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trobadora posting in

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cimorene

Years ago Wax bought one of Finlayson's original Tom of Finland tote bags. She carried it a long time (12 years maybe?), until finally the handles wore so threadbare they were falling to pieces and there was a big and several small stains, so I confiscated it for treatment.

Washing it several times and soaking it in oxygen bleach only faded the main tea stain. But this week I finally got around to unpicking the stitches that attached the handles and sewing in new longer ones of cotton webbing (by hand because the sewing machine isn't working). I embroidered over a couple of small rust spots where there had been button pins and then sewed a zipper into the pocket. In the process, I accidentally put it down on top of a wet teabag, so it had to soak in cold water and be spot-treated with oxygen bleach, which removed the new spots. I then soaked it in some diluted lemon juice and the older tea stain faded to a faint yellowish.

See, I was going to embroider over it too, but it's much bigger than the other spots, about four inches long and two or three high. And the bag shrank a bunch when initially laundered. It's sturdy cotton canvas and it didn't occur to me to worry, but umm, it only shrank vertically, not horizontally, and so all the semi-obscene gay guys in the print became... stumpy. And Wax thinks that they will stretch out again over time when the bag is weighed down with cargo; a big embroidered patch would interfere with that.

tafadhali posting in

vidding

Title: Voice in My Throat
Fandom: Sense8
Music: "Voice in My Throat" by Pearl & The Beard
Summary:

I walk down the road and I'm alone again but | All these years I've travelled down a lonely pathway
You will be the voice in my throat | You have been the voice in my throat

Notes: Made for

colls for

fandomtrumpshate

AO3 | DW | Tumblr

oursin

This week's bread: the Country Oatmeal aka Monastery Loaf from Eric Treuille and Ursula Ferrigno's Bread (2:1:1 wholemeal/strong white/pinhead oatmeal), turned out nicely if perhaps a little coarser than the recipe anticipates (medium oatmeal has been for some reason a bit hard to come by).

Friday night supper: ven pongal (South Indian khichchari), v nice.

Saturday breakfast rolls: eclectic vanilla, texture seemed a bit off, possibly the dough could have been a bit slacker?

Today's lunch: the roasted Mediterranean vegetable thing - whole garlic cloves, red onion, fennel, red bell pepper, baby peppers, baby courgettes and aubergine (v good), served with couscous + raisins.

the_shoshanna

by which I mean work! Fun work!

Before we left on this trip, we'd booked a sea kayaking tour for today; with only two full days here, the idea was to spend one of them hiking along the tops of the coastal cliffs, and the other admiring them from below. Also we go lake kayaking at home, which we enjoy a lot though it is of course orders of magnitude more gentle than sea kayaking! We booked a similar sea kayaking tour in New Zealand years ago and really loved it.

But it was a lot warmer in New Zealand. And we weren't quite so tired. ~~and we were a lot younger~~ After the day we hiked through sideways hail, we both agreed that we'd just as soon give it a miss. But of course we were well past the company's free cancellation deadline. But fortunately (??) the forecast for today was for heavy rain and high winds. The kayaking company wrote to us a few days ago saying that the outlook was bad, and would we be willing to switch our booking to Saturday (yesterday)? No, we said, so sorry, we can't do that; and crossed our fingers. And indeed, on late Friday evening they cancelled Sunday's trip and said they'd refund us. (I haven't actually checked, but I assume the refund has gone through, or will on Monday.)

So we were off the hook! As I said in an earlier post, we laid in food (and beer) yesterday for tonight's dinner, so we wouldn't have to go out. And Geoff had the brilliant idea of asking Mike and Christine if they'd be willing to show us around the farm a bit today, maybe we could offer unskilled help with whatever they were doing? So we asked, if it wouldn't be intrusive (I mean, it's their home, and Mike's son is visiting), could we participate in their work today? And they were pretty surprised, I think, but said sure!

This morning I made a big breakfast for us with three of the six eggs, two of the four sausages, all the cherry tomatoes that hadn't gone off, three of the five huge mushrooms, and half a red onion that we'd also bought the day before, because for Geoff it's just not an omelet (well, a scramble) without onion. It was delicious.

They said they'd likely be at work in the barn behind the house around ten, and we'd be welcome to come by; but when we started over there a few minutes past the hour, Christine saw us passing their door and nipped out to say they hadn't started yet. So we suggested they just come by whenever they were ready for us, and went back to lounge about a while longer. Finally Mike came by and said he was on his way to the barn to split logs, and if we really wanted to come help, we'd be welcome.

It was ferociously windy and gusting rain, sometimes quite heavily. (Definitely not a kayaking day!) (At least, it was ferociously windy to us, but Mike said that 50kph winds are nothing, around here. Eep.) We put on rain gear, but to my private relief we ended up actually working inside the barn. (Mostly.) Mike was sitting at a powered log-splitter (somewhat like this https://www.homedepot.com/p/YARDMAX-6-5-Ton-15-Amp-Horizontal-Electric-Log-Splitter-YS0650/323678117), with huge tarpaulin bags of cut logs behind him, and it was our job to keep handing him logs to split, keep another bag positioned for him to toss the split ones into, and haul away the bags of split ones when they reached max haulable weight, piling them against a wall of the barn to be moved further (and sorted into shorter ones that would fit in their own home's wood stove and longer ones that would fit in the rental's) sometime later. Geoff also went out into the rain a couple of times to bring in wheelbarrows-full of more logs. Meanwhile Mike's son Aneurin was dealing with their apple harvest; they have I don't know how many apple trees, but I can see through our own window some trees absolutely flush with apples, and the strong wind meant lots of windfalls; so they had to be picked up and brought in and sorted into best quality/not so great quality/use right away, and the first two categories at least had to be put away, each variety separately in its own part of their apple storage cabinet. (Mike called it the apple store, meaning storage of apples; it looked like a tall enclosed cabinet with shelves, and I'd try to find a picture of the kind of thing I mean except that I know you understand that searching for "apple store" will not turn up anything relevant.)

Anyway, it was fun! We borrowed work gloves so our hands were protected, and I was careful of my back, and in about two hours we'd helped him split, at a very very rough guess, maybe fifty cubic feet of wood? We filled seven tarp bags to the limit of the weight that Geoff and I could haul to the side. I know that Mike couldn't have worked so fast alone, and we freed up Aneurin to deal with the apples; Christine was inside their house cooking and also directing Aneurin whenever he had a question about the apples that Mike couldn't answer. Certainly he and Christine seemed genuinely pleased to have us helping; Mike said a couple of times that we should come back, and we'd find the Cwtsh (our rental space) heated by wood we'd helped split!

Once all the wood was split, he invited us into their house for tea! Christine welcomed us in and made impressed sounds when Mike told her we'd filled seven bags of split logs. The kitchen, which was the room we walked right into, is a wonderful space. She said that when they bought the house about twenty-five years ago, she initially didn't like it at all; it had been redone badly and uglily in the seventies (a drop ceiling instead of that gorgeous medieval vault! Terrible colors!), and they tore all that out and restored it to what it had been, except of course with all mod cons. Her oven and hob are tucked into the huge stone arch that was the original fireplace, and the ironwork chain and hook that were originally over the fire, to suspend the cooking pot from, are now hanging decoratively from the rafters. She has floor-to-ceiling shelves on one wall that are largely filled with enameled cast iron pots and pans; I expressed my admiration!

Mike took us further into the house to a small solarium, filled with plants; he successfully grows pineapples there, as well as a cinnamon plant, frangipani, limes and lemons, and more that I can't remember. (Imagine being in a Welsh market and seeing pineapple for sale labeled "locally grown"!) We oohed and aaahed, and then came back out to have tea with the two of them and Aneurin, although Aneurin looked at his phone and excused himself once he'd finished his cup. We chatted about what Geoff and I do for work, and Christine told us about working in professional storytelling and also writing a book of local folktales (https://www.amazon.com/Pembrokeshire-Folk-Tales-United-Kingdom/dp/0752465651 -- there's a copy of it in the Cwtsh but I hadn't realized it was by her!), and also about falling in love with the property despite its hideous 1970s tat when they learned that it has its own spring-fed water supply. We talked briefly about the awfulness of climate change. (I forgot to say that earlier, one of the times she'd come by our place for some reason, I'd said something that made clear I was originally American, "but these days I don't admit it," and she shudderingly concurred, and added that they have a swear jar in the house, and every time That Man's name is mentioned, the offender has to put a pound in.)

They invited us to stay for lunch; but we demurred. I at least didn't want to overstay our welcome even though they pressed us a bit, and I didn't want them to feel pressured to socialize at the expense of getting necessary work done (there's a lot more to do; Mike described a lot of work that's going to be done in and to the barn, in preparation for which a lot of space has to be cleared in it), and I was a little socialized out, to be honest, and wanted to have a chance to relax and also catch up on blogging! Also we really have overbought food -- we still have bags of nuts and dried fruit for hiking that we haven't even opened yet -- and while I'd always rather have too much food than too little (especially on long hikes; imagine if that sideways-hail hike had been even longer and worse, and if we hadn't had plenty of calories available if we'd needed them), we really didn't want to spoil our appetites for dinner, when our wee fridge is bursting with the food we laid in yesterday.

So we said many thank-yous on both sides, and Geoff and I came back to our space. Mike commented that the rain would probably stop in good time for us to have a dry, if windy, evening walk, but we've just been sitting around contentedly on our devices (and Geoff had his usual-when-he-can afternoon nap). Tomorrow Christine will give us a lift down to the bus station, where we'll catch a 10:48 bus to Aberystwyth; the timing apparently works well with an appointment she has, which is great.

It's been a fabulous visit, and I'm sorry it's so short. The location has its inconveniences (and cooking for ourselves? on vacation? what?) but overall this is a great place to stay, the sort of thing AirB&B originally marketed itself as (they are listed on AirB&B, but we booked directly, which I think they much preferred). We've loved both the space and the chance to spend time with them!

Now Geoff is busy figuring out how to work the oven, to heat up our pies and chips, and I'm finally catching up to now here!

wychwood

Interminable September has not defeated me yet! My goal for the week is to get through the Dream of Gerontius without attempting to faint. Other than work, chores, and choir I have been doing nothing but read read read and have already finished more books this month than I managed in any other month this year, but do now seem to be slowing down slightly.

My boss has set up a new joint task tracker for our 121s and we went through and added numerous things from my to-do list to it on Friday, but she wants to put predicted end dates on them and I just... can't. "OK, can you finish this one in September?" no I can't do anything else in September I'm going to be in a tent. "Shall we say October for this?" no because there's already two things you wanted in September and also in October I'm going to be spending a fortnight testing something single-handed because everyone else is busy. "OK then this one in November?" right but didn't you also want me to guarantee the bespoke work testing before Christmas because this schedule doesn't give me any room for that in September or October and there's graduations to fit in somewhere, so...

She's not actually unreasonable, but also I don't think I've ever quite been able to explain how much of my workday is taken up by "ordinary" things that never get as far as her list of bigger tasks but, crucially, do still need to be done. And most of the bigger jobs require significant blocks of focussed time and I don't have very much capacity for that in any one day, although I can work on boring maintenance tasks OK... anyway, I was feeling extremely stressed on Friday, and it's trying to creep back now except I don't have time because tomorrow I have a half-day away day and then my singing lesson and then a choir rehearsal and then I have to get home and unpack and repack my bag before bed because I have another on-campus day on Tuesday so I can attend a half-day meeting she can't make, and then another choir rehearsal in the evening and sure theoretically I can't explain why I can't find three hours in there to work on live chat, but also...

Time to go and read another book and do my best not to think about it, I think!!1!

the_shoshanna

Geoff is the primary photographer of our trips, just as I'm the primary logisticker. But I have taken a few photos that I thought folks might like to see.

And if you don't, that's what cut tags are for!

This was the view from our first hotel room, in Bishop's Castle:

A view across Bishop's Castle and the hills beyond

This is a pretty representative image of what the easier parts of our hikes have looked like. (On the harder parts I haven't been getting my phone out except to navigate with!)

Some rolling countryside near Kington, Herefordshire

This was the cheese I bought for a picnic lunch in Hay-on-Wye. How could I resist?

This was the path we walked along the River Wye:

and this is what it looked like when we got out into the meadow and had lunch:

A moderately wide, placid river between wooded shores

This was just part of the breakfast spread awaiting us in our Fishguard B&B:

(Yes, a few of the tomatoes had unfortunately gone a bit moldy by the time we got to them. But the others were delicious.)

and this is the ladder up to our sleeping loft!

the_shoshanna

Our long-delayed front porch and mudroom project finally began construction while we've been away, and within a couple of days they notified us that they'd found dry rot and more asbestos. This house, I swear.

As God is my witness, I will have a mudroom this winter!

the_shoshanna

A beautiful hike in unexpectedly beautiful weather

The morning dawned cloudy with intermittent bursts of rain. For some reason all we wanted for breakfast (aside from coffee with that delicious local milk) was toasted laverbread with butter and jam! The bread is crumbly and hard to slice, so we sometimes ended up with more chunks then slices, and there's something in it that makes my tongue tingle, but it tastes good and it's exceedingly Welsh and I so rarely have butter and jam, it's just not usually my thing, so it was a big treat. But all that beautiful sausage and bacon and the eggs (two of their hens lay blue eggs! Four of our six eggs are blue!) went unloved.

Mike came by to say hi and check in, and showed us radar on his phone suggesting that the rainburst that had just passed would actually be the last one; the official BBC forecast was for (possibly thundery) showers off and on all day, but the radar showed nice clear skies coming in from the west. (He said that he often finds the Irish forecast more useful than the British one, since that's where the weather's coming from.) So we set off walking around noon. We asked him and Christine, who also stopped by on her way to tend to the chickens, what the best way to get from here to the coast path would be, and they gave us directions northward on the road, past a cemetery and a small named settlement/farmhouse and a church that was attacked by about 1400 French soldiers in the last ever invasion of the British Isles, in 1797. The soldiers mostly absconded and/or got drunk, one local woman is reputed to have rounded up eight of them while armed only with a pitchfork, the invasion fell apart, and a peace treaty was signed on the site of the pub we had dinner at last night. One of the local attractions that we will not make time to see is a tapestry depicting the battle, modeled after the Bayeaux Tapestry.

Anyway, after the church Mike's directions degenerated into "I don't know, find a path, follow your instincts!" Which was reasonable, considering that the coast path we were aiming for runs, you know, along the coast, and we could see the water from the churchyard, so when we found a path marked as a public footpath leaving the road and heading toward it, we took it, and indeed it shortly intersected the Pembrokeshire Coast Path. (Wales has a marked and maintained footpath/hiking trail running the entire length of its coast, which is amazing.)

The B&B is north-northwest of the town, and we went north to reach the coast path, so our plan was to turn right and follow it east and south again, back to the town's harbor, and thence home. And Mike was right; the weather was absolutely beautiful, sunny with clouds but never even a threat of rain, and although it was sometimes briefly quite windy, it was always blowing onshore from the water. Which was a good thing, because a good chunk of this part of the path runs along high rocky cliffs over the ocean. Signs on some of the gates leading from farmers' fields warn, "CLIFFS KILL. Stay on the path," and indeed, as I think Buffy once said, "Fall down there, be dead a long time." I never felt genuinely in danger, the footing was generally good although sometimes a steep scramble up or down and we each have a good hiking pole, but I did once make the mistake of imagining what falling would feel like, and I kind of freaked myself out. I was glad when the path moved away from the cliff edge again. And we never admired scenery while walking; we always stopped first and then looked around. I would definitely not want to do that walk in stormy weather.

The path wound up and around, edged with gorse and other brush, and giving us some great views of waves hitting the cliffs, and places where the cliff had calved into the sea. As well as fields on the inland side, of course, but we didn't actually see any livestock in them. (Though at times there was certainly a lot of manure.) We saw the big ferry making its way from Fishguard Harbor toward Ireland. We stopped now and then to eat handfuls of trail mix and drink water and watch seagulls soaring far below us.

And at one point, when we'd been walking for maybe three hours in all, we were startled by a call from behind us of "Track!" and four trail runners overtook us! We're in boots, with poles and a pack and layers (including rain gear just in case, because hello), slogging along the hilly and precipitous terrain (happily! But slogging!), and they come cheerfully loping past us in Lycra shorts and t-shirts! We got out of their way, everybody said hello as they went by, and as the last guy passed me I said, "well, we're impressed!" and he called back something cheerful-sounding in Welsh. It definitely put our sense of trekking accomplishment in perspective!

Eventually we hit the outskirts of town, and descended on roads to the harbor. At the point where we left the coast path (and the coastal national park) a sign noted that, to control plant growth and encourage biodiversity, the area was being grazed by ponies! but unfortunately we didn't see any.

We didn't want to keep asking Mike for rides into and out of town, but we also didn't want to climb the steep hill back to the B&B late in the evening (extremely narrow road with no pedestrian walkway, after dark; also we just, you know, didn't want to climb the steep hill back to the B&B). So we hit a fish and chip shop on the harbor and got two huge pieces of fresh-fried cod, and also a large order of chips to share. I was the one who said "let's split a large," and holy shit a regular would have done; that order of chips would feed four. We sat in the sun on a concrete ramp leading down to the water (not the most comfy, but the benches in the actual waterside park area were exposed to the very strong wind) and managed to finish our fish and put at least a visible dent in the chips. Somewhat to my surprise, we were not harassed by seagulls! One or two landed fifteen or so feet away and eyed us consideringly, but never actually tried for our food. Very polite. So that was our early dinner, and we wouldn't need to go out later in the evening.

We also picked up some pies (one beef and onion, one chicken and mushroom, one Cornish pasty) and a couple of beers to bring back for the next day's dinner (tonight's), because today's weather was predicted to be abominable and we didn't want to have to go out.

We walked out on a long mole/breakwater into the harbor, just to see the water and the land from a different angle. I was amused that, although it was completely wide and firm and level and there was a wide flat path along it with lots of other people strolling out (and two teenage boys fishing off the far end), a sign at its foot warned that the breakwater was not designed or intended for pedestrian access, walk at your own risk; like, they disavow this completely easy and innocent stroll, but the cliff trail is public access?

There is a town bus that sometimes stops a hundred meters from the B&B (and that last hundred meters is virtually level; the bus covers all the steep climb), but trying to figure out exactly where we could catch it and which of its runs went to where we'd want and not somewhere else had defeated me in the pre-trip research. And if you think that sounds silly, here is a map of the bus route (the long thin thing sticking out is the breakwater we walked out on):

A map of a bus route that looks like a demented spiderweb

But Google Maps' transit info feature came to my aid, informing me that we could catch one going where we wanted in about half an hour. And waiting for the bus was a much more attractive idea than struggling on the road up the hill; we'd been out for almost five hours, and we were full and tired. So we hiked uphill a couple of blocks to what Google indicated was the right corner, and settled in to wait.

After a while a man came out of the pub across the street and called out to us that we'd be waiting quite a while, and we assured him that we knew that. He was waiting for the same bus in the opposite direction; it was going to arrive from the southwest, pick him up and bring him northeast, then reverse direction back to us, pick us up, and bring us west and north. It was very reassuring to have him confirm that it was coming! He also told us the fare: 95p each. I was confident that we'd be able to tap a credit card, since all the buses do that, but I asked him, just in case, and he said he wasn't sure, and actually came across the street to give us two pounds! So nice of him! But I knew I had two pound coins in my bag, and was digging them out. And when the bus arrived for him, he called out to us, before boarding, that he would tell the driver that we were waiting to be picked up on her return.

So he did, and we were, and we enjoyed the feeling of the bus laboring its way up the hill instead of us doing it. Then there were hot showers and a nice quiet evening, with cups of tea. It is very quiet here at night so far out of town (and, I mean, behind two-foot-thick walls).

That was yesterday, and I will post this before starting to try to write up today!

badly_knitted posting in

fan_flashworks

Title: Mysterious Messenger
Fandom: The Fantastic Journey
Author:

badly_knitted
Characters: Varian, the Rider, the Travellers.
Rating: PG
Spoilers/Setting: Riddles.
Summary: Varian had heard of the Riders, but the native Arawaks had neglected to mention that the mysterious messengers spoke in riddles.
Word Count: 527
Content Notes: Nada.
Written For: Challenge 491: Riddle.
Disclaimer: I don’t own The Fantastic Journey, or the characters. They belong to their creators.

( Mysterious Messenger... )

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my desk

oursin

Happy birthday,

brewsternorth!

matsushima posting in

unclutter

I'm a grad student and I read best on paper whenever possible. That means I have a lot of paper around my apartment. I need to hold onto it because I'm taking notes and working towards writing my thesis. So what to do so I can find what I need, what I need it? a hybrid paper-digital system inspired by the Kerlan Collection archives, where I've visited a few times.

Each item is logged in my research bookmarks with tags and notes and the location is listed as "Box X: Folder X." I also mark that on the first page of each article so I know where to put it when I find it. (I also date when I read it digitally and on the paper. My goal eventually is to digitize my highlights and notes but I haven't had time yet.)

I haven't applied this to my other papers (apartment paperwork, pet paperwork, copies of bills and taxes paid, and so on) but I don't see any reason this hybrid digital-analog system wouldn't work for any kind of paperwork.

This is the system I'm using for my grad studies and I thought it might help others uncluttering, especially with that stuff you have to hold onto in print for whatever reason.

Current Mood: okay

sholio

I fell down a rabbit hole this evening reading the comment reblogs on this Tumblr post on 90s TV. I ended up deciding to copy some of them here to save them from the inevitable linkrot and post decay.

https://www.tumblr.com/laylainalaska/794609119262900224

Original post:

I don't know what those '90s sci Fi TV writers were putting in their shows but I wish they'd start doing it again

#they de-escalated the stakes every once in a while so that you can see what the characters are like when they're not under duress
#they made statements about the world through allegory
#they invested in depicting developing friendships and relationships between their characters
#they assumed that their audience was paying attention to the screen and wanted to be there
#and that their audience has enough intelligence to follow narrative clues and even sometimes to predict the ending
#dont even get me started on this i will go ALL DAY

I don't agree with every single point in every reblog. I also think there's quite a bit of TV now that still does most or all of this, though usually it's the dramas and procedurals rather than scifi, and a lot that's not great about 90s and earlier TV. But there is also a lot of food for thought in here, so I just threw a bunch of the comments into this post to mull over.

The asterisks separate out each different reblog; basically each is its own separate comment, generally in dialogue with the original post rather than each other.

Thoughts are welcome!

( Under the cut )

dine

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

sisterofbloomerjunior posting in

unclutter

Managed to clean off and move my loveseat so an energy auditor can check to see what areas need more insulation for winter. Quite a bit of the items were laundry, so I spent the weekend washing.

Too bad we’re having a late summer heatwave or I would had taken a vacuum cleaner to be repaired at one of Hennepin County’s Fix-It Clinics. :/

Mom’s getting to the point that she won’t be able to drive much longer, so this time it is likely we’ll have to sell the Buick, so I’ll clean that out soon.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Location: The upstairs bedroom I cleaned, huzzah!
Current Music: Fan

fic_in_a_box_mod posting in

ficinabox

Navigation: Rules/General Info | AO3 Collection | Medium Rulesets | Mod Contact: ficinaboxmod@gmail.com OR Screened Mod Contact Post

Your swapsignments have been sent out via email! If you're signed up, the email has gone to the email associated with your AO3 account. If you're not signed up, it's gone to the email you provided when you volunteered to be a secret swapper. If you signed up for swaps and did not receive an email, please contact us so that we can get that information to you. Both people who successfully swapped and people who we couldn't swap got emails, so everyone who tried to swap should have an email.

If you requested swaps despite not being signed up, keep your eyes peeled for the pinch hitter request post. Your secret swaps count as pinch hits, so we'd love to see you make some requests. That post should go up tomorrow or the day after, and will be pinned just below the rules post on the comm.

We would also like to thank those of you who signed up to receive extra wordcount. Some of you simply held extra words while we shuffled swaps around, others of you will receive more than 10k in assignments when your swaps email arrives, and in all cases swaps wouldn't have been successful without you!

Here's what you let us do:

1,299,000 words were swapped! (1,200,000 last year!)
there were 2406 potential swaps (where one swap is a request from one of you create for someone!) (Last year: 1802)
621 swaps were made between 260 participants (Last year: 557 swaps; 216 participants)
2 participants wanted to swap, but unfortunately couldn't; these participants will be prioritized to the best of our ability next year if they sign up for swaps again (Last year: 5)
We now have 957 combined assignments and swaps out, most of them waiting to be filled! (Last year: 837)
This year we timed the swapping process for the first time! It took about 22 hours and 45 minutes across four days. This only includes time spent on figuring out the majority of the swapping, so it excludes the time it took to set the swapping sheet up, do quality control checks on the swapsignments once we thought the swapping puzzle was finished, and send 260 emails.

Finally, thank you very much to everyone for your patience. Please refer to this part of the rules for an in-depth refresher on assignment minimums and expectations, but the short of it is: 10k of complete fic (or equivalent opt-in) is due on October 19 at 10:00 EDT. Email us immediately if you have any problems with or questions about your assignment(s).

Initial Pinch Hits:

Initial Pinch Hits will probably go up tomorrow-ish. Mentally schedule it for ~24 hours after your swaps email, to give us time to get all these swaps into the mod sheet and verify all of the pinch hit amounts.

sovay

I had not thought there were any meteor showers of consequence this month, but it seems that the swift pale streak between the telephone wires southwest of Cassiopeia belonged to the September Epsilon Perseids, so named despite their radiant in β Persei, the demon-star of Algol. I can hope it was not wildfire drift that accounted for the candle-tint of the half-moon, which was doing its autumnal trick of hanging like a lantern in the not yet leafless trees. The last of this summer's monarchs flew just before sunset, the twenty-second of her name.

Current Music: Suzanne Vega, "Left of Center"

toastykitten posting in

thisfinecrew

Hi, it's been a while. I'm going to try to post like once a month on Palestine stuff so there's some more awareness of things that are going on. Because there's a lot.

Israel continues to bomb multiple Arab nations and threaten them; they last struck Qatar attempting to assassinate Hamas leaders who were there at the invitation of the US to discuss a ceasefire with Israel. The result of that is now Arab nations are rethinking their relationships with the US. They are also continuing to bomb Gaza daily and round up people in the West Bank.
Laura Loomer got the US to stop issuing travel visas to Palestinian children traveling for humanitarian and medical treatment.
Meanwhile, in the US, the House just passed a Lauren Boebert amendment to the Pentagon budget that would target the BDS movement.
Rep Brian Mast just introduced a new bill that would allow Marco Rubio to revoke US passports, including US citizens, at his whim, but basically if you criticize Israel.
Earlier this week, progressive House Reps and others like Mahmoud Khalil and Cynthia Nixon did a big push for HR 3565 Block the Bombs Act, which would block the President from selling certain munitions to Israel, except under specific conditions. There are now 46 cosponsors, all of them Democratic. 7 joined this month. Although Reps Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene have both made statements opposing Israel, they have not joined as cosponsors.

Orgs and places to donate to:

petra

Don't ask a question you don't want answered (300 words) by Petra
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Anakin Skywalker
Characters: Padmé Amidala, Anakin Skywalker
Additional Tags: Triple Drabble, Mutual Pining
Summary:

Padmé asks Anakin a question and gets a surprising answer.

Current Mood: yearning
Current Music: Besides, no matter what one might infer, one must have faith to some degree

finch

There's nothing quite like reading fanfic that jumps up on your buttons and rolls around on them like my cat jumping up on my keyboard while I'm working.

Weekend one is not off to a great start, I'm gonna be honest. It's definitely now Autumn and the pressure change has my vertigo messing with me. At the moment I have tinnitus in both ears, but the right ear is the whooshing sound I usually get and my left ear is a high-pitched sound. The combination of tinnitus and audio processing disorder leads to the most ridiculous scenes in stores or restaurants or anywhere I have to talk to people because I'll be partway through an interaction and lose the ability to understand what the other person is saying.

The plan for this weekend has been cut down since bending over and other various weird movement is out, but at minimum we're planning on taking some stuff to goodwill tomorrow. This will happen. Bug went through her books some and for her that's huge. And we paid somebody with a truck to come take a few things too big for the car, so... Definitely some progress. Just not as much as I'd like.

I did also finish a fic last night but not anything I've been intending to work on, just something that took over my brain this week. Yay, that!

Profile

squirelawrence

March 2020

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Page Summary

trobadora in sid_guardian - Guardian Wishlist sign-ups - final day!
cimorene - Resuscitating Wax's Tom of Finland tote as a Stumpy Buck of Finland tote
tafadhali in vidding - New Vid: Voice in My Throat (Sense8)
oursin - Culinary
the_shoshanna - Unexpected fun!
wychwood - *violent eye-twitches setting in*
the_shoshanna - some pictures
the_shoshanna - (meanwhile at home)
the_shoshanna - Yesterday (the "today" of yesterday's post) was great!
badly_knitted in fan_flashworks - The Fantastic Journey: Fanfic: Mysterious Messenger
oursin - (no subject)
matsushima in unclutter - inspiration from the archives: organizing papers
sholio - Tumblr meta on 90s TV
dine - a mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems
sisterofbloomerjunior in unclutter - Sofa, so good.
fic_in_a_box_mod in ficinabox - Swaps out!
sovay - On the edge and off the avenue
toastykitten in thisfinecrew - Palestine/Gaza Awareness
petra - Don't ask a question you don't want answered - Star Wars triple drabble
finch - first weekend

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Style: Dusty Antique for Nouveau Oleanders by branchandroot
Resources: OpenClipart and I'm home again

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