canyonwalker: Sullivan, a male golden eagle at UC Davis Raptor Center (Golden Eagle)
[personal profile] canyonwalker
Today is Day 14 of Hawk's post-op recovery. At the time of her surgery they wrapped her foot in a half-cast, half-splint with strict instructions to put no weight on it. That made her close to immobile. She could hop around short distances with the help of of a pair forearm crutches— "short distances" being like from the bed or sofa to the bathroom. Going between floors in our vertical townhouse took focus and real energy. She tried to limit herself to one trip up and down per day. Today she had a followup visit at the clinic.

For the trip to the clinic Hawk used a knee scooter. It does no good in the house because there are stairs everywhere. But it's great for covering long, flat distances like from the parking spot in the garage to the clinic's front door, and from the front door to the orthopedic department. She zoomed along on the scooter, going faster than me, walking normally. Though heavy closed doors were her bane as it was difficult to balance while exerting enough force to open them. I caught up to her every time there was a door. šŸ˜…

At the clinic today they removed the cast and replaced it with a bandage wrap and a boot.

Hawk's cast is replaced with a boot (Oct 2025)

The boot can be taken on and off. And even the wrap can be removed (by us) at home tomorrow. After that she just needs to cover her foot with a sock. And before very careful with it when it's out of the boot, of course, because it's still healing. She'll need the boot for at least another 3 weeks, possibly up to 6 weeks.

The switch to the boot has made her more mobile. Now she can put partial weight on her foot. She still uses the forearm crutches to walk, but she can move faster with them because she can put her injured foot down to balance instead of having to hop along on one leg.

Hawk celebrated the change today by asking that we visit a local bakery that has her favorite, princess cake. She boldly decided to walk (hobble) from the parking area to the cafe. It was across the street and partway up the block. She was okay getting there though it took more out of her than she expected. So she bought all the princess cake they had in the display (5 pieces) and asked me to pull up the car for her hobble back out.


lovelyangel: (Kagamin Upbeat)
[personal profile] lovelyangel
Kumoricon 2025 Registration Hall
Kumoricon 2025 Registration Hall
Oregon Convention Center
Thursday, October 30, 2025
iPhone 13 mini photo

I have Kumoricon badge pickup down to a routine, with a preferred driving route from Barnes/Burnside to Everett/Steel Bridge to street parking underneath I-405. I left home at 2:30 pm so that I could listen to Marketplace on NPR during the drive – and fed Parking Kitty at 3:10 pm. I did a WAG and requested 45 minutes of parking time.

This morning we received an email from Kumoricon saying the Ginkoberry entrance was closed this year and that we could use the Holladay street entrance instead – which is what I did. I headed straight to Hall E. Unlike last year, there was a long line which fed shorter lines in front of each of the badge stations. The wait in line this year was longer.

At the station, I presented the volunteer with a printout of my QR code and my photo ID. The volunteer was delighted. ā€œYou’re a Pro!ā€ Apparently it’s much easier for their scanners to read paper than smartphones. And a lot of people don’t have their photo ID ready. I said I didn’t know if I was a pro or not, but she reassured me I was. She directed me to the program guide, lanyards, and clips, and I took one of each while she prepared my badge. She asked if I wanted a Day 0 ribbon, and I declined. ā€œYou’re the first to decline one!ā€ Honestly, I don’t see why advertising that I attended Day 0 was cool in any way.

After leaving the station, I stopped to assemble my badge/lanyard, and then I walked back to my car. There was five minutes remaining on my Parking Kitty, so the round-trip Shizu-to-Shizu was 40 minutes. Unfortunately, it was now rush-hour, and I used one of my Lloyd-to-Home rush hour patterns so that I didn’t get too bogged down in traffic. Still, I didn’t get home until 4:35 pm.

Anyway, I’m now equipped for the convention tomorrow. I’ve already used Guidebook to plan a schedule. I’m not particularly optimistic for photography, as candid photography is nearly prohibited nowadays. šŸ˜ž I’ll set expectations low and hope to get one or two keepers over the three-day event. I’d actually like to skip Sunday if I could.

One bright spot is guest seiyuu Kikuko Inoue! Belldandy! (And a zillion other well-known characters.) I don’t know if I’ll stand in line for an autograph, though. šŸ¤”

Kumoricon 2025 Pocket Guide and Badge
Kumoricon 2025 Pocket Guide and Badge
lovelyangel: (Meiko Smile 2)
[personal profile] lovelyangel
Bookwall
Bookwall

Yesterday (Wednesday), the remaining bookshelves were delivered, and in the evening I shelved the books that I had staged. I wasn’t exactly sure how many shelves would be available, so I left some extra room. Books keep coming, though, and there’s no such thing as too much empty space.

At any rate, I’m happy this wall is finally done. Work on the library continues, with new furniture arriving next Tuesday. My own office furniture won’t return until several days after that.
lb_lee: A happy little brain with a bandage on it, enclosed within a circle with the words LB Lee. (Default)
[personal profile] lb_lee posting in [community profile] davis_square
Nobody's getting food stamps next month, and I'm doing something about it! Maybe I could do something... FOR YOU!

See,  I've discovered that I'm a really good courier when it comes to getting stuff into free boxes! I've also discovered that I'm good at helping people clean out their kitchens (and other rooms, but right now, food is the important thing). I've helped people do this and can give references!

So: is your kitchen full of herbs, spices, teas, drinks, or food that you are never going to get to? (Teas and herbs/spices are SO useful to people, and so often forgotten!) Does looking into your cabinets stress you out? I can help with that! I can help clean out your kitchen, disappear the bad stuff into the compost, and transport the good stuff to local free pantries so that hungry people can eat it! You get cupboard space, your neighbors get fed, I get to prove to myself the government can't break my spirit, and everyone wins!

This is an open offer for the general Boston area, but because I am a pedestrian and stuff like canned goods are heavy, I'm most useful in the Arlington, Cambridge, Medford, and Somerville areas. I will be limited in how much I can carry, but I have two VERY sturdy 20 liter backpacks, a tote bag, and a heart filled with determination and spite.

Help us feed our neighbors! Spread the word to anyone around who might find this useful!

(I don't require payment for this. I am MAD.)
lovelyangel: (Cooker WhatTha?)
[personal profile] lovelyangel
Culled From the Library
Culled From the Library

Due to my not rigorously checking the design of the bookwall, I figure I lost about 10 linear feet of shelf space. That’s unfortunate, as I could have saved many of the above books that had to get cut so that I’d have enough space. Ah, well. Everything has to go at some point in time. These boxes of books will get taken to The Book Corner, run by the Friends of the Beaverton City Library.

I’ve also filled my recycle bin with more odd items. I wasn’t going to devote time to see if any could find a home. The recycle bin gets picked up tomorrow morning.

Recycle Bin Fodder, Below This Cut )

building heat

2025-10-30 21:36
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
[personal profile] redbird
I had to call the management company about the heat again today. I and I think at least one other neighbor called in a problem Monday, and they sent someone who made a fix that he said might be temporary, but also said he had ordered parts for a longer-term solution. Tuesday was OK, but by the time I got up this morning [Thursday] the heat clearly wasn't working again.

The management company sent someone over fairly quickly. He first knocked to let me know they were here and thank me for reporting the problem, then came back to tell me they had to look at a sensor in Adrian’s room. So she hurriedly put on her bathrobe, the three of us masked, and I invited them in, with a warning about not letting the cats in. They looked at it, and came back a while later to replace it—apparently there was something wrong with the thermostat, and they replaced the sensors in each apartment, because they couldn’t be sure of which one was the problem. The heat came back on within the hour, and we’re OK for now.

Adrian and Cattitude both thanked me for being Speaker to Landlord on this one.
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
and omg those cultists are so needy. They can't feed themselves, so you're constantly trying to keep them in berries and fish, and they complain about everything!

"There's no place to poop, build an outhouse!" (You're an animal, poop on the ground!)

"I want to eat a poop sandwich!" (Uh, okay, but why do I have to make it!?)

"Oh, that grass gruel made me sick!" (Get back to work!)

"I'm sick of your lies!" (Welp, time to perform another human sapient sacrifice of a, uh, willing victim!)

Seriously, who's running this cult, you or them?

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


Read more... )

where

2025-10-30 13:40
calimac: (Default)
[personal profile] calimac
I was in a hurry for some reason when I put down my reading glasses, and I remember thinking, "This is not where I usually put them." But where that somewhere was, I now cannot in the least recall.

For several days now, I've been checking every shelf and drawer in the house without luck. I use the glasses mostly for the computer screen. Without them, I have to bring my face right up to the screen - that, or increase the font size bigly, which I don't like doing because I find it choppy to read with fewer words visible.

I dreamed I found them, but I checked when I woke up and they weren't there.

My vision hasn't changed much, but I may have to schedule an eye exam and then buy new glasses. What a nuisance, especially with my schedule already being filled up with medical appointments. I hope they still have the heavy black frames I got these with, because I wanted something sturdy for glasses I was always taking on and off (though not as eccentrically as Derren Nesbitt in that Prisoner episode).
sovay: (Sovay: David Owen)
[personal profile] sovay
For nearly the first time since the Cape, I slept. It required me to spend hours after midnight waiting for my body to get the unconsciousness memo and then repeat the process this morning after a doctor's office called back at the crack of business, but construction has been precluded by the recurrent nor'easter rain and it worked. The dreams were nothing to write home about, but at least I had them. And then we had a mild power outage, but still. Sleep! I could get used to it.
oursin: George Beresford photograph of Marie of Roumania, overwritten 'And I AM Marie of Roumania' (Marie of Roumania)
[personal profile] oursin

Or words to that effect.

Anyway, general sense of Point Thahr, Misst, in this piece: Can I learn to be cool – even though I am garrulous, swotty and wear no-show socks?

Mind you, and perhaps this is a generational thing, I murmur, thinking of dark jazz cellars and so on, I so do not associate 'cool' with:

Cool people are desirable and in demand; others want to be them or be with them. That social clout readily converts into capital as people buy what you’re selling, hoping it will rub off on them.... A much-publicised paper recently published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology found that cool people are seen as possessing six attributes: they are extroverted, open, hedonistic, adventurous, autonomous and powerful.

WOT.

And further on, we have an interview with somebody author of article considers Peak Cool:

[S]tudying fashion in London, she learned how to talk her way into fashion week events, pretending she was ā€œsupposed to be there – like, no doubt about itā€, she says, eyes glinting. She then parlayed that talent for networking into styling and creative consulting work. ā€œAll the coolest people I know are hustlers,ā€ Delaney says. ā€œIf you’ve just had it given to you, then it’s not that cool.ā€

Hustlers??? The truly cool do not hustle.

Perhaps this strikes me as particularly Not Getting It because I have just been reading Eve Babitz?

And IMHO, you do not 'learn' to be cool: if you are cool, what you do is imbued with coolth, even if it doesn't tick the obvious boxes.

andrewducker: (Dr Who)
[personal profile] andrewducker
This morning Sophia announced, as we were about to leave the house, that she couldn't find her school shoes.

Her black school shoes.

The ones that are and integral part of her Wednesday costume. For the school Halloween disco. This evening.

Jane and I frantically tore the house apart for fifteen minutes and checked *everywhere*. Eventually we forced her, crying, to put on her trainers, promising her that if her shoes turned up we would bring them in to her.

Because we left fifteen minutes late we missed the bus. And so it was that we were halfway through the walk to school when Sophia quietly said "Oh."

And then told me that she'd just remembered that yesterday she'd come home from school in her welly boots, leaving her shoes at her peg.

You'll be delighted to hear that I didn't murder her.

Shutdown Teardown

2025-10-30 12:41
l33tminion: (Default)
[personal profile] l33tminion
Yeah, the White House probably does need more event space. But if Biden or Obama's approach to that problem was to bypass all process and demolish an entire wing during a government shutdown as quickly as possible so as to present it as a fait accompli? The Republican reaction to that would definitely not be calm. And it's incredibly naive to think either the ballroom will be paid for entirely by donations or that the all donations nominally for the ballroom will go to that project, given the history of how responsibly Trump-affiliated nonprofits manage their donations.

Trump is also trying to get the DOJ to pay him $230M in recompense for prosecuting him for his obvious and egregious crimes. This includes asking for actual damages for legal fees he never paid and punitive damages which the law bars paying. The decisions on all of this will be made by people who were Trump's personal lawyers, including those defending him in these specific cases. This by itself seems a wild scandal, but it's just another day in (what's left of) the Trump White House.

There's also been talk about the supposed necessity of a third Trump term, term limits be damned. Of course this is trolling, but this is an administration that governs through trolling, stupidity of the plan (as after the 2020 election) is no barrier to the existence or seriousness of the attempt. Personally, I'll bite the bullet on the (admittedly still too contingent) prediction: If Trump isn't dead or something, they'll try the straightforward plan of just running and winning the Republican primary. And in that case, I think SCOTUS would say on 1st Amendment grounds, political parties can put forward the candidates they want, however foolishly (after all, eligibility rules theoretically could be changed, no matter how much a constitutional amendment is definitely not actually happening). And if he wins, will they want to rule in a way that amounts to "the Republican can't win"? I'd guess it would come down to some combination of "whether he's 'obviously ineligible' is a non-justiciable political question", "that's the responsibility of the Electoral College", and "the mechanism is impeachment". Of course, that would also require Trump to actually win, or for one of his alternative slate of plans to actually succeed.

Trump's also ordered the military to restart nuclear weapons testing. Don't know where to begin with that. Seems insane.

Catter's Box

2025-10-30 09:51
flwyd: (smoochie sunset)
[personal profile] flwyd
The thrashing tail and butt wiggle before they pounce on a toy is a cat's batting stance.
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


A fairy's efforts to recover stolen arcane tools via illicit means produce spectacular calamity.

The Fairy of Ku-She by M. Lucie Chin

unpopular opinions

2025-10-30 06:02
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee
Saying that the creative process of creation/conception for a story/novel MUST START with character/goal/motivation is complete fucking nonsense. You will usually need it in the END PRODUCT (modulo weird edge cases like Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men), but that doesn't have to be the inception.

cf. composing music, where this would be like saying to a composer: you MUST ALWAYS start FIRST with a melody or you MUST ALWAYS start FIRST with a harmonic progression or you MUST ALWAYS start FIRST with instrumentation etc. No??? You can start in any of a number of places and still wind up with music???

There are times you need to start with $XYZ because of the use case (if writing for a string quartet, that constrains your instrumentation, ranges, techniques).

But when writing music, I can START in ANY of these places (not a complete list) (and have done so at various points):

- instrumentation
- tempo
- time signature
- harmonic progression
- a rhythm
- a vibe
- key/mode/etc
- melody or leitmotif
- structure/form (e.g. theme and variations, ternary form)
- a transformation (e.g. diminution, retrograde)
- articulation(s) to feature
- trolling ("What if I rewrote Swan Lake's theme in 5/4?")
etc

You're not going to be able to tell which one from the RESULTING MUSIC as an end product.

For that matter, watching web/comic creators talk about story ideation is fascinating. A bunch of them start with "I drew this cool character, but who are they? what is their story?", which is absolutely not my process since I don't visualize, but it's a perfectly cromulent process!

(no subject)

2025-10-30 09:45
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] boxofdelights!

Gratuitous poll

2025-10-29 23:03
sholio: Text: "Age shall not weary her, nor custom stale her infinite squee" (Infinite Squee)
[personal profile] sholio
I have reached a never-again milestone on AO3; my number of works is currently sitting at 999!

It'll increment in a few days when some currently unrevealed things are revealed, but before it does that I want to try to write a lucky 1000th fic.

(Appropriately, I'm also hitting this weird little milestone on the 25th anniversary of my time writing fanfic, which started in 2000.)

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 44


What should I doooooo?

View Answers

Write something extra special or iddy
37 (84.1%)

Use this as motivation to finish a WIP
17 (38.6%)

Actually manage to write something for spook-me this year
4 (9.1%)

Write a fandom or pairing I've never written before
3 (6.8%)

Revisit a fandom or pairing I haven't written in ages
18 (40.9%)

Write something experimental or wildly off brand for me
7 (15.9%)

Write something I, the person taking this poll, would like to see and will tell you about in comments
5 (11.4%)

Write a giant mega crossover of every fandom I've ever been in
7 (15.9%)

How very DARE you limit me to 3 options on this poll! I will express my opinions in comments
3 (6.8%)

conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
This is the first thing
I have understood:
Time is the echo of an axe
Within a wood.


**********


Link
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
Boo.

(Wait, and also nearly Halloween! Boo!)

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


Read more... )
vvalkyri: (Default)
[personal profile] vvalkyri
It won't work, and I shall be sad after making a large version of your flyer that is all about resources for furloughed feds and then I try accessing the QR and the orange one works and the yellow one (unsurprisingly) does not.

Flyer with description of resources in a document avail by orange qr code. The qr code for  submitting more is yellow, and does not work.  Neither has a url mentioned. Provider org not listed.
I'd offered to print a bunch on the way up to the food drive/rally, and I guess the really important part is that people can access the resource list, but the fact that the submission QR doesn't work and there's no website at all on here (nor a mention of which org it's from, but it might not be from a specific org? there are SO many different resource compilation documents going around) makes me loath to make a bunch of these if maybe she'll have a chance to get me something less pretty and more functional. 

Also I had the bright idea to print an 8.5x11 one pager 'what are we on about?' as 11x17 and that seems to have created a SURPRISING amount of work, and my few minutes before bed turned into an hour. 

:sigh: 

I guess the good thing about having gone downstairs and done this is she'll see my message in the morning and maybe be able to get someone (it's not her design file) to fix it in time to still print them. 

I keep planning to try to get a movement started to push back on how what DC called making the Streatery program permanent is really just going to kill them.  And I desperately need to sleep.  


But my face is burning and I've got no idea what's going on with that at all. If I wake up sick I shall be very cross.  Especially since I'm the one bringing the tarps.

This was supposed to do the click to embiggen but it's being weird and i really want to sleep. 

Hm. this can't be a symptom of food poisoning can it? Last couple days have been a "eat the things what need eating"

jreynoldsward: (Default)
[personal profile] jreynoldsward

It’s a labored truism that after you’ve lived a certain number of years, time seems to speed up rather than slow down (mileage varies as to when that happens for each individual). Certainly, autumn seemed to sneak up on us this year, in part due to higher daytime temperatures. It doesn’t seem like it was that many days ago that I was still wearing T-shirts and no base layers to ride Marker. Now…while it’s the lightweight base layers, it’s still the beginning of five-six months with some sort of base layer underneath, sweater or sweatshirt on top.

Time passes, nonetheless. It’s weird to think that the husband and I are now in our eleventh year in retirement. Neither one of us really thought that we’d be living this life at this age—that was not the case for our parents. Medical advances, different jobs, not going through a world war makes a difference. That said, I know darned good and well I couldn’t keep up the pace of my younger years. Oh, the sustained effort can happen over a couple of days—and then I’m done. Not that I’m a lazybones or anything, it’s just—I get tired. The arthritis calls my name. And so on.

Part of this life is getting out into the forest to cut firewood. Yesterday, we went out for what might be the last load of this year. The chainsaw is complaining about eleven years of use, even with diligent maintenance, and while we might get one more session out of it, we might not, either. There was two inches of snow in our preferred cutting area, and the first of two controlled bull elk hunting seasons started today. We might get out again for woodcutting this year, or we might not. It all depends on our ambition and the weather.

In any case, for us, the wood harvest in fall is more about building a stockpile for next winter, not this winter. At some point we’ll stop getting out there because we’re just too old and tired for woodcutting.

Yesterday, however, was not that day. Even though we couldn’t find the one lodgepole pine we spotted at the end of our last cutting that would have made the perfect start for a big load, we still managed to find some good stuff. Nice lodgepole with pitch pockets that are good for starting fires; not so much white/grand fir. It was harder to see the good stuff on the ground because of the snow, but on the other hand, it was also easier to spot standing dead trees that we had overlooked before.

Fall is often a lot nicer for woodcutting than spring. It’s usually cooler, there’s less mud, and there are lots of opportunities for pretty pictures of autumn leaves. Yesterday was overcast with a sharp breeze that meant despite layering, we didn’t take off the layers. I took some shots with the artsy filters on my Canon Power Shot of golden tamarack against snow-covered firs and pines. Some turned out, some are…well, more material for book covers and promotions, I suppose.

#

Along with fall comes my birthday. Sixty-eight this year. Some years linger lightly, others bear a weight. For some reason sixty-eight has that resonance for me. As I said to my husband this morning, “A year and eleven months more, and I’ll have outlived my mother.”

But it’s not just that. There are some days when I catch myself after fretting about not doing enough and I have to think—I’m in my late sixties now. Sixty-eight and today I schooled my Marker horse at various gaits, including an attempt at racking. Which…I think he is doing. Either that or an extended fox-trot. He was a wee bit sparky, a wee bit on the muscle, but—he also called for me and fretted at the gate because he heard me talking to Dez and he wanted me there. Now.

I never thought I’d still be riding an energetic young horse in my late sixties. Here I am, however. Granted, he’s a safe horse moving into his full maturity at whatever age he really is (vet said seven in the spring of 2024, which would make him eight. Hard to be sure, though. Horse physical and mental maturity is really an individual thing). But still—besides the racking, I asked him to stretch out and gallop a little bit. We’ve spent most of the summer working on a slow, rocking-horse canter). Boy can move when he wants to, and today he wanted to. Which was fine. And it’s good to know that I can still gallop a horse on my sixty-eighth birthday.

#

Thinking about time passing also affects my writing, as well. I’m working on a high fantasy at the moment (yes, it will be a trilogy!) and one of the protagonists is an older man who has decided to step down from his leadership role because, well…his wives have died. One of the young women he helped raise as part of his extended family circle (in this world the terms Heartfather, Heartmother, and Heartsdaughter/Heartsson are common) has died and become a Goddess, while the other one has successfully overthrown the Big Bad Emperor (with the help of the woman who became Goddess). He has visions of the woman who is the heir to the new Empress, and…he not only wants to help his Heartsdaughter the Empress but he’s curious about this woman he keeps seeing in visions.

More than that, he grows to realize that he really, really wants to do something different with his life. He wants to matter—and it becomes clear that he wants to leave his position as Leader to his grandson, who is a rising star in his own right. He doesn’t have a reason to stay where he is, so…he’s moving on, to reinvent himself. And yeah, a lot is going to happen along the way.

#

I find it interesting that while I did have older protagonists pop up here and there when I was writing in my fifties, I really didn’t do much with them until my sixties. Part of the original Martiniere Legacy series is driven by the fact that the protagonists Ruby and Gabe are older, with a lot of life experience, and that knowledge shapes a lot of their decisions. The final book of that quartet, plus the matching individual related standalone books, ends up taking a long look at what later life can mean for different situations—including a clone whose progenitor was in his seventies, and who has inherited a lot of that man’s aging physical problems.

I’m fascinated by the places that my thought process is taking me these days. It’s definitely different from when I was younger.

Well, we’ll see what this year brings.


yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee
I committed a mini-album on Bandcamp of Trailures and Other Fiascoes (= "failure trailers"). Hybrid orchestra instrumental music because mopey foxmoth can't sing.

(I know voice lessons exist but for medical reasons, sore throat for over a year; singing is contraindicated.)



(This is accumulated composition/production from the past few months; I'm bowing out of a bunch of things currently due to ongoing health stuff. I don't want to discuss health details further, thanks!)
fairestcat: Dreadful the cat (Default)
[personal profile] fairestcat
So, as I mentioned in my Festivids letter, I am currently in Hawaii. Hilo to be specific. I have been here since October 10th and I genuinely have no idea when I'll get to go home.

My mother was diagnosed with congestive heart failure five years ago, but this fall she got significantly worse and also developed pneumonia. She was in the hospital for two and a half weeks and is now in a short-term rehab working on getting back her ability to do exciting things like walking across a room without getting shaky-legged and out of breath and using the bathroom unaided.

I'm in an itty bitty postage stamp sized airbnb room in Hilo, since my mom's place is a nearly two-hour drive away. I can't go home until we figure out what happens next for my mom. I don't think she can go back to the place she's been sharing with my sister. My sister is also disabled and not really able to help my mom with stuff, their tiny house is cramped and crowded, has built-in steps and is a constant tripping hazard, and honestly my mom and sister are driving each other completely mad.

Hawaii is beautiful and all, there are certainly worse places I could be stuck indefinitely, but I really want my own bed and my own spouses and my own pets and my own time zone.

(no subject)

2025-10-29 21:15
skygiants: Utena huddled up in the elevator next to a white dress; text 'they made you a dress of fire' (pretty pretty prince(ss))
[personal profile] skygiants
The other Polly Barton-translated book I read recently was Asako Yuzuki's Butter: A Novel of Food and Murder, which I ended up suggesting for my book club on account of intriguing DW posts from several of you.

Butter focuses Rika Machida, a magazine journalist, on the cusp of becoming the first woman in her company to break the glass ceiling and join Big Editorial, who decides that her next big feature is going to be an insider interview with the infamous prisoner Manako Kajii. Kajii is accused of murdering several men that she met on dating sites after seducing them with a fatal combination of sex, personal attention, and French cooking; in the eyes of the public, however, her greatest crime is that she somehow managed all this femme fatale-ing while being Kind Of Fat.

After a tip from her best friend Reiko -- a housewife who quit her own promising career in hopes of starting a family -- Rika, despite having no previous interest in cooking or domesticity, writes to Kajii about getting her recipe for beef stew. This opens the door for a connection that gets very psychologically weird very fast; Kajii, behind bars, tests Rika with various little living-by-proxy challenges -- eat some good butter! go to the best French restaurant in town! eat late night ramen! after having sex! and tell me all about it -- and Rika, fascinated despite herself, allows herself to be manipulated. For the interview, of course. And also because it turns out good butter is really good, and that eating and making rich food for herself instead of working to keep herself boyishly thin (the prince of her all-girl's school! One of the Boys at work!) is changing her relationship to her body, and her gender, and to the way that people perceive her in the world and she perceives them.

This is more or less what I'd understood to be the plot of the book -- a sort of Silence of the Lambs situation, if the crime that Clarice was trying to solve by talking with Hannibal was societal misogyny -- but in fact it's only about half of the story, and societal misogyny is only one of the big crimes under consideration. The other one is loneliness, and so the rest of the book has to do with Rika's other relationships, and the domino-effect changes that Rika's Kajiimania has on the other people in her life. The most significant is with Reiko, which is extremely fraught with lesbian tension spoilers I suppose ) But there's also Rika's mother, and her boyfriend, and the older mentor that she has secret intermittent just-lads-together meet-ups with in bars to get hot journalistic tips; all of these relationships are important, and usually ended up in places I didn't expect and that were more interesting than I would have guessed.

Not everything landed for me about this book, but this was one thing it did pretty consistently that I appreciated -- Rika would think about something, and I would go, 'well, that was didactic, you just said your theme out loud,' and then the book and Rika as protagonist would revisit it and have a more complicated and potentially contradictory thought about it, and then we'd go back to it again, and it usually ended up being more interesting than I would have thought the first time around. It's a long book, possibly too long, but it's equally possible I think that it does need that space to hold contradictions in.

It was however quite funny to read this shortly after Taiwan Travelogue -- another book I have not written up and should probably do so soon -- and also shortly after What Did You Eat Yesterday and also seeing a lot of gifsets for She Loves To Cook and She Loves To Eat ... fellas, is it gay to be really into food? signs point to yes!
vvalkyri: (Default)
[personal profile] vvalkyri
And in a turn of dark hilarity, with only like 2 or 3 days of work on it we have so far 3 confirmed congresscritters but we've gotten nowhere finding anyone willing to speak who works in a food bank or mutual aid, who is receiving SNAP and looking at losing it, who is a fired or furloughed fed, or who is with USDA Food Nutrition Service.

But anyway. Yeah, 3-5 in front of USDA HQ on the Mall side near Smithsonian Metro, a rally (and food drive*) and we're sending the physical stuff to probably more the food bank in Arlington and the one in Gaithersburg** and we've raised over 5k in a day or two for Capital Area Food Bank and I feel guilty that I don't have a link that has links for all three.

I have no idea what I'm doing or wearing for Halloween.

I suppose I need to spend some more time trying to track down . . . something.

My phone died while I was in the library printing and I ended up talking with a lady for like 45 min after the library closed who plans to show up tomorrow (yay!) and who was telling me about things DC did to keep people from autofalling off medicaid when she was a case worker, and who also was telling me about some guy who was curing AIDS with herbs in the 80s; I went back to explaining PEPFAR and soft power somewhere in there. I think her name was Latisa. We also saw a desperately cute tiny dog.

I need way more sleep tonight.


*and yes we know generally it's best to just give $ to food banks and food pantries but hopefully the photographers will be really into the congresscritters helping load cars? (well actually I think they each have literally like 17 min windows of available time on site.)

** Manna food bank in Gaithersburg is desperate for additional volunteers the next few days:
"Manna Food Center in Maryland serves a significant federal workforce population. Because of the ongoing government shutdown, they are making emergency bags for furloughed federal workers in our area.
If you are available to volunteer for any of the shifts listed below, please contact Manna's Volunteer Coordinator, Kalandra Thompson, at 240.268.2520 x2520 or kalandra@mannafood.org
Volunteers are urgently needed for the following shifts:
Ā· Thursday 10/30 9am – 12pm – 3 openings
Ā· Thursday 10/30 9am – 12pm (Rescued Produce shift) – 8 openings
Ā· Friday 10/31 from 12pm – 2pm (Frozen Meat Prep shift) – 9 openings
Manna Food Center Warehouse: 9311 Gaither Road, Gaithersburg, MD 20877

Recent Reading

2025-10-29 23:04
davidgillon: A pair of crutches, hanging from coat hooks, reflected in a mirror (Default)
[personal profile] davidgillon
 

Hidden Legacy Series, Ilona Andrews

(First trilogy reviewed here. As a quick primer, magic has existed since the mid-1800s, runs in families called Houses, led by the overpowered Primes, and mundane law enforcement mostly refuses to get involved with their feuds).

Diamond Fire

Book 3.5 as it's a novella, and Nevada Baylor, protagonist of the first trilogy, is about to marry billionaire Connor 'Mad' Rogan. But they're two wedding planners down and Nevada's middle sister Catalina has decided she's going to make this wedding work if it kills her, or if she has to kill someone else. The problem is, someone already has killing in mind, a major theft already happened, and prime suspect for that is probably one of Connor's mother's family. So it's shy, brilliant Catalina against a dozen spoiled Spanish aristos.

I like Catalina as protagonist, but I think my favourite character is the utterly irreverent Runa Etterson, a Prime specialising in poisons: "Yes, the frosting is definitely poisoned - everyone grab a spoon and dig in!"

Sapphire Flames

Catalina has now replaced Nevada as head of House Baylor and the Baylor PI agency, on the grounds it's the only way to stop Nevada working herself to death. Summoned on a mission of mercy, to lure a grieving teen off a ledge, Catalina is horrified to discover his sister is Runa Etterson, and that they are the only surviving members of their family after their mother and sister burned to death in a house fire. Runa is convinced it was murder, and as the new head of House Etterson, she wants the Baylor Agency to find out who did it. Meanwhile, her mother had her own safeguard in place, and has hired an assassin to avenge her, an assassin Catalina is horrified to discover is billionaire playboy Count Alessandro Sagredo, subject of her teenage crush. In person Alessandro is arrogant, entitled, and annoyingly, evenly shockingly competent. It's love at first hate. 

Emerald Blaze

"Holster your weapons, and step away from the monkey!"

Nine months on from Sapphire Flames and Catalina is mostly over Alessandro walking out on her in pursuit of his personal obsession. But when both she and her secret boss, the grandfatherly Linus Duncan, aka the scary Warden of Texas, are attacked by summoned creatures, Linus decides that the attacks mean Catalina needs to take point on the investigation of the murder they may relate to. Which is when Alessandro reappears, strangely stripped of his arrogance, humbled even, and swearing to protect her. Which considering the investigation means going face to face with not one, but four combat Primes, the prime suspects in the murder, and a bunch of assassins, might be just as well.

Ruby Fever

A year on from Emerald Blaze and the Speaker of the Texas State Assembly (ruling body of the Houses) has just been assassinated, while someone walked through Linus Duncan's overpowered security to leave him comatose, which means Catalina Baylor, Deputy Warden of the State of Texas at the age of 23, is on her own when it comes to who is running the investigations. But that doesn't mean she's on her own for actually getting stuff done, because she has the full assistance of her family aka House Baylor, and her fiance, Alessandro Sagredo. Plus an annoying Russian prince. And she's going to need all the help she can get, because this time it's war.


Okay, these are David-candy, and I had to ration myself by insisting I read each book twice before moving on to the next, otherwise I'd have blown through the whole double-trilogy in three days. There's a definite pattern to the two trilogies: Book 1, best of frenemies, Book 2, reconciled lovers, Book 3, partners. But Nevada and Catalina are different characters, possibly overly defined by their older sister/middle sister roles, and if their partners are both dangerous billionaire bad boys, they're at least different dangerous billionaire bad boys - Connor as a soldier and Alessandro as, well, Zorro.

They're very much about family - the Baylors start as the three sisters, their mother, their two male cousins, and Grandma Frida, all working together, but also found family, because by the time the second trilogy wraps they are up to somewhere around twenty characters considering themselves to have family ties - and all but a couple of the younger kids with fully developed characters. 

The world-building is equally good, as is the plotting, with underlying arcs binding the trilogies together. I think I caught a couple of things that were raised and not developed, but nothing major. They even covered a point in the Baylor heritage where I initially thought they'd missed the scientific implications.

Impressed.

gwynnega: (books poisoninjest)
[personal profile] gwynnega
(Via [personal profile] sovay and [personal profile] asakiyume.)

1. Lust, books I want to read for their cover.

I'm pretty sure I originally picked up Little Women (an abridged edition) when I was eight years old because of the cover. (It's this edition.) This sparked an Alcott obsession.

2. Pride, challenging books I finished.

Ulysses, maybe? (I read it via dailylit.com, in small email installments every day.)

3. Gluttony, books I've read more than once.

I don't do that as much these days as when I was younger, but sometimes I'll listen to an audiobook that I've previously read in print. I've done that recently with Rosemary's Baby (read by Mia Farrow) and Little Rabbit by Alyssa Songsiridej. Back in the day, I reread Marge Piercy's Vida and Braided Lives, and some of Marilyn Hacker's poetry books, among others. (ETA: I reread Dracula via Dracula Daily a couple of years back, long after my first read of the novel. I'm currently rereading Frankenstein. Also, it occurs to me that I've reread some novels for panel discussions. Joanna Russ's The Female Man springs to mind.)

4. Sloth, books that have been longest on my to-read list.

I don't have a to-read list, but I have owned quite a few books for decades without reading them. Sometimes I eventually get rid of them, but others I keep if I still think I'll want to read them. That category includes: The Madness of a Seduced Woman by Susan Fromberg Schaeffer (I hauled that book from Los Angeles to the UK and back again) and (more recently) The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers.

5. Greed, books I own multiple editions of.

Diane di Prima's Loba, Samuel R. Delany's The Motion of Light in Water, Judy Grahn's The Highest Apple, and Joanna Russ's On Strike Against God. (The editions differ in terms of what material they include.)

6. Wrath, books I despised.

An Education in Malice by S.T. Gibson. A dark-academia Carmilla set in the 1960s should have been a lot of fun. I know some people really liked this book, but I couldn't get past the raging anachronisms. I suspect the book was originally set in the '90s or '00s, but then the author added some miniskirts and no one bothered to check the references--for example, mentions of Anais Nin books that hadn't come out yet, and a reference to Sylvia Plath "first editions" (when her books were new). Also, it somehow never occurred to anyone involved that no one talking about a telephone before the age of cellphones would call it a landline.

7. Envy, books I want to live in.

I suppose when I was a kid, I would have liked to hang out with the March sisters or Sherlock Holmes? But the prospect of living in the 19th century stopped being appealing at some point.

Vertigo writing workshop!

2025-10-29 16:01
mrissa: (Default)
[personal profile] mrissa
 Exciting news! I've been working all year on a vertigo arts project, collaborating with people in academia, physical therapy, puppetry, and dance. Now I'm running a creative writing workshop for people directly or indirectly affected by vertigo to process some of their experiences through the written word.

SUNDAY NOVEMBER 23 at 1100 a.m. Central Standard Time (5 p.m. GMT). This workshop is FREE TO ATTEND with funding provided by the Impact and Innovation Fund of the University of St Andrews, Scotland--but we do ask that you register in advance! For more questions or to register, please email ar220@st-andrews.ac.uk

We will draw on some of the complexities, difficult symptoms, and feelings that characterise the condition such as loss of balance, mobility, disorientation, dizziness, anxiety, impact on social relationships, etc. You will be given some prompts to work with, but you will be encouraged to write at your own pace, using forms or technique that are most comfortable to you.

I know that this doesn't apply to many/most of you, but please spread the word to anyone you know who DOES live with vertigo or someone who has vertigo. This is not the last thing I will get to tell you about from the vertigo arts project--this is just the beginning of the cool stuff we've been doing.
ffutures: (Default)
[personal profile] ffutures
This is an all-new bundle of games, sourcebooks and adventures based on the Cthulhu Mythos from a variety of authors and publishers, the seventh Bundle Of Holding annual collection of this type.

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Tentacles7

 

Like all of these bundles it's a mixed bag, hopefully containing something for everyone that likes the background. Since multiple games systems are represented here some adaption may be needed - for example, if you're playing the original Call of Cthulhu game some adventures will need conversion from "old school revival" D&D-like rules. There's some systemless background material, such as a book on cults, but this is more diverse than a lot of these bundles and more work is likely to be needed to get the maximum bang for your buck.

Not sure if this is the last horror offering before Halloween, but it seems likely. We should know what comes next before long...
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


The seventh all-new library of Sanity-shattering tabletop roleplaying ebooks inspired by the Cthulhu Mythos.

Bundle of Holding: Tentacles 7
oursin: Photograph of small impressionistic metal figurine seated reading a book (Reader)
[personal profile] oursin

What I read

Finished Encampment, which was brilliant, and intense.

So intense that I had to decompress with a brief Dick Francis binge: Driving Force (1992) - a bit subpar I thought, slow start, massively convoluted plot; Wild Horses (1994) - the one involving a paraphilia I actually did a post here on back when, and making of a movie; Twice Shy (1981) which has a lot of v retro though presumably at the time cutting-edge computer nerdery involving programs on cassette tapes.

On the go

Have started - this was while I was out and about in the world last week - Peter Parker's Some Men in London: Queer Life, 1960–1967 (Some Men in London #2) (2024), since I was recording a podcast last week with the author and he assured me it was somewhat less of a downer than the previous, 1950s, volume. I think it may be a dipper-in over some while.

Still dipping in to Readers' Liberation - liked the first chapter, which is about what readers bring to the book, the second seems a bit heavier going.

Eve Babitz, Eve's Hollywood (1974) - perhaps not quite as good as Slow Days, Fast Company, but it was her first published work.

Up next

No idea: have just sent off for The Scribbler Annual but no idea when it's likely to arrive.

emotional support dyeing?

2025-10-29 10:43
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)
[personal profile] yhlee
hand-dyed handspun yarn

A test batch to see how the colors come out. Next I start measuring out and doing this more systematically.

Three-ply handspun wool yarn.
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


What dark purpose compels a girl and her android companion to wander post-apocalyptic Japan?

Touring After the Apocalypse, volume 6 by Sakae Saito

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