Friday, October 3rd, 2025 10:14 am
The only two things certain in life are death and taxes. In the hangover from Yom Kippur I've just finished filling out my Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts, which I loathe with a passion. But death seems more significant this year.

Last night I got back from Yom Kippur services exhausted and still a bit light-headed from the twenty-five hour fast. The first thing I saw was an email from my mother about "the attack on Manchester." Amazingly it was the first I'd heard of it. The security people at the synagogue must have known but I don't think most people did. I should have realised when I saw a police car outside in the afternoon that something must have happened.

This is apparently "the first deadly attack on a British synagogue" and the deadliest attack ever on a place of worship outside Northern Ireland. (Per a useful thread by Sunder Katwala.) Also last night one (1) of my colleagues sent me an expression of sympathy, for which I was, and am, ridiculously grateful. Local and national Muslim leaders have also posted statements of solidarity, but taking the mood as a whole right now it's easy to feel (and maybe this is because I'm still exhausted, but I feel I've been exhausted for a long time) that most non-Jews are not interested in solidarity with the Jewish community right now because they don't think it's compatible, rhetorically at least, with being against what Israel is committing in Gaza. (And the ones who are, are interested for the wrong reasons.)

Hearteningly, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez did post a statement of sympathy – but most of the comments (on BlueSky! not even on X!) were variants on "Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism" or "Criticism of Israel is legitimate." I would be a whole lot more convinced by the former if comments like this didn't keep cropping up on posts about Jewish holidays and/or the death of Jews.

(Feminism isn't transphobia, but you'd be amazed how many purported feminists haven't got the memo. Being anti-crime isn't racist or anti-immigrant, in theory, but you'd be amazed by how many people use one thing as cover for the other. I could go on.)

Anyway, the other email I came home to was from Caledonian Sleeper, saying that my journey to Aberdeen this evening has been cancelled due to a storm. I managed to quickly rebook, so I'm now going straight to Inverness on Monday for my writing retreat at Moniack Mhor. It's a shame I'm going to miss my weekend in Aberdeen but maybe I needed the rest. And it doesn't seem so important right now. I would really like to wear my little magen david necklace up to Moniack Mhor but it gives me pause that so many people seem to be unable to distinguish "I am proud to be Jewish" from "I support genocide."

Like I said, I'm exhausted.
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Wednesday, October 1st, 2025 07:39 pm
+ My brain is mush. We dock sometime during tonight, so tomorrow will be another hectic day. Thankfully come Friday I shall have freedoooommmm.

+ I want a Big Barda icon but I'm too zapped to make one *sulk*

Maybe after I've had my shower.

+ Not helping: my mom constantly asking me when I can come see her in Oslo, and for plans this Christmas when she'll be visiting and living at my brother's. I do not have capacity for this. Love her to bits but it's tough to convey that SOCIAL BANK EMPTY, PLAN QUEUE FULL.

+ Booked my flu shot for next Thursday. Apparently they're not doing Covid shots at the doctor anymore, boo. And the only information I can find is that it becomes available week 42. Hopefully I manage to get in there early enough that it will mostly be in full effect by the time I go to Thailand.

+ One Battle After Another will be showing at the small local cinema next week. There's been some very positive buzz. I may try to lure some friends to come with.

+ Decided to try and move away from using GoodReads, and so far StoryGraph seems a good fit. I know there's quite a few options out there, but I only made it through two before settling on StoryGraph. (Fable being the second option, but just way too busy for me. Someone looking for a move involved and social experience might vibe with it!)

One of the fun things is you can make your own book lists or challenges. I started putting together a small Queer Comics one. I could only find two other comic/graphic novel challenges by searching, so that's certainly a void in need of filling that's what she said.

Anyways, I'm here, in case anybody else is stretching their wings.

Sad eta: Jane Goodall has passed.
Sunday, September 28th, 2025 07:45 pm
Guess who picked up a super fun comic, tore through three trades, then wanted to find folks talking about it and searched on BluSky... to find it got cancelled the very day she picked it up? AYUP.

Why aren't people buying super fun team comics?? *shakes fist at universe*
(yes it was cancelled due to poor sales)

The comic in question? Birds of Prey, written by Kelly Thompson. It had team! Quips! Competency! Siblings! Big Barda and Tiny Bat!! Muscles and mind-controlled beefcakes!

The last issue comes out in December and I'd prefer to pick up the trade. When I went to check if we'd even get volume 4 - comics! they treat us so well! - there was some good sprinkled in there. Firstly, she's pitching a new book at DC featuring a couple of the characters from BoP. My feral mind is slamming both fists on the table, chanting "Big and tiny! Big and tiny!" Probably not but gimme.

Secondly, Thompson's heading up the new Buffy and Angel run at Dynamite!
In my early days trying to figure out how to be a writer and what stories mattered to me and why — no heroine quite broke through for me like Buffy Summers.

She was somehow everything my young geek heart had always wanted but hadn’t known to ask for. Something about that delicate alchemy of horror, fantasy, and comedy paired with a hero so pure of heart and yet flawed and relatable was… impossible to deny. I fell deeply in love with Buffy, and following that, her whole world. Her ex-boyfriend is now a supernatural detective in Los Angeles you say? Inject it directly into my veins! But unlike a lot of other worlds I loved, the world of Buffy and Angel somehow never fell to the wayside. I could always come back to it and find something new, or something I’d missed, or something I needed. And I hope this new story we’re telling can do the same for old and new fans everywhere.

Thank god BOOM! lost the license because oof. Outside of the pretty covers and first issue, that was rough to say the least.

But I'm excited for this! We could, dare I say it, get a good Buffy comic.
Friday, September 26th, 2025 11:19 am
This week, as another Year of Adventure event, Pat Wrede and I (at Pat's suggestion) took a road trip to Kellogg, Minnesota to visit Lark Toys. I'd never heard of the place before, but it was an enjoyable jaunt indeed. It was started by a man who was interested in creating a market for his carved wooden toys, and over the years it has grown to be a remarkable place. Besides being a toy store, it is a toy museum. It was great fun to wander down the corridor of "Memory Lane" and identify old toys that I had as a child, that I haven't thought of for years: Spirograph, the game of Life, Chinese Checkers, Operation, spin tops, etc. There was an impressive little bookstore, too, with thoughtfully curated books for adults as well as children.

The centerpiece is a truly extraordinary carved carousel, created by the original owner. There was a cafe, and a fudge emporium, and had we been inclined, a miniature golf course.

It was a lovely drive, and Lark Toys was great fun and well worth the trip. Highly recommended I came home with a wee giftie for M, which I look forward to seeing her enjoy.

Image description: Background: a corridor of Lark Toys, lined with display cases. Top: a sign with the words "Memory Lane." Upper left: the logo for Lark Toys, the silhouette of a bird with a wind-up toy key on its back. Below the silhouette: the words "Long Ago." Below the "Memory Lane" sign, another sign which reads: "As once the wing'd energy of delight carried you over childhood's dark abyss, now beyond your own life buid the great arch of unimagined bridges. -Rainer Marie Rilke." Below this sign: a stylized tree, over a pillowed reading nook. Right: a lamp past with directional signs jutting out of the post. Left: a wooden stand filled with lollipops. Lower half: a rabbit and a swan each wearing a saddle (figures from a carousel). Bottom: a family of toy bunnies and a group of Matryoshka Russian nesting dolls.

Lark Toys

38 Lark Toys

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Friday, September 26th, 2025 02:46 pm

An excellent teaching experience today; the kids were more engaged and we had fewer tech snafus (and were better prepped to pivot for almost all of them), the one downside being that I did not act fast enough before the kids descended like locusts on the leftover lunchboxes and therefore I gotta get my own lunch.

But at least I had already prepared to buy myself dinner as a "yay you did a teaching!", so I can just get a gyro wrap and fries instead of bánh mì and spring rolls without any kind of emotional agonies.

A friend's yard sale is tomorrow and I have successfully offloaded a surprising number of things for that — two curtain sets! branded mugs! IKEA plates! — and I need to set up folks to care for the gherkin while I am away, and someone to pick up the corms for a public beautification project that is also happening then, and after a followup call, the Parks Department has finally finally admitted to looking at my pollinator garden plans and has feedback, which I gotta respond to. Also laundry needs to happen.

Friday, September 26th, 2025 12:20 pm
Down for maintenance, you say?
A timely drabble-athon!

Where we can all huddle together, prompt silly things, write fills, and spread some fannish joy.
Wednesday, September 24th, 2025 06:28 pm
Too rusty to even think about touching live action, but if anybody have any comic book covers or panels they'd like to see iconned, pop them in the comments?
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Wednesday, September 24th, 2025 10:19 am
+ Fishery has been so consistently bad there's talk of maybe heading home a little earlier. I wouldn't mind. I've been cope-eating my way through the whole trip lol. Pity I undid all the progress I made last trip, but I gotta keep my spirits up some way, and right now that's via candy and comics.

The weather is also kind of shit, and looking to get shittier. Like, no fishery and go seek shelter by the coast shittier.

+ I sometimes stop by creativenarket.com for their weekly batch of free goods, and this week they've got a 1300 pack of really versatile marker elements up for grabs. Lines, boxes, circles, icons... could do a lot of fun stuff with it!
(I haven't made icons in so long *sob*)

+ My dad had a skin cancer scare last week, but thankfully they caught it in time! (by which I mean, the doctor said it looked ok, he insisted they remove it, and then it turned out to be cancerous. So happy my dad's a stubborn one.) They've taken further tests and found no sign of it having spread, so he should be in the clear.

+ I did send him the link to this study: Daily vitamin B3 dose cuts skin cancer risk by up to 54%. Very large pool of participants, I feel more than sturdy enough to pester him about adding some vitamins. (I'll also have to push when it comes to sunblock *sigh*)
Overall, niacinamide – also known as nicotinamide, a vitamin B3 form found in food and supplements that supports cellular energy, DNA repair and healthy skin – was associated with a 14% lower risk of developing skin cancer. When people began nicotinamide after having earlier received a positive skin cancer diagnosis, the reduction in risk was 54%. What's more, the effect was seen in both basal cell carcinoma and cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, with the largest drop in squamous cell cancers.

+ Italian workers’ strike in solidarity with Gaza brings disruptions across the country.

+ House Arab.
I watched in real time as the consensus congealed; by Sunday morning, everyone seemed to agree that the events of the previous day could only be interpreted as senseless barbarism or perhaps an Iranian plot, but absolutely not as a legible expression of rage by a people the world had left to die.

+ With the Serial Numbers Filed Off: The Problem with Trad Pub Fanfic.

+ [personal profile] sholio posted a bunch of Murderbot fic recs, bless. Bookverse short gen and longer iddy plot fics, PLUS a fic of their own: Crime And Punishment, Mensah POV, 2500 words. I'm not allowing myself a break from my current book, but very excited to dig in after.

...I didn't have a Murderbot tag shame on me.
eta also, schneefink.

+ ‘Andor’ Writer Dan Gilroy On Disney Suspending Jimmy Kimmel & Hollywood Facing “Venomous Evil”.
Their goal is to instill fear, to make you feel helpless, hopeless, to break you down. Don’t let them. Educate yourself. Organize. Speak truth to authority. Because the story’s not written — the pen is in your hand.
(they did decide to reinstate Kimmel. And then announced a price hike hours later 🫠)

+ The ‘blue dragon’ is back from the brink and Global Conservation Protection of Calakmul Helps Increase Jaguar Population by 30%. More pretty dragons and pretty cats \o/

+ The US town that pays every pregnant woman $1,500.
The town of Flint made headlines a decade ago when pediatrician Mona Hanna discovered lead levels in local children’s blood had risen dangerously after the city switched its water supply to the Flint River. The coalition that came together to protect children then continued to advocate for children after the water crisis resolved, Hanna said.
Tuesday, September 23rd, 2025 02:12 pm

As per usual: I am not even a little bit ready for the Days of Awe! Emotionally. I'm pretending that the cleaner was scheduled yesterday so I could start 5786 with a clean house. It's gonna be real weird to be with my mother for Y"K, although really most of that day will be spent on the ferry, which will actually be a lovely way to pass the time thinking about Y"K stuff.

I have eaten my apples & honey and gone to the river and filled my cup with friend time, and that's a pretty good way to start the year. L'shana tovah, friends.

Monday, September 22nd, 2025 01:02 pm

Block party yesterday extremely good: I met someone who keeps bees on his garage roof, and may have acquired volunteers for the pollinator garden, and talked about needlework with someone, and ate delicious fried chicken and upside-down peach cake. A+ community experience.

Today the cleaner is taking a crack at my dishwasher filter because I could not face a further attempt, and I am doing the interesting parts of my job (discussing copyright in archives! writing semantic HTML in preparation for writing modern CSS! prepping for a teaching commitment later this week!), and tomorrow I will go to the river for Tashlich first thing, and then have a co-writing sesh with H., and then the apple tasting flight with local honey (not from the garage bees) with friends in the park.

There is a constituent meeting with my state senator I am planning to go to later this week, he seems mostly useless but not actively evil, wish me luck.

Saturday, September 20th, 2025 07:31 pm

I impulse-made pasta dough in the stand mixer last night, and then today, I:

  • went to the farmer's market, where the good sourdough vendor was in attendance and recognized me, and I also picked up an apple tasting flight (Macoun, McIntosh, Honeycrisp, and Gala) and honey for Rosh Hashanah Tuesday, as well as a dozen gorgeous multicolored eggs, a purple cauliflower, and various other vegetables;
  • meandered around the neighborhood in perfect early-fall sunshine, following the treasure map of local yard sales, and one house was giving away their stuff, including an adorable little pitcher and stationery and stamps and linen napkins I'm going to turn into embroidery projects;
  • did some gardening and met up with a friend and her kid, and hung out with them for a few hours and made play-doh shapes;
  • came home and rolled out half the pasta dough and made ravioli and took a hot bath.

And now I'm going to drink some mint tea and lie on the couch and read a book and cuddle my cat. Tomorrow there is a block party and more fresh pasta to roll. This all feels suspiciously idyllic.

Friday, September 19th, 2025 07:06 pm
I have been steeped in everything science fiction and fantasy for decades, but there is one thing I've had no experience with whatsoever:

I have never tried Dungeons and Dragons gaming.

I'm not quite sure why. Heaven knows I have dozens of long-time friends who have been gaming for years, and I've heard peripheral conversations on the topic at many a science fiction convention. Even around my own dinner table, as Fiona has long enjoyed gaming.

So when I sent out my call for ideas for Year of Adventure things to do, one friend, [personal profile] lydamorehouse, hit upon the obvious: why not join her group for a gaming session?

I went over to Lyda's house to consult, and she walked me through the process of pulling together a character to play. I was pretty lucky with my rolls, and Lydra graciously set me up at Level Four. After an hour and a half of questions and answers, I had a new character, a ranger, with a respectable level of skills to test out.

And that's what I did last Saturday over Zoom: I was invited to join the troupe of motley characters by a rather glittery dragon and came upon the assembled company at a windmill, where they were regrouping after their last adventure. I had to follow Lyda's prompts and ask a lot of questions, but I had a general idea of what to do. I spent a fun three hours playing with the others. We stashed some magical pastries, examined a magical rune book in a Bag of Holding, and tangled with a vampire. I took out my bow and quiver, stuck a garlic roll onto the end of the arrow, and shot it into his chest. This gave me the satisfaction of staggering him a bit--although I didn't have much of a chance to savor my victory since he promptly turned me into a frog.

I got better eventually and exited, following a wolf. But the experience was deemed a success for all concerned (and apparently I didn't grossly offend anyone), so I was invited to return for the next session.

I think I'm going to enjoy this.

Image description: Background, bottom layer: a Dungeons and Dragons character page. Overlaid over it: Center: an old-fashioned windmill building. Left: a darkly sinister male figure dressed in black, a wolf at his side. Right: a woman pulls back the string of bow loaded with an arrow aiming at the man, a bread roll (a garlic roll) affixed to the tip. At her feet: a frog. Upper half, semi-transparent: a screenshot of several people in Zoom conference. Hovering over the vanes of the windmill: a miniature dragon.

Gaming

37 Gaming

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