beanside: (Default)
beanside ([personal profile] beanside) wrote2025-04-23 05:54 am

She comes when the empire falls And shines on crumbling walls



It's hump day!! And I really didn't want to get up this morning. It took a good couple of minutes of stretching before I forced myself upright. Even now, I could easily go back to bed. But alas, I am up for the duration.

Tonight we have game, our long delayed Brindlewood Bay game. It's been so long that I'm definitely going to need to go back and reread some of my friend's excellent notes. I'd be lost without them on so many games. This is the beginning of a fairly busy weekend of games. not as packed as some, but games on Wed, Fri, Sat (Jess has two) and one on Sunday for me and one for Jess. It's going to be fairly packed. Saturday is the first game of the continuation of Mad Mage, which is entirely homebrewed. I've done homebrew games before, but this one, I'm worried about. When Frostmaiden finsihed the module, it left behind a handful of plot hooks for the next chapter, and then one of my players needed to quit, which gave me the impetus for another section of game. It all was kind of organic.

On the other hand, the Mad Mage module was very self contained, being that it was in a dungeon. There's not a lot of recurring characters. Actually, only one that could recur. And it didn't lend itself to a continuation of the plot, or a plot that was related to something they did in the Mad Mage module. Mad Mage was fun, but I'm not sure why it's ranked as highly as it is. It's no Strahd. It was considerably more heavy lifting than Strahd ever was. Or maybe dungeon crawls just aren't my thing. Dunno. Anyway, it didn't lend itself to a direct sequel.

So, I homebrewed a sequel and a setting out of thin air. If you'd asked me three years ago if I'd have been creating a mystery that's going to require a ton of role play, I would have laughed at you. But as time has gone on, I've shifted from being a combat person to being a little more balanced. So I'm a bit nervous, but excited.

Yesterday was a busy day. I spent a lot of time calling people back, and taking calls. the calls weren't that busy, but I was also trying to fit in a couple of slots and people, so it felt hectic. No clue how today will be.

Today is Payday!! Whoo! Most of it will disappear as quickly as it came in, but I think I'll have a little left over. There were a lot of days that I was there late the last two weeks, and of course, I worked Saturday, and when I got my paystub yesterday, it paid off. I might have as much as $200 left over, which is awesome. I'm looking forward to using some of it at the Farmer's market on Tuesday.

I ordered some food for the week, but I may see about ordering a bit more. I need to stock up on beans and chickpeas. They make great quick meals with some rice.

And on that note, it's time to hop off and get myself in gear. Everyone have an amazing day!
vass: Small turtle with green leaf in its mouth (Default)
Vass ([personal profile] vass) wrote2025-04-23 08:33 pm
Entry tags:

Things

Books
Very little progress.

Crafts
Dyed a 36x45cm piece of white 14 count aida cloth purple, for Secret Reasons. And now I know that I can get a reasonable result doing that with a large storage box and hot water, winging the quantity of Rit dye. Shenanigans may result.

Food
My parents' Christmas present to me, a new frying pan, just made it to me today. I haven't test-driven it yet, but it looks nice. And like it should heat up easier than the cast iron one my stove can't really handle, much as I love it.

Weather
Finally cooling down. Good.

Other
One of the Discord servers I'm in had a PowerPoint night. I didn't present, but I contributed a very unserious set of slides for someone else to present sight unseen. This was a heap of fun, and I recommend this form of grownup show and tell to other nerds. I am already working on my next such document.

In a different Discord, a discussion of linguistics prompted me to make a series of noises which in turn made Dorian give me a very funny look. If you would like to provoke yourself to make a series of noises that will make your cats give you funny looks, here is the chart.
vass: Warning sign of man in water with an octopus (Accidentally)
Vass ([personal profile] vass) wrote2025-04-23 08:11 pm
Entry tags:

Daydream

What if, when you went to a nonprofit/charity/etc website because you want to donate money to them, you could add ?nomarketing on the end of the link, and it would bring up a barebones version of their donation page that would JUST LET YOU MAKE A SINGLE DONATION.

It would not sign you up to their newsletter.
It would not give them permission to contact you.
It would not ask you to share their link on social media.
It would not ask you how you found them.
It would not show you a thank you letter written in the first person by a composite version of one of their clients.
It would not show you tragic and distressing photographs or descriptions of the horrible things happening to the people you HAVE ALREADY DECIDED TO GIVE MONEY TO HELP.
There would not be any animated banners or carousels.
There would be no popups.
Required fields on the form would only be information they genuinely cannot accept your money without, and they would have checked both the law on what information they actually need and their assumptions about names and titles (e.g. not everyone has a first name, not everyone has a last name, not everyone's name is short, some names have spaces or apostrophes or hyphens, not everyone belongs to one of the four genders Mr, Mrs, Miss, and Dr.)
It would not give you a menu with three choices: make your one-off donation a monthly amount, make your one-off donation a monthly amount but more money, or (deselected and in a duller colour) "keep your one-off donation" before letting you donate.
Or after you donate.
Or both.

I understand they have a job to do, but do they understand how aversive this experience is? It is the biggest thing about charitable giving that I dread, when I have enough to give. "Hi, I'd like to give you some mon-" "CAN YOU GIVE US MORE? CAN YOU GIVE IT EVERY MONTH? KIDS ARE DYING, VASS, ANIMALS ARE DYING, THE PLANET IS DYING, MOREMOREMOREMORE CAN WE TEXT YOU, CAN WE CALL YOU UP AND TELL YOU ABOUT THE DYING KIDS CAN YOU TELL ALL YOUR FRIENDS TO GIVE US MONEY TOO-"

If they made it less stressful, I would not have to psych myself up to do this. And by definition this is how they are treating people who already want to help them.
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2025-04-23 03:19 am
Entry tags:
conuly: (Default)
conuly ([personal profile] conuly) wrote2025-04-27 04:13 am

Black Cherries by W. S. Merwin

Late in May as the light lengthens
toward summer the young goldfinches
flutter down through the day for the first time
to find themselves among fallen petals
cradling their day's colors in the day's shadows
of the garden beside the old house
after a cold spring with no rain
not a sound comes from the empty village
as I stand eating the black cherries
from the loaded branches above me
saying to myself Remember this


*******


Link
conuly: (Default)
conuly ([personal profile] conuly) wrote2025-04-25 04:06 am
conuly: (Default)
conuly ([personal profile] conuly) wrote2025-04-26 04:05 am

There is a friending meme ongoing

Clicky!

Also, I meant to say re: the utilities that you are all the best and I absolutely love you :)

(Still need to call National Grid and still don't wanna.)
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2025-04-23 12:10 am

World Book Day

The official theme for World Book Day 2025 is:

"Read Your Way: Diverse Books for Every Mind"

This theme emphasizes the importance of inclusion and diversity in reading. It encourages readers to explore different voices, perspectives, and cultures through literature, promoting empathy and global understanding
.

Read more... )
torachan: ryu from kimi ni todoke eating ramen (ramen)
Travis ([personal profile] torachan) wrote2025-04-22 10:22 pm
Entry tags:

Daily Happiness

1. I had another work from home day. I'm about halfway caught up with my email and fully caught up with teams. Tomorrow I've got a couple meetings, so I've got to go in to the office, but I might work from home again on Thursday to finally catch up on everything.

2. When Carla was out today she stopped at Uncle Tetsu's, a Japanese cheesecake chain. They have a sakura cheesecake right now and we had some after dinner tonight and it was sooooooo good. I normally prefer New York style cheesecake to the Japanese fluffier style, but this was really good consistency and the sakura flavor was amazing.

3. I finished playing The Plucky Squire. Overall it's a pretty fun game, but it is not just a straight action adventure game. There are a bunch of (frankly not that fun) mini games for the boss fights and stuff where you have to play other styles of games and that is not what I signed up for. Like for one character's boss battles you play a Mike Tyson style boxing game, for another it's a rhythm game, and for the third it's a Puzzle Bobble type. Then there are some stealth sequences where you have to sneak past enemies who can kill you instantly if they sense you, and if they sense you there is no way to run to escape, even if you're close to a place you could get away. You're just instantly dead. And the final battle is a space shooter type. The good thing is that if you die in a boss battle you can sometimes restart partway through, not all the way at the beginning, and the stealth sequences have multiple checkpoints and you'll respawn there rather than back at the beginning. But I would still have preferred not to have that "variety" in my action adventure game. Still is a fun game, though. But if you suck at those types of games it might ruin it for you.

4. I finished editing all my Disney Japan pics, so hopefully I can get the last day's posts written up later this week.

5. Jasper is just so handsome.

ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2025-04-23 12:09 am
Entry tags:

Good News

Good news includes all the things which make us happy or otherwise feel good. It can be personal or public. We never know when something wonderful will happen, and when it does, most people want to share it with someone. It's disappointing when nobody is there to appreciate it. Happily, blogging allows us to share our joys and pat each other on the back.

What good news have you had recently? Are you anticipating any more? Have you found a cute picture or a video that makes you smile? Is there anything your online friends could do to make your life a little happier?
torachan: (Default)
Travis ([personal profile] torachan) wrote2025-04-22 10:08 pm
Entry tags:

2025 Disneyland Trip #23 (4/5/25) Tokyo DisneySea (Part 2)

When I last left off, we had just checked out the big gift shop at the Fantasy Springs hotel and were exploring the land while waiting for our return time for the Peter Pan ride.

More DisneySea adventures! )
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2025-04-22 11:08 pm

Today's Adventures

Today we went out shopping.

Read more... )
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
ysabetwordsmith ([personal profile] ysabetwordsmith) wrote2025-04-22 10:29 pm
Entry tags:

Insect Apocalypse

Insects are disappearing due to agriculture -- and many other drivers, new research reveals

New paper highlights 500+ interconnected drivers behind global insect decline.
Insects are disappearing at an alarming rate worldwide, but why? Agricultural intensification tops the list of proposed reasons, but there are many other, interconnected drivers that have an impact, according to new research
.

Read more... )
wyld_dandelyon: (let's go!)
wyld_dandelyon ([personal profile] wyld_dandelyon) wrote2025-04-22 10:13 pm
Entry tags:

Happy Earth Day!

I've been under the weather. This time I managed to get Bronchitis just from the end of the winter heating season (unless a friend with a congestive heart condition was actually sick, and not just coughing because of the heart condition). But I think this was coming on earlier, and the med regime my former allergist suggested was keeping my lungs and sinuses a lot clearer than in the past, but not enough for my body to clear out the infection.

Well, I came to this conclusion Friday, with (among other things) singing at the Eurofilk showing me I was unusually short of breath for singing; I already had an appointment with my newish primary doc who I really like on Monday, and when I tried to call the allergist last month to set up an appointment, there was no answer or answering machine on his number, or on the alternate number I found on Google. I did find an article about him listing him as 81 years old, and I'm not sure how long ago that was written, so I'm assuming he died or retired. So, I waited out the weekend and got tireder and tireder, and shorter and shorter of breath.

Happily, she was willing to prescribe antibiotics and steroids (if I'd gotten antibiotics on Friday, that might have been enough), unhappily, when they figured out that the only way they could give me the meds the doc thought most appropriate that didn't have corn in it (kids' liquid, again), it turned out that the pharmacy couldn't fill it until today. It was too late to try to talk the doc into prescribing something different, as the clinic was closed.

So today I woke up way too early, and was NOT falling asleep again (my body does insist on waking when I really need meds, which freaked out my RN mother when I was first sick enough to always be awake when she came in to wake me up to take them). This was handy in that I was able to deal with a bank overdraft for my grown-up kid (she's still using the account I got her when she went to Denmark in 4th grade so I could easily transfer money to her if there was an unexpected need, so, being awake I saw the text notification) (Her birthday is later this month, so an early birthday gift was perfectly reasonable).

And then I had food and called the pharmacy, because I WANTED those meds before the rest of the day's errands, which included getting My Angel to her PT appointment, mailing a thing (in a post office, since there seems to be no more drop-off boxes outside our regular post office any more--WTF, government?--and going to pick up meds at a different pharmacy too.

The strip mall the post office was in had one of the closing JoAnne Fabrics, which had almost no fabric left, and not much of anything else either. I did find some things to buy, including two substantially marked down big bags designed to hold a sewing machine and sewing stuff, but which I plan to use one of for author stuff (books, display, etc.) on the assumption that I'll do signings at cons again, and the other for acrylic paints, brushes, and the like since my current bag and plastic bin plan isn't working out as well as I'd like, and because having that stuff on wheels will be very convenient.

I also got some beads, wire, a thimble and multitool, sewing machine needles, an ironing pad to put on a table, some tape, a couple of pillow forms for planned gifting, and, surprisingly, a basket of tumbled stones to put in the fishtank. Sadly, the heavy-duty dolly they had pictured in the front as available had already been sold. I looked at the jewelry making stuff, thought about the heavy duty crimper and some of those beads, but I haven't been making jewelry lately and can use the hemostats I use for holding autoharp strings to crimp things, so I left those behind. I did also get some very discounted project boards, so if we decide to go to one or more protests, we can take signs.

And I took photos of our daffodils in the middle of all that.

I am cheered by all the photos of protests I'm seeing, and by how badly Elon's car company is doing. It gives me hope. Keep contacting your elected officials, we've got to wear them down until they stand up to our very cruel and foolish leader.

Now I am going to hit post and go watch Rachel show all those pictures of the signs again, and do Duolinguo, so I don't miss a day, and fall in bed. Maybe I'll manage to post Daffodil pics tomorrow.
snickfic: (Giles bookish)
snickfic ([personal profile] snickfic) wrote2025-04-22 08:23 pm

Fandom stuff

- I signed up for [community profile] seasonsofdrabbles. Come join me! So I have someone to write for.

- After my first [community profile] hurtcomfortex idea got increasingly complicated with less and less direct h/c, I now have a new idea that is directly h/c and much simpler. Which is great, because I can tell it's going to be a long 'un. (That's why the writing period for this exchange is so long, right? Because h/c takes lots of words??) So now I have 400 words, and the deadline isn't for like six weeks! Woo!
mecurtin: face of tuxedo tabby cat Purrcy looking smugly happy (purrcy face)
mecurtin ([personal profile] mecurtin) wrote2025-04-22 10:02 pm
Entry tags:

Purrcy, bees

#Purrcy was both happy and regal, sitting in my seat on the sofa with the sun coming the skylight on it. See how he smiles at me in Cat!
#cats #CatsOfBluesky

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby is lightly curled on a brocade cushion, looking at the camera with ears alert, whiskers spread wide and white, eyes light green and pupils just slits. He is clearly very happy, as sunlight shines on the cushion and most of him.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby is lightly curled on a brocade cushion, looking at the camera with ears alert, whiskers spread wide and white, eyes light green and pupils just slits. He is clearly very happy, as sunlight shines on the cushion and most of him.




I sat out on the porch to eat breakfast today, and the local hive of feral honeybees was awake, buzzing about looking for nectar. The crabapple flowers are opening, so they seem to have their timing just right. The carpenter bees were also out, inspecting the eaves. It was really good to have that 1/2 hour, even though it was so late in the morning (I had errands to run before my stomach was ready for breakfast) that I didn't see or hear any migrants.
flemmings: (Default)
flemmings ([personal profile] flemmings) wrote2025-04-22 08:03 pm
Entry tags:

(no subject)

When the weather page says 90% chance of rain at 4 p.m. one should not look at the placid grey sky and the dry sidewalk, think Guess they're wrong, and trundle over to Fiesta for crackers. Because the heavens opened as I came out and everything got soaked. That was yesterday. Today was sun and bulgogi at my tony Korean restaurant, which was twice as much rice as I wanted. I did finally ask for a fork, so if I go back I needn't worry too much because now they know. But I still spill stuff. Age sucks.

Won't talk about the piggery I indulged in over Easter which means I won't be weighing myself any time soon. But the Pour Boy restaurant sent me some elegant and manageable chopsticks with that pad thai on Sunday and I may keep them for use elsewhere.

And my tax return was delivered to the accountants in good order so I may assume it was filed in good order, though the Easter disruptions mean they haven't even cashed my cheque yet. They will, Oscar, they will.
tozka: A bit of green landscape against a riotous blue cloud-filled sky (van gogh landscape)
mx. tozka ([personal profile] tozka) wrote2025-04-22 03:08 pm

us civics, frick museum, wiscon

Good afternoon, happy Tuesday! I finally spotted the morning doves again-- well, actually, one of the landed on the back porch and made eye contact with me through the sliding glass door, and then another dove dive-bombed the first one and they both flew off. Fun!

Got some links for y'all here! I'm experimenting with formatting this time. Is this easier to read, or worse?


[personal profile] siderea did an informal poll about some of the differences in educational systems in the US, with regards specifically to when civics was taught.

I did most of my schooling in Maryland and I took a civics class in 9th or 10th grade, but I'm pretty sure we went over some stuff before then in elementary school/middle school. We had mock presidential elections, for instance, so I'm sure we at least went over the stuff about voting.

I also remember seeing the Schoolhouse Rock video about how bills are passed, but I honestly can't remember where along my educational timeline it happened. I AM fairly certain a teacher showed it to us, though!

More links under here )
Need more stuff to read? I've compiled all previous linkspam posts here on my website or of course you can explore the linkspam tag below.
jjhunter: Watercolor of daisy with blue dots zooming around it like Bohr model electrons (science flower)
jjhunter ([personal profile] jjhunter) wrote2025-04-22 06:21 pm

Haikai Fest: "'The World's Most Popular Spring Flower'"

Let's take a breath for poetry. It is April, and as good a time as any for a collaborative poetry fest. Please find below a starting stanza or two of a brand new haikai (what's a haikai, you ask? Think extended haiku: alternating stanzas of 5-7-5 and 7-7). Comment with a following stanza to build on that seed. Someone (most likely me) will respond with another stanza, and so on and so forth throughout the day.
===

daffodil focus
bell song, valdrome, pheasant's eye
live stained glass glory

_
sholio: bear raising paw and text that says "hi" (Bear)
Sholio ([personal profile] sholio) wrote2025-04-22 01:10 pm

Red Boar's Baby

As is my usual practice, my latest book as Lauren is available for download for my DW circle for the next week or so!

cover shows a man holding an infant

Download from Bookfunnel.

The download will be up until the book goes live on Amazon on May 2.

(Technically this is Shifter Agents #6, but it's a standalone that shouldn't require any context to read.)