As of today, Wax's annual vacation is now fully over without us having accomplished anything (from our long list of house repair and renovating tasks) because we still haven't emerged from depression-anxiety-exhaustion since last fall.

Wax feels much worse than me, but it would not be fair to say I've recovered from it. I have enough energy to want to accomplish a project or go for a walk but not enough to start these things on my own (it takes about 1/2 as many spoons to do them together) and enough to want to see my friends but not enough to go beyond texting one of them once a month or so.

Anyway, Wax thinks she might have a thyroid issue. Or another physical issue, but the point is, she suspects she's not just depressed or burnt out. But her employer switched healthcare providers six months ago and the new one doesn't have a local branch, so going to an appointment will mean going into Turku (25-35 min drive). Her exhaustion is therefore holding her back from seeking treatment for it.

And I guess I also feel kinda bad. I am going to have to try to meet a new GP and discuss my medications and stuff. Sometimes, though, I think what I need (not instead of medication, just like... need most) is really a rigidly-scheduled regimen of eating enough calories and sleeping and exercising to gradually increase endurance at the same time every day, but as an ADHD sufferer, I can no more make myself do those than make myself suddenly speak Finnish fluently. It feels like there should be a trick - like it shouldn't be this hard to just create routines. Or leave the house alone to go for a walk. And yet.
mark: A photo of Mark kneeling on top of the Taal Volcano in the Philippines. It was a long hike. (Default)
([staff profile] mark posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance Aug. 31st, 2025 07:37 pm)

Per the [site community profile] dw_news post regarding the MS/TN blocks, we are doing a small code push shortly in order to get the code live. As per usual, please let us know if you see anything wonky.

There is some code cleanup we've been doing that is going out with this push but I don't think there is any new/reworked functionality, so it should be pretty invisible if all goes well.

The bbq yesterday was fun! Baby Miss L continues to be a character - she's a little awkward but she manages to get up and down steps now. In fact, she stood on the steps and was like, "Jump! Jump!" and we were like, " um, no, no jumping off the steps!"

Anyway, there were a lot of desserts, but the strawberry cake was enjoyed. It smelled fantastic and tasted good too.

In other news, I did the August recs update earlier:

[personal profile] unfitforsociety has been updated for August 2025 with 12 recs in 2 fandoms:

* 11 Batfamily and 1 Batfamily/Spider-Man crossover

***

A reminder to everyone that starting tomorrow, we are being forced to block access to any IP address that geolocates to the state of Mississippi for legal reasons while we and Netchoice continue fighting the law in court. People whose IP addresses geolocate to Mississippi will only be able to access a page that explains the issue and lets them know that we'll be back to offer them service as soon as the legal risk to us is less existential.

The block page will include the apology but I'll repeat it here: we don't do geolocation ourselves, so we're limited to the geolocation ability of our network provider. Our anti-spam geolocation blocks have shown us that their geolocation database has a number of mistakes in it. If one of your friends who doesn't live in Mississippi gets the block message, there is nothing we can do on our end to adjust the block, because we don't control it. The only way to fix a mistaken block is to change your IP address to one that doesn't register as being in Mississippi, either by disconnecting your internet connection and reconnecting it (if you don't have a static IP address) or using a VPN.

In related news, the judge in our challenge to Tennessee's social media age verification, parental consent, and parental surveillance law (which we are also part of the fight against!) ruled last month that we had not met the threshold for a temporary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law while the court case proceeds.

The Tennesee law is less onerous than the Mississippi law and the fines for violating it are slightly less ruinous (slightly), but it's still a risk to us. While the fight goes on, we've decided to prevent any new account signups from anyone under 18 in Tennessee to protect ourselves against risk. We do not need to block access from the whole state: this only applies to new account creation.

Because we don't do any geolocation on our users and our network provider's geolocation services only apply to blocking access to the site entirely, the way we're implementing this is a new mandatory question on the account creation form asking if you live in Tennessee. If you do, you'll be unable to register an account if you're under 18, not just the under 13 restriction mandated by COPPA. Like the restrictions on the state of Mississippi, we absolutely hate having to do this, we're sorry, and we hope we'll be able to undo it as soon as possible.

Finally, I'd like to thank every one of you who's commented with a message of support for this fight or who's bought paid time to help keep us running. The fact we're entirely user-supported and you all genuinely understand why this fight is so important for everyone is a huge part of why we can continue to do this work. I've also sent a lot of your comments to the lawyers who are fighting the actual battles in court, and they find your wholehearted support just as encouraging and motivating as I do. Thank you all once again for being the best users any social media site could ever hope for. You make me proud and even more determined to yell at state attorneys general on your behalf.

All day on Wednesday, I thought it was Thursday, and all day yesterday, I thought it was today. But it was not! So I do have some Wednesday books posting to do, now on Friday!

What I've just finished
The Oleander Sword and The Lotus Empire by Tasha Suri, the second and third books in her Burning Kingdoms trilogy. Overall, I thought these two were much more engaging than the first book, and I wanted to know what happened next, but I wasn't blown away by them like I was by her Books of Ambha duology (which I highly recommend!).

Also I've read both Into the Riverlands and Mammoths at the Gate by Nghi Vo. I enjoy these novellas quite a bit and these two were wonderful. I especially liked the martial arts references in Riverlands and how Mammoths was about grief and stories, two of my favorite topics to read about!

What I'm reading now
The Brides of High Hill, the next Singing Hills Cycle novella by Nghi Vo. I've just started it but I'm enjoying it so far.

What I'm reading next
I am just happy to be reading at all so I cannot say! I thought the next Craft Wars book was out in September, but it looks like it's not until the end of October, so I guess we'll see!

Speaking of books, though, last night I watched the Netflix adaptation of The Thursday Murder Club and I enjoyed it - the casting is A++ for the most part (Helen Mirren is perfect as Elizabeth and Ben Kingsley is great as Ibrahim. And Pierce Brosnan remains ridiculously handsome.) - and I think 95% of the streamlining they did was fine, because there were a few two many twists and turns in the book, but spoiler for both book and movie ) I haven't read any of the other books in the series, though I'm sure I will eventually, but I hope it does well enough that they can make a few more movies with this set of actors.

Now I have to go take my strawberry summer cake out of the oven. I was invited to a cookout tomorrow at my sister's at the last moment, so I have to have a cake to bring!

*
china_shop: Guo Changcheng writing in his notebook (Guardian - rookie taking notes)
([personal profile] china_shop Aug. 30th, 2025 09:41 am)
Dear self,
You are not allowed to post any more discussion posts or similar until you've answered the majority of outstanding comments. (Great to see your corner of Dreamwidth being so active, though! Wheee! <3)
Love, me

Partial to-do list:
  1. [community profile] guardian_wishlist signup
  2. outstanding comments on the Guardian readalong, [community profile] fan_writers discussion and intro posts, and Guardian drama polls
  3. a fill for this round of [community profile] fan_flashworks
  4. behind-the-scenes FFW stuff & mod post draft
  5. write to MP and mayoral candidate; submit on All The Things
  6. finish my DNW-kink WIP ASAP
  7. finish my other WIP after that, and prepare for my annual Wishlist writing frenzy *fingers crossed, knock on wood*
  8. close a bunch of tabs, seriously
  9. rest my arms.
rydra_wong: Lee Miller photo showing two women wearing metal fire masks in England during WWII. (Default)
([personal profile] rydra_wong Aug. 29th, 2025 05:53 pm)
That is a thing that is happening.

My standard joke here is that any game involving reflexes and coordination is going to be an excruciating experience of innumerable repeated failures for me, so I might as well play one where that's the point. This is only partly a joke.

Necessary context for anyone who has not met me IRL: I am dyspraxic as fuck. I was in my late twenties at least, possibly thirties, before I could catch an object being gently thrown to me across a short distance. My coordination, reflexes and ability to react to multiple inputs in real-time are so bad that I can't drive (or cycle on the road) because it would be OBVIOUSLY WILDLY DANGEROUS for me to even try (people would die). I have to buy special shatterproof crockery because otherwise my plate turnover is so high.

It was only with climbing that I learned that I can actually acquire motor skills, some of them, slowly, if I have unlimited time to practice them on my own terms.

Further necessary context: I'd been looking wistfully at the Soulsbornes for ages -- having seen videos such as Jonny Sims's Bloodborne streams -- as something that I'd probably love if I only had any coordination or ability at all to cope with having to react to multiple rapid inputs in real-time.

One of my climber friends has argued that Soulslike games are basically the same as working on a hard boulder project: you fail and fail and fail and fail and that's the process, each time you try to learn a bit more or try something new, and gradually you make progress, and eventually, hopefully, you don't fail.

And that's a process that I fucking love, and that works very well for my brain. Perverse stubbornness is my jam.

But when I look at something like Bloodborne -- the combat exchange is over before I can even track who's where and what's happened.

So I was thinking grumpily/wistfully and in secret about how what I really wanted was not an "easy mode," but a Soulsborne game that I could adjust the speed on (maybe set it all to 20-30% slower!), just so I could get my foot in the door, just so I could begin to maybe try.

And I watched more videos of other games, and somewhere along the way I watched people figuring out and/or being coached on how to get through the fight with the Asylum Demon at the end of the tutorial* in Dark Souls 1.

(I also read that Dark Souls 1 has the slowest and, in some people's eyes, "clunkiest" combat of the Souls games — not necessarily the easiest, but more tactical, less fast-twitch.)

And I thought, "... huh, I wonder, if I really worked at it, maybe I could beat the Asylum Demon? That would be kind of cool."

To be clear: I bought the game with the goal of seeing if I could beat the tutorial.

Cut for length )
Tags:
Wax never blogs anymore and really this is more the kind of thing people talk about on Tumblr, BUT

today someone commented on a My Chemical Romance alternate universe fanfiction novel she posted SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO just to tell her they were super creeped out to realize that the characters in the fic were 15 and 21, respectively.

LOL.
china_shop: An orange cartoon dog waving, with a blue-green abstract background. (Bingo!)
([personal profile] china_shop Aug. 28th, 2025 03:32 pm)
Pandemic life
Colds and so forth. )

Previous poll review
In the Plaguefic poll, 46% of respondents were okay reading about Covid and related subjects, 52% didn't mind mentions, and 28% like it when characters mask sometimes, while 22% said there are aspects of the pandemic they avoid, and 22% prefer their reading matter to avoid the subject entirely.

In ticky-boxes, hugs won with 74%, followed by wallabies at a disco with 48%, and battery acid and protest signs with 36%. Thank you for your votes! <3

Reading
Audio: Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer, read by Candida Gubbins. This continues to be fascinating and put present times into dryly alarming perspective, in a "thus has it ever been" kind of way. Most of the names and all the dates are in one ear and out the other, but Palmer spins an excellent yarn and kindly gives key figures nicknames (Battle Pope!). I'm up to Lucrezia Borgia, ie, about halfway.

Library book: A Lady for a Duke by Alexis Hall. I'm about halfway through this, too. Everything I know about Regency is from non-contemporaneous novels (Heyer), but still. These characters are clearly modern LARPers, but the central conflict is good.

Kdramas/Cdramas
I'm restricting my Nothing But Love rewatch to the exercise machine, to make it last.

Other TV
We finished Bookish. I came around to it in the end; the flashback to Book's long-lost love was heartrending. Looking forward to season 2.

Nothing else. It turns out I don't watch much TV on my own.

Guardian/Fandom
I posted a poll to [community profile] fan_writers about whether sharing is part of your creative process, and there's some great discussion there.

Upcoming in Guardian fandom: [community profile] guardian_wishlist sign-ups open tomorrow. And the Slo-mo Drama Rewatch starts on [community profile] sid_guardian next week. \o/

Audio entertainment
Writing Excuses. Letters from an American. More Eight Days of Diana Wynne Jones (which aside from being really fun, highlighted this line from Archer's Goon: Mum always said that you could tell what people were like by their houses. So naturally now I keep thinking about Guardian through that lens and wondering what everyone's living spaces look like). I tried a local politics podcast (RNZ, equivalent of NPR), but apparently our political commentary has been reduced to economics, blah.

Online life
  • I need to stop making discussion posts when my arms aren't great.
  • I've found the frame-by-frame key in VLC, and nothing will stop my screencapping now, mwahaha!
  • Randomly alternating my comments between Casual HTML and Markdown. What could go wrong?


Writing/making things
My DNW-kinkfic continues, as I turn 1625 words of zero draft into Draft 1.0. Ot1h, it's very freeing to know almost no one will read this; otoh, the zero drafting comes with that feeling people talk about with outlining, where the impetus starts to leak out of the balloon... I'm going to finish it anyway, and I need to hurry up so I can make stuff for Wishlist.

Life/health/mental state things
For most of my adult life, I needed 8 to 9 hours of sleep a night to function well and be healthy. A couple of years ago, I read an article about how people over fifty shouldn't get more than 8 hours, and actually 7 is better. (Cannot remember the reasoning.) My expectations and sleep needs immediately dropped to 7ish hours per night, for lo, I am profoundly susceptible to the power of suggestion. Except that this week while Andrew's been sick, I've been getting 8 hours, and I feel good actually. So much more energy. tl;dr: I am ridiculous.

Cat
Sometimes during morning on-the-bed strokes, Halle crawls between two layers of blanket, and I never know if she's calling time on the stroking, or if this is some hide-and-seek cat game I'm supposed to know the rules of.

Food
I cook mostly vegetarian when it's just me. I really want a burger.

Good things
Immune systems. Fresh fruit. Several days of sunshine. Guardian. Dreamwidth activity generally. Cat. Andrew. LWS Writers' Hour. This cover of Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights" (Youtube).

Poll #33544 Cluedo
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 44


Your murder weapon of choice

View Answers

asp
10 (22.7%)

cyanide
6 (13.6%)

bulldozer
5 (11.4%)

heartbreak
7 (15.9%)

industrial freezer
2 (4.5%)

fright
1 (2.3%)

cassowary
24 (54.5%)

extremely elegant clothing
14 (31.8%)

other
3 (6.8%)

ticky-box full of musical frogs jamming away on their bongos
19 (43.2%)

ticky-box full of neglected-houseplant guilt
12 (27.3%)

ticky-box full of throwing coins into the wishing abyss
18 (40.9%)

ticky-box full of cartoon dogs going to the movies
15 (34.1%)

ticky-box of what would a Gamma/Delta/Epsilon AU look like? radioactive river permittivity?
9 (20.5%)

ticky-box full of vertical stripes
14 (31.8%)

ticky-box full of hugs
33 (75.0%)

magid: (Default)
([personal profile] magid Aug. 27th, 2025 05:16 pm)
  • 2 pounds of orange carrots
  • 2 pounds of Chioggia beets
  • 3 pounds of new potatoes (both yellow and red skinned types; I chose some teeny tiny ones, and some larger, aiming to avoid any that had some green, while internally doing the dance of happy potatoes)
  • 6 yellow onions (I chose ones as large as I could find; there are never enough onions!)
  • 6 heads of garlic
  • 8 smallish eggplants (I chose regular Italian ones)
  • 6 summer squash (I chose some zucchini, a zephyr (two-toned), and some pattypan ones that are wildly variegated green and gold all over; all medium to small)
  • 1 ruffled Napa cabbage, medium (though I realized on the walk home that I was probably reading the wrong side of the list for this, and I should have picked up 2 (or, more likely, swapped the other one); ah, well)
  • 2 bunches of cooking greens (I chose collards over purple kale or Swiss chard)
  • 20 medium to large red tomatoes
  • take-what-you-want herbs and hot peppers (I took a few of each type of hot pepper (jalapeno, Hungarian hot wax, cayenne), plus parsley, sage, and some red shiso (also available: holy basil, thyme, and possibly others I didn’t notice))

First thoughts: there are never enough onions or potatoes; I’d be happy to get twice this amount, or more (and those with the small share got half of this!). Herb salts. Roasted potatoes with chopped sage. Collards with mashed potatoes. Stir-fried onions, carrots, and Napa with garlic, tofu, ginger, and soy sauce. More bouts of ratatouille. Pickled carrots. Pickled hot peppers. Fermented hot pepper sauce. Canned crushed tomatoes. Sauted onions and collards with some form of sausage (vegan or actual meat), also some carrots and hot sauce from last year’s hot peppers.
Tags:
So here's a question for you, especially if you do office-type work: when did people start sending pictures of things instead of actual documents in a work-related setting? And WHY???

I have had this happen repeatedly recently, and then instead of just going on with my work easily, I have to email back and ask for a version in a program that I can edit. (If I don't need to edit, I will sometimes just print it as a PDF so I can attach and send it to people, but that is still an extra step I have to take because someone else couldn't put their work in a work-appropriate format.)

Personally, I get not wanting to share a linked document - I do it but I kind of hate other people in my documents because of version control issues (...or maybe just control issues? 😬😬😬) - but anything is better than a useless JPEG pasted into the body of an email when what I ASKED FOR was a list of attendees for a meeting I may need to sort, or a purchase requisition that I will need to update.

As a related item, stop with the QR codes! Our HR department sends emails about training opportunities or other events and is like, "Use the QR code to register!" Like, how about no? And certainly not when it's an event to which we are inviting board members, some of whom are LITERALLY in their 90s and not tech-savvy. What is wrong with a nice LINK to a FORM on a regular WEBBED SITE?

I guess I am feeling very Abe Simpson yells at clouds today, but come on. These are not things that make work easier! (Well, maybe it's easier for the people who do this, but then they have to deal with my annoying follow up emails, so is it really easier for them???)

In other news, my younger nephew got a promotion that required him to move to California in a hurry, so he flew out last night. I will miss him! Who will I call now when I need a tall person to do things in my apartment??? (Just kidding! It's a great opportunity for him, and he is some kind of regional manager now with a region that includes Hawaii, so my sister and I are already like, "let us plan a trip to visit him IN HAWAII!" [note: I will likely never be able to afford a trip to Hawaii, but a girl can dream.])

*

I'll start with the tl;dr summary to make sure everyone sees it and then explain further: As of September 1, we will temporarily be forced to block access to Dreamwidth from all IP addresses that geolocate to Mississippi for legal reasons. This block will need to continue until we either win the legal case entirely, or the district court issues another injunction preventing Mississippi from enforcing their social media age verification and parental consent law against us.

Mississippi residents, we are so, so sorry. We really don't want to do this, but the legal fight we and Netchoice have been fighting for you had a temporary setback last week. We genuinely and honestly believe that we're going to win it in the end, but the Fifth Circuit appellate court said that the district judge was wrong to issue the preliminary injunction back in June that would have maintained the status quo and prevented the state from enforcing the law requiring any social media website (which is very broadly defined, and which we definitely qualify as) to deanonymize and age-verify all users and obtain parental permission from the parent of anyone under 18 who wants to open an account.

Netchoice took that appellate ruling up to the Supreme Court, who declined to overrule the Fifth Circuit with no explanation -- except for Justice Kavanaugh agreeing that we are likely to win the fight in the end, but saying that it's no big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime.

Needless to say, it's a big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime. The Mississippi law is a breathtaking state overreach: it forces us to verify the identity and age of every person who accesses Dreamwidth from the state of Mississippi and determine who's under the age of 18 by collecting identity documents, to save that highly personal and sensitive information, and then to obtain a permission slip from those users' parents to allow them to finish creating an account. It also forces us to change our moderation policies and stop anyone under 18 from accessing a wide variety of legal and beneficial speech because the state of Mississippi doesn't like it -- which, given the way Dreamwidth works, would mean blocking people from talking about those things at all. (And if you think you know exactly what kind of content the state of Mississippi doesn't like, you're absolutely right.)

Needless to say, we don't want to do that, either. Even if we wanted to, though, we can't: the resources it would take for us to build the systems that would let us do it are well beyond our capacity. You can read the sworn declaration I provided to the court for some examples of how unworkable these requirements are in practice. (That isn't even everything! The lawyers gave me a page limit!)

Unfortunately, the penalties for failing to comply with the Mississippi law are incredibly steep: fines of $10,000 per user from Mississippi who we don't have identity documents verifying age for, per incident -- which means every time someone from Mississippi loaded Dreamwidth, we'd potentially owe Mississippi $10,000. Even a single $10,000 fine would be rough for us, but the per-user, per-incident nature of the actual fine structure is an existential threat. And because we're part of the organization suing Mississippi over it, and were explicitly named in the now-overturned preliminary injunction, we think the risk of the state deciding to engage in retaliatory prosecution while the full legal challenge continues to work its way through the courts is a lot higher than we're comfortable with. Mississippi has been itching to issue those fines for a while, and while normally we wouldn't worry much because we're a small and obscure site, the fact that we've been yelling at them in court about the law being unconstitutional means the chance of them lumping us in with the big social media giants and trying to fine us is just too high for us to want to risk it. (The excellent lawyers we've been working with are Netchoice's lawyers, not ours!)

All of this means we've made the extremely painful decision that our only possible option for the time being is to block Mississippi IP addresses from accessing Dreamwidth, until we win the case. (And I repeat: I am absolutely incredibly confident we'll win the case. And apparently Justice Kavanaugh agrees!) I repeat: I am so, so sorry. This is the last thing we wanted to do, and I've been fighting my ass off for the last three years to prevent it. But, as everyone who follows the legal system knows, the Fifth Circuit is gonna do what it's gonna do, whether or not what they want to do has any relationship to the actual law.

We don't collect geolocation information ourselves, and we have no idea which of our users are residents of Mississippi. (We also don't want to know that, unless you choose to tell us.) Because of that, and because access to highly accurate geolocation databases is extremely expensive, our only option is to use our network provider's geolocation-based blocking to prevent connections from IP addresses they identify as being from Mississippi from even reaching Dreamwidth in the first place. I have no idea how accurate their geolocation is, and it's possible that some people not in Mississippi might also be affected by this block. (The inaccuracy of geolocation is only, like, the 27th most important reason on the list of "why this law is practically impossible for any site to comply with, much less a tiny site like us".)

If your IP address is identified as coming from Mississippi, beginning on September 1, you'll see a shorter, simpler version of this message and be unable to proceed to the site itself. If you would otherwise be affected, but you have a VPN or proxy service that masks your IP address and changes where your connection appears to come from, you won't get the block message, and you can keep using Dreamwidth the way you usually would.

On a completely unrelated note while I have you all here, have I mentioned lately that I really like ProtonVPN's service, privacy practices, and pricing? They also have a free tier available that, although limited to one device, has no ads or data caps and doesn't log your activity, unlike most of the free VPN services out there. VPNs are an excellent privacy and security tool that every user of the internet should be familiar with! We aren't affiliated with Proton and we don't get any kickbacks if you sign up with them, but I'm a satisfied customer and I wanted to take this chance to let you know that.

Again, we're so incredibly sorry to have to make this announcement, and I personally promise you that I will continue to fight this law, and all of the others like it that various states are passing, with every inch of the New Jersey-bred stubborn fightiness you've come to know and love over the last 16 years. The instant we think it's less legally risky for us to allow connections from Mississippi IP addresses, we'll undo the block and let you know.

musesfool: Zuko, brooding (why am i so bad at being good?)
([personal profile] musesfool Aug. 23rd, 2025 07:15 pm)
I tried making mozzarella sticks again for dinner tonight and I don't know if the oil wasn't hot enough or what, but they stuck to the bottom of the pot. They stuck to the spatula when I finally scraped them off the bottom of the pot. They stuck to the PAPER TOWELS.

I have fried a lot of things in my time and then put them on paper towels to absorb the excess oil and NEVER BEFORE has anything stuck to them. What the actual fuck. I still ate whatever I was able to salvage, but wow, what a mess.

*
china_shop: Close-up of Zhao Yunlan grinning (Default)
([personal profile] china_shop Aug. 23rd, 2025 10:15 am)
Previous poll review
In the Obsessions poll, 9.8% of respondents have one current active fandom, 31.4% have a couple, 25.5% have a handful, and 15.7% have none at the moment. The most common response was "it's complicated" with 37.3%. Seven point eight percent have blorbos but no fandom.

In ticky-boxes, goth butterflies and punk moths came second to hugs, 56.9% to 76.5%. Dream parkour came third with 47.1%. Thank you for your votes! <3

Reading
Audio: Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer, read by Candida Gubbins -- I'm a third of the way through this delightful thirty-hour tour of the Renaissance. No idea how much is lodging in my brain (versus in-one-ear-and-out-the-other-ing), but I'm getting bits here and there. Like, for example, the Renaissance framing of "grace" as heavenly political capital. And theology as it relates to Hamlet. The general tone is very fun. In progress.

Audio: Stone and Sky (Rivers of London) by Ben Aaronovich, read by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith and Shvorne Marks. Having settled Peter into married life, Aaronovich is porting all the relationship stuff over to Abigail. I guess that makes sense. (The case isn't coming together for me, but that might be because I keep falling asleep while we're listening.) In progress.

Library book: A Lady for a Duke by Alexis Hall. Just a few chapters. Historical romance, and I'm pretty sure all the characters are speaking/behaving anachronistically, but I'm looking forward to the reveal.
Spoiler. The lady in the title is trans and was best friends with the duke before she went MIA at war and transitioned; he thinks she died, and he's now grieving his friend.
In progress.

Guardian by priest. We've finished the main story, just one short story extra to go. Wow, this has been a ride!

Kdramas/Cdramas
Still rewatching Nothing But Love (AKA Nothing But You), ahhh, I love them so much.

I've also started My Girlfriend is the Man, a Kdrama about a woman with a genetic predisposition to sudden-onset sex swap, who does indeed wake up in a male body. I only just finished episode 1, so I don't know yet how well they're going to handle it, but I'm fairly sure the narrative pressure on the boyfriend is to accept that his girlfriend is still his girlfriend, whatever body she's currently wearing. No idea where they'll take it after that.

Pru and I finished Sell Your Haunted House this week. We're planning to start Love Scout next (rewatch for me), unless I can think of something good (and Korean) with murders/ghosts/cases of the week. Hmm, maybe I should give Mystic Pop-Up Bar one more try... I bounced off it before, but I know several people who loved it.

Other TV
Cut for length. )

Guardian/Fandom
It's the last weekend of the Guardian novel scheduled readalong, and then we're heading into a slo-mo rewatch of the drama (half an episode per week). If you've been Guardian-curious or thinking of revisiting the show, now's your chance. *lures*

[community profile] fan_writers is going so well. Love to see so much conversation and interaction over there! If you have thoughts on writing, please feel free to post to the comm, either directly or with a link!

Audio entertainment
Letters from an American (lots, including a great half-hour interview with Gavin Newsom). Half an episode of Sinica, Writing Excuses, a couple of episodes of You Can Learn Chinese, some Eight Days of Diana Wynne Jones, and a couple of episodes of A Life Indigenous.

Plugged-in life
The last few days, I've been experimenting with not spending every waking non-keyboard moment listening to audiobooks and podcasts. I was kind of hoping some silence and/or music would wake up my creative brain, and then ideas would come spilling out my fingertips. So far, it's just created an opening for brain weasels. Pbthpbthpbhtpbhpth!

Writing/making things
I spent Monday morning writing a political submission and then finished my meta post about story middles. I spent Tuesday's writers' hour writing most of this. I am working on a fic, but it's slow going. It's veered into one of my DNWs (D/s). I mean, you know how sometimes you can write your own DNWs, because you instinctively avoid the aspects that actively squick you? That part is working. It's just that neither the Shen Wei in my head nor I have any idea what we're doing, lol. Playin' it by ear. *rattles keyboard*

I threw something verrrry last minute together for the [community profile] fan_flashworks Twinkle challenge. No idea if that worked.

Life/health/mental state things
I'm okay, just a bit disconnected. The weather's been so cold I want to stay home all the time. I really hate everything our government is doing (not on the same scale as the US, but terrible in its own libertarian way), so by day I'm a mild manner fangirl, but at night I wake up periodically to scrawl angry letters to politicians and/or newspaper editors in my notebook. I should send more of these; I'm always held back by feeling like I don't know enough and need to fact check.

Food
I made two small batches of vegetable dumplings -- Moosewood's sweet potato recipe, and mushroom & coriander adapted from the Omnivore's Cookbook's chicken recipe. I had to use my dumpling press because of my arms, but that worked okay.

Recently made: enchiladas, crispy orange beef (consistency would have been better if I hadn't shoehorned a ton of vege in there too), plus experimenting with crispy tofu in various dishes. A lot of the sauces make the tofu go slimy, but it's so good when they don't.

Goals
My goal for this year is to make goals for next year.

Good things
Guardian stuff -- the readalong, Wishlist!!, the upcoming rewatch, yay! I'm hoping the latter two will combine to get me writing again. Playing with paint pens (drawing butterflies like a six year-old). Sunshine. Cat. Boy. Assimilating my little-worn 'tidy' clothes into my everyday wardrobe so I don't have to shop.

Poll #33518 Plaguefic
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 51


Covid in fiction

View Answers

I'm okay reading fiction about Covid and related subjects
23 (45.1%)

I'm okay reading fiction that includes mentions of Covid
26 (51.0%)

There are aspects of the pandemic I avoid
11 (21.6%)

I like it when characters mask sometimes
14 (27.5%)

I prefer my reading matter to avoid the subject entirely
12 (23.5%)

It's better in profic / a novel
4 (7.8%)

It's better in fanfic
2 (3.9%)

other
1 (2.0%)

I don't read much atm
6 (11.8%)

ticky-box of gossimer and thistledown
17 (33.3%)

ticky-box of steel girders
12 (23.5%)

ticky-box of half a bottle of flat champagne
8 (15.7%)

ticky-box of battery acid and protest signs
18 (35.3%)

ticky-box of three wallabies at a 1970s disco
24 (47.1%)

ticky-box full of hugs
37 (72.5%)

I meant to post yesterday but fell asleep on the couch after dinner, which has been happening with more and more frequency over the last few months - usually it's only for 30 - 45 minutes, because it's never intentional and I am not in a comfortable sleeping position, but oh boy the dreams I have when it happens are super vivid and weirdly almost always take place here in this apartment. Usually "home" in my dreams is the house I grew up in (or some dream facsimile) or my first apartment - my second apartment is never what it actually looked like but always some much larger Manhattan apartment with a view! But when I am falling asleep on the couch, I am frequently also asleep on the couch in my dreams, and trying to wake up and not managing, or waking up in the dream to answer the door or something. Weird how that works!

Anyway, I did read something so Wednesday reading on a Thursday:

What I just finished
The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri, book one of the Burning Kingdoms trilogy. I really liked Suri's Books of Ambha duology - the second one in particular I thought was AMAZING - but this one isn't really doing it for me. It's fine.

What I'm reading now
Allegedly, the second book in the trilogy, The Oleander Sword but I haven't really been picking it up when I have time to read.

What I'm reading next
Well if I finish The Oleander Sword I will probably move onto the third book, The Lotus Empire, but who knows?

I did find time to finally watch K-Pop Demon Hunters on Netflix and I enjoyed it very much. It's like Buffy except there are 3 girls and they're in a band. Very fun!

Work today has been bonkers - it was 1 pm before I even thought about having breakfast so I just held out until 2 (my regular lunch time) for lunch. Hopefully the afternoon is quieter!

*
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([personal profile] magid Aug. 20th, 2025 05:19 pm)
This week’s email let me know that there won’t be any ripe sweet peppers (only hots and green = unripe sweet peppers), because little worms that are the larval stage of pepper maggot flies showed up, and they nom on sweet peppers (but leave the others alone). Nothing to be done about them because the farm is organic, so if I want ripe bell peppers, to the farmers’ market I will go. (So lucky to have options!)
  • 6 medium yellow onions
  • 6 heads of garlic
  • 6 summer squash/zucchini (I chose large-ish green zucchinis again)
  • 8 medium eggplants (I chose a mix of Italian, light purple, and variegated purple-white)
  • 2 pounds of orange carrots
  • 2 pounds of Chioggia beets
  • 2 big heads of romaine lettuce
  • 22 medium-small tomatoes
  • take-what-you-want herbs and hot peppers (I chose some of the two types of hots (jalapeno and I think cayenne), plus a lot of parsley, some red shiso, and a bit of sage)

First thoughts: can some crushed tomatoes. Roasted beets and carrots. Roasted eggplant and zucchini. Green salad (for romaine, I think I should get some Parmesan and make some croutons). Bulghur with diced tomatoes and parsley (hrm, if I have bulghur right now). A vinaigrette salad of some sort or another. Some kind of eggplant-based Indian dish?
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