jain

I had a birthday! It was low key (Mum is still not up for even small adventures) but involved a lot of eating. I had lunch with Dad, and then dinner with S before choir although I was still so full I managed half a starter and a bit of her dessert. Then choir, and we had some cookies in the break. Tomorrow I have post-swimming coffee and cake before work and then office snacks (three flavours of interesting cheese crackers! I thought that was more fun than cake).

Nearly everyone gave me vouchers as per my request and I have so many Steam vouchers now. That will be fun for when my wishlist items go on good sales! Also my dad gave me a scented candle but that was more of a "please get rid of this thing I don't want" than a present as such :D It appears to be a branded corporate gift from his old work, but it smells OK and my candle order has been "on its way" from the parcel facility less than twenty miles away for ten days now, so I'll take it.

Choir was also interesting because it was the first rehearsal of the second conductor candidate we're auditioning. So far I like him - probably better than the first one, although he was OK - but we'll see how it goes. I had demanded that S make sure I was sung happy birthday (before we realised it was the new guy's first night!) but she managed to make it happen anyway. Deeply mortifying in the moment, but also I really wanted it to happen! It was the 22nd anniversary of S and I joining the chorus (no prizes for guessing why I can remember exactly what date it was...) and we've been friends ever since.

Tags:

Poll #34186

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 3

View Respondents

Which books would you like to try next?

View Answers

Mary Stewart - This Rough Magic
3 (100.0%)

Diana Biller - Widow of Rose House
0 (0.0%)

MM Kaye - Death in the Andamans (aka Night on the Island)
1 (33.3%)

Beth Byers - Murder & the Heir
0 (0.0%)

Madeleine Brent - Tregaron's Daughter
1 (33.3%)

Barbara Michaels - Be Buried in the Rain
1 (33.3%)

Charlotte Armstrong - The Chocolate Cobweb
1 (33.3%)

Isabelle Holland - Trelawny
0 (0.0%)

Jane Aiken Hodge - Last Act
0 (0.0%)

Wendy Hudson - Mine to Keep
1 (33.3%)

Would you be willing to host one of these (alone or with someone else)?

View Answers

Yes - I will tell you more in comments
1 (100.0%)

No
0 (0.0%)

Maybe - let me explain in comments
0 (0.0%)

Tags:

Just in time for Valentine's Day,

fancake's theme for February is Inept in Love! This round is for all those dingdongs who just do not know what they're doing when it comes to romance or even expressing their feelings for a best friend or family member.

If you have any questions about this theme, or the comm, come talk to me!

Tags:

let them eat fancake

Health stuff

I am much better. The pain has gone down to a 6 and it’s tolerable. My chiropractor does miracles. But I have learned my lesson. Not driving for more than an hour in traffic. It does stupid things to my back.

Teacher stuff

Last week’s Zoom session went fine. We added a session for next week to focus on the mapping of the processus of Reader’s advisory. I am making them use paper and pencil, even colour pencil. No computer, no application, no AI. Old school. My reading for the next class is done. I have to write the content now. I’m still a week ahead. I’m proud of myself that I did not procrastinate.

Reading

The Apothecary Diaries v.2 which I’m reading in French. These are the light novels series. It’s completely, totally and desperately addictive. Onward to v. 3, it should be arriving at my library branch today.

Bassin déversant. Émilie Bélanger. Poetry in prose. I cried. I got teared eyes. I laughed. It is an emotional read about the relationship between a grand daughter and her grand father. Nature, maternity, losing oneself as we grow old and how to say goodbye. I took notes and copied verses.

Mon très cher F. Le fantôme de l’Opéra v.1 by Mio Nanao. This is an adaptation of Gaston Leroux’s classic The Phanthom of the Opera in manga. It’s an alternative adaptation. The setting is the same, the names are the same but the story is inspired by the original but not tied to it. It’s interesting.

Watching

I have one new currently airing cdrama. The Inner Eye. It’s a legal drama. I like Xin Zhi Lei, she always brings something more to dramas.
I am rewatching The Ingenious one while knitting. I need an easy yet interesting cdrama to watch and I want to watch series 2 after.

Crafting

I’m knitting a baby blanket as fast as I can. I have a deadline of February 13th. I did xstitich a little but not much. It’s knit, knit, knit.

Tags:

Hi all, again ♥ I'm flexing these voice muscles. In text. You know. As you do when you're out of practice and a vortex of opinions, memories, and thoughts swirl in your brain. To switch to a gross metaphor I'm wielding floss to clean out the mental tartar. May the specks fall where they fall. Watch out!

Also: I'm struggling to reply to comments. Sorry ♥ I'll keep trying!

- I'm coming up on 3 years as a shelver at the library. Pros: I love the work. Everyday is an alphanumerical puzzle I solve using my body. I barely have to talk (though still more than I prefer). My branch has nice people. Cons: it's part-time, my Union is in cahoots with The Machine, and I'm tearing my body apart. You will pry this job from me only when I'm incapacitated.

( Herein lies morbid content, including world events, suicide, and death. )

- Is it weird to follow up that with more positive notes? Ah what the heck it's my style. I'm flying out to Japan next week on vacation. I'm going to Chugoku to visit prefectures I've never seen before. I want to learn and vibe and eat. The world's so interesting.

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Tags:

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Current Mood: contemplative

Federal Ranger Cracka Buckshore's efforts to keep irate parents from lynching handsome Fodo Bathin are complicated when Cracka, Fodo, and everyone else on the planet are kidnapped and taken to an artificial universe.

Golden Sunlands by Christopher Rowley

Tags:

(This may get updated over the course of the day)

After struggling to get Zoom link downloaded and operating etc, managed to get into first session I wanted to attend, Foundling Hospital in early C20th, good grief, practices had not changed much in a century had they? Recipe for trauma in mothers, children, and the foster mothers who actually bonded with the children until they were taken away to be eddicated according to their station in life.

Then switched to a different panel and was IRKED by a lit person talking about the Women's Cooperative Guild Maternity: Letters from Working Women (1915) which they had only just encountered ahem ahem - was republished by I think Virago? Pandora? in 1970s - and women's history has done quite a bit on the WCG since then so JEEZ I was peeved at her assumption that the working women were not agents but the whole thing was being run by the upper/middle class activists who were most visibly involved. And wanted to query whether working women thought it was very useful to have posh laydeez able to put their cases re maternity, child welfare and so on in corridors of power, rather than deferentially curtseying??? (I should like to go back in time and ask my dear Stella Browne about that.)

Also on wymmynz voices not, or at least hard to trace, in the archives, I fancy this person does not know a) Marie Stopes' volume Mother England (1929), extracts of letters she had from women about motherhood and b) based on 1000s of letters surviving and available to researchers. I could, indeed, point to other resources, fume, mutter.

Update Well, there were some later papers I dropped in on and enjoyed (and was able to offer comment/questions on; but I was obliged to point out certain errors in a description of Joanna Russ's The Female Man (really I think if you are going to cite a work you should check details....) (and I suppose Mitchison's work was just outside the remit of what they were talking about, so I was very self-restrained and failed to go on about Naomi.)

Tags:

Happy birthday,

coffeeandink!

I reposted some of my longer 3 Sentence Ficathon fills on AO3.

An Immodest Proposal (Babylon 5)
State of Change (Babylon 5)
Hypotheticals (Gattaca)

And a new B5 fic, written a little while back because I had the idea, but not posted until now:

Reliquary (Babylon 5, post-canon, canon compliant, character deaths)

Reposted under the cut.

( Reliquary - Babylon 5 - 1500 wds )

Tags:

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Tags:

book log: reading wednesday

This book is hard to tag - it's basically cosmic horror, or horror scifi. It is also one of the creepiest and trippiest things I've read in a long time and maybe ever.

I kinda vaguely knew about SCP as a collaborative wiki project from the 2000s, with user-submitted descriptions of imaginary (and frequently extradimensional) objects. This book is based on it. It's about a group of characters who work for the Antimemetics Division of the SCP Foundation, a department most people don't know about (because it's impossible to remember it for more than a few minutes after finding out about it) that handles "antimemes," which are the opposite of memes - if memes are catchy and transmissible, antimemes are intentionally unmemorable, to an extent where you need to use extraordinary measures, such as memory-enhancing drugs, just to recognize that they exist at all. It's information that functions as anti-information. And it turns out there are living creatures with antimemetic properties, as well as weapons that use it ...

( Lots and lots of spoilers )

Tags:

1. It looks like I might be going up north to help out at the new store for a few days after all. The store is still ridiculously busy and they need extra help throughout the rest of the month. Nothing's finalized yet, but maybe the week after next I'll go for 3-4 days. I am curious to see the new store (and check out our Cupertino store while I'm up there, which I've also never seen), so I don't mind going. I'm very glad I didn't have to go for the grand opening itself, though!

2. I took Carla to a doctor's appointment this afternoon and while I was waiting for her, I took a walk and stopped in at a little bakery nearby and got a delicious cardamom bun.

3. Tuxie was back this morning!

4. These boys were having some nice cuddle time yesterday. As usual, Ollie was more into it than Jasper lol.

Tags:

https://xkcd.com/3203/

Creator:

sweetsorcery
Title: Sweeter than Honey and Bitter as Gall
Fandom: Aces High (1976)
Rating: T (for themes)
Word Count/size/length: 2,169
Characters/Pairings: Captain Sinclair/2nd Lt Stephen Croft
Notes/Warnings: WWI, RFC, Mutual Pining, Secret Wedding, First Kiss, Angst and Feels, Bittersweet

'If this were a different world, and we were free to do as we wished, I would ask you to marry me. Right here, in this lovely little church.' Captain Sinclair laughed softly; a warm, rumbling laugh. 'Aren't I silly?'

Stephen gave a sob of happiness. 'No, you're not! Why don't we pretend it's a different world? That everything is just as we want it to be. Ask me. Oh please, do ask.'

Link: Read on AO3.

Tags:

Posted by Victor Mair

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=72752&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=english-proficiency-tests

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=72752

From Tim Leonard:

I wonder if any English proficiency tests include deciphering things like this.

VHM: It was only twenty or so years ago that I learned about the word "beater" for a cheap, high-mileage, beat-up car that still performs reasonably well.

Selected readings

"List of language proficiency tests"
American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) tests

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=72752&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=english-proficiency-tests

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=72752

I'm starting to think that I'm never going to get caught up with Critical Role. 🙃

This is why I have to stay up until 2-3am on Thursday nights, no matter how much I need sleep. If I miss an episode, it sets me back for months. Every time. I should know this by now, because it happens every time I skip an episode.

I'm currently three episodes behind, although it will be four episodes by tomorrow because there's no physical way possible for me to catch up before then since three episodes + three Cooldown is about eleven hours. I really need to find the time to catch up. It's just so hard since I can't do anything else while I'm watching, since it's not possible for me to multitask while watching something new-to-me. I have to pay attention and constantly read the subtitles, or I miss what's going on.

It's one thing to set aside four(ish) hours late on a Thrusday night when I'm already tired and don't have the spoons to do much of anything already. It's something else entirely to find four hours to set aside when I have so many other things that I need to get done.

Current Mood: tired

Tags:

fandom: critical role

Books
Finished reading Victoria Goddard's Plum Duff. I am extremely baffled by the theological worldbuilding choices she's making. What is she doing? Is it on purpose? Where's she going with this? Does she realise the implications of what she's doing? i.e. that this is a fantasy-Anglican religion which somehow managed to replace original sin with something worse?

Read Victoria Goddard's Stone Speaks To Stone, a rollicking boy's own adventure from Jemis' father's soldier days. I get that it was necessary to show the mindset of an imperial subject who "well believed in its civilising mission". I do understand that it was necessary. I just. Ugh. I'm still waiting for the ironic twist to that refrain "he was a loyal son of the Empire." One day Jack's going to learn better, right? Or else Jemis, who fancies himself a revolutionary, will have to contend with his beloved father's role in imperial expansionist wars.

Reading Ursula Whitcher's North Continent Ribbon, long after everyone else. It's time. (I still have some leftover guilt and anxiety about the roleplaying game during which

ursula conceived this setting, and it's been getting in my way.)

Tech
*whimpering*

Garden
More tomatoes!

Tags:

culture consumed

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Tags:

Mentioning this mostly so I have the date. I went to the ophthalmologist today and it was a quick checkup. Things aren't worse! I'm doing things right. We can just maintain the status quo.

I have a follow up in 1 year and they just book 6 months in advance. So sometime in august I'll have to call and book for next Feb. She said it's a good time of year to be seen because everything is so dry the eyes are at max annoyed so the worse they're probably going to get for the year XD

What I’ve Read
Cinder House by Freya Marske – Oh, this is a very satisfying novel. I love a book that starts with the protagonist dying and ends with her happy ever after. I don’t want to spoil too much – not because it’s a mystery, even tho there is a mystery solved inside it – but also because I think the unfolding story is very good on its on merits and different enough from the folk talk and most tellings of it to be worth a fresh approach. Marske does a fantastic job of making the haunted house’s relationship with sensation, from the point of view of the house, feel actually sensuous and alluring. I admit that the resolution is a little clever, but so satisfying that I wasn’t upset to see that I’d called the ending.

Unrelated – I watched The Ugly Stepsister (Emilie Blichfeldt, 2025) which is a body horror take on how the Cinderella myth works for the step sister who cuts off parts of her feet to try and fit the glass slipper. Yes, they absolutely do that, it’s gory as fuck – and it’s absolutely merited because this film is about showing a vulnerable girl destroying herself for patriarchal approval. It’s utterly beautiful in every scene, using a dreamy filter for much of the film, including the scenes where our ugly young woman dreams of infecting herself with a tapeworm so that she loses weight. I cannot recommend this film enough, and it was fascinating to watch with Cinder House so recently in my mind.

Incandescence by serpentinerose - https://archiveofourown.org/series/5440201 – A Guillermo del Toro Frankenstein (2025) fic with Victor/Creature teased out for all the wildly unhealthy possibilities. The prose is lush, the references are classical, and my id is well-fed.

What I’m Reading
The Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein – I’m about 80% thru and it’s really great work. I am finding the prose just perfect – it gets out of its own way and still manages to give me a great line every now and again. Really enjoying this! I am surprised that I didn’t hear of it before, because literally every time I have posted about it, someone NEW comes to tell me how much they enjoyed the book. Another point in favor of going to cons – people will evangelize about their favorite little known books

What I’ll Read Next
Oh, god, I have so many library books out
Monks Hood – Ellis Peters
Master of Poisons – Andrea Hairston
Frankenstein
The Brightness Between Us -Eliot Screfer
The Husky and His White Cat Shizun – Rou Bao Bu Chi Rou (I picked this up after seeing that it was beloved by a fic author whose work I recently enjoyed but I have no idea what I am looking at here)
The Craft of Lace Knitting by Barbara Walker
Silver in the Wood and Drowned Country by Emily Tesh
Viriconium by John M Harrison
What Stalks the Deep by T Kingfisher

Tags:

reading meme

Remember how my boyfriend from when I was 17 turned up out of the blue? Well, he dropped in again after doing his NZ tourist trip, and left me a bunch of memorabilia so I could scan it then mail it back to him. The letters (mine) are... written by an over-dramatic teenager with poetic delusions, so I quickly noped out of reading them. The pics are kind of fun, though, despite my terrible hairdo.

( Read more... )

Tags:

This is your weekly read-in-progress post~

For spoilers:

<details><summary>insert summary</summary>Your spoilers goes here</details>

<b>Highlight for spoilers!*</b><span style="background-color: #FFFFFF; color: #FFFFFF">Your spoilers goes here.</span>*

(Thank you to the anonymous kind person who bought the community a year of paid account!)

Tags:

post type: weekly: read-in-progress

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Tags:

Last year's stats (again, posted in Feb)

( 2025 )

Tags:

monthly tallies

I thought I'd already posted about this and squeed in public, but apparently I downloaded it, listened to it, and started using it as a regular bedtime story, and never actually posted about it!

dangercupcake did a podfic of one of my favourite xiyao stories of mine, "Like a Long-Time Painted Smile" (which I think of as the Lan-furen AU). No lie, it is a story that I enjoyed writing and it is one that I've read over a few times since publishing it, but it's so nice to hear someone else read it for me. (And it does work for putting me to sleep. I easily go from enjoying the scene to just drifting off.)

podfic of "Like a Long-Time Painted Smile" by out_there (220 words) by dangercupcake
Chapters: 11/11
Fandom: 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Lan Huan | Lan Xichen/Meng Yao | Jin Guangyao
Characters: Lan Huan | Lan Xichen, Meng Yao | Jin Guangyao, Lan Qiren, Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji, Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian, Nie Mingjue, Xue Yang | Xue Chengmei, Nie Huaisang
Additional Tags: Fear of intimacy comes in many forms and JGY has all of them, Marrying an eligible bachelor can be the start of a happy ending, Lan Xichen is the most eligible bachelor for good reason, Fix It Fic, set during the time skip, Bottom Lan Huan | Lan Xichen, Lan Furen - Freeform, background wangxian - Freeform, A happy ending means JGY and NHS remain friends, Nie Mingjue Lives, Podfic, Audio Format: Streaming, Audio Format: MP3, Podfic Length: 5-6 Hours
Series: Part 47 of MDZS/The Untamed Fanwork, Part 88 of Podfic
Summary:

Meng Yao marries into the Lan. Everything changes.

Tags:

diffrentcolours has been on a mission to find more fun/novel things to do: it's kinda been the upshot of both our therapy lately that we should do this.

So tonight we went to see a Noel Coward play, Private Lives, at Hope Mill Theatre which was new to me. It was a great venue, though I'm glad I didn't have to try to find it on my own because that never would've worked.

And the play was great too: very cleverly staged, with occasional video projection and really good use of (mostly diagetic) music, well-acted, and the darkest the-straights-are-not-okay underbelly beneath that Noel Coward wit: it was sweet and even sexy but also made me think about what we do or don't learn from relationships that have ended. The seats weren't wide enough for our hench shoulders, but that just meant we had to snuggle up and that was such a nice way to watch it.

The theater's independent, gets no external funding, so definitely worth supporting if you get the chance. I was glad to see it pretty busy on this random weekday evening.

Tags:

In compensation for a day-consuming stat appointment, I got to spend some more time with the Salem Street Burying Ground and found one of those puddled-iron sunsets on the way home. I hadn't brought my camera, but I had my phone.

( So I break every mirror to see myself clearer. )

I seem to have missed Candlemas this year, so have a belated invocation to Brigid: Emma Christian, "Vreeshey, Vreeshey." The temperature rose to just freezing this afternoon and a whole shelf of snow-crust calved off the roof onto the front steps.

Current Music: Rose Betts, "Save Me a Seat"

( Read more... )

Tags:

food

i had to ring the doctors' earlier and the receptionist wished me many happy returns for yesterday!

next books poll

Fancake's Theme for February: Inept in Love

What I’m doing Wednesday (a day late)

vomitting up a stream of consciousness

Stealth fandom

Exposure to Burn Injuries Shaped Human Evolution

Golden Sunlands by Christopher Rowley

Online attending conference

(no subject)

Recent fic (mostly Babylon 5) on AO3

Reading Wednesday 2026, #5

There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm (SCP Foundation)

Daily Happiness

Binary Star

FIC "Sweeter than Honey and Bitter as Gall" (Aces High) Captain Sinclair/Stephen Croft T

English proficiency tests

Critical Role

Things

a totally different book!

(no subject)

Wednesday Reading Meme for Feb 4 2026

Return of the teenage boyfriend! (and pics)

Read-in-Progress Wednesday

I'm not quite as obsessed with HR as this makes me sound...it really just worked out this way...

Writing Roundup 2025

Podfic: "Like a Long-Time Painted Smile"

Elyot with a Y is such a transmasc name, I'm just saying

Let the lights run like rivers all over my skin

[food, healthwork] VEMGETABLES and NUTS and--

Profile

Links

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags