1. My knee is sore today but the other aches and pains I had last night when trying to get to sleep seem to have gone away in the morning.
2. I had two meetings today and both were cancelled!
3. I made an appointment to get my covid shot next Monday, which was the soonest I could get an appointment, though I might drop in tomorrow on the way to work and see if they have any walk-in availability (it said limited walk-ins online), as there is a location offering them close to work.
I took the pill a little earlier today like 5 Am and I was better. Less nausea, less dizziness. It came in short waves but bearable. It is ratcheting up my GERD though. However my blood sugar was 125 today so it seems like it's working. Hopefully (cross your fingers for me) my body will adjust to this med and I can take it. I need to get the HGA1C down (and if there's weight loss, fantastic, if not, I'm still happy if I get the blood sugar under better control)
today I sat down to tutor one of my students who is so eager to do well and then scared her when I put my foot up on the table and show her where the medial malleolus is under the skin and she see's my ankle 'it's PURPLE' Yes, dear, that's varicose and spider veins. We'll discuss them for the final.
Today was the faculty/staff art show so I can say I have my art in a gallery again. Ha. I didn't stay until we got to see who 'won' the people's choice award. I'm sure I didn't win but that's not why I didn't stay. That nausea had come back. Here's my art
Forest Elegy is the one I've had planned for two years. the first time I tried to do the leaves, they crumpled (2023) then I decided to put them between wax paper, sealing it with an iron, colors didn't stay but the leaves did (2024). In the meantime I had lost my bones and had to borrow these from the wildlife lab.
Ashes of Them was a last minute idea that didn't quite work as planned (ah well) In the ashes are bits of my old poetry about lost love and you can't really see it in the ashes but there is a faux wedding ring. I set off my smoke alarm and nearly blistered a few fingers.
I was sad to see Robert Redford passing today though that was a nice long life there.
Fannish 50, well here are two unrelated fannish things. One is a trailer for Dana Terrance's non-Disney owned indie animation which really does fire shots across Disney's bow (she did The Owl house) It drops this weekend and it looks worth watching (it is horror)
And can I talk about how excited I am that the Halloween Baking Challenge has aired. I am not a baker. Like at all. My grandmother used to bemoan this. When I was injured and in the nursing home, Food Network was one of the few channels I got and I watched the spring baking challenge. It was fun though and then I found the Halloween one and this is up my alley. I was happy to start this tonight (though I'm annoyed AF by one of the home bakers already).
I think one of the reason I like this challenge is there isn't much of the drama, you know, the blaming, screwing each over over, the smack talking. This feels more friendly. I don't need to see the negative b.s. in so many challenge shows and none of the baking challenges seem to have them so those are the shows I like.
I determinedly managed to get through the Master level of Astro Bot, and then after several hundred attempts got the Sephibot from the Megamix Mastery challenge, yay. To get Sephiroth you have to get through three challenges using the dog (which is like a rocket boost), the monkey (plays cymbals that change orientation/direction of various obstacles) and the chicken (launches you upwards), and what I particularly enjoyed was that once you’ve made it to the chicken bit, which is the final one, the bouncy fast-paced Astro Bot music starts to merge with One-Winged Angel, Sephiroth’s iconic theme :D Anyway, he is now mine! I then gritted my teeth and watched some YouTube playthroughs for help and FINALLY got the last two bots from the speed rounds (inflatable octopus my nemesis, I have at last successfully wrangled you) so have now 100%’d everything until more DLC comes out.
Played a bit more of Death Stranding, and I do like it, but it hasn’t really gripped me yet - it wants me to seek out another settlement, but then I keep getting local missions, and I’m not sure how much I’m supposed to level up first and there’s no apparent time tension. I therefore picked up Stardew Valley again, which is probably my worst game every for making me play “just one more day” and am now on summer in year 3, have finally managed to marry a villager (Elliot, who has conveniently added a library wing to my house, why no I am sure my character likes him for his personality) and unlock Qi’s challenges on Ginger Island.
And then I picked up FFVII Remake thinking vaguely about doing a hard mode play through, but couldn’t find that or chapter select as an option so have now played through most of 17 chapters all over again (there are only 18 chapters) and gosh I love everyone in this (almost; obviously I do not love Hojo or most of Shinra, including the Turks). I am significantly better at fighting now as well, although I forgot everyone’s level 2 limit break was locked behind their colosseum fights but you can only see the options for characters in your party, so Tifa and Barrett are still stuck on level 1 because I didn’t take them back there once I had them.
The sheer density of boss fights towards the end and the lack of ability to save in between phases is a pain. In chapter 17 I beat Jenova Lifebringer easily enough as a team battle (now that I know to take out the tentacles), fought Rufus and his blasted alien hound solo on the roof top (I can take out the dog easily enough but getting Rufus means you have to hit him with Braver when he reloads, and he is super fast and keeps shooting me so I end up running in circles around the roof top for AGES self-healing until I can make it work), and then went into a fight against the Arsenal (not the football team) with Barrett and Aerith that I lost in the second to last phase - so I left the game on pause to wrangle children, organise household etc and when I went back I had to fight Rufus and Darkstar all over again, arrgh.
Shows: SGA Rec Category: AU - no Stargate Characters: Rodney McKay/John Sheppard, Ronon Dex, Teyla Emmagan Categories: M/M Words: 10,517 Warnings: none apply Author on DW:berty Author's Website:Berty on AO3 Link:When You Piece It All Together, It's A Love Story on AO3 Why This Must Be Read: This is absolutely a comfort read for me, and one I hope to reread many times. It's got all the good stuff: a great meet-cute, John as a somewhat fame-averse rock star, Ronon as "Big Ron" his head of security, Teyla as an eco-warrior, and Rodney as his usual genius self, blissfully unaware of the existence of celebrities. A lovely story, go read (or re-read) it!
I liked the Korean movie Phantom (2023) enough that I decided to hunt down the novel on which it's based, Mai Jia's The Message -- in large part out of curiosity about whether it's also lesbians.
The answer: ... sort of! The lesbians are not technically textual but there's a bit of Lesbian Speculation and then a big pointed narrative hole where lesbians could potentially be. It is, however, without a doubt, Women Being Really Weird About Each Other, to the point where I'm considering it as a Yuletide fandom (perhaps even moreso than the movie, where the women are also weird about each other but in a more triumphant cinematic way and less of an ambiguous, psychologically complex and melancholic way. you know.)
The plot: well, as in the movie, there's a spy, and there's the Japanese Occupation, and there's a Big Haunted House where we're keeping all the possible spies to play mind games with until somebody fesses up. Because the book is set in 1941 China, there are actually three factions at play -- the Japanese and collaborators, the Communists and the Nationalists -- and for the whole first part of the book, fascinatingly enough, we are almost entirely in the head of the Japanese officer who's running the operation and choreographing all the mind games in an attempt to ferret out the Communist agent in his codebreaking division. The result is sort of a weird and almost darkly funny anti-heroic anti-Poirot situation, in which Hihara is constantly engineering increasingly complicated locked-room scenarios designed to get the spy to confess like the culprit in a Thin Man movie, and is constantly thwarted by his suspects inconveniently refusing to stick to the script, even when presented with apparently incontrovertible evidence, placed under torture, lied to about the deaths of other members of the party, etc. etc.
The suspects include several variously annoying men, plus two women whom we and everyone else are clearly intended to find the most interesting people there: quiet and competent Li Ningyu, cryptography division head, mother of two, whom everyone knows is semi-separated from an abusive husband, and who somehow manages to keep calmly slithering her way out of every accusation Hihara tries to stick on her; and her opposite, loud bratty chic Gu Xiaomeng, whom Hihara would very much like to rule out as a suspect as quickly as possible because she's the daughter of a very wealthy collaborator, and who seems moderately obsessed with her boss Li Ningyu For Some Reason.
Both book and movie spend, like, sixty percent of their length on this big house espionage mind games scenario and then abruptly take a left turn, with the next forty percent being Something Completely Different. In the film this left turn involves DRAMATIC ROMANTIC ACTION HEROICS!!!! so I was quite surprised to find that the book's left turn ( involves spoilers )
Hi everyone, thanks for your patience through many delays and silences. Unfortunately, we're writing to inform you that no one on the Triple Crown Committee is able to run a Triple Crown raffle or other event this year. We know everyone looks forward to it — we do too — and we've tried to find some way to make it happen, but we just don't have the capacity to do it.
If you're interested in independently organizing a raffle or other event for Triple Crown winners, we're happy to chat with you about that. We won't be able to do much by way of practical support, but we can provide a list of verified 10k+ "winners" of the three Triple Crown exchanges and promote your event in Triple Crown venues. Please reach out to highadrenalinemod@gmail.com to discuss taking this on.
Good luck to everyone with Fic in a Box assignments and swaps, Five Figure Fanwork Exchange assignments, and hopes and dreams for High Adrenaline! And thanks for your understanding.
The deadline is almost upon us, which means that there's now one day left to finish your fic(s)! Technically, that is, because I'll throw in the same "surprise" mini-extension as I always do, and keep the collection open for submissions until an hour before reveals (which will happen at 00.01 GMT on the 19th).
Good job to everyone who has already posted, and best of luck to those who are still writing!
This is your check-in post for today. The poll will be open from midnight Universal or Zulu Time (8pm Eastern Time) on Tuesday, September 16, to midnight on Wednesday, September 17. (8pm Eastern Time).
Do you have rituals related to writing? Do you like to make a cup of tea before writing? Reread the last couple hundred words of your WIP? Read a few pages of a book?
i did it all for the robins (musesfool) wrote2025-09-1607:37 pm
Last night at this time, I was on what ended up to be a 90 minute (or more - I left after 90 minutes) call with other shareholders in my building to discuss options for complying with local law 97, which is all about reducing carbon emissions. It was informative, though as usual, the people running these meetings are bad at it it, and 2 people basically monopolized all the Q&A time with very specific-to-them concerns instead of applicable-to-all-tenants stuff, but at least nobody accused the board of being racist for muting them, which is what happened the last time I joined a building-related zoom call. Still only about a quarter of the people who live here showed up, which I find inexplicable considering the financial considerations involved. While no final decision was made, it seems like there will be a recommendation to take one of the incremental measures while continuing to explore the more expensive (but not the ludicrously expensive most expensive) options. So we'll see how that goes. If it helps my apartment not to turn into a sauna going forward, I am interested!
*
Baby Miss L is still trying to finalize her Halloween costume, but as with last year, there may be multiple outfits as she has a very full social calendar. She has gotten better about school, too - apparently she waves hello to everyone as she enters, and I imagine they all appreciate her attention. *g* I have also started compiling a list of books to buy her for her birthday and Christmas, which I guess I'll start shopping for soon.
*
I complain about work fairly often, but today I learned that 1. they've confirmed that our insurance will cover covid jabs for everyone who uses it, and 2. they're giving us 2 extra paid holidays this year since both 12/26 and 1/2 fall on Fridays. So I know I have it pretty good despite...everything happening in the world to try to ruin public health and nonprofits.
*
I can't remember if I posted about the very addictive phone game I recently downloaded, but after several lelvels where the only way to advance was to spend money to get helpful items, I deleted it. I can't be spending that kind of money and I am definitely the kind of person who needs to defeat the puzzles, even though I can see they are specifically designed to not be beatable without those helpful items. It's one reason I don't gamble or play "real" video games - I tend to get feverishly obsessive about winning and neither sleep nor money matter to me in that state. *hands* At least I know this about myself? Idk, but it felt good to delete the game even though I am still craving it.
*
The Mets snapped their losing streak on Sunday and still control their destiny in terms of a wild card spot, but given how poorly they've played for so long, this series with San Diego feels like a playoff game already. We'll see if they can hold the early lead. ....and now Lindor goes deep! <333
guardian_wishlist sign-ups are now closed! We have 21 wishlists covering a variety of Guardian canons and related fandoms and a wide range of media. Go forth and make gifts!!! :D :D :D
Wishlists are tagged for fandoms and media (previous years' tags are labelled with their respective years, so check the plain fandom and media tags at the bottom for this year's), and there's also a spreadsheet for your convenience.
Anyone can write or make gifts for any sign-up, right up to reveals on 6 October (Reunion Festival). All gifts must be hidden from public view until reveals. Post or link gifts in comments on the recipient's wishlist. (Comments are screened.) Gift comments can be anonymous or signed in. You don't need a Dreamwidth or AO3 account to gift.
guardian_wishlist sign-ups are now closed! We have 21 wishlists covering a variety of Guardian canons and related fandoms and a wide range of media. Go forth and make gifts!!! :D :D :D
Wishlists are tagged for fandoms and media (previous years' tags are labelled with their respective years, so check the plain fandom and media tags at the bottom for this year's), and there's also a spreadsheet for your convenience.
Anyone can write or make gifts for any sign-up, right up to reveals on 6 October (Reunion Festival). All gifts must be hidden from public view until reveals. Post or link gifts in comments on the recipient's wishlist. (Comments are screened.) Gift comments can be anonymous or signed in. You don't need a Dreamwidth or AO3 account to gift.
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tortured_hero_feed) wrote2025-09-16 09:44 pm
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torachan) wrote2025-09-16 09:04 pm
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stargateficrec2025-09-17 01:45 pm
