dragonlady7 | Apr. 3rd, 2016

Apr. 3rd, 2016

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Drove up to Toronto, which is like 2 hrs away, just to go to the Science Museum and see the traveling exhibition on mammoths. Amusingly, it was an American exhibit, originating with Chicago’s Field Museum, and so there were two odd things:

#1 everything was in feet and pounds, which I at first didn’t notice and then had a Moment as I tried to work it out (does that happen a lot to Canadians? How good are you at the conversions? I’m passable at metric but only because of the Internet; we learn it when we’re like nine and never see it again. But I assume if you live somewhere else you’d have like zero reason to have any fucking idea how long a goddamn foot is.)

#2 there was an elephant skull there for comparison and it was illegal for them to bring the one that belonged to the exhibit over the border, which they captioned as a very positive thing; it was a cast, and a pair of tusks some Canadian collector already owned.

Photo: a tiny diorama of mammoth hunters.

More travelogue behind the cut. I did a photo post but Tumblr eats those, and indeed, ate it, so, eff that.

It’s good I have a lot of practice lately with children’s museums because that’s who the crowd mostly was. The exhibit was pretty kid-oriented but I didn’t care, I was in heaven anyway. I may have weirded out a docent, who was talking to a bunch of semi-disinterested kids about the difference between mammoth and mastodon teeth, and I was like, I had completely forgotten this but I will now recite for you, verbatim, the informational placard from the wall in the Pleistocene Diorama at the NY State Museum in Albany circa 1986, you’re welcome.

It may have been awkward. I don’t really care.

(obligatory shot of yours truly looking like a lunatic. I’m the one on the right, if it’s not clear. Much to my sorrow; I’d rather be the giant badass one on the left.)

Then dude and I went and met up with one of his coworkers for lunch/brunch/dinner in the Distillery District, and afterward I happened to stop in a certain shoe store there and (after some reassurance from the dude that really it was okay) bought something with which I am utterly delighted. (I would *never* spend that much on shoes, I said, and then considered that my skates cost nearly twice that, and I haven’t been excited about much foot-wise since. ALSO exchange rate uh wow, we got a deal. Oh my god I’m so sorry, Canada, your currency is so cheap right now, I hope that’s not as painful as it looks. Christ, I remember par.)

My feet on the dash. Note the mung on the window: it was snowing. Yeahhhhhh. (Oh you can see my birthmark just peeking out. I always forget that’s there. Hi giant spot! When I was a kid I thought I could tan to that color. Nope.)

There’s more, I liveblogged it in a note app on my phone, but I may or may not write all that here. The weather was something else. Could’ve been worse. I got some good shots of it but didn’t download them yet. (We took the scenic route home, past the Niagara Gorge and down the river on the other side of the border.)

via http://ift.tt/1UAv2N8:danceswchopstck replied to your post “I am going to go to Toronto today to go to the Science Museum and LOOK…”

In that case, do you know about Eleanor Arnason’s story called Mammoths of the Great Plains? It’s pro SF, not fanfic, but AU to RL.

I do not! I will look it up!

I wrote about 95k of an original novel that involved magic and time-travel and mammoth hunters, Bronze Age Ireland death rituals, and a literal fuck-or-die scenario that I still find hot on my rereads, but what I loved most about the book was writing about mammoth-bone huts. I am such a weirdo nerd.

Crossposts: http://dragonlady7.livejournal.com/1466461.html

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danceswchopstck replied to your post:danceswchopstck replied to your post “I am going…

Mammoth bone huts! I seem to remember a mammoth-bone longhouse in Jean Aul’s Clan of the Cave Bear series, probably in book 3, The Mammoth Hunters. I have mixed feelings about that series, but figure it’s worth mentioning. Again, pro fic. Should have trigger warnings, IMAO. Further details available upon request.

oh, I Know about Clan of the Cave Bear. See, as an Ice Age Megafauna-obsessed very young child, I found the first book in the library, and I brought it to my mother. “Look, mother,” I lisped sweetly, innocently, in my sweet high child’s voice (I’m setting a mood here okay) “it’s about cave men, there are mammoths in it!” “Uh,” she said, “I think that one has, like, sex stuff in it, I dunno if you should read it.” “Oh,” I said, disappointed. “But I can read long books!”

And for some reason, my mother looked at my sweet little innocent baby face, and looked at the book, and said, “All right, you can get it out, it’s probably fine.”

It was not fine! It was not fine! But I read it anyway! Oh my I read it anyway. Oh, I should definitely not have read it anyway.

“Was it okay?” Mom asked, later.

“It was fine!” I said, shoving it violently into the to-return pile, “totally fine! not at all not fine!” and whether she believed me or no, no more was ever said on that topic.

(There was actually a post going around on here not all that long ago where an astonishingly large number of people recounted astonishingly similar experiences to mine, so, lolllll all you people who think Reylo is single-handedly going to Destroy Today’s Youth, you have literally no concept of what has come before.)

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felren13:

atlantisrises:

bomberqueen17:

Dove chocolates always have really weird slogans in them. I’m not sure what they’re thinking with this one. But it worked if they were trying to cheer me up. Hmm… I think my favorite quote of my father’s, that comes easily to mind anyway, is “I’ve never killed anybody that didn’t need killing.” That’s a good one. Anyone else got a good one?

“Well I’m not planning to die anytime soon”

my dad told me once, “you are good dragon spawn”

This has been fascinating across platforms, because most people’s dads are the Dad Jokes kind of dad, and that is very much not my experience. In my life, Mom is the one who makes corny jokes.

Dad is not one hundred percent sure how your “jokes” function and is where I have inherited my awesome ability to take any joke way too seriously and suck the joy out by analyzing it, which I tend to view as a form of humor in itself.

Dad was dead fucking serious. He has only ever killed one person and it was in combat. He is proud not of this, but of never having killed anyone else. (“I’ve been tempted,” he says seriously, and then lists some examples. Thanks, Dad.)

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pardonmewhileipanic:

maryburgers:

s4wdust:

s4wdust:

My petty ass when someone skinny buys something XXXL from a thrift store to ~transform~ it into a cute tailored cocktail dress: how about you leave the XXXL section alone so poor fat women out there can retain some sense of variety out of the 7 things that actually fit them in the god damn goodwill

Just to be clear I’m not talking about “I bought something a couple sizes larger than me and I’m taking it in”

I’m very specifically talking about THIS SORT OF THING

ugh the top and bottom ones make me especially furious because she removed the interesting part of the dress! those would both look adorable on me as is.

she could make an ugly black dress like that herself without chopping up a cool vintage dress in a rare larger size

I think people who do what’s shown in the pictures are trash and should be reminded of this at all times

I was super into wardrobe refashions for a while, because as a size 16 I am both #1 statistically average and #2 unable to shop in 85% of retail stores that sell women’s clothing. But I got so tired, on Pinterest, of every single wardrobe refashion being all about how to make a huge garment tiny. It’s like– every single one. If all you’re doing is using a garment for the fabric then that’s not a refashion, fuck you. Go buy some fucking fabric, you’re not creative. Mine are the kind of thing where I bought three pairs of jeans and combined them, or two dresses and combined them, because *fuck* your size S.But that’s actually difficult to do, so I haven’t completed many of them. If I could just “hack my husband’s shirt so it fits me!” I would, but my dude has a 38" chest and mine is 48".

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hand-sewing pro tip: when you have to move the garment you’re working on and need both hands, so you stick your needle in your mouth to hold it a second, don’t stick it in pointy end first

you’re welcome

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justastormie:

whatfulllipsyouhave:

edgebug:

so when i was 7 or 8 i’d “write letters to hermione granger” and set them out on the piano in the living room every night with my stuffed toy owl and every morning i’d have a letter from hermione back, sitting at the foot of my bed, and hermione and i corresponded like that for months and i’d just like to thank my mom for writing out a “letter from hermione” for me every single night

That is the cutest thing I’ve ever read oh my god

so when i was about the same age i got really into both ciphers and james madison (idk don’t ask) so i just randomly started writing these letters like i was james madison writing to my own spy ring, using all kinds of ciphers. constantly writing that WE MUST SWITCH CIPHERS THE BRITISH ARE ON TO US. and it wasn’t every night because the ciphers kept getting more complex, but it was about one every week for six months and my mother always responded. and she always found the letters, because i took to hiding them in increasingly more obscure locations because spies, obviously.

i didn’t realize how much work this was until i snuck down late one night for a cookie. and saw my mother bent over my giant book of ciphers and muttering to the dog “is this another code or can she not spell?” (i could not and still can not spell) and i was a bit angry at first but i kept watching and she KEPT AT IT. checking everything in that book against my letter and i never felt so loved. my mom with a full time job sitting up to figure out my silly letters said just because i enjoyed the game.

i got her this bio of james madison a few years ago for xmas with a simple number substitution cipher on the inside saying “In thanks for your dedicated years of service, your daughter and occasional President.” She still has it pride of place on her desk next to the obligatory kid pics

so yeah cute mom story for the day.

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deputychairman:

Fandom: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)Rating: ExplicitRelationships: Poe Dameron/FinnAdditional Tags: when casual sex isn’t casual at all, Pining, Angst, it is hard to be careful of someone’s feelings, when they haven’t told you what their feelings are“So listen,” he says, and Finn’s listening all right. Finn has been flirted with a lot by pilots, Finn probably already knows what he’s going to say. “I didn’t have a chance to get you a gift - ”

“You don’t need to get me anything,” Finn interrupts. Finn’s looking right into his eyes.

“I was hoping you’d say that,” Poe puts one hand on Finn’s knee to murmur in his ear. “Cause I was gonna offer you a blowjob instead, if you’re interested…”

If Poe could just enjoy this for what it is, he might find it pretty gratifying the way Finn’s face lights up like that’s the best offer he’s had all year.

In which Poe Dameron pines and withholds crucial information, because nobody wants to be the person confessing passionate love to their heroic saviour and who they are pretty damn sure is taking “buddy!” at face value.

This is an excellent story and makes me absurdly grateful I did not wind up writing the story I first intended to when first I set out in this pairing because if I had I would be FURIOUS because this is way better than what I would have written, which was along these lines but this is actually better.

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#Finn’s doubtful ‘yeah?’#because he’s talking about escaping#and Poe’s looking at him like he’s thinking about banging#and Finn is clear on the order of priority here#(escape first bang later)#but he isn’t so sure Poe has that clear#swtfa

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I started to prepare to post another chapter of Home Out In The Wind way early, as a pick-me-up for how terribly my Friday went, but in the proofreading I wound up adding on over 1k words to the chapter and another good big chunk on the next one. Which is even better, and reminds me again how very different a thoroughly-edited work I’ve had time to contemplate is from a post-as-you-write it work that no one has seen but me.

wittering about writing process behind the cut: (ha I had to wait for xkit to fail to install again before I could fix the horizontal rule and make it properly a cut, sorry for anyone who had to scroll past it in the meantime)

Sometimes it’s readers’ notes that prompt these changes, and the initial round of edits all were, but this most recent one is mostly me noticing that in the first draft, I was super into Poe and less into Finn. Which is often the case when I’m writing long things with multiple POVs– there’s one that’s a treat to write and wallow in, and the other that I use just to frame the first one really because the first one is my *~darling sweetheart~*, and on the second pass I’m realizing that (duh) it’s all more interesting if Finn genuinely has his own motivations. And indeed, his own motivations are the parts in the posted chapters that people are reacting to most! Clearly, whether you read this pairing out of Oscar Isaac thirst or not (they’re related conditions, c’mon), it’s a more rewarding story if Finn has inward monologue that’s not just about Poe.

And I knew that when I wrote it, but a lot of times the first draft is just this race to get it down and make it form a structure before you forget where you were going, before you get bogged down in details. And there was one scene in particular that I was absolutely racing toward the switch over to Poe’s POV, in fact I’d already written his POV, I knew what I wanted to happen (and it was going to be so juicy) and I just had to get Finn to a position where he could start the Poe POV scene and that meant establishing why he’d be there, and I literally stuck in a sentence and marked the scene done in my head, and it was no kind of resolution and he was inappropriately upset about the very minor thing I’d given him to be upset about.
And it wasn’t until the last-minute proofreading of the scene that I hit that sentence (which betas had reacted to! not particularly negatively, but people had, and I thought, yes that’s a fine scene ending, sure) and realized that it was a placeholder and I’d surely meant to put a lot more here once I had a better handle on the character.

That’s the other thing; I wrote this entire epic, for the first 50k words or so, in three documents, one from each character’s POV; I instantly realized that Rey’s POV did not start until well after the first two, and she became the draft of the second story. (The second story was literally called “Rey” for a really long time. The Finn POV was called “Finn”. And the Poe POV? Well, indicatively, it was called “SWTFA”. I had not yet realized, or maybe I had, that I was so overwhelmingly interested in Poe above all.

And that’s fine, you can focus around one character. Some of it, as a ficcer, is who I think I can sort of own. I am totally unwilling to touch Rey’s backstory; I know for a certainty it will be revealed in the movies and any story I tell will be outmoded by those revelations. Likewise, I shy away from Kylo Ren and his redemption or not; they’ll absolutely handle that. (I’m going to have to at least mention the character, I get that, and in fact he will appear and will play an important and possibly more ambiguous than originally conceptualized role.)

Poe, I realize, will be getting a tie-in comic and already has a background and all, but those are comics. That means they won’t be doing it in the movies. Comics, you can kind of brush aside a little. Very few people will read it, and if they do, they won’t absorb it the same way. Comics are awesome and I incorporate them where I can. Movies, though. Movies obliterate your work.

Finn may or may not get a backstory. I’m not so sure about him.

But anyway. Poe was clearly the most appealing for me, and I feel best about filling him in, and that’s fine.

But Finn has POV scenes, and that’s a decision I made. He therefore needs to be a rounded character. And for some reason making him do that is something I have had to mull over a lot before I could do.

I’m just glad I have the chance to do that.

Anyway, chapter update will probably be Wednesday as originally scheduled; I have to shake it really hard to make the new bit settle properly. I got another 2k into the next chapter too, it was kind of rewarding. All of it is Finn.

Crossposts: http://dragonlady7.livejournal.com/1466877.html

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so uh, i can’t reply to posts anymore, they just– go away after I’ve typed them, which is fucking peachy

i also can’t figure out how to uninstall xkit

every time i refresh the page it comes up and tries to reinstall. i can’t interact with the site but i can scroll. i read my dashboard around the “please wait while xkit installs!” dialog box. I see everything slightly dimmed. I’m pretty good at it now.

I can’t really do anything. If I click on something and it makes the page refresh, I can’t interact with anything until the install fails. It’s between four and ten minutes at this point, sometimes longer. (Sometimes I go away and do other things, and come back and the dialog box is still up and it’s been twenty minutes.)

I can’t uninstall it though, I can’t find where you do that. I tried updating it. I have reset it so many times I have no settings to save so thanks for suggesting xcloud but it’s literally useless to me.

But there’s no “hey, you know what, never mind” option; I can’t figure out how to uninstall. You can’t just– do that. I guess.

I don’t want to uninstall, because Tumblr is fucking horrible without any kind of blacklisting, but I mean– I unfollowed some people because they habitually reblogged really long posts that weren’t tagged at all, so the site is about 75% more usable without those people anyway. So I guess I can deal. I just.

I can barely function as an adult human in the world, I am not equal to the task of the entire concept of browser extensions. But I can’t remove them. so I just use the site by scrolling strategically to read around an immovable dialog box. And so I can’t “like” things, can’t reblog them, can’t save them for later, and once the dialog box finally goes away and I can interact (sometimes I remember, and can scroll back to the thing I saw that I wanted to interact with), I type replies in and they just– disappear.

Unless they really are showing up and I just don’t know, because how would I know, it’s not like I’d get notified if anyone replied to them. REPLIES ARE A USELESS LIE YOU STUPID FUCKS.

I am so tired. I am just tired. I am sorry to people who want to speak to me, I cannot reply to your replies and if I click through to read the whole thing you wrote when you reblogged me, I have to wait 20 minutes for the post to load, so I’m probably not going to bother. I am so sorry.

I can still answer asks. Chats, sometimes I have to wait 10-20 minutes for the page to let me respond, so don’t be sad if nothing happens for a long time.

OH AND BONUS: I too have noticed that now if you are mentioned in a post, you will get tagged in every single fucking reblog even if the reblogger adds nothing! It didn’t used to work that way, but now it’s a really really good way to make your notifications unusable. I am truly sorry to anyone who may genuinely have tagged me in something, wanting to bring it to my attention, because I am mentioned (appropriately) in a post that numerous people have recently reblogged and because of the way Tumblr truncates things uselessly, I have no way of separating an actual, real notification about this from just a reblog notice, now.

It’s like they’re trying to make it unusable.

And I am a person who is SO BAD AT EVERYTHING, it’s sort of tailor-made to reduce me to a pile of useless tears. Their official help wants me to delete and reinstall Chrome and do something I don’t remotely understand, and I just, that’s not a thing I can do. Okay, I have learning disabilities I can’t even figure out, it’s a circular kind of problem, and there’s just literally no fucking way I’m going to do whatever the fuck they want. I just wish I could uninstall. And I can’t.

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(I am really hoping that the previous post, which was typed in a haze of despair, is just what it takes to push me over the edge into figuring out how to fucking fix this. I am like a dog with a welding torch, this is probably going ot burn the house down and i am literally incapable of following instructions so this is going to be a lhilarous festival of flailing so watch me go wheeeeeeeeeee!)

Crossposts: http://dragonlady7.livejournal.com/1467027.html

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That is the solution to everything.

So for anyone new, I worked professionally as a bartender for most of my late twenties. Mostly, I worked in an airport bar, and there was not a lot of creativity. But I took a class, and from the textbook for the class and the disposable income working in a bar gave me (it was a union job, my only union job to date, and I had to work 40 hours, which is more than you should work a job of that nature, as it was exhausting on many levels, so no, I am Too Old For That Shit now), I developed a really solid working knowledge of cocktails.

recipes and ruminations to follow, because it’s nicer than worrying about goddamn computers

My aesthetic is that I like complicated things, I’m so old I don’t mind the taste of anything, I’ve sort of worked at not developing a really refined palate because I like to do this relatively inexpensively, but I’m not indiscriminate. My overriding concern when drinking is that I hate being hung-over, and am so damnably old now that I can get hung-over without having been drunk in the first place, so especially when I am serving people I do not know, I tend to make very strongly-flavorful drinks that do NOT hide any kind of punch. If you’re drinking something really strong, it is going to taste strong. I never strain the ice out of things and I factor in ice dilution to most of my recipes. I want to be hydrated. I want to enjoy my whole evening, not just the parts before it gets blurry. So, that’s how I make drinks.

I do not know the official names of many things, but basically all drinks fall into like, four or five basic formulas. So keep that in mind as you stare in befuddlement at your liquor cabinet. There are organized, formal names for all of these things, and I can’t remember them.

Instead, today, I am going to tell you about the Margarita.

(FIRST: the lightning round of technical knowledge. A SPIRIT is usually 80 PROOF. This means that it is a standard distillate of something specific prepared in a specific way, and is a consistent 40% alcohol by volume. “Proof” = % alcohol x 2. I don’t know why. The highest you can feasibly get to is usually 190 proof = 95%, just because of the physical properties of the distilling process. A LIQUEUR is normally about 30 proof but can vary significantly, and is prepared by the addition of ingredients usually including sugar to a SPIRIT. It is for flavoring, but strength varies very significantly and you need to note this. When mixing, ALWAYS KNOW HOW STRONG THE DRINK IS, it is very hard to keep track of what you’re doing otherwise and as you’ve consumed alcohol, it numbs your tongue and you don’t realize how strong things are and that way much pain lies, take it from an old lady who has DONE ALL OF THAT.)

The Margarita is descended from a very basic lineage. It is two shots of a hard liquor (~80 proof), and one shot of a liqueur, which is sweet and flavored and usually 40 proof but sometimes also 80 proof. (Keep that in mind with your menu planning.

The lineage of the Margarita is from the Sidecar, which used brandy and lemon instead of tequila and lime. But what they had in common was that the liqueur was Grand Marnier or Cointreau: an orange-flavored, full-strength (close to 80 proof) liqueur.

Two shots of tequila, some lime or sweetened lime juice, and one shot of orange liqueur.

I like to use this as the basis for basically anything I have, and go from there. I am currently drinking a Cherry Sidecar, because I had cherry brandy (from a microdistillery that sells at the farmer’s market. I also have a jar of exquisite and ridiculous amaretto-marinated artisanal cherries I got on sale somewhere. So.

2 shots cherry brandy
1 shot applejack
1 tsp simple syrup because I had some
1 tsp sloeberry vodka because I had some (approximately strawberry flavored)
1 Tbsp lemon juice
Stirred, then added ice cubes

(SIMPLE SYRUP: you should just always have this, if you mix cocktails. It’s one part water to one part sugar; boil the water then stir the sugar in until it goes clear. this is very strong, you can dilute with more water, or I leave it strong and let the ice dilute it, it keeps the ice from making the drink instantly weak.)

There is no harm in adding bitters and any arcane shit you have, as long as you know the taste is compatible (to find out, put a little of the drink in a shotglass and add a drop of the thing you’re thinking of trying, and drink a big swallow of water between taste tests so you know you actually know what you’re tasting), and when in doubt, add some sugar syrup and some lemon juice to almost any drink to stretch it out a little. The sugar makes it more pleasant, the lemon keeps it from being too sweet. I invariably do this if I’m using a very high-proof liqueur, because it won’t taste strong when consumed, and then you’ve finished the drink and go make yourself another one and then you’re fucked-up. Nope! Stretch that baby out a little with some more mixer. Sugar + lemon, and a lot of ice cubes, and if you blow through it anyway, refill the same cup with water and drink it until the ice cubes are gone before you get another round. That is how you survive to enjoy your booze properly.

In a bar, I made things with a minimum of ingredients. But at home, I like to put in all kinds of weird shit because it’s for me and I enjoy that. Be aware of who you’re serving. If you have guests, maybe don’t put a lot of weird shit in, because you have no idea if they’re sensitive to ingredients or whatever. But for yourself, do whatever you like.

I grew up in a family where we had alcoholics, but most of them made it into their 80s before it killed them. (As an adult I got less lucky, so I know more now.) So I was aware that it was possible to have problems, but my immediate family was all people who enjoyed drinking for the flavor, and were rarely if ever visibly intoxicated, so that’s the kind of drinking I like to do. I wish it were like that for more people; my deskmate at work had a family absolutely ravaged by substance abuse, so he doesn’t drink, and finds my stories of it quaint. His perspective has been fascinating.

If Problems run in your family, my sympathy is with you. (As I said, in my adult years, I did lose some family prematurely.) You can choose to imbibe or not, but I’ve found it helpful to make little rules like, if you don’t like the taste throw it away, and don’t drink alone, and make some of your signature cocktails low-or-no alcohol. (Frequently-pregnant friends also made the latter a good skill to have.)

I have some great low-to-no-alcohol recipes too; maybe if I can get xkit properly installed I’ll write some of them. I always meant to write a book about cocktails someday. We’ll see if I do.

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I found that! and I found xkit’s help online that helpfully drew me a diagram of how to find that in Chrome and it was wrong, so I wonder if my version of Chrome is eighty years old or something, but oh my gosh. Mac OS wants to update my entire computer and I’m terrified to do that.

(I don’t have a Preferences menu option, and now I don’t remember how I got to my extensions, but I did. It is possible that this is not really Chrome, but some fossilized remnant of an ancient civilization. I am REALLY BAD at computers, have I mentioned this?)

But I found my browser extension settings in there somehow, and I found my old xkit 1 install, and i deleted that, and SO FAR IT IS WORKING, and I am slightly alcohol-impaired so I am dubious as to whether this will truly be a real solution???? But it might be???? I still have the more-recent xkit install there, but I think that now it knows that I know how to nuke the shit out of it, perhaps it will behave?

I don’t know, but I’m really hopeful.