bossymarmalade | Reading

You know it's been a Capital W Week when one of the least draining parts of it was that you had to sit at home one day from 9am waiting for the guy to show up to repair your washing machine and he didn't show until 6:20pm. And that issue did in fact involve a drain pump! Insert rimshot here.

( The Pitt, 2.15, 9:00P.M. )

sabotabby

IT'S PODCAST FRIDAY EVERYONE go listen to Wizards & Spaceships' season 2 finale, "In Praise of Difficult Women ft. Silvia Moreno-Garcia"! It's largely about SFF's Skyler White problem, i.e., why are men allowed to be difficult, unlikeable, or deeply problematic and non-villainous women basically aren't. Basically, an excuse to listen to a multi-genre genius hold forth on her opinions for about an hour. She's so cool. Holy shit.

dine

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torachan

1. I woke up late today (by like an hour or so) and felt pretty tired mid day, but otherwise am pretty much recovered from the travel.

2. Yesterday I went to Petco to buy more litter and decided to get a new cat tree for the kitties as a treat. I wanted to spray it with catnip spray to get everyone to notice it, but so far can't find the spray. Jasper really likes it, though.

3. I'm very glad I have a four day weekend before having to go back to work on Monday.

4. Molly didn't come out of hiding last night until around 9:30, but she's been pretty much glued to my bed ever since. And she was extra demanding of pets when I went to bed last night.

sabotabby

This one's about crypto, which admittedly makes my eyes glaze over even though it's really important. It's just that I know enough about economics to know that all money is fake, but crypto is especially fake, and really has all the downsides of money without the advantages of money. Also everyone involved is an asshole, much more so than is depicted in this episode. It's based largely on Andean Medjedovic (and good job casting someone who looks a great deal like him) and the many attempts to find the real Satoshi Nakamoto.

Warning that this episode discusses autism in ways that are fucked up and shitty.

( WAGMI )

petra

teland tagged me in a Tumblr meme, which I completed here for legibility/copy-paste-ability.

Here are my present thoughts about the first story I wrote in each of 30 fandoms, selected because those are the ones in which I have written more than 3 works longer than a drabble, with the occasional guest star of "All right, I mostly wrote drabbles in this fandom, but I really want to list it."

If that sounds like a meme you want to do, consider yourself tagged! The original meme was just "First story you wrote in each fandom" but I'd be here for a month if I did all of them.

The list of fandoms where stories appear is: Ashes to Ashes, Aubrey-Maturin - O'Brian, Battlestar Galactica (2003), Dark is Rising - Cooper, DCU (Comics), DCU Animated - Timmverse, Discworld - Pratchett, Doctrine of Labyrinths, due South, Falsettos - Finn & Lapine, Generation Kill (TV), Good Omens - Gaiman & Pratchett, Jeeves & Wooster, Les Misérables - Hugo, Life on Mars (UK), The Magicians (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, then known as Avengers (2012), Men's Ice Hockey RPF, Promethean Age - Bear, Singin' in the Rain (1952), Slings & Arrows:, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars RPF, Supreme Power, Tales of the City - Maupin, Twitch City, Vorkosigan Saga - Bujold, and White Collar.

( I am not monofannish )

Current Mood: proud of myself
Current Music: We have books, all kinds of fiction

petra

Feed the hungry? Heal the sick? Stop the war? Naaaaaah. Let's BUILD BIG ART.

Is it to celebrate Trump getting the FIFA Peace Prize? JD pwning the Pope?

Trump Admin triumphs: footage not found.

The mere concept of building a big monument to fuckall while we are actively ~~at war~~ illegally bombing another country without the consent of Congress, with no victory conditions and less motivation than the average divorce, offends me to the core. Triumphing over common sense is not a triumph.

Current Mood: ashamed
Current Music: My country, right or wrong; if wrong, to be set right.

devilc

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turps

I had a bit of an adventure today and went to a different branch of my gym, the big branch in Sunderland city centre. That meant many more machines to use and now, of course, every muscle in my body is starting to ache as I had to try out everything that was new to me. What I'd actually made the trip for was the bigger branches have hydro massage beds you can use as part of your membership, and I've wanted to try one for a while. So, today I did and oh man, it was good. It especially felt good on my lower back and legs. Then I went and destroyed that feeling on the machines.

Next time, work out first, then massage.

I'll still mostly go to my local branch as that's within easy walking distance, but this other one I'll try to get there with James once a week as it was good for him, too. Also, has much better music as they were playing Linkin Park at one point.

Yesterday we were also in Sunderland as James needed to collect his new glasses, and while we were in town we picked up our cards for the newly opened The Community Shop. It's on the same basis as Company shop, selling surplus food for cheap, just for this version only people on means tested benefits can join. I could be a member due to getting the carers' allowance so signed online a while ago, and went to get the actual card yesterday.

We ended up waiting in a queue for over an hour, and then the person who took my photo took the worst picture ever. She was so stressed with so many people waiting she hurried the process so only half my head is in shot and the lighting is horribly harsh, so I look like some gargoyle with half a face. But, she made no suggestion to retake so guess I'm stuck with it.

I doubt I'll use this shop as much as Company due to a lack of parking, but it's always good to have options. Especially so as members can also use the attached heavily discounted café and really, being able to get a main meal for £1.50 is a good thing.

Now, part of a post that I started on Monday.

It was a sweaty one at class today, not helped by the heating being on despite it being a lovely, sunny spring day. It was the biggest group we've had for a while, which is why it's a shame that the classes for the next two Wednesdays have been cancelled due to meetings, just as people have started to come back. But, Mondays are still on which is good.

So, got tidied up before going there, did class, came home, and I've made another batch of vegetable soup, so that's cooking in the slow cooker now.

We went to the cinema to see You, Me and Tuscany on Saturday. I do like a romcom and this was a good one. A predictable plot but set in a beautiful place with lots of sunshine, so you could just sit back, not think and enjoy what was on-screen. And James stayed awake for the whole thing.

After leaving there we drove to Corey's flat to drop his and Sharna's Easter sweets off. So, it was nice to spend some time with him.

umadoshi

Our planter is here! Getting it wasn't actually a saga, but it felt a bit like one. ( TL;DR: delivery service annoyance )

We also both took yesterday off (and I'm off the rest of the week, but got up at my usual workday time today in hopes of getting a fair amount of manga work done), and ventured out to buy veg seeds for the planter. (We also still need to get soil/fertilizer/etc., but want to read up on it more first. I think I might order a hard copy of The Vegetable Gardener's Bible, which I got on sale in ebook recently and like so far.)

Yesterday's important lesson: when noting down which seed varieties we like the looks of, include the source, because our local store, at least, has separate displays for each originating company, and knowing that would make it much easier to check for the various varieties. Anyway, here's what we wound up with (descriptions are in my last post):

Basil: Devotion.

Cabbage: Early Golden Acre (green) and Serpentine F1 (savoy).

Spinach: Bloomsdale and Renegade.

Lettuce: Brighton (Butterhead), Black Seeded Simpson (green leaf), Red Salad Bowl (red leaf), Grand Rapids (green leaf), Freckles (romaine), and Drunken Woman.

Current Mood: busy

dine

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devilc

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torachan

1. We are back home! It was a long day of traveling and then a long day of staying awake for a whole other day so as to get back on LA time, but we did it. So glad to be home!

2. I looked at making reservations for the bus from the hotel to the airport last night but ended up not doing so because I didn't want to commit to a time yet and I had the vague memory of having made same-day reservations last year. Well, either I misremembered or this year they're just busier because this morning it was telling me I was outside the reservation period. We checked out of the hotel and then waited a few minutes downstairs for the bus to come by and asked the driver if we could get on without reservations and he said no, so we ended up just taking another bus to Maihama station and then taking the train (I think it was like three trains lol) to the airport. With the new rolling suitcase we bought last week, it was actually doable, and we would have been able to do the same in Osaka and save those taxi fares if only we'd had it then. idk why we thought backpack style bags were the way to go, but we are definitely converts to the rolling suitcase now. By taking the train, we were able to stop back at the Disney store in Tokyo station which we had checked out yesterday morning but then decided to make our purchases when we came back through on the way back to the hotel, except our plans ended up taking us a different route and we didn't go back through Tokyo station. So Carla was able to get a few more last minute Rapunzel items before we left.

3. Overall it was a really nice trip, but I'm not sure I want to do a full two weeks again. The last couple days we were away, there were some cat pee accidents, so I think the stress might have been getting to someone (we suspect Molly since she was in hiding most of the time we were gone, even though she knows Alex), and we just missed the babies a lot.

4. I never close my bedroom door but Alex was closing it while she was working, which of course made Chloe very curious as to what was going on inside!

sabotabby

HEY PALS I'm back with more trashy copaganda from Canada, oh yes it is the return of Law & Order Criminal Intent: Toronto.

( Skin Deep )

carenejeans

Write Every Day April 2026 - Day 15

This is my last day hosting for this month! Tomorrow, head over to sanguinity's place. See you there!

Quote of the Day:

"Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic."

— Jim Jarmusch, quoted in Austin Kleon's Steal Like an Artist.

My Check-In:

Alibi sentence! Because, er, I was lazy! ;-)

Tally
( Days 1-13 )

Day 14:

badly_knitted,

carenejeans,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

dswdiane,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora

Day 15:

china_shop

Let me know if I missed you, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet. And remember, you can join in at any time!

writerlibrarian

Health

I took a dive in the outside steps on Sunday. My right knee was scratched a whole lot. The shock was brutal. I'm better, yea! for chiropractor and Polysporin cream.

Teacher stuff

Last week of online class, I still have to write one text for next Monday. Then they have to do their last term paper due on the 30th. By May 10th it's done.

I really enjoyed the experience. If the opportunity is offered again I'll take it.

Work stuff

I might take a short term replacement job at my old library. One of the librarian is out on sick leave. I'm just the back up if she doesn't come back mid May and only part time (3 1/2 days) and only until June. That's a lot of only. We will see.

Reading

April is a slow month reading wise I'm still reading Katabasis by R. F. Kuang. I'm up to 21% and it's interesting. But I'm more into reading fic this month. It's Rough Trade first writing challenge of the year. The theme is Complications : competence/alternative universe. I love reading the stories as they are written. I have two this time I'm following : Bone Deep it's a Harry Potter Master of Death AU and (How to) Save a Life also Potter fandom but with a focus on Draco being the main character. Often I end up rereading some stores that were posted through the challenge and published months later. I am rereading Keira Marcos Fusion/AU Potter/Tolkien: The Arda Exodus. It is still very entertaining and a comfort read.

Watching

Pursuit of Jade is on pause because I'm not in a historical drama mood but I'll go back to it eventually. I am watching Sunsets Secrets Regrets a noir, crime, undercover, police drama. So far (10/28), it's keeping me watching. Rebirth was a no go, I watched the first three and nope.

Hockey

The battle of Pennsylvania Pittsburgh vs Philadelphia. Redux. Go Pens. Starts this week-end.

Crafting

My red fox in the forest is done.

sabotabby

Just finished: The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar. This one has been on my list forever just because of the author, so I never looked up what it was about or anything like that. If I had, I'd have read it sooner. It's a queer feminist retelling of "The Two Sisters"/"The Twa Sisters," a.k.a. Loreena McKennitt's "The Bonny Swans," which I loved as a teenage goth and still love as an adult goth. It's so immersive in its writing that I somehow failed to connect there being two daughters with one suitor, a miller with a daughter, a river, a land dispute, and a harper until about halfway through when the realization hit that El-Mohtar is at least goth-adjacent and approximately my age lol.

Anyway, it's about Esther and Ysabel, two sisters whose family owns a willow grove (willow being used for "grammar," a.k.a. magic) downstream from Faerie. Esther is being courted by the village incel but is in love with Rin, a shapeshifting Fae who plays the harp and has become enchanted by Esther's singing. Esther would kill or die for her younger sister, and the bond between them is gorgeously written.

Tangentially, "The Bonny Swans" always confused me as a kid because it's stitched together from a bunch of versions of the story, so the father is a farmer in the first verse but the king in the last, and it's unclear whether what the miller's daughter pulls from the river is a swan or a woman, and the novella actually goes a fair way to resolving some of these contradictions. But I also noticed that this is low-key a trans narrative, because in the first verse the farmer has "daughters, one two three," and in the last verse there's no middle daughter, but there's a brother named Hugh. This particular story just leaves out the middle child but there's a free plot idea for you if you want one.

Sour Cherry by Natalia Theodoridou. Apparently feminist fairy tale retellings is the Nebula theme this year. This is Bluebeard; a modern day woman telling a story to her son about his father, flashing back to a dreamy narrative about a man who curses the land wherever he goes. It's haunting and poetic and unflinching in its depiction of not just domestic abuse but why women stay in abusive relationships. I thought it dragged at the end but was so well-written that I'd absolutely recommend it.

Currently reading: Here Where We Live Is Our Country by Molly Crabapple. I just started this last night after pre-ordering it the second I knew of its existence. It's a detailed, illustrated history of the Jewish Bund and the concept of "doikayt," or hereness, the formation of Jewish identity in the diaspora. Obviously this is very relevant and very up my alley and this is the right person to tell the story.

dine

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pensnest

Beast and I just watched 'Smoke', a series on (I think) Apple TV about an arson investigator and a police detective who have a couple of arsonists to chase.

Taron Egerton is really, really good in it.

*

( The rest of this post is about twenty-five years out of date! )

carenejeans

Quote of the Day:

"Take time to be bored. One time I heard a coworker say, 'When I get busy, I get stupid.' Ain’t that the truth. Creative people need time to just sit around and do nothing. I get some of my best ideas when I’m bored, which is why I never take my shirts to the cleaners. I love ironing my shirts—it’s so boring, I almost always get good ideas. If you’re out of ideas, wash the dishes. Take a really long walk. Stare at a spot on the wall for as long as you can. As the artist Maira Kalman says, 'Avoiding work is the way to focus my mind.'"

Austin Kleon, Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative (Workman Publishing, 2012)

My Check-In:

Some work on the Neverending Project...*thud*.

Tally
( Days 1-12 )

Day 13:

annavere,

badly_knitted,

carenejeans,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

dswdiane,

goddess47,

luzula,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

ysilme

Day 14: