elements

My annual leave shot by and involved rather more chilling out than getting things done! But I did achieve some limited cleaning and organising inside the flat and finally a much needed tidy up of the tiny front garden in advance of planting up all my winter pots and window boxes.

And now it's September and the To Do list is as long as ever!

My birthday last week was suitably quiet - I pulled a 24 hour straight work day from 8:30 Tuesday morning to 8:30 Wednesday morning - the inbox was a bit of a mess after being away for 2 weeks so I cleared most of that, then dealt with some outstanding invoicing issues and since I was on a roll also reviewed and deleted a ton of historical email which is no longer needed.

I'd taken Wednesday off for my birthday and had no real plans so I could catch up on sleep and read/watch a few things.

One of my colleagues announced she's leaving (at the team meeting on Tuesday) and of course there are no plans to replace her - funny how they can always find money to fully fund multiple new senior management posts but never replace or properly fund the peons delivering front line services isn't it? Eh I've reached the stage where I'm massively disillusioned about work environments and just keeping my head down and getting on with things with my fingers crossed I can last the next 4 years to retirement. Note yo self - must properly review pensions before end of the year!

We had the autumn BBQ on our allotment site yesterday afternoon which was lovely - sat in the sun from 1-5pm chatting with a variety of people and eating good food.

And, of course, September is another #orjenise100 (over on Instagram) so I'm busy clearing up bits of my flat and getting rid of things surplus to requirements.

Somehow yesterday's task of getting rid of 5 things from the kitchen morphed into a deep clean of the kitchen (which I need to finish today) but things look better already.

It's a bit grey with rain forecast so I figure a morning spent finishing the kitchen and batch cooking and and afternoon continuing the Great Bedroom Declutter will be time well spent. If it clears up I can do some planting in the tiny front garden, if not I can do that tomorrow early evening (much better weather forecast and I'm working from home so no time wasted commuting).

pegkerr

I sort of blew it this week. This isn't a problem I have very often (my daughters alternately tease me and get annoyed at my tendency to pull out my iPhone camera on every possible occasion). But this week, at the event that clearly would be the centerpiece of my weekly collage, I failed to pull out my camera a single time. And therefore, I had to assemble this collage from components that captured the feeling of the moment, but were not taken AT the moment.

It feels like cheating.

This week we celebrated the 90th birthday of my mother-in-law Mel. I have always adored Mel, who is wise, kind, and true, and I have been so very grateful that after the loss of Rob, I am still considered an integral part of his family. I know that this isn't true for all widows. Rob and I always considered the fact that we truly loved each other's families to be one of the cornerstone strengths of our marriage.

Rob's brother Lance hosted the celebration in his backyard, and included a delicious catered taco dinner. His sister Erika came from Seattle, his sister Shannon came from Phoenix, Arizona, Mel came from California, and his brother Phil came from LaCrosse, Wisconsin. It felt wonderful to have everyone there, as well as spouses, nieces, and nephews, along with particular friends. As I said, I was so busy with conversations that I didn't pull out my camera once.

The picture of Mel and her surviving children was taken last summer, the day after one of my nieces' wedding.

Bottom: A mother, seated to the left, with her four children seated in a row arrayed in stools next to her. center: background: a catering array of taco fixings. Overlaid over that: a birthday cake and an assembled taco. Top: a backyard catering tent on a lawn with people seated at tables underneath. Overlaid: gold numeral balloons saying '90.'

Image description: Bottom: A mother, seated to the left, with her four children seated in a row arrayed in stools next to her. center: background: a catering array of taco fixings. Overlaid over that: a birthday cake and an assembled taco. Top: a backyard catering tent on a lawn with people seated at tables underneath. Overlaid: gold numeral balloons saying '90.'

Ninety

36 Ninety

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Current Mood: happy

bironic

GUYS I made a thing!

It is in fact the 100th vid I’ve posted, according to the AO3! Not the 100th I’ve finished, technically—there’s one from 2024ish that’s with the recipient for approval. But I’m proud of this one and am glad to celebrate the milestone with it.

Title: You’ll Be Back
Fandom: Interview with the Vampire (TV 2022)/The Vampire Lestat (TV 2026), Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles
Pairings: Armand/Louis, Armand/Lestat, Armand/1970s!Daniel, Armand/2020s!Daniel
Music: From Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda, performed by Jonathan Groff. Lyrics at genius.com.

Summary: 🎶 And when push comes to shove
I will kill your friends and family to remind you of my love 🎶

Content notes: Dysfunctional relationships, morbid humor, vampires. Major spoilers for all three seasons. Detailed warnings for graphic vampire violence and racist imagery: a beheading; a headless body that moves, used for comic effect; an initial gets carved nonconsensually into a (Black) character’s skin; FYI said initial is used in canon to deliberately evoke slave branding; someone is convinced to step in front of a subway train; a vampire is destroyed by sunlight; fistfights; abduction; a character in a sack is kicked by multiple assailants; someone throws a cup of blood; a building collapses in a city skyline (Toronto).

Watch on the AO3 or on Vimeo or ( embedded here. )

celli

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rivkat

Hey, anyone interested in beta'ing a relatively unserious HR Centaurs-era fic?

I need to talk about how much I identify with Shane Hollander for a bit.( my brave little autistic toaster )

James Islington, The Shadow of What Was Lost: I liked Islington’s Strength of the Many, but didn’t connect with this separate fantasy world, where people with psychic powers are bound not to resist people without them. Islington doesn’t lean very hard into the really negative consequences of that; instead there’s a lot of complicated factions, apparent time travel or time loops, and other interconnections.

Vernor Vinge, A Fire Upon the Deep: Vinge writes at multiple scales—galactic Powers that can destroy entire civilizations and children orphaned by the crash of their spaceship and subsequent attack by the multiple-mind doglike entities on the world where they landed. It was ambitious and often interesting, but there was a lot to follow.

William Gibson & Pat Cadigan, Alien3: Novelization of unproduced script; it was basically ok for a novelization but didn’t have the kind of snap that the 80s novelizations sometimes had. There was too much repetition of the concededly great line “nuke it from orbit; it’s the only way to be sure.” You can see why they wanted Joss Whedon to punch up the dialogue of the actual movie (which has a completely different plot).

siderea

Many years ago, I was sitting on the steps of the MIT Student Center, eating my Tosci's ice cream after SCA dance practice, when a young philosophy major I was mentoring ran up to me and exclaimed, "I just realized! You're not a platonist! You're an empiricist!" I cracked up. To this day I have no idea what ever might have lead him to think I was a platonist in the first place.

I think about that from time to time, moving in the worlds of smart sciency people. One of the things I often feel sets me apart from most of my conspecifics in my cognitive approach to the world is that I am an empiricist. I've been described as "Rationalist-adjacent", which is fair enough, but I am not a small-r rationalist. I love reason – but I love data more. Reason can be great stuff, but without valid data to reason from, it's just a way of going wrong with confidence.

This came round on the guitar again lately with regard to the US cyclosporiasis outbreak. At least one reasonable medical professional whose judgment I generally respect has announced they feel it's safe to go back to eating lettuce, because usually the cyclospora season ends at the end of August. That would be some of that them there reasoning I am dubious about,

I can't help but notice that usually we don't have a cyclosporiasis outbreak like this at all, so reasoning from what usually happens seems to maybe not be so warranted. Sure, maybe all the new cyclosporiasis cases will fall off dramatically in the immediate future because of some seasonal effect. But we don't know why this outbreak happened in the first place, so we don't know what will stop it. Like one of the possibilities here is something climate change related, that, thanks to climate change, will not be dropping below whatever threshold until later in the year than usual.

Personally, I'm going to wait for the data to come in showing that lots of people aren't getting new cyclosporiasis cases.

Now, because of the enormous lag between infection and symptoms, and symptoms and testing, and testing to reporting to health authorities collecting the information, and then publishing it somewhere I can see it, chances are that by the time the new infections numbers go down, lettuce – and the other suspect produce I've been avoiding – will have been safe for weeks.

That's fine. I'm not hurting none. I've had lettuce almost every day this summer, and blueberries too, because we've been patronizing our local farmers market here in Massachusetts, far from the epicenter of the outbreak. Blueberries are out of season now, so I'm on to peaches which to my surprise are apparently in season here to the end of September. When we get takeout, we get thoroughly cooked food. If this goes on, I might get a countertop hydroponic lettuce kit. I don't see a huge need to rush back to eating grocery-store lettuce. I don't think it's some sort of tragedy if I avoid bagged lettuce that retroactively turned out to have been safe for a month or two.

I'll agree that grocery store lettuce is safe to eat again when I see data that indicates that.

lannamichaels

One thing about The Thursday Murder Club having such a high body count is that it doesn't have all that many different reasons for the high body count. It uses things more than once.

This post is about men killing their wives and why that's romantic.

Or, in a broader sense: men having control over their significant other's death and disposition of remains. And why that's a sign of love when people the narrative likes do it. ( Spoilers, obviously )

lannamichaels

How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying by Django Wexler (2024): Absolutely delightful isekai time loop novel about transmigrator Davi, who transmigrated into this fantasy/video game set-up a few hundred lives and a thousand-ish years ago. She always starts back at the same point upon respawning: a magical pool where a wizard tells her that she's prophesied to save the human Kingdom from the evil others (orcs, snake people, rock people, etc). However, in every life, instead of succeeding in saving the Kingdom, Davi is killed by the new Dark Lord, although there are different Dark Lords in different lives.

And now Davi has had enough. She decides to flip the script. This time, she's going to BECOME the Dark Lord.

Featuring a lot of footnotes, but the amount didn't bother me (I stopped reading Discworld fic in part because Discworld fandom would pepper in constant footnotes, while the books would have, like, seven total footnotes); Davi being attracted to and sleeping with a bunch of folks and feeling zero angst about it; a final-arc bit of worldbuilding that I was thrown by but I figured was to set up the sequel and did set up that Davi is not the first transmigrator to show up here; and just a lot of fun. Great quick read.

The title and the worldbuilding work and Davi's blasé attitude really also worked in with great expectations-of-the-plot, because you knew that Davi was going to die again along the way, but the way it happened and how that advanced the worldbuilding worked really great, in a way that you didn't expect. I was reading it and going "yeah she's definitely gonna die near the end BUT it's not gonna feel like the rug got pulled out, because you are being told damn well to expect it" and then when it does happen, it advances the worldbuilding, and Davi's characterization, in great ways.

Everybody Wants to Rule the World Except Me by Django Wexler (2025): Sequel to above. Now that Davi has succeeded in becoming the Dark Lord, uh, now what? Because the horde of ~~wildings~~ wilders sure wants to go destroy the Kingdom. But Davi spent a thousand years on the Kingdom's side, and she knows now that there are permanent consequences to what she's doing. What should she do?????

This book is good, but not as good as the first one, and I lay the fault at the fact that it feels it has to explain the transmigration and the time loop and how it came to be, and that's really a place where these kind of narratives can just fall flat, or get bogged down, or just not be as good as the rest of it when it has to explain it. And I see why the authors who do this feel the need to do it.

But it really didn't work that well, it took a ton of energy from everything else, and it raised more questions, which hey sure that's good, right? Except the questions it raises are along the lines of plot hole questions. And it doesn't resolve the initial transmigration question, it just pushes it earlier, so, okay, if you're not going to explain all of it, why explain any of it.

But I understand why it went this way. I just felt it wasn't as strong.

Also for the love of god, I was willing to grit my teeth and bear it in the first book, but since this book actually has Himbo Boyfriend Prince Johann on screen all the time, I fucking hate that word. It's not okay or funny or charming to call someone a bimbo! Yes, even if you're being oh so clever and making it clear the bimbo is a man! Stop calling him a himbo, for fuck's sake!

Also while I caught most of the pop culture references, a couple did fly over my head (there was one in the first book where it flew over my head and I nodded because I could tell what it was and it was just something I wasn't familiar with; this one referenced someone named Joe? Something like that? Not clear), and also all the clever little stuff but this draws attention to itself and it all starts to fall apart once we get into the Reasons For The Time Loop and Implications Of What Davi Remembers, and also -- I must assume the author is part of the fanfiction world, and so was writing the reference to AO3 as an injoke or waving a flag saying "hi everyone!", but having a reference to AO3, I did not like that, and also having references to various shipping and leaving things for fic and also a clever ship name for a pairing near the end, a pairing I didn't realize was meant to be having sexual tension, uh, I guess -- I didn't like any of it on a Please Can We Have A Fourth Wall level, but ALSO ALSO ALSO okay, this gets where the fact that Davi is aware of the narrative and that this is a book and someone is reading it, someone back on Earth, and -- that just leads to more questions. It draws too much attention to itself.

I know the fanfiction fourth wall has been fully broken, but that doesn't mean I like it, and having it done by someone in fandom isn't better than having it done by someone else! Yes, it doesn't have "ew, the perverts are doing pervert things" like stuff written by people who aren't in fic fandom does, but "please please please write fic of my book and put it on ao3, look, here are the pairings I want and here's the sort of thing you should do with the pairing" NO NO NO. If this was published on ao3? Fine. But this is a pro published book I got from the library. I know the fourth wall is broken. But I want to pretend it isn't, and seeing this stuff in a book does not make me thing "oh sure I'll write fic, you got it". IN FACT THE OPPOSITE.

Both books ends with a pivotal climactic fight scene that is a bit out of place; it feels like it's there because the genre demands a climactic fight scene, but the book isn't really that kind of book, and so it's rushed and way too close to the end and things tie off too fast afterwards. It was a bit like "wait, what, we have a multi-page fight scene that's also too short and abrupt" in the first book but then it happens again and well, I guess. It's all the more jarring because the pacing otherwise in these books is very good.

Anyway, overall rating: A-. These books are good! Probably should have been a trilogy rather than tying off very abruptly at the end of a duology.

The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman (2020): A murder mystery by someone best known in these parts for being a mainstay of British quiz shows. I give this murder mystery credit for being obsessed with death and dying, but, like, in a natural way: Osman clearly looked at the Little Old Lady Solves Crimes genre and said "what if there were four of them". This book takes place in a retirement community where everyone has one eye on the impending grave and what might cause their deaths or, worse in their minds, dementia, Alzheimers, strokes, etc, the sort of thing that sends them to the nursing home and they never leave it. Heavy, heavy, heavy subject matter, but executed fairly well, especially for a debut novel, and with a light enough tone in general.

I wouldn't say it's very challenging or original in the characterization department: the developer is a male chauvinist pig, et cetera et cetera. But it does it well enough and it is engaging based on the very frequent POV changes. The chapters felt really short and that was reading an ebook; I imagine it's even shorter on the page. Could have used longer chapters.

There was a point, near the end of the book, where I looked at the ebook and said, in dawning horror, "I have lost track of the body count in this book". Four murders, three suicides? I wouldn't swear to it. No, wait, at least two more murders. Three more? Goddamn. It's a lot. (I'm including backstory, because Osman's all "what's more interesting than solving two murders that probably aren't connected? Solving one from 1970, sure, why not.")

Because, however, of the Massive Death Count, it got very noticeable the underlying morality. For one murder (actually he killed two people, unless I misremember and he killed three), the guy gets completely away with it. For the rest: suicide or being murdered. There are two cop POV characters; no one is arrested, no one goes to jail. Characters who kill someone either get away with it or die.

Since I do complain about books that should be 300 pages instead being 500 pages, I must thank all three of the books for being the right length for their story.

pegkerr

I've been getting together with a couple of friends to walk three times a week first thing in the morning. Sometimes, we walk around Lake Nokomis if weather permits, but this summer, due to heat, humidity, bad air, and various injuries we've been nursing, we have mostly been walking at the Mall of America before the mall opens.

This spring, we noticed a kiosk that was set up by one of the escalators: scan an app or a receipt for something you bought at the mall, and you could collect points. We generally stopped for coffee to talk for a while after our walks, so we started collecting receipt points that way.

Then at the beginning of the summer, another kiosk was set up, and we started checking in there, too. Scan the app, and you could win something every day: a 6-point pass to the Nickeloden Universe amusement park. A free admission to mini-golf. A ticket to the Matrix 5D show. A free coffee at the cafe. A $5 off coupon at a restaurant. Or, once, memorably, six free chocolate truffles.

This past week, as the summer promotion time was coming to a close, we met at the mall in the afternoon to cash in our free coupons. It was fun! We each had different tastes in roller coaster styles, so we rode those separately, but we played mini-golf under black lights together, which I haven't done in quite a long time.

Sometimes, you just gotta take the time to have fun. And saving money while you do so makes it all the sweeter.

I wanted this collage to capture the sense of color and busyness of an afternoon of indulging in our own amusement.

Image description: Top: Sign for Rock of Ages Blacklight Minigolf. Below that: sign for Moose Mountain Adventure Golf. Center: sign for Fairly Odd Coaster. Background: Long shot of the Nickelodeon amusement park. Right lower corner: a rack of colored golf balls, glowing in black light. Lower center: one of the hole displays of a miniature golf course. Lower left corner: a roller coaster car on an orange track.

Fun

35 Fun

Click on the links to see the 2026, 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 52 Card Project galleries.

Current Mood: rejuvenated

celli

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celli

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jadelennox

I don't actually care that much about heated rivalry casting but I miss being in a fandom with all my delightful people so \o/

lannamichaels

I was talking to someone yesterday about Charlotte Sometimes and the whole kids book genre of "modern day kid time travels to historical time period and then time travels back conveniently before the kid-she's-traveling-into dies horribly" and I remembered that there was an American Revolutionary War one of these, too, that I'd completely forgotten about.

All I remember is the protagonist is a girl, and there's a bit about taking the bread to the bakery to be baked at the bakery. And I think it had a newspaper bit at the beginning for the girl to check what date it was. And I think it may have actually been set befor the Revolutionary War, but I'm not 100% on that. And I think she doesn't possess another kid; she comes back with her own body, and it's just the kid who helps her and takes her in who then dies.

Anyone know what this one might have been?

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31

How is it mid September?

2026 52 Card Project: Week 36: Ninety

Vid! “You’ll Be Back,” Interview with the Vampire (TV), Armand/everyone

well, my big plans got derailed a bit...

Heated Rivalry & some books

Cyclospora update [pest, US]

The Thursday Murder Club & When Is It A Sign Of Love To Murder Your Wife

Three books

2026 52 Card Project: Week 35: Fun

My plan needs a name

\o/

that reaching out hand

Looking for what a book was called

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