gotta love the kids keeping score
Jun. 14th, 2025 07:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
In other news, this morning, I made this baked oatmeal and it's good, but probably needs a little more cinnamon? Or maybe some allspice? Hmm... It'll be nice for breakfast over the next few days. Next weekend I'll make banana bread since I now have a bunch of bananas, since i needed one for this recipe. (It was either applesauce or bananas, and I'm more likely to eat/use the bananas, so...)
And then this afternoon, I made this pizza dough, which turned out well, but took a full hour to double in size, despite what the recipe says, so dinner was later than planned. I topped it with some mozzarella and this white sauce. it was good! (Pictures here.)
Tomorrow, I'll be making teriyaki chicken meatballs for lunch for the week. Right now, every surface in my kitchen is covered in drying dishes, which is the real annoyance of the dishwasher not working.
*
a trip, and some cell provider purgatory
Jun. 14th, 2025 06:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
(it is the 13th consecutive weekend of rain in Boston. this seems excessive)
Saw a boat, learned some facts, shouted HUZZAH a few times, bought some tea, met an instagram friend. Good times.
Did not realize, when I bought my ticket, that today was also a) protests and b) Pride, so the T was a bit on the crowded side.
( this is just whining, really )
NATG XV, 6th pair: Leap of Faith
Jun. 14th, 2025 06:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

With Calpain whispering into the ear of our prompt master, we got saddled with a pair of idioms that have no business in a drawing challenge: jumping to conclusions and a leap of faith. Faced with the options of drawing a pony jumping a moat to reach the town of Conclusions or drawing Faith plummeting to her death, Faith was easier. I did most of the pencil work on time but it was only today that I finished it up. The submitter for day 6 is still open for a few more hours, so, success! Challenge met.
(no subject)
Jun. 14th, 2025 04:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Authorities still searching for suspect in shooting of 2 Minnesota state lawmakers
Apparently he dressed up like a cop, because of course he did, and residents are advised not to open the door to police unless there are multiple officers present. I'd go one step further and say that you should never open the door to an unexpected official until you've confirmed that they're supposed to be there. If they are legit, they have an ID, and you have a phone number you can call - your local precinct, if they're cops, your gas company, whoever it is. (Uh. Maybe step out the back door to call if they say they're from the gas company. I mean, use your best judgment.)
Weirdly specific firefox question
Jun. 14th, 2025 04:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Now, when I open a new tab by clicking a link to open a new tab it opens right next to the tab I'm on. If I do it via the address window or the new tab button then it opens all the way at the end of my tabs, which is annoying and disorienting if I'm not already all the way at the end.
Is there a setting, perhaps in about:config, that I can adjust to change this behavior so it always opens new tabs next to the one I'm on?
OMGOMGOMG!!!!
Jun. 17th, 2025 11:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Okay, only the first episode so far (and two pre-season teasers) but... omg.
I've summed this one up for you all before as "Everybody is gay while fighting fascism in space" and "Turns out, fascism is both racist and inefficient", so yes, that does make it the perfect thing to listen to while heading out to protest. (Speaking of....)
( Read more... )
unfortunately even though we accomplished Task we still have to do the shopping
Jun. 14th, 2025 06:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
It's good for me somehow, probably.
I'm currently exhausted because the spring that pushes the latch bolt out of the kitchen-hall door broke last night after midnight and we spent several hours fixing it this afternoon. Wax took the equivalent spring out of the lockbox of the dining-livingroom door because unfortunately the lockbox is a pre-1940 model and the springs are not manufactured anymore, nor are the parts interchangeable with the later springs from the 40s- model that are still in production, nor can the whole lockbox be easily switched (because the spindle and hole for it are not the same circumference and the boxes themselves can be different sizes). However, the two lockboxes aren't identical. In fact, it looks like the one that broke is the oldest one in the house. She had to squish the spring a bit to get it in, and it wasn't exactly the same shape and size, so we are nervous that it may break soon. (She did all the hard bits with tools, not trusting me not to injure myself, and I cleaned the insides of the lockboxes with q-tips dipped in vinegar and then oiled them with q-tips dipped in mineral oil.) Wax hopes we can get the blacksmith to make a new spring for the spot when that happens, rather than having to replace the entire mechanism, but we don't know how plausible that is.
We can't do without this door and its latch, but the lockboxes on the other doors are all other sizes so they can't be swapped. We need it latched to keep the cats apart! They're making progress, and they've touched noses now, but Tristana still retreats any time Sipuli gets a little excited, and they are only meeting with Sipuli on the leash.
Dear Just Married creator
Jun. 14th, 2025 02:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I would be perfectly happy if you swap tags between requests. I think all my requests are pretty similar, and if a different request's tags give you an idea, please go for it with my enthusiastic consent.
I would love to receive any of my requests equally, and optional details aside, the tags are the primary prompts; please feel free to do what you like with them.
( Relationship likes and dislikes )
Fandoms
( Babylon 5 - TV )
( Biggles books - W.E. Johns )
( Agent Carter - TV )
In (near) Prague
Jun. 14th, 2025 08:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
On an ice hockey camp in Slaný, near Prague. I flew out on Thursday afternoon with two friends from Kodiaks. We arrived at the rink hotel in time to check in, have a little walk down to the nearby supermarket and get food, and settle in for the night. For reasons the three of us were all sharing a dormitory room the first night, and we decided the perfect film to watch over our picnic dinner was Inside Out 2 - also set at a 3-day hockey camp. I hadn't seen it before, though the other two had, and I enjoyed it very much.
Friday morning was pretty relaxed; a fourth Kodiak joined us after leaving home at awful-o-clock in the morning, and we were moved into the nicer ensuite twin rooms in pairs for the rest of the camp. We met in the dressing room at 1pm, were on ice at 2pm and again at 6pm, with a stickhandling session in between. Then dinner at 8 and falling into bed not long after.
It's excellent coaching, I'm being pushed well out of my comfort zone and the balance of drill and rest in each session and between sessions is just right. I hit my "cannot actually skate any more" limit about 3 minutes before the end of the last ice session.
Today will be two ice sessions at either end of the day, with video review (argh), optional swim+spa (yes!), and stickhandling again in between. My muscles this morning are making themselves known but I'm not exhausted. All is good. Time to go get changed.
Just Married signups
Jun. 13th, 2025 11:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
Also,
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
6/12/2025 Least Tern Watch
Jun. 12th, 2025 08:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Heat pump repair | Random ebook pricing weirdness
Jun. 13th, 2025 04:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
The cats were unsurprisingly unimpressed about being corralled in the bedroom repeatedly (both to keep them underfoot and to minimize their covid exposure as much as possible, in addition to all the purifiers running and
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I just went poking around in the Kobo listings for Adrian Tchaikovsky ebooks, and stumbled over the fact that there's an ebook (Terrible Worlds: Revolutions) collecting his three Terrible Worlds novellas, none of which I've read and one of which is on my wishlist. The collected volume is going for $7.99 Canadian. The individual novellas go for $10.99 each. [EDIT: Regular prices, in all cases.] I don't have a specific way in mind that I think this should be handled, but surely there are better ways to price/label/offer ebooks.
The poking around came after the ebook for Tchaikovsky's Service Model, which Ginny just read and liked, turned up on the on-sale list this morning, so this is also a PSA about that. (At least for the Canadian Kobo site.)
Murderbot Day
Jun. 13th, 2025 12:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
https://filmstories.co.uk/news/murderbot-designing-a-future-world-that-doesnt-look-like-alien/
“I started out by taking the most ancient societies on each continent – Etruscans, Asian, European, and African cultures,” Chan tells us. “I looked at the most fundamental motifs and gathered them into a bible, then asked my team to imagine 100 generations from now, when the diaspora of Earth have chosen to live together in society. How would they evolve a unified set of symbols? A language that really honours where they came from.”
This informed the alphabet that can be seen in the decoration painted across the otherwise grey, corporate habitat the PresAux crew are leasing. At the same time, acknowledging how much of the crew is queer and polyamorous, the colours of the rainbow are also entwined into their decorations.
“All of that is mashed up but it has a fundamental logic to it,” says Chan.
* Interview with Akshay Khanna (Ratthi):
https://squaremile.com/style/akshay-khanna-murderbot-actor-interview/
I’m incredibly excited for people to watch Murderbot on Apple TV+. Sci-fi has been my favourite genre by a country mile forever, and being on a show like this has always been a career goal of mine. Frankly, I had too much fun filming that show, and getting paid to do it constantly felt like I was getting away with something on set.
And the show is just so good. I can confidently say it’s fantastic – and if you don’t like it, then I would gently tell you that it’s OK to be wrong sometimes.
* Interview with Sabrina Wu (Pin-Lee):
https://www.autostraddle.com/sabrina-wu-interview-murderbot/
And then once I got the role, I read the books and I was legit just blown away at how funny the books were. I just haven’t seen such a dry sarcastic sensibility with this kind of hero sci-fi stories. And then I also just really liked that it was in the tradition of I felt like Octavia Butler, where it’s like, “oh, this is a queer imagining of the future.” So I don’t know. I just thought it was a really sweet, funny, different world. I also, obviously every comedian who becomes an actor, their dream is to get to work on something with action to move beyond an It’s Always Sunny kind of comedy. I believe there was already an opportunity for me to be in a spaceship and shoot guns, and it just made me happy that it was genuinely funny source material.
* Video interview with Tattiawna Jones (Arada) and Tamara Podemski (Bharadwaj):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NllgfEekw9s
* And a video interview with Noma Dumezweni (Mensah)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZpigqUqZXQ
* and a video interview with Noma and David Dastmalchian (Gurathin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=361cKOujISE
* And a video interview (with a transcript) with Alexander Skarsgard, Jack McBrayer, and Paul and Chris Weitz:
https://collider.com/murderbot-alexander-skarsgard-jack-mcbrayer-creators-paul-weitz-chris-weitz/
* And there is a profile of me in The New Yorker (!!)
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/do-androids-dream-of-anything-at-all
Garlic
Jun. 13th, 2025 10:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Next: planting that bed with squash and a cucumber.