watervole | Reading

On very bad news: my belly dance teacher, Elizabeth, popped over to the Middle East to get some dancing in during the half term holiday, and she is now trapped there thanks to the war. We suggested she find the embassy and let them know she's there but that's all we've heard, so none of us know what's happening beyond that. Some prayers for her safety would not come amiss if anyone reading this has a prayer list :(

On slightly better news, DH and I are having a heat pump put in, to run our central heating, instead of the gas boiler we previously had. And when I say 'we're having a heat pump put in' I mean right now. One engineer is outside drilling something. One is putting sticky back plastic over our carpets to protect them, prior to checking which radiators need to be replaced.

(Apparently we need larger radiators because the water coming from the heat pump will be at a lower temperature than that coming from a boiler, so we'll need a larger surface area of radiator to provide equivalent heating.)

We were keen to get a heat pump because we are with an electricity provider who get all their electricity from renewables (mostly wind farms around here.) That way, once we swap our gas hob for an electric one, we will be freed from fossil fuel use except for the cars. (They're on the plan too, but second hand electric cars are not yet as available as we need, and who can afford a new car?)

I'm very impressed with our electricity people so far (Octopus Electric.) They said they'd be here by 8am and they were here at 8.10am. (In contrast to the scaffolding people who said they'd be here yesterday and never turned up at all.)

They're putting protectors on our carpeting where they intend to walk. They say it will take them three days to install the heat pump system, but we'll only have one day without heating. And they have given us three fan heaters to keep us warm on that one day, and told us we can keep them afterward.

It'll be hard to go back to a system where you have to heat up the hot water tank in order to have hot water, (rather than the current system where the boiler heats the water on demand.) But we're doing our bit for the planet, so that will have to be the consolation :)

conuly

And, incidentally, freaked the fuck out of my sister

I did tell her there was a fox!

conuly

and on the packaging it says:

"This product is not a toy and is intended for collection or use by individuals aged 14 or above"

They're superhero stickers! 14 and above! What do they think kids are doing, eating them!?

***********************

( Read more... )

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3214/

Now that I've finally gotten an electric vehicle, I'm never going back to an acoustic one.

https://xkcd.com/3214/

igenlode

Took the eiderdown off my bed and put it away for the year, a rather rash procedure prompted by a series of nightmares (usually a sign that my sleeping temperatures are too high). Also a non-trivial one that requires quite a lot of furniture-shifting in order for me to be able to pull the bed out far enough past the chest of drawers and the radiator so that I can access the storage underneath, so it's not a choice that is reversible at a whim. But I have been sleeping for some time with the eiderdown thrown back so that it only covers my feet, and that is obviously still too much.

I have taken one of the blankets off for good measure, as I found myself sweating while trying to remake the bed -- the sun has come round far enough to heat my room in the afternoons now, and the temperature in there after dark with the window open was still on its way up towards seventy :-O
But I haven't put the blanket away, so I can retrieve that easily if necessary.

( Sweet peas )

Marie Antoinette has managed to pull off its usual trick of giving even the most unsympathetic characters moments of humanity, which is one of the things that is so good about it; ( Read more... )

conuly

But not for the East Coast, not really. So whatever.

ffutures

0one Campaign Starters presents interactive .PDF maps and floorplans for ready-made tabletop roleplaying campaigns from 0one Games.

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/CampaignStarters

This isn't really something I need - I don't really do fantasy, and I prefer to make my own maps as I need them, and keep them as minimal as possible. But if it's something you need it could be a good deal.

puddleshark

This is the way the world ends,
this is the way the world ends,
this is the way the world ends,
not with a bang but ~~a whimper~~ a big tentacle-y monster...

igenlode

To quote March 3rd last year, it has been warmer, and I sowed a batch of chilli, towel-tomato and Roma tomato seeds.
Although stupidly I deliberately elected to sow the 'bad' towel-tomato seeds, being the ones that I managed to glean early on in the season from the few fruits that had seeds in, rather than the known 'good' ones that came from later fruit bursting with seed, on the grounds that I didn't want to risk my best seed on a too-early sowing. But of course if these do germinate than I shall end up with adult plants from possibly-defective genetic stock (although to be honest all the plants behaved the same way, and they are probably seeds from the very same stock, just picked later in the year).

I also planted out some more of the mixed salad/lettuce seed from last year, as it was pretty successful. I don't know how well it will have lasted, so I sowed it quite thickly.

vivdunstan

Sorting a teetering pile of accordion sheet music books, as well as more elsewhere in the house. Still more to go through, but have identified those I won't be playing again and would like to pass on. Also have a bunch of piano sheet music books (but keeping loads of others). To go to charity soon.

I am too prone to buying more and not playing what I've already got. And some things just don't work well for me. I even found duplicate copies of Irish and Russian accordion music books! The sitting room music area is looking more trim now and manageable. And the other music will go to new homes.

Now just checking if our local Oxfams will take the sheet music books, or if they'd prefer us to take them to the city centre shop, which does specialise in music of all kinds, including sheet music.

astrogirl

God, 2026 simultaneously seems to be going by very fast and to have lasted at least a decade so far. By the calendar, though, we have now finished February, so here's the usual monthly book round-up.

( 10. Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts )

( 11. Twelve Months by Jim Butcher )

( 12. The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins and the Fight for Women in Science by Kate Zernike )

( 13. Mule Boy by Andrew Krivak )

( 14. Monstress Volume 10: Hollow Gods by Marjorie Liu & Sana Takeda )

( 15. Space Posters & Paintings: Art About NASA by Bill Schwartz )

astrogirl

The very definition of fannish woe: noticing a typo in one of your fics on AO3 and going it to fix it, only to have the archive go down just as you're hitting the "update" button and refuse to accept it. Woe!

Well, at least in this case it was the very minor typo I noticed and not the embarrassing brain fart mistake I'd just fixed a little while before. Still. SIGH.

Current Mood: woe!

galadhir

Ill today and have been since Thursday. I suspect this means I won't be making bellydance tomorrow, as I'm too tired and dizzy to stand up for more than 10 minutes. And that will mean potentially having to pull out of doing the veil dance at the hafla for lack of practice time. (It's at the end of April but there are only 3 classes left to practice it in and Louise hasn't even written the end yet.)

Hopefully

I'll be better by this Thursday and
Someone will have taken a video that we can all use for practice once the term ends.

petra

I am a completely psychologically normal individual and the part where I had, until I posted one of them yesterday, two active WIPs started in the last couple of weeks in which my blorbo loses his virginity to, in fact, the same person, under extremely fraught circumstances, is simply because I love joy.

Definitely nothing to do with VirginWan Weekend posts having filtered onto my Tumblr dash for weeks and inspired me to greater heights of appalling Obi-Wan/Anakin.

The one I finished is: i want to raise a city behind his teeth (for when the AO3 comes back to us). It’s identity porn, Petra stylée, set the day Anakin is knighted.

The one I am still working on is your classic Obi-Wan in a Time Loop trope, except he’s repeating RotS and he only gets one day to do it in.

( It starts like this, and I am looking for an alpha-reader/cheerleader/audience. )

Current Mood: oops i did it again
Current Music: Do you think it would kill you to enjoy this a little bit?

conuly

Not me specifically, I don't think, she just wants to offload a rabbit on somebody.

I actually would like a rabbit, but I think I probably have enough pets. Also, my sister would surely lose her mind.

********************

( Read more... )

pensnest

Dear me, somehow my Reddit feed is full of posts by young women who apparently have no personal taste. Asking which wedding dress they should choose, or which engagement ring, or which wedding ring goes with their engagement ring. Sigh. Girls! It's your body, your hand. It should be dressed according to your taste, not mine! (Especially when your taste involves something that looks like fancy underwear with draperies, or has those sad, drooping sleeves.)

I mean. I suppose it's most likely "I wanna make a post and be given lots of attention" more than "I dunno what I want", but it's irritating.

*

Went to a rather sweet birthday party yesterday evening. Quite a lot of potential guests have been stricken with the current lurgi and had to cancel, but there were enough of us to have a good time. There were members of all three of the choruses, just about enough to put on somewhat unbalanced mini-choruses. And my quartet managed a couple of songs, and I sang "I Won't Mind" which everybody thought was a lovely song, because it is. And I think the Birthday Celebrant had a good time. Very friendly and family-oriented. Although it was in the Middle Of Nowhere, Norfolk, and involved a long and entirely dark stretch of single-track road. Bleah.

*

We had our coaching evening with Deke Sharon on Tuesday, an experience generally enjoyed by all. It's not that the message of Emotion Is Thing To Communicate has not been put across before, it has, but somehow he managed to make that connection for most of the chorus, and it worked! They (I, still struggling with a cold, observed and wrote stuff down) sang A Million Dreams, and the first time through, the tension was *huge*! By the fourth repetition, though, it brought tears to my eyes and my Beast's. (Beast, and a handful of others from the men's chorus, took advantage of the invitation to come and watch.)

Deke is quite a showman, and was very entertaining. It was not an intense, information-rich session, but the message that got through really did make a difference to the singing. Most interestingly, the chorus sang better without the MD.... obviously it takes a lot of work to be able to get to that point, but once we can sing with our MD joining the singers, we should. Anyway. A very worthwhile experience. And Deke was awarded a pot of Colman's Mustard, of course.

Also, he started off by saying, "Judging Art is fundamentally stupid." Go Deke!

conuly

And was there not a king somewhere who said:
“Back, waves! I do command you!” I forget
His name, beloved, or his race, and yet
I know the story and am comforted.
The tides will rise, are rising—see, they spread
About your robes, your ermine will be wet,
Your velvet shoes, your dear dear feet! Ah let
Me warn you, sir, the waves will reach your head!

My king, my kingly love, how shall we stay
The bold broad lifting of this lovely sea?
What is the master word that we must say
To bring these roaring waters to the knee?
The other king went scampering away!
Will you so do? Or will you drown with me?

**********

This poem is by Leonora Speyer

puddleshark

The yellow gorse flowers very cheerful in the sodden black-brown landscape. Me, not so much. Back to work tomorrow after a week's holiday.

Guess what the weather is doing on my last day off...

( Clues )

msilverstar

The US and Israel are bombing (and shooting missiles at) Iran, which is retaliating against Israel, Saudi Arabia, Dubai and UAE. Yemen and Hezbollah may get involved. Pakistan is bombing Afghanistan. Russia is still invading Ukraine. The US abducted the elected President of Venezuela. Cuba is defending itself against exile attackers.

This world is breaking down and it's my country's fault and I hate it. I'm sorry

astrogirl

Looky, I've finally finished with my

genprompt_bingo card for last round! Maybe eventually I'll even manage to start on the current one. And perhaps that will involve less of me writing about things like eating spiders or fantasizing about killing children, but, hey, I also wrote about baking cookies and a girl and her uncle being sweater buddies and watching Shrek, so, eh. It all evens out, right?

Title: Some Children to Make Into Corpses
Fandom: Gravity Falls
Characters/Relationships: Bill Cipher, Bill's hatred for Dipper and Mabel
Rating/Warnings: Teen. I've used "Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings" on this one, because I feel like not giving it a "Major Character Death' warning would be wrong, but giving it one would be misleading. But this does feature deaths of alternate versions of the kids, as well as versions in Bill's imagination, and while it's not super gory, if children dying horribly isn't something you want in your psyche at all, now's the time to bail out.
Tags: Bill Cipher in the Theraprism, POV Bill Cipher, Bill's All-Seeing Eye, The Multiverse, Bill hates those kids, Descriptions of violence against children, Descriptions of child death
Length: ~1100 words
Summary: There aren't any universes where he wins.
Author's Notes: This was written for Gen Prompt Bingo, for the prompt "child endangerment." The prompt got me thinking about that page in TBOB where Bill declares that there's only one universe in which the kids survived the summer, and the question of whether that's true or not... which led me to further questions I've pondered about the nature of the multiverse in GF and Bill's place in it, which in turn led to this. Whatever this is.

Some Children to Make Into Corpses

conuly

This is some wag the dog garbage, but with worse naming, isn’t it.

petra

i want to raise a city behind his teeth (9422 words) by Petra
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi/Anakin Skywalker
Characters: Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker
Additional Tags: Virgin Obi-Wan Kenobi, Loss of Virginity, First Time, Coming In Pants, Oral Sex, Intercrural Sex, Anal Sex, Rimming, Infidelity, Identity Porn
Summary:

Obi-Wan celebrates becoming a Jedi Master and Anakin's knighting by thoroughly ridding himself of his virginity with Anakin's assistance; Obi-Wan mourns the loss of his padawan and consoles himself with several partnered orgasms. Anakin contributes to both sets of emotions.

Current Mood: unidentifiable
Current Music: Love me for what I am; I am somewhat imperfectly me

petra

( I hate this timeline )

Current Mood: what the fuck
Current Music: As the world falls down

vivdunstan

It’s #RareDiseaseDay today. Here’s a link to my vasculitis story about the neurological disease I fell ill with in 1994. 1 in a million incidence and frustratingly progressive in my case, despite throwing masses of treatment at it over the years since.

puddleshark

petra

I'm working on identity porn for tomorrow because the Virginwan Weekend over on tumblr has it as a prompt, and y'all could've knocked me over with a feather when I saw it listed. A fest for deflowering my blorbo, and it has my word? OMG!

Even though what I meant back when I arguably made the word up (c. August, 2005 | Fanlore) and what the AO3 tag means do not tend to coincide.

My version is "A and B know each other extremely well. They have complicated identities -- maybe secret, but not secret from each other. They kink on acting out a subset of their identities for each other."

I am writing My Kind of Identity Porn on the occasion of Anakin's knighting.

( It goes like this. )

*

Tagging this put Patricia O'Callaghan's cover of Leonard Cohen's "I'm Your Man" in my head, so here, have Charmax's awesome femslash vid to it.

Current Mood: hopeful
Current Music: If you need another kind of love, I'll wear a mask for you

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3213/

I mean, half of these are undefined. And your multiplication dots are too low; they look like decimal points.

https://xkcd.com/3213/

paranoidangel

What I Didn't Finish Reading
Aurora: Darwin by Amanda Bridgeman. This was free as part of Kobo's first book of a series being free. I didn't get very far through it because it's really dull, there's so much explanation of things I don't care about, the main character and the attitudes of those around him wouldn't be out of place in the 1960s, and one of the women was described as petite and also 5'5". You can't be petite when you're (from my perspective) tall. What's strange is that there are a load of really positive reviews on Kobo, when most books have very few, if not no reviews there. I wonder if we were reading the same book.

What I Just Finished Reading
The Hotel Avocado by Bob Mortimer. I don't know why I was worried about this - it was exactly the sort of book I'd expect Bob Mortimer to write. All the characters were a bit odd, their descriptions were similarly odd, there was the odd strange name, and an interesting plot. I really enjoyed it.

The Girl With Nowhere To Go by Louise Guy. I liked her previous books because although they were general fiction they weren't all about romance and had a twist, so if you thought you knew what was going on, you'd find you didn't. Except this one was pretty easy to guess. And all fo the characters meeting, in order for them to find out this secret that unites them, felt so contrived.

What I'm Currently Reading
A Very Courageous Decision by Graham McCann. This is really interesting about Yes, (Prime) Minister, which I am currently re-watching in preparation for going to the I'm Sorry, Prime Minister play. I stopped at Yes, Minister because it often recaps episodes and quotes them and I wanted to (re-)watch them first.

Interesting Stories about Curious Words by Susie Dent. This is interesting, but it's also a bit like reading a dictionary - a little at a time is best.

What I'm Reading Next
The Zig Zag Girl by Elly Griffiths. This is the first in the Brighton in the 1950s series and at least I know I'll like it. I also have the seventh in the series in my to read pile, so I just need to get the 2nd-6th from the library and I can cross two books off my to read list...

Mirrored from my blog.

petra

REPORT: Mark Carney calls Canadian Men’s Hockey locker room to offer consolation RRSP advice from The Beaverton (US : The Onion :: Canada : The Beaverton) has left me wanting a conversation between the venerable-but-still-kicking former POTUS Jed Bartlet and Mark Carney, at any point in the last umpty years.

I can't write it by myself because a) I haven't watched TWW in over a decade and I was also stoned at the time, b) I have only a layperson's grasp of economics, and c) I watched and enjoyed Mark Carney's speech at Davos but that's all I know about him.

wernnaa suggested starting with a Planet Money episode to give them something to talk about, but I haven't been a regular listener in years.

Would anyone like to a) adopt, b) coauthor, or c) beta this bunny if I attempt to write it?

(Jed, in my reading, is not heterosexual because Leo McGarry is Leo McGarry, but I am not at all sure he'd hit on Carney or v.v.)

Current Mood: inspired
Current Music: Portaging through the wilderness, that's where I would like to be

jacey

Audiobook narrated by Steven Crossley

The first Oxford Time Travel book is a collection of short stories, the second is Doomsday Book, read and reviewed earlier this month. This is the third which I was persuaded to try because (unlike Doomsday) it’s supposedly light and frothy, and it also won the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1999. And indeed it has elements of Three Men in a Boat meets Dr Who. Ned Henry, one of Oxford’s time-travelling historians, is searching for the Bishop’s Bird Stump, a (fictional) vase lost in the wartime bombing of Coventry Cathedral, in order to please Lady Schrapnell who holds the purse strings of the project to rebuild the cathedral. He’s been sent hither and thither to jumble sales and air-raids that he’s impossibly time-lagged and brain-fogged, so to get him safely out of the way his professor (Dunworthy whom we met in Doomsday Book) sends him back to Oxford 1888 for a relaxing fortnight beside the River Thames. He goes through the veil somewhat precipitously to get away from Lady Schrapnell, ill-prepared and barely taking in his instructions. Thus he makes a mess of his first encounter, fails to do something important and ends up on the river with an Oxford undergrad, Terence St Trewes, and a dotty history professor. Eventually he manages to meet up with his contact (the lovely Verity) and ends up a guest in a country house belonging to a bunch of Lady Schrapnell’s great-great-many-times-great-grands with the beautiful but vapid Tossie who speaks in diddums-diddums baby talk, her goldfish-fancying father and a scarily Schrapnell-like mother, plus the family butler, the Jeeves-like Baine. Thus the romantic comedy is set as Ned and Verity try to put right a variance in the space-time continuum which they accidentally caused in the first place. The Bishop’s Bird Stump is constantly bubbling away in the background as it’s a pivotal object that changes Tossie’s life. The book is light, but not a comedy in the laugh-out-loud sense, more slightly quirky and absurdist. Yes, there’s a dog (Cyril the bulldog) and a goldfish-eating cat (Princess Arjumand). Steven Crossley reads it well in an RP accent, with a good range of voices. You’re never far from hearing Lady Bracknell in a raft of imperious women from the book’s present (2057) to Victorian England. And, of course, all is well in the end with the bird stump found, and the right lovers paired up, more thanks to time itself than the hapless Ned. Connie Willis captures the Three-Men-in-a-Boat vibe very well

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Page generated Mar. 3rd, 2026 03:48 pm

Tales From the Riverbank

Reading

(no subject)

Fox went out on a chilly night, prayed to the moon to give him light

I ordered some stickers

Electric Vehicles

Heating up

The blood moon rises once again

Another RPG bundle - Campain Starters

Lost in Brighton 3

Seed log

Sheet music sorting

February Book Log

Fannish Woe

(no subject)

I make my own fun with my blorbo

One of my coworkers keeps trying to give me a rabbit

bring your good times and your laughter too

She says, being forbidden:

A gloomy prospect

war death and destruction

At Last, A Bingo!

Jesus fuck again with this shit?

i want to raise a city behind his teeth - Star Wars story, Virgin-Wan Identity Porn, Petra stylée

US Politics: Light candle/curse darkness - Iran and Kansas

Rare Disease Day 2026

Lost in Brighton 2

And then I was myself as hard as I could be

Dental Formulas

What I am reading Wednesday, on a Thursday

Canadian Politics + The West Wing plotbunny, seeking good home, coauthor, or beta

Booklog 21/26: Connie Willis: To Say Nothing of the Dog – Oxford Time Travel #3

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