rhivolution | Reading

1. I saw both Gemma and Molly using the new cat box tonight! I think someone other than Ollie might have used it once or twice but I never saw confirmation until now. Now if Chloe and Jasper would just come around, I'd feel confident about replacing the other two boxes and no longer having to worry about people peeing outside the box.

2. I have had bad neck issues from sleeping for years and things got somewhat better after I bought a pillow that was specifically for stomach sleepers, but it's several years old now and I've been thinking about replacing it anyway, plus it's also never been perfect and I still do have a lot of neck pain, though thankfully not constantly. I saw a list of best pillows on Wired a week or so ago and have been thinking about the one they recommended for back and stomach sleepers and finally bit the bullet and ordered it the other day. It arrived today and while I haven't slept a full night on it yet, it feels amazing to lie on, both back and stomach, so I have high hopes. It was pricey, but if it helps my neck, it's worth it.

3. Having a three day work week was so nice! It's the weekend again already!

4. If only I could sleep this comfortably!

marycuntrarian posting in

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Come join and post discussions, fanworks, reviews, etc! I'm starting the comm with our own Friday Five, so reply now and meet some fellow fans!
Community TV

rydra_wong

Please enjoy this eloquent depiction of The Capra Demon Experience:

Watch on YouTube

(Content note for animal harm in the form of killing horrifying skinless zombie dogs.)

This is a notorious point where a not insignificant number of people ragequit and stop playing the game altogether.

Also as previously mentioned I struggle badly with tracking multiple inputs, I have the reaction speed of a slime mould, and my default combat state is "panicked and flustered."

It took me about 7 hours (spread across multiple days -- admittedly, most of this time was doing the boss run again and again and again and then dying within seconds of the fight starting) and I am very proud of myself.

(And right now I am dealing with a medical stressor -- hopefully nothing, but had to go get some tests, waiting on results -- so I will take my distractions and wins where I can get them.)

nanila posting in

awesomeers

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished! Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

torachan

1. I've been making good progress on the high priority tasks the Japan IT team left for me when they went back to Japan at the end of last week.

2. The other day Carla and I were talking about sandwiches and I remembered this delicious veggie sandwich I used to get back in college. The place isn't around anymore, so I can't look it up to see exactly what was on it, but it was whole wheat bread with cream cheese, sprouts, cucumber, and some other veggies. I have cream cheese and sprouts already so asked Carla to get bread and cucumbers at the store and she found that they sell Cheesecake Factory brown bread in sandwich bread form now at the grocery store (they've been selling the little loaves like in the restaurant for a while) and that goes perfect with this sandwich. She also got some avocados, so I had sprouts, cucumber, and avocado on it and it was so good. Definitely going to make that for lunch again tomorrow.

3. Tuxie is still so wary of me, but he was very cute hiding in the planter the other day.

aurumcalendula

I might have a more cooperative vid idea to poke at while I let my Star Trek ones percolate!

I definitely need to do a full Discovery rewatch soon! Strange New Worlds still doesn't sound like my thing, but I'll have to check out episode 3x09 the next time I have Paramount+, since it looks like it was a good Ortegas episode.

prisca posting in

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Fandom Empire's last challenge of this year is:

August 27 - September 10: Sign-up
September 7 - December 7: Challenge open
December 8 - December 14: Final scores

At the end of the challenge, there will be banner/badges for everyone and 50 DW points for three randomly chosen regular (2 missed weeks maximum) participants.

Check out the information post here.

I would be glad to have you around. If you are interested, don't hesitate to sign up here.

vass

Books
Finished the Danny Lavery book, except for the missing pages. (I told the librarian, and she ordered a new copy and put a reserve on it for me.)

Started Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy's The Bottoming Book. (I bought The Topping Book too, and decided to, well, start from the bottom.)

Fandom
The Lays server (Nine Worlds fandom) held a bingo-themed prompt fest for the month of August: there was a grid of prompts (anonymously submitted to a google form, then posted on AO3 by the exchange mods), a 500 word minimum, and a collective goal (which we met) of blacking out the whole board. I wrote part 1 of Peer Review, and hope to write and post the concluding part soon. I hope the anonymous person who posted that prompt isn't too upset with me. (~~It was me.~~)

Music
Went through a few days of listening to Vienna Teng's 'We've Got You' a perhaps concerning number of times.

Games
Spire-slaying continues: have now unlocked (but not beaten yet) Ascension level 9 for all four characters.

Crafts
Secret!cross-stitch still in the design phase, but I've made progress.

Did a weekend DIY project of painting my clothesline and restringing it.

Garden
It's September, which means that the grass/weeds have exploded almost overnight, and it's raining often enough that mowing is tricky to manage.

I planted some lavender and rosemary near the clothesline, and they are still alive so far and even (the lavender) flowering.

Hope you're all doing okay.

nanila posting in

awesomeers

torachan

1. I took another early morning walk today. Unfortunately the weather was not quite as pleasant as yesterday and I was pretty sweaty and muggy when I got home, but I did have plenty of time to cool off before having to get dressed for work, so that was good.

2. I am still cced into all the store-side emails at work, despite my new position, so even though they are not priority, it makes for a lot of emails to go through when I've got a long weekend to catch up from. (I am cced by choice, as I want to still be in the loop.) But since they are not my responsibility anymore, it was faster to go through them and catch up, and I was able to do that at home while cooling off from my walk, so I was ready to actually focus on my main tasks once I got settled at work.

3. First day in the new office (well, it's the same office, but the second floor is a U shape and I'm in the opposite end of the U from where I was, and it's an enclosed (shared) room rather than the open space I was in before, so it feels very different). My desk is larger and I like it better than the kind of crappy one I had before, so that's nice. One thing I was bummed about is that it's further from the restroom that I was using, but actually it's very close to one of the first floor restrooms and close to the stairs, so it's faster or about the same amount of time to go to the bathroom, but I also get stairs in every time I go, which is nice.

4. Jasper likes to just chill on my desk sometimes. Thankfully as long as he's lying down, he's not actually in the way of anything.

nanila posting in

awesomeers

torachan

1. Carla had a doctor's appointment early this morning (7am) so I had offered to drive her since I figured she might be groggy that early in the morning, which she was. I had been very tired the night before and went to bed before ten, so even though I set my alarm for 5:30, I wasn't feeling bad at all. While she was at her appointment, I took a walk and it was really pleasant out. Even though I was out walking for half an hour, I was only a little sweaty towards the end. I might think about taking a walk in the morning before work, even if just on my own. (The weather is supposed to be better for the rest of the ten day forecast but it's still warmer and muggier than I'd like for taking a walk midday.)

2. Since we didn't have anything else planned after that, I was able to do some errands I'd been meaning to get around to and take some stuff to the post office and drop off some clothes at Goodwill.

3. One nice thing about my new position at work is that I feel less tied to my work phone. Although I've offered to help out with area manager stuff, it's not actually my job anymore at all, so I don't need to be constantly checking to see what's going on at the stores and if anything needs to be urgently addressed. I could get used to this lol.

4. Gemma has such a sweet face.

pauamma posting in

capslock_dreamwidth

DOLLARS TO DONUTS THE AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT WILL BURY THE REPORT AND CALL THE EXPERIMENT A SUCCESS.

rachelmanija

After disliking both The Hollow Places and The Seventh Bride by T. Kingfisher, and for similar reasons (idiot heroine who refused to believe in magic when it was happening right in front of her; annoying tone), I gave up on her works. But since lots of my customers like her, I ordered this book. And when it arrived, it was so beautiful that I had to pick it up and examine it. And then I figured I'd read a couple pages, just to get an idea of what it was about. Those couple pages quickly turned into the first chapter. Then the second. The next thing I knew, I was actually enjoying the book, and finished it with great pleasure.

Anja is a scientist specializing in poisons and antidotes, who regularly takes small doses of poison to understand their effects and test out antidotes. She saves the lives of poisoned people, sometimes. This gets her enough fame that one day the king shows up, asking her to save his daughter, Snow, who he believes is being poisoned...

This is a very loose retelling of "Snow White," making clever use of elements like the apple, the mirror, and the poison.

Like the other books of hers I read, this one is set in an unambiguously magical world and/or has a portal to an unambiguously magical world, and has a heroine who doesn't believe in magic. I guess this is an obligatory Kingfisher thing? At least in this one, Anja doesn't deny that things are happening when they're clearly happening, she just thinks that maybe there is some underlying scientific explanation. This makes at least some sense, as she's a scientist. (Though in my opinion, science is basically a framework and a worldview, and a scientist in a magical world would be doing experiments to figure out how magic works, not denying its existence.) In any case, Anja does not act like an idiot or a flat earther, but pursues the clues she finds and doesn't deny what they suggest. She's kind of monomaniacal, but in a fun way.

Hemlock & Silver meshes multiple genres. It's not a horror novel or even particularly dark for a fantasy, but it has some genuinely scary moments. It's often very funny. And one aspect of the story, while technically fantasy, is so methodically worked out and involves so much science (optics) that it feels like science fiction. There's also a murder mystery, a romance, a surprisingly agreeable rooster, and a talking cat. It all works together quite nicely.

aurumcalendula

( Read more... )

jazzyjj posting in

awesomeers

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished!

Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

mossy_bench posting in

vidding

Title: Pay the Man
Fandom: Star Wars: The Clone Wars
Music: Pay the Man by Foster the People
Summary: The war that brought them together also broke them apart, sending them down paths that seem irreconcilable. Yet it’s only after they’ve parted ways that they may, at last, truly understand one another. / a Barriss/Ahsoka fanvid
Notes: This is my first fanvid, and I wrote up some reflections on it on my Dreamwidth! I would love to chat with more experienced vidders about the experience.
Warnings: Some flashing lights, fast cuts, cartoon violence

AO3 | DW | Tumblr | YouTube

torachan

1. Today was a pretty low key day. Aside from going out for a couple neighborhood walks, I didn't go anywhere, and didn't do much at home other than play Donkey Kong Bananza and read. It was nice to have a day to really just relax. And I still have one more day off!

2. I finished up another puzzle this morning. I bought this at the same time as the other Disney villains one, since it has mostly different villains. Like the other one, having each person separated in their own area (and with different enough colors in each) made it easy to sort and then work on each of those as if it were its own mini puzzle, so it went pretty fast.

3. I do not know how cats find this comfortable, but they all like sleeping this way from time to time, so I guess they do!

peaceful_sands posting in

bitesizedcleaning

Welcome to the September Stampede - the 10 minutes a day bite-size cleaning challenge that lasts from 1st to 30th September.

This is supposed to be a low-stress challenge - if you miss a day, it doesn't matter, if the day's challenge doesn't suit, repeat the day before or start on the next day's. With the exception of two days, the challenges should take about 10 minutes, if you want to spend longer that's great, judge by your personal available time and energy.

To make it easier to take part and not be held up by time differences and days when I'm not able to post, all challenges will be posted in the table below the cut to aid both those taking part and the daily poster.

The majority of the challenges should be adaptable e.g. clean a flat surface - desks, kitchen worktops, bathroom cabinets, floors, tables would all work. Similarly for clean a vertical surface, any of the following (and no doubt others) would count - windows, wall tiles, mirrors, doors. Cleaning a drawer can just as easily be a box of things or any other kind of container or a cupboard. You pick whether you work in one area of your home for the month/until it's finished or work in a different area each day. If you want to repeat a task e.g. cleaning a drawer until the full set of drawers is sorted and cleaned, go for it.

My biggest request for the month is that, whenever you can, you join in the chat - even if you haven't done the day's challenge come and cheer for others. We're here for the ups and downs this month so you can tell us when you're struggling as well as celebrate your successes. (If anyone thinks all this looks familiar, may I commend you on your memory and confess that yes, it is cribbed from last year's post :) )

( Daily Challenge Table shown below the cut )

And so today's challenge is to spend 10 minutes cleaning a flat surface.

Just to give you all the heads up - I'm not sure how often I'm going to be able to make a post so each time I will post the whole chart so that you can keep track of the challenges - feel free to comment on the most recent post at any stage with as many days progress as you can.

Good luck and have a great September.

rachelmanija

Poll #33561

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 118

View Respondents

Which books would you most like me to review?

View Answers

Hemlock & Silver, by T. Kingfisher. The first book of hers I've actually liked!
53 (44.9%)

Lone Women, by Victor LaValle. Fantastic cross-genre western/historical/horror/fantasy.
37 (31.4%)

Into the Raging Sea, by Rachel Slade. The best nonfiction shipwreck book I've read since Shadow Divers.
40 (33.9%)

The Blacktongue Thief/The Daughter's War, by Christopher Buehlman. Excellent dark fantasy.
27 (22.9%)

The Bewitching, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Three timelines, all involving witches.
17 (14.4%)

Mexican Gothic, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Exactly what it sounds like.
36 (30.5%)

Archangel (etc), by Sharon Shinn. Lost colony romantic SF about genetically engineered angels.
37 (31.4%)

We Live Here Now, by Sarah Pinborough. Really original haunted house novel.
36 (30.5%)

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, by Stephen Graham Jones. Outstanding indigenous take on "Interview with the Vampire."
49 (41.5%)

When the Angels Left the Old Country, by Sacha Lamb. A Jewish demon and angel leave the old country; excellent voice, very Jewish.
65 (55.1%)

Some other book I mentioned reading but failed to review.
4 (3.4%)

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I made a Community community

Yesterday I beat the Capra demon

Just One Thing (05 September 2025)

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Hemlock & Silver, by T. Kingfisher

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Just one thing: 02 September 2025

New Vid: Pay the Man - Barriss/Ahsoka, Star Wars: The Clone Wars

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September Stampede - Day One - Flat Surface (and Master List for the month)

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