Reading

Current Mood: working
Current Music: nothing now

Seventh of the Seventh.

I'll be working this week, and possibly in the foreseeable future as well. It's hard to say - the woman I'm sitting in for needed emergency surgery to have her gallbladder removed, and organ removal always constitutes a careful recovery period.

I don't know how long I want to do this. Full-time, at least. It's the gnawing nighttime feeling and the looming mornings that are getting to me more than lost afternoons at the gym and visits to farmers' markets. Having less time to get my daily living activities finished so I can get writing done in the evening. I'm sure there's a knack to it I can pick up with practice. Breaking the weights out for some evening workouts is something I'm out of practice doing, but I'm getting back into easily enough. I can't drop and do twenty pushups straight, and I'm still capable of a few with good form, so I'll hitch myself back to that goal, among others. Something achievable.

Entry tags:

book reviews

"Three Murder Cases Solved (Dee Goong An)" by Robert Hans van Gulik

Unlike van Gulik's other Judge Dee novels, this one is a translation of an eighteenth century manuscript by an anonymous author, which later inspired van Gulik to write his own. It is very different from the standard Western detective tradition, some of which I was prepared for after reading other Judge Dee stories from van Gulik and others, and some of which caught me by surprise. This Judge Dee is a lot harsher, and there is a lot more torture (because Chinese law required criminals to confess their crimes), and I didn't particularly enjoy that, but both van Gulik's explanatory preface and afterword were extremely helpful in interpreting and making sense of the attitudes and expectations behind it. I learned a lot, some of which will probably end up in fic at some point.

Anyway, looking forward to working my way through the rest of van Gulik's catalogue as I've only read The Chinese Bell Murders and there are a lot more.

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Sunshine Revival Challenges 1 and 2

Challenge #1: Journaling Prompt: Light up your journal with activity this month. Talk about your goals for July or for the second half of 2025.

My primary goal for July is to finish the first draft of my Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang fic. I would like to but do not expect to finish it before the Mereth Aderthad.

*

Challenge #2:
Journaling: The romance of summer! What do you love? Write about anything you feel sentimental about or that gets your heart pumping.
Creative: Write a love poem to anyone or anything you like.

Right now, the summer-related thing I want to do the most is to sit on the lakeshore at the cabin and read a book for hours on end. I was able to do that last summer and I really miss not being able to do so this summer. Right on the shore, the lake breezes kept the mosquitos and flies away; even ten feet inland this didn't happen. The lapping of the waves, the sky, the ever-changing clouds (when there are clouds), the birdsong and insects buzzing in the forest: I need this.

And now for the poem:

Natural fireworks:
lightning storms,
lightning bugs.
Fireflies are preferable--
they're less dangerous.
But I love both.

Fireflies I can hold in my hand:
light on, light off
-- and then they're off
back into the wider world.

Entry tags:

sims4 legacy challange update 2

update on my sims4 legacy save!!

Gen 3 - Sage: Clara's oldest daughter with Jordyn Landgraab is Sage. She has younger twin sisters, who are both spellcasters, but Sage became a Vampire after she aged up and had two kids. Jordyn Landgraab was hit by a meteor when Sage was a preteen and so Clara moved the family from Glimmerbrooke to Newcrest into a biggest house before Mackenzie and Bella both passed of old age. Sage married Lilith Vatore who was also the vampire to turn her. They have two daughters, one a vampire and one a human. I think the human daughter will be the next heir since I only want one vampire heir right now. Sage has the big vampire family aspiration because I want her to be a crazed vampire who turns a bunch of sims and eventually has to be stopped. I've been trying to get a "drink to death" mod working in my save so I can make her truly messed but, but I haven't gotten it working yet. I think the gen4 heir will have the writer aspiration and be a normal human and the gen5 will become a werewolf after having kids.

I've also been trying to keep the worlds populated because I've heard it gets sparse after generations and generations, and I want to keep some of the big families going.

Current Mood: this is how a democracy dies

Entry tags:

in the eye of the bearimy

July has come, and I now have less (fewer?) than three full weeks of freedom before school stuff starts up again. Official Teacher Pre-Planning will start in three weeks, but my department is going in for two extra (paid!) days the week before, so I can now count my sleeping-in weekdays on two hands.

Insulin pump continues to be amazing. I have committed some Diabetic Sins, namely eating a donut that was FAR too sugary and staying high for at least 6 hours, and also eating a serving of Pop Corners out of the bag my sister left behind when she came to visit. Popcorn and Donuts-- not even once.

I checked out The Ministry of Time from the library on a whim (it was on a table of staff-recommended books) and binged it in two days. I clocked a couple of the reveals long before they were made explicit in the text, which I was proud of after going in spoiler-free. You could tell the author was a Tumblr girlie who got really into The Terror tv show, but not in a bad way. I wouldn't have minded if the novel had been about three times longer-- I'm tempted to see if I can find her username, just to see if she's posted any extra stuff, like how the Alexandra Rowland did for A Taste of Gold and Iron.

I bought Star Wars: Outlaws in the Steam sale. I wasn't planning to-- I've had the game on my wishlist ever since it came out, because I love a Star Wars single-player RPG, but was irrationally irritated that it, like the Jedi Survivor series, didn't let you customize the PC at all. Points in its favor that at least the PC was a girl, but I wasn't at all sure that I'd like the gameplay, so I didn't want to buy it until there was a good sale.

As I was looking at the Steam store page, though, I saw that it had a demo? So I downloaded that and within 15 minutes, was absolutely sold. I love her little ship and the costume design and the location and mission design of what was in the demo, and getting the Deluxe edition with all the DLC and everything was $5 cheaper than getting the base game at regular price, so I said fuck it and got the deluxe.

I've made it to the point where I can actually wander around and save, and I'm torn between wanting to explore everything and wanting to progress the main quest. It's open enough that you feel like you CAN explore, but not so open as to be overwhelming. I think I'm going to end up siding mostly with the Crimson Dawn, because they give the most bonuses to stealth and that's my favorite play style so far. (I love crawling in a vent and having Nix steal shit and hit switches for me.)

I was able to catch up on all the MCU movies of the past five or six years while working on my cell quilts-- as soon as Thunderbolts comes to streaming, I'll watch that one too.

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Betting On Trains - Hem

Take my business.

Things which I don't get to say nearly enough: "Can you break a hundred?"

To make things as simple as possible, I got paid in cash earlier today, and to make things really simple, it was a mix of twenties and hundreds to use as few bills as possible. I'll freely and happily admit it cut down on the volume of currency being exchanged. It also struck me that while $100 is a standard unit of currency, it's an atypical one, which isn't a combination of traits I see much.

My plan was to break them into twenties if the bank was open for customers, or deposit them intact in an ATM kiosk if it wasn't. On the walk to the bank, I decided to buy a luxury imported British film magazine at Barnes & Noble, and in thinking about how to pay for it, I asked the clerk my question.

Then I said it was fine, and handed over $21 to more easily make change for the $15.50 price tag. A much more ordinary type of payment. I took the hundreds to the bank and deposited them at the ATM, as I'd planned.

And for a moment there, just a brief moment, I had a glorious glimpse into another life where I always asked that question.

Entry tags:

neil gaiman allegations

Not a GREAT week when it comes to ending sexual violence.

The whole Diddy thing. It doesn't matter how much proof there is.

Brad Pitt, who is known to have struck his wife and his children then perpetuated lawfare on them for years to the point where several of his kids no longer want contact with him, has the number one movie right now. Best opening weekend of his career. Most of the coverage doesn't even mention the violence.

On the anniversary of Tortoise Media publishing allegations of rape and sexual assault against Neil Gaiman, Netflix is dropping season two of The Sandman. Meanwhile, Gaiman is forcing one of his victims into arbitration. Not because she's libling him, but because she broke an NDA. Everything's gone very quiet, which I assume is what he wanted.

Some thoughts from smarter people:

Rebecca Solnit: Cynicism Is the Enemy of Action.

Tarana Burke: Tarana Burke doesn’t define #MeToo’s success by society’s failure.

Some people want to judge the movement on specific outcomes, so when a case is overturned, Burke said, “people are like, ‘Oh the #MeToo movement has failed.’” Instead, she said, such outcomes are proof of the difficulty of the work.

“It’s not about the failure of the movement; it’s the failure of the systems,” Burke explained. “These systems are not designed to help survivors, they’re not designed to give us justice, they’re not designed to end sexual violence.”

“When we bind ourselves to the outcomes of these cases, we are constantly up and down with our disappointment, our highs and lows,” Burke continued. “What they tell us is just how much work we need to change the laws and the policies but most importantly, to change the culture that creates the people who commit, who perpetrate acts of harm.”

Current Mood: exanimate
Current Music: nothing now

Second day in.

Thinking it'd look more professional, I went with a messenger bag instead of a backpack today. As professional as it may have looked, I'm going to go back to the backpack. So much easier for so many things on so many levels, not the least of which is being able to ride a bike. Yes, I know bike messengers do it all the time. No, I'm not a professional bike messenger, and I'm unwilling to try. Especially if I'm already wearing a nice dress.

There wasn't much time to read at work, mostly because I'd been given an actual task to do: sorting through patient folders and setting aside old records to discard. Not as much fun as it'd have been if I'd had an MP3 player with me, and still satisfying to see the piles start to rise, and space in the drawers start to emerge. Where there's space in a drawer, there's objects to be discovered, and found my second office perk. A stain remover stick's not much, but it's still something I could take home with me. The first thing is a large can of cold brew coffee sitting in my fridge, waiting for a morning I need a jolt beyond all meaning.

Entry tags:

shill,
television

Sunshine Revival Post

1) As part of

sunshine_revival's first challenge: "Creative Prompt: Shine a light on your own creativity. Create anything you want (an image, an icon, a story, a poem, or a craft) and share it with your community."

I just shared some necklaces I made a few months back over at

everykindofcraft. I did a lot of beading in the first 13 years after I took it up, but things have been rather start and stop in the last 10. A craft store closeout + a challenge from a relative got me making some new things in the last few months. That probably also contributed to my starting

everykindofcraft here, because I saw various people posting wonderful stuff that not many people were seeing, whereas on Pillowfort some general craft communities there are always getting posts.

Hopefully we can get more crafters sharing here!

2) Have been watching a slew of Apple+ shows as our subscription cutoff nears. The miniseries Disclaimer was framed in an interesting way, one which I suspect had a lot more clarity in multimedia than in the book, but perhaps not. It uses multiple narrative voices and POV for the narration, including second person, first person, and some omniscient narrative. This was pretty relevant because of who was being framed (literally) and who actually got to have their voice(s) heard.

( Read more... )

3) Surface is a story told in a much more straightforward manner even though it also involves an unreliable narrator of sorts in that our central character had memory loss and is trying to piece together her past which also involves a parental mystery.

( Read more... )

4) Also saw the movie Wolfs, which is fine but largely a vehicle for us to watch Pitt and Clooney do fun stuff.

( Read more... )

5) Finished The Big Conn and Cowboy Cartel, two documentaries about big crime. I found the former much more interesting, even though I'd heard about the case before. What was probably the most striking about both was the role of the media in precipitating change.

( Read more... )

6) Careme was marketed as the story of the first celebrity chef, who served Napoleon, Tallyrand and others. It was certainly about far more than cooking.

( Read more... )

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Current Mood: calm
Current Music: Tupelo Honey - Van Morrison

July the First.

It was such a slow first day, midway through the afternoon, I was being paid to sit there and read. It won't be like that every day - not even other days this week - and even if it doesn't get repeated, I can savor having had it for a little while.

So far, it's a front desk job like all front desk jobs: phone calls, emails, appointments, office supplies. People called, I called them back. Documents were scanned into the computer and copies were made. The clients were largely punctual and there's no music playing. While I doubt I can get away with headphones or a radio, there's a fan I may use for white noise to make the periods of sitting around, waiting for more nothing to happen, a little easier to get through without having to fall back on monetary compensation. Even if I got through a large chunk of some reading today.

Though I suppose longhand writing notes are always an option. If I remember to bring the right notebooks tomorrow.

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Current Mood: nervous
Current Music: Tin Angel - Joni Mitchell

Valentines and maple leaves.

Ending the month with good news: I've got a new gig. It's full-time and starts on a week where I'll have Friday off, so it'll be an easy adjustment and a decent way to test out if I'm cut for it long-term. Or even medium-term, into the next couple of weeks until the usual receptionist gets back.

I'll be doing scheduling, some emails, some phone calls. Front desk work on the Upper East Side. It'll be easy to get there, and it'll be done indoors and sitting down. I don't think it's going to be all that relaxing and I'm going to have to go back to doing workouts at night in my apartment instead of at the gym for the duration. But it's just for a little while, to see if it's a good fit.

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All is Well

1) A few more trip photos posted over at

common_nature, these of Oneonta Gorge.

2) Saw The Flash film and found it better than expected but also so-so. The big problem to me was the lead himself. Granted his character isn't really written to have any charm but a good bit of the humor fell flat for me, and when he was on screen twice as much it made it worse.

( Read more... )

3) Just an update about the bed situation listed in my last post. Everything went well! The youngsters delivering the bed had no problem with taking the old one down to the moving truck, and moving the other one to another room.

( Read more... )

4) A new wrinkle in the last few weeks is that during yet another heavy rain we got a leak near our front door.

( Read more... )

5) I quite liked this diagram of the interaction between entertainment production and fan activities. This came from an interview on Henry Jenkins' blog about a new set of textbooks for studying fandom.

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Current Mood: sad
Current Music: nothing now

Sunday night.

Every time I think, "I need a peer group," I need to remind myself about the various corners of fandom. Escapade is very much made up of my peer group in a not insignificant number of ways, and spending a good chunk of the weekend in such a group's company was a balm. Soothing, comforting. We're of different ages and backgrounds, and we're peers with one another in a way I don't much get in other places.

I even got some practical suggestions for the ongoing job hunt. It always remains to be seen how helpful they are, and the point stands that they're practical, with specific tasks and methods. Another thing to remember: look to one's peers for help. Not for everything, but for many things.

Entry tags:

mirandy wip fic recs <3

i'm subscribed to two wip mirandy fics that are so good!! and i'm so fascinated by after only one or two chapters that I think everyone should check them out, the writing style of both fics are sooo good

let it consume by wolvekt // miranda (and like everyone at runway except for emily lol) is a vampire who irv is forcing to take a thrall (andy!) by halloween while andy is having the worst october ever when her boyfriend nate is a werewolf (!!) who bit her (!!!) and she has until halloween to reverse the effects of the bite.
'cause us traitors never win by bigelows // post canon where miranda and andy are contestants on the tv show the traitors

Entry tags:

personal

june wrap up!

I really need to get back to posting on here because I miss it. Anyway! I've been reading a lot, hanging out at coffee shops to write, and playing with my dog. I'm still in my total tdwp brainrot era which is fun. I really like the time loop fic I wrote and posted recently (all mornings are tuesdays) and I need to catch up on cross posting my fic on here.

fics posted <3

woman, i once had whimpered at your hand (black sabith / 2,266 wc, for the toxic femslash convenience store)
all mornings are tuesdays stuck in an endless february (mirandy / 7,808 wc, for the femslash big bang's monthly prompt)
Closet Case (mirandy / 1,003 wc, for the toxic femslash convenience store)

book blog posts!

books read:

Princess in Love by Meg Cabot (reread)
The Black Bird Oracle by Deborah Harkness
Say A Little Prayer by Jenna Voris
Beyond Her Manner by Emily Banting
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Those Who Wait by Haley Cass
Forever and A Day by Haley Cass
First-Time Caller by BK Borison
Princess in Waiting by Meg Cabot (reread)
Everything She Does is Magic by Bridget Morrissey
The Lily and The Crown by Roslyn Sinclair
Don’t Let Me Go by Rachael Sommers
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (reread)

Current Mood: calm
Current Music: American Car - Mike Doughty

Put the foot down.

I received what I'm going to take as a fine compliment today: someone I'd met all of four hours earlier said I sounded like I wrote professionally for magazines and other publications, simply from how I talked.

I've decided it's up there with multiple people - completely independently, several years apart, none of them knowing each other - telling me I speak in real life the way I talk online.

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Music: Sangue Latino - Secos & Molhados

Work ethic.

The thing that's getting to me about my part time gig - more than pretty much anything else - is that I keep having to defer to my client's doctor's appointments and other such obligations. I know how hard it is to get an appointment with a specialist in a reasonable timetable, and adding in factors like her having to schedule a car because she can't use the stairs to get to the subway, it becomes exponentially more difficult to arrange, let alone attend.

It's not the deferring so much as knowing if we met at least twice a week, we could build some momentum on tackling the decades of accumulated legal paperwork and really get going.

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fandom: music

Music Thursday

Watch on YouTube

Entry tags:

book reviews

end of June update

I read three of Seishi Yokomizo's translated works - The Honjin Murders, Death on Gokumon Island, The Inugami Clan. Thus far, I'd describe his style as "murder as a performance" - in each of these books, the murderers spend a great deal of time and effort staging the bodies as a way to "show off" to the audience and the other characters. This is true for other mystery writers, I think, but it's especially prominent here, and Yokomizo's culprits often have a sense of "fair play" in terms of their relationship to the detective; on some level, they want to be caught, I think, even when it's not conscious. Yokomizo is also keenly aware of Western detective conventions (explicitly discussing them in the first book) and responding to them, although he gets way less self-conscious about it after the first book. Anyway, it's a very different vibe from the Nero Wolfe novels, to say the least.

I would also say that The Honjin Murders very much has "first novel" vibes, and Yokomizo gets more comfortable as a writer and with the premise as he goes along. He is also not great with female characters, and has his own biases and stereotypes, but this is not unique, alas.

The cover art for the Pushkin Vertigo editions is memorable and striking, and includes character glossaries, all of which I appreciate. They've published at least two other translations, but I don't know if I'll be able to get a hold of them without taking additional steps. (Worldcat revamped their catalogue so you can't see what libraries hold what without making an account, and it's so irritating, ugh.)

Also apparently Seishi Yokomizo is a character in Bungou Stray Dogs, which makes him effectively unsearchable on tumblr without having to sort through pages and pages of his anime namesake. There is also a Steam game based on The Honjin Murders, although I don't think I have the capacity to play it right now until I get a new computer, which is true for most games at the moment.

On the Nero Wolfe front, I read Gambit, which is ostensibly about chess (but really isn't) and In the Best Families, which unexpectedly broke with the usual formula. One of the hazards of reading a long-running series out of order is that I missed the earlier books in the Arnold Zeck continuity, but he's basically the Moriarty to Wolfe's Holmes, so I figured it out pretty quickly.