Dear self (and partial to-do list)
Aug. 30th, 2025 09:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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:
guardian_wishlist signup
- outstanding comments on the Guardian readalong,
fan_writers discussion and intro posts, and Guardian drama polls
- a fill for this round of
fan_flashworks
- behind-the-scenes FFW stuff & mod post draft
- write to MP and mayoral candidate; submit on All The Things
- finish my DNW-kink WIP ASAP
- finish my other WIP after that, and prepare for my annual Wishlist writing frenzy *fingers crossed, knock on wood*
- close a bunch of tabs, seriously
- rest my arms.
Me-and-media update
Aug. 28th, 2025 03:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
( 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
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Upcoming in Guardian fandom:
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
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.
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).
Your murder weapon of choice
asp
10 (22.2%)
cyanide
6 (13.3%)
bulldozer
5 (11.1%)
heartbreak
7 (15.6%)
industrial freezer
2 (4.4%)
fright
1 (2.2%)
cassowary
24 (53.3%)
extremely elegant clothing
15 (33.3%)
other
3 (6.7%)
ticky-box full of musical frogs jamming away on their bongos
19 (42.2%)
ticky-box full of neglected-houseplant guilt
13 (28.9%)
ticky-box full of throwing coins into the wishing abyss
19 (42.2%)
ticky-box full of cartoon dogs going to the movies
15 (33.3%)
ticky-box of what would a Gamma/Delta/Epsilon AU look like? radioactive river permittivity?
10 (22.2%)
ticky-box full of vertical stripes
14 (31.1%)
ticky-box full of hugs
34 (75.6%)
What I'm Doing Wednesday
Aug. 27th, 2025 06:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
( books: Smith, Kingfisher, Smith, Abulafia, Herron, Tierney) )
home
So glad to be home. Though I came home just in time to discover chigger bites up my legs from repotting mom's new money tree...which at least weren't a mosquito or spider in my bed like I first thought they were? (The bites take 2-3 days to appear, so I was confused.) I didn't make it to yarn group Sunday thanks to a vicious migraine that took forever to pass, even with meds. Frustrating.
dirt
I lost a few plants from being out of town so long, but they were already in fragile shape so I'm not that surprised. The bougainvillea is blooming in the sweltering heat. I need to get the spider plants planted into the Buddha head planter. The drainage hole is unexpectedly small, so I'm pondering the planting mix. I would redrill it, but it's concrete and I don't have a bit that large.
healthcrap
splitting headaches all too frequent, inc today. I called the pain clinic finally and got an appt set for more botox. Stupid head/jaw. I'm so impatient to feel better.
#resist
Labor Day: Monday, 9/01: Workers over Billionaires (#5051)
I hope all of y'all are doing well! <333
Update
Aug. 26th, 2025 01:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Watching: The Good Place, with a side of Bluey. Also, my dude keeps making me watch "Honest Trailers" on the ytube, and honestly? They're pretty damn funny.
Work: continues to be hectic, with a side order of "why does the Vice Chancellor want to wreck this place?" I have three separate draft submissions to finish off and post this week. /o\
Making: I've gotten back into the groove with spinning (after an enforced break while my right shoulder was borked). I've been working on a cabled sock yarn made with a blend of Blue-Faced Leicester (a nice, long-stapled sheep fibre) with a dash of Ramie (a plant fibre that's been in use since ancient times). It involves spinning four very fine threads that are plied in pairs and then the pairs plied together, giving you a strong yarn that your feet (theoretically) won't wear out too quickly. I've started on the third bobbin.
( one of my blurry photos )
Other things: We went to the Walk for Gaza on Sunday. There were around 2,000 people there. The weather has been beautiful.
Me-and-media update
Aug. 23rd, 2025 10:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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.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]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
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]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
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.
Covid in fiction
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%)