehow I'm in trouble for grabbing a can of Pringles."

"Because," said Eric, his face in the Skype window so worried it was almost cute, "in west Texas pulling a gun out is like saying, 'Hi, I have a gun!' But if you pull a gun out and take stuff they put you in jail for years."

"It was just a bunch of junk food!"

"So what, Jean Valjean? Armed robbery is armed robbery."

Current Music: King Princess - Covers

oursin

London Pride has been handed down to us:

Busiest Thoroughfare of the Metropolis of the World - review of book on the history of The Strand.

Over 250,000 images of London from the collections at The London Archives and Guildhall Art Gallery

***

Heritage endangered:

On an old cobbled street in a market town, residents say hundreds of years of history are disappearing before their eyes as thieves keep stealing large slabs of Yorkshire stone.

The Royal Society of Medicine is putting some of its rarest books and photographs up for sale at Christie’s this month. Is this a case of medical negligence? Screaming. The GMC should strike them off.

Rare piece of Australia's Indigenous history captured on camera in the desert

According to a local anthropologist in Broome, the photos were taken by a nurse who was volunteering at the La Grange mission.
In his opinion, the images are extraordinary — one of the rare moments of "first contact" on the Australian continent to be captured on camera.
The originals were donated to a Catholic Church archive, which is not accessible to the public.
But it turns out there are copies. On a dusty CD buried in the boxes of an elderly author.

I have a lot of questions here about disinterring the original - I have very cynical thoughts about the church 'archive', as probably a storeroom in a basement somewhere - and in general things which are literally hidden in the (unprocessed, uncared for) archives of some institution.

And at this I can only fall on the floor, weeping and going 'the horror, the horror': [S]ome AI chatbots (such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Bard and others) may generate incorrect or fabricated archival references.

***

Gender and learning:

The Real Way Schools are Failing Boys - though possibly, just de-emphasise competition, for starters???

Estrogen levels predict enhanced learning (at least in rats....)

wychwood

I made an automation flow that actually works!! I did realise afterwards that I need to add more error handling into it, but I am fully into celebrating the initial success right now.

Particularly because work is otherwise not as rich in successes as I would like. My inbox is a disaster area (everything in there requires action; I aim to keep it under 100 items and right now I'm running at 125 on a good day), the last report I actually completed in full was for July and I have a cumulative 2800 items to review in case they need moving, 900 duplicate records that need cleaning up, three test plans to write, an entire component that is supposed to go live before Christmas but which isn't with me for testing yet... and none of those things are even on the action tracker Boss Lady and I go through in my weekly 121.

But I did cross off one of my ten KANBAN items this morning and deleted two or three to-do list items. I'm hoping that tonight I will sleep instead of going for a series of one-hour naps all night, and maybe tomorrow I'll have the energy to tackle Power Automate...

dancing_serpent posting in

c_ent

Welcome to Topic Tuesday! Right away I want to stress that discussion posts are always welcome to the community, you don't have to wait until a Topic Tuesday rolls around, and then maybe be disappointed by the current topic of discussion. Whenever you want to talk about something, please simply make a separate entry to this comm, no matter the week, the time, or the topic. All right? *g*

Today's topic is Your Highlight(s) of the Year. 2025 is almost over, so let's take a moment to look back. What were your highlights of the year? Which drama/movie/novel was your favourite, or made the year memorable for you? Did you fall in love with a new actor or singer? Or find a new song/piece of music that seems stuck in your head on an endless loop? Go into detail as much or as little as you like, and leave links if you want.

As usual, if you want to talk about spoilers, please use one of these codes to hide them.

or

conuly

You'd think we'd get snow, but no. Tomorrow's forecast thus far calls for a "wintery mix". The only wintery mix I want is cocoa and marshmallows, not whatever the hell happens to fall from the sky like soggy doom confetti.

19F, jesus. At least it'll be warmer tomorrow. Warm enough to get a fucking wintery mix instead of snow, which is what we really want.

********************

( Read more... )

spikedluv

9-1-1: On hiatus until Jan 8.

Matlock: Mom and I have not yet watched this episode. I’m actually kind of dreading it because I’m worried things are going to backfire.

Tracker: This was a good ep. ( spoilers )

spikedluv

I had a dr appt this morning, my annual. I had been putting off several appointments I need to make while taking care of mom and driving her to appointments, so I made several today, including two ultrasounds and my mammogram. I also got a tetanus shot (which I later completely forgot about until my arm started aching a bit in the evening). I was told I could get the pneumonia vaccine, but turned it down for now. (For those of you who get it, what are your thoughts on it?)

I made quickie trips to Dollar Tree and Price Chopper while I was downtown. I had planned to stay home tomorrow morning, since I’ll be driving mom to her appointment, but now I’m not sure what I’m going to do. We’re supposed to get snow on Wednesday, so perhaps I need to get food to plan more meals, just in case. However, we’re only supposed to get 1-3, and as long as they don’t close school the roads should be fine, AND I have my chiropractic appointment Wednesday morning, which I don’t want to miss . . . Ahhh! *pulls hair* Decisions!

I visited mom, did a load of laundry, browned ground beef for tomorrow’s ziti, hand-washed dishes, ran a load in the dishwasher, cut up chicken for the dogs' meals, and scooped kitty litter. I also hit the post office to mail more cards and Stewart's (for gas and milk). I shake 'n baked chicken legs for Pip's supper and had some cheese tortellini with butter and grated cheese for mine.

I watched Tracker and read more in Amelia Peabody.

Temps started out at 10.6(F) and reached 17.4. Cold.

Mom Update:

Mom was doing okay when I saw her. ( more back here )

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