elanya

I have not been great at this.. ha ha ha...but its fine, I don't have a ton to say I gues!

I read three more KJ Charles books (Specterd Isle, Band Sinister, and Death in the Spires). The continue to be very fun! There is also an excellent fan community that I am enjoying very much.

I also read Blood in the Machine, a book about the Luddites and the modern tech revolution, which had some really interesting stuff that was really engaging and in other parts was more of a slog. And today I finished Becky Chambers A Psalm for the Wild Built, which was a cozy light little novella that I think would have been better if I had never read Braiding Sweetgrass, because I am just looking at the relationships of people to the world in that and going 'no you could do better than that actually' when it is supposed to be utopic. But I still enjoyed it and grabbed the sequel. For 'cozy books with low stakes plot focused around cozy beverages" I enjoyed it better than Legends and Lattes, possibly just because I am a Tea Person more than a Coffee Person.  I'll tackle the sequel next, and then I have Daisy Jones & the Six and then probably back to a couple more KJC and then who knows!  Probably my hold on Godkiller will come in again while I'm in the middle of something else long of have a queue piling up and I will out it back into circulation again :p

I realized I never did post links to all the things I wrote for the Rare Kink Buffet but, it's all on my AO3 :x  I also did post my long (for me) plotty Adventure World thing which 7 whole people have looked at and maybe half that actually read.  It is okay, its fine.  I'm not a popular taste, I'm a speicialty one.  or something.  IDK.  Despite being in my feelings forever about never figuring out how to entice people to read the things I write that I get super invested in, I have turned around and started a massive spin-off slow burn fic about a character I created whole cloth for the last one.  So even more of a niche audience.  I'm a good 7k into it already, ha ha ha.  This will be the 10th thing I have written, even that is over 10k.  I do this to myself, literally no one else is asking for it :V 

Family homes things continue to continue.  Probably no one is going to sell my home out from under me at this juncture, but I also doubt my housemate will actually ever move out either, because they also can't afford it.  So meanwhile they do things like have week-long visitors and never wash a single dish.  And my sister twisted her ankle, so I have been doing extra dog duty as well.  This is fine when it is nice and I can just go out in the back and kick a ball around with Hades and he is happy.  The yard is greening up, and my wild strawberries and sweetgrass are going mad, and lots of plant that may not even be terrible plants are coming up in place I want them too!  But also of of terrible plants.  who will will: catmint vs bellflower -_-  Possibly I have forgotten with knapweed looks like, or else I really have made a major dent in it, finally.  I need to get a garden fork to deal with some of this stuff more effectively.

Oh, I also got my tax return!  I treated myself to a new Fancee Pillow, which arrived yesterday, some nice hand lotion, and diner for the fam.  And then I had to buy a bunch of dog stuff and was immediately poor again.  But not in debt, so I'll take it.

Anyway, I am watching Fangs of Fortune very slowly with Nary and Kennesaw, and we are scheduled to do a few more eps imminently. 

And also - I signed up for Jukebox and I already have offers for my songs and found some cool stuff to offer.  So, yay!  and now, off I go for TV times.

It's still me!

not much has changed!

I had a weird weekend, all my games were cancelled and Nary was away on an impromptu trip to pick up her kid from University, so quiet.

The weekend before, though, we went on a trip up north-ish to the Bruce Peninsula and were there for the duration of what turned otu to be a pretty major ice storm. It didn't really affect us much, luckily, just meant we decided to write rather than watch TV because we didn't need the internet for that. the power flickered where we were staying but no long outages. I had to get out of the car and move a fallen tree so we could get out of the cottage driveway on Sunday. But also it was really beautiful. Ice storms truly are terrible beauty.

I'm into my last few weeks of having Fridays off and I am going to miss them, 4 day work week when :p

Still on a KJ Charles kick so listened to more of her books, and then last week Legends and Lattes, which was cute but not enthralling, and now I'm back on KJC.

Rare Kink Buffet opened last week and author reveals are on Wednesday so I'll be back with the, uh, 11 fics I wrote for that afterwards. It's nice because people really will read stuff there fandom blind to some extent, so things I would not otherwise have expected to be appreciated by more than like, 1-2 people have gotten at least a little attention. But things I thought might be more popular have not so hey, mixed bag.

I am working on another beastly installation of my AWRR AU, it's over 7 k. That is long for me. I'll be shocked if I can keep it under 10 :x

Not much more to say I don't think - time to give Hades his night dins and think about writing.

Still on a KJ Charles kick - I devoured the Will Darling books, and my hold came in on the second of the Doomsday books and I devoured that as well! I didn't love it as much as Country Gentlemen but it was satisfying and a good conclusion to the duology. I also, last week, listened to Chuck Tingle's Camp Damascus which was a good side step, but next week I'll go back to KJC for a bit with Think of England which i want to read to properly appreciate the crossover fics with Will Darling ;)

Otherwise - things are pretty samey? Sister and her ex are moving along on the formal separation, which is good, but apparently IL has been making sounds about maybe selling the house after all, which is not ideal, I think for anyone 9including them), but especially not for me. They think they might be able to afford a place with the money from that but. I don't think so, at least not anywhere local. Like basically if they want to move out so they can maybe host the kids, it is going to trigger a much bigger mess as sister can't afford to live here, so that means moving away *with the kids*. Meanwhile my job is here, I also can't afford to live on my own, an I have a dog who needs a lot of space and does not get alone with anyone outside the family, so we'd both be thoroughly screwed. While I can't say I love living with IL, I think it is probably the best solution, financially, and sister feels much the same. It would be better if they wanted to act more like an actual roommate and not like. Still expect what I'll call 'family privileges' (having a clean house and sharing in family meals among other things) but also only contribute beyond finances at the most basic level.

Work continues to be annoying, I feel over-relied upon but also under support and undervalued, and it is frustrating. I had a productive day yesterday but still have a lot on my plate, and it is all petty annoying things. The biggest hassle is trying to get the new back-up service set up, which is me trying to get things out in their online vault, from the networked cloud storage we are trying to back up, which doesn't want to play nice. I have a plan to try out on Monday, but I also have a tour to give (I'm not 100% sure what all Neal actually wants for that? he was unclear).

Talked to grad school friends last night for out regular bi-weekly ladies night check it - US friends are stressed and uncertain, not a lot I can do for them other than listen, and try and talk about more fun things as well, like books and other stuff. I am really glad to still be in touch with them, anyway. I went to queer knitting and was trying to explain ti someone about how I basically grew up with close internet friends and still have those ties, but I don't think I managed to convey how that works for me and how those toes stretch well beyond social media. in fact some of my friends I'm not really tied to on social media at all? Anyway, I feel like I live in a world and context that's very strange to most people. I'm very lucky to have friends all over, including locally. On Monday I'm going to a friends place and we are gonna make sock puppets for a terrible puppet game, for instance. I do feel like probably other online and fandomy people are likely to understand *more* but I always feel like a weirdo wherever I am. Just gotta roll with it at this point!

I am still working on writing, probably by the next time I do an entry, there will at least be things I have written that are able to be read, though still anon. I've got... 4? Fills done for RKB and might finish another this weekend. I have two more planned but we'll see how it all... comes together ;)

In other news, I have got the yard reasonably cleaned up and did some of the tree trimming and such I wanted to do, finally. There is still more but it is a start, at least the minimum I wanted to get done this year. I need to get mulch, and I'd love to get bulk mulch but since IL has to part their car at the back of the driveway in order to plug it in, there isn't as much functional space. Also I need a new wheelbarrow.

Maybe tomorrow I'll see if I can get some logs split? If the weather is nice, which is iffy. If i can't physically do it they are just gonna have to remain whole logs, I guess. I need more gear to get the chainsaw going. I was okay using the sawsall but the chainsaw just seems conceptually more dangerous, if only medium so in practice. And also.. I need to, uhhh,... find it :p This will be the year though! and also the power washer. Yeah. This is gonna happen :V the other thing I do need to do is decide if I want any plants form the plant sale this year, and get that order in pronto! Maybe I can do that over lunch, at least. Then some writing :3

Next week - what is time - I am going away for a long weekend with Nary, which i hope will be nice :3 Who knows what the weather will bring, especially up where we are going. But I understand the stars will be really nice to watch so there is at least that to look forward to :3 She's had a lot of family stress recently too, so hopefully it will be a good get away for her as well.

ETA: I ordered the plants! A columbine, big bluestem to replace the one that I planted last fall and fell victim to overenthusiastic plowing (it pushed our entire front step out of alignment and ripped it out of the ground before it was fully established), gonna try a fern out front in the shade of the cedar, and Canada anemone which I will will to take over the front yard with the strawberry :3

just a quick one... I finished World War Z and K.J. Charles The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen, which I quite enjoyed. and they I got gifted a copy of the first volume in the Will Darling Adventures by the same author and started that this morning. It is a shorter book, only about 7 hours, so I'll probably finish it on the weekend. However I'm already seeing some tropey patterns in the relationship development between them. Also the plot? They both hinge on the main guy being threatened to produce something of value that they don't have. And the other guy is Shifty in some way.... though notably different ways. The characters do feel very distinct, and this one is interwar rather than regency.

What else.... writing wise I am getting sucked into this years round of the Rare Kink Buffet, which just opened for posting today. I have one fill done (but not posted) and am hoping to do a few more. Playing with my blorbos in pseudo fandom of OW based on tabletop games.... maybe someone will read them for the kinks, idk. I'm having fun with it and that's what's important.

This weekend there is a workshop I'm doing for work - well it is at my work and I wanted to attend, so I am. but I'm also providing stuff for it and I am apparently giving people a chance to poke around the repository afterwards and who knows what else.

and now I want to change into comfier pants and maybe grab a lil snack before I have a different online game :)

So the Made To Do It exchange revealed like. A few hours after my last post. Oh well! Candy hearts is out of anon now also. So here's a bit of ( writing reveals )

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And now - more of a rant? Maybe a couple of interrelated rants, IDK. Today my loan hold came on in Robin Wall Kimmerer's The Serviceberry, and since it was only 2 hours and it was a shortened loan (onluy 7 days), I figured I'd just blow through it in basically a day and like one scheduled listening session. I'm also working on World War Z by Max Brooks. It's a strange juxtposition, but reading WWZ in a post-covid, second Trump presidency is already a bit of a wild ride, as I think I already mentioned, but there's a lot kin there about communities and economic stuff and survival and I'm just like. Hmmm. You know what this book is missing? Indigenous perspective. of course there are a LOT of perspectives that are in the book, though I'm not in love with all of the interpretations, it is at least interesting. Anyway. This conjunction made me think of another thing as well. I have been watching the anime called Dr. Stone, which has some pretty nonsense bit but is essentially about a teen genius scientist who wakes up thousands of years after everyone on earth was turned to stone, and how he reinvents all the science on a condensed timeline to revive technology for the other people he brings back. Sometimes it is very clever and sometimes it is really insulting even if you are willing to accept the general premise and that there is no timeline for a lot of it so it could be taking years.... until it clearly isn't. Anyway in the season I'm watching now they decide to go to North America so they can get corn for ethanol production. Sure whatever except that corn is a highly domesticated plant - without people its just gonna be grass again. Corn needs people to be corn. Anyway, it turns out there are people, but it is another supergenius scientist and he's got basically a modern farm set up and like. That's not the best way to corn. Anyway. There is a lot about that show that stretches my suspension of disbelief but the two things that have really got me were a: pottery and b: corn. oh maybe also glass... anyway. It is mostly fun. But corn.

That is not what I was going to rant about, but I ran out of brain (can you tell) and I will maybe save it - but the tl;dr version is that listening to The Serviceberry has helped me articulate to myself a bit better why I am not really comfortable with the whole 'paid GM' thing in gaming - it just changes the relationship too significantly for me. Keep the hustle out of your hobbies. Game with people whose participation and presence reward your efforts. But mostly if you are gonna charge people to play with you don't pretend like you are inviting them into a community. I don't like that - it feels predatory, especially when you are targeting queer groups. Even if you are yourself part of *that* community.

...okay maybe I didn't save it but I also don't have brains to edit or make it more coherent. So it is what it is, but I can maybe elaborate more in comments if anyone wants.

Still trying to post here semi-regularly at least... let's see. Maybe some cuts this time as there is a lot to review!

( Writing and exchanges )

( Read more... )

( Other life stuff )

This is the first week of having Fridays off through the end of the fiscal year to use up my vacation, and I'm looking forward to having a long weekend. I keep thinking that they are never going to give me a raise at work ever, even though minimum wage has gone up over two dollars since my last contract, and I'm the only person who works there full time who is making due with a single income. Sort of. But if I didn't live with my sister I wouldn't be able to afford to work there! This is partly because Hades is so expensive (big dog, lots of food, also not the healthiest dog, and his daily meds certainly add up). But in the end its the same. What I keep thinking about is whether I could convince them to reduce my hours so I am down to 4 days a week regularly. I feel like that would do a world of good for my work life balance, giving me back the 10 hours a week I lose currently in transit commute. I don't think they would really go for it though, though I did just waste some time looking at indeed for points of reference. there really aren't a lot of jobs like mine out there. My job is a really cool special thing, and in that I'm lucky, but they don't really compensate me fairly for it, which is shit. I can barely afford to go away for an occasional weekend right now, let alone plan a longer trip without going into debt. in other work news, the heat is still broken but will hopefully be fixed on Monday.

Other than that - I can't remember what I said in my last update, but I finished candyhearts and posted two treats! I started my next AWRR AU fic that's been eating my brain for months. I also signed up for EAD's Lunar New year: wood Snake flash exchange, which seems like it should be lots of fun! I have a vague idea of what I want to do for it, and maybe I'll get a few treats done also, as it is also just a short thing. We'll see. I'm pretty sure I know what my candyhearts gift is, also.

I'm listening to the Odyssey now, the Emily Wilson one, and am already about halfway through. It's wild to me how much shorter it is! but that works out because I want to cancel my free audible trial on the weekend, and I should be able to get through it by then. Unless they offer me some kind of fabulous deal, I'll probably just stick to what I can find on Libby/Overdrive - I'm hoping if I start getting enough holds on things, they'll start coming regularly available. But we'll see! Maybe this phase won't last. Not sure what I'll go for next, anyway.

Nary and I are close-ish to finishing Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies. We're on the last chapter/case. It is a wild ride but I really do love all the characters. After that, in theory, we are going to see about doing Baldur's Gate 3, which i got for Christmas. She's not sure if she'll enjoy watching me play, and her computer isn't good enough to run it. But I don't really have the time to play it just on my own. So we'll see. I could try and play it with my sister but she is also really busy, idk.

It is almost ladies Night, which is something I started during the pandemic to keep in touch with some grad school friends, the folks I used to do a fandom podcast with, so Nary, earis and lukoni. Every second Thursday we try and get together and just hang out online. It's been really nice, actually, so stay in touch with folks!

I'm probably forgetting something to talk about here, hmmm... I guess on Tuesday I went to a talk by a local nature group and learned that the Canadian Supreme court recognized climate change in a decision, so that is nice, and also that having pollinator gardens may actually be covered by the charter right to freedom of expression, even if municipalities try to legislate against them. "Municipalities do not have the right to legislate aesthetics". So that's nice, although they are legal in my city anyway. They are also trying to push for urban gardening, which is cool, but are eyeing 'underused lands' like park space but a lot of 'unused' and underdeveloped parkland in this city and I suspect in the province are actually archaeological sites so. That's a conflict I'm not sure is even on their radar.

Okay, I think that might actually be all I have to say for now!

I finished listening to the Iliad this morning - it really was a fantastic experience, I am just salty that the version I listened to is an audible exclusive and I'm unlikely to stay signed up, so I don't get to 'own' it or have access to it. just let me pay money to own the thing! Insert rant here about late stage 'capitalism' where consumers don't even get to own products let alone their own labor. Grump.

Anyway, I really enjoyed it! If you are on audible and want to listen to a guy with a Shakespearean actor quality narrate classic text in a lyrical prose, and also don't mind graphic (graphic!!!) depictions of violence, I would highly recommend it. I might try an Odyssey next, which seems to be more widely available - but I'll probably do audible again just to use my second 'free' credit. After that, idk!

Meanwhile I will have a sulk that we are missing the full epics that actually covers Achilles' death and the sack of Troy.

Otherwise - things are fine. The heating is broken in the repository at work since last week, which is not ideal, but I'm glad it is winter and not summer. Heat is a lot more damaging than cold. Also I'm reminded that I saw that there is some cellulose nitrate in a new collection and I need to decide what to do with it. It's just a small bit, but nevertheless it should probably be isolated. I had a long meeting yesterday that I didn't really need to be in, but I also think that ti is nice to not have everything completely siloed, its just that my boss can't run a streamlined meeting to save her life. There was a bit of awkwardness in there too around some miscommunications, because she also is not always very good at listening and remembering context. I mean, most of the time she is great but there is definitely a solid percentage of time where I want to throttle her.

Home is also fine - IL's mom left on Monday. It was nice to have her around, and she is nice to talk to, but also weird having someone who is more extroverted in the house... or at least an extrovert who had any interest in engaging with the rest of the residents, perhaps. IL is still down in the US. I think they are out of the hospital but they basically stopped relaying updates to the 'family' chat so who knows. They were progressing really well in the immediate aftermath and probably still are.

I actually went away last weekend to visit Nary, which was a nice break. We binged watched the second season of Castelvania Nocturne, ate some nice food, and went to see Nosferatu )(second viewing for me) at the upgraded theater near her. It was one movie company that took over the theater from another and their base layouts are very different. the old one had their big concessions stand right in the center, and the new one just has them around the edges, so there is all this big open empty space... The old theatre also believed in colour (blue and yellow) and the new one is more 'no we are a Serious Fancy Place for Adults!' so everything is grey and it just looked very sad and empty to me. Maybe they will add more stuff over time. The seats themselves were very nice. They are a step up from the 'regular' recliner ones most theaters in the region seem to have now, with warming seats, and they all had the haptic stuff to make the seats vibrate and whatever, and had a butt warming feature. They also had their own little side tables, and the seats were semi-enclosed in a little cubicle thing with a place to hang up your coat. So it was nice not to feel too crammed in. Not all the seats were that style, but Nary splurged :3 Then we had our normal Sunday afternoon game that we are all in, and then dinner, and then home, womp womp.

I made a cake last night, and somehow under iced it but it is still quite tasty! And I finished my main candyhearts assignment and am just about done a treat, and then have to decide if I want to do another treat or start something else. And EAD decided to do a snake flash and I am having a quick little think about that, as there are some OW options and I could ask for that. But alas all the sneks I really want fic about are ocs :(

Tis an interesting weekend here. My sister's ex, who still lives here, is going off to the US for some surgery, staying with some of their partners for recovery, and their mom is here to help out with the household and spend time with her grandkids. So yesterday was a bit much, with 2 extra people in the house to navigate dogs around. Hades is a big, reactive, German shepherd. He is mostly just barky but he is a BIG dog and that's intimidating. We have a house that is pretty easy to close him off from people so that everyone has space but it mostly falls on me to do it when I am home, because I am more aware of where he is, etc, and also not everyone is like. Considerate of him, even though he is the one who lives here. Today the ex and their gf left early to drive into a giant snowstorm because they are not really great at planning and forethought! Good luck to them I guess.

In other news, I finished the audiobook version of Braiding Sweetgrass, which I highly recommend, and started listening to the Iliad, Lattimore translation read by Charlton Griffin. I signed up for an audible trial for this as I couldn't find anything free, but I'm really enjoying it. It is kind of fun to listen to the epic verse read aloud, but then just translated it into colloquial modern speak for my own entertainment as we go. Eg: Hektor: OMG Paris you are making us look like a bunch of punk bitches wtf. Being pretty is NOT enough. Now I have to fix this. Paris: Valid, but also sorry can't help it if I'm so handsome! And so on.

Meanwhile I'm working on writing my candyhearts assignment (its going slowly but I hope will come out well), and slowly working on knitting a top for which I'm altering the sleeves from bell to bishop.... third time's the charm on getting them right I hope!

Watching through My Hero Academia with Nary, and Fangs of Fortune (gorgeous and sad) with Nary and our friend Kennesaw, Theoretically watching Mysterious Lotus Casebook again with my sister but she is often busy when I have time for it. Playing-ish with Nary (she is playing but I'm helping :V) the second Apollo Justice trilogy. Playing in so many ttrpgs (but online), including right now, but its not my turn so I figured I would try actually writing something here.

Maybe

Maybe I will try this one again.

hello - who's all even out there?