This explains so much of my family

Oct. 9th, 2025 08:06 am
sporky_rat: It's a rat!  With a spork!  It's ME! (Default)
[personal profile] sporky_rat

I spent four days hyperfocused on learning how to art on Procreste, the art program that's available on the iPad.

I can see a very obvious progression of ability and skill in the nine pieces of art I did, and this explains my family. They'd hyperfocus on something and five days later they're really good at it and ready to move on.

It explains a few of my things as well.

Still. Nine pieces of art. Eight of them were gifts to people, one was my DR character.

Definitely going to ease up on it now.

Health (good news)

Oct. 8th, 2025 08:08 pm
azurelunatic: Karkat Vantas yelling. His shirt has the astrological sign Cancer in grey. (Karkat Yell)
[personal profile] azurelunatic
My immunotherapy infusion yesterday may have been my last!! I have a scan on Monday that will probably say that. Belovedest celebrated by cracking into the Strategic Redpop Reserve. This will mean much more leeway to leave town and such.

Colonoscopy results: mostly normal, one pre (not sure how many pre-s to put here) cancerous "lesion", and all of them removed. Repeat in two years, this time with Extended Prep. (My understanding of "lesion" and the medical definition may not align entirely well.)

Started the new injectable after the colonoscopy. I can definitely feel the impact. It remains to be seen exactly what kind. One of my friends has a new injectable too; she's getting some sinus clearance from it. Of all the random effects.

After the infusion, Belovedest and I trekked up-city to pick up a package for [personal profile] alexseanchai. All Pampered Chef, and a high proportion of likely goodies vs. likely duds. There were some varying scrub brushes. The utensil/knife scrub brush looks like dentures that are actually a scrub brush, but I can see that coming in handy. There was also a quarter-sheet pan with two eighth-sheet pans. And then we trekked back down when Belovedest realized they'd left their tablet at the cancer center. Freakin' ADHD. We're on The Assassins of Thasalon in our progress through Penric.

I have a smallish makeup hobby. Part of that is sometimes going all Weird Barbie on my face with eyeliner or whatever. Tonight I've convinced myself (via iridescent green eyeliner) that some kind of moon phase forehead jewelry might really slap.

silly body, this is not helpful!

Oct. 8th, 2025 11:07 am
elisem: (Default)
[personal profile] elisem
 Today does not need to be a trigeminal neuralgia day. It really doesn't.

Where is it happening? It's on the right side this time. 

How bad is it? Three instances so far, so I am braced for more, since that's usually how it goes. Wait, four. And it's not super-bad, just the little dungeon map of tiny passages filled with pain, leading outward and upward from my right upper jaw. Much of the upper cheek is involved, with what feel like lines curving downward from the outer right eye, and this time it's also doing the Monocle of Pain trick, where my eye is ringed in a weird hybrid sensation of ache/pain/coldness/tightness/tickling. That last bit is even more annoying than it sounds. 

What set it off this time? Temperature differential (cold). One accidental touch of cold against the right spot was all it took.


We shall see. Meanwhile I am going off to look again at the pattern of the trigeminal nerve in the face, so as to check whether the stuff on the cheek and the lines from the outer corner of the eye match where the nerves are.

Got a decent rest since the last wave, so maybe it will get bored and wander off.

Silly body.

Anybody else deal with this nonsense? Several people in my family have. 
elisem: (Default)
[personal profile] elisem
There's a quick sale going on at https://www.etsy.com/shop/LionessElise where almost everything is 35% off right now and a few things are 50% off. The sale ends when there's enough to handle some bills that need to get taken care of.

Thanks for looking, and for being awesome. Love you all.
schneefink: Quirrel from Hollow Knight sitting on a bench (HK Quirrel on bench)
[personal profile] schneefink
I've been having so much fun with Silksong, an incredible game. There's so much to explore!
I finally got to the first ending (could have done it earlier but now felt like a good time) and that seems like a good point to post, uh, 9.5k of notes about my playthrough.

Act 2: Citadel of Song. Part 1 )

Misc stuff

Oct. 6th, 2025 09:39 pm
ysobel: (attacked by a pencil scribble)
[personal profile] ysobel
1) finally got around to subscribing to BritBox -- partly because I've been wanting to binge Poirot, partly because they have the old Doctor Who (which I've seen scattered episodes of but not even a quarter), partly because I'm grumpy at Disney/Hulu for raising prices. Britbox should keep me happy for a while though. And when I finish the 26 seasons of Old Who and 13 seasons of Poirot, it'll probably be somewhere around 2050... lol

2) I'm kind of annoyed that not all of Doctor Who is available right now. D+ has the Ncuti Gatwa ones, but nothing else. I own the first few seasons of New Who, which is rewatch for me, but when it was first airing I stopped having access partway through Matt Smith, and I haven't seen Peter Capaldi or Jodie Whittaker at all. Obviously I can watch out of order, but. Grump.

3) My current headcanon for Phantom of the Opera is that Erik is some flavor of asexual. He wants Christine as a bride, but it's a very child-ish "marrying means you're together forever" attitude, and if he knows newlyweds sleep together, he's oblivious to that being anything other than cuddling. He doesn't take advantage of Christine when she's down in his lair. And the sequence of "Either be with me forever or your boyfriend dies" "What if I kiss you?" "... ... ... ok you can leave" fits in, because in my head he's like "??? is this sex? Gross???" This amuses me way too much somehow...

4) I've pretty much decided to quit Duolingo when I hit 4000, which is in a bit over a month. The content is getting more irritating and while I am a little sad to not see how far I go, fuck Duolingo.

5) Am doing a daily drawing challenge (via Marc Brunet on YouTube -- he has a "learn to draw in 30 days" video with prompts. Posting the oh-so-exciting results to my instagram ... if you're desperate to see a bunch of squares and circles and cylinders and stuff, lol.
lightreads: a partial image of a etymology tree for the Indo-European word 'leuk done in white neon on black'; in the lower left is (Default)
[personal profile] lightreads
3/5. Another novella in this fantasy series about the scholar who has a demon in his head. This one about a misadventure with teens in tow, and how families grow and change, and young people starting to find their way.

Pleasant, but I continue to think that there is a tidiness to these books that keeps me from really liking them. It’s not just the knowledge that everything will work out in the end, which it generally does, but occasionally not. I think it’s that she’s set up this theological system to be a bit . . . I don’t know. Categorical? Hogwarts house-y? Overly interventionist? IDK, these books feel terminally undangerous in the midst of dangerous things happening. Angsty teens figure out their life plans in 30,000 words or less. Everyone has a salutary lesson. Go home. I’m not expressing it well. Whatever it is, I think it emanates from the theology, and it renders these books just a little bit too neat, too easy.

Lady Hotspur by Tessa Gratton

Oct. 4th, 2025 02:18 pm
lightreads: a partial image of a etymology tree for the Indo-European word 'leuk done in white neon on black'; in the lower left is (Default)
[personal profile] lightreads
Lady Hotspur

3/5. What if Henry IV (loosely) but make it epic fantasy and make most of the major players women, and make most of those women queer.

Yes, there is a prequel book that I did not read, because I do what I want. This would probably be richer if you read in publication order, but it’s one of those situations where the prior book is set several generations before, so, you know.

Anyway, yes, the premise sounds great, and large portions of this book are wonderful. This manages to feel Shakespearean, and I don’t mean that it feels tragic (though it has that mode). It’s bawdy and political and deeply concerned with how history turns upon character, and how people stand or fall on their flaws. It also has a tremendous sense of the numinous and, getting somewhat less Shakespearean here but also not in another realm or anything, a wonderful touch with multiple shades of queerness and how that functions or doesn’t in monarchist systems.

However, while I’ve read books that were too long, I can’t remember the last time I read one that was at least a hundred thousand words too long. Phew. That is truly impressive bloat. I would be rating this higher if it were like 40% shorter (which would still make it a damn long book, to be clear). I lost patience with this multiple times. I always came back and found something to enjoy again, but man.

Read if you really like queer lady knights, women running the world, that Shakespeare feeling, and a book that feels as if it is tremendously slow even as many things are happening.

Content notes: Murder, war, references to child abuse, miscarriage, cancer.

Hemlock & Silver by T. Kingfisher

Oct. 3rd, 2025 11:23 am
lightreads: a partial image of a etymology tree for the Indo-European word 'leuk done in white neon on black'; in the lower left is (Default)
[personal profile] lightreads
Hemlock & Silver

4/5. One of her standalone twisted fairy tales, this one about the poisoning expert called in to figure out if the king’s daughter is being poisoned, and the strange and horrifying magical discoveries she makes.

This is good, but it finally clarified for me what is wrong with her romances. The good stuff first: a wonderfully practical, weird, obsessive, traditionally unbeautiful heroine. A series of animal companions, talking and otherwise. A genuinely creepy place to explore. A sad fairy tale under it all.

The romance: This one is not as bad as many of her others, I will say. But I finally put my finger on what’s wrong with them. It’s that she spent the first half of this book developing this woman into a vivid, quirky, peculiar, wonderful character. And the second the romance is on page, every jot of that character work vanishes and she reverts to boring and clumsy romance beats. Like the heroine coming to the conclusion, despite vast mountains of evidence, that the guy is repulsed by her. A thing that could happen? Sure. A thing that could happen with this character? I suppose, but you’d have to lay a lot of groundwork. Fundamentally, I think her heroines, which are the best part of these books, stop being themselves when it comes to romance, and I hate that.

Content notes: Past child death, past murder of spouse, creepiness with mirrors, body horror.

Festivids letter placeholder

Oct. 2nd, 2025 06:41 pm
fairestcat: Dreadful the cat (Default)
[personal profile] fairestcat
The letter will be here soon.

Here's to another season

Oct. 2nd, 2025 10:07 pm
schneefink: Scarland castle (Hermitcraft s9) with the sun shining through it (Hermitcraft Scarland)
[personal profile] schneefink
Hermitcraft season 10 just ended, and it was beautiful. The previous season ending I'd watched was season 9 and it ended with two people, Joe and Scar, each alone on the server, and then it was over; but season 10 ended with over a dozen hermits on the server together playing games and having fun and doing one last group hug while the bells counted down, and it was sad, yes, but also joyous. They built this together, they had a great time with their friends, and they're going to build more things together and have more good times together :) This really was the season they all became even closer.

Season 10 was the first season I watched live from the beginning, and it was great. So many fun stories, and events, and games, and great builds, and wonderful moments.
Some favorites, incomplete and in no particular order:
- the whole permit storyline, with Cub taking over as permit manager from Grian and then the No Poe being hunted down and exiled and Cleo riding back over the nether roof and more Taskmaster
- Ghastketball! And Hungry Hermits, and Ravager Rush, and Metro Mayhem, and the Labyrinth, so many cool games this season.
- The two big charity events with so many hermits meeting up IRL, once at the Gamers for Giving LAN party and once in the actual Mojang studio offices
- Mumbo getting really into building and also fans
- Fight club - I wish it hadn't petered out but what we got was still great
- Grian's quest for a mending book with the underwater chapel, and then Scar fishing one right in front of him
- The mystery of the ore snatcher - I wonder when we'll find out who the main ore snatcher was (since Grian already confessed to 'helping out' to throw Doc off the track)
- Tall Claims Court and Doc being sentenced to skyblock
- Cleo doing sculk experiments and concluding that the sculk is in love with Cub
- the Neighborhood was also fun, and I'll just ignore the two people who left (I'm really glad that that was handled so professionally and didn't blow up into huge drama on this side of the fandom)
- and so much more.

There's several s10 episodes yet to come, and in the meantime I look forward to the world download and the Hermitcraft panel at Twitchcon and then of course the next season, whenever it starts (my guess is mid to late November.)

Okay, this is very cool

Oct. 2nd, 2025 08:16 am
rydra_wong: Lee Miller photo showing two women wearing metal fire masks in England during WWII. (Default)
[personal profile] rydra_wong
Guardian: Nearly 100 years after her death, Oxford’s first female Indigenous scholar honoured

Reading the lost diary of the first indigenous woman to study at Oxford (by her descendant June Northcroft Grant, who accepted Papakura's MPhil certificate at the ceremony)

What a cool person and fascinating life; really interesting and impressive to see someone succeeding in doing academic scholarship on an Indigenous group from within that group, in that time period.

OH SHIT IT'S HAPPENING

Oct. 2nd, 2025 08:14 am
rydra_wong: Lee Miller photo showing two women wearing metal fire masks in England during WWII. (Default)
[personal profile] rydra_wong
Someone's finally cast Francesca Mills as Ophelia:

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/gallery/2025/oct/01/hamlet-national-theatre-hiran-abeysekera-shakespeare-in-pictures

Which I have been saying should happen for six years, since seeing her in Barrie Rutter's Two Noble Kinsmen as the Jailer's Daughter (a role which I described as "semi-comic shitty-first-draft Ophelia"). Also Juliet now please, casting directors.

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