kenjari | Network

I held the bannister and I got it

I sat down to look for it

I took it with me because I could not find it

Damn splinter!

muccamukk

Watch on YouTube

sorcyress

I left off Satureve, I think? lots of very late dancing, which felt very good???

So Sunday continued my pattern of very leisurely late wakeup time (Arisia is one of the only times of year I just straight up guilt-free get to run my sleep schedule the way I actually want to). I got my stuff transferred from the one room to the other, and then had just enough time to hit up the art show before my goat check shift. But first.......Mount Arisia!

On Saturday,

mindways decided to try a speed run (apparently aided by wearing his very speedy pants) during the climb time, and managed to get the thirteen floors in a truly staggering time. I know that I'm not necessarily in nearly as good shape as him, was not wearing speedy pants (in fact, at that point I was wearing a lovely-but-heavy suede skirt), and critically, am quite a bit shorter. I didn't run it. I just decided "okay, if I was going to walk up these stairs like I meant it, what would I score?"

I was not quite a minute slower, but I am _very happy_ with my 2:15 ascension. A bit over ten seconds per floor when *not* running? Yeah, I'll definitely take that, and if we're in the same hotel in 2028, I think I'll have to at least try and beat that. I don't know if I have the stamina to full run up the whole thing, but gosh, wouldn't it be fun to try?

Having not made it up to the art show earlier, I had the vague disappointment of seeing several pieces I would consider buying, if they hadn't already sold. I think that's perfect in some ways, because it meant I got to admire them, and feel happy the artist is being paid, but not have to spend the money myself. It also meant I had a little more buffer to buy needless pretties in the dealer's hall instead, which I'm honestly quite happy about. (shockingly, I did resist the EXTREMELY LARGE d20s. Like, a size for putting on the desk and pondering. And _gorgeous_ too, too often the big ones are just kinda chintzy.)

Goat check was nice, then off to check my texts and send massive congratudolances to Tuesday upon hearing that The Providence Bureau of Invest-Egg-Ations, after placing second the last two years, has won the 2026 Mystery Hunt! Am I gonna get to see this particular sweetie ever in the upcoming year? Probably not, but I'm real happy for them regardless!

I wandered a bit and dealers halled a bit and eventually wound up eating food and hanging out with mom in their room until it was time for us to head to the masquerade. Mom always works as the backstage pirate, and I often work with them. It was...fine. Mom was lovely and the costumers were lovely and Antonia is an absolute bangup MC, and I don't think the audience could tell any of the particularly rough spots (except of course that the judges took forever, because they always do.)

Post Masque I did some lobbyconning. jere7my and I went and got Toast, and then eventually Tuesday showed up and they and I went to get more Toast. I am very pleased that by my last round of the evening, they had more cookie butter, so I could get my favourite combination.

Tues and I wandered a bit, including playing Lost Cities in person, where I did about as badly as I have ever played --I scored a total of one point. Just _brutally_ unlucky with the cards! Tuesday had like, 150 points to make up for it.

Off to bed went we, and that was that.

Monday morn was going to start lazy, but when I checked my phone, I saw a somewhat urgent message from LB saying that they'll were feeling sick and could I put a sign on their table until they could figure out how to get their supplies back. I sailed downstairs to the dealers hall and blatantly ignored the "this space is not open for another forty minutes" sign entirely. I can't summon the authority of I Am Supposed To Be Here everywhere, but I _definitely_ can at sci-fi cons. Do you _know_ who I _am_? I'm the child of Greykell and Richard, this place is in my blood!

I gathered LB's things for them, and was very pleased to see their box exactly fit in my (really, Rey's) rolly crate. So that was trivial to bring home, and I'll swing it by their place later this week. It is good to be able to help my friends and community!

Tuesday and I ate breakfast and got ready for our respective tasks --I had one last goat check shift, which was incredibly slow --apparently the snow scared people out of coming for just Monday?-- and she was off to the wrapup for hunt. I helped clean up and that was that, everything else about the con was lazing about deliciously.

More photos to come later. I hope you are having a good time of things. I hope tomorrow works out well for the all of us.

~Sor
MOOP!

aurumcalendula

The Imperial Coroner Season 2

( some thoughts on episode 4 the season so far in general )

torachan

1. Pretty chill day at work today. I got stuff done. The office situation is a bit annoying now because as of last Thursday we have a handful of new people moved in, but there weren't enough empty desks so they brought desks from their previous office and crammed them in where we had previously had a meeting table and it feels very crowded now. I'm sure I'll get used to it, though.

2. I love the dramatic lighting on Gemma. It suits her dramatic personality lol.

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3196/

I've had countless nights where the line never left the bottom zone of the graph, but the few moments where it's climbed all the way to the top have made up for them all.

https://xkcd.com/3196/

pauraque

letter tiles in columns drop into a lower grid to spell out words in a newspaper headline

In this daily puzzle game, the goal is to spell out the words in a newspaper headline by choosing letters to drop down from the columns above. The headline starts blank, so you have to figure it out based on possible English words, syntax, and context. (E.g. If there's a one-letter word and the possible letters you can drop are A, G, and X, well...) When you've filled in the headline you get to read a short news article from the cozy fantasy realm of Yliad, where arcane scribes study at rival magic schools. Each week's puzzles form a story arc, and the arcs gradually piece together the worldbuilding.

I saw this game linked in the Clues By Sam newsletter, and I've added it to my morning round of daily puzzles. I find it pretty easy, but word puzzles are definitely more in my wheelhouse than logic puzzles, and there's nothing wrong with a quick warm-up before your brain is fully in gear. The little stories are on the cutesy side, so, you know, don't expect epic tales of blood and sacrifice or anything. The narrative just adds some interest and flavor to your standard drop-quote puzzle. And it's queer-inclusive so that's a plus!

The Daily Spell is free to play in your browser. ✨

aurumcalendula

Any recs for live action media with both a mystery/thriller plot and a significant f/f romance (with a happy ending)?

( some stuff I've seen )

stonepicnicking_okapi

Snowflake Challenge: A mug of coffee or hot chocolate with a snowflake shaped gingerbread cookie perched on the rim sits nestled amidst a softly bunched blanket. A few dried orange slices sit next to it.

Challenge #9

Talk about your favorite tropes in media or transformative works.

Are there any trope I don't like? I'm not a fan of kid!fic (where the characters are children) or high school or university AUs or enemies-to-lovers/hate sex, but most of the rest of them are interesting.

I have read and/or written most of them.

I like genderswap. The first couple of years of writing fic I wrote nothing but genderswap BBC Sherlock.

I like supernatural AUs, werewolves, vampires, ghosts, tentacles, shapeshifting (especially wolves or dogs), animal hybrids.

I like Omegaverse, Coffee shop AUs, Detective/PI AUs. Sentinel 'verse.

There was only 1 bed. Trapped in an elevator or snowed in a cabin. Unexpected heat. Sex pollen. Hurt/comfort. Amnesia fic. Found family. Poly ships. Soulmates. Incest. Lingerie. Someone gets a puppy. Mpreg.

As a ficcer, I have come to appreciate having a friendship pairing which is as important/deep as the romantic pairing in the same fic. Also, I have a thing about, for a given sex scene, not handing out orgasms like party favors. Not everyone has to have one!

unicornduke

Hey all, if you'd like to join the crafting hangout, it is tonight from 6-8pm ET!

Video encouraged but not required!

Topic: Crafting Hangout

Time: Mondays 6:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

Link

Meeting ID: 973 2674 2763

stonepicnicking_okapi

Watch on YouTube

stonepicnicking_okapi

Challenge #8

Talk about your creative process.

Ideas for fic or collages sometimes just come to me. Sometimes I get ideas from Youtube videos or something I read or the seasons or holidays. I suppose my creative process is 'parody until it's mine.' Meaning, I try to follow something (a collage by a Youtuber or a source AU like a film or novel or short story) and then usually somewhere between halfway and two-thirds into it, the collage, the fic, I stop paying attention to the guide (or whatever I am trying to mimic) and just keep going. It's like the training wheels fly off and I'm coasting on my own speed.

I did learn over the winter that I feel grumpy if I don't collage (or something else crafty) at least once a week. Earlier, I had regarded it a hobby I could take or leave but I think it's become more important to my equilibrium than that.

Also, creating for someone (gift, card, gift fic) is much more motivating than creating for myself.

cupcake_goth

Behold the shiny! Which was almost entirely paid for by Poshmark profits, so in terms of “real” money wasn’t unreasonably expensive.

—-

My god does my hair need dying. It’s not going to happen any time soon, but I sigh every time I look in the mirror right now. There are so many projects I want to do right now, and I KNOW I must not. Even the ones that would be something I could do while sitting on the couch watching movies. Getting up to put on a movie leaves me shaky, which is a sure sign I need to keep resting. Hmmph.

—-

Yesterday I learned that Miss Erzabet No Biting has blanket preferences. I had switched around some of the blankets I was under on the couch, with a polyester knitted one on top. She would walk onto my lap, look bewildered, and hop off. As soon as I switched things back to having the woven cotton ones as the top layer, she immediately settled down. Yes, my cat is spoiled.

—-

Speaking of the kitties, they turn 15 this year, which means we’ve owned them for almost half our marriage. That’s weird to think about.

davidgillon

My sister and I were telling my mother (who is in hospital again) that we had been meeting with her doctor, but he had to dash off because he's adopting and had a meeting with the social worker.

My mother instantly looked across at me and said "He can have that one".

Current Mood: Hmmph!
Current Location: Not wanted on voyage

newredshoes

I am sitting in Gingko's favorite chair, which is an immensely comfortable yellow wingback that perfectly takes advantage of the sunny south-facing windows, which are extra sunny today because it is hideously cold and will continue to be so and worse for a week at least. Gingko is also sitting in this chair, which is not large enough for both of us, but my smart girl is making it work. This is a day where I am finally, after three days of ~decompressing, interested in things other than screens. Maybe it was taking that Adderall this morning? But I've been cleaning the leather accessories I've been collecting, plus polishing up some wood that's desperately thirsty (including a nice little cigar box from the thrift store!).

I'm spending so much time trying to find the next living spare where I'll land that I haven't made much effort to make the most of this one. ( Spaces, pruning, money... many thoughts )

But, okay, activities I prioritize and treasure and would like spaces for:

Crafting — printmaking, paper-mache, watercolor, comics, collage, tunnel books, dioramas, so much!

Tea and tea display, not just this big glorious shelf but an actual tea ceremony kind of spot (not low enough to the ground that Gingko could destroy it, though; sorry to any coffee tables, I don't think you're really in my foreseeable future)

Altar and tarot table + display — the presence of household altars was something I learned from shadesofbrixton and visiting Santa Fe, which I absolutely loved, alongside this phenomenal altered wall cabinet at chicagoprintmakers that I can't find a photo of but trust me, I really want to replicate it

Music — I need to mount my banjo, ukuleles, accordion and other assorted instruments where I will see and want to play them!

Yes, I have a rowing machine which I love and which is collecting so much dust, but once my arm is better, I want to get it down again, I freaking love using it and I want a regular space for it in the next place

Reading nook!!!! With lots of plants!! What if!!!!

This is what I want to build!!! Not to mention space for hosting parties, including dinner parties, which my table deserves to see again!! It's really not true that everything will fall into place once I get this one thing (permanent living space) done, but it really feels like maybe it kind of will!!

Current Music: "When You and I Were Young (live)," Missy Gossip and the Secret Keepers

oursin

I mentioned that I was reading Dream Count for an intended new in-person book group of fairly local people connected through being (mostly) women historians (most of) whom I already know.

The gathering to discuss Dream Count was yestere'en in Highgate, at a destination to which there is a bus service from the nearby main road, though on Sunday evenings the service is a little more sporadic than habitual and I arrived a bit early, even after some difficulty finding the house in question. (Serious FAIL by local residents to actually have house numbers visible, ahem, not helped by several houses actually being nos XX-YY which adds to the confusion and in fact I ended up going to the wrong house first.)

However, once I got there it was agreeable to see auld acquaintance and talk of how things had been going -

- I am not entirely persuaded that having a sit-down at a table supper was actually a great idea, or maybe that was just me who had not all that long ago had a large late lunch.

Discussion of actual book did not get started for some while. Everybody seemed to have a rather mixed response, though it did, at least, provide a basis for discussion along several directions.

Future plans to meet at 6 week intervals - not to have full dinner party (relief!)* - next book will be Anna Funder's Wifedom about Eileen Orwell (already have the ebook yay).

Kind lift not all the way home but to useful point with lots of buses from Our Hostess.

*Snacks instead - should I take foccacia and Famous Aubergine Dip? Y/N

oracne

No dayjob today because we're off for MLK Day.

It snowed all day yesterday, starting before dawn, but nothing stuck to the sidewalk until after dark, by which time it was still snowing and I was just not up for shoveling. Which meant, of course, that first thing this morning, after the overnight freeze, there was a layer of ice on the sidewalk. With a great deal of effort and about an hour in two segments (pre- and post-breakfast), I managed to break up and remove enough to make it reasonably safe. I hope. My hands were a little shaky at the end, which indicates I exerted myself more than I should have. Our house is not that wide, thankfully.

The temperature is supposed to go above freezing this afternoon, so hopefully that softens the remainder enough that I can scrape it up. Putting salt on top of ice doesn't help, it just melts the top so it can refreeze in a new and more slick state. Nope!

I have a free ticket for the Orchestra's MLK Day concert this afternoon; I was originally planning to attend with my friend who is now out of town because of a death in the family. We shall see if I recover from my exertions enough to attend. I am not worried about wasting a spot, they generally hand out more tickets than there are seats for these events, and tell you a seat is not guaranteed.

It's possible more snow will arrive in the coming week. Whee. If it does, I hope it doesn't affect our choir kickoff on Saturday, January 24th. Also, I hope the scores get sent out soon, as I need to make a trip to the library to print mine.

I'm back to the office tomorrow and Wednesday.

skygiants

For the first few chapters that I read, I was enjoying Ava Morgyn's The Bane Witch, as heroine Piers Corbin heroically Gone Girled herself out of an abusive marriage by faking a combo poisoning-drowning and flailed her injured way north to seek refuge with a mysterious aunt, accidentally leaving a fairly significant trail behind her. Satisfying! Suspenseful! I was looking forward to seeing how she was gonna get out of this one!

Then Piers did indeed get north to the aunt and tap into her Family Birthright of Magical Revenge Poisoning. As the actual plot geared up, the more I understood what type of good time I was being expected to have, and, alas, the more it did, the less of a good time I was having.

So the way the family magic works is that all of the Corbin women have the magical ability -- nay, compulsion! -- to eat poison ingredients and convert them internally into a toxin that they can -- nay, must! -- use to murder Bad Men. It's always Men. They're always Bad. They know the men are Bad because they are also granted magical visions explaining how Bad they are. They absolutely never kill women (there are only ever women born in this family; they have to give male babies away at birth in case they accidentally kill them with their poison, and I don't think Ava Morgyn has ever heard of a trans person) or the innocent!

...except of course that the whole family is actually threatening to kill Piers, to protect themselves, if she doesn't accept her powers and start heroically murdering Bad Men. But OTHER THAN THAT they absolutely never kill women, or the innocent, so please have no qualms on that account! Piers' aunt explains: "Yes, Piers. Whatever has happened to you, you must never forget that there are predators and there are prey. We hunt the former, not the latter."

By the way, both irredeemably Bad Men that form the focus of Badness in this book -- Piers' evil and abusive husband, and the local serial killer who is also incidentally on the loose -- are shown to have been abused in childhood by irredeemably Bad Women, but we're not getting into that. There are Predators and there are Prey!

The book wants to make sure we understand that it's very important, righteous and ethical for the Cobin family to keep doing what they're doing because everybody knows nobody believes abused women and therefore vigilante justice is the only form of justice available. There are two cops in the book, by the way. One of them is the nice and ethical local sheriff who is Piers' love interest, who is allowing her to help him hunt the local serial killer despite being suspicious that she may have poisoned several people. The other is the nice and ethical local cop investigating her supposed murder back home, who is desperate to prove she's alive because she saved his life and he's very grateful. He understands about abuse, because his name is Reyes and he's from the Big City and his mother and sister were both abused by Bad Men. The problem with these good and handsome cops is that they're actually not willing enough to murder people, which is where Piers comes in:

HANDSOME GOOD COP BOYFRIEND: You don't want to help me arrest him, do you? You want to kill him.
PIERS: Doesn't he deserve it?
HANDSOME GOOD COP BOYFRIEND: That's not for us to decide.
PIERS: Isn't it? This is our community. You're an authority in maintaining law and order, and I'm a victim of domestic and sexual violence. Surely, there is no one more qualified than us.

This book was a USA Today bestseller, which does not surprise me. It taps into exactly the part of the cultural hindbrain that loves true crime, and serial killers, and violence that you can feel good about, in an uncomplicated way, because it's being meted out to Unquestionably Bad People. Justice is when bad people suffer and die. We're not too worried about how they turned out to be bad people. There are predators, and there are prey.

sholio

See Part One here.

4. Babylon 5, G'Kar & Londo, post-canon, spoilers
any, the minimum amount of communication needed for a fix-it AU
Originally posted here

( Slightly more than 3 sentences of overthinking )

5. Babylon 5, early season one
any, low-effort illustration of something important
Originally posted here

( More than 3 sentences of ambassadorial bickering )

6. Murderbot, MB + Gurathin
any, "I adore floating." (Peggy Guggenheim)
Originally posted here

( 3 sentences for a change! )

7. Murderbot bookverse, MB + Mensah + Mensah's family
any, snowstorm
Originally posted here

( 350 words of fluff )

8. Murderbot, TV or bookverse, Bharadwaj
any, fossil footprints
Originally posted here

( A lil Bharadwaj character study )

conuly

Now, we don't have a coffee maker. We have a french press, and we have a pourover thinger, and no coffee maker. Electric coffee makers are roach magnets, and I will stand by that statement.

But the job has a coffee maker, a nice new model after the pot on the old one broke, and the lid on top opens to the left, which means you have to hold the coffee pot in your right hand if you want to pour the coffee into the machine. Also, all the measurement numbers on the coffee pot are only visible if you're holding the handle in your right hand.

And you may say this is petty, and it is - well, it's petty for me because I have two hands, I might well be more annoyed, and justifiably, if I was missing one! - but somebody made a choice to hinge the lid on the left instead of on the back, and somebody, maybe that same somebody, made a choice to only put numbers on one side of the handle instead of both. And they didn't have to make those choices, they could've made different choices that didn't screw me over personally, me and all the other lefties as well as approximately half of all people who don't have mobility in their right hand or don't have that hand at all*, and they chose poorly. Probably didn't even think it through even a tiny little bit.

* Wait, is this a valid assumption? Or are people more likely to be disabled on this side or that side?

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

( Read more... )

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kenjari

January 2026

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gletschergenossen

Network

Yet again, I’ve been injured doing laundry

Music Monday

Arisia Sunday and Monday!

(no subject)

Daily Happiness

Aurora Coolness

The Daily Spell (2025)

(no subject)

Snowflake Challenge #9

crafting hangout

Music Monday: Samurai's Day off (chill hop! ha!)

Snowflake Challenge #8

I guess being couch-bound means I post a lot

He can have that one

A four-day weekend is so nice.

Yesterday I went out and was social

Snow!

(no subject)

3 Sentence Ficathon, part two

Job has a coffee maker

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January 2026

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