unmowngrass

I finished reading Adventures in Calamity Physics yesterday. There was a major plot zig around 85% of the way done, and then a zag after the 90% mark. Did not see either of them coming! Now I'm on Terminal Chaos, the second book in the series that starts with Station Eternity. I like the characters in it— especially the rock-like aliens.

This weekend, I photographed a bunch of stuff and posted it for sale on Craigslist. It included a damaged antique Victrola cabinet, which I thought I'd be lucky to give away for free. Hah! I probably should have charged something for it, just to cut down on the number of flaky people messaging me about it all weekend who couldn't seem to actually follow through. But! It went to someone who is going to strip it and restore it to its former glory, and I couldn't have asked for a better recipient.

Saturday night, HalfshellHusband and I watched Letters To Juliet, in which Amanda Seyfriend was woefully miscast (too callow) and Vanessa Redgrave made up for it. \o?

Sunday afternoon, I went for a bike ride out on the parkway. BIG surprise there— they have finally opened the rest of the lower parkway after closing it for 3 1/2 years while they, IDK, added a lane or two to the Business 80 over-crossing there? It's really nice to have the rest of that downriver option. There are always fewer people there, and I can't go very far upriver on weekends because of the increased amount of idioting that makes biking there (in clip-in pedals) dangerous. This means I don't have to do a bunch of tight loops over and over again to get my 20+ miles in on downriver days anymore. \o/

Not looking forward to the summer heat, though. Two weeks ago, we had our random 53^o day. Next week? It's supposed to hit 89^o. NOoooooooooo!

labelleizzy

Out my front window I can see:

* White flowers from the potato vine in the backyard
* Dark pink of the flowering crabapple
* Fresh pale green growth on the podocarpus
* Several fruit in different stages of ripening on the limequat tree
* Fresh growth and some flowers on the redcurrants bushes
* Fresh growth on the rosebush and fig tree
* Fresh growth on the dwarf pomegranate that we've decided is coming out this year. 😢

Of the plants that we're going to remove I'm saddest about the pomegranate.
We're also going to take out two Chinese Fringe bushes because they're crowding the citrus trees, and two shrubs at the end of the patio that aren't thriving at all.

My plan is to cut down the foliage and ask Sergio to take out the stumps, and maybe dig them out a little bit so we could try and plant something else in their spots.

Current Mood: busy

halfshellvenus

Guess what I found at Amazon, while looking through Book Nook-style LEGO and peudo-LEGO sets? A Tardis set for all the Whovians out there. This is a wooden model-kit rather than being made of LEGO-style bricks, but it's still neat. There are a bunch of other Book Nooks offered by the same company, which include a variety of Steampunk-themed things and zodiac- and tarot-related sets. \o/

I did our taxes this weekend, and even with Turbotax it was more of a pain than it needed to be. We actually owe money this year, thanks to a bunch of capital gains that I didn't even know had happened. They typically get automatically reinvested. I.e., we often don't actually see any real money, just the changes in investment account balances. And yes, I realize that's a problem most people probably wish they had. Given all this, you'd think I'd be more sold on retiring this year. But I'm leery because of Trump and his effect on the affordability of healthcare. HalfshellHusband is a high consumer of health services, so having to get independent coverage makes me nervous.

I'm 3/4 of the way through Adventures in Calamity Physics, a coming-of-age novel about a high school senior who suffers a catastrophic trauma. She has an insufferably erudite Casanova of a father, and a rather pretentious friend group she was pressed into joining by a well-meaning teacher. Despite how it sounds, it's an amusing and mostly (drily) humorous read. It's work, though. Much of the prose includes references to books or films as passing supplements to descriptions or situations, so it's full of citation notes. And you find yourself reading every one of them.

Movie-wise... we watched Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning on Netflix last weekend. Ulllhhh. The inside-the-situation-room scene was particularly bad, with some of the worst and needlessly wordiest dialogue ever seen in Hollywood. None of the actors seemed to believe in what they were saying. Plus, there's the endless over-reliance on rubber mask disguises, which wasn't believable in the first film. :( There were some fun car chases, but a lot of the movie seemed like noise and flailing trying to disguise a lack of conviction. \o?

Now, in the throes of the spring-forward bleariness, I need to get ready to go bicycling. Today will be outdoors, after three days of being stuck in the garage because of excessive wind. Welcome to spring in Sacramento. :O

hafnia

I feel like I ought to have more to say, but the last week has been more of the same: making bread (experimenting with sourdough, mostly hydration ratios, though I did do at least one pass at the cranberry walnut loaf and while it wasn't perfect it was good enough that I'm going to keep trying, it made excellent toast), noodling at writing stuff, and — well.

Last week, Maximo was like, "oh I'm not sick, it's just allergies" as he became, in short order, Very Goopy.

"I don't think that's just allergies," I said (helpfully! I am helpful). "You sound like a frog."

He rolled his eyes, but — well, dear reader, I was correct, it was a rather nasty headcold, one which he kindly passed on to me. It's been going around his work, evidently — everyone's negative for, well, everything (including Maximo), no fever/body aches/anything that would point to flu or COVID, just — goop. Good ol' rhinovirus, I guess.

Anyway, yes — he was like, "I don't think I'm sick", and then he was, I caught it from him, and thus had two days of sort of sneeze-y, goopy misery. Today is the first day that I've felt halfway normal since Thursday, and, well — ended up with a migraine, because the universe has a sense of humor. (Deep sigh.)

Was supposed to take a sourdough class that a friend of a friend was teaching and wanted feedback on; texted her yesterday thanking her for the invitation and telling her that in the interest of not passing along the crud, I wouldn't be going. So. You know. Boo.

Stayed home, obvs. Max went up to Salem to go meet one of his friends to play disc golf, since the weather was fine, and as soon as he left I went back to bed and didn't get up for a solid three and a half hours. Took pain meds, curled up in the dark, slept it off. Woke up not being entirely sure that words were, well, working, but mostly felt better, and have felt okay most of the rest of the day.

And, well, yeah.

The weather has been sort of shit lately — rainy enough that I can't start doing the outdoors stuff I want to do (clearing out raised beds, digging up the bulbs I want to get rid of in the front yard, because the hyacinth has more or less taken over the entirety of the corner and I am sick of it), also cold until today. It's actually supposed to snow overnight Monday, which is very ?! considering that today was 60F, and may explain the migraine (they are, alas, weather-linked).

The Fandom Trumps Hate (hereafter FTH) auctions wrapped this evening. Was sort of relieved to see that I got bids on both of them? Was half-afraid, going into this, that no one would bid on me — did actually have a couple of friends where I was like, "PLEASE, IF IT GETS TO THE LAST FEW HOURS AND NO ONE HAS..." — but, well, yeah. Did get bids! Got multiple bids, even, on the writing, which is still astounding to me, but FTH is one of the events that's for a good cause, so it's less, "ah yes, You Specifically are Desired" and more, "what you're doing is interesting enough and it's for a decent enough reason that no one's going to begrudge spending $5 on it". Though, er — I think the last bid for writing was more like $55? Which is, again, a bit "!!" to think about, but oh, well.

I won't find out about assignments until probably sometime next week, but I'm looking forward to it, so. Hoping that the second-place bidder from the writing auction also wants something, because A). More money going to charity = good, and B). They left a really lovely comment on something I'd written, which made me think, "ah, we have similar taste!", and so I want to know what they'd request, honestly.

Not much else to report, I think. Lots of grumbling re: physical health stuff (three migraines in two weeks, including one that more or less Lingered for three days) — the migraines were honestly what came up in therapy last, along with, "I know that rejection sucks but boy it really sucks" — and that's not terribly interesting to talk about, plus y'all heard from a lot as part of the Talking Meme Month stuff, so. I am still noodling over thoughts on writing for that, for the record, and when I finally have something coherent to answer the questions that were posed to me, I'll share it. It's very — mm. Part of it is that I'm reluctant to give advice on how to write, because I feel like it's personal/subjective, and what makes "good writing" depends on things like what the purpose of it is (e.g. is it technical writing, are you trying to convey information or instructions, are you telling a story — and if so, what sort of story) as well as your own personal style and preferences. I'm never going to write like Hemingway or Dickens, but I'm not particularly fond of either of their styles (nothing against them, really), so of course it's not going to sound the same, and if someone comes to what I've written looking for that, they're going to walk away annoyed.

I can talk a lot about how to develop the habit of it, which is how I think you get better, but...I mean...it also feels very deeply weird to position myself as an expert on this when I have recently gotten rejected. I haven't done anything meaningful with writing in about fifteen years — I mean, I write for myself, and it's fun, but I definitely haven't met the publication goals I set out to, etc, and so there's this feeling hanging over me of, "man, do I have enough know-how to feel comfortable answering this stuff?"

I think the answer is yes, with some hedging, but, well.

We'll see.

Watch this space, I guess, in the meantime, and I will probably try to throw up something coherent once my head is no longer actively trying to kill me.

hafnia

Ha. So — so far at 3/4 for rejections (for jobs and writing submissions) over the last, er, month. Jobs — one I just did not hear from (the posting was removed and then relisted), and the other was a mismatch between what their ad said and what they actually wanted (they were nice about it, but it wasn't a fit). The writing thing I figured I would be rejected for, too, since right after I submitted, they shared on their social media, "we're especially interested in stories about [SOMETHING I DID NOT WRITE], as we've been inundated with stories about [WHAT I DID WRITE]", which...oops.

It's...I dunno. As I said to Ed in therapy yesterday, I know that if you don't submit stuff, you can't, like, expect to have any chance of getting stuff published, and if you don't apply to jobs, you won't get hired, but both processes suck a lot and I am not a fan.

I have one more piece currently out for publication. It was an even longer shot than the first one, so, er. I'm preemptively going, "yeah, I'm going to guess I didn't get in for this one, either" and shrugging. At least I tried?

Right, anyway.

The upshot to this is that while I was very much In My Feelings yesterday re: rejections and just feeling low, I got a very nice comment on one of the things I have on AO3 that I'm most proud of (The Road Through the Mountains, because...yeah, anyway). Like, nice enough that it made me teary, because it came in very shortly after the extremely impersonal writing rejection (like, they misspelled my name, that's how impersonal we're talking, ha), and it was very clear from what they'd written that they loved the piece, which was a great feeling. ♥

And, er, well.

The auctions for Fandom Trumps Hate opened for bidding today — they'll be open through Friday — so imagine my complete and total shock when I opened the bidding sheet for the writing I'm offering and saw that there is, in fact, a bid — one placed pretty early, even, for 5x what my minimum bid listing is, from someone I don't know.

I had sort of half-expected that I was going to need to send someone $5 to bid on me, so this is a very pleasant surprise. ♥ Almost offsets the "ugh, applying for stuff is the WORST" feelings. :)

If you're wanting to bid, then, looks like you have to donate more than $25.

If you want tabletop (bespoke tabletop!!), that one is open and doesn't have any bids yet — you can find it here.

halfshellvenus

I don't think I mentioned that HalfshellHusband got me a fantastic Lumibricks Time-Rift Library set for Valentine's Day. I'm really looking forward to putting it together!

In the meantime, I just finished a Starry Night set I got 2-3 years ago and never put together because of all the time spent on the house rebuild or (after moving back home) because it was still in an unopened box. I picked this set out as a birthday present however many years ago, partly because of the Starry Night theme (I have a LOT of Starry Night "merch") and also because it includes a Van Gogh minifigure with his painting. \o/

What I failed to notice at the time was that it was a mini-brick set. I haven't worked with those before, and the danger of something rebounding off the other pieces (or just falling) is very high. The smallest pieces are extremely hard to find on our Oriental-patterned rug. I didn't lose anything permanently, though the set had a few missing pieces (I improvised) and a LOT of extra pieces. The instructions were all pictures, with the number 1, 2, and 3 being the only non-Japanese (Chinese?) parts, and one of the blues was REALLY hard to make out on the diagrams— I had to get out a flashlight. This was a super-challenging build. :O

Midway through the build:

Three-quarters of the way done:

Final product with mini-artist:

I would recommend this set, except that it's no longer being made. There are other Starry Night sets, but the resulting "pictures" are usually less accurate than this one. Someone did a very creative job designing this! But if you're tempted, there's the original LEGO set (expensive!). And also these three knockoff sets at varying prices (all of which have a mini-painting, and you could add your own made-up mini-figure)! That last set is actually pretty good. All are mini-bricks, though, so be warned.

In other news, I put the coffee table together. That amounted to screwing in the legs, which were in two pieces to accommodate a flat lower section. The biggest challenge? Breaking down all that styrofoam to get it in our garbage can. It'll probably take 2-3 weeks to get rid of it.

hafnia

I signed up to do work for

fandomtrumpshate this year. So, er.

Two different auctions, one for writing (obvs) and one for fan labor.

Writing auction is here — 20-50k words, up to E rating, original work. There's more details at the link, but basically, if you want a bespoke romance novel, you get a bespoke romance novel. Or, you know, SFF action-adventure or whatnot, it's really up to you.

People who are familiar with The Road Through the Mountains or In the Lord's Manor: YEAH, YOU ALREADY KNOW WHAT I LIKE TO WRITE, AND IF THAT'S WHAT YOU WANT, I'M FUCKING THRILLED.

(People that liked the House Ilizana stuff in particular — you know who you are — I have a planned-but-not-written longfic about Jastira and her lady's maid and what they got up to prior to her marriage to Mal's dad that I have been itching for an excuse to write, so if you look at this and go, "man, $5, that's pretty reasonable, I wonder if she'd be willing to...", the answer is YES.)

Genuinely, though, if there's anything I've done that you've liked and wanted more of, bids start at $5! It goes to charity! I will write basically anything as long as it doesn't hit my DNWs!

Bidder's choice as to which charity stuff goes to, please bid on me? Ha ♥

The fan labor action is here, and it's the one I imagine more people will be interested in. Ever wanted to play one of my campaigns but not had a chance to because of timing, wanting to play solely with people you know, or similar? GOOD NEWS. I'm offering a bespoke ttrpg one-shot. Limited in system (D&D 5e, Monster of the Week, Blades in the Dark), but 3-4 hours depending on players and what people want, I will work with the bidder on what themes they want present, etc. Again, details are at the link, but if you've ever been like, "the games you run sound cool, I want to play with you", good news!

Bidding for that starts at $20, again bidder's choice as to which charity you donate to. ♥ Please note that $20 total for tabletop for up to 6 people is a fucking steal, for most DMs/GMs it's more like $15-20 per person at the table, on the low end, so!

Bidding will open on March 3rd (and you bet your sweet bippy that I'm going to advertise again, so!).

I really doubt there'll be much competition for bids, so! Keep an eye out, if you want to bid, please do so, or if you know someone who would be interested in what I'm offering, point 'em at the auctions, yeah? :D

hafnia

27 is late, of course, because I saw friends last night and didn't get home til late :D

27: If I had unlimited resources (including time), what hobby would I pursue?

There are two!

1). I learned how to oil paint when I was a teenager, I loved it (I was not very good at it, but that's fine), and I miss it. Would love to do it again at some point!

2). Stained glass.

Both are specifically, "money/having a space to do it in"; would also love to learn to blow glass someday (there's a bunch of workshops for it out here, oddly enough), but that's something where it's like, "I fully expect that I will try doing this and go, 'hmm, cool, not for me!'", whereas the other two are things I know I like. :D

28: Best moment of the last month?

Oh, seeing that my fucking sourdough worked and being able to make myself a sandwich with it (which was very good), almost definitely! :D

hafnia

if I could travel anywhere, where would I go/what would I do?

I mean, honestly? I'm kind of boring. I'd go back to Spain and spend a week or two doing nothing more important than eating good food and visiting all the historical sites, maybe hit up Portugal while out there.

Max wants to visit Japan, someday I would like to visit Chile, but like — for the most part, "go back to Europe now that I'm older and theoretically have money" is near the top of the list. :D

Anyway, er — the sourdough adventures continue! I made crackers from discard (very good, worth doing again), and today I experimented and did a weird loaf (this recipe).

It turned out pretty well, actually!

It's very high hydration, which means it stuck awfully to my brotforms, but I'm going to drop it for next time, I think, and try again. "Next time" as in, "I'm probably going to make more bread this weekend, because Why Not".

We are moving ever closer to the cranberry walnut loaf of my dreams, which is the Important part. :D

halfshellvenus

In fact, I own two of them! I purchased a random LEGO Harry Potter minifigure from ebay, and it also wound up being this: Professor Sprout with mandrake. How cute is that?

It is, of course, all about the mandrake. Because I love absurdity. AND I just discovered that there is also a Sirius Black minifigure with ball and chain! Ahahahahaha!

After our random winter day last week (53^o), we're now having more springlike weather. A little TOO springlike—Saturday's high is supposed to be 76^o, which is awfully warm for the end of February. It makes me worry that the summer temps will come early, like in March or April. Please, no!

I finished Station Eternity recently, which was a fun read. It's a combination of comedy, mystery, and sci-fi. The main character is a young woman with an uncanny gift for solving murder mysteries, who notices that a LOT of those murders involve people who are somehow connected to her. She pleads with a sentient space station to grant her refuge, so she can get away from humanity and stop triggering more murders. There are only two other humans on the space station with her... until the station decides to invite a human contingent for a visit. More murder ensues!

I also finished T. Kingfisher's Hemlock and Silver, which is kind of a desert-based light fantasy with loose ties to the Snow White fairy tale. The main character is a poison expert, which is unusual. An enjoyable read over all. Someday, I'll get around to reading The Raven and the Reindeer, which I forgot I bought on Kindle at some point. This is good, as our county library still refuses to buy the digital version of it.

This weekend: I'll be building the coffee table, gathering some more items for Goodwill, and I might finish my pseudo-LEGO mini-brick Starry Night set! \o/

hafnia

talk about a TTRPG system other than Dungeons and Dragons

Easy — there's a number of them I like. Blades in the Dark and Monster of the Week/Thirsty Sword Lesbians/Apocalypse World/every other PbtA game out there come to mind, as do some lovely GMless indie ones (Stewpot! Rusalka! Fiasco! The Quiet Year!), BUT.

Honestly, okay, the top complaint I get about tabletop?

"I don't want to play online, I don't want to play with strangers, and I don't know anyone offline that wants to play with me, where do I even start?"

The answer for that is:

SOLO GAMES.

There's a bunch. I'm not talking about the weird D&D hacks, either, though those do exist (and I don't recommend them!). Solo tabletop as a genre has expanded a lot and there's a bunch of wonderful stuff out there now. I've played a few, but my favorite, by and large, is Thousand Year Old Vampire.

In TYOV, you play as a vampire made sometime in history. You pick when, give yourself a handful of possessions, and then roll dice and respond to prompts to figure out what happens to you. Do you survive and thrive, or do you die? What do you remember, what do you forget, and how do you adapt to being a vampire? It's extraordinarily well-done, and unlike a lot of journaling games, which can feel like writing prompts, it manages to capture the experience of roleplay extremely well. I played it for the first time a couple of years ago, and ended up documenting what happened to a Roman peasant girl as she lived through the collapse of the empire and into the Middle Ages. Some of the choices I was faced with and things that my character had to do were among the hardest I've ever made as a player, and it required a great amount of consideration and thought to move from point A to point B. The game broke my heart (in a good way), and I highly recommend it. It is, to this day, one of my favorite games. ♥

In non-Talking Meme Month news: reveals happened for the January round of a remix exchange I'm involved in, so I now have something new on AO3 that is (surprise!) not rated E.

And I Awoke on the Cold Hill's Side (rated T, 7.5k words) is a love letter to growing up queer in Salt Lake. It's set around the time that I would have been in undergrad. It's not perfect (what is?), but I hit the mark for what I set out to do, and, well, yeah. People familiar with the valley can probably pinpoint exactly which warehouse I'm talking about for where the party toward the middle of the piece takes place.

...I also have another piece up that is, uh, rated E. Slaying the Dragon (E, 14k words) is about grief and how we recover from it and come back to ourselves. It's set in the same universe as The Road Through the Mountains, though it's obviously not the same characters or set-up, and no familiarity with it is required. ♥

Not much happening. Have thus far been ghosted or rejected by every job I've applied to. I feel mostly okay about that. I have some freelance work lined up for the fall (we're drawing up contracts), so I am perhaps less worried about money coming in than I should be. Still noodling on various and sundry stuff; been dealing with some pretty awful chronic pain things lately so that's taken most of my focus, and I'm trying to like, gently remind myself that I can in fact take this time to simply Be and not worry about, you know. Everything.

( talking about FOSS/software stuff, probably not interesting to most people. )

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unmowngrass

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Page generated Mar. 11th, 2026 08:42 pm

Reading

Finished!

Spring and gardening

More -ish than LEGO

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More pseudo-LEGOs

I will post about this again, but...

Talking Meme Month - 27 and 28!

Talking Meme Month - day 26

I now own this...

Talking Meme Month - day 25

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2026

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