sovay | Sovay's Friends

I dreamed we had just won the Napoleonic wars, our enemies had all been banged up in the Tower- where they were being liquidated- and we were being given a tour of the premises. "This is good stuff," I thought to myself , "but then it would be because it's been written by Sir Walter Scott." We went into the room where they kept the rack and our guide opened a big cupboard to show itwas full of corpses. We were revolted. And then the ghost of Cardinal Wolsey rode out on a mule and told us that "The Great Duke" (by which he meant the Duke of Wellington) should really stop killing people.

Meanwhile we were auctioning off our enemies' art collections. If a painting failed to reach its reserve I stepped in and claimed it for the Crown- which is why today the National Gallery in London has so many lousy Renoirs.....

thawrecka

Finding Moments (627 words) by thawrecka
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 长公主在上 | Zhǎng Gōng Zhǔ Zài Shàng (Web Series)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Gu Xuanqing/Li Yunzhen
Characters: Gu Xuanqing, Li Yunzhen

lauradi7dw

We got 3-4 inches of not fluffy snow last night (better that than the part of Boston that got some sleet. yuck). I spent over two hours after I got home from ringing clearing out so that it will be easier to clear the next storm, which may bring between 6-20 inches of snow, and high winds. I don't need to use the car until Thursday, but I am concerned about bus to subway on Monday morning, and a bit confused by the lack of excitement. The NWS is admonishing us to charge devices (I'm about to start) and not to travel on Monday. OTOH, hardly any schools have declared Monday as a storm day yet. I too hope that the storm will take a dramatic turn out to sea or dissipate in another way, but I'm not counting on it.

https://forecast.weather.gov/showsigwx.php?warnzone=MAZ014&warncounty=MAC017&firewxzone=MAZ014&local_place1=Lexington%20MA&product1=Blizzard+Warning&lat=42.4457&lon=-71.2314

thawrecka

Terrible headache and I didn't even drink last night, it's just that people were too loud in the pub. Amazing how you can get symptoms identical to a hangover without alcohol just from being around people yelling for hours.

Recently read: The Woman Dies by Aoka Matsuda, translated by Polly Barton - I picked this up partly because I enjoyed Barton's translation of Butter, and partly because the cover art is so cool. Collection of stories, much of it flash fiction, tacking sexism, gender, technology, the media, etc. A lot funnier than I expected. The titular story, which is my favourite, is incisive about sexist cliches in the movies, but also has a very funny conversation about vaginas. I feel like this is best read all at once, because so many threads are picked up repeatedly in multiple stories (the Japanese national anthem jokes, for example), and it has a great rhythm that way, so I'm glad I read it all at once. I had a great time with this.

Currently reading: Lord of Mysteries: The Clown, Part 1 by Cuttlefish that Loves Diving - I'm 44 chapters in and really enjoying myself. There's some things the animated series glossed over but that the novel goes into more depth on, so the world feels even more textured. I'm most delighted by how sneaky Klein is, and how awkward all his interactions with Leonard are, but there's a lot to enjoy. I like that this has more on the tarot club, and I'm amused by Audrey and her large dog.

Yen Press doesn't seem to list a translator anywhere in the book, but I can believe there is a human translator because there are so many clunky adverbs. When did adverbs stop being considered bad writing, my guys? Maybe I'm out of touch on this, because I see them so often in published fiction these days (especially in translated fiction), and they always annoy me.

DNF: The Moon Glow Bookshop by Dongwon Seo, translated by Shanna Tan - the idea of a bar that sells drinks that tell stories is fun, but the prose in the translation is so clunky and surface, with no real subtext or interesting description, no depth or texture, that I just can't push myself forward.

siderea

If you live in the BosWash Corridor, especially in NYC-to-Boston, you need to be paying attention to the weather. We have an honest to gosh Nor'easter blizzard predicted for the next 3 days, with heavy wet snow and extremely high winds – the model predicts the damn thing will have an eye – which of course is highly predictive of power outages due to downed lines.

Plug things what need it into electricity while ya got it.

Whiteout conditions expected. The NWS's recommendation for travel is: don't. Followed by recommendations for how to try not to die if you do: "If you must travel, have a winter survival kit with you. If you get stranded, stay with your vehicle."

I would add to that: if you get stranded in your car by snow and need to run the engine for heat, you must also periodically clear the build-up of snow blocking the tailpipe, or the exhaust will back up into the passenger compartment of the car and gas you to death.

As always, for similar reasons do not try to use any form of fire to heat your house if the regular heat goes out, unless you have installed the necessary hardware into the structure of your house, i.e. chimneys, fireplaces, and wood stoves, and they have been sufficiently recently serviced and you know how to operate them safely. The number one killer in blizzards is not the cold, it's the carbon monoxide from people doing dumb shit with hibachis.

NWS says DC to get 2 to 4 inches, NYC/BOS to get 1 to 2 feet. Ryan Hall Y'all reports some models saying up to 5 inches in DC and up to three feet in NYC and BOS.

2026 Feb 21 (5 hrs ago): Ryan Hall Y'all on YT: "The Next 48 Hours Will Be Absolutely WILD...". See particularly from 3:30 re winds.

If somehow you don't already have a preferred regular source of NWS weather alerts – my phone threw up one compliments of Google, and I didn't even know it was authorized to do that – you can see your personal NWS alerts at https://forecast.weather.gov/zipcity.php , just enter your zipcode. Also you should get yourself an app or something.

conuly

The evening darkens over
After a day so bright
The windcapt waves discover
That wild will be the night.
There’s sound of distant thunder.

The latest sea-birds hover
Along the cliff’s sheer height;
As in the memory wander
Last flutterings of delight,
White wings lost on the white.

There’s not a ship in sight;
And as the sun goes under
Thick clouds conspire to cover
The moon that should rise yonder.
Thou art alone, fond lover.

***************

Link

thistleingrey

I've finished the green Lille Kolding (former low-attention project for waiting variously). Without knowing, I added the right number of stitches to make it possible to drape atop my head, cross under my chin, and tie behind my neck on very cold mornings. Guess I've already made myself a hood, stereotypical-babushka style. (The neck protection from crossing the ends is helpful when it's cold.)

The much-revised slipover or sleeveless pullover is okay for shoulder/yoke/mid-torso, which means it'll be sloppily fine otherwise. Though its neckline is larger than I'd intended, it's similar to how the pattern's model wears the official sample; adding the pattern's edging near the end will pull it in a bit. That's so much better than my earlier tries with other patterns, which followed conventional measuring instructions and then wouldn't let my arms in.

The current slipover's editing struggles may've bestowed enough info to allow knitting myself summery sleeveless or cap-sleeve tops. Then perhaps I can see about editing saddle-shoulder tops with sleeves.

Post-shingles, I may even be able to wear summery tops, now that thermoregulation seems slowly to be righting itself, and now that stuff beneath my skin is no longer upset by sunlight. Going out in the sun has been good for other reasons; I'd keep all those times if there were magically a chance to redo. But I'm glad I'm past when there wasn't enough air sometimes to speak properly, overlapping it.

The only link that came to mind while I wrote this post is Cocoon Chokki, which looks lovely and would never be drop-shoulder on me. After knitting several oversized drop-shoulder garments that weren't, I can quit trying it as a workaround for garment drape/fit, heh.

conuly

And lemme tell you, my team picking was solely on the basis of "Are people in this team active" and "Do they have an open slot for me", because active team members send you more lives and you're more likely to win prizes in the team competitions, but most teams are 100% people who joined and never play.

But you can talk to each other, great, except that there's this one person who is very active and posts every single day about how they've changed the game so she can't win, she sucks, she is always stuck, she doesn't like it anymore, she's gonna quit - this all prompts a flood of "Oh, don't go, please stay" responses, and I can't help but wonder if that's the sole reason she posts like this.

One day I'm going to tell her that if she really feels that way she ought to quit, or at least shut up about it, because her posts bring my enjoyment of the game way down. Don't know what sort of response I'll get from everybody else who isn't her, but I can't be the only one who's itching to say it.

********************************

( Read more... )

conuly

Oh boy....

shewhomust

I always rnjoy Rachel Roddy's coolery column in the Guardian, more for her descriptions than for her recipes. I was not in the slightest tempted to cook last week's chocolate and rosemary panna cotta - I didn't even feel much desire to eat it - but I loved what she had to say about aromatic herbs. Their scent, she argues, seems made for our culinary pleasure, but a form of self-defence, a weapon against both both predators and competitors.

Rosemary is particularly kick-arse in this respect, with those volatiles (mostly organic compounds called terpenoids) synthesised and stored in minuscule glands that project from the surface of each dark green needle, which breaks when brushed against or bitten, releasing an intense, hot, bitter shot. It’s the evergreen equivalent of carrying personal defence spray. The needles also mark territory. By leaking their volatiles into the nearby soil, they inhibit the seeds of other plants (maybe even their own) from taking root and, in turn, taking space, water and precious minerals in a challenging environment.

rydra_wong

can, to some small degree, be simulated by a blindfolded person trying to push buttons while someone else shouts confused and panicked instructions at them:

Watch on YouTube

(Except that these guys mastered jumping WAY faster than I did.)

It's hilarious and delightful to me to watch people having an experience of Dark Souls which is not wholly unlike mine. In a weird way I feel kind of #represented.

In later vids, they have (like me) discovered the joys of the halberd as adaptive technology for people who are bad at spacing and aiming.

sholio

Cannot BELIEVE I still have an SPN icon!

Anyway ... I first started making fanvids for fun in 2002, but I began posting them on LJ in 2006, and since 2026 is therefore my 20th anniversary of posting the first one (#what) and I've been wanting to get more of them on AO3, I decided to make that a project for this year!

So here's my 2006 one and only Supernatural vid, Life is a Highway.

This isn't the first one I put online, but of the 2006 vids I think it's probably one of my favorites and a good one to start with. Contains clips up to late season one because that's all I'd watched at that point and most of what was available. Here's the original LJ-imported-to-DW post. Please enjoy this dive into ~~an alternate reality~~ a moment in time when season one of Supernatural was literally All There Was.

Some notes if you'd rather read them afterwards

Obviously at this point all I have is the exported file rather than the original vidding files (as this was at least 5 computers ago) so 2006 quality is what you're getting, including some slight wonkiness with jerky video and slightly odd cropping (I was screencapturing the video, which explains both the slight borders that occasionally appear - I got a lot better at cropping later - and a few instances of jerkiness as my 2006 computer struggled to render the video). The credits also include my original 2000s-era LJ name, which some of you may remember.

IIRC, I was making these earliest vids on a really old copy of Adobe Premiere that I had absconded with from my college computer lab in the 1990s.

Watch on Vimeo

Also posted on AO3.

If you want a 12 Mb download in 2006 quality, you can download it here!

Also, an interesting bit of context on the 20th anniversary vidding project - I discovered recently that I uploaded a bunch (most? all?) of my older vids to Vimeo in 2016 on the private setting, so apparently I was planning a *10th* anniversary vidding project, but got derailed somehow. What is time.

ranalore

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Current Mood: drained

poliphilo

I had my hearing tested yesterday.

You sit in a box with a glass window- a sort of man-sized microwave- and press a button every time you hear a beep through the earphones you've been fitted with.

It could almost be mistaken for fun.

The verdict is I have a degree of hearing loss- somewhere between mild and medium; nothing unusual for my age. It's not disabling and hearing aids are not recommended....

poliphilo

How does the President divert attention away from the Epstein files?

I'm picking up hints that he may be considering one of two options- or possibly both....

1. Start a new war in the Middle East.

2. Make an epoch changing announcement about UFOs and all that sort of thing.

I know which I would prefer.....

kenjari

The Green Pearl
by Jack Vance

This is the second book in the Lyonesse trilogy. This one focuses on Aillas, king of Troicinet and South Ulfland as he wages war against the Ska in order to secure South Ulfland and consolidate his power. The last third of the book brings in a second plot in which Glyneth, Aillas' love interest, is kidnapped into another world by a mage working for Aillas' rival, King Casmir. Framing this narrative is the story of the green pearl, a cursed gem that brings out the greed of its bearer and brings them bad luck.
I enjoyed this book as much as I did Suldrun's Garden. Aillas is a fair and capable ruler. He's also quite clever in his approach to the Ska. I found his brief captivity of Tatzel, a Ska princess, to be a pretty interesting episode. Aillas' motives are complex, born of both his attraction to Tatzel and his desire for retribution for his time as a slave to the Ska. Yet he does not subject Tatzel to assault or cruelty, and they end up feeling some grudging respect for each other.

Current Mood: exhausted

minoanmiss

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Current Mood: tired

asakiyume

Cumbia
Sometimes I have perfectly wonderful dreams--this morning, for example. I dreamed I was invited onto the dance floor to dance cumbia. I've had exactly one cumbia lesson in my life--not even a whole lesson; it was tacked onto a salsa lesson. But in the dream, I put aside all timidity, joined my partner, and it was perfect. We were so in sync; we improvised--I can catch the feeling just writing these words. This had the same joy as dreams of flying: incredible, freeing movement.

Krucial
The cashier was a young guy with fluffy hair pulled back in a pony tail. His name tag said "Krucial."
"That's an awesome name," I said.
"My mom gave it to me. It was on a wrapper," he said. [Maybe related to this: Krucial Rapid Response]
"That's great," I said. "You're crucial for your mom!"
"Awww, thank you!" he said, and and we high-fived.

Snowy Owl
A snowy owl has been hanging out near where I live. All the birders in the area are going there and taking pictures of it, and some of these have filtered into my social media, and they're magnificent, like this one, by someone named Dale Woods:
Snowy owl in a snowy field of corn stubble

Snowy owl in a snowy field of corn stubble

Sturgeon
Elsewhere on social media someone recommended the story "The Man Who Lost the Sea" (1959), by Theodore Sturgeon. I've never actually read anything by him, and the person linked to a 2009 reprint in Strange Horizons, so I gave it a read. The poster said it involved a surprising twist. Well not really: I understood the situation halfway through. But I liked the story all the same: the writing was lovely, and I wanted to see how the main character would realize the truth. This, very near the end, struck me especially:

For no farmer who fingers the soil with love and knowledge, no poet who sings of it, artist, contractor, engineer, even child bursting into tears at the inexpressible beauty of a field of daffodils—none of these is as intimate with Earth as those who live on, live with, breathe and drift in its seas.

If you want to read it, here's the link: "The Man Who Lost the Sea."

Music: Cumbia sonidera: Que Haria

lauradi7dw

Representatives Ro Khanna, Thomas Massie, and Valerie Foushee (one hopes many more) are co-sponsoring a War Powers Resolution to debate and vote on the war with Iran that Trump is about to (illegally) start. They don't have a HR number for it?

https://massie.house.gov/uploadedfiles/iranwpr.pdf

There is a concurrent one in the Senate. I called them all (and the White house) yesterday but will do it again as soon as I get home from jogging. I have been quite remiss in the running about department, but it's above freezing right now and the predicted mess hasn't started yet, so it's the obvious time.

osprey_archer

It’s been three months since I last posted a hobby update, partly because the hobbies have been on hiatus lately. It’s been cold and gray and dark, and after doing so well getting up early for tea and cross stitch in November and December, I’ve slipped back into my slovenly old ways of dragging myself out of bed at the last possible moment.

Also my right shoulder has been acting up, which has impacted my ability to play dulcimer or cross stitch. I have finished but one of the adorable cross stitch advent tags for next year’s Picture Book Advent. And actually I’ve only finished the cross-stitching part; it still needs to be sewn to a felt backing in order to become a true tag.

However, I did manage to decorate MANY paper hearts to brighten up my office door. In fact, I made so many that I took the overflow hearts home to decorate the Hummingbird Cottage, with the intention of making yet more, but then I ran out of steam… However, even this moderate sprinkling of hearts brightened the place up, especially since I’m the fortunate possessor of four Valentine-themed dish towels and six Valentine cloth napkins (black fabric with red and pink hearts, striking).

I have St. Patrick’s Day napkins too, but my search has so far not turned up any St. Patrick’s Day dishtowels. However, I’ve been cutting out paper shamrocks at a remarkable rate, so hopefully the plethora of shamrocks will overcome any defects in the dish towel area. Should perhaps consider a few leprechauns too?

I’ve also been looking through my trusty Irish cookbook and have been thinking it’s time to make lemon curd again, plus perhaps try my hand at brown bread ice cream. (Sprinkle brown bread crumbs with brown sugar, bake till toasty, then fold into softened vanilla ice cream. Crunchy and caramelly, apparently.) Plus of course I’ll be making my usual round of Guinness stew.

After St. Patrick’s Day, I’m thinking the office door will segue to a general spring theme that can last through graduation at the beginning of May. Flowers, probably. But what kind? Paper tulips and daffodils? A crabapple tree in full bloom? (I believe this could be stunning but would require me to cut out MANY pink flowers.) A torrent of general mixed flowers?

For the Hummingbird Cottage I’d also like to do some decorations on a more specifically Easter theme. I have a vision of cut paper pysanki eggs, which may be beyond my somewhat limited paper-cutting skills. But you never know till you try.

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February 2026

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Page Summary

poliphilo - English History A Little Garbled
thawrecka - (no subject)
lauradi7dw - moving snow to get ready to move snow
thawrecka - (no subject)
siderea - Weather Alert: Good gentles all, charge your devices [meteo, DC/NYC/MA]
conuly - [The evening darkens over] by Robert Bridges
thistleingrey - current stitching, and
conuly - So, the silly phone game I play has "teams"
conuly - Over a foot of snow projected for tomorrow!
shewhomust - The evergreen equivalent of carrying personal defence spray
rydra_wong - My motor cortex learning to play Dark Souls
sholio - Supernatural vid: Life is a Highway (the 20th anniversary vidding project)
ranalore - some people get a class ring, some people get a crown
poliphilo - Hearing Test
poliphilo - Two Paths
kenjari - Book Review
minoanmiss - A bold stand on a major national problem
asakiyume - cumbia, krucial, snowy owl, sturgeon
lauradi7dw - USians, call (email) your reps!
osprey_archer - Hobby Update

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Style: Classic for Refried Tablet by zvi and Aaron B. Russell

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Page generated 2026-02-22 08:22

Myth Happens

Sovay's Friends

English History A Little Garbled

(no subject)

moving snow to get ready to move snow

(no subject)

Weather Alert: Good gentles all, charge your devices [meteo, DC/NYC/MA]

[The evening darkens over] by Robert Bridges

current stitching, and

So, the silly phone game I play has "teams"

Over a foot of snow projected for tomorrow!

The evergreen equivalent of carrying personal defence spray

My motor cortex learning to play Dark Souls

Supernatural vid: Life is a Highway (the 20th anniversary vidding project)

some people get a class ring, some people get a crown

Hearing Test

Two Paths

Book Review

A bold stand on a major national problem

cumbia, krucial, snowy owl, sturgeon

USians, call (email) your reps!

Hobby Update

Profile

February 2026

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