memewidth

A full day yesterday! I started off by meeting my lovely knitting group in Biddy's for the morning, and having the usual agreeable natter.

Then it was off to Jorge's Portuguese restaurant for lunch with the family—Bun and MrBunToBe (a nickname that will be more convenient to type in a year or so), Boy, BIL and of course, Beast. Three of us has tapas, the others had a main meal. Two of them had Iberican (?) Pork, fed on acorns and in consequence a darker, stronger-flavoured meat than the customary pork. It seemed to be a good choice.

Then Beast, Bun and her chap and I went off to see Hamilton at the Theatre Royal.

It is a very interesting show, and the chorus had So! Much! Energy! They seemed to be doing challenging moves throughout so much of the show, very impressive. (And they'd be doing them again in the evening!) There was a big black guy among them, definitely a couple of sizes larger than most chorus boys: he had real presence, I couldn't help but watch him when he was on stage. Being just as flexible and lively as everybody else, of course. Beast and I spent some time debating the costumes of the female chorus members. Those skin-tight, nearly flesh-coloured leggings are, well, distracting; some of the moves might not have read as quite so focus-pullingly sexual if the women had been wearing breeches like the men were. And waistcoats instead of corsets. I couldn't decide whether at some points the chorus women were representing prostitutes, or if it was just a slightly off costume choice. Overall, I'd have preferred to see everybody dressed in the same kit. But perhaps I missed something about them? Anyone?

The sound was, I'm happy to say, mostly satisfactory during this show, apart from slight fuzziness early on. Not that there is nearly as much orchestration to overburden the voices as there would be in a more conventional musical, but it was welcome.

I suspect that when we watched the Disney recording of the OBC, there may have been subtitles. It's quite difficult to grasp all the words when they are not just Rap, but delivered at machine-gun speed. It wasn't hard to understand what was going on, of course, but there are subtleties and clevernesses that you miss if, like me, you don't listen to rap in the normal course of things. I just don't have the ear for it. Some of the 'motif' phrases were repeated often enough for me to figure them out, but I know I missed stuff.

King George was a lot more physical than the OBC George. He was, in fact, hilarious! You could really feel his butthurtness (this is not a word but it ought to be) and his glee.

Overall a very exciting show. Good to have seen it live. I may watch the version on Disney again to see if I can catch more of the words, because I have a feeling they are clever and I would enjoy them.

turps

It was quite a day yesterday.

It started well, I went with James to get our flu jabs, and got those done fast, in and out of the pharmacy before our official appointment times.

Then off to the doctor, who after a few attempts managed to draw enough blood from James to send off for the routine tests he needs. Though, I do wish people would listen when James tells them it's easier to draw from the back of his hand. I get it probably feels wrong for the medical people to start there, but his veins are so buried in the crook of his arms that it's almost impossible to find them.

Left there and came home as the tumble drier repair man was due. That actually went better than I expected, turns out the baring had gone causing the belt to snap. But the guy said it was such a good machine it was worth repairing, though due to the space needed for the repair, he'd have to take it to his workshop to do so. But, it should be fixed and back by Monday afternoon, and for cheaper than I was expecting, which is good.

After he left we did some organising for the craft fair we've done today. Got everything sorted, and then got ready to take Murphy to a vet appointment as it looked like his UTI was back again. But, turns out it was much more serious and he had a bladder blockage.

As I couldn't get him an appointment until 5:30, that meant the vet who could do the op to unblock had gone so we were sent off to the out of hours emergency vet hospital. This is where he ended up a month ago, so I knew they were nice there, but man, I really didn't expect to be heading there again.

( cut for vet stuff )

Drove home and because it was so late ended up at the fishshop for a cheese patty, chips and curry sauce tea. Ate that then ended up just waiting for the vet to phone with news, which she did close to ten.

Then to top it all I had the most horrendous night sweats that woke me up. ( cut for detail )

So that was yesterday, and I did not want to get up at 6am to get ready for the craft fair today. But I did, and the fair itself went okay.

Now we're home, and I intend to have a lobster bath, wait for the nurse to phone about Murphy, or phone them myself if I can't wait, then watch Strictly. Though tbh, I'd say the odds on me staying awake for the whole thing are pretty low right now.

ruric

I had a very productive week at work 6th-10th October.

Unfortunately I was incubating something and on the evening of Friday 10th I went to bed very early and woke up sick on Saturday. I made it to a pumpkin crochet class on Sunday and survived the week at work by staying as far away as possible from colleagues and more or less going to bed as soon as I got home and living on tinned soup and pasta.

Still not feeling great but a bit better than last weekend but I have done nothing around sorting the flat out - in fact many things spiralled backwards because I had very few spoons the last 7 days!

I am hoping to reclaim my kitchen and bathroom today.

Apparently Question of the Day is
The definition of an antique is something that is 100 years old – do you own anything that old?

Yes - most of the furniture in the cottage and flat is probably that old, as are some pictures and ornaments, my oil lamp collection and some of my jewellery, plus several books.

turps

I've been re-reading Musketeers fic this last week or so. I started due to whumptober, but as that's not as busy as usual in the fandom, I've been re-reading some favourites, too. I haven't got there yet, but suspect a Dragon Riders series re-read will be in my future soon.

I've also read an ER/The Pitt cross I enjoyed, where John Carter and Robby discover they're half brothers after an unexpected meeting. They're not fandoms I usually read it -- I saw the rec on my network -- so suspect this could be a common thing, but I enjoyed this take on it Like Brothers We Meet.

Rosie cancelled class yesterday due to being ill, so I had an unexpected free morning. James was off too, and normally we would have gone to the cinema or for a walk/drive, but he'd scheduled his annual long term condition nurse review for midday. Of course, three different nurses completely failed to get any blood out of him, so he's back tomorrow, so a doctor can try.

That's after we both go to the chemist to get our flu jabs, but not Covid boosters this time, as it seems the vast majority of people in the UK don't qualify for them now. So chemist, doctors, then home as the tumbler drum has stopped turning, so the repair guy is coming out late morning. Hopefully, it's just a snapped belt, and it can be fixed as the machine itself is still heating up, so *fingers crossed*

I also watched Bodhi for an hour late afternoon as her mams went to her first parents evening. She's doing well at school, starting to recognise and write quite a few letters, though her teacher said she's very quiet. Which made me laugh as she literally didn't stop talking once the whole time I was there.

We played superheroes with Batman, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Captain America and Hulk action figures. They had quite the adventures, especially when they met a herd of dinosaurs. Though, poor Hulk seemed to spend a disproportionate amount of time on the naughty step.

pensnest

I've been hibernating with a nasty cold for a few days—even had to miss my mixed chorus rehearsal for the first time ever—but today is Beast's birthday, and we went for a celebratory brunch at Number 33. He had The Beast, appropriately, a mighty collection of sausages, bacon, black pudding, beans, bubble and squeak, mushrooms, hash brown, fried bread, and eggs. I may have forgotten something. I'm still contemplating what to cook for supper—the original plan was a rib-sticking stew, but I think it might be pasta with chicken and mushrooms instead.

Slightly to my surprise, I have written about 10,000 words of not-fanfic. A bunch more to go.

althea_valara

A friend linked to this tumblr: https://bitimdrake.tumblr.com/post/797526051236577280

It's a list of tropes that have been flipped, so for example instead of the "Only one bed" trope, it's "Too many beds" trope. I'm cackling just reading the flipped tropes, and some of them are giving me Ideas, so I thought I'd boost in case others are looking for some good prompts right now.

Current Mood: amused

tsuki_no_bara

happy humpday, o my flist. i hope my fellow americans enjoyed the long weekend, assuming you got indigenous people's day off. (i did. altho to be fair the u gives us a lot of random holidays.) i took advantage by a. driving all the moving boxes up to my cousin's house so she could stuff them in the back of her garage - they're my sister's boxes and since neither of us has any storage space our cousin said she'd store them for us, b. going to ikea with my sister (i need to buy some bookcases and i just wanted to see them in person) (we did not have meatballs and also the little snack counter was closed so i couldn't even get a soft serve), followed by c. dinner and a movie (one battle after another which i really liked), and finally d. sitting on my ass watching tv and doing laundry. also i met a couple of cats who live on the first floor of my building. they're very friendly and one of them is THE SOFTEST.

what i spent a chunk of monday watching was wayward, which is on netflix and is DEEPLY disturbing. DEEPLY. it's about a school for wayward kids (hence the title) and it's got some very culty vibes and is set in 2003 for some reason and did i mention that it's disturbing?

i'm also watching the lowdown with ethan hawke and am enjoying it thoroughly altho i think the plot is starting to get away from me. it's on a regular channel so there's only one episode a week so i have to WAIT. on the one hand i don't mind that i can't binge watch but at the same time i want to know what's going to happen NOW. anyway it's much less disturbing and not at all culty which is refreshing and ethan hawke is fun to watch. his character is kind of a chaos magnet - his heart's in the right place but, well, chaos follows him everywhere. that part is very entertaining.

Current Mood: should be in bed!
Current Music: jurassic park

althea_valara

communal_creators is a creative challenge where you pledge to be creative for a certain amount of time daily OR to finish projects of varying size. We have writers, yarn artists, vidders, bakers, someone making music - if it's creative, it counts. The current round ended last night, so here is a recap of what I did during the month.

I had pledged Time Tier II, to average 30 minutes a day of creative activity. I didn't pledge to finish any projects, because most of projects were massive things that I likely couldn't complete in a month's time.

[Image Description: A screenshot of a spreadsheet, showing I averaged over an hour of creative activity daily during Communal Creators.]

Crochet saw the most activity, with Smallweb coming second. I crocheted on 20 days and touched 5 different projects. The majority of the work went to my Motion Picture Mosaic Cardi, which saw 13 hours of activity.

"Smallweb" was my moniker for work on my Neocities site. This saw a LOT of work in September because

smallweb September was happening and double-dipping on challenges? {Yes, please.} I did smallweb work on 12 days, with 8 of those being in September for 10 hours. Another 3.5 hours happened in October. This was the area that saw most success, I feel; I finished copying over files from Dreamwidth which meant FFBE season 1 is DONE. I also completed documentation for FFXI:Rise of the Zilart and started Chains of Promathia. I'm quite pleased with the work I did, though I need to get back to it if I ever want to finish the site.

Knitting was my third most active category. I knitted on 13 days, on 5 different projects. Most active was the Central Park Hoodie, which saw ~5 hours 40 minutes.

I am VERY PLEASED that some of my creative activity took the shape of writing, and that's thanks to

ladiesbingo. I worked on THREE different fics for it! That's so exciting to me! Alas, it quickly fell off, and I didn't touch the writing in the last two weeks. I'd really like to get back to it sometime, but finding time is the problem. Also, I need to do some canon review.

I feel this round of

communal_creators was a qualified success. I'm very pleased with my output. Thanks to

senmut for hosting!

Current Mood: creative

isis

Hiya! It's been a while! I blame Yuletide. (The preparatory work is a Lot, even with all the comods and tagmods who do an amazing job of putting things together. So, make me feel like it was worthwhile: go sign up! 😁)

But I have been consuming media!

What I recently finished reading:

Chaos Vector and Catalyst Gate, the second and third books in the space-opera Protectorate series by Megan E. O'Keefe. I enjoyed the series overall, though I feel like O'Keefe slowed things down and lost momentum after the sequence of clever twists from the first book. The actual story behind the story turned out to be less novel and captivating than I was expecting, and although a few of the reveals were "a-HA!" great, some parts just felt as though the worldbuilding was being done on the fly, and the plot built around to justify it.

The writing occasionally felt a little fanficcy to me, like, "let's express found family sentiment here! Let's throw in an obstacle that turns out not to be one!" but overall it was easy to read and fairly entertaining.

Europe in Autumn by Dave Hutchinson, which like the first book of the previous series is a reread so I can read the rest of the books in the series. This one I first read in 2014, and as with the Protectorate books, I am stunned at how much I completely don't remember at all. Here's my review from 2014:

A whole lot of elements in this book hit my buttons perfectly. There is the alternate-history/near-future aspect, which centers on the interesting idea that the EU has not just fallen apart but splintered into dozens of tiny pocket states (and I have to say, there was a strange resonance to reading the bit about Scotland's explosive parting from the UK only a month after the real-world vote failed). There is the largely Eastern European setting, the Estonian and Polish and Hungarian characters, which read delightfully exotic to this American (though I wonder how it will read to my European friends!). The writing is strong, never getting in the way of the story but frequently delighting me with clever phrases and evocative images, exactly the style I love reading. And I adored the idea at the heart of the eventual reveal.

But...there were problems. The pacing was a little odd, slow to get going, with scenes (or parts of scenes) that did not obviously contribute to the story. Some, granted, played a part later. But it didn't feel tight to me; yet at the same time, there were all these questions that were answered in oblique ways, or left hanging such that clearly the reader was supposed to connect invisible dots, which made me feel a bit too stupid for the clever author - not as bad as Ken MacLeod's books make me feel (and there were bits of this that were reminiscent of his The Execution Channel, but along those lines. And the cool reveal I mentioned above comes practically at the end of the book - but when I hit it, I felt, that is what I want the book to be about! Not all this preparation stuff! And there wasn't enough about the cool part!

I mostly still agree with this, though I now think the pacing works better for me, maybe because I missed some details before or failed to understand how a later section made use of information from an earlier one. Also - there was an offhand bit of building up the undergirdings of this near-future world, the why of Europe having splintered into micro-polities, involving a pandemic of the "Xian flu" which "had brought back quarantine checks and national borders as a means of controlling the spread of the disease..." and I was, holy shit, this was published in 2014. (This fictional pandemic was 10-20x more deadly than Covid-19, which was certainly bad enough.) Other contributors to European disunity were "Economic collapse, paranoia about asylum seekers – and, of course, GWOT, the ongoing Global War On Terror," and about there I started thinking damn, if it wasn't for the Great Uniter (of everyone else against him) this would be playing out right now...and maybe it will play out here, as the states attempt to sort themselves by political party.

I guess the point is, I enjoyed reading this both as an escape and also as a a warning. On to the second book, which according to my notes I read in 2016 and liked even more (because it was mostly about the cool thing at the end of the first book)!

What I recently finished watching:

Two episodes of Resident Alien which was too cringe for me. I liked the concept, in theory? But the execution was excruciating.

Foundation S3, which - well, another way that civilizations crumble, I guess. I enjoyed it, particularly watching the various Cleons diverge from their assigned paths, but alas the problem with a generation-spanning epic is that the characters you liked in a previous season are (mostly) long dead now. Probably my favorite part was Bayta (and Toran, I guess) who felt very much like Star Wars characters to me.

What I'm still playing but not for much longer:

I'm about to start the endgame sequence (at least, that's what the quest screen tells me) of Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Time to kill those pesky gods!

halfshellvenus

I'm sure we all do, but it takes me at least a day of the weekend to get into that weekend mindset. And despite all things I need to do, it's like my mind goes blank that whole first day.

The first priority was finishing my Idol story (ah, that's where a lot of the weekends go!). You can find it via the poll here. Please read the entries and vote for your favorites if you can! We need all the help you can give. :)

The second priority was getting to the plant nursery and buying some replacements for things that died due to the house fire, the rebuild, and/or our 3-year absence. Mainly, I wanted to buy replacements in specific colors for the two rose trees that died along our walkway. Found a purple one (not the same as what we lost), passed on a red one because I need a 30" tree there instead of a 40" tree. Got a yellow rose bush to replace a white one (bleh) we lost that I never liked. We still have about... 46-50 roses of various kinds on this property? Yeah. \o? I'll be meeting with a landscaper on Thursday about re-planting dead spots, and it's already a little late in the year for it.

I planted 4 other perennials that died for lack of water, and THAT went badly. Holy s#!t. Three of those are in an area where we've lost azaleas over time, and the ground was rock hard there. So that took about 90 minutes longer than I'd planned. The other stuff should be done by the landscaper, but that was on us. I just thought it would be refreshingly simple, plus I had some plants to remove that reseeded themselves and got out of control while we were gone. That never happened. :(

We watched a movie on Saturday night that I can recommend: R.I.P.D., which starts Ryan Reynolds and Jeff Bridges and is pretty much cracktastic. It's on Netflix. At some point, we will watch Ice Road: Vengeance starring Liam Neeson, which is a sequel to The Ice Road (both also on Netflix). The idea of a snow-plow driver on a rampage to avenge his murdered son is a thin idea for a set-up, but the off-beat humor totally made the first movie. If you like irony/absurdity/satire, you might enjoy it.

And now back to work, never-ending and still in the stress zone for what I hope will be only a couple more weeks. \o?

pauamma

A Note on Windows 10

I want to talk about something boring, that most of you don't want to think about, but it's important so please stay with me.

Today, Windows 10 died but, like most deaths in IT, it will persist in an undead state, shuffling around for likely the rest of our lives. This is a VERY big problem.

When Microsoft stops supporting an operating system, the operating system continues to work - it just can't get patches. For decades, I've been in conversations like But I only use my computer to read my email, I don't need to upgrade, do I? From a security perspective, my answer was You really should upgrade, but I get it, money is always tight. You might be okay for a while.
This is no longer true - for a few reasons. We live in a confluence of changes:

AI is making finding new vulnerabilities much more quickly than before. In the past, a critical vulnerability in Windows 7 or XP could take several months to find, and even then, it was hard to exploit. Today, we have AI finding all sorts of issues in just a few hours and — worse — chaining them together to make it very easy to take over a machine.
The browser wars are back, but not like they were. How often have you see the little button in your browser saying that you should really update it. How often do you click that button? I work in information security and even I don't always click it when I should. If you are running a vulnerable browser on a vulnerable operating system, you are one click away from an attacker having access to everything.
No one just checks email. They go to social media, they go to Amazon and eBay, they sometimes check their bank and retirement accounts. This means that your attacker can see your social media, buy things on your credit cards, and take money directly out of your accounts.
We live in a interconnected society at a time when some groups in that society are being targeted by those in power *and* where other groups are emboldened by those in power to collect data to further target people. Whether it's in the form of doxxing, informing the police, reporting people and businesses to ICE, or direct surveillance by authorities, access to your computer does not just place you at risk — it places everyone you communicate with on that device at risk — family members, friends, social groups, political groups, whatever. A vulnerable computer risks everyone.

We can no longer rest on the idea that we are not interesting enough to be surveilled or attacked. We all have risks to ourselves and to others.

This is a long way to say that, if your computer does not support upgrading to Windows 11, you *really* have to stop using it. (Or install Linux on it, but that's a whole other discussion.) If you can use your phone or tablet for a month, there will some really good deals on laptops in mid-to-late November. If you can't, and money is tight, Dell and CDW have outlet stores that will be somewhat reasonable.

What you can't do, however, is to keep using that Windows 10 machine. It may be undead, but it's time to kill it all the way and move on to something better.

Addendum from pauamma:
Comments are and will remain screened, but I cannot and will not promise that your IP address if commenting will remain hidden. Exercise due caution.

Current Mood: somber

niqaeli

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

turps

We decided to swimming yesterday morning, and what a mistake that was. It was a family swimming session, so I should have known it would be busier than during the week which is all lane swimming, but it didn't click just how busy it would be. In the end I tapped out when I hit half my usual lap total, because no way was it possible to swim in a straight line. So, I won't be weekend swimming again.

After that we headed off to see Kayleigh as my baby sister was 40 yesterday. We stayed a couple of hours and I got hulk smashed a bit by Bodhi and had some birthday cake before heading home. I'll be picking Bodhi up from school today, my first Bodhisitting for quite a while, so no doubt I'll be getting Hulk smashed again then, too. I also had a very vivid dream about not picking her up from school and her being left there last night. Guess today's pick up had lodged into my head somehow before I went to sleep.

We've been to see two films in the last couple of days. I Swear was amazing, one of the best films I've seen this year. And then on SaturdayTron: Ares which was loud, brash, visually interesting, and had Jared Leto who is always easy on the eye. So while it wasn't amazing, I didn't regret watching.

Thursday I went to a light show at Durham Cathedral. Our slot wasn't until 7pm, so as we got there earlier than that there was a lot of waiting around to get in, but it was very much worth it. The interior lights were beautiful, and I'm so glad we went.

I'll share a few photos here, but if you want to see some short videos, I've posted at my insta here.

( photos )

halfshellvenus

Little Metal Hearts
Idol Wheel of Chaos | Week 12 | 1930 words
Happy Detritus

x-x-x-x-x

Jerry's Repairs sat in the middle of Second street, between an antique store and the Orbit Cafe. It was the oldest business on the block, although no one was sure when it had first appeared.

Jerry was a spry old man in his eighties, undaunted by time, technology, or the sheer quantity of stuff on display in the shop's front room. The back room was the workshop, where all his projects lay. There were toys, gadgets, appliances, and robots. Each waited for replacement parts or dedicated repair time, or even just inspiration to guide the way.

At heart, Jerry was a tinkerer. He didn't always know why his solutions worked. Sometimes they just felt "right" to him, with everything falling into place as if by magic. But some projects were more difficult than others. He'd been stuck for months waiting on discontinued arm pieces for a couple of his robots, and several of his projects required firmware upgrades that might never be forthcoming.

That sort of thing was an anathema to Jerry. He hated "planned obsolescence" with a passion–things should be built to last. It was at the heart of what he did. Why throw away something that could be fixed? Jerry's whole business was based on giving second chances to the stuff other people threw away. Where others saw junk, he saw possibility. Everything he put up for sale in the front half of the shop spoke to the truth of Jerry's mission.

The shop was open Tuesday through Saturday. Today was Wednesday, not quite the beginning of the week, and Jerry was in the back room, taking stock of what needed to be done. He had already moved a bunch of things outside, to let their solar batteries charge. Now he was staring at two one-armed robots, a temperamental vacuum cleaner, and a broken toaster. He had been in this situation before.

Why was it so often the right arm that got broken? Did humans program robot behavior in their own image? In any case, he'd waited eight weeks already and he still didn't have any leads on new arms. Jerry figured he was about two weeks away from 3-D printing some replacements on his own. In the meantime, he cut and bent some scrap metal into the right shape for a forearm, and then used rubber bands to attach the metal to the newer robot's wrist and elbow. Not too bad–the cobbled-together arm worked almost as well as the original. As for the software upgrade, Jerry was familiar enough with the model to know that there was no benefit to updating the robot's current version, unless speculative financial modeling was a "must have" feature.

The vacuum cleaner was trickier. It offered almost no suction on bare floors, but went into overdrive on carpets, in a seemingly suicidal attempt to burn out the motor. Jerry ignored it, and picked up the toaster instead. He plugged it in to confirm that the problem was with the heating element. Then he used a soldering iron to reattach it more firmly. Did everything work now? He was just in time to test it out by making some toast for lunch.

At the end of the day, Jerry closed the till, pulled down the shades, and locked the store up for the night. He headed down Second street to Warner, and walked six more blocks to his house.

Inside the shop, the back room slowly came to life.

( Read more... )

If you enjoyed this story, please vote for it along with any of your other favorites here.

azurelunatic

There's a new power scooter out, the Golden Buzzaround Carry-On HD. The HD part is important. This is the heavy duty one, which is also first-in-class lithium ion battery scooter. But that's not what this entry is about (and the scheduled arrival date is Tuesday).

Since the scooter was backordered and not going to arrive in time for the Michigan trip, I ordered a (not too expensive for the specs) power wheelchair off Amazon. The choice was partly informed by the advertised shipping time: two days. Plenty of time for it to arrive. And then I watched the shipment crawl over what was clearly ground transport, likely because of the battery. Eventually the package arrival date got down to our departure date. Meanwhile, I was paralyzed with anxiety about the trip, and was barely able to pack. At least I was able to make checklists for when I eventually unfroze on the day of departure.

FedEx said my power chair would arrive between 1 and 3. This was inaccurate, and at some point the forecast switched to "end of day".

When it hadn't arrived by 4, we loaded into the car with my upright (unpowered) walker. At the last minute as we fled out the door, I thought our snack supply looked a little too small and grabbed a random bag to toss a few more things into. As we pulled out of the neighborhood I called the airline accessibility services line to report the change. Which took a little while, as I had to explain that no, I hadn't "changed my mind" about bringing the power wheelchair, the reason I wasn't taking the power wheelchair was because it hadn't arrived yet, so I couldn't take it. At that point I got the appropriate amount of sympathy.

Within the MINUTE I told the very nice customer service person goodbye, Alex spotted the FedEx truck.

By that point Silver and I were on I-5, but with a very nice turn off opportunity. (Silver had taken that specific route because it's a pain in the ass to get over another couple lanes that quickly and in traffic.)

So we went back, we thanked the Bastard profusely and profanely, with the double thumb-tap to the lips (both of us, simultaneously). Silver offloaded the walker and onloaded the chair while I talked to the airline accessibility department again and tried to figure out what the battery voltage was. The footrests fit into the duffel bag with the extra snacks, just as if I had planned it intentionally. I asked Silver to empty my padded tote bag, so we could use it for the battery.

We got to the airport on time for all of that.

I got the best of both worlds: chair coming with me, but since the battery wasn't charged we checked the main body of the chair at the Special Services counter and got wheelchair service through the airport. Security was less of a zoo than usual because we went through the wheelchair lane instead of the endless maze. I got pornoscanned for the first time.

That got us to the gate an hour earlier than we'd intended.

I was very glad to have the power chair with us, as it made some of the bits that would have been excessively strenuous much much better. Silver got used to lifting the thing into the back of their mom's SUV, and eventually we banged our heads on the car less often.

Coming back, it wasn't quite as easy going through security since I was still new at steering the chair and we didn't have the professional chair-pusher to finesse security. (No, not the ateva way.) We gate-checked the chair. I checked in with the two wheelchair-pushers who met us at the Seattle end of things, and assured the one who was waiting for me that I had my chair (as Silver cussed gently at the footrests).

And when we eventually got home, Yellface cussed us both out like I've never seen her cuss before. She was Peeved! That we! Had Abandoned! Her!!!!

I have since decked it out with retroreflective tape, electroluminescent wire, and a miniature disco projector meant for a bike.

calliopes_pen

( Beneath the cut, you will find my Dear Yuletide 2025 letter. Fandoms are: Bram Stoker’s Van Helsing (2021), Count Dracula (1970), Count Dracula (1977), Dracula (TV 1968), Fright Night (Movies 1985-1988), Legend (1985), Mr. Boogedy (Movies 1986-1987), and Nosferatu (2024). )

tsuki_no_bara

i know yom kippur was a week ago but i hope you've all been sealed in the book of life for a good year. [1]

last tuesday, over a week ago, i was waiting for the bus in the morning and got a text from my bank asking if i'd sent a money order for $485. i had not. so the bank froze my card and marked the money order as fraud, and i checked my email and learned that someone had signed up with some online money order company - with my name, my address, my phone number, my bank card - and sent $485 to peru. so i reported it as fraud to the money order place and later talked to a human at the bank who let me know they'll keep an eye on my account for ten days and send me a new card. have i gotten the new card yet? i have not. did i have to go to the bank over the weekend and wait in line to get actual cash from an actual teller like it was still the 70s? i did. OY.

wednesday night i locked myself out of my car and discovered i don't have a spare key, so my sister waited with me for an hour until the road assistance guy showed up and kind of broke me into my car. ALSO OY.

and then saturday my sister locked herself out of her house and the first set of keys i brought over were for her previous apartment because for reasons that escape me i kept them even after she moved out. >.< usually i keep people's spare keys in the junk drawer in my kitchen but the spare keys to her current place were in my sock drawer. because that makes sense. mom thought it was funny when we told her on sunday but at the time it really really wasn't. (we did however end the evening with chinese takeout and mission: impossible - fallout which brings us to the last two m:i movies which we saw in the theater what feels like a very short time ago.)

the night before yom kippur, when you stuff your face in preparation for your fast, we went to cousins j&r's house and had brisket, and the night of yom kippur, when you break your fast, we went to cousins m&e's and had the world's best egg salad. it's also the world's simplest egg salad - eggs, mayo, salt, pepper - but it is so, so good. cousin e can be kind of a bitch tho (is it intentional? is it just the way she is? who knows!) so we may find someplace else to go next year. and for some reason we always end up talking about high school - m&e met in high school when i think she contrived to sit next to him on the bus on a ski trip, and they and both their sisters were all only a few years apart so they remember the same people and the same teachers and my sister and i just do not care about the cousins' high school experience. and yet somehow we always end up there. but the egg salad, seriously.

the day of yom kippur, because we didn't want to sit in services the whole day, my sister and i saw downton abbey: the grande finale which i really enjoyed even tho i never watched the show. the stakes are high for the characters but not so much for the audience and the hats are fantastic and it's just a really nice movie. but oh my god elizabeth mcgovern's face looks old.

work is work. busy. occasionally one of the students in one of my groups will bring me a baked good because it's her turn to bring snacks to the group meeting and i guess she likes to bake. (she's a good baker. today the random baked good was a red bean cinnamon roll.) i submit all the students' expenses and i try to do it right away and as a result some of them like me. :D also one of the admins m is retiring next month and we had her party yesterday. her significant other showed up and it was nice to finally put a face to the name after hearing admin m talk about him for like five years. we got a banner that said "we were just starting to like you" and another that said "congratulations quitter" because that's the sense of humor she has. her so said some nice things and one of her pi's said some nice things and she said some nice things and a bunch of her students showed up and it was lovely. and! we had three cakes. and they were very good.

(it's been an unusually cakey couple of days.)

she told this story about how ten years ago or so when it was really snowing and her so came to pick her up, he told her they needed to stop for kleenex on the way home because she was getting a cold and sniffling everywhere and she said "there's a foot of snow on the ground, we are not stopping for kleenex", and so she just grabbed a box off her desk and took it home. and he asked are you allowed to do that? and she said i'll pay them back. so now it's ten years later and she's retiring and telling us this story and she pulls a box of kleenex out of a bag - "i'm paying you back" - and then pulls another box out of the bag - "and this is interest" - and maybe you had to be there but it was really funny. she is 100% not the person to go to if you need sympathy for anything but she's been at the u like twenty-three years and she's great for work related advice.

i guess this is now old news, but i still can't get over the french prime minister resigning after less than a month in office and less than 24 hours after announcing his cabinet (i read somewhere his cabinet picks were too left for the right wing and too right for the left wing). i think he was the third pm this year and is definitely the shortest serving pm since 1958. i'd say good lord, france, get your shit together but, well, you all know where i live and no one needs to get their shit together as badly as the us does.

costco has a new advent calendar that's five feet tall. that's a lot of chocolate.

if anyone out there wishes their romantasy novels were scented, i bring you the primal of blood and bone, which smells like garlic mayo. because, i dunno, hellman's really wants to reach the booktok crowd. i guess.

fred ramsdell co-won the nobel prize for medicine and as of this past monday the nobel committee was unable to get in touch with him to tell him so because he was "living his best life" hiking in the wilds of idaho. imagine going off-grid for a while and when you finally resurface you learn you've won a nobel prize. surprise?

the guardian knows what's what, as evidenced by this article about the mummy, everyone's favorite bisexual awakening movie.

and finally, rip jane goodall. she was one of the good ones. if you have netflix, if you skip to about 15:30 during this interview, you can hear her discuss who she'd want to put in a spaceship and send away from earth. and then skip ahead to 50:24 for some words of hope.

[1] on rosh hashanah it is written and on yom kippur it is sealed, who shall live and who shall die, who shall perish by fire and who by water, who by hunger and who by thirst, who by strangling and who by stoning, etc etc.

Current Mood: i should be in bed as per usua
Current Music: sounds like silverware clinking next door

turps

I met up with

tara yesterday and had a lovely time.

We arranged to meet at midday to give me time to go to Rosie's class first, drove to Sunderland after that and met T off the metro where I got to have a good hug because it's been far too long since I've seen her. And yet, despite living in Australia she remains one of the fannish friends I've met the most, from our popslash days when we took Corey to the aquarium when he was a very young kidlet, to now. She's been with me to cat cafés, dog cafés, restaurants, to my house, walked lots of the NE coast, met most of my family, seen me at my highest weight and lowest and is just an awesome person who I'm glad to have in my life.

We walked to Sheepfolds Stables for a coffee, and doughnuts for me and James. James also went to check out Propa, Si King's -- one half of The Hairy Bikers -- place which serves typical northern food. Though, yesterday they also had lasagna pie on the menu which I certainly don't see as northern, though does sound interesting. James was hoping to actually see Si as he's often there, but it wasn't to be.

From there, we drove to the coast for lunch at Prego, where we ate and talked for what turned out to be over four hours. What can I say, living half a world apart from each other means we had a lot to talk about. Then, sadly, we took T back to her hotel and I had to leave with another hug. Such a good day ♥

Yesterday was also my oldest nephew's birthday, then on Sunday it's a big birthday for Kayleigh, and my middle nephew is 18 on Monday, so an expensive time in terms of gifts. A financial situation not helped by Pauline deciding to cash in the birthday meal out we'd promised her on Sunday gone.

Despite the unexpected cost, that was a nice meal out, but both James and Pauline had an upset stomach the next day, meaning it had to be the beef they'd both eaten as the culprit. We were planning to go to that restaurant for our Christmas family meal out with Pauline and my brother's family, but food poisoning, no matter relatively mild, is rather off-putting, so we're looking for somewhere else now.

The fly tipping is still going on, each week more, each week it gets reported. But one day last week I noticed someone had picked up one of the black sacks of rubbish and thrown it on top of the shed roof of the neighbours we strongly suspect are doing the fly tipping. Now, it's not a method I'd normally approve of, but at this point I say, good on my next door neighbour, who admitted throwing the sack back to them on his way to work early one morning.

We're off to see this at Durham Cathedral tonight. Hopefully, it'll be lovely to see.

azurelunatic

My immunotherapy infusion yesterday may have been my last!! I have a scan on Monday that will probably say that. Belovedest celebrated by cracking into the Strategic Redpop Reserve. This will mean much more leeway to leave town and such.

Colonoscopy results: mostly normal, one pre (not sure how many pre-s to put here) cancerous "lesion", and all of them removed. Repeat in two years, this time with Extended Prep. (My understanding of "lesion" and the medical definition may not align entirely well.)

Started the new injectable after the colonoscopy. I can definitely feel the impact. It remains to be seen exactly what kind. One of my friends has a new injectable too; she's getting some sinus clearance from it. Of all the random effects.

After the infusion, Belovedest and I trekked up-city to pick up a package for

alexseanchai. All Pampered Chef, and a high proportion of likely goodies vs. likely duds. There were some varying scrub brushes. The utensil/knife scrub brush looks like dentures that are actually a scrub brush, but I can see that coming in handy. There was also a quarter-sheet pan with two eighth-sheet pans. And then we trekked back down when Belovedest realized they'd left their tablet at the cancer center. Freakin' ADHD. We're on The Assassins of Thasalon in our progress through Penric.

I have a smallish makeup hobby. Part of that is sometimes going all Weird Barbie on my face with eyeliner or whatever. Tonight I've convinced myself (via iridescent green eyeliner) that some kind of moon phase forehead jewelry might really slap.

svgurl

mcu100 is a a bi-weekly MCU themed community challenge where you join a team and write as many 100 worded drabbles to earn points for your team

allbingo is hosting Fall Fest through the month of October. There are both pre-made bingo cards or you can create your own with the available prompts.

ficortreat is open for another round. You can create a "door" (instructions at link) and offer what you're willing to create and then go around other people's "doors" and see what they're offering too.

booknook is still accepting sign-ups for October Review-a-Thon 2025, where you pick a book and sign up for a date to post your review.

cap_ironman, a Steve/Tony community, is running 2025 Holiday Exchange and Community Gifts. Sign-ups for the exchange close on October 9th, 10PM EDT.

koreanfandomsex, a multifandom exchange for Korean fandoms, is open for sign-ups until October 12th, 11:59PM Pacific.

be_compromised, a Clint/Natasha community, is running Secret Santa 2025. Sign-ups are open until October 13th, 4PM GMT.

julybreakbingopresents is running for Halloween Horror Bingo. Sign-ups are open until October 13th, 11:59PM Eastern.

amperslashexchange, a fic and art exchange for ambiguous relationships that are hard to definitively classify as either platonic (&) or romantic/sexual (/), is open for sign-ups until October 14th, 11:59PM UTC.

holmestice, a gift exchange for all Sherlock Holmes fandoms, has opened signups for Winter 2025 until October 14th.

Rainbow Connection Flash Exchange is a multifandom flash exchanged hosted on AO3, dedicated to rainbow or colour themed fics. Both nominations and sign-ups are open until October 16th, 3PM EDT.

seasonsofdrabbles is accepting nominations for their Fall Round. Nomination will remain open even once sign-ups open and will close on October 19th, 11:59PM Eastern.

smallfandombang, a Big Bang challenge for small fandoms (less than 2000 works), is open for author sign-ups until October 31st.

elasticella is running Hotties Haunting the Narrative: a festive femslash ficathon until November 1st.

fancake's theme of the month is: uncommon settings. Click on the banner below to learn more.

Photograph of the full moon encircled with added text: Uncommon Settings, at Fancake.

Crunching that data

Intelligent eyes in a hunger-pang frame

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Well that borked my plans

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what next is the question?

signal boosting: Trope Flip Fest

i believe she was a sperm thief. a semen demon.

Communal Creators wrap-up

wednesday reads and things

I need longer weekends!

Reposting anonymously — no speculation or questions about the author of this.

A Note on Windows 10

monday handstands is very tired of embodiment being bullshit

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LJ Idol: Wheel of Chaos: "Little Metal Hearts"

Portable power chair

Dear Yuletide Writer 2025

also i finally unpacked all my boxes, yay

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