October 15th, 2025
amusedposted by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mrs_sweetpeach at 01:48pm on 2025-10-15 under project 52
mrs_sweetpeach at 01:48pm on 2025-10-15 under project 52
sick
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Just finished: Girls Against God by Jenny Hval. I really don't know what to make of it. It's one of those very cool concepts—body horror! time travel! art! black metal! feminism!—that fails somewhat in execution but fails in interesting ways. It's divided into three parts, the first being a stream-of-consciousness rant by a girl who joins a Norwegian black metal band/aspiring witches coven a few years too late, after the scene has fallen apart, and her desire to rebel against the patriarchy and religion. By the end of the first section I had gone from "well, this is how teenage girls sound, this is how I sounded when I was a teenager" to vaguely annoyed. But then the second two, which are hallucinogenic body horror fever dreams, absolutely whip. I wanted the whole book to be like that.
Currently reading: The Magic Words: Writing Great Books for Children and Young Adults by Cheryl B. Klein. Why am I reading a book about writing YA when I have no desire to ever write YA, and knowing the thoughts of teenagers is something I strongly feel I should not have to do without financial compensation? Well, because I got into a discussion with another writer about craft books, and how I don't normally read them, and he recommended this and another one to change my mind about craft books. And also because I seem to have written myself into a situation where I have a teenage POV character, and despite being surrounded by kids all day, writing as one is a whole different ballgame.
So far it's pretty good—I rather like the brainstorming exercises at the end of each section, and the respect that the author has for really good children's/YA fiction (which does, of course, exist, and there's probably even more of it than when I was young, but I wasn't particularly interested in reading about teenagers when I was a teenager). It's 2017 though, so there's a lot more praise for a certain Formerly Beloved Children's Author than she deserves, so if you're going to read it, be warned.
Currently reading: The Magic Words: Writing Great Books for Children and Young Adults by Cheryl B. Klein. Why am I reading a book about writing YA when I have no desire to ever write YA, and knowing the thoughts of teenagers is something I strongly feel I should not have to do without financial compensation? Well, because I got into a discussion with another writer about craft books, and how I don't normally read them, and he recommended this and another one to change my mind about craft books. And also because I seem to have written myself into a situation where I have a teenage POV character, and despite being surrounded by kids all day, writing as one is a whole different ballgame.
So far it's pretty good—I rather like the brainstorming exercises at the end of each section, and the respect that the author has for really good children's/YA fiction (which does, of course, exist, and there's probably even more of it than when I was young, but I wasn't particularly interested in reading about teenagers when I was a teenager). It's 2017 though, so there's a lot more praise for a certain Formerly Beloved Children's Author than she deserves, so if you're going to read it, be warned.
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Two identical-looking envelopes came in the mail today from Health Equity/Wage Works. One contained information about open enrollment in Google's health plan. The other was information about signing up for COBRA coverage once the Google-paid insurance stops at the end of October.
(COBRA would cost a little over $2,000 per month in just premiums for the two of us. That's as much or more than the total estimated annual cost of marketplace plans we've seen. "You can keep your insurance when you leave your job if you pay the full cost" isn't a great deal when your employer used "we have fancy health insurance" as a way to attract employees.)
(COBRA would cost a little over $2,000 per month in just premiums for the two of us. That's as much or more than the total estimated annual cost of marketplace plans we've seen. "You can keep your insurance when you leave your job if you pay the full cost" isn't a great deal when your employer used "we have fancy health insurance" as a way to attract employees.)
quixotic
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posted by austin_dern at 12:10am on 2025-10-15 under silver bells
austin_dern at 12:10am on 2025-10-15 under silver bellsAnd today I close out Silver Bells pictures but I promise you there's narrative of recent events to come.
Good view here of the camera stand and professional photographers, and I guess one of the camera guys just had his iPhone with him too.
Oh, now, focusing on a dark tree, wonder what could be next ...
Yes, it's lit up! The tree was red that year to observe the ruby anniversary of Silver Bells. Took me a bit to realize that too.
The drone show helped underscore the 40 years-ness of this, though.
And another appearance by ruby slippers.
Santa appearing in the drones with his famous catchphrase, 'ho ho' (ding dongs were unavailable).
And now to the good part, the fireworks!
Just enough fireworks here to make it look like the capitol is sprinkling.
And here's a better white explosion behind the dome.
And a nice bursting of several fireworks. Also, can't help noticing the people on the third floor balcony of the capitol where they can't see a thing.
Close-up picture of the tree, seen from near the base.
The tree needed a less elaborate set of shims and supports to stay more or less upright this time!
Trivia: Bavaria and Austria switched to the Gregorian Calendar in October 1583, a year after the Pope had directed. Wurzburg, Münster, and Mainz all changed in November 1583, but picking different ten-day blocks to drop. Source: The Calendar: The 5000-Year Struggle to Align the Clock with the Heavens --- And What Happened to the Missing Ten Days, David Ewing Duncan.
Currently Reading: American Scientist, July - August 2025, Editor Fenella Saunders.
PS: What's Going On In Alley Oop? Why are they getting rid of the dinosaurs? July - October 2025 and it's a great question, why ever get rid of the dinosaur people?
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October 14th, 2025
posted by twistedchick at 01:24pm on 2025-10-14
twistedchick at 01:24pm on 2025-10-14Okay, maybe that's a bit grandiose, but that's what it feels like.
For about a decade I've been taking the standard blood thinner, coumadin, to help ward away the possibility of stroke, which my mother and grandmother had at various degrees of severity. It was no big deal for years -- the strength of the pill was offset by eating a certain amount of various green veggies, so I'd take the pill and eat some broccoli and all was well.
Then I got COVID last January. A relatively light case, as they go, but the longterm effect was that it magnified the effect of the pill to the point where I had a lot of bruising, including bruises and swelling on my face. I looked like I'd gone up against Mike Tyson. So my dosage was dropped considerably, and so was the amount of greenery I needed to eat.
At this point it's half a leaf of romaine, or two tiny baby kale, or maybe 3 pieces of dark green spring lettuce, or less than a third of the top of a stalk of broccoli.
I haven't had a full serving of a green vegetable since January and I'm getting hungry for them.
So I asked the pharmacist I deal with about it, and she didn't want to hear about it. She said if I wasn't getting enough greens she could increase my dose so I could have them, totally ignoring the whole Mike Tyson bruises situation. I had my INR bloodtest, which determines how well the greenery is doing at offsetting the coumadin, and it was fine.
Then I got a call from a different pharmacist, who was horrified at the idea that I was feeling undernourished. He has changed me to a different prescription (sorry, can't recall the name), which does not have food requirements -- I can eat what I want. It's taken with a full glass of water twice a day, probably with a small snack as well, but that's no problem. He asked about everything I take, flagged one supplement as possibly a problem (I can drop it) and set it up so I should get it in the mail in a day or so. When it arrives I will need to go without either for 72 hours, then start.
And no more blood tests. My arms are already feeling better for that!
I'm just looking forward so much to having a really nice big salad!
For about a decade I've been taking the standard blood thinner, coumadin, to help ward away the possibility of stroke, which my mother and grandmother had at various degrees of severity. It was no big deal for years -- the strength of the pill was offset by eating a certain amount of various green veggies, so I'd take the pill and eat some broccoli and all was well.
Then I got COVID last January. A relatively light case, as they go, but the longterm effect was that it magnified the effect of the pill to the point where I had a lot of bruising, including bruises and swelling on my face. I looked like I'd gone up against Mike Tyson. So my dosage was dropped considerably, and so was the amount of greenery I needed to eat.
At this point it's half a leaf of romaine, or two tiny baby kale, or maybe 3 pieces of dark green spring lettuce, or less than a third of the top of a stalk of broccoli.
I haven't had a full serving of a green vegetable since January and I'm getting hungry for them.
So I asked the pharmacist I deal with about it, and she didn't want to hear about it. She said if I wasn't getting enough greens she could increase my dose so I could have them, totally ignoring the whole Mike Tyson bruises situation. I had my INR bloodtest, which determines how well the greenery is doing at offsetting the coumadin, and it was fine.
Then I got a call from a different pharmacist, who was horrified at the idea that I was feeling undernourished. He has changed me to a different prescription (sorry, can't recall the name), which does not have food requirements -- I can eat what I want. It's taken with a full glass of water twice a day, probably with a small snack as well, but that's no problem. He asked about everything I take, flagged one supplement as possibly a problem (I can drop it) and set it up so I should get it in the mail in a day or so. When it arrives I will need to go without either for 72 hours, then start.
And no more blood tests. My arms are already feeling better for that!
I'm just looking forward so much to having a really nice big salad!
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I've been using Ubuntu in one form or another since 2010 but I'm not as satisfied with it lately. It's pushing SNAP packaging on everyone and it's just as responsive as I remember. So after trying it out on some of my other systems I've switched to Linux Mint.
Instead of wiping my drive, I just installed a new one and did a clean install. I pulled some files from the old drive with a USB adapter but left a lot of cruft behind. I'll stash the old drive away as back up for the time being as SSDs are cheap nowadays. Installation was smooth and easy.
I like the Cinnamon desktop and the general layout and feel of the system. There's still some stuff I need to tweak but over all, it's been a good experience. If you're frustrated with Windows I recommend switching to Linux Mint.
Instead of wiping my drive, I just installed a new one and did a clean install. I pulled some files from the old drive with a USB adapter but left a lot of cruft behind. I'll stash the old drive away as back up for the time being as SSDs are cheap nowadays. Installation was smooth and easy.
I like the Cinnamon desktop and the general layout and feel of the system. There's still some stuff I need to tweak but over all, it's been a good experience. If you're frustrated with Windows I recommend switching to Linux Mint.
pleasedposted by sorcyress at 06:27am on 2025-10-14
sorcyress at 06:27am on 2025-10-14Had a _really_ lovely weekend with SamSam's family. Highlights:
*Nine of us biked to the beach together, me taking the tail with my giant ass-cargo bike. The roads were mostly dirt, sand, and gravel, it was a terrible choice, I had a wonderful time. Seeing the ocean was real good and I liked also watching the hermit crabs run around in the tide pool --there were so many!
*Later four of us biked to the cranberry bog to pick berries. This would've worked better had we not gradually realized that every batch of berries was comorbid with a small little section of poison ivy. We rinsed our hands and managed to all avoid getting rashes, but then we had to decide what to do with the berries we had already gathered. Sam was first to get rid of theirs, and tossed them into the pond. YES GOOD SUCH GREAT NOISES, the rest of us immediately followed.
*Ben and I managed to drag four total beginners through ringing Erin on bodies. Ringing on bodies is _the best_ and I had forgotten how much easier it is to do with dancers, and that's so good. I took some notes about how to do it, so hopefully that will go better in the future. I still have not yet internalized what direction to set up/start plain hunt though (we walked the wrong way to begin and had to switch the orientation of the set)
*Elanor and different-Ben wrote a little fifteen minute play for us all to perform. I believe there was only one person who was consistently in the audience, the rest of us all kept running up and down to/from the stage for our parts. There was one table-read and zero rehearsals. My script got caught in the curtain while it was opening so I had to awkwardly lean behind me to look at my scene-partner's. It was very stupid and delightful! It felt _excessively_ Melendy (honestly, a lot of the weekend did, and now I'm craving rereading a bunch of those).
*After, Steve taught us a game at a pool table that involved trying to roll the cue ball (by hand) to hit the single other ball before that other one stopped moving. Once you got them to hit, it was the next person's turn to grab the cue ball from wherever it was, and send it off. We played largely non-competitive and got eight of us going in a little cycle for a while. Extremely satisfying game!
*I played Crokinole yesterday morning with Sam. I'm _rubbish_ at it, but it's a very tactilely satisfying game so now I want to play more. I wonder if I can become a secret crokinole sharp using common household items?
*Thom and Liz bundled me and Laurel off after dinner on Saturday to Plan Their Wedding Dance. It was very cute to be in that space with people I love and doing something I have a lot of expertise in *and* bouncing that expertise off someone else with a lot of expertise. I think it'll be a nice little dance! There's gonna be a small group of Scottish dances for people who know what they're doing first, and it was _extremely_ funny for Thom to name dances, me or Laurel to go "wait how's that one go?" and Liz to immediately start singing the tune, which is not...*not* how they go, but is absolutely not what either of the callers were requesting.
There's probably more, but that's the big things I can remember this morning. Now it's time to head to work and do some of the grading I completely neglected.
~Sor
MOOP!
*Nine of us biked to the beach together, me taking the tail with my giant ass-cargo bike. The roads were mostly dirt, sand, and gravel, it was a terrible choice, I had a wonderful time. Seeing the ocean was real good and I liked also watching the hermit crabs run around in the tide pool --there were so many!
*Later four of us biked to the cranberry bog to pick berries. This would've worked better had we not gradually realized that every batch of berries was comorbid with a small little section of poison ivy. We rinsed our hands and managed to all avoid getting rashes, but then we had to decide what to do with the berries we had already gathered. Sam was first to get rid of theirs, and tossed them into the pond. YES GOOD SUCH GREAT NOISES, the rest of us immediately followed.
*Ben and I managed to drag four total beginners through ringing Erin on bodies. Ringing on bodies is _the best_ and I had forgotten how much easier it is to do with dancers, and that's so good. I took some notes about how to do it, so hopefully that will go better in the future. I still have not yet internalized what direction to set up/start plain hunt though (we walked the wrong way to begin and had to switch the orientation of the set)
*Elanor and different-Ben wrote a little fifteen minute play for us all to perform. I believe there was only one person who was consistently in the audience, the rest of us all kept running up and down to/from the stage for our parts. There was one table-read and zero rehearsals. My script got caught in the curtain while it was opening so I had to awkwardly lean behind me to look at my scene-partner's. It was very stupid and delightful! It felt _excessively_ Melendy (honestly, a lot of the weekend did, and now I'm craving rereading a bunch of those).
*After, Steve taught us a game at a pool table that involved trying to roll the cue ball (by hand) to hit the single other ball before that other one stopped moving. Once you got them to hit, it was the next person's turn to grab the cue ball from wherever it was, and send it off. We played largely non-competitive and got eight of us going in a little cycle for a while. Extremely satisfying game!
*I played Crokinole yesterday morning with Sam. I'm _rubbish_ at it, but it's a very tactilely satisfying game so now I want to play more. I wonder if I can become a secret crokinole sharp using common household items?
*Thom and Liz bundled me and Laurel off after dinner on Saturday to Plan Their Wedding Dance. It was very cute to be in that space with people I love and doing something I have a lot of expertise in *and* bouncing that expertise off someone else with a lot of expertise. I think it'll be a nice little dance! There's gonna be a small group of Scottish dances for people who know what they're doing first, and it was _extremely_ funny for Thom to name dances, me or Laurel to go "wait how's that one go?" and Liz to immediately start singing the tune, which is not...*not* how they go, but is absolutely not what either of the callers were requesting.
There's probably more, but that's the big things I can remember this morning. Now it's time to head to work and do some of the grading I completely neglected.
~Sor
MOOP!
inspiredThe dye that we hoped might help us tell the brown mice apart has worn off, so we're back to thinking one of them kind of looks bigger than the other so that's going to tell us which is which? Maybe it'll be more obvious as we have more time with them.
Meanwhile Crystal, the elder mouse, I watched monkeying around climbing the wire mesh of their cage so she's at least feeling young yet.
That's not a lot to say about what's going on today so please take a double helping of pictures from the Silver Bells Electric Light Parade.
Hager Fox, which does heating and air conditioning, was one of multiple floats to have a Grinch.
And here's the big inflatable Hager Fox!
And here's a festival queen of something or other with plenty of lights around.
The giant rotating head of Ransom E Olds watches the crowd.
And then here's a Wizard of Oz float for whoever did that.
The slippers seem bigger than they appear on-screen.
And this robotty figure is somehow tied to ZapZone, which the pinball map tells me is the nearest place to play the Hot Wheels pinball machine.
Here's eternal favorites the Petoskey Steel Drum Band moving in! You can tell I took a video because the aspect ratio is changed here.
Now imagine this picture but the whole truck is bouncing up and down with the beat.
A small flurry blows through and does nothing to impair anything but maybe one picture of the night.
Sad to say Metro Lansing's only got the one roller derby team but at least it has a purple roller skate float.
And here's a glowing cow. I think this is the one for local convenience store chain Quality Dairy.
Trivia: Señor Wences performed as a juggler until the management of his theater (the Casino Theatre in Buenos Aires) decreed that only acts not requiring musical accompaniment could appear, so he adapted a ventriloquy routine he had last performed in school eighteen years before. Source: The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville, Anthony Slide. He'd picked up juggling as a way to rebuild his hand strength after a bullfighting accident.
Currently Reading: BBC History, July 2025. Editor Rob Attar.
posted by ![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png)
wapsisquare_feed at 01:51am on 2025-10-14
wapsisquare_feed at 01:51am on 2025-10-14Original art up for grabs here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/monica-jack-o-up-141163750
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October 13th, 2025
posted by julian at 09:29pm on 2025-10-13
julian at 09:29pm on 2025-10-13So a week before we move is a *great* time to have the fire alarms go off, credibly. (That is, all of them at once, ours and the upstairs neighbors', going off at once, which is probably required in the fire code by now but isn't how I'm used to them behaving.) I checked in with the upstairs guy, and neither of us saw smoke or anything likely to cause anything dangerous, but Calluna and I nonetheless got the cat into the carrier and go bag and purses outside, Just In Case. And called 911.
The fire guys (who have a fire station about 3 blocks from us so we get a hell of a lot of Fire Truck Noise) arrived just as the upstairs guy was solving the problem by starting to take down the smoke detectors, one by one. First one he tried was the relevant issue, which makes sense given as it was date-stamped 2007. (...yes.)
Lessons taken from this: a) I don't think the upstairs guy had the right approach to the problem -- that is, I think the fire guys should do that kind of conclusion making, and b) I need to do some practicing for an actual fire, clearly, because I dithered too much. Since I want to make sure we have reasonable fire exits in our upcoming basement (that's easy, there's huge windows that open and you can just crawl out) and the upcoming 2nd floor (not sure there), that'll just fold into the consideration.
Anyway, not to bury the lede, but we bought a house in Pepperell (on the border of NH, as opposed to where we are now on the border of RI), it's cool, we're having the movers next Monday, will quite likely have to do a smallish truck (or van) the weekend after for remaining stuff, dislike packing vociferously, but! we can finally get the Stuff From Storage from when we stuck it there like 5 years ago.
More about this soon, or, as is more likely given me, more much later.
The fire guys (who have a fire station about 3 blocks from us so we get a hell of a lot of Fire Truck Noise) arrived just as the upstairs guy was solving the problem by starting to take down the smoke detectors, one by one. First one he tried was the relevant issue, which makes sense given as it was date-stamped 2007. (...yes.)
Lessons taken from this: a) I don't think the upstairs guy had the right approach to the problem -- that is, I think the fire guys should do that kind of conclusion making, and b) I need to do some practicing for an actual fire, clearly, because I dithered too much. Since I want to make sure we have reasonable fire exits in our upcoming basement (that's easy, there's huge windows that open and you can just crawl out) and the upcoming 2nd floor (not sure there), that'll just fold into the consideration.
Anyway, not to bury the lede, but we bought a house in Pepperell (on the border of NH, as opposed to where we are now on the border of RI), it's cool, we're having the movers next Monday, will quite likely have to do a smallish truck (or van) the weekend after for remaining stuff, dislike packing vociferously, but! we can finally get the Stuff From Storage from when we stuck it there like 5 years ago.
More about this soon, or, as is more likely given me, more much later.
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posted by watersword at 07:29pm on 2025-10-13
watersword at 07:29pm on 2025-10-13I have not accomplished much on my staycation, but I did spend Saturday at the Preservation Society's Festival of Historic House (this year's theme was modernism), and thoroughly enjoyed myself. I did not get to all of the houses on the tour, alas, but if this nor'easter ever clears up, I am going to spend an afternoon gawping at the houses which were marked as "outside viewing only" on the map, and which I ignored in favor of looking at interiors.
The stained t-shirt needs to be mended before I can put it away for winter, so that's this week's project. First I gotta suffer through split stitch, then satin stitch, then French fucking knots, and then I get to have fun with fishbone stitch, which is one of my favorites if not my favorite.
I am making rice pudding with the rice I undercooked, with vanilla and dried sour cherries, and there are fresh cranberries at the grocery store, which means it is properly fall, and I am going to make a cranberry ricotta cake and feed it to everyone I know.
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posted by austin_dern at 12:10am on 2025-10-13 under silver bells
austin_dern at 12:10am on 2025-10-13 under silver bellsGot my panel submission in for Motor City Furry Con 2026, so, let's celebrate with a dozen pictures of the next event in my photo reel, which is, Silver Bells In The City. The nighttime parade and fireworks show and lighting of the State Tree, not the pinball tournament. That's Silver Balls in the City and you'll see that later.
Walking up to the parade spot. The tiger there is mascot for the Detroit Tigers, doing some crowd work before things started. (The tower on the right of the photo is about where the local ballpark is.)
Pedestrian bridge and lights over the Grand River. Note the building that looks like it should be in a Batman opening sequence behind it.
Local news guy teasing the parade for the 5 pm newscast. Behind him (from our point of view) is the plaque marking the 1937 Lansing 'Labor Holiday', that is, general strike.
Parade started! Here's the Grand Marshall, who I guess was in the Olympics.
And after that, the Detroit Tiger!
Marching band, here with the flag-twirlers in reindeer costumes. Can you spot the kid having a Furry Awakening just behind the yellow tape?
But what we really want in Silver Bells are the vehicles made up like bugs, so here's one of them.
And here's the new-model Cata-Pillar bus.
The Old Newsboys, who as ever do ... something or other ... raising enough money each year with their spoof newspaper to put out next year's spoof newspaper? I guess?
Some of the parade floats get nicely overbuilt like this.
Airport rescue vehicle surrounded in lights. As ever, I'm glad there wasn't a problem at the airport that needed them.
And here's a nice float with a reindeer depicted as the size of the house, like you hope to see.
Trivia: Michael Ventris's 1952 deciphering of Linear B is the first and only case of ``internal decipherment'' of a language's writing, based wholly on the statistical analysis of a script's signs, without reliance on bilingual or trilingual texts. Ventris was an architect. Source: The Greatest Invention: A History of the World in Nine Mysterious Scripts, Silvia Ferrara.
Currently Reading: BBC History, July 2025. Editor Rob Attar. It's a magazine I picked up for whenever we got to the beach, which we kept putting off, and then when we actually spent our day at the beach I didn't read anything.
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October 12th, 2025
posted by wapsisquare_feed at 11:45pm on 2025-10-12
wapsisquare_feed at 11:45pm on 2025-10-12
Hey folks! I’m excited and nervous to be back. I’ve been dealing with anxiety and depression, and have been working with a counselor. I know lots of you have greatly missed my comic, and I’m hoping my stories and characters will help fill the hole that was left when I stopped the daily comic. I’m shooting for M-W-F so not to overwhelm myself. Where I’ll need your help is for all folks who are able, please consider joining my Patreon at the $2 level. If everyone reading this can do that, I will easily have enough to pay all the bills, and groceries per month, and can concentrate on getting the comic produced.
https://www.patreon.com/pablowapsi
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posted by twistedchick at 04:06pm on 2025-10-12
twistedchick at 04:06pm on 2025-10-12I got a paper letter from the Registry of Motor Vehicles yesterday, telling me it was time to renew my state ID card, and a billing email from Panix this morning.
I took care of both of those online. Both were straightforward, although the state required me to check more boxes--which makes sense, because Panix doesn't care where I live, am registered to vote, or also have email with other providers. Interestingly, the RMV noted that I'm already registered as an organ donor--but that, unlike voter registration, doesn't depend on them having my current address.
I took care of both of those online. Both were straightforward, although the state required me to check more boxes--which makes sense, because Panix doesn't care where I live, am registered to vote, or also have email with other providers. Interestingly, the RMV noted that I'm already registered as an organ donor--but that, unlike voter registration, doesn't depend on them having my current address.
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Athena has a trait we haven't had to deal with in pet rabbits for a long while. She chews cords. Stephen outgrew this as his body declined. Columbo was indifferent to them. Penelope we never worked out her policy about cords and wires. Sunshine would move them out of her way. Roger ignored them unless they were in his way. But Athena, she chews them. This has damaged a lamp cord and an extension cord and we're not looking forward to how we'll have to protect the wire into our new fireplace's fan. But it's been mostly a minor hassle. And then last week she got hold of one of the wires leading to a TV speaker, a wire that ran behind her cage for the speaker on top of her hutch, and snipped it.
So first question, where to get more audio cable now that Radio Shack is a bunch of fading YouTube clips? Meijer's, turns out, so that's okay. There was the annoyance of moving the rabbit's pen, and the TV, and the stereo tower to get at where things connect. We set this up and bundled the wires in a way that doesn't really have enough slack for this sort of change-out. Also there was the annoyance of finding a wire stripper; I would give up on this and just use a straight razor. But with a little trying I got enough rubber off the wires and a solid enough connection between the wires that I could put everything back where it belonged. Apart from draping the wire away from bunny's cage.
With that done, the other speaker died.
So, first diagnostic. Taking the speaker over, the one on the bookshelf, and plugging it into the hutch's wires showed the speaker worked. The problem was, apparently, the wires leading to that and I had to work up the gumption to pull everything back out again where I could get at it. Swapping the wires for the two outputs swapped what speaker gave me sound, so it was the wire's fault. This particular wire goes through the floorboards, runs through the basement a bit, gets spliced into another wire, and that wire goes back up through the floorboard to the bookshelf speaker. Did I have enough cable to replace all that wire? Yes. Did I want to? Very much no.
So I tried snipping a little off the wires and giving the hutch speaker a fresh connection into the stereo output. That didn't work, but snipping a bit more off did, which is very good because I was on the brink of trying to figure how to replace the cable going into the basement at least and that would not have been any fun at all. And, now, we've got working stereo speakers again, which is nice.
Also nice? Today I close out our Bronner's trip. Want to make guesses about what's to come next in my photo roll?
Also in the museum are a collection of Nativity figures from around the world.
There's only a selection of them on display --- the sign promises they have over five hundred from fifty nations --- but I can't help seeing that bottom left figure except as Woodstock.
Yes, we closed the place out, but we paused for photos near the exit with Santa and Illuminated Reindeer.
And then we went to the Cheese Haus, where this pun made bunnyhugger declare they were never friends.
Here's the big cheese figure outside Cheese Haus, though.
And finally, when we got home, bunnyhugger opened presents, the most delicate of them being this turkey sculpture to replace one my parents sent, hoping to replace terra-cotta turkey that broke in storage years ago.
Trivia: In the maps for his 1513 edition of Ptolemy's Geography, Martin Waldseemüller, who had given the name ``America'' to the two new continents in his 1507 world map, did not give the continents names (labelling them ``Terra Incognita'') or show them clearly separated from Asia (as he had in 1507). In his 1516 map he labelled North America ``The Land of Cuba --- Part of Asia'' and South America ``Brasilia, or the Land of the Parrots''. Source: The Fourth Part of the World: The Race to the Ends of the Earth, and the Epic Story of the Map That Gave America Its Name, Toby Lester.
Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 74: The Slippisippi Riverboat Race, Ralph Stein, Bill Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle. So for the big race Poopdeck Pappy sneaks a rocket engine on board an old-timey riverboat but it's okay because the people they're racing snuck jet engines on theirs. Just so you know the level the stories are at here.
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October 11th, 2025
“This is a party that is spiraling. And I think they’ve lost the debate, Kayleigh, and because they’ve loss the debate they are going to resort to violence. And it’s awful to see. It’s something that I don’t want for my country."
Is this the party that proclaimed if they couldn't win at the ballot box they're resort to the bullet box? That was the Republican party, not the Democrats.
"It’s something that I want to see resolved, and the only way to resolve it are for Democrats to say enough. How many more of us need to die, Kayleigh?
How about some gun control? That would help.
“How many more times do we need to see our president shot in the head?"
By a right wing nut job.
"How many times do I need to see Charlie Kirks?"
By someone more hateful then him?
"How many times we need ICE facilities shot at?"
By right wing nut jobs.
"How many Christian children praying in churches do we need a see slaughtered?"
By a right wing nut job.
"The Democrat Party and leadership of the Democrat party need to say enough is enough."
You know, the Democrats keep pushing for gun control, it is the Republicans who keep opposing it.
“Unfortunately, when you’re godless and when you have nothing else to ground you, you will resort to violence when you believe you’ve lost the argument."
See 'bullet box' above.
"So it’s terrible to see. We need to fix it.” – Far-right podcaster Benny Johnson, today on Fox News, going on to rant about returning the nation to Jesus, presumably by force."
Mr. Johnson, it is the member of YOUR party who are the violent ones. Most mass shootings are done by right wing nut jobs. Not trans people, not atheists, not drag queens. Cis White Men. The number prove it. The person you need to talk to about the violence is in the mirror.
Is this the party that proclaimed if they couldn't win at the ballot box they're resort to the bullet box? That was the Republican party, not the Democrats.
"It’s something that I want to see resolved, and the only way to resolve it are for Democrats to say enough. How many more of us need to die, Kayleigh?
How about some gun control? That would help.
“How many more times do we need to see our president shot in the head?"
By a right wing nut job.
"How many times do I need to see Charlie Kirks?"
By someone more hateful then him?
"How many times we need ICE facilities shot at?"
By right wing nut jobs.
"How many Christian children praying in churches do we need a see slaughtered?"
By a right wing nut job.
"The Democrat Party and leadership of the Democrat party need to say enough is enough."
You know, the Democrats keep pushing for gun control, it is the Republicans who keep opposing it.
“Unfortunately, when you’re godless and when you have nothing else to ground you, you will resort to violence when you believe you’ve lost the argument."
See 'bullet box' above.
"So it’s terrible to see. We need to fix it.” – Far-right podcaster Benny Johnson, today on Fox News, going on to rant about returning the nation to Jesus, presumably by force."
Mr. Johnson, it is the member of YOUR party who are the violent ones. Most mass shootings are done by right wing nut jobs. Not trans people, not atheists, not drag queens. Cis White Men. The number prove it. The person you need to talk to about the violence is in the mirror.
annoyed It's been a couple weeks since we got the three mouse sisters so we finally had time to take them to the vet. By we I mean bunnyhugger, although I did help in catching the mice to put them in their travel carrier. Work, you know. Also in the failed attempt to mark one of two near-twins with a bit of food dye so we'd have a hope of telling them apart. We got our fingers food-dyed green.
We also caught and brought in Crystal, the oldest mouse whom we've had since February. If the pet store was right about her year-old age she's now nineteen months which is getting into old age and while she seemed overwhelmed by three barely-mature mice she doesn't seem quite doddering. But we were also worried she was scratching suspiciously much. And bunnyhugger briefly worried she might be pregnant because of how fat she looked one night. Nope; she's just a little fatter than when we got her in February and compared to the small young mice she just looked big. And we can be confident the young mice are female; we've seen their nipples (which male mice do not get).
So, the mice are all healthy, the oldest included. There's no specific reason to suspect mites or anything, but they're getting a dose of parasite-killer as best we can deliver. Which is not easy because it's about putting 0.1 ml on the skin of their shoulders and do you know how hard it is to get access to mouse shoulders? We did our best and hope it's okay enough.
Also, our older mouse is, despite her advanced age, showing no signs of cancer. That's a great stroke of luck; maybe we'll get to have her a full year yet.
You've heard about our pets, so now, you get a half-dozen pictures of Bronner's. You're welcome!
In case you're wondering if you have enough porcelain figures in your life, here's the Bronner's collection.
The collection only promises to be figures through 2003 which maybe reflects when the original collector died (or lost interest) but I choose to believe it reflects the original collector being so disgusted with what Precious Moments was doing they had to stop.
In the little museum they have this original, 1955, catalogue of Christmas stuff. No, your eyes don't deceive you: none of the brochure's photographs say 'Christmas' anywhere on them. (The snowmen are holding books that read 'Noël', though.)
One of their old pianos along with their 1951 Peace On Earth - Good Will To Men shield, billed as their first outdoor decoration. The sign next to it reads 'Please! Do not ask for appointments by telephone', which is a strange thing to request of people.
And a Detroit-made organ plus some other outdoor signs celebrating the holiday.
A little nativity scene and the cash register that taught Wally Bronner how to cash. That sliding handle for the pennies is wild.
Trivia: After a cholera outbreak in 1849, blamed on filthy living conditions including feral animals, New York City (then just Manhattan) ordered free-roaming pigs off the city's streets. By 1860 the area below 86th Street had been cleared as a pig-free zone. Source: Down To Earth: Nature's Role in American History, Ted Steinberg. Upperclass New Yorkers had been trying for a half-century-plus to get pigs off the streets, although that the pigs cleaned up food waste and became food for their often-impoverished owners made it hard for prohibitions to stick.
Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 74: The Slippisippi Riverboat Race, Ralph Stein, Bill Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.
PS: What's Going On In Thimble Theatre? Why did Sea Hag send Popeye to Mississippi? August - October 2025 for some even more Popeye writing-about.
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October 10th, 2025
posted by sorcyress at 11:12pm on 2025-10-10
sorcyress at 11:12pm on 2025-10-10I am at Pinew-wait no I'm not. But I am on Long Pond! Which is pretty fucking good! I like being in the woods even when they are not quite perfectly ~my~ woods. Also, let's be real, of the crowd of people here, half of them are the camp folks I would most want to be hanging with, and the other half are people who are beloved by the first half. It's good!
Getting here was AN ADVENTURE. It was also slightly more of an adventure than it should've been, because I foolishly trusted SamSam to give me accurate directions to camp. To be fair, they were accurate, they just included a part that they hadn't actually traveled on before and it was...uh...I was not excited to have been the guinea pig for that. It was a "no trespassing" private little back trail that was not wide, mostly rocks, and the parts that weren't rocks was sand. About 80% of it might've been fun if I was riding it on my regular bike without a load.
I was riding my xtracycle, fully packed and loaded. I wasn't, like, at weight capacity or anything, but I did fill the volume pretty well. It's a nice bike but also _no_ it is _absolutely not_ a mountain bike. Yikes.
But the rest of the trip! The paved roads were wonderful! The hills were...okay, the hills were not wonderful *but* except for the being illegally in the woods, I did ace the ride. No walking up anything, no feet on the ground while in motion.
It's certainly the heaviest trip I've done in a long time. Probably since the time I went bike-camping with jere7my? Which I think was in the year I got my new bike which was probably......2012? I should probably go on loaded-bike trips more often, but like, that's part of the point of having a cargo bike! Especially having a cargo bike and the mbta!
Got here near the end of folks eating dinner and joined in and have spent the rest of the evening talking and laughing and drawing in my sketchbook while other people knit (sooooo much knitting happening!). It's very pleasant! I am having a pleasing adventure.
(We'll figure out the getting home bonus challenges when it's actually Monday and I can see how bad the nor'easter actually is) .
So that's my weekend set. Hope y'all are having nice plans as well.
~Sor
MOOP!
Getting here was AN ADVENTURE. It was also slightly more of an adventure than it should've been, because I foolishly trusted SamSam to give me accurate directions to camp. To be fair, they were accurate, they just included a part that they hadn't actually traveled on before and it was...uh...I was not excited to have been the guinea pig for that. It was a "no trespassing" private little back trail that was not wide, mostly rocks, and the parts that weren't rocks was sand. About 80% of it might've been fun if I was riding it on my regular bike without a load.
I was riding my xtracycle, fully packed and loaded. I wasn't, like, at weight capacity or anything, but I did fill the volume pretty well. It's a nice bike but also _no_ it is _absolutely not_ a mountain bike. Yikes.
But the rest of the trip! The paved roads were wonderful! The hills were...okay, the hills were not wonderful *but* except for the being illegally in the woods, I did ace the ride. No walking up anything, no feet on the ground while in motion.
It's certainly the heaviest trip I've done in a long time. Probably since the time I went bike-camping with jere7my? Which I think was in the year I got my new bike which was probably......2012? I should probably go on loaded-bike trips more often, but like, that's part of the point of having a cargo bike! Especially having a cargo bike and the mbta!
Got here near the end of folks eating dinner and joined in and have spent the rest of the evening talking and laughing and drawing in my sketchbook while other people knit (sooooo much knitting happening!). It's very pleasant! I am having a pleasing adventure.
(We'll figure out the getting home bonus challenges when it's actually Monday and I can see how bad the nor'easter actually is) .
So that's my weekend set. Hope y'all are having nice plans as well.
~Sor
MOOP!
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adrian_turtle made a leek and squash risotto for supper, and it was very good. It contains short-grain rice, broth, leeks, butternut squash, arugula, and I think garlic powder. It was topped with candied pecans, some pieces of squash, and leek-flavored oil. Most of the squash was cooked with the rice, to dissolve and make the risotto rich and creamy. The combination of ingredients gave the dish plenty of umami; I didn't miss the cheese that's typically added to risotto.Jotting this down now before I forget, I may get Adrian to provide more details or a recipe link later.
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posted by revlyncox_feed at 05:10pm on 2025-10-10
revlyncox_feed at 05:10pm on 2025-10-10“Dinosaur by the Highway” was a service delivered to The Unitarian Society in East Brunswick on January 26, 2025, by Rev. Lyn Cox.
The stories we develop and carry through our lives can affect how we interpret new experiences and how we respond to them. We can’t change the past, but we can reinterpret the meaning we gain from our experiences. This is true for our personal stories as individuals as well as for our collective stories as families and communities. The poignant, the joyful, and the bizarre events we encounter are threads in weaving together a new way forward.
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Here is a recording of a story and song about John Murray (one of the first Universalist ministers&h
posted by revlyncox_feed at 05:02pm on 2025-10-10
revlyncox_feed at 05:02pm on 2025-10-10Here is a recording of a story and song about John Murray (one of the first Universalist ministers in America), the winds of change, and the gospel of love. I offered this story and song back in January, but getting the editing done took awhile.
This story and song go with the sermon “Dinosaur by the Highway.”
You can learn more about John Murray and Thomas Potter from the Murray Grove Retreat Center.
The song, “To Preach the Gospel of Love,” was written by Lisa Romantum Schwartz and set to a folk tune, “The Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night.” The lyricist gave permission for the use of this song in UU congregations through the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Worship Web database.
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annoyed There are a lot of very important things to listen to this week about, specifically, your legal rights if you are American or step past the regime's artificial borders. But look, my job here is partially to entertain you in dark times, so that's what I'm doing this week. Check out No Gods No Mayors' episode on Mel Lastman because it's hilarious.
Mel Lastman was in his last years as mayor when I moved to Toronto, but a lot of what he did continues to influence the city today. He was a forerunner to the Big Fun Strongman archetype that we saw in Rob Ford and to a lesser extent, Doug Ford and Trump, the kind of guy who will answer his phone personally but propose jailing children and implement policies that lead to a lot of dead homeless people and the kind of long-term infrastructure problems that won't affect him, because he's dead, but definitely affect me, a TTC commuter. Lastman was definitely towards the more comedic and less sociopathic end of that archetype and the episode is fucking hilarious, especially the long-running feud with Howard Moscoe. (Side note: I'm sure he had his issues but I had no idea how funny Moscoe is. He comes off as an absolute chad in this episode.)
My two quibbles with this episode: 1) In hindsight, and after knowing some army guys, I think Lastman was right to call the tanks into Toronto during the 1999 snowstorm. 2) It doesn't go into detail about the funniest thing about Lastman's illegitimate sons, which was that he denied he'd fathered them and the paper immediately published a picture of them, leaving zero doubt about their paternity.
Also there's some fun trans humour at the beginning, some of which I don't understand because I'm not an anime person, but it's pretty cute.
Mel Lastman was in his last years as mayor when I moved to Toronto, but a lot of what he did continues to influence the city today. He was a forerunner to the Big Fun Strongman archetype that we saw in Rob Ford and to a lesser extent, Doug Ford and Trump, the kind of guy who will answer his phone personally but propose jailing children and implement policies that lead to a lot of dead homeless people and the kind of long-term infrastructure problems that won't affect him, because he's dead, but definitely affect me, a TTC commuter. Lastman was definitely towards the more comedic and less sociopathic end of that archetype and the episode is fucking hilarious, especially the long-running feud with Howard Moscoe. (Side note: I'm sure he had his issues but I had no idea how funny Moscoe is. He comes off as an absolute chad in this episode.)
My two quibbles with this episode: 1) In hindsight, and after knowing some army guys, I think Lastman was right to call the tanks into Toronto during the 1999 snowstorm. 2) It doesn't go into detail about the funniest thing about Lastman's illegitimate sons, which was that he denied he'd fathered them and the paper immediately published a picture of them, leaving zero doubt about their paternity.
Also there's some fun trans humour at the beginning, some of which I don't understand because I'm not an anime person, but it's pretty cute.
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My other daily writing project has long been a third-tier comics blog but this week I managed to be almost nothing but comics, plus two big doses of somebody else's writing. Here's what you missed if you weren't already reading it. Spoiler: lot of comic strips, so you might enjoy that.
- MiSTed: The Tale of Jimmy Rabbit, Part 8: A Fast Runner
- Since I Can't Say Anything Original About _Peanuts_
- Statistics Saturday: Some Days Charlie Brown Did Not Kick The Football
- Robert Benchley: Let's Not Dance This!
- It's Nice to See _Skippy_ Doing Something for the 75th Anniversary of _Peanuts_ Too
- What's Going On In Olive and Popeye? Did _Olive and Popeye_ and _Eye Lie Popeye_ end? July - October 2025
- What's Going On In Eye Lie Popeye? Who is this ‘Susie'? July - August 2025
- MiSTed: The Tale of Jimmy Rabbit, Part 9: The Great Race
Now that you've been briefly somewhat entertained by all that please enjoy a dozen pictures of Bronner's from bunnyhugger's birthday last year:
Prop from the Rankin/Bass special Rudolph and Medusa Christmas in November!
Bronner's sells prelit trees and there's no reason they have to be boring old green. Some of them go all-out Pride or at least Popsicle.
There are the occasional bright green trees hiding away back there, though. bunnyhugger kept having trouble with her camera's shutter speed being so fast half the LEDs were off in every picture.
Here's a prelit tree that's also pre-decorated in white frosting to look all fresh-snowed.
Did you know Bronner's has a small side museum dedicated to the place's history and, of course, their collection of Hummel figurines? Sorry to spring this on you by surprise!
More precious figurines, including something celebrating the year 2000 there.
And some unpainted Hummels, for everyone who figures someday they'll get around to painting their tabletop roleplaying game mini-figs.
There's also these cases showing the steps in making Goebel or Precious Moments figurines.
Ready for the tour of how the magic happens?
So, the figures start out, like you'd expect, as abrasives, flower, and a pestel.
These then combine to make brushes, spatulas, and (on the right) a kid who kind of looks like pantomime comic strip star Lio.
Finally, they get married. I hope this helps you make your own figurines!
Trivia: The trans-Uranian planets predicted in the calculations of John Couch Adams and Urbain Le Verrier were both a good bit farther out from the sun and more massive than the actual Neptune. (They also forecast much more elliptical orbits than the actual Neptune, which has one of the most nearly circular orbits of all the Solar System's major bodies.) Source: In Search Of Planet Vulcan: The Ghost in Newton's Clockwork Universe, Richard Baum, William Sheehan. Adams and Le Verrier had to make some guesses as there otherwise wasn't enough data just from Uranus's orbital perturbations to find a planet.
Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 74: The Slippisippi Riverboat Race, Ralph Stein, Bill Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.
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October 9th, 2025
And now to Sunday, at last. We finally got everything together and made the drive to Silver Beach, in southwestern Michigan. It's daft to be going to the beach in early October, but it was also in the 80s and sunny and how long is it going to be before we can say that again? bunnyhugger got home late from a women's pinball tournament the night before and, after a couple hours watching the Flophouse podcast's live stream, and having dinner, stayed up late enough to make coronation chick'n sandwiches and get to sleep not early enough, really.
Silver Beach is just about two hours away. Why not go to a beach closer by? Other than that they don't get much closer a drive, what with Lansing being in the dead center of the lower peninsula? That's because, after failing to buy the carousel that used to be at Silver Beach Amusement Park, they commissioned a new one from Carousel Works. So the first thing we did was walk over to the carousel building and get two rides and also a discussion about whether I own a t-shirt from there. I don't remember it (I think), but bunnyhugger has pictures of me wearing the 'Ride The Raptor' T-shirt highlighting their velociraptor figure. I've got to find where that went. They don't still sell T-shirts, but bunnyhugger did buy a little passport booklet with pictures of all the animals. On exiting the ride you can have the ride operator stamp what you rode and if you fill up the booklet you get, I think it was, seven ride tokens. There's no way she'll achieve this, not unless we go there a lot more and spend hours just re-riding, but it's a fun souvenir and nice to have a way of tracking what you've ridden.
After that we hauled all our stuff out of my car, to a decent-looking spot on the beach, and discovered we forgot our umbrellas. It's my fault; in moving them out of the way to look for something I managed to put them against a wall we completely ignored while loading the car and asking ``have we got everything''? So it would be a day of making sure we have plenty of sunscreen on, and for bunnyhugger facing away from the sun. And so I have to correct myself as we got only almost everything together.
After setting up, though, and having lunch at last, I did what I least expected to do at the beach and slept. Like, for hours, just laying on a towel on the sand, getting pleasantly near melting under the sunlight. I was asleep long enough that bunnyhugger took her daily half-hour walk and more, and did some exploring to see just how big the beach was. (She missed an historical marker that I found, though, noting the launch spot for the first powered flight across Lake Michigan, from St Joseph's to Chicago, July 1913. We both missed a marker somewhere nearby noting Augustus M Herring's powered flight experiments there in October 1898.) I finally woke up when bunnyhugger got stung by what she first thought was a yellowjacket --- a problem of going to the beach this late in the season --- but turned out to be some other insect with less long-lasting bites.
Later on I actually got my bathing suit on and went into the water. The water was a little cool, but surprisingly good for October. It was choppier than I expected, though, waves sometimes hitting eighteen inches when when you consider you'll see tides as much as two inches. Also I swam much less than I expected to because apparently in the decades since I was half-fish I lost my endurance. How could that happen? But I also rediscovered how nice it is to float, just laying back, hearing nothing but your breath reflected in the water. Until a big wave comes and puts your head suddenly ten inches underwater. I again have no idea how long I was out there but it felt really good.
As mentioned, the waves were choppy. The wind was too. bunnyhugger brought a couple of her kites and used the time to get them in the air. I saw from far out of shore --- the seabed falls off very slowly and even rises repeatedly --- as her 40-foot-long long dragon kite twisted its way around and around. She couldn't get it as high, or for as long, as she wished, but it was going nicely for a good while. She flew the kites for a while after I got back in, too; she was flying until a bit after sunset, in the last bits of usable light.
We're not sure that we closed out the beach. We were there after sunset, and late enough after sunset that we couldn't see anyone else on it. We did see some people farther back, on the grass, with a karaoke machine and having a party or something. But we did our usual business of taking in every last drop of the day. Very glad we got to do that.
Another thing it's fun doing? Spending the day at Bronner's. Here's another half-dozen photos from last year's visit.
And now some of the many raccoon ornaments. I only pick up one or two a year, don't worry.
And here's one for the Michigan Central Station, in Detroit, but made of blown glass.
If you need a plush tiger considerably larger than your child, Bronner's is ready for you.
Or if you just need aliens in very tiny flying saucers.
Over here, what if your fursona dressed as a bee? We have you covered if you're a mouse, rabbit, or ... uh ... donkey?
The caption explains, 'This is the chisel which Wally and Irene Bronner used to remove a portion of the Berlin Wall'. I assume it's also the chunk of wall they removed and also that they did this all after about November 1989. Less trouble that way.
Trivia: In 1896 Octave Chanute --- then 64 years old --- set up a camp for studying gliders at St Joseph, Michigan, and with Augustus Herring and two other American flight enthusiasts performed over a thousand glides by 1902. Source: Mastering the Sky: A History of Aviation from Ancient Times to the Present, James P Harrison.
Currently Reading: The Theoretical Minimum: What you need to know to start doing physics, Leonard Susskind, George Hrabovsky.
PS: What’s Going On In Eye Lie Popeye? Who is this ‘Susie’? July – August 2025 in a recap of only a couple weeks' worth of a very dense comic strip.
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October 8th, 2025
posted by twistedchick at 09:50pm on 2025-10-08
twistedchick at 09:50pm on 2025-10-081. After a little experimentation, I've found that it is possible to sing most popular Christmas carols (and possibly other songs) with the only lyrics being repeats of "Epstein". I suggest this for the use of protesters, as I imagine the lovely sounds of four part harmonies with a stunning effect on the bystanders.
2. Does anyone else have tinnitis? And if so, how do you manage to fall asleep when everything else is quiet? I have been listening to rain sounds on a recording, which helps, but it's hard to be relaxed and ready and just NOT tip over into sleep. Suggestions welcome!
3. Songs I have figured out (to some degree) on Native American flute: the guitar lead line to Layla (the piano interval is in C and very easy); the sax lead line to Gerry Rafferty's 'Baker Street'; the Beatles' 'Blackbird'; bits and pieces of many other Beatles tunes; the Beach Boys' 'California Girls', including the key change in the chorus that most people don't notice. If my only real inheritance from my mother's dad is his ability to play anything he could whistle, I'm very glad to have it; it has done well for me all my life even though I can read music (he couldn't).
4. I bailed at the last minute on a dental cleaning today, because I got no real sleep last night (see 2.) and I was not up to driving for half an hour or having someone's hands in my mouth for an hour. I also felt overheated and queasy, and told the receptionist that when I called, and she agreed I shouldn't come in. We rescheduled for Nov. 6, which was Mom's birthday, so I'm not likely to forget to come. It's late at night and I still do feel a bit off, so I'm calling the whole thing self care.
5. And I'm looking forward to seeing the nominations list for Yuletide. Every year there are more diverse possibilities, many of which I have no idea about since I'm not up on the latest Korean or Japanese or Chinese shows. But there are still enough oldbies like me around that I should be able to cobble together some requests and a list of possibilities to write about.
2. Does anyone else have tinnitis? And if so, how do you manage to fall asleep when everything else is quiet? I have been listening to rain sounds on a recording, which helps, but it's hard to be relaxed and ready and just NOT tip over into sleep. Suggestions welcome!
3. Songs I have figured out (to some degree) on Native American flute: the guitar lead line to Layla (the piano interval is in C and very easy); the sax lead line to Gerry Rafferty's 'Baker Street'; the Beatles' 'Blackbird'; bits and pieces of many other Beatles tunes; the Beach Boys' 'California Girls', including the key change in the chorus that most people don't notice. If my only real inheritance from my mother's dad is his ability to play anything he could whistle, I'm very glad to have it; it has done well for me all my life even though I can read music (he couldn't).
4. I bailed at the last minute on a dental cleaning today, because I got no real sleep last night (see 2.) and I was not up to driving for half an hour or having someone's hands in my mouth for an hour. I also felt overheated and queasy, and told the receptionist that when I called, and she agreed I shouldn't come in. We rescheduled for Nov. 6, which was Mom's birthday, so I'm not likely to forget to come. It's late at night and I still do feel a bit off, so I'm calling the whole thing self care.
5. And I'm looking forward to seeing the nominations list for Yuletide. Every year there are more diverse possibilities, many of which I have no idea about since I'm not up on the latest Korean or Japanese or Chinese shows. But there are still enough oldbies like me around that I should be able to cobble together some requests and a list of possibilities to write about.
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posted by sorcyress at 08:41pm on 2025-10-08
sorcyress at 08:41pm on 2025-10-08Work was a lot because work was always a lot. Bonus lots for today: did some graphic design on the performance task so people are able to hand it out tomorrow. Sent the big NEML email to all the coworkers and began gathering data there. Ran a circle for the department meeting, because when my boss does it, she skips over a bunch because she doesn't take it seriously.
So between all that, and normal work stuff, I was slammed right up until the bell rang, and then we had an hour of department meeting (solidly okay) and an hour of Geometry team meeting (quite good, very productive) and then Clayton and I (plus bonus Rachel) had like half an hour of talking about grand ideas for making the curriculum better and then I threw everyone out of my room because it was 4:30 and aaah.
But I managed to keep going, and then I prepped my lessons for tomorrow and ran several billion copies (more NEML stuff) and left the building by about 6:15 or so. Was home at 7:30ish, checked in with Ezri, sent a plan to Tuesday, and flopped into the bed to play a bit of Necrodance just to do _something_ mindless with my day.
(being Mindful all the time forever sucks. I am trying to do more of it because a lot of my mindless is the kind where I can't transition out of it again, and despite what the hypnokink people would have you think, it's not as sexy when you're a mindless phone-games machine. But being real aware and Mindful of what I am doing and trying to make conscious choices about it is differently hard.)
Then, pleasant shock (see above paragraph), I actually transitioned out of Necrodance around the time I told Tues I would, and did some brainwork and then turned the phone off for a POWER HOUR. Dishes, dinner, wash hair were the three goals. They were all completed? This is wild and I don't know how to cope.
The next plan is to again check in with Tuesday --I like having partners who I can mutually do things with, even when we are far apart-- and then Iunno. Rest? Sounds fake.
~Sor
MOOP!
So between all that, and normal work stuff, I was slammed right up until the bell rang, and then we had an hour of department meeting (solidly okay) and an hour of Geometry team meeting (quite good, very productive) and then Clayton and I (plus bonus Rachel) had like half an hour of talking about grand ideas for making the curriculum better and then I threw everyone out of my room because it was 4:30 and aaah.
But I managed to keep going, and then I prepped my lessons for tomorrow and ran several billion copies (more NEML stuff) and left the building by about 6:15 or so. Was home at 7:30ish, checked in with Ezri, sent a plan to Tuesday, and flopped into the bed to play a bit of Necrodance just to do _something_ mindless with my day.
(being Mindful all the time forever sucks. I am trying to do more of it because a lot of my mindless is the kind where I can't transition out of it again, and despite what the hypnokink people would have you think, it's not as sexy when you're a mindless phone-games machine. But being real aware and Mindful of what I am doing and trying to make conscious choices about it is differently hard.)
Then, pleasant shock (see above paragraph), I actually transitioned out of Necrodance around the time I told Tues I would, and did some brainwork and then turned the phone off for a POWER HOUR. Dishes, dinner, wash hair were the three goals. They were all completed? This is wild and I don't know how to cope.
The next plan is to again check in with Tuesday --I like having partners who I can mutually do things with, even when we are far apart-- and then Iunno. Rest? Sounds fake.
~Sor
MOOP!
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Here's what I read last month:
Outside In Can Live With It - Stacy Smith?, ed.
Murder at King's Crossing - Andrea Penrose
The Incident of the Book in the Nighttime - Vicky Delany
The Mango Murders - Lucy Burdette
Outside In Can Live With It - Stacy Smith?, ed.
Murder at King's Crossing - Andrea Penrose
The Incident of the Book in the Nighttime - Vicky Delany
The Mango Murders - Lucy Burdette
sad
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posted by mrs_sweetpeach at 10:50am on 2025-10-08 under project 52
mrs_sweetpeach at 10:50am on 2025-10-08 under project 52
distressed
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awakeJust finished: Genocide Bad: Notes on Palestine, Jewish History, and Collective Liberation by Sim Kern. I don't really have much to add—I'd highly recommend this one, whether you just learned about Palestine two years ago or you've been in the movement for decades. It's well-written, empathetic, and clear-eyed. My only critique is the bit at the end, which is an anarchist vision of a future liberated Palestine and Israel. It's not that I disagree politically, but I'm not sure it needs to be as long as it is, and they have the same issue as Starhawk when it comes to gardening on highways (why would you do this). I think it might turn off people who are not already anarchists, and beyond that, it feels like the kind of vision that everyday Palestinians and Israelis wouldn't necessarily share or relate to. But the core of the book is so good that I'm not terribly bothered by it.
Ten Incarnations of Rebellion by Vaishnavi Patel. You know how most alternate histories are about things like "what if the Nazis won WWII?" or "what if the Confederates won the American Civil War?" (how would you be able to tell in the Year Of Our Lord 2025???). What if someone wrote an alternate history that was actually...creative? This is about an alternate India where British colonialism continued into the 60s and 70s. All of the leaders of the independence movement are dead, most of the young men are off at war with China, and Kalki, the daughter of a disappeared revolutionary, dreams of standing up to the British. Together with her college friends, Fauzia, who's Muslim, and Yashu, who's Dalit, she reforms a cell of the Indian Liberation Movement in Mumbai (known as Kingston).
One of my issues with alternate histories is I often wonder what the point of them is. They'll tend to posit our dystopian reality, one in which fascism is ascendant, the climate crisis is raging, and surveillance capitalism owns the most intimate parts of our lives, as the best possible outcome, because isn't that better than the Nazis winning? This book has a point. It uses the failure of the original independence movement to show how resistance movements can grow after a crushing defeat.
Anyway, I loved it. ( spoilers )
Currently reading: Girls Against God, Jenny Hval. At least one of you read this awhile back and I was like, ooh, I must read that, and I finally started. I haven't gotten far in yet—so far it's a teenage girl ranting about how Norway sucks and black metal rules. Which I can get behind, but given the blurb, I hope it's going somewhere. It does very much have an authentic teenage voice but I deal with authentic teenage voices for a living.
Ten Incarnations of Rebellion by Vaishnavi Patel. You know how most alternate histories are about things like "what if the Nazis won WWII?" or "what if the Confederates won the American Civil War?" (how would you be able to tell in the Year Of Our Lord 2025???). What if someone wrote an alternate history that was actually...creative? This is about an alternate India where British colonialism continued into the 60s and 70s. All of the leaders of the independence movement are dead, most of the young men are off at war with China, and Kalki, the daughter of a disappeared revolutionary, dreams of standing up to the British. Together with her college friends, Fauzia, who's Muslim, and Yashu, who's Dalit, she reforms a cell of the Indian Liberation Movement in Mumbai (known as Kingston).
One of my issues with alternate histories is I often wonder what the point of them is. They'll tend to posit our dystopian reality, one in which fascism is ascendant, the climate crisis is raging, and surveillance capitalism owns the most intimate parts of our lives, as the best possible outcome, because isn't that better than the Nazis winning? This book has a point. It uses the failure of the original independence movement to show how resistance movements can grow after a crushing defeat.
Anyway, I loved it. ( spoilers )
Currently reading: Girls Against God, Jenny Hval. At least one of you read this awhile back and I was like, ooh, I must read that, and I finally started. I haven't gotten far in yet—so far it's a teenage girl ranting about how Norway sucks and black metal rules. Which I can get behind, but given the blurb, I hope it's going somewhere. It does very much have an authentic teenage voice but I deal with authentic teenage voices for a living.
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posted by sorcyress at 01:10am on 2025-10-08
sorcyress at 01:10am on 2025-10-08Today was...sorta good?
Work was pretty okay. It's become evident that, of the eight prep periods I am supposed to get each week, I'm realistically gonna get like...three. Not counting my brain crashing and needing a break. So. That's a lot.
Things are generally pretty good even with that! Like, I really like all the things I'm doing at work. It's just another example of the thing I figured out a year or two ago: teaching is a job where you can't become faster as you get better. Like, nearly everything that involves being a good/better teacher is something that involves more time. Deeper connections with students. More thoughtful grading. That kind of thing. I can get faster at grading, but I can't really get faster at guiding a student through socratic questioning until they can reach an understanding themself.
So yeah, work is gonna be a ton this year, and I'm just...gonna cope, I guess? It is what it's.
And then I had therapy, and therapy was kinda good? Before therapy was crap, before therapy I just went into total slug mode on my phone playing stupid phone games. Far too much of that. I was filling Jenn in on all the things I managed yesterday, and at one point she was being mildly astonished at HOW MUCH I'd gotten done. Well yeah, sez I. I didn't play phonegames yesterday, and it's incredible how many more hours are in the day when you don't spend them on phonegames.
After therapy, I did a little more scraps of prep for tomorrow (including the extremely essential "go run your copies _now_" because let's be real, if I try to save that for the morning, I will find eighty people scrobbling around the school to try and find the single working copier in the building. It's like a fun new scavenger hunt every week!
But I did also spend some time fucking around with my phone UX. Actually poked at the widgets menu and found a few things I will probably like. Resorted and gathered my apps --I am not quite able to bear just deleting the phone games, even if that seems like it might need to be the answer for some of them. But putting them in a different folder, in a different place, seeing if that helps...yeah.
And I poked at Habitica briefly, and realized it might be the thing I am looking for in terms of "ugh, need a todo app". We'll try it again for a bit, see what happens. Worst case scenario, nothing useful, and that's just baseline.
On the way home, I found my buddy Thrantar walking to Bluesy, and we walked a block or two together. That would've been it, except just when we were about to split and go our separate ways, we instead found a folk music jam that's apparently been happening on the regular just out on the bike path. I am very fond of this, I am very fond of my weird little town. We stood a good long while and listened to music and chatted about life --I am happy both for the getting to listen to music and for the broader getting to reconnect with someone from my past. It's real good!
(and I briefly chatted with one of the people who seems to be organizing it and when she said a wistful "oh I wish we could have dancing sometimes too" went "UM I KNOW A GUY (it's me, I'm the guy)" and that would be really keen if it worked out in the long run. I would enjoy having occasional ceilidh calling on my way home from work!)
Home again eventually. Played video games and chatted with friends and ate good dinner and played a lot more video games. This is...this is only semi-useful, but honestly, any video game that takes the laptop is probably better for my brainpan than the ones that use the phone. It's almost a win?
Now I am up too late again, and I need to get up early, or at least, get up very much on time and get straight to work so I can finish some of the prep stuff. This is a conceivable plan, I suppose.
Tomorrow's big goal might be to wash my hair? Also maybe have an internet date with Tuesday. Both of those would be really good things to get done.
I love you, and hope y'all are well.
~Sor
MOOP!
Work was pretty okay. It's become evident that, of the eight prep periods I am supposed to get each week, I'm realistically gonna get like...three. Not counting my brain crashing and needing a break. So. That's a lot.
Things are generally pretty good even with that! Like, I really like all the things I'm doing at work. It's just another example of the thing I figured out a year or two ago: teaching is a job where you can't become faster as you get better. Like, nearly everything that involves being a good/better teacher is something that involves more time. Deeper connections with students. More thoughtful grading. That kind of thing. I can get faster at grading, but I can't really get faster at guiding a student through socratic questioning until they can reach an understanding themself.
So yeah, work is gonna be a ton this year, and I'm just...gonna cope, I guess? It is what it's.
And then I had therapy, and therapy was kinda good? Before therapy was crap, before therapy I just went into total slug mode on my phone playing stupid phone games. Far too much of that. I was filling Jenn in on all the things I managed yesterday, and at one point she was being mildly astonished at HOW MUCH I'd gotten done. Well yeah, sez I. I didn't play phonegames yesterday, and it's incredible how many more hours are in the day when you don't spend them on phonegames.
After therapy, I did a little more scraps of prep for tomorrow (including the extremely essential "go run your copies _now_" because let's be real, if I try to save that for the morning, I will find eighty people scrobbling around the school to try and find the single working copier in the building. It's like a fun new scavenger hunt every week!
But I did also spend some time fucking around with my phone UX. Actually poked at the widgets menu and found a few things I will probably like. Resorted and gathered my apps --I am not quite able to bear just deleting the phone games, even if that seems like it might need to be the answer for some of them. But putting them in a different folder, in a different place, seeing if that helps...yeah.
And I poked at Habitica briefly, and realized it might be the thing I am looking for in terms of "ugh, need a todo app". We'll try it again for a bit, see what happens. Worst case scenario, nothing useful, and that's just baseline.
On the way home, I found my buddy Thrantar walking to Bluesy, and we walked a block or two together. That would've been it, except just when we were about to split and go our separate ways, we instead found a folk music jam that's apparently been happening on the regular just out on the bike path. I am very fond of this, I am very fond of my weird little town. We stood a good long while and listened to music and chatted about life --I am happy both for the getting to listen to music and for the broader getting to reconnect with someone from my past. It's real good!
(and I briefly chatted with one of the people who seems to be organizing it and when she said a wistful "oh I wish we could have dancing sometimes too" went "UM I KNOW A GUY (it's me, I'm the guy)" and that would be really keen if it worked out in the long run. I would enjoy having occasional ceilidh calling on my way home from work!)
Home again eventually. Played video games and chatted with friends and ate good dinner and played a lot more video games. This is...this is only semi-useful, but honestly, any video game that takes the laptop is probably better for my brainpan than the ones that use the phone. It's almost a win?
Now I am up too late again, and I need to get up early, or at least, get up very much on time and get straight to work so I can finish some of the prep stuff. This is a conceivable plan, I suppose.
Tomorrow's big goal might be to wash my hair? Also maybe have an internet date with Tuesday. Both of those would be really good things to get done.
I love you, and hope y'all are well.
~Sor
MOOP!
Since my report last month about how the new air conditioner was all but installed I'm sure you expect that it's been in the window for weeks now, keeping us comfortable in the nights of the last reliably warm days of late summer/early autumn. And so it has except instead of weeks it's been a couple days.
So here's my excuses. The first is that despite my general confidence in the Magic Mount system I was not perfectly sure that the brackets it mounted to, glued as they were to the window frame interior, were secure enough. So I found another screw-free mount, this one a footer to put underneath the air conditioner, and I liked it. It snaps into place inside the windowframe and leaning against the skirt of the roof between the first and second floors of our house. Between the two things feel very secure, which is good for my confidence in the whole thing.
The remaining catch is that the air conditioner came in two parts, a shell that you can use to make sure you have the thing installed correctly, and then the actual hundred-plus pounds of mechanism that slides into the frame. To keep from sliding loose, the mechanism screws in, in four spots, to the frame. Two of the spots are inside, but two of the spots are on the outside, accessible only by ladder. I needed to wait for bunnyhugger to be free to spot me. But then two days a week she's at work until close to or after dusk. One or sometimes two days a week, recently, we've had pinball events taking us away in the evenings. Or other appointments. Or, on the weekend, things like going to Michigan's Adventure or visiting her parents or so on.
So this Saturday, with bunnyhugger at a pinball tournament and not likely to get back before sunset, I noticed our neighbors on that side of the house having a cookout. After I found a tiny bit of garage work to do and got to small talking with them, I explained I had to do something on the ladder, and the guy visiting (a boyfriend(?)) was happy to spot me. Once I had the mechanism installed and screwed in upstairs, I got out the ladder and set it up to the air conditioner. There it was but the work of a moment to screw the last two screws in. Little work tip for this sort of thing: get a small bar magnet; it's a great way of making sure you can't drop the screws.
Anyway I thanked them greatly, and we talked about Cedar Point's Halloweekends a little (he'd never been, and I warned him not to go on a Saturday and not at all Columbo's Day Weekend). And then back upstairs to put the front cover on the machine, plug it in, turn it on and find ...
Oh, it's quite nice. Not quite silent but barely any noise compared to the old one. And it even has a remote so we can turn it on or off or change the temperature barely even waking up. For as frustrating as this was to get put together it's felt magnificent in operation, and I'm sorry it's only a couple days before I, most likely, take it out and set it in the attic for the winter. But we can at last claim the new air conditioner as a success.
And now, here's osme more looking over more pictures of Bronner's from bunnyhugger's birthday trip last year:
They sell a lot of cute mouse figures and I suspect the masked mouse was left over from five years ago.
Despite being mainly a Christmas shop Bronner's sells for other holidays too, such as Raccoon Pumpkin Festival.
Or here, with an ornament for the Singing Ghost Festival.
Here's some ornaments for people who want their trees to be a thing they eat.
And here's one for people who want mice that are Tron-style lightcycles.
This, meanwhile, is for people building their own Tom Servo ornaments.
Trivia: The Florida pavilion at the 1939-40 World's Fair was one of only two state buildings equipped with an air conditioning system. Nevertheless a brochure for Sarasota suggested that air conditioning was less needed in Florida than in other states. The air conditioning was pitched as ``designed to duplicate the balmy atmosphere one actually encounters in Florida''. Source: Cool Comfort: America's Romance with Air-Conditioning, Marsha E Ackermann.
Currently Reading: The Theoretical Minimum: What you need to know to start doing physics, Leonard Susskind, George Hrabovsky.
October 7th, 2025
I woke up at about 7:30 a.m., had a cup of black tea, showered, and went to my doctor’s office for a fasting blood, which I wanted to do before I see her in a couple of weeks. There was a little bit of annoying delay: Mt Auburn Hospital is being moved to a different MyChart system, and some balls are being dropped. Specifically, the order for my lab work wasn’t on the new system, so they had to copy it from the old system, which is in read-only mode for a few weeks, after which it won’t be available even to medical staff. Carmen said her office is going to be sending an email to all patients, advising us to follow up on existing referrals and orders for lab work before the end of the month. I hope that doesn’t miss too many people, but I made a point of telling Adrian about it.
Once they had my test tube of blood, I stopped at a couple of stores on the same block as my doctor’s office, to buy (frozen) ground lamb and some more cannabis edibles. Then I treated myself to an apple, grape, and brie crepe for breakfast, which I ate at an outdoor table. After eating the crepe, I went to CVS and got a flu vaccine, then took the subway home. I am feeling very accomplished, and a bit tired.
The flu and covid tests I mentioned in my previous post arrived yesterday.
Once they had my test tube of blood, I stopped at a couple of stores on the same block as my doctor’s office, to buy (frozen) ground lamb and some more cannabis edibles. Then I treated myself to an apple, grape, and brie crepe for breakfast, which I ate at an outdoor table. After eating the crepe, I went to CVS and got a flu vaccine, then took the subway home. I am feeling very accomplished, and a bit tired.
The flu and covid tests I mentioned in my previous post arrived yesterday.
curious I mentioned yesterday getting to the beach Sunday so let me tell you about last Friday instead. As it was a Friday I asked if bunnyhugger wanted to go to RLM's weekly Grand Rapids tournament and she was thinking of something the other side of the state. MWS often runs tournaments on a Friday night, this one at the relatively newly-opened Sparks Pinball Museum in the Oakwood Mall, in Troy, Michigan, part of the Detroit urban expanse. It's not quite twice as far away as Grand Rapids --- out past even where Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum once stood --- but it's a venue we've figured we would get to someday for, like, ever.
It did not disappoint! As with the Sparks mothership we haven't been to in years, MB oversees the pinball and arcade games and coin-ops and the collection is amazing. 75 machines, from 1960s tables through to modern games and over the course of a ten-round tournament I would play games from both 1964 and 2024. The place is also covered with stuff MB had collected from Chuck E Cheese's and Aladdin's Castle and Show Biz Pizza and other places that other people have strong nostalgic attractions to. I never built them up myself, sorry.
Also we ran into one of the furries we know mostly from Motor City Furry Con there. It wasn't purely accident; he works on some of the games there and was working on repairing an ``electronic handwriting analyzer'' --- a fortune-teller machine that uses your signature as the gimmick to give you a punched computer card --- that was apparently at the 1964-65 World's Fair. I mean, its supply of not-yet-exhausted personality report cards list the World's Fair, but it's in the machine-maker's interest to bally it up, right?
So, the tournament. After doing terribly last weekend we this week did ... eh. I squeezed out six wins in ten rounds; bunnyhugger, five. This would qualify me for a tiebreaker to get into the playoffs, but --- just as it would have at RLM's tournament, the other side of the state --- it was on Paragon. And just as with every Paragon I've ever played, the game was fast, hard, and prone to arbitrary drains. The game looks so good, why isn't it any fun? But I managed to get to a respectable second place, when only the first-place finisher moved on.
This did mean I had time to do some other stuff, like obsessively search the museum for the sixteen hidden Pee-Wee Herman string dolls. I can report having spotted fourteen of them; one, I found because I just knew there was no way this large an area of the place didn't have any hidden dolls. I wonder where the other two are.
We also made a little time, at Vix's insistence, to play the 'Cool Gunman' game. This is a light gun-based game, on a table about the size of a pool table, where you shoot at sensors in the floor which make an asterisk-shaped tower pop up. Ideally, this popping-up throws one of two empty pop cans into your opponent's goal, or at least gets it away from your own goal. This odd blending of ice hockey and shooter games is a good bit of fun; I'm glad we took time for it.
So, quite nice venue, somewhere we'd like to be again. It's just annoying it takes nearly two hours to get to. But a pay-one-price arcade that's even in a mall, like a particular streak of arcade longs to be, with Comet, Cyclone, Dr Dude, and Bugs Bunny's Birthday Ball? That is nice.
Next up in the photo roll ... our trip to Bronner's on bunnyhugger's birthday, the 5th of November last year, which was supposed to be a happy day. Gads but it should have ended the way we spent it, just full of good cheer and good feelings.
The Bronner's experience: so very many ornaments, almost shooting at you in limitless abundance. It's wonderful in its way and I promise I didn't photograph every aisle because my camera doesn't have the battery life for that.
Some of their I-love-my-pet line. Rabbits have an easier silhouette to put in than guinea pigs do.
Among the model buildings they had this year was an Old Timey Dairy Queene, for all those folks buying ice cream in a white Christmas.
Some toys combining the Rankin/Bass Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer with ... uh ... kids doing sheep cosplay? I don't know.
New for last year: frog witch transformation! Get it while it lasts!
Also turns out Bronner's is selling fursuits these days, who knew?
Trivia: Joe Quinn (1864 - 1940) was the only baseball player to appear in the American League, the National League, the Union Association, and the Players League, four of the major leagues to have ever existed. He was also on the two teams with the best and the worst win-loss records in major league history, the 1884 St Louis Maroons (94-19) and the 1899 Cleveland Spiders (20-134). Source: The Beer and Whiskey League: The Illustrated History of the American Association --- Baseball's Renegade Major League, David Nemec. Although Nemec notes, Quinn never played for the American Association.
Currently Reading: The Theoretical Minimum: What you need to know to start doing physics, Leonard Susskind, George Hrabovsky.
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October 6th, 2025
listlessposted by wapsisquare_feed at 03:59am on 2025-10-06
wapsisquare_feed at 03:59am on 2025-10-06
You are summoned to Kitsune Alley at the request of Mitsuki. This animated short takes place in the Wapsi Square universe. https://wapsisquare.com/ Big thanks to talented voice actor Saori Nishihara for helping out with my nerdy little project. Please check out her other work through her website: https://saoli.net/
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We finally got to the beach today! And spent a lovely day there, with me not on my computer and not writing things. So please enjoy instead the close-out of our Cedar Point trip from November last year, eleven-plus months ago!
Ride operator at the front of the Mine Ride, shortly after a train's dispatch. You can see it about to get into the shed.
And a walk-on ride for us! We wouldn't get the train to ourselves, I believe, but it was close.
We did go back around for a ride that, while not the last one of the night, did get us back into the station after midnight, the close of the season. So we were on a roller coaster on November 3rd, the latest in a year we've been able to yet.
I photographed this sign showing the way to Snake River Falls because I expected it to be removed or rewritten for this year. I forgot to check if it was.
The Town Hall Museum I photographed out of fear they'd tear it down over the winter season. They didn't, but they have turned it into a Halloweekends walk-through attraction.
And here's Snake River falls, the last time we'd see it.
Skeleton head just taking up space on the Frontier Trail.
And a view of the Power Tower and the reverse spike for Top Thrill 2.
Got a picture of bunnyhugger in front of the Iron Dragon entrance. They changed the queue over the off-season and I don't remember if I knew that and was taking a last picture of the way it was, or just, we were nearby and it's Iron Dragon.
This is an ordinary picture of the end of the entrance midway but it came across nicer than I expected. Something about the depth of action worked out well here.
Picture of Cedar Downs, put to bed for the season, that came out better than I expected.
And the decorations in front of the Midway Carousel, facing the park's exit.
Trivia: On the 6th of October, 1961, NASA head of Space Flight Programs Abe Silverstein requested and received Associate Administrator Robert Seamans's formal approval for ``preparation of a preliminary development plan for the proposed orbital flight development program'', that is, what would become Project Gemini. Source: On The Shoulders of Titans: A History of Project Gemini, Barton C Hacker, James M Grimwood.
Currently Reading: The Theoretical Minimum: What you need to know to start doing physics, Leonard Susskind, George Hrabovsky.
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October 5th, 2025