(no subject)
Dec. 7th, 2025 07:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsThe other movie I saw recently -- not on a plane! but in a real theater! -- was Guillermo del Toro's ( Frankenstein (do I need to spoiler cut this? well, let's be safe) )
skygiants
Culinary
Dec. 7th, 2025 06:31 pmoursinThis week's bread: Country Oatmeal aka Monastery Loaf from Eric Treuille and Ursula Ferrigno's Bread (2:1:1 wholemeal/strong white/pinhead oatmeal), a bit dense and rough-textured - the recipe says medium oatmeal, which has seemed hard to come by for months now (I actually physically popped into a Holland and Barrett when I was out and about the other day and boy, they are all about the Supplements these days and a lot less about the nice organic grains and pulses, sigh, no oatmeal, no cornmeal, etc etc wo wo deth of siv etc). Bread tasty though.
Friday night supper: groceries arrived sufficiently early in the pm for me to have time to make up the dough and put the filling to simmer for sardegnera with pepperoni.
Saturday breakfast rolls: adaptable soft rolls recipe, 4:1 strong white/buckwheat flour, dried blueberries, Rayner's Barley Malt Extracxt, turned out very nicely.
Today's lunch: savoury clafoutis with Exotic Mushroom Mix (shiitake + 3 sorts of oyster mushroom) and garlic, served with baby (adolescent) rainbow carrots roasted in sunflower and sesame oil, tossed with a little sugar and mirin at the end, and sweetstem cauliflower (some of which was PURPLE) roasted in pumpkin seed oil with cumin seeds.
Frivolous question - solo horror game
Dec. 7th, 2025 09:57 amradiantfractureI am nearing completion (fingers crossed) on a little winter solstice horror game that uses solitaire as its mechanic.
You will not be surprised to learn that this is is pretty much a solo journalling game with prompts. However, the solitaire mechanic does impose (I hope, anyway) a kind of melancholy fatalism.
I have been calling the game Solitary for obvious reasons, but of course there are many many many many games on Itch alone already called Solitairy. Any thoughts on an alternate title?
§rf§
You will not be surprised to learn that this is is pretty much a solo journalling game with prompts. However, the solitaire mechanic does impose (I hope, anyway) a kind of melancholy fatalism.
I have been calling the game Solitary for obvious reasons, but of course there are many many many many games on Itch alone already called Solitairy. Any thoughts on an alternate title?
§rf§
(no subject)
Dec. 7th, 2025 09:55 amconuly posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
agonyauntDEAR HARRIETTE: I have twin sons who are in college at different schools. They are good kids but a bit young for their age. I don't think either of them has ever dated. I have always taught them that they should have enough money to take a woman out on a date, and right now they aren't working. I offered to give them some cash to help them in case they do want to take someone on a date, but so far neither has taken me up on it. Have I done something wrong as a mother? Why are they so delayed? -- Arrested Development
( Read more... )
( Read more... )
(no subject)
Dec. 7th, 2025 09:49 amconuly posting in agonyauntDear Care and Feeding,
My sister openly doesn’t like me (and has said so publicly and directly), though we manage well enough for family events. I get along with my brother and his wife, but they are horrible at communication and interact with my sister more frequently. My dad gets along with all of us and is good at communication, but lives in denial of all weird family dynamics.
Around every holiday season or major family function, I get left out of crucial information regarding plans, transportation, emergency changes, etc. One consistent hurdle: Brother or Dad tells Sister something and assumes she will pass it on to me, and she doesn’t. I have explicitly told them both to stop doing this, and they just forget, leaving me scrambling when they ask why I haven’t RSVP’d/contributed to a group gift/etc. On the flip side, neither of my siblings is particularly good about getting back to me when I reach out to them, so asking directly doesn’t help either. (Brother and his wife are notoriously bad at responses with everyone, so it’s not personal, just frustrating.) One workaround I’ve discovered is to ask Dad to reach out on my behalf, because that guarantees an actual response, but it’s irritating that I have to resort to that to get basic information like, “What time do you expect me to arrive at your house?” Is there anything I can do to make this easier?
—It’s Mean Girls Meets Finding Dory
( Read more... )
My sister openly doesn’t like me (and has said so publicly and directly), though we manage well enough for family events. I get along with my brother and his wife, but they are horrible at communication and interact with my sister more frequently. My dad gets along with all of us and is good at communication, but lives in denial of all weird family dynamics.
Around every holiday season or major family function, I get left out of crucial information regarding plans, transportation, emergency changes, etc. One consistent hurdle: Brother or Dad tells Sister something and assumes she will pass it on to me, and she doesn’t. I have explicitly told them both to stop doing this, and they just forget, leaving me scrambling when they ask why I haven’t RSVP’d/contributed to a group gift/etc. On the flip side, neither of my siblings is particularly good about getting back to me when I reach out to them, so asking directly doesn’t help either. (Brother and his wife are notoriously bad at responses with everyone, so it’s not personal, just frustrating.) One workaround I’ve discovered is to ask Dad to reach out on my behalf, because that guarantees an actual response, but it’s irritating that I have to resort to that to get basic information like, “What time do you expect me to arrive at your house?” Is there anything I can do to make this easier?
—It’s Mean Girls Meets Finding Dory
( Read more... )
Advent calendar 7
Dec. 7th, 2025 12:38 pmantisoppistEarlier, as Christmas Eve had turned into Christmas Day, she had listened at the window to the faraway church bell from the village ringing midnight. It was a still night and not cold, the wind in the direction to send the sound of the bell here; it would be a warm start to Christmas after the storms, and the lack of frost and cold left the landscape wintry without dignity; the bell's resonance was more pedestrian than it'd have been on the kind of crisp cold winter night tonight ideally ought to have been. Dead. Dead. Dead, the bell went. Or maybe: Head. Head. Head. The village church had only one bell so couldn't play a tune. It sounded, she thought, like someone at the back of memory hitting at stone with an axe, which is an act that'll do nothing but ruin a good blade.
a scattering of images photographic and verbal
Dec. 7th, 2025 12:03 amasakiyumeStill not as online as I'd like to be, but here are some easy things to share. First, tendrils!
I planted some seeds from a passion fruit and got some seedlings, and I noticed the other day that they'd started sending out tendrils. Here one tendril is reaching round a ginger leaf:
I broke off a dried asparagus fern skeleton from the outside garden and brought that in for the passion fruit to climb on instead:
And then I thought everyone could enjoy "Nope," demonstrated both by enlarged emoji and by Little Springtime. It was in my old hometown's public library for a display of picture books about saying no to stuff.
Now the verbal images. I was at R's place because I was going to take her and her kids to get green card photos, and I'd taken off my boots in the apartment. The boots are tall--they go to my knees. Her younger son looked at them standing by the door and said, "They're like military boots," and demonstrated marching. Which, wow. You compare a thing to things you're familiar with. I've been told the refugee camp these guys were in was close to active fighting.
And this last isn't so much an image as a metaphysical something-something. Or a failure of Google Translate. Or both. At a different point in the day, R and I were waiting in my car for her kids to get off the bus, and she typed a question into Google translate. I could see the English words change and rearrange themselves as she rephrased and added to the Tigrinya. The final result was:
How do I know what I don't know?
I wrote back, That's a very big question!
I think, based on her efforts to narrow down what she was asking, that she wanted to know about cars, about eventually getting a car, but the 10,000-foot-level question was a great one.
I planted some seeds from a passion fruit and got some seedlings, and I noticed the other day that they'd started sending out tendrils. Here one tendril is reaching round a ginger leaf:
I broke off a dried asparagus fern skeleton from the outside garden and brought that in for the passion fruit to climb on instead:
And then I thought everyone could enjoy "Nope," demonstrated both by enlarged emoji and by Little Springtime. It was in my old hometown's public library for a display of picture books about saying no to stuff.
Now the verbal images. I was at R's place because I was going to take her and her kids to get green card photos, and I'd taken off my boots in the apartment. The boots are tall--they go to my knees. Her younger son looked at them standing by the door and said, "They're like military boots," and demonstrated marching. Which, wow. You compare a thing to things you're familiar with. I've been told the refugee camp these guys were in was close to active fighting.
And this last isn't so much an image as a metaphysical something-something. Or a failure of Google Translate. Or both. At a different point in the day, R and I were waiting in my car for her kids to get off the bus, and she typed a question into Google translate. I could see the English words change and rearrange themselves as she rephrased and added to the Tigrinya. The final result was:
How do I know what I don't know?
I wrote back, That's a very big question!
I think, based on her efforts to narrow down what she was asking, that she wanted to know about cars, about eventually getting a car, but the 10,000-foot-level question was a great one.
Sure as the morning light when frigid love and fallen doves take flight
Dec. 6th, 2025 10:47 pmsovayCrossing recent streams, tonight I participated with rushthatspeaks in a reading of The Invention of Love (1997) in memoriam Tom Stoppard with a Discord group that does a different play every week. I was assigned Moses Jackson, the straightest himbo ever to play a sport. I consider it a triumph for the profession that I did not catch on fire enthusing about field athletics.
When I read in passing that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966) had begun life as a one-act comedy entitled Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Meet King Lear, I went to fact-check this assertion immediately because it sounded like a joke, you know, like one of the great tragedies of the English stage starting out as the farcical Romeo and Ethel the Pirate's Daughter and then a ringing sound in my ears indicated that the penny had dropped.
Speaking of, I have seen going around the quotation from Arcadia (1993) on the destruction and endurance of history:
We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew?
Stoppard was not supposed to have known the full extent of his Jewishness until midlife, but it is such a diasporic way of thinking, the convergent echo of Emeric Pressburger is difficult for me not to hear. I keep writing of the coins in the field, everything that time gives back, if not always to those who lost it.
rushthatspeaks in a reading of The Invention of Love (1997) in memoriam Tom Stoppard with a Discord group that does a different play every week. I was assigned Moses Jackson, the straightest himbo ever to play a sport. I consider it a triumph for the profession that I did not catch on fire enthusing about field athletics.When I read in passing that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966) had begun life as a one-act comedy entitled Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Meet King Lear, I went to fact-check this assertion immediately because it sounded like a joke, you know, like one of the great tragedies of the English stage starting out as the farcical Romeo and Ethel the Pirate's Daughter and then a ringing sound in my ears indicated that the penny had dropped.
Speaking of, I have seen going around the quotation from Arcadia (1993) on the destruction and endurance of history:
We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew?
Stoppard was not supposed to have known the full extent of his Jewishness until midlife, but it is such a diasporic way of thinking, the convergent echo of Emeric Pressburger is difficult for me not to hear. I keep writing of the coins in the field, everything that time gives back, if not always to those who lost it.
cat health worries
Dec. 6th, 2025 09:13 pmredbirdFirst: The cat in question seems to be basically well.
So,cattitude has been worrying on and off that our cat Kaja was getting skinny. A few days agp. that got to the point of calling the vet and then taking the cat in for a check-up.
At the exam, the vet told Cattitude that Kaja has not lost weight; if anything, she has gained an ounce or two. What's going on is, the cat has lost some muscle mass, which has led to some redistribution of her weight, and what Cattitude noted was that her legs were thinner. The vet said it was probably arthritis, drew blood to test for some more serious problems, and sent her home.
We got the results this morning, and they are reassuring: Kaja's kidney function, liver function, and thyroid are all fine. So is her blood sugar.
The email said we could have them do X-rays to check for arthritis, but that would require sedating the cat.
Or, they can assume it's arthritis, and give her monthly injections of a pain-killer to treat that, and see how she's doing in a few months.
The third choice is to just monitor the cat's health for now, and give her omega-3 supplements. We need to discuss the choices, but it's Saturday, and none of them involves "so call the vet and set this up right away."
So,
cattitude has been worrying on and off that our cat Kaja was getting skinny. A few days agp. that got to the point of calling the vet and then taking the cat in for a check-up.At the exam, the vet told Cattitude that Kaja has not lost weight; if anything, she has gained an ounce or two. What's going on is, the cat has lost some muscle mass, which has led to some redistribution of her weight, and what Cattitude noted was that her legs were thinner. The vet said it was probably arthritis, drew blood to test for some more serious problems, and sent her home.
We got the results this morning, and they are reassuring: Kaja's kidney function, liver function, and thyroid are all fine. So is her blood sugar.
The email said we could have them do X-rays to check for arthritis, but that would require sedating the cat.
Or, they can assume it's arthritis, and give her monthly injections of a pain-killer to treat that, and see how she's doing in a few months.
The third choice is to just monitor the cat's health for now, and give her omega-3 supplements. We need to discuss the choices, but it's Saturday, and none of them involves "so call the vet and set this up right away."
Recent reading
Dec. 6th, 2025 08:26 pmtroisoiseauxRead Men Have Called Her Crazy by Anna Marie Tendler, because apparently I'm on a memoir kick. This one is about the author's (voluntary) hospitalization for a mental health crisis in 2021 and her experiences leading up to it, the main narrative interspersed with flashbacks to a lifetime of unpleasant interactions with men, including a relationship with a nearly 30-year-old when she was a minor (enabled by the 2000s emo-punk scene's lack of "any moral compass pertaining to underage girls"). This was an uncomfortable read, in an even though she wrote and published this book I feel vaguely like I'm invading her privacy by reading it way. (And, given the overarching theme of "ways the author has been wronged by men," I also felt faintly guilty for having picked this up mostly because of her association with a famous man, i.e., her ex-husband, a popular stand-up comedian, who does not appear whatsoever in this book.) Also there is the death of a pet. :( So, yeah. Oof.
Continuing I Leap Over The Wall by Monica Baldwin, who was a cloistered nun from 1914 to 1941 (!!) and also, as it turns out, the niece of former British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, so on top of everything else— details about life as a nun, which, perhaps unsurprisingly, don't differ that much from those in Catherine Coldstream's Cloistered, even with the decades between them; her sense of time warp from having left the outside world on the eve of the first World War and returned in the middle of the second, and adventures in adjusting to the "modern" world— she throws in occasional references to "Uncle Stan" and charmingly out-of-touch experiences such as having "received a more or less average education, first by governesses and then at a continental finishing school." All recounted in a cheerful, gossipy, very 1940s tone, so I'm enjoying this a lot.
Continuing I Leap Over The Wall by Monica Baldwin, who was a cloistered nun from 1914 to 1941 (!!) and also, as it turns out, the niece of former British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, so on top of everything else— details about life as a nun, which, perhaps unsurprisingly, don't differ that much from those in Catherine Coldstream's Cloistered, even with the decades between them; her sense of time warp from having left the outside world on the eve of the first World War and returned in the middle of the second, and adventures in adjusting to the "modern" world— she throws in occasional references to "Uncle Stan" and charmingly out-of-touch experiences such as having "received a more or less average education, first by governesses and then at a continental finishing school." All recounted in a cheerful, gossipy, very 1940s tone, so I'm enjoying this a lot.
Defect
Dec. 6th, 2025 01:52 pmadrian_turtleI heard there was a new version of the musical Chess, much better than the original. I don't know the details, but I think they added some outside narration for context, to help it make sense? And changed the focus? (I am not really worried about spoilers. Even if they make the plot less inane, the audience should be there for the music, not the plot.)
A big problem with reviving a Cold War musical in 2025 is that there is a major plot point about a guy choosing to leave the Soviet Union and come to the US. It's 40+ years ago, so the Soviet government is the conventional Bad Guys. The only obstacles to this are coming from the place he's leaving; there aren't any worries that the US might not let him in. The song that nods to paperwork barriers plays it as a joke. Neither because he's from their great enemy, nor because he's just generally a foreigner. For an audience that doesn't remember the 20th century, that just doesn't make sense. The difficulty with getting INTO America is obviously the hard part.
https://www.wgbh.org/news/local/2025-12-05/immigrants-kept-from-faneuil-hall-citizenship-ceremony-as-feds-crackdown-nationwide
(Story at link is about an incident yesterday. Immigrants with green cards who had paid all fees and passed all tests and screenings for citizenship, and were minutes from taking the oath of citizenship in a historic building in downtown Boston...were stopped because the government disapproves of their countries of origin.)
A big problem with reviving a Cold War musical in 2025 is that there is a major plot point about a guy choosing to leave the Soviet Union and come to the US. It's 40+ years ago, so the Soviet government is the conventional Bad Guys. The only obstacles to this are coming from the place he's leaving; there aren't any worries that the US might not let him in. The song that nods to paperwork barriers plays it as a joke. Neither because he's from their great enemy, nor because he's just generally a foreigner. For an audience that doesn't remember the 20th century, that just doesn't make sense. The difficulty with getting INTO America is obviously the hard part.
https://www.wgbh.org/news/local/2025-12-05/immigrants-kept-from-faneuil-hall-citizenship-ceremony-as-feds-crackdown-nationwide
(Story at link is about an incident yesterday. Immigrants with green cards who had paid all fees and passed all tests and screenings for citizenship, and were minutes from taking the oath of citizenship in a historic building in downtown Boston...were stopped because the government disapproves of their countries of origin.)
Update to a fustercluck
Dec. 6th, 2025 12:59 pmysobel posting in agonyaunt[Originally posted in chat; I have added paragraphs for readability]
My brother has organized an ill-advised surprise party for my father's 75th birthday.
Our father is a complete introvert and also very exacting. He likes things to be a certain way, and gets tense and angry if everything is not perfectly to his taste. He hates loud places and large groups of people. Unfortunately, he's always used excessive alcohol to handle social engagements and gets belligerent when drunk.
Because of all of this, I was surprised when my brother, "James" told me that he'd planned a surprise birthday party of 30 guests for my dad at a new restaurant. The guest list includes the following extremely awkward confirmed attendees: our aunt (dad's semi-estranged sister) who is an overbearing religious fanatic none of us can stand; our mother (dad's ex-wife) who is resented by our dad and hated by our aforementioned aunt because of the divorce; and a number of neighbors who our dad has been feuding with off and on for the last 20 years.
I asked my mom why she was going along with this and she said James called in a big favor she owed him and she felt like she couldn’t say no, so he’s pulling out all the stops to make this happen.
I don't know how James could possibly think this is a good idea, except that he has a huge ego and believes this will be some fairy tale reunion where everyone will suddenly make nice. I don't mean that James is a bad guy but he has a tendency to steamroll over people and do things "for their own good." Every argument I've made against this party has prompted him to lecture me and act like he knows so much better because he's 7 years older than me.
It's true that my Dad can be difficult but I don't want him to feel ambushed on his birthday. If James keeps refusing to cancel should I warn my dad? Or do I just kick back with a glass of wine and watch the drama unfold?
( response and update )
My brother has organized an ill-advised surprise party for my father's 75th birthday.
Our father is a complete introvert and also very exacting. He likes things to be a certain way, and gets tense and angry if everything is not perfectly to his taste. He hates loud places and large groups of people. Unfortunately, he's always used excessive alcohol to handle social engagements and gets belligerent when drunk.
Because of all of this, I was surprised when my brother, "James" told me that he'd planned a surprise birthday party of 30 guests for my dad at a new restaurant. The guest list includes the following extremely awkward confirmed attendees: our aunt (dad's semi-estranged sister) who is an overbearing religious fanatic none of us can stand; our mother (dad's ex-wife) who is resented by our dad and hated by our aforementioned aunt because of the divorce; and a number of neighbors who our dad has been feuding with off and on for the last 20 years.
I asked my mom why she was going along with this and she said James called in a big favor she owed him and she felt like she couldn’t say no, so he’s pulling out all the stops to make this happen.
I don't know how James could possibly think this is a good idea, except that he has a huge ego and believes this will be some fairy tale reunion where everyone will suddenly make nice. I don't mean that James is a bad guy but he has a tendency to steamroll over people and do things "for their own good." Every argument I've made against this party has prompted him to lecture me and act like he knows so much better because he's 7 years older than me.
It's true that my Dad can be difficult but I don't want him to feel ambushed on his birthday. If James keeps refusing to cancel should I warn my dad? Or do I just kick back with a glass of wine and watch the drama unfold?
( response and update )
New story in anthology -- out now!
Dec. 6th, 2025 03:29 pmgenartiI have various longer posts to make (job transition news, a write-up of a truly hilarious theater experience, etc), but in the meantime, a quick post to let you know that the Murderfish anthology, which I have a story in, is now officially out and available for purchase!
Murderfish is, as it says on the tin, an anthology of stories about murderous fish. (Its predecessors were Murderbirds and Murderbugs, which cracks me up every time I think about it.) Each story features a different kind of sea life, as well as very cool art of them all! I haven't read all the rest yet, but I'm excited to, and it looks like there are a whole lot of genres involved. My story, "In Sheets of Seaweed," is about a woman in the simultaneously privileged and precarious position of being a prince's mistress, who dreams increasingly of sharks calling to her; I called it my "shark selkie" story for a long time before I thought of a title, and in fact after. I'm very fond of this story, and I'm delighted it's found a home at last.
The ebook is available here and the paperback here. The audiobook is coming soon, but hasn't been unveiled quite yet.
Those are both Amazon links, though not affiliate ones. If you're like me and prefer to avoid buying things through Amazon, full support, but for the moment that's all I have. I've asked if it'll be available on other sites as well, and I'll update when I get an answer.
Murderfish is, as it says on the tin, an anthology of stories about murderous fish. (Its predecessors were Murderbirds and Murderbugs, which cracks me up every time I think about it.) Each story features a different kind of sea life, as well as very cool art of them all! I haven't read all the rest yet, but I'm excited to, and it looks like there are a whole lot of genres involved. My story, "In Sheets of Seaweed," is about a woman in the simultaneously privileged and precarious position of being a prince's mistress, who dreams increasingly of sharks calling to her; I called it my "shark selkie" story for a long time before I thought of a title, and in fact after. I'm very fond of this story, and I'm delighted it's found a home at last.
The ebook is available here and the paperback here. The audiobook is coming soon, but hasn't been unveiled quite yet.
Those are both Amazon links, though not affiliate ones. If you're like me and prefer to avoid buying things through Amazon, full support, but for the moment that's all I have. I've asked if it'll be available on other sites as well, and I'll update when I get an answer.
(no subject)
Dec. 6th, 2025 01:33 pmskygiantsI am home! with my own cats! and my own computer!! This is very exciting because I have spent most of the last two weeks traveling, including last Monday when I spent about 24 hours total stumbling through different airports getting rerouted onto different flights before finally getting to achieve my dearest wish at that point, Be Horizontal.
In the course of that extremely long day I watched two French movies on planes:
( Au revoir là-haut/See You Up There )
( La venue de l'avenir/Colors of Time )
In the course of that extremely long day I watched two French movies on planes:
( Au revoir là-haut/See You Up There )
( La venue de l'avenir/Colors of Time )
also recent reading
Dec. 6th, 2025 11:46 amthistleingrey(Formerly stalled drafts have been nudged by end-of-term exams, in progress.)
Sonali Dev, Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors, The Rajes 1 (2019)
Recipe for Persuasion, The Rajes 2 (2020)
Incense and Sensibility, The Rajes 3 (2021)
Beyond the pairwise romance ostensibly cranking its plot, the first book is a love letter to third-culture kids whose lives have been bent by contradictory familial expectations, and an acknowledgment of bits of the wreckage wrought by postcolonial aspiration. Light touch, relatively, but I appreciate that these books say some of the quiet things aloud about costs and---better---that several characters encourage each other to speak to someone specific.
"Raje" isn't ordinarily a surname, which makes it a good choice.
Perhaps the most important feature of the setting, as a fix-it, is that when the kids who figure in these books as adult characters were growing up, several older relatives were local. I also appreciate the queer side-character situationship, whose arc suits the books' setting.
Anyway, four books total---none for Mansfield Park, which I think would be tough to fit. The fourth is The Emma Project (2022), which I've begun.
Sonali Dev, Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors, The Rajes 1 (2019)
Recipe for Persuasion, The Rajes 2 (2020)
Incense and Sensibility, The Rajes 3 (2021)
Beyond the pairwise romance ostensibly cranking its plot, the first book is a love letter to third-culture kids whose lives have been bent by contradictory familial expectations, and an acknowledgment of bits of the wreckage wrought by postcolonial aspiration. Light touch, relatively, but I appreciate that these books say some of the quiet things aloud about costs and---better---that several characters encourage each other to speak to someone specific.
"Raje" isn't ordinarily a surname, which makes it a good choice.
Perhaps the most important feature of the setting, as a fix-it, is that when the kids who figure in these books as adult characters were growing up, several older relatives were local. I also appreciate the queer side-character situationship, whose arc suits the books' setting.
Anyway, four books total---none for Mansfield Park, which I think would be tough to fit. The fourth is The Emma Project (2022), which I've begun.
Sunday Online Chat
Dec. 6th, 2025 09:25 amsartoriasI need to remember to mention these (rare) things in case one or two of you have free time at 9:00a.m. Pacific time Sunday the 7th. B Cubed Press Sunday Brunch, on Youtube, hosts a live chat. Tomorrow I'm to be included, for what will begin as a chat about preparing for readings, but might go in any direction.
Deth of Siv, etc
Dec. 6th, 2025 03:57 pmoursinWhat is this that this thing is, when, okay, one is aware of all the woozing and grumbling about the various delivery services, but here is the ROYAL MAIL being pretty bad.
Yesterday I had an email saying they had delivered a parcel.
There was no parcel.
I looked at the proof of delivery and behold, that was Not Our Front Door they were sticking it through, it was the wrong colour and one could see the corner of a glass panel (ours is solid wood).
So I went on to their site to try and delve a bit further and, my dears, it is HORRENDOUS, one suspects it is designed to make people Just Give Up.
For example, the 'contact us' link, that actually goes to a 'Help and Support' page that lists a whole range of possible contingencies that one has to sort through to discover one that matches the occasion.
And once I had come across the Advice relating to item (presumably) misdelivered to wrong address, advice was, to contact the sender.
I have no bloody idea who the sender was being as how I was not even expecting a Royal Mail delivery, have been back over my emails and texts and no, I did not receive any previous message involving that particular tracking code.
There is a passing allusion to possible scanning errors.
The only means of contacting them is by phone, and when I tried, and had made my way through the menu options, the wait to speak to a person was 50 minutes.
I am leaving all this pro tem in case a) it was misdelivered and gets put back into the system b) it never actually existed in the first place.
But, really.
And in other, perhaps more minor (?) annoyances of Modern Life, what is this thing that this thing is of 'Cooking Instructions on Back of Label'? that you then have to detach, in the hope that it will actually come off in one piece that one can actually decipher....
ETA Parcel has now turned up, either in today's post or popped through letter box by neighbour to whom it was delivered in error.... Is friend's book I was in anticipation of.
resisting entropy
Dec. 6th, 2025 11:47 amwychwoodMy boss gave me a Christmas present, which is very nice of her! It's... a coffee mug (I only drink cold water) with snowy London landmarks on it (why).
In other puzzling news, I haven't had to wade through two inches of water to get to the station since last spring! I was assuming it was just because we'd had such a dry summer, but there have been several downpours which 100% would have flooded the station entrance last year now. We had a whole thing where the back of our site kept flooding and our management company spent months arguing with the water company about whose fault it was, and eventually the water company admitted it was them and did a bunch of work on the main road to fix it; I'm thinking the flooding by the station must have been part of the same problem, since it's the parallel road downslope. Who knew it was actually fixable without completely reconstructing the whole rear station entrance area! My wet boots thank them from the bottom of their soles.
I've been experimenting again with the automation software at work; at this stage it's a process of continuous failure - you create a process, you run it, it falls over, you spend ten minutes working out why, you fix that, it falls over at the next step, you spend fifteen minutes and call a colleague to fix that, rinse and repeat. On the other hand, the buzz from getting anything to work (I would say "a process" but I haven't actually got a complete flow for anything yet!!) is pretty good. And if I can get the flow I was working on yesterday up and running, it'll save me a couple of hours of extremely tedious manual checks every fortnight, and I'm all in favour of that.
In other puzzling news, I haven't had to wade through two inches of water to get to the station since last spring! I was assuming it was just because we'd had such a dry summer, but there have been several downpours which 100% would have flooded the station entrance last year now. We had a whole thing where the back of our site kept flooding and our management company spent months arguing with the water company about whose fault it was, and eventually the water company admitted it was them and did a bunch of work on the main road to fix it; I'm thinking the flooding by the station must have been part of the same problem, since it's the parallel road downslope. Who knew it was actually fixable without completely reconstructing the whole rear station entrance area! My wet boots thank them from the bottom of their soles.
I've been experimenting again with the automation software at work; at this stage it's a process of continuous failure - you create a process, you run it, it falls over, you spend ten minutes working out why, you fix that, it falls over at the next step, you spend fifteen minutes and call a colleague to fix that, rinse and repeat. On the other hand, the buzz from getting anything to work (I would say "a process" but I haven't actually got a complete flow for anything yet!!) is pretty good. And if I can get the flow I was working on yesterday up and running, it'll save me a couple of hours of extremely tedious manual checks every fortnight, and I'm all in favour of that.
Doing the Impossible
Dec. 6th, 2025 05:52 amspryngDayjob has been nonstop and will likely remain so right up until Christmas break. I am all day every day performing data processing that you'd think would be perfect for AI, but apparently breaks its little brain. So I get to do the brain-numbing dull stuff while genAI gets to write books / create art and my boss keeps asking me why I can't just apply AI harder and that about sums up everything that makes me ragey re the current AI debate.
It's dull, tedious stuff, but I'm trying to keep it from infiltrating the rest of my life. I borrowed my mother's guitar around Thanksgiving, got it restringed (it'd been sitting in a closet for 5+ years), and have been learning the absolute basics in my downtime. Aside from ukulele, I've never played a stringed instrument before... honestly, aside from piano, I've never really been an instrument player in general. Choir was my thing, so I feel like I'm "learning" to read and play music all over again.
Also wow, they weren't kidding when they said your fingers would hurt learning guitar. I definitely got close to blisters forming one day, ouch.
A few years ago I decided to learn French because the language had always eluded me and now I can read most French and am starting to pick it up spoken. Last year I decided to master bread baking because that, too, had been something I always failed at before; now I can retrieve the starter from the fridge and have fresh-baked bread the next day that even the kids prefer to store-bought. Now I'm picking up guitar after long ago accepting I'd never understand it... but I'm starting to.
I should probably just make a list of all the things I thought I'd never be able to do and cross them off one by one. Some of them are more impossible than others (cartwheels, at this age and size?), but others are absolutely possible (pull ups, car maintenance). I love being almost 40 and not only still learning new skills, but disproving old assumptions about myself. I wish I had more time to tackle it all, but I'll have to just do one thing at a time for now.
Maybe I can work on getting the skill to a level like the sourdough starter -- something I can pull out when I need it, or just when I want it. Piano is almost there; I've certainly just plunked down and played a piece to chill several times this week. It's also nice to have things I can do, but I'm not necessarily good at, so I'll never have the urge to try to monetize it. I just want to be that family member who can pull out an instrument and play a song, you know?
That's a good goal.
And who knows, maybe I'll actually understand music theory eventually, too. Another seemingly impossible thing.
It's dull, tedious stuff, but I'm trying to keep it from infiltrating the rest of my life. I borrowed my mother's guitar around Thanksgiving, got it restringed (it'd been sitting in a closet for 5+ years), and have been learning the absolute basics in my downtime. Aside from ukulele, I've never played a stringed instrument before... honestly, aside from piano, I've never really been an instrument player in general. Choir was my thing, so I feel like I'm "learning" to read and play music all over again.
Also wow, they weren't kidding when they said your fingers would hurt learning guitar. I definitely got close to blisters forming one day, ouch.
A few years ago I decided to learn French because the language had always eluded me and now I can read most French and am starting to pick it up spoken. Last year I decided to master bread baking because that, too, had been something I always failed at before; now I can retrieve the starter from the fridge and have fresh-baked bread the next day that even the kids prefer to store-bought. Now I'm picking up guitar after long ago accepting I'd never understand it... but I'm starting to.
I should probably just make a list of all the things I thought I'd never be able to do and cross them off one by one. Some of them are more impossible than others (cartwheels, at this age and size?), but others are absolutely possible (pull ups, car maintenance). I love being almost 40 and not only still learning new skills, but disproving old assumptions about myself. I wish I had more time to tackle it all, but I'll have to just do one thing at a time for now.
Maybe I can work on getting the skill to a level like the sourdough starter -- something I can pull out when I need it, or just when I want it. Piano is almost there; I've certainly just plunked down and played a piece to chill several times this week. It's also nice to have things I can do, but I'm not necessarily good at, so I'll never have the urge to try to monetize it. I just want to be that family member who can pull out an instrument and play a song, you know?
That's a good goal.
And who knows, maybe I'll actually understand music theory eventually, too. Another seemingly impossible thing.