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[personal profile] tsuki_no_bara
shana tovah to my fellow hebs! may you be inscribed in the book of life for a good year. i'm seeing in the new year with an excess of honey cake so it's definitely been good for me so far. :D (my sister had people over for dinner on tuesday and i made a honey cake because i always do and almost no one ate it! cousin a took two pieces home with her and my sister kept some and i brought like 3/4 of a honey cake home with me. wtf. it freezes well but the freezer kind of dries it out so i don't know if i want to do that.)

more things i did in the two months i wasn't posting that i forgot to mention:

took my car to be inspected (it failed)
took it back so the garage could fix something in the exhaust system which is why it failed (it passed)
went to cousins j&m's for dinner and to say goodbye to their twins before they went off to college
went out for dinner and saw jaws with the aforementioned cousins j&m and my sister
went candlepin bowling for writer a's birthday (she used to be in writing group but left and is now back in town but not back in writing group) (yet)
admired writer a's t-shirt which advertised luthen's antique shop (andor. you know. :D )
did not however ask where she got it so i might acquire one of my own
maybe something else? it was a while ago. i don't remember.

candlepinning is fun but i am not good at it. writer e (who is still in writing group) and her wife and kid also came and we ate pizza and were social and it was a good time.

i have now finished andor s2 and am really annoyed it's not available on dvd so i can't buy it in preparation for the day disney yanks it off streaming. because you never know! i really enjoyed it altho it's kind of a rocks fall, everyone dies kind of show. i mean, maybe "enjoy" isn't the right word. but it's very well done. i watched it over discord with other star wars fen which actually was enjoyable because sometimes you need to watch tv with other people and sometimes those other people are in your computer and not in your living room.

in other tv news [personal profile] apiphile pointed out that the show with keira knightley and ben whishaw and the spies and assassins is black DOVES. black swan is the weird ballet movie with natalie portman. >.<

curling starts on sunday (i go on the ice at 8:30 and i am NOT BEST PLEASED) and i am emotionally if not constitutionally prepared. *flex*

Drama/Trauma in the Laundry Room

Sep. 23rd, 2025 07:14 pm
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[personal profile] halfshellvenus
Somebody, and by that I mean someone furry, started scratching the side of his head two weeks ago, and got a deep sore going before we could get him to the vet to be coned. :(

I bought a cone a couple of years back, but I never took it out of the packaging, and it turned out to basically be labrador-sized. No good for a medium-sized house cat! Our vet was closed the day we wanted to take our cat in, and when they re-opened we discovered they couldn't see him for 4 days. Yikes. I took him to Banfield Pet Hospital (inside PetSmart) to be coned and given antibiotics, because that was the urgent issue. He got the cone off within 5 minutes of being home. HalfshellHusband took him back, and he got the cone off before even leaving the store. So the vet made a soft harness out of some stretchy cloth, and that did the trick.

We took him to our own vet on Monday, for a more thorough examination. They found no underlying cause for his original scratching other than that he gets itchy during the change of seasons, so that was good. But they undid the harness, which means the cat got the cone off again later that night. Holy moly! They gave instructions to burrito him (Hah!) to subdue him, as if they didn't routinely tranq him on office visits (including that very day). By then, a soft cone had come from Amazon that was easier to get on-- this outer-space-themed flower-type thing:


Not our cat

He is able to eat and drink with the soft cone, but also has gotten out of it three times and is sometimes able to still get one of his hind feet into scratching position! I have another, bigger soft cone to try the next time he escapes the current one, but what a headache this all is. He has no idea that he'll be wearing that cone for another 2-4 weeks, which will be fun for all of us. \o?

In Idol news, I was able to come back in (at least for now) due to a lucky spin of the Wheel of Chaos. But [personal profile] rayaso got poisoned, so he's out. That's disappointing. :( There is also no poll this week, so no one seems to be reading or commenting on the entries. Mine is here, if you'd like to take a look. I went with humor, which has been the case for most of this season. Not last week, though! This entry was a pain to format, too, and the HTML that used to let you change font so easily doesn't seem to work anymore. Nor does CSS. I gave up on shifting the typeface styles, but that was after I'd wasted a good 60+ minutes on it.

I WILL get around to TV recs at some point, but let me quickly say that Amazon's The Devil's Hour is really intriguing, and you should give it a try!

LJ Idol: Wheel of Chaos: "A New Man"

Sep. 21st, 2025 12:26 pm
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[personal profile] halfshellvenus
A New Man
Idol Wheel of Chaos | Week 10 | 2440 words
Intrigant (one who intrigues or is involved in intrigue)

x-x-x-x-x

Winslow Johnson was a middle-aged man in a Midwestern city who suffered from being constantly overlooked. Even his name, which should have been interesting, somehow wasn't. People noticed it for half a second, and then slid right off into "Eh…" It was unusual, but somehow also blah, like Winslow himself.

Sometimes, Winslow wondered if he was invisible.

He worked as a shoe salesman at J. C. Penney, a job that was even less exciting than it sounded. Penney's specialized in 'sensible' and 'matronly,' with a large overlap between the two. Winslow had also never cared for feet, which only made the job more unpleasant. He had tried feigning enthusiasm for them before, but found that it only made him seem weirder.

What he needed, Winslow thought, was a personality transplant.

At office parties and in the breakroom at work, he never seemed to have anything to talk about. He had hobbies, and they weren't anything desperate like collecting string. But when he mentioned his tiny herb garden or he invited someone to spend the day watching trains with him, he got nothing but blank stares in return. Why couldn't he be like Dave from Home and Garden, who was a sports nut and knew how to make people laugh? Or like Janet from Housewares, who was always up-to-date on new movies and the popular TV shows?

Winslow had no idea how to solve his problem. There were no classes for that sort of thing, no magic potions that could make a difference. The only thing he could think of was to go to the bookstore and consult the self-help section. The quantity of selections was overwhelming:

"The You You Are," by Dr. Ricken Lazlo Hale.

What? Winslow thought.

"You Are Special, Yes You Are!" by Bitsy McLintock.

Winslow cringed, and kept surveying the shelves.

"Why You Suck, And How To Stop," by Chad Barton.

Huh. The title was kind of harsh, but didn't it basically describe his problem? And if anyone would know how to be cool, it would be someone named Chad. Winslow picked the book up and started leafing through it.

Chapter 1
Why You Suck and Nobody Likes You

You're creepy. You're boring. You smell bad. Do any of these sound familiar? The suckee is always the last to know.


Oh, no! Winslow thought. Could one of those be his problem? Or worse, all of them?

Read more... )

There's no poll this week, as it's a contestant-only vote.

yes ok it's been a while

Sep. 20th, 2025 01:03 am
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[personal profile] tsuki_no_bara
oh my flist the ugly building where i work is SO COLD. SO SO COLD. holyshit. i am not a bag of frozen peas! i mean seriously. what the hell.

anyway. hi. it's been *counts* weeks. classes have started at the u and students are back and suddenly it's busy. surprise. on tuesday i walked into work the same time as admin d, and when she got on the elevator i said i'd wait because she was going down and i was going up. she works on the third floor, i work on the fifth, she pointed out we were both on the first floor. so that's how my week's been. >.<

other shit i did:

discovered a very large box of plastic spoons in the kitchenette at work
finished unpacking the kitchen and the living room
did not finish the dining room or my bedroom but made some progress anyway
went to work writing group three times
went to og writing group twice
went to the yearly greek festival by myself because [personal profile] tamalinn and friend a both had weather headaches :( and stuffed my face with sausage and rice pudding and kataifi
had dim sum with [personal profile] tamalinn and friend a's hubs (aka friend d)
had disappointing chinese food and saw my mother's wedding with my sister (it drops you in the middle of the story and never really catches you up but at least the actors had good family chemistry and it's very pretty, very cozy british cottage countryside)
had much better mexican food and saw the roses with my sister (apparently i will watch olivia colman in anything. i didn't like the ending or the main characters' friends but i laughed in some very odd places and there's a gorgeous house with absolutely stunning views)
had chinese takeout and watched mission: impossibles at my sister's house (twice! the chinese place has really good eggplant and the fluffiest egg foo yung)
watched all of girls5eva (fun, silly, spoofy, occasionally really touching, and i liked the songs)
watched the end of resident alien ("such a ridiculous show" + "ow, right in the feels" all the way through)
finished s2 of poker face (didn't love the ending, think i liked s1 better, enjoyed the guest stars)
watched s2 of twisted metal (deeply weird and hysterically violent but anthony mackie and stephanie beatriz have nice chemisty and overall i liked it)
watched all of black swans (in which keira knightley is a spy investigating the murder of her sidepiece and ben whishaw is her sad gay assassin colleague and now i'm interested in british spy shows)
probably other things i don't remember right now

also i went to iceland and greenland and canada. :D where i saw puffins (from a distance) and an active volcano (also at a distance) and lava fields and cute little icelandic horses and nosy icelandic chickens and mineral baths (twice) and geysers and so many waterfalls and soothing moss and lakes and icebergs and cute little houses and cute little churches and cute little greenlandic children (mom and i waved at them and one waved back) and the world's largest fiddle and a house museum and the occasional other ship and the occasional dog and some old buildings and lots and lots of open water. i walked a lot and got rained on and sat in the aforementioned mineral baths (twice) and spent like two minutes in a sauna because it seemed appropriate and got a salt scrub on the boat and walked around the outer decks through some terrifying wind and discovered the simple joy of a bailey's irish cream on the rocks and listened to karaoke and played hangman (badly) and assorted games of trivia and went to some lectures about explorers and saw really good shows and ate delicious brazilian barbecue and bought a lot of chocolate and also stamps. also apparently we crossed the arctic circle. we got certificates. :D

i'm still not a cruise person and i still wish we'd done the original itinerary but i had a good time and got to see really cool places and kind of want to go back to iceland because we didn't really get to see reykjavik and only got to eat local once. (one of the stops on the golden circle tour, which we did the day before we set sail. i had a lamb sandwich. yum. but other than that pretty much all the local food we had was snacks, mostly black licorice for everyone who isn't me and did i mention the chocolate?)

i have one more episode of andor s2 and i'm totally expecting someone to die altho i don't know who. tell me nothing.

today was CORN FEST at work and while i didn't think i ate that much i definitely was not hungry for dinner. i brought home leftovers which include an ear of corn (it was SO GOOD OMG) and a giant piece of cake with extra frosting. and it started at noon which means no one had had lunch yet and there were consequently not a lot of leftovers.

nakagin capsule tower, my beloved.

do you want to watch a short documentary about my local comic shop? of course you do. :D

if you drive into boston from the south you pass a giant gas storage tank with a rainbow painted on it. i was always told the original artist was vietnamese and hid ho chi minh's profile in one of the stripes. the artist was actually a white nun named corita kent and she sounds like a really neat person. she also did not hide anyone's profile in this particular art.

have some photos of ordinary folks in new orleans before hurricane katrina.

watch a swedish church move 5km down the street.

so you know how the nazis stole a lot of art that was never returned to its original owners because a non trivial amount of it hasn't been found? a missing painting was discovered in argentina hanging over a couch in a real estate listing. surprise!

manchester united fan takes up the challenge to not to cut his hair until the team wins five in a row. they're not doing well this year and now the guy has an impressive mop.

the new century standard letter-writer - published in 1900 and full of templates for a very wide range of correspondence needs.

who wants to go to france and take a cheese tour with me?

what's on the other side of the earth from you? for me, it's ocean.

this is definitely old news but if you haven't see it you might be amused to know that noah wyle's emmys tux was made by a company that normally makes scrubs. but they made him a (very nice!) tux to honor all the medical professionals out there.

Disappointed

Sep. 16th, 2025 12:13 pm
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[personal profile] halfshellvenus
I got booted out of Idol: Wheel of Chaos last week, by the "poisoning" twist that's part of the game (and the chaos) this season. Very sad about that. :( I'd rather get voted out than be murdered sideways, and I know the other Poisonees must feel the same. :( I wrote a good story for a hard prompt, too, so I would have expected to survive another week based on it! ETA: Wait. Back IN the game again, thanks to another spin of the Chaos wheel! WUT.

That was also the same day my Hawaii sunburn started to peel, but I've still got some of those vacation feelings going. What a wonderful, relaxing time. We stayed at the Waikoloa Village Hilton, with a room overlooking the bay, the lagoon, and the (surprise!) dolphin area. Just sitting out there and watching everything was fun, and it also helped me get a sense of what was happening with the tides (which sometimes made the chairs and umbrellas by the lagoon inaccessible). I snorkled in the lagoon quite a few times, and saw lots of Moorish idols and parrot fish and yellow tangs, and even a spotted ray and a trumpet fish! Mostly, I read and people-watched and listened to the waterfall across the way. Lovely. I spent a LOT of time by the lagoon overall, and that's how I got sunburned three different times. I'm pretty sure I've managed to avoid sunburn in Hawaii entirely as an adult, up until now. Because it's always burning, never tanning...

My sister recommended that resort (she and her husband stay there often), and it was truly gorgeous. Possibly too big for HalfshellHusband, though? He struggles to walk long distances (foot pain and an arthritic back), so that was way more walking than he would have liked. If you started from our hotel, and walked the long way across the bay to the other side of the resort, I think it would be a distance of about 6-8 blocks. At least the Kona airport was small, compared to the ginormous one in Hololulu that he struggled to get through last year. It's not just the distance or the pain, either—the combination of heat and humidity in Hawaii make it hard for him to breathe. Still, he soldiered on as he always does.

With all of that reading, I have some books to recommend:
Blob (A Love Story), by Maggie Su - A feckless young women encounters a gelatinous blob in an alleyway behind a bar, and takes it home. Soon, she is attempting to mold it into the perfect boyfriend.
The Shamshine Blind, by Paz Pardo - Only the second sci-fi novel I've ever read that has the physical effects of color as its main theme (the other is Jasper Fforde's "Shades of Grey"). This book has a noir feel to it, with the main character hunting down fake pigment distributors and illegal uses of color in a dystopian world under Argentinian dominion. (!)
Secret Dead Men, by Duane Swierczynski - Del Farmer, a reporter-turned PI, tries to solve the mystery of his own murder with the help of the souls of the dead he has collected (and now houses in the Brain Hotel inside his head).
Gone, Baby, Gone and Prayers For Rain, by Dennis Lehane - This entire detective series is good, but these two books are both extremely well-written. It would be hard to say which is better, though I'll give the nod to the second one.

Soon to come: TV recs. But in the meantime, how have you all been?

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