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Photos: Smokey & Sorry Face (Garage, now Deck, Cats) (with Bonus Buck!)

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‘Let forensics Agatha Christie this shit’
On Tuesday I saw the local co-op had Pokémon cards, a new box, so I went in hoping to get some Thursday but they had all gone already. Apparently they get they regularly but that’s the first time I’d seen them. I know they go out of stock quick in places but didn’t expect that here and in such a small store. If I see them I’ll have to get some.
I did get some blu rays from the charity shop up the road, The Wolverine extended edition (I didn’t know there was one?) and second The Lego Movie. I only saw that once at the cinema so it’ll be interesting to see it again. And speaking of blu rays I ordere the 5 seconds of summer one from eBay which came today, yay!
Thursday was also the annoying call which went ok. The guy seemed nice enough, if a little prone to oversharing and at least I don’t have another till the end of September.
In the night I watched the Black Phone, which I wanted to see cause the trailer for the sequel looked pretty good. It was pretty good. It was not sure how it was going to be given the subject but it was mostly implication, though a lot of what was said did feel crazy.
Also the past few days was Alien Earth. The first two eps went live Wednesday, so I watched one them and then the other last night. Thoughts under the cut.
Today I put on Freaky Friday, cause I’d not seen the original and am thinking of seeing the new one (thanks Manny Jacinto) and it was really fun! It’s impressive how well Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsey Logan nailed the body switching like it really felt they embodied each other. Plus Mark Harmon was in it?? I had no idea it was so strange seeing him there!
Tonight’s plan is to watch the next Marple and then watch The Loved Ones (which came yesterday). (And see what my brain is like for other things) Then tomorrow I wanna try and watch Section 31 and then Monday is Weapons (and maybe Freakier Friday too)
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If this world is wearing thin, and you're thinking of escape, I'll go anywhere with you.
Work yesterday was a little bit crazy. I'm assumming someone quit or went on FMLA at one of our sites, and there were about 20 patients that needed to be moved. Guess who got to do that? The site was begging us for help. and so my boss asked me if I'd be willing to do it. So, I did it. It involved calling people and then, if I didn't get them, sending them a message via mychart, with a carefully worded note asking them to reschedule. People were relatively nice, so it was all good.
Then, I was calling about another 15 patients back to get them in sooner/correct the mistakes they made scheduling on my chart, etc. IT meant that overall, I maybe took 25 calls during the day. The rest of the time was in callback mode. In theory that was fine. In practice, it felt a little like chaos.
Afterwards, we attempted to take the dog out for a walk, were denied, and then got all dappered up for our dinner at Ammoora.
We left as soon as my sister came home, and ended up getting there early. It was an easy drive down I-83 and across to light street. The restaurant is nestled into the Residences by Ritz Carlton, which look super swanky.
They seated us immediately, even though we were early and walked us through the hallway to the dining room. It was fucking gorgeous. Seriously, look it up on TikTok, and you'll see. It's just a beautiful restaurant.
Our waitress was adorable, and very sweet. We got a liter of sparkling water, and some non alcoholic drinks--being a Levantine restaurant that bridges the gap between Mediterranean and Middle Eastern, they had a lot of non alcoholic drinks. Which makes sense, since the food is halal, and some people who follow halal also abstain from alcohol.
We decided to go all out, and I didn't regret it until the end of my entree. We had the Za'atar Honey Burratta, which was amazing, with honey, pistachio and rose petals, and the Mousakan Chidcken rolls, which were excellent, and came with this sumac labneh dip that blew my mind. I was tempted just to lick the bowl of the sauce, y'all.
For dinner, Jess got Shish Tawouk, which is very spiced chicken kabobs--spicy, but oh so good. I got the Short Rib Freekeh, which is a buttery, melt in your mouth short rib (I didn't even need a knife for this, it was so tender) and a mushroom freekeh risotto. It definitely qualified as one of the best things I've ever eaten.
Against our best judgement, we got two deserts. I chose Rus Bil Karaz, which was coconut rice & milk pudding, confit sour cherries, coconut caramel tuile. It was really good, but the true star was Jess' choice, the Ashta Bil Asal, which was milk cream, honey, pistachio, Arabic cotton candy, rose petals. OMG, it was delicious and the perfect way to end the night.
My only complaint was that as it filled up, things got a little loud, and at points, we were both overstimulated.
Today, we're off to the farmers market to pick up our meat share, and then back home to play D&D!
Tomorrow, rest.
And on that note, I'm going to go put on pants and get myself together. Everyone have the very best Saturday!
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The Day in Spikedluv (Friday, Aug 15)
I did a load of laundry (washed, dried AND folded – I’m on a roll with this!), hand-washed dishes, took Grant for a walk, cut up chicken for the dogs’ meals, scooped kitty litter, and showered. ETA: I also boiled macaroni and eggs, diced veggies, and stirred up macaroni salad.
I visited mom and called her in the evening; read more in Hatshepsut; and finished the current Kindle cozy and started another (in the same series; I might stick with this one).
Thanks to
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Temps started out at 57.6(F) and reached 84.2. It’s not in the 90s, but it still felt very hot out.
Mom Update:
Mom was still very weak and easily exhausted today.
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Seeing the Kid
I met up with the boyfriend there, and turned the laundry over to him, and then we went to a restaurant where the Kid joined us and we had brunch. That was lovely.
Then, the cost of a return Uber being prohibitively high, I took the subway and bus home.
I did some phoning for some stuff I had to do, and played some solitaire, and got a phone called from
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I HATE THE NEW QUEENS BUS SCHEDULE!!!! This time I decided to take the 25 from my usual stop to the 50, instead of the 44 to the 50. That did work better, but I still had to wait a lengthy amount of time for the 50, and it was super crowded.
I got to the Bronx and had my pizza for dinner, though only one slice rather than two. I ran into M in the pizzeria, which was nice.
The meeting was good but small. M drove me to the bus stop afterward.
I came home via the 50 and 25 again. Damn annoying.
Got here and Teamed the FWiB, waking him up where he was dozing in front of his computer, He has a really nasty cold and cough now. We didn't talk to long, and then I went and fed the pets, and started here.
Gratitude List:
1. The FWiB.
2. The Kid.
3. The laundry is out of my hall.
4. Good brunch.
5. My meetings and the people there.
6. Bed soon.
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Sad news for Sentinel fandom
I had an email today -- Sheila, AKA Buewolf458 here on DW and AO3, has died. She had suffered from dementia the past few years, and died peacefully in her sleep. She leaves behind a large number of fandom friends who are mourning her passing, and a large body of work at AO3.
A week ago -- Aug 8 -- I got the news that Ande, AKA Andeincascade at DW and AO3, has also died. I don't have any more information than that.
I met both ladies at a few Moonridge events; they were both fun to hang out with. That's one of the worst things about getting old; people we knew in our "younger days" leave us behind.
Anyway, if any of you know other spaces where either of these women once participated, feel free to pass on the news.
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2537 / Fic - The Old Guard
The Old Guard | Joe/Nicky | ~1300 words | Thanks to
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(Also on AO3)
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Lake Lewisia #1291
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LL#1291
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Two cyberpunk novels I've been reading recently
To Embers We Return by Ning Yuan (translated by Douqi):
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[books, embodiment] Hypermobility Without Tears, Jeannie Di Bon
Jeannie Di Bon is a "Movement Therapist" who "specialis[es] in Hypermobility, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and Chronic Pain." In the introduction, she talks about her own experiences in a way I find very sympathetic:
I've lost count of the number of times a doctor has told me it's all down to IBS and instructed me to eat more fibre and try Pilates or yoga to relax. Dismissive in its nature and kind of ironic now, as I trained to become a Pilates teacher in 2008.
And, you know, the actual core (yes I did that) of her Integrated Movement Method is sound: she's giving advice about fostering body awareness, of when and where you're tense and when you're not, working through a pretty standard sequence of breathing exercises and gentle movements. All the exercises in this book are the kind of thing that show up pretty early on in any full-body physiotherapy programme, that have loads of progressions available (particularly within the Pilates model), and they're absolutely fine and probably useful to folk who've not been able to access care covering this kind of topic.
If it were just the exercise programme, it would be ... fine. More or less. I think a bunch of the ways she explains movements are unclear and counterintuitive, but hey, presumably they work for at least some people.
Unfortunately, there are all of the bits in between.
Chapter 4 is where they went from "okay, you're simplifying to the point of lies-to-children but you are also explaining why" to "... either you're deliberately misrepresenting things for personal gain or you're wildly incompetent", and I'm still not sure which of those it actually is. (I am trying not to think too hard about the possibility that the answer is "both".)
( Read more... )
tl;dr there is nothing you will get from the Integral Movement Method that you won't get from competently-taught or -explained Pilates except scaremongering and misdirection... and unlike IMM, you can get decent Pilates resources for free. Don't bother with this one.
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My Kids' Chronic Illness Post on Substack
https://lorrained558511.substack.com/p/my-kids-chronic-illness
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Tortoise + stars
(It reminded me a bit of a large toad L and I saw a short while ago, that was also very cute.)
Yesterday friends and I drove outside of the city for a bit to watch the Perseids. I saw the largest shooting star I've ever seen in my life, very cool. And some normal and smaller ones, too. As soon as the moon got higher it was a lot harder to see anything, I'd underestimated just how much of a difference that would make.
A silver lining, I guess, of having a chronic skin condition is that at least I get extra warning signs from my body when my stress levels increase, sometimes that takes me a while to notice. I had a very low energy week, and the temperatures certainly didn't help. The bank holiday today was very welcome; apart from visiting my parents I mostly spent it lying in bed reading. I have more classes this weekend and then the weekend after that, so I need every extra day to relax that I can get.
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Friday open thread: unexpected kindnesses
Before I launch into the prompt, a quick note to say that I am going to close offers on The Power Within on Monday evening, 6pm UK summer time, so if you were interested in making a donation, get them in by then and let me know.
Now, onwards to the open thread: what is a recent, small-scale unexpected kindness you've received from a stranger recently? I'm not asking about life-altering genorosity, but something small, and unnecessary on the part of the giver that was nonetheless given, and brightened your day.
Mine occurred in the Gail's* at Cambridge station today. I have a habit of stopping there in between getting off my train and starting the second leg of my commute in to the library, and buying an iced coffee, as a way to gather my thoughts before the working day. This morning, rather plaintively, I asked if they had any cheese straws. I must have sounded so despondent that one of the bakers overheard and came out of the bakery into the shop front, to explain that they were still in the oven, but would be ready in about five minutes. I said I'd wait and drink my coffee and return in a few minutes to buy a cheese straw when they were ready, settled down in the cafe, and zoned out.
About five minutes later, the same baker came over with an oven-hot cheese straw in a paper bag, and when I got up to pay, he said there was no need — it was on the house. I would have been very happy to pay, but it was a lovely gesture, and certainly meant I started my Friday on a high note.
Have any of you had similar moments of kindness recently?
*Gail's is a mildly upmarket UK chain of bakery/patisseries. It's a kind of running joke that the Venn diagram of presence of a Gail's in a constituency, and the Lib Dems targetting that constituency in the last election is a circle; my town voted in a Lib Dem in 2024, and a Gail's inevitably followed a few months later.
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Scrivener, my beloved, also paragraphs length
Scrivener has been such a boon to my editing. Initially, I migrated stuff there mainly to be able to organise my worldbuilding notes and for the per-chapter/scene notes, but I'm finding so many little ways to make my life easier. Nearly every time I think "if only there was a way to...", I realise there is one. I could cry. What really helped me is watching a bunch of the webinars that Literature and Latte are running, especially Oliver Evensen just showing his actual workspace and how he's organising a whole series in one project. If you're just starting out, the sessions are totally overwhelming because it's often 20 or 25 small tips that make life easier, but half the time I'm like "omg I didn't know you could use labels and label colours this way! I didn't know metadata could be used like this! I didn't realise dynamic collections were a thing!" and everything is awesome, lego-style.
The software is kind of struggling to load if I accidentally load the entire manuscript in "Document" mode with the 5 billions beta-readers comments I imported (and that was a subset!) - still manages though. Because I noted which person said what, I feel like I'm hanging out everyday with the bunch of you who kindly took the time to share impressions, haha. Thanks again <3
I've had a couple of chuckles about paragraph length. In the novella, I was told a few times my paragraphs are too short or too broken down. Meanwhile, whenever I start working with a new beta-reader in fandom, they nearly always tell me my paragraphs are too long. It's related to screen size, I'm told. Looks overwhelming when it takes up the entire phone screen without any paragraph break.
I'm not reading a lot of fic at the moment, but I'm reading a toooooooooooooooooon of books and so my paragraphs are getting chonkier with this round of editing. Who knows what'll happen when I do the final-final (;D) proofreading afterward though...!!
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I'm not the world's most passionate guy - Community story, genderqueer Pierce Hawthorne
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Community (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Pierce Hawthorne & The Study Group, Pierce Hawthorne & Craig Pelton
Characters: Pierce Hawthorne, Craig Pelton, Britta Perry, Shirley Bennett
Additional Tags: Genderqueer Character, Canon-Compliant Pierce Hawthorne, Genderqueer Pierce Hawthorne
Summary:
Pierce experiments with his gender.
*I read a Tumblr post (linked as inspiration) about trans headcanons that cited a character named Pierce. I don't know who they were talking about, but in my heart, they were talking about this asshole.
Possible alternate tag: Queer and Woke are Not Synonyms
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Photos: Apple Blossoms (5/6/25)

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credit card hassles and triumphs: the saga
I started to get annoyed "update payment details!" notifications from various apps. I figured I could live for 2-3 weeks without Netflix, Prime, Apple+, AMC, etc, (actually, doubtful) but then my main Apple account also got cross with my defunct card and I was scared I might lose all my iCloud storage. There are masses of images in there that it would be a bit tragic to lose. Unsure what else (all past emails? My stored Notes? My life is organised around those notes!) Plus the phone might stop working, I guess (my only phone).
Initial bank lady had said they would continue to fund Apple pay, but clearly that was bullshit. So I called them, and the bank guy cogitated a bit, then said if I installed the bank's payment app (called somethingmoney) I'd be able to call up my NEW credit card details and use those for all the online stuff that was expiring. Hallelujah!
So I tried to install their money app but despite it being TOTALLY FREE my phone kept saying my credit card was defunct. Did you know Apple won't let you install TOTALLY FREE apps if you don't have a payment system set up? Well, you can't. Fucking billionaires. All the bank dude could suggest was that I bring the phone into the bank next day so they could see for themselves what the problem was. This was completely that thing where something doesn't work and you assume the person doing it is an incompetent idiot and impatiently say "let me have a go".
So I was pissed off. It was clear to me that this was goddamn Apple bullshit, not something I was doing and that taking my phone to the bank would NOT solve it. Bank dude had regretfully informed me that the money app was for mobiles only, and all my mobile devices were Apple.
It was now about 4:45. Then I had a lightbulb moment - I needed a non-Apple device! So I decided to go to the Warehouse (a big box store, the cheapest one in Auckland). Yes! Out I go to my car, which won't start! Dash is covered by lit-up icons including the battery one. Woe - I called the AA, who amazingly arrived inside 30 minutes. Very nice AA man (AA men have replaced my dear departed dad in my life) got in and the car started immediately. Oh the embarrassment! He kindly explained that if you don't push the clutch pedal in really hard you get all the lights and it won't start. Showed me the green light I needed to make go away to be sure I was doing that.
Grateful and chagrined, and having proved all those bastards right who say "just let me have a go", I drove to the local Warehouse (open late every day of course the better to take our money) and got the cheapest Samsung smartphone they had.
At home, I dicked about trying to charge it but most of my fixtures only have the old usb sockets. Luckily it still had 45% charge (gradually dropping as I fumbled about). Baffled by how it worked, I had to DuckDuckGo a few key issues like "how to turn on Samsung" and "where is Samsung settings" (there was an online manual that failed to cover those minor points). Eventually I had it on even though it kept turning its screen off every 30 seconds. I found the google store and downloaded the money app. And it worked! Once I'd logged into my account I was able to see "card details" with my new card number etc. The CVV was called something else but it was the usual 3-number code.
Victory! I had card details and was able to update Apple, which sorted out the other apps.
But... then today I tried to update my Amazon, Paypal, and Uber eats payment details, and it rejected the CVV no. WTF? Now, as above, I'd had problems with the damn new phone switching the screen off every 30 sec, which meant it was hard to stay logged into the money app to copy my card details into all the other billionaire apps. So I'd cleverly taken a photo of the details, which solved it. Turned out that wasn't so clever for numerous reasons, one being that I failed to go back to the money app to recheck the new card's details. When I eventually did, hours later, they'd changed the damn CVV code! That's when I noticed the small print saying it wasn't a CVV code but was a "dynamic security code" that changed every 12 hours.
So now I'm sorted. It's been 9 working days since they supposedly mailed me the new card and of course no sign of it yet - could easily be another 9 days, if not more. And all I have to do is look up my new dynamic security code every day and update several payment systems. Plus I have a shiny new Samsung phone and very little idea how it works. Haven't dared inserting the SIM card yet - unclear if it takes the mini, micro or ultra-miniscule size, or whatever. That's a hoop to jump through on another day. At least I managed to locate a usb adaptor so I can charge it now.
Ah, the modern world, so restful.