wrangletangle | Reading

Two Doctor Who companion outfits for your delectation and delight! Outfits selected by a mixture of ones I, personally, like; lists on the internet; and a certain random element.

( Outfits below the Cut )

Vote for your favourite of these costumes. Use whatever criteria you please - most practical, most outrageously spacey, most of its decade!

Voting will remain open for at least a week, possibly longer!

Costume Bracket Masterlist

Images are a mixture of my own screencaps, screencaps from Lost in Time Graphics, PCJ's Whoniverse Gallery, and random Google searches.

schneefink

After a long day of classes (on a bank holiday, too) I treated myself to some grapefruit + nougat ice cream and then planned to spend some time reading, do some housekeeping in preparation for hosting a guest (very exciting), and then write some overdue review posts, maybe prepare some recs if I'm feeling ambitious.

Instead I spent most of the evening continuing to play Astalon: Tears of the Earth. I'd seen it recommended quite a few times on r/metroidvania and I was very curious, so when I saw it was on sale I bought it even though it's not entirely smart to start a new game 2.5 weeks before an exam. Ah well.

You play as a group of three adventurers in a post-apocalyptic wasteland that investigate (read: fight their way through) a tower from which comes a substance poisoning their village. One of them sold his soul to the titan of death, and in exchange every time you die you are transported back to the entrance of the tower.

I also saw it described as a "metroidvania with roguelite elements," which made me a bit skeptical because the other game that claims that is Dead Cells and that didn't convince me when I briefly tried it. But that description isn't really accurate because it doesn't have the procedural generation of a roguelike, it has the exploration of a metroidvania, and that's my favorite part of the genre. It just doesn't have checkpoints and very little healing. But there's plenty of shortcuts to unlock so landing back at the beginning is much less frustrating than I'd feared. And unlocking shortcuts is very satisfying; the exploration is satisfying in general, with plenty of secrets to discover. Plus, there are not that many but enough character interactions that I care about the characters as well.

After about eight hours I've beaten three bosses (one of them I'm pretty sure is optional) and discovered around 35% of the map. ( Spoilers )

unicornduke

Hey all, if you'd like to join the crafting hangout, it is tonight from 6-8pm ET!

Video encouraged but not required!

Topic: Crafting Hangout

Time: Mondays 6:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

Link

Meeting ID: 973 2674 2763

olivermoss

* I keep thinking 'I'm pretty much over this cold or whatever, I just need a bit of a nap.... why is it tomorrow?'

How the fuck is it Monday?

* I was really looking forward to finishing Lost Records: Bloom & Rage now that the second half of the game it out, but the game thinks I didn't nab the main quest item from tape 1. I was a few hours into tape 2 before I realized it. As great as the story is, the actual mechanics are very futzy and slow, and this hasn't been the only bug. Some games are fun because of the actual game play, some are good in spite of the gameplay.

I don't have time for this, I am going to find a LP to finish it out.

* [pours salt circle around flist] I really should not engage about Murderbot outside of this space. At this point some of the discourse is so far removed from the reality of the canon I am pretty sure people are just making shit up to support their takes. Actually, in a few cases I am completely sure. Maybe once the show is out the hype will drown some of it out? I wonder if it's dropping weekly or all at once?

It's fine to relate in various ways or to have different takes, but there is some wild stuff out there. Not sure what I expected from the fandom that thinks I haven't really consumed the canon because I like the wrong audio adaptation.

unicornduke

Saturday was a working day with employees here working. It was hot hot hot and sunny. There was a breeze but it only helped so much.

We got half of the required blueberries pulled. Those blueberries are the wrong variety that the nursery sent us and they are mixed into a block that is called the "early riskies". Those are early producing blueberries that taste good. The wrong plants are not early, they are mid to late season and they are mediocre taste. So we got ahold of the nursery and let them know and they are sending replacements this week. But the 4 year old plants need to be pulled out. I put one worker on the tractor (Kubota 7040 orchard tractor. It's tiny but mighty) and I was on the ground. I used a tire strap loop, wrapped around the base of the plant and had him pull the tractor forward, around half of the time, it tightened up and caught on the middle of the bush and pulled it out. I figured out it helped to jam a shovel into the ground a couple of times to loosen the plant up. If it still slipped, I would tighten the strap as tight as possible and cinch it with fencing wire that I had in the back of my truck. that got almost all of the plants. There were a few that still slipped, so those got more shovel stabbing of roots. So one row is down, around 25 plants.

The other employee was doing the thankless job of pulling the dead johnsongrass out of the spartan blueberry rows, so we can get sprays and woodchips down better, so after lunch I switched her to pruning blackberries. We're pretty sure only one variety of blackberries survived the winter, they aren't winter hardy to our temperatures generally, so we lose half of the crop pretty regularly. The problem is that they're the thornless varieties, much less hardy than thorned ones. But I don't know that people will want to pick the thorned ones. Something to work on. There's training the thornless ones onto a folding trellis and stuff, not sure we have the capacity to get it done. I swapped the guy working with me to pulling more johnsongrass and I went and starting moving woodchips.

We are mulching all of the raspberries with woodchips this year, changing it up from straw since the chips are easier. I got the raspberries on this side of the road all mulched this week and now I need to do the spartan blueberries and the raspberries across the road. I got a couple loads dumped that afternoon and then stopped to send the employees off at 4pm, quick chat about schedules for the week and checked the radar. Big storm blob approached, so I wanted to get one more load done. Ran over with the tractor, got it loaded, the sky started sprinking as I headed across the road. Got the load dumped, no problem. As I headed back to the house, I could see the mountains in the distance start to disappear. That's generally bad if you want to stay dry. I crossed the road, parked the tractor, closed my truck bed cover and sprinted to the house because the skies opened up. It was a half hour thunderstorm complete with the power going out briefly.

Everything was soggy after that, so I gave up on working and showered and got ready for the support group. It was decent. Small group and at the beginning the facilitator had made a comment about how the group had been quite large in it's first session in January, but gotten smaller since then, and around halfway through, someone came in late and then I understood why. The person who came in was one of those people who have something to say about everything else other people are talking about and also it was all about her. The facilitator did her best, but I get why a lot of people would have bailed. It was a decent chat though and I'm glad I went. I also got to see the downtown, which I haven't been down there in ages. It looked like there were some decent restaurants and stuff in the area, so I'll have to go and explore.

Yesterday was a lazy day. Dad and I chatted about schedules and plans and since everything was still wet, we couldn't do a ton of stuff. Oh terrible. I got my contribution to easter dinner baked (blueberry fruit bars) and then started working on the rototiller. It's a Howard, which is pretty indestructible which is good because we have a lot of rocks. We take the center tines off to renovate the strawberries and when I want to use it to prep a field, I need to put tines back on. It's a pain. But I like the rototiller for smaller plots. The potatoes still haven't arrived which is baffling, the shipping notice says they haven't given it to USPS yet. So it's somewhere. I'll get the rototilling done today and plant some peas.

Dad and I did a quick scouting and then headed up to the family party. It was a little quieter than some years, but it was a nice time. My cousin made some roasted lamb that was incredible. Lots of mashed potatoes. Yum. I caught up with family and then wandered out to the porch in my socks to watch the volleyball game. After 20 minutes or so, my uncle called me out and said if I was laughing, I should put my mouth where my money is. So I hopped down in my socks and we played valleyball until it got dark. Incredible fun. Ate some more dessert and then headed home and right to bed.

I ran for groceries this morning and also got a library card! Now I've got yogurt on the stove and then rototilling and crafting on the agenda for the rest of the day. Plus laundry.

pedanther

. At board game club, we played Lanterns, Exploding Kittens, Drop It, and Carcassonne. I haven't played Carcassonne in ages, but it turns out I'm still good at it (and, just as importantly, enjoy playing it). I also enjoyed playing Lanterns, which I'm not as good at, and Drop It was okay. I don't remember what the gameplay of Exploding Kittens was like because everything else about it was crowded out by how repulsive the artwork was.

The group of people I've been playing through Pandemic Legacy: Season One with got together on Friday and we played through to the end of the season. I'm kind of glad we're done with it; it was an interesting experience seeing how the game changed over the course of the season, but the story parts continued to be familiar and predictable right to the end. We'd also started to lose track of some of the rule changes, which contributed to us finishing the season on a more successful note than if we'd remembered all the new rules that were added to make the climax of the season more challenging, but I think that even if we had kept perfect track of all the rules we still would have achieved a respectable outcome.

We also played a game called The Isle of Cats.

. Years ago, when we were studying Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest in high school, the official text we had to use was an omnibus edition that also included An Ideal Husband, Lady Windermere's Fan, and A Woman of No Importance. I read An Ideal Husband at some point in the intervening decades, but I never got around to reading Lady Windermere's Fan until last month and it was only this week that I read A Woman of No Importance. Wikipedia says it's generally considered the least successful of the four, and that makes sense to me; unlike, say, Earnest, which is clearly and coherently a comedy, A Woman of No Importance is a bunch of witty dialogue crammed into a drama revolving around a subject that is not in the least funny, and I don't think it all fits together quite satisfactorily.

. There's a new podcast called DC High Volume, which is doing official audio adaptations of classic comic book storylines. They've just finished Batman: Year One (which was not bad, although there were a few scenes, including the climactic action moment, that I don't think quite worked without the visuals), and are following it up with The Long Halloween.

. I've either been having more vivid dreams lately, or just remembering them more clearly when I wake up. It might be something to do with catching up on my sleep debt, or possibly because the weather's turned cold and I've started sleeping with the winter covers on.

olivermoss

I went to Trader Joes to grab some lunch. This is a picture from halfway through one of the two lines that feed into the main line for the cashiers. When I was finally through I couldn’t see the cashier I was told to go and didn’t move fast enough, so a lady sniped my spot.

Me most of the time: Yeah, I can handle cities. I’m not from NYC but I grew up right near there. The NYC I grew up with was a lot meaner, grittier, more cuthroat than today's NYC.

Me actually in NYC: Help, mean lady stole my cashier!

Since getting food had taken so long, by the time I ate it was getting decently late. So, I decided to change my plans for the rest of the day. I was near Grand Central Station, so I hopped over there. Last time I was there, the ceiling was dark with one light blue spot, like bright sunlight was hitting it. It was the test patch to see if the mural on the ceiling could be restored and if it was still even there.

Today's Grand Central

The train station I remember was a lot different. This article talks about how the ceiling had "half-inch-thick layer of residue from cigarettes, diesel fumes, steel dust, and lead" over the mural and that stone work. Also, "Before the renovation, the Main Concourse was a bit dim, largely because blackout paint was applied to the windows during World War II." Yeah, the windows just weren't cleaned for decades, that was the state of it. That's the train station I remember. Dim light, murals and stone work hidden under decades of grime, the main walkways clear only because during rush hours the sheer mass of people would wear away the dirt leaving only the corners still covered.

From the article, a more familiar site:

Walking into the main concourse today:

The building is amazing with grand stairways and walkways, elaborate stone and metalwork doorways to plain concrete train and subway platforms. There are amazing contrasts and fantastic shots are possible, but I couldn't stay long. I looked over and saw the train to where I grew up, the train my Dad rode on his commute, and nearly fucking lost it. I hadn't been back east since my parents passed. Grand Central is not a place to have a sudden break down so I exited down into the dining hall.

I considered going back to my hometown since I was in the area and likely wont be again, but I knew there was no good outcome. Either I'd feel nothing or I'd be very not okay, and very not okay alone in public. As I know from experience, being emotional in public without someone to act as a buffer can lead to bad shit.

Then I went back up to the main hall and decided I should go. However, being an idiot I decided to leave by going into and through the Met Life Building and then through the Leona Helmsly Building (it's still really called that? amazing):

I walked my Dad's commute to his office building. It's a weird commute. Outside of cutting through two other buildings, you start on on a wide street with massive, recognizable buildings... and then turn down a narrow cross street where most of the sidewalk is subway grating. Just, thin metal mesh over a portal to hell or something that stretches the entire length of the sidewalk and the lion's share of the width. Underneath the trains are making noise, up on the street the metal is making noise as you walk and it moves a bit, and subway exhaust just blows up at you from under your feet. I used to hate having to walk over that, especially at rush hour as a kid because I couldn't see where I was going, I was just being pulled over something that didn't feel solid enough to be walked on, and also there was all the sounds, vibrations and the gross, warm air.

I found the building he worked at, looked over at the buildings I used to look down on from his office, and then decided it was time to head back to my hotel for the night.

olivermoss

Morning view:

The plan for the day was the Morgan Library:

The Morgan Library is amazing. I had a pre-paid will call ticket so my admission sticker didn’t have a time printed on it. Admission is timed and you’re supposed to only be there an hour. People who bought admission there had time stamps on their stickers and I heard some stressing about ‘only fifteen minutes left, we only have fifteen minutes’ Meanwhile, I spent a leisurely two hours and did a full circuit of everything twice, even sat for a bit to look over my photos and post to Bluesky.

It wasn’t until I was there and I’d seen the name ‘J Pierre Morgan’ a few times that my brain turned on and I realized this was the collection of JP Morgan, as in JP Morgan Chase. Chase Bank. I didn't know anything about this place, I just looked up stuff to do in NYC, saw one image of the Morgan Library and went 'yes, good' and put it on the list. I figured I'd learn about it there. In addition to his personal library, you can also see his office, his librarian's office, the modern galleries that were added and the large cafe in the center of the space.

His office:

Vault in his office with thick steel walls for his most valuable books:

( A few more pics )

There is almost nothing about JP in there, but lots about Belle da Costa Greene, his librarian. She was a light skinned black woman who passed as white for more of her career. The largest exhibit - which runs though May 4 - was on her, her life, showing photos of her and how they were shot to help her pass. So much on colorism. Two whole galleries were filled with pictures and drawings of her, her life, colorism in that era in general. Not what I was expecting to explore for my afternoon, my plan was 'try to get selfie in pretty room', but I was impressed.

Her office:

Her office had a large display of rolling seals - Each cluster is a seal, an actual imprint and then a photo enlarged to show detail:

Belle in her apartment with her personal library:

I was amused by the analog photoshopping, details where painted over to make it pop for print:

While JP collected European and medieval texts, she collected Asian and Middle Eastern texts and fine examples of Persian Script - from her collection:

Very little is know about her point of view on things. Someone was working on a biography of her, but the manuscript was lost? She was authorized to spent up to 100k of his funds on a single book, 100k in 1910 money, so about 3.3 mill. There is a pastel illustration of her at a 1911 auction bidding 50k for a single volume.

In addition to all that, there was yet another gallery of illuminated manuscripts, a stone passageway lead up to an gallery with a display on Kafka:

The hallways between the spaces also has painted ceilings, artifacts, rare book editions, etc.

And then another gallery with an exhibit about how often Medieval books were chopped up, pages treated like art prints, insets removed, etc. This is a painting and the book it was taken from:

A lot of medieval art we have is from books that were chopped up to treat the illuminations as like paintings, or sometimes bindings were removed to make the books cheaper to move over the ages.

And finally a depiction of how why so many valuable books, paintings, statues and other things from all over Europe got concentrated into one NYC townhouse:

I really lucked out with which temporary exhibits I got to see. The one of Belle da Costa Greene was amazing and I wish it was permanent. The two additional medieval book exhibits were great. The Kafka one I sort of breezed through.

musyc

Dear

caseficexchange creator:
Thank you! I'm looking forward to your fic or art!

Musyc ||

willhavetheirtrinkets|| Exchange App

For all my requests, fandoms I've requested a lot over the years have more detail, but I love all my fandoms equally. I recycle my prompts from exchange to exchange, but this doesn't mean I'll only be happy with those specific prompts! I'm just not great at coming up with new ideas. I'd love it if you picked one, but they're only suggestions! If you hit the vibes of my likes, that's all I need. Check out my all purpose letter for a lot of detail if you want more information on what I enjoy.

Both art and fic are beloved as treats for any of my requests! Art likes.

Things I generally love in any of my requested fandoms:
◈ happy endings ◈ angst or hurt/comfort with happy ending ◈ missing scenes ◈ mysteries (whodunit, cozy, etc.) ◈ 5/n times (+1/n) ◈ outsider pov ◈ friends supporting each other ◈ friends annoying each other (affectionate) ◈ parties and/or gifts ◈ noodle incidents ◈ slice of life ◈ trapped together

Casefic tropes and ideas I love:
◈ Howcatchem over Whodunit
◈ Rashomon-style conflicting narratives (each member of the team tells the story slightly different)
◈ Race against time to: stop the criminal from criming again; stop the execution before the wrong person dies; solve the case before another agency takes over; etc.
◈ Clue-style house party/locked-room mystery
◈ Heists for justice
◈ Characters having an unknown-until-now hobby/interest/skill that leads to a crucial clue
◈ Absolutely positively officially forbidden to XYZ so we're going to do it when no one's looking
◈ Separate cases all turn out to have connections to each other
◈ Even criminals have standards (so they're going to help the heroes)
◈ Friendly competition (team gets a reward) and minor sabotage (how *did* the battery fall out of your phone tsk tsk)
◈ Secondary characters in the spotlight (lab rat/squintern-focused types of stories)
◈ Generally humorous shenanigans

Crime tropes I'm fine with:
◈ Sexual assault/rape (adult)
◈ Murder (adult or child)
◈ Kidnapping (adult or child)
◈ Serial/signature killers

For all fandoms: I'm fine with canon-typical levels of injuries or violence, including that suffered by requested characters. Explosions, GSWs, druggings, kidnappings: All good.

( Requests )

purplecat

Ian lies in the front of the phot looking in pain, back against a blueish rock. Two blond thals in black leather trousers with holes in and padded blue sleevelss tops, also lean, pushing against the rock, one behind the other.

olivermoss

I took the Lakeshore Limited to NYC. It passes by the Great Lakes and not far from the Finger Lakes, but not near enough to see them. Turns out, the pictures of the train by the water is the section is goes down the Hudson.

Seeing the Hudson river was cool, but I wish I had more context for what I was seeing. I know there is a lot of interesting and historical stuff there, but I was not connecting the sites I was seeing to the local history I learned back in middle school.

Yup, it was snowing:

Familiar places outside the window:

Train:

Islands in the Hudson had lighthouses:

I don't know what this place is, but how do I find it and live there?

Coming into NYC - The windows were super dirty. Annoying, or did they add to the atmosphere:?

Then I arrived and was in Penn Station, an absolute monument to the fact that modern NYC and the NYC I grew up next to are very different places. It was bright and clean and lovely, and not the dangerous hellhole it used to be. Me, being me, I stopped to take some pictures. Then some guy comes up to me.

Him: I was on your train
Me: Okay
Him: Are you also looking for the baggage pick up?
Me: Nope
Him: Because you look lost and it’s dangerous to look lost in this city.

As he said that last part he went from standing slightly closer than I’d like to way too fucking close. I switched to the local dialect and assured him I am fine, and am in fact from the area. That isn’t exactly what I said, but for this post I’ve translated it from New Yorker back into standard American English.

The man may have been on my train, but I doubt it.

Why does this keep happening? I arrive in a city, step off train, and immediately something fucking happens. I decided to just hoof it to my hotel. The lack of traffic in NYC these days is surreal. People talk gridlock sometimes, but old school NYC gridlock was on a whole ‘nother level. Even during ‘low traffic’ times, it wouldn’t be unusual for a light to cycle without a car even being able to move. You’d literally sit through green lights because the cars on the other side of the intersections hadn’t moved and you had no place for your car.

I enjoy staying at CitMs, but it’s starting to feel odd how I am staying in the same room, different view. The system remembers my lighting preferences, like the shade of purple mood lighting I want in the bathroom. Same layout, décor, etc. As it starts to become familiar to me, it’s strange to be having the same room different cityscape.

olivermoss

That concert I was just at? Their big hit is about being back in Chicago. End of Beginning by Djo if you are curious. That was playing in my head half the trip.

I am becoming pretty familiar with Chicago. I've done some cool stuff there like The Wild Mile and am pretty comfortable using their mass transit system. But I am never there for Chicago, it just keeps being my layover. When I did Grand Canyon fully by rail, my Empire Builder winter hiking trip, my recent Cali Zephyr trip and now this trip, Chicago is my connector. It's kinda weird to me how the city is becoming familiar to me when NYC really isn't. (more on that later)

My plan for the day was to just work in the Metro lounge rather than see the city. I'd packed for warmer NYC weather, not Chicago where it was snowing and windy. It was nice for most of the day, but then some guy came into the quiet section to have a very loud phone conversation, one of those over 60 guys that just projects at their phone, and it was medical stuff about both his daughter and also the kid he was traveling with. the kid was right there and clearly able to understand the conversation. I heard him go 'oops, scared some lady off' and realized other people were literally leaving to get away from this guy and I wasn't? So I also grabbed my stuff and went to go sit in the area where they play game show reruns all day.

Out train left too late for dinner service, but we were offered a free drink and snacks in the dining car:

I was on Viewliner, which is a config I haven’t been on in…. 30 years? More? The bedrooms and roomettes are taller and all on the same level, instead of the double decker set up of the superliners we use west of the Rockies.. One of the ‘features’ of this config is a private bathroom, a toilet right in your room, next to your bed.

As far as I know, this is the more popular config and the private bathroom is supposed to be a good thing. I am team ‘no thank you I’d rather not’ and also team ‘yeah I’ll go piss in the cafe car not next to my pillow’. I don’t know if my take is actually unpopular or if East Coasters are just louder, but I prefer my Superliner config. I do enjoy that the bathroom doubles as stairs so you can easily climb up and also there is a luggage cubby over the hallway. I sat up on a ledge near the roof of my car because I could. I shoulda taken a picture from hanging out near the ceiling, but didn't.

Bed mode:

I woke up in the middle of the night and we were stopped somewhere. It wasn't a station stop, we were just maybe waiting on something. I looked out my window and saw this, which was kinda cool:

olivermoss

I had an early flight, but didn't think it would be too hard to get there. The light rail to the airport was having issues with the airport stop being closed. Also, the train I needed to take to that train was having ~staffing issues~ so there are delays of up to 38 minutes. So, I planned on a rideshare and just leaving extra time in case it took a minute to get a car. It took almost 20 minutes for Lyft to find me a ride, and then it said that pick up would be in another 20 minutes. It took the guy 30 minutes to get to me, but I chalked that up to Lyft’s estimates often being overly rosy.

Shortly into the ride the guy started describing to me his plan for a democratic economy based on divination using the art of college art students to predict the future. With his plan, we’d go back to the 20 hour work weeks we had in the 40s and earlier, before gender equality broke everything. He just kept talking, from how his divination method has been proven using it to predict silver prices.

Also, he drove an EV and it’s battery was low. There was a large screen on his dash showing the warning. Halfway through the ride his hazards came on automatically. I was just listening to ramblings, watching the battery tick down and also watching him miss 5 turns. The trip took way longer than it should have and I was already in 'if security is backed up, I'm screwed' territory. Also, I was seriously worried about his car dying before we got there and being stranded with this guy somewhere in the dark.

Then he went quiet for a bit. Then he started to apologize over and over again because he drank caffeine and every ‘future reality’ in which he drinks caffeine things go bad. He also started talking about seeing things. I should have made him pull over and launched myself from the car, even though that would mean missing both my flight and my train connection. I don't know if it's because I'd had two hours of sleep and was completely tunnel visioned on making my flight somehow, but I talked to him, got him calmed down and got him through the last few turns. I wish I hadn't. My report on him would have been taken more seriously by Lyft if I'd ended the ride early, but also like... would they even really care? Nothing works like it should now.

When he got there I told him to see where the nearest charging station was, the airport had to have one. He said he was fine to get home. I told him I didn’t want him stranded. He wouldn’t listen.

Then I got inside and got my boarding pass. I had trouble because I was so stressed from the ride I was literally shaking. It had been about 45 minutes of sheer stress. When the kiosk pulled up my info said ‘first class’ and my boarding class was ‘pri’ for priority. I figured it was just a boarding categorization thing. PDX’s redesign means that we have fast security, shoes stay on, and you have to pass slowly two at a time through a large area with sniffer dogs.

I made my flight, just barely. And yup, my seat was in the first class section, which is not what I’d booked. I went back and triple checked. I had booked seat 3A, but I'd booked the 'extra legroom' option on a small plane without a first class cabin. This is weird, because my impression is that surprise upgrades, like 'oops we changed planes and now you get to try first class' used to be a thing that happened, but not anymore. It was a marketing strat to make flying seem more exciting, twenty years ago. Maybe for reasons they are bringing that back, especially for Alaska Airlines flights out of PDX?

Anyway, the important part is that I was offered champaign as soon as I got on. I don’t typically drink before 7 AM, but if there was a day to do it. I felt a lot better after that. I was able to eat some of the food in first class, including some of the snacks. The food they offer is almost never edible to me, so I ate some because I could. I had champaign, orange juice, coffee, bacon, fruit and potato chips for breakfast.

I may break up my trip into a stupid number of posts, but yeah, just this post had gotten long enough. I still feel shitty about not launching myself from that car, but like what if the guy tried to stay with me? I just wanted to get to that airport so badly.

purplecat

A Building floorplan visible because of thin upright stones as walls.

Barnhouse Village again. That's RNGs for you!

unicornduke

I still feel like I'm settling in, or I'm in a weird limbo of life. Like I'm waiting for reality to come get me, I'm having a really nice time working on the farm. It's deeply weird. Not helped by my messed up sleep schedule, staying up late reading and not getting up as early as I mean to but lots of long hours and hard work. And the world is out there on fire.

I got my new drivers license tuesday, getting a bunch of farm work done including catching up with some things that have been typically neglected. As I'm spending more time here, I'm more and more baffled on how the farm is still running with how much time my dad spends on his computer work. How did he do it?

Today was weeding and spreading woodchips with the mill creek mulcher, a delightful machine that spreads mulch in a 18 inch wide swath on a 400ft row of blueberries in about five minutes with more time spent loading the dang thing and driving to the rows than actual spreading. Then I spent a lot of time on the bobcat skidsteer moving woodchips from one place to another. First was consolidating the pile currently being dropped off. Dad has a local tree guy empty his trailer in two or three different places and it's hard to get good piles with dump trailers, so the chips end up in piles of around 5 feet high across a 100 ft by 50 ft area. So I spent two hours or so taking those piles, creating a ramp up and making a 40x40ft pile that is 12 or 15 feet high. Good fun. Then I took the bobcat and loaded our dump trailer with the aged chips from the other pile and brought two loads down to the blueberries to be spread tomorrow.

One deeply weird thing I'm encountering is that I'm now much stronger than my dad. He's always been incredibly strong but between getting older and his back issues, he no longer can carry the stuff he used to, or muscle the equipment in the same way. And I'm back on the farm full time, so getting stronk as fuck plus the testosterone is making things go faster, plus I think the hormonal birth control I was on before was causing issues. We carried trash out of the church basement late last night and I took two bags up that he couldn't lift and one of them wasn't all that heavy in my opinion. But maybe I've changed too.

I'm doing a hybrid garden, growing some things I want in with the PYO farm stuff, like paste tomatoes and jalapenos and some stuff will be in a separate garden for just me, like the 7.5 lbs potato seed that shipped today. I'm hoping to have the garden field rototilled by the end of the weekend so I can seed peas and some other spring things. We have been having weather whiplash with some days barely reaching 40F with some strong winds and saturday is supposed to be 70F. The peppers finally germinated, the little jerks, and I seeded tomatoes today. Farm raspberries are coming next week, strawberries the week after.

Monday I made so much mac and cheese that it required two cassarole dishes (my nice 9x13 glass baking dishes are in storage. somewhere) and I should have enough to last me through sunday night even when eating some of it for lunches. Having access to my chest freezer and bulk goods is helping immensely with eating enough food. Monday, I also repaired my Unihertz Tank Mini of its bricked screen, which I broke back in December. I was so pleased with myself at fixing it, worked great except....the MMS receiving problem. It didn't have this issue back in December but it does now so I'm still using my backup phone since I can't get group texts at all. I've tried some stuff but so far nothing has fixed it. Deeply annoying.

I'm going to a trans meetup group on saturday hopefully to start meeting people. I like my parents but honestly, I need to spent time with people that aren't them or employees. Crafting night has been deeply helpful with this as well

reeby10

Slightly belated...

Reading

I finished A Poetry Handbook. It was pretty disappointing. Don't know if that's because I had too high of expectations for it, but I just didn't find that it had anything particularly interesting or useful.
I read Go Luck Yourself by Sarah Raasch (Royals and Romance #2). So so good!! The romance was great, as was the actual plot, but I really just love so much how she writes sibling relationships. Fingers crossed she does a third book.
I started reading Clown in a Cornfield by Adam Cesare (Clown in a Cornfield #1). I bought it last year, but there's a movie adaptation coming out next month, so I figured I should get to it soon. Good so far.
Ficwise, I'm still on Sterek fic. I'm on the second fic from the series last week, under the pale moon by lscar123 , and enjoying it a lot.

Watching

So much youtube. Someday the roommate and I will watch other things again...
AEW as usual. Things with Moxley's group seem to finally be starting to fall apart, so I'm happy about that!

Listening

Nothing.

Writing

Finished my smut4smut assignment! I somehow wrote over 3k in one day right before the deadline, which was wild. I think it came out good though :D

olivermoss

One reason I've been so dead since I got home is that I definitely picked something up on my trip. I'm not super sick, but very tired, grumpy, slightly feverish and I've got a touch of chest congestion on my right side.

I really need to stop falling immediately into 'alas, I am so old and tired, a trip wears me out so badly... this is it... this is my life now...' Only to realize no, something is going on. I am tired because sick.

I think I am on the mend because I was OUT of it on Tuesday, and am now at least capable of going oh, yeah, there is clearly a problem and it's not that my strength has left me forever.

isis

What I've recently finished reading:

In eyeball, Against the Tide of Years by S. M. Stirling, the second "Nantucket Trilogy" book. I liked the exploration and expansion of the map, but I really wished there was an actual map in the book, because I only had a vague idea, if any, as to where these various historical/archaic places actually were, and where they were in relation to each other. Even in the exploration across the American continent it wasn't clear where they were, because Stirling used native names (I guess?) for places. (And one of my big beefs with this book is that the exploration across the American continent had pretty much nothing to do with the rest of the book, and it didn't really have a point or a resolution. I assume it will be important next book, but in that case I wish it had been mostly left for the next book.)

I did like the new characters introduced in this one, and most especially I grinned when we met Odikweos son of Laertes of Ithaka, and also Alaksandrus of Wiulusiya, or Vilios, or Ilios. I always love seeing real historical characters show up in historical fiction! (Also I was extremely tickled when Ian quoted Monty Python, hee!)

In audio, Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, which I got from the library because it was one of the fantasy books recommended by Shannon Chakraborty in a NYT article last month. Casiopea Tun is a Cinderella in 1927 Mexico, a poor relation housemaid for her wealthy and unpleasant relatives. She snoops where she shouldn't and, oops, accidentally releases the Mayan death god Hun-Kamé, who was "killed" and imprisoned by his brother Vucub-Kamé. But before the god can take his revenge on his brother and regain his throne, he has to go on a hero's journey to find the missing parts of his body that his brother has scattered across Mexico, and of course Casiopea has to come with him.

I always enjoy stories of asshole gods and the mortals who help them out, and I really enjoyed having a story about gods and mythological traditions I wasn't familiar with. The writing's lovely, and it worked well as an audiobook, although either the reader's voice or the fidelity of the recording didn't play well with my running headphones, and of course I know only some Spanish and no ancient Mayan, so I felt like I missed a lot of names of people and places. I liked Casiopea's defensive sassiness, her desire for adventure finally unleashed, and Hun-Kamé's duality, his godly nature tainted by the vitality he drains from Casiopea to sustain his existence in the "Middle World". And the ending was great - I won't spoil it, but I was worried it would end up in typical YA land, and it did not.

schneefink

mcytrecursive had author reveals. I wrote three fics! I have periods of feeling very insecure about my writing, so it was especially nice that I had a good time writing all three, felt very positively about them, and then got very nice comments.
The first two are probably readable without knowledge of the fic they are based on, but all of those are great and you should read them anyway.

cut your chains in shining blue for

strifetxt, Hermitcraft
Recursing: Untamed Beasts by

WhisperNorBury
1.6k, Cub & Scar gen, prequel
Summary: Five times Cub killed Scar's summoner.
AN: My assignment, and the hardest one to write. Especially to settle on the five things, for a good progression and to make each of them different and interesting. I think it turned out very well! I was almost done when I remembered that Minecraft has respawns so now most of it takes place on hardcore worlds.

Etho's Escort Service From Hell for

alice_not_alice, Hermitcraft
Recursing: MailDemon AU by

azzayofchaos
1.5k, Cleo & Etho gen, demon AU
Summary: Cleo has fallen into Hell again, and this time she might need the help of a friend to get out.
AN: I wanted to write a treat for Alice, discovered this AU in the prompts, and wrote it basically in one go. Cleo and Etho are so much fun together, and I was reliably informed that I did achieve "funny."

(watch) where fears and dreams come true for

Odaigahara, Hermitcraft/Life series
Recursing: lost in the dark (he's got a heavy heart) aka Hunger AU by

definitelynotshouting
2.2k, Grian & Scar & Cub gen, canon divergence
Summary: Scar came with Grian when he left Hermitcraft and figured out a different way to keep him fed.
Cub finds them.
AN: Tagged as "downright fluffy compared to the original (a low bar)," but it does still have some angst, it would not be Hunger AU Grian otherwise (at least not without changing the premise.) Hunger AU is very angsty which is great but also made me want fix-it fic (at least partially...) and when I remembered that it's set in season 8 and thus pre-Scarland I got the idea for this, and I think it works.

I also got a fantastic gift:
star of the west horizon by

Odaigahara, Hermitcraft
Recursing: a rare talent indeed by

these_godforsaken_halls
6.7k, Grian & Cub & Scar gen, fairy AU post-canon
Summary: “I’m leaving for a while,” Grian tells Xisuma, who goes very still indeed at the suggestion that a fairy might spend the night outside of the hollow. “Just for a few days, now that I’m healed– I won’t be going far, and I’ll be extremely careful, I swear it, you don’t even know careful until you’ve seen how careful I’ve been, and Scar’s saying I’m much better at hiding than I was, anyway, so there’s no need to worry on that account.”
“Goodness, er, well–”
“And I’ve already packed, including all the pixie dust I’ll need,” Grian says firmly, “but you can look through what I’m bringing with me, if you’d like. To be sure I haven’t taken anything I’m not supposed to.”
“I’m not sure that’s necessary,” Xisuma says, and this is good, because it means Grian successfully diverted him from the main thing he was likely to object to. Grian can fly circles around Xisuma if he’s devious enough. He used to dodge scouts all the time, before–
Before.
He used to bait hawks.
Why I love it: Gorgeous. Fantastic character voices and relationships, perfect post-canon road to recovery, beautiful backstory flashbacks, wonderful atmosphere, just, so good.

I had such a good time with this exchange, I already look forward to

mcytblraufest, which is doing a Battleship format this year and I'm excited.