merryghoul | Reading

Got Through to the IRS

Huzzah!

I don't have to say much about it, but yes, I managed to complete my IRS account, and got approved for a timed repayment plan. Huzzah indeed!

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Location: the living room
Current Music: Bump of Chicken "Sleep Walking Orchestra"

china_shop

I wrote most of this on Tuesday, and now it's Friday, so some unrepaired time dilation might slip through.

Pandemic life
( Protocol slippage. )

Previous poll review
In the Impending doom of the natural variety poll, the most common natural disaster threatening respondents is drought/heat (55.6%), followed by flood (44.4%), then blizzard (40.7%). Twelve of us (including me) are at risk of earthquakes.

In ticky-boxes, hugs won by a landslide with 70.4%, followed by "ticky-box made of Möbius strips and Escher staircases" with 48.1%. Thank you for your votes!

Reading
A little more Neurotribes, but the focus on kids and parenting is not holding my interest. Nothing wrong with it; I'm just not the right audience. A chapter of Guardian. A smidgen more of The Book of Three, and the first few hours of Incandescent by Emily Tesh, read by Zara Ramm (very heavy on introductions and the nitty-gritty of school administration so far, but I like the POV character - no spoilers, please).

TV & movies
Four episodes of The Expanse season 6 with a friend; we're watching the other two tonight. Murderbot (really enjoyed the last episode). Poker Face (haven't seen the latest). Andor S02E06 (maybe we're watching this too slowly? so far this season isn't clicking for me).

Episode 2 of Stick, which... I enjoyed watching Lydio Ko play on TV, one time, but I just don't know how much golf I can engage with, especially in fiction. Swings all look the same to me, so after the first three or four, there's none of the physical competence porn you get in more overtly active sports. And I don't find Owen Wilson inherently charming or interesting. I think the biggest appeal of the show is actually that so much of it is set outside with trees around, and that's still a very manicured, artificial setting. /fussy /tl;dr, We're in the market for a new show.

Our Unwritten Seoul (Kdrama on Netflix). I'm enjoying this so much! Two episodes and several revelations yet to go.

Materialists at the movies. We went to this because a friend and I have a running conversation about the death of the romcom, and this nominally was one. But it turned out to not really be rom or com, and the title should have clued me in that Andrew wouldn't like it (he disliked the main character and wasn't at all invested in the outcome). It's interestingly structured, and the cast is good, but it's mostly about entitled people approaching dating in terms of checkboxes (age, height, income, etc).

Spoilery things about the structure.

The main character, Lucy, is a professional matchmaker in NYC, and the film is in three parts: the first third is a wealth-porn romance between her and Pedro Pascale; he pursues her after they meet at the wedding of his brother, her former client. They go to a lot of expensive restaurants, have sex on satin sheets in his $12m penthouse, and talk a lot of numbers at each other. He wants to take her to Iceland on holiday. The middle third (or possibly third act of four? I wasn't timing it) starts when one of Lucy's clients is sexually assaulted on a date Lucy set up. This all happens off-screen, and I don't think we even see the assaulter. The victim is the nicest, warmest of Lucy's clients, but the film is mostly concerned with Lucy's crisis, as the assault brings home that the checkboxes don't matter. The final third or act is a second-time-around romance with her struggling-actor/cater-waiter ex-boyfriend, Chris Evans. Lucy broke up with him over money, and now at the culmination of her character arc, she decides she loves him enough to make it work after all. Conveniently, he is still extremely hung up on her.

I don't think I've ever seen a relationship movie that starts out focused on one pairing getting together (they feel pretty well-matched, and Pedro Pascale's character is smart, open, attentive and kind), then transitions to another pairing. Huh.

The Wild Robot on Netflix. Okay, this was really cute and funny. I especially enjoyed the possum babies. (I kept missing quips, though -- poor sound mixing, or is my hearing going?) As an aside, I was amused that the corporation was called Universal Dynamics, given Global Dynamics in Eureka (2006) and Massive Dynamics in Fringe (2008). What comes after "universal"?

October Sky on Netflix. Fictionalised biopic about a kid in a coal-mining company town in 1957 who is inspired by Sputnik to create a rocket, learn trigonometry, and get a college scholarship. Stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Chris Cooper, and Laura Linney. It was fine, but wow, I wanted the story to be about overthrowing the company.

Audio entertainment
I spent four or five hours over the weekend listening to Melanie Nelson of Coherent podcast interviewing politicians, academics and a disability activist about the "Let's Make Everything Libertarian" Bill for which submissions closed lunchtime Monday. (Locals, it's not too late to weigh in! Talk to your MP!) Since then, Writing Excuses and a bunch of Midnight Burger. (I bounced off Midnight Burger when I first tried it a year or two ago, but now I'm really enjoying the physics and other science aspects, and the characters are growing on me. Ava is my fav. I'm most of the way through episode 11.)

Online life
Catching up on comments. Still have a billion unread emails, and let's not even talk about my tabs.

Writing/making things
I spent the weekend juggling multiple urgent things. Now I have some breathing space, of course, when I sit down to write (aiming for a combination

fan_flashworks entry and Guardian Bingo), I can't make sentences.

Whining.

A contributing factor is that I'm having another "argh, my prose sucks" crisis of confidence. This happens periodically. You can't be on a roll indefinitely without hitting a bump, I guess. For me, usually it means it's time to read a particular type of literary novel, preferably in paper format. The one I remember being most successful is Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible; the very close, very voice-y rotating POVs, the playful intricate language use, and the thoughtful exploration of context help me to sink into whatever POV I'm writing, rather than skating over the surface and Lego-ing together tired phrases. I wrote some really good fic after re-reading it a few years ago. Whereas re-reading Byatt's Possession just meant I produced endless run-on sentences, heh. Anyway, I guess I should get on that soon...

Finished and posted an old outsider POV writing exercise for

fan_flashworks's Yield challenge.

Life/health/mental state things
I got my political submission in (thanks to

cyphomandra for beta) and wrote an outraged email to the Prime Minister about the Deputy Prime Minister's engaging in stochastic harrassment.

In general, I've been feeling needlessly stressed and vaguely sick, but today my alarm didn't go off and I slept an extra hour and a half. So much better.

Good things
Un-punctured bike tyre. Kdrama. New intermediate glasses making it easier to do crosswords and to read while I exercise. New bathroom sink taps.

sid_guardian commentpalooza. I'll probably get back on my writing feet again soon. Andrew and Halle and books and fandom.

Poll #33295 Routine

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 44

View Respondents

Night-time getting-ready-for-bed routine

View Answers

I brush my teeth
37 (84.1%)

I lock up and switch things off around the house
22 (50.0%)

I tend to pets
13 (29.5%)

there are a few skincare- and/or haircare-type steps
16 (36.4%)

kind of a lot of steps, of various kinds
7 (15.9%)

it takes me more than half an hour
13 (29.5%)

sometimes it takes me an hour or more
4 (9.1%)

what routine? I'm always ready for bed
7 (15.9%)

other
6 (13.6%)

ticky-box of it's normal to have strong opinions about taps (AKA faucets)
21 (47.7%)

ticky-box of how stressful it is to ask tradespeople to change things they've done
23 (52.3%)

ticky-box of wondering if today is the day you'll unexpectedly step through a portal into another time or world
18 (40.9%)

ticky-box full of sitting on a mountain ledge in the moonlight, listening to owls
25 (56.8%)

ticky-box full of hugs
35 (79.5%)

hannah

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.

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

kaffy_r

Humans? Hah! The IRS Needs No Humans!

( Ol' Franz would have blanched at the IRS )

Current Mood: aggravated
Current Location: the living room
Current Music: Ateez "Guerrilla"

hannah

Yesterday was largely a smoothly running operation. Once things got set up, it was easy to tell people to feed the ballot into the scanner until the machine caught it and to wait a moment for the confirmation screen, and being told to wait a moment as part of the general instructions helped people do so. There was a moment someone didn't wait, didn't see he'd marked his ballot badly enough it couldn't be read, and he was thankfully barely out the door for us to get him and tell him to fill out another one.

There was another moment someone used a red privacy sheet instead of a black one, which had us worried for a moment before we found out the only major difference in the sheets is the color and any ballot inside them's good to be accepted. A few affidavit ballots got spat out, and so did some with extra marks. Sometimes a ballot needed to be fed in from the other end to get accepted by the machine, and it never mattered which side faced up.

Setting up the machine was easy, except for the part where someone needed to come and troubleshoot one of them, leaving us to open about 15 minutes behind schedule. It didn't cause a backlog or an issue, and all in all, we serviced just over 1300 people - about the same as the election last November. There were more babies and animals this time, and about the same number of children, but beyond that, the adults of all ages blurred together after a while so I can't speak to the represented demographics. Just that a little over 1300 ballots were processed by all the machines, with people showing up early and still coming in at 8:59PM.

Closing the machine was trickier because while all the steps were direct and granular, there were still moments I wanted to double check a part of the process with someone, and with everyone working on something, nobody could say "I'll be with you in two minutes, hold tight until then," which didn't help. But we got it done, and while we were out a little later than in November, with the sunlight having lasted longer and the day itself being much less stressful, it evened out.

One amusing moment came when someone tried to juggle a paper takeout bag, an iced coffee in a plastic cup, and a ballot, and I told him to put the coffee down onto the floor. Which he did. Something in how I told him to do so had one of the other poll workers laughing throughout the day.

Another amusing moment came in the last fifteen minutes of the day. Someone wanted them to work faster and I said we could glare. They looked away and said sure, and when they looked back, they jumped and cried out - because when they'd looked away, I'd pulled out a hard stare to demonstrate the kind of glaring I was talking about. I broke into laughter and they did, too, but man, what a moment to have.

One other poll worker was reading the Robert Caro books on Lyndon Johnson, which had us talking about systems of power, whether power corrupts or reveals, good research methods, and hypothetical Caro-level biographies we'd like to read. One person said Sacajawea and the LBJ reader said Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord. I told him I'd want to read one on Tom Cruise, which, given it's a theoretical Caro-level biography, would talk about things like the history of cults and the rise and fall of various aspects of the American film industry to give full context the way Caro's LBJ books talks about the daily life of pre-electricity rural Texas and his Robert Moses book talks about the geology of Long Island to help the readers understand where those men were really coming from.

We also speculated on whether someone would get a 51% plurality and secure a spot directly from the ballot box. We chatted about market tonics and sourdough starters and the terroir of wheat. On occasion, one of the voters was upset about the concept of ranked choice voting, and sometimes they voted for one candidate instead of ranking anything and at least one person cast a blank ballot as a political statement. After twelve hours, I stopped saying people could take pens and stickers and simply told them to take pens and stickers. I ate lunch and dinner in a nearby park and otherwise spent most of the unpleasantly hot day in an air-conditioned building.

Overall, while parts of it could've gone better, I had a good enough time I think I'll probably be back in another few months.

Current Music: nothing now

hannah

Not quite a paella, not quite a pilaf, not exactly a risotto. Certainly a cooked stovetop rice dish. Certainly based on a riff of a paella, working with what I had available. Certainly cooking the rice with the other ingredients and broth to make sure it all came out nicely. And pretty much all of it green, too.

Green spring onions from the market, because I had plenty of them. A stalk of green garlic, too, the cloves roughly chopped, the stalk sliced in half to infuse more garlic flavor. A couple of zucchini, sliced both thin and thick. A head of broccoli, cooked first to make sure the stalks got soft along with the florets. Herbs, spices - some parsley, a blend, a couple dried chili peppers, fresh black pepper, large-grain salt. Sushi rice since I had a cup and a half left in the bag and wanted to use it all up.

The original riff involved tomatoes, and I didn't want to go without any, and I didn't feel like adding anything red or even yellow to throw off the colors. So I used a can of chopped green tomatoes I bought a while ago because I'd never seen them before and found them intriguing, and they turned out to be exceptionally well suited to sweeping up a little corner of the kitchen.

Current Mood: satisfied
Current Music: nothing now

hannah

Despite the stress and a small number of concerning moments, I don't regret working the polls today. Partly because I didn't have to be online, largely because I was in an air-conditioned room most of the day.

I got up at 3:15AM and I got back to my apartment at about 10:30. I'm not sure how easy sleep's going to come tonight, which means I'm really very thankful I called everything off tomorrow.

Current Mood: hot
Current Music: And It Stoned Me - Van Morrison

tjs_whatnot

I was just going to drop a link to something I actually wrote and uploaded to AO3, but then I saw

delphi's Six Sentence Sunday and remembered that was something I wanted to start doing (which will hopefully keep me writing). ❤️❤️

If anyone else is doing this, please link me yours. And, if your don't want to post your own, feel free to do it in the comments. I'd love to read it.

So, first this, and then the other story. These 6 sentences is from a Green Creek story I've been plugging away on for a very long time. It's Mark/Gordo:

When it all got to be too much, when the multitudes of blues became too vivid and overpowering, he ran. When that didn't work, he drove. And when even that didn't stop the drowning feeling of ocean waves of blue crashing around him, he kept driving until he could breathe again, could see the familiar trees engulf him, the familiar scents inflame him. Dirt. And grass. And leaves. And smoke mixed with motor oil.

He could breathe again when he could breathe in those aromas.

This time though, this time the smell of other overpowered all else. Made his blood boil.

*sigh* I just love these two knuckleheads.

And speaking of people I love. Last week was long time friend

kaalee's birthday. And I was asked on the Heartstopper Discord if I'd like to create something for her. And, of course I did. So, I wrote something that kinda of paid tribute to all the fandoms we've followed each other through Sherlock/ HP (but only slightly as I'm all not ready to write in that world, or ask others to read in it)/ and of course, Heartstopper ❤️❤️

In My Pocket (Universe), You Will Always Reside (2081 words) by tjs_whatnot
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Heartstopper (TV), Heartstopper (Webcomic), Sherlock (TV)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Nicholas "Nick" Nelson/Charles "Charlie" Spring
Characters: Nicholas "Nick" Nelson, Charles "Charlie" Spring (Heartstopper)
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Friends to Lovers, We definitely have a type, allusions to magical school, Fuck You JK Rowling, no plot just vibes
Summary:

There is a Charlie for every Nick...

china_shop

I finished off an old writing exercise for the Yield challenge on

fan_flashworks:

Title: Supplanted (1541 words) [General Audiences]
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Characters: Xiao Quan (Shen Wei's student), Shen Wei, Zhao Yunlan, Jiajia
Additional Tags: Episode Related, Canon Scene, Canon Dialogue, POV Outsider, Episode 9 roadtrip, Zhao Yunlan is my blorbo, but sometimes he's a bit of a dick, Xiao Quan don't get no respect

Summary:

The responsibility for getting them back on the road rests on Luo Quan’s shoulders—and when he achieves it, the glory will be his, too. Jiajia will clap her hands and promise to buy him a drink when they get back to Dragon City. Professor Shen will give an approving smile.

hannah

Putting myself to bed several hours early tonight to aim for enough sleep to be functional and present tomorrow. I'm going to pull out as many stops as possible to try to be asleep before 10PM. A long cold shower, a farmer's market tonic, everything I can manage.

Possibly even the AC for a little while.

It's made most of the afternoon and evening into a waiting game where I know I can't commit to much, and it's made it difficult to focus on small things - more than usual, at least. Most of my Wednesday plans are cooking and planning out the Andor panel discussion topics, and that's at least a little more pleasant to look forward to.

Current Mood: sore
Current Music: nothing now

kaffy_r

It's Not the Heat, It's the Humidity ...

... which is, of course, a rank lie, at least here in Chicago and a fair amount of the American Midwest. *checks weather site* It is currently 98F, with a heat index of 108F, thanks to the aforementioned humidity. This is the third day, and I imagine I should be grateful that the heat index wasn't up at 117F, as it was yesterday and the day before.

( Griping, etc. under here )

Current Mood: uncomfortable
Current Location: the living room
Current Music: Bump of Chicken "Sleep Walking Orchestra"

netgirl_y2k

Having spent far too long slogging through Private Rites by Julia Armfield grouchily going 'this should have been a novella' I decided to start off June with a couple of actual novellas.

Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite - Olivia Waite is someone I had previously encountered through her series of f/f historical romances, so when I heard that her next book was going to be a cozy mystery set in space I was intrigued. A Miss Marple type detective is taking a well earned sabbatical in the ship's memory core before being decanted into a new body, when she wakes in a young body that isn't hers. It's cute, but it is very...slight. But I do increasingly think that it's an admirable skill to know and accept when a one hundred page idea is a one hundred page idea and not dragging it out to novel length.

Navigational Entanglements by Aliette de Bodard - This was a little bit longer at one sixty odd pages, and there was a lot going on - navigators are people who can navigate unreality with the help of some sort of magical/sci-fi power called shadows, a monster escapes from unreality, there's a murder mystery, four expandable junior navigators all with their own traumas and neurodivergences have to learn to work together, there's an odd couple romance - and it's very interesting and all, but none of it gets enough room to breathe, so it doesn't really land.

The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses by Malka Older - I absolutely adore this series about awkward lesbians solving fairly low stakes myteries in a future where humanity has fled a dying earth to a system of interlinked platforms around the rings of Jupiter. They actually remind me a little bit of Murderbot, not so much content wise, but, like, vibes, and the way they go down so easy. If you haven't read them, there are three of them now, and you're in for a treat!

Cover Story by Celia Laskey - You know that feeling where you're reading something at a clip and having a great time, and then you get to the end and are like, I don't actually think that was that good? Yeah, it was one of those. So that the set-up is that it's 2005, the beginning of the smartphone and blogging era, and a neurotic publicist falls in love with the up and coming actress she's charged with keeping in the closet. It was pacey and frothy and I read it over a couple of days, and then I got to the end and the one (1) thing about it that had stuck with me was there's this line in one of the sex scenes "her vagina gulped for air", and, I'm sorry, but whoever let that line stay in the final draft hates you and wants your endeavours to fail.

The Heiress by Molly Greeley - Modern takes on Austen can be of, uh, variable quality, but this one, where Anne de Bourgh fights her way out of her laudanum induced haze to take control of Roslings, her destiny, her queerness, her desire not to be a mother is probably the best one I have ever read. Highly recommended!

hannah

With Escapade panels going live this Solstice, it gives me room to plan about planning - I've made sure I don't have anything scheduled for this coming Wednesday, for example, so I expect that's when most of it's going to be happening. I'm hosting the Andor panel, so I'll start going through a few Tumblr and Dreamwidth accounts for meta posts, collecting conversation starters, and ask for help making slides if need be.

Much as I'm not looking forward to Tuesday, I'm very much looking forward to Tuesday night and having survived it. Hopefully it'll only be a long day in terms of hours.

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: nothing now

merryghoul

These were all fics meant for an earlier

comment_bingo round but I'm reccing them in a different post. Why? Because 🙃 and 😑.

Please let me know if I've accidentally recced something made with AI as I'm so used to fics not made with them and I'm not the greatest judge of something made with AI.

Also please let me know if AO3 locked fics aren't okay because I do have some recced below.

( Read more... )

china_shop

Title: Whatever It Takes to Bring You Back (5691 words) [Teen and Up]
Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018)
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan
Characters: Shen Wei, Zhao Yunlan, Wu Tian'en, Ding Dun
Additional Tags: Whump, Pain, Loss of Agency, Episode Related, episode 17, Zhao Yunlan's first trip to Dixing does not end well, Until it does, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Hurt!Zhao Yunlan, hurt!Shen Wei, Get Together, First Kiss (for one of them)

Summary:

“Shen Wei! You’re here—” Zhao Yunlan was sobbing. Then he screamed again, curling in on himself and clutching his forearm. “Fuck, this hurts! Get it—this—get it out of me! Help, Shen Wei—”

Something was very wrong. Even if he were terribly injured, Zhao Yunlan wouldn’t permit panic into his voice. He would make jokes, not scream for help. How much agony must he be in, to have broken like this?

china_shop

Previous poll review
In the The Tower poll, by far the most popular princess is the cat (63%), so I guess it's a cat tower. Runner up is the dragon princess with 47.8%, and third is the minotaur princess (32.6%), who I imagine is enjoying the view after so much time shut up in a labyrinth.

In ticky-boxes, rescue dragons came second to hugs, 60.9% to 69.6%, and puppies came third with 45.7%. Thank you for your votes!!

Reading
Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and How to Think Smarter About People Who Think Differently by Steve Silberman, narrated by William Hope. This is (understandably) more about parenting than I was expecting, so I don't know that I'm getting a huge amount out of it. But it's well-written and well-read, and I'll keep going a bit further. (It's over 20 hours.)

Maybe a little more of The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander -- I'm not sure if I've got back to this since I last posted. I'm awaiting new intermediate glasses, which I'm hoping will make life easier and mean I can read on my exercise machine again, without having to set the font size to "huge". (Breaking news: ageing is overrated.)

Guardian by priest -- I think we're nearly through the epic (in both senses) mythology dump, and we'll soon be getting back to what I think of as the main plot arc.

Release Your Persona by Yeaze (Korean BL manhwa) (via

reviews_and_ramblings, which I found via

cornerofmadness) -- this sure was an education in how porny BL manhwa are. It's a short-and-sweet celeb/non-celeb romance. Very cute (and did I mention E-rated?).

No Peter Whimsy this week because I disliked the narrator of the audiobook.

Kdramas
Our Unwritten Seoul -- okay, I'm loving this story of adult twins who swap lives; it's interesting and hopeful without being fluffy. Curious to see where it's going, and (of course) impatient for secrets to come out.

Sell Your Haunted House -- rewatch continues. Such a good show.

Other TV
The first episode of Étoile, a ballet drama created by the Sherman-Palladinos (of Gilmore Girls and Marvelous Mrs. Maisel fame). Seems fun so far. We'll get back to it.

Finished the first season of the Argentinian show, El Eternauta, and I totally see why it was recommended to go in unspoiled (I agree!), but just ftr, the season doesn't wrap up. It's one of those gear-shift to-be-continued endings. Still, it was fascinating and I always appreciate a different-from-the-usual-suspects setting. (

laireshi, if you happen to be reading this, this show hits one of your DNWs.)

Turning Point: The Vietnam War continues to be excellent; really impressive range of interview subjects from all sides. Murderbot is still really fun. Finished season 5 of The Expanse. The school episode of Poker Face and the con artist one (John Cho & Melanie Lynskey 4 eva), and episodes 4 & 5 of Andor season 2.

Guardian/Fandom
My fannish activity consists of the readalong, the polls, and writing -- which is all so much fun and plenty to keep me busy.

Audio entertainment
Writing Excuses, a lot of Coherent (local politics argh), and a couple of episodes of Midnight Burger because I was starving for fiction. (Episode 7 was so good I made Andrew listen to it. I'm not sure it worked as well out of context, but mostly I just liked the physics conversation anyway.)

Writing/making things
I'm still writing! This is a pretty great streak for me. How long can it last? Trying to finish a minor character/outsider POV flashfic for tomorrow's

fan_flashworks deadline (prompt: Yield), and I still have the Guardian bingo prompts for June on my mind. One day I'll get back to my WIPs.

Also, there's been author reveals, so I can say that I picked up a pinch hit for

whumpex, which was really fun. I had not previously thought I'd enjoy writing a fic where Zhao Yunlan spends most of it screaming in pain, but... you live, you learn.

Life/health/mental state things
( Idek. )

Good things
Sunshine and biking. The bakery at Greta Point, with its delicious cinnamon rolls and seed-strewn rye sourdough. Achieving getting my car fixed. Writing! Guardian and comments and polls and the readalong and happy brain-sparky times and people. My favourite hand cream courtesy of

mergatrude. Crosswords. Kdramas. My arms are holding up pretty well.

Poll #33270 Impending doom of the natural variety

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 54

View Respondents

What natural disaster threat(s) do you live with?

View Answers

earthquake
12 (22.2%)

fire
15 (27.8%)

volcano
5 (9.3%)

flood
24 (44.4%)

drought/heat
30 (55.6%)

hurricane/cyclone
14 (25.9%)

landslide/avalanche
2 (3.7%)

blizzard
22 (40.7%)

tornado
15 (27.8%)

tsumani
4 (7.4%)

other
3 (5.6%)

ticky-box full of emergency kits/go bags
18 (33.3%)

ticky-box made of Möbius strips and Escher staircases
26 (48.1%)

ticky-box full of unlabelled VHS tapes
18 (33.3%)

ticky-box full of zebras in headphones listening to 80s pop on Stripe-ify
19 (35.2%)

ticky-box full of hugs
38 (70.4%)

hannah

Leaving Brooklyn this afternoon, I saw billowing, towering stormclouds out to the west, slowly coming over and in. I took a couple pictures and went on my way, cursing this to be one of the rare days I went out without an umbrella and understanding that I was going home and if I got wet, no harm done. Even if they looked particularly ominous. Not even any texture to them: flat, hard gray, weighing so heavy the sky moved around them.

At the transfer point in Manhattan, I saw a lot of shaken umbrellas and one spot over the tracks - just one - where the water was coming through hard and steady. A singular two-foot rainfall.

When I got out at my stop and saw all the slick flooring just before the steps out, I was pretty well ready to speed back to spend as little time in the rain as I could, except then I saw two people walking down the steps, totally dry.

The time it took me to get to Manhattan was long enough for the storm to move on. I missed it entirely. Not the ecstatic greens and blues that come after a storm, the clarity of color that arrives; I didn't miss out on any of that. Just the storm that made it possible.

What timing.

Current Music: Crying, Laughing, Loving, Lying - Labi Siffre

hannah

Of late, I've tried to derive some entertainment value of sitting and waiting for people to stop talking so I don't interrupt them because that's about the only way to get through it with any composure. There's people I've met who can go for long minutes without giving me any indications they want me to talk. I'm tempted to see if raising my hand does anything, or getting up and moving.

I know I could theoretically interrupt them, but every person who has this trait would have to be yelled at for them to hear me talking. Though now I'm also tempted to try to just start talking in a normal volume, ignoring everything they're saying, just to see that reaction.

Current Mood: stressed
Current Music: nothing now

hannah

The day's plans of meeting a friend of a friend and seeing a Broadway show were scuttled by the star of the show having to back out at the last minute due to a small injury. As the friend of a friend had come to the city to see Orville Peck more than he'd come to see Cabaret, we decided that he'd be better off refunding the tickets.

I knew the neighborhood a little bit, so I took us four blocks north and one block west to go from the city people visit to the city people live in, going from having a bite and some coffee at a tourist destination to doing the same at a local coffee and sandwich place. He ordered a gabagool sandwich and a pink iced chai latte, and I just had a pink latte. Afterwards, we went to a record store and he found a vinyl Ney Matogrosso album, which was a surprise because he's apparently hard to find in the US on pretty much any format, but especially vinyl.

Not long after, we went our separate ways, him to Brooklyn and the friends he was staying with and me to my apartment to finish folding laundry and cook some lunches for the coming week. I could fixate on the misfortune, or I could look at how we managed to made the best of things.

Current Mood: mellow
Current Music: Half Acre - Hem

china_shop

Does anyone know where referring to diamonds dismissively as "the most boring form of carbon" is from? We picked it up somewhere (movie, tv, or book), and now we can't even remember if it was an ordinary character being geeky and pedantic, or a supernatural being eye-rolling at a human.

It could even have been Douglas Adams, except then I'm pretty sure a) I'd be able to identify it, and/or b) it would come up in an internet search.

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a merry ghoul

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June 2025

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Page generated Jun. 28th, 2025 04:20 am

you should've seen the other guy

"For God's sake, Eddy, listen to her! She's crazy--"

Reading

Dept. of Success

Me-and-media update

Work ethic.

Dept. of Kafkaland

Polling.

Lunch investment.

Post-script.

Six Sentence Sunday (and something I've actually finished!)

Guardian fic: Supplanted (episode 9 gen, Xiao Quan POV)

Winding down.

Dept. of Surfacing

More Books!

Daylight hours.

Fic recs (WWE, AEW, Doctor Who)

Whump fic: Whatever It Takes to Bring You Back (Guardian, SW/ZYL)

Me-and-media update

Downpours.

Strategies.

Carrying this scrap of paper.

orphaned quote

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June 2025

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