kyrielle | Network

vital functions

Sunday, February 8th, 2026 10:38 pm

Reading. I have FINISHED Index, A History of the (Dennis Duncan), including both indexes, including The Games Therein, and had a Great time.

Started (just now) The Rose Field, volume three of The Book of Dust (Philip Pullman). ( Grousing; vague spoilers for vol 2 )

so as I say I'm not hugely hopeful for this, but hey, maybe I'm being unfair to it.

Writing. Did you know that getting knowledge out of your own head and into other people's is a specific set of skills that has very little to do with how well you know the things you're trying to communicate? TRY TO LOOK SHOCKED, PLEASE. (6.3k words, and am absolutely in an Iterative Cycle of trying to make the introduction more-or-less work. It is progressing, just... very slowly.)

Listening. I realised that Hidden Almanac was possibly in fact exactly a useful sort of thing to listen to while Wrangling Laundry, and have therefore started again from the beginning, at least in part as an attempt to actually listen to some of the episodes I dozed through while they were playing in the car...

Playing. Incomplete White Puzzle progresses. (Today I have added I think three pieces to the contiguous section, two of which I had already joined to each other as a free-foating lump, and made another couple of free-floating lump connections.)

I think we also did a bit more Inkulinati before I got horrendously distracted by Puzzle. And the sudoku fixation continues, though it is at least ramping down a little.

Cooking. I have been having A Rough Week brain-wise, but I have today managed to make some bread, and I did earlier in the week gently fry up some celery and garlic to add to the mashed potato & parsnip that we were having with Vegetables and Veg Sossij. I think that is about the extent of it.

Eating. VEGETABLES, including a couple of peppers from an overwintered plant. (Restricted diet for a week up until the Tuesday just gone, so the return of Fibre was Extremely Welcome.) Favourite chocolate stars with raspberries. Fruit With Skin On. Lebkuchen. Stollen. Seeds and nuts.

Growing. I think the nematodes (applied as a split dose a few days apart) have dealt? at least temporarily? with the sodding Sciarid Flies? for now?

Lemongrass needs pricking out. Physalis are showing zero indication that they have any intention of germinating, which is mildly annoying. There are still three not-dead Lithops seedlings, though I doubt they're the same three as last week. Orchids getting increasingly enthusiastic about their plans to flower.

Have not managed to get anything else sown, yet.

Observing. Lots of bulbs: daffodils and crocuses various and snowdrops are Definitely Underway, at this point. We are fairly convinced that the Yelling from the garden around dusk is Amorous Foxes, though we have not (yet?) bestirred ourselves to ask the internet if what we think we're hearing is in fact what we're hearing...

Tags:

vital functions

GenPrompt Bingo: Wild Card (Telepathy)

senmut

Sunday, February 8th, 2026 04:38 pm

AO3 Link | Long Distance Force Calls (842 words) by Merfilly
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Wars: Rebels
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Darth Vader & Ahsoka Tano
Characters: Darth Vader, Ahsoka Tano
Additional Tags: Telepathy, Force Bond
Summary:

They never severed the bond...

Long Distance Force Calls

The first time her meditations took her deep enough that the lock slipped from the training bond, Ahsoka almost metaphorically ran away and slammed the gate shut. She was still on the run, still trying to figure out where she could belong that would make a difference, and there was this swirling storm of rage and pain.

Before she could, he took notice of her, and for a moment, she felt him push the anger away to hold on to her as something of his own.

~You left me.~ The accusation burned blue-white in her mind, as the anger rose higher than the possessive love.

~I would be dead if I hadn't and you know it,~ she shot back, but there was a piece of her that did feel the guilt of the galaxy burning down because of her choice.

~I could have protected you!~

~Really, Skyguy?~ She deliberately let him see as she stood looking over the markers made for the 332nd.

It was him that closed her out … after she tasted his own sense of failure to those that had trusted them both.

She had not been meditating that deeply when she knew that he was touching her mind. The whirls of anger were almost steadying, given how enraged she'd been by the Alliance ignoring her advice. They would not do so again — but too many had paid the price.

She locked that, all of her other activities, deep inside, protecting them behind shields he could not penetrate. That the anger was tied so deeply to pain, unending pain, was a moment's curiosity before she acknowledged him in her mind.

~Snooping on me, Skyguy?~

~Your irreverence only grows,~ and the voice was far more resonant, deeper, carrying a darker flare than ever, but she thought there was something desperate in how it sounded.

~Did they all die?~

She hissed in a breath, needing to protect those few men she knew to be free of the Empire, the ones safe from the nightmare… and grieving for all those she had not been able to save.

~If, Apprentice, you should find others, they still age.~

Her hesitation to tell him made those words come across as cold as space, and yet, even as he left her alone in her mind, she noted he had told her the important part. Somewhere, deep inside the man that had become her worst nightmare, he still cared about the men. And she would see what she could do to fix it, another testament of who they had been, when they had been together, protecting the men.

She was injured, almost to the point of needing trance to hold it at bay until her operatives made the pick up.

She didn't want to risk being that vulnerable, even as she reached for the fury-laced-with-pain that smoldered in the corner of her psyche.

~You are hurt.~

The surprise, followed by almost overwhelming anger directed at whatever had harmed her was almost touching, but Ahsoka had to keep that away from her heart. She brought her irreverence to her own defense.

~You are always in pain, Skyguy. Surprised your handler didn't get that fixed.~

That was better, a sharp spike in the anger, the deeper presence of darkness — it helped her maintain the illusion that they could never be anything but enemies now, even as neither of them severed their bond.

~There was not much of me to heal,~ being the next honest thought set Ahsoka back on her proverbial heels.

~Ultimate power, with access to a master cloning world, and he couldn't get you body parts cloned? Organs? Whatever it is that you need to not be… like this? Skyguy, your contract with this guy is worse than mucking eopi stalls.~

She didn't expect him to hold onto the link after that.

~Perhaps. But there is no alternative.~

Those words, contemplative, almost calm, sent a chill down Ahsoka's spine, but before she could think her way to a witty comeback, he locked her out again.

~There have been a number of times I thought you were a figment of my imagination.~

That calm entry into her mind, backdropped against the abyss of ever-present pain, set Ahsoka on edge. They'd been entirely too close in physical space this day.

~I wish I had words to convince you that we could make a better reality than what we have.~

She kept it to a surface emotion of wishfulness, holding back every other emotion that had surged in her soul during the near encounter.

~Wishes have never been a good plan of attack, Apprentice.~

She closed her eyes, gave him her regrets for the past, and locked him out of her mind, shoring up her shields against the man she missed, that still existed in a monster that had destroyed everything resembling peace.

Here they were, face to face…

…and even all the moments of the years apart that had led to words and emotions shared, they both knew.

Today, what they had been would either be destroyed forever —

— or reforged.

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Holly Poly Reveals

settiai

Sunday, February 8th, 2026 04:14 pm

Holly Poly reveals have happened, and I ended up writing a total of four fics this year. They were all in very different fandoms.

( Baldur's Gate (Video Games) )

( Daredevil (TV) )

( Titanic (1997) )

( Watchmen (Comic) )

Current Mood: creative

Tags:

(no subject)

twistedchick

Sunday, February 8th, 2026 02:12 pm

Start with the possibility of the stupid SAVE Act being passed by the Senate, requiring anyone who ever changed their name away from their birth name to bring stacks of ID, then add to that the possibility of ICE at the polls. Can you spell 'disaster for American election'?

Downsizing

bill_schubert

Sunday, February 8th, 2026 11:50 am

Last week's lunch at an independent living facility continues to have ripples. I was getting something out of my sock drawer and realized that I no longer wear socks for 10 months of the year. I'm in shorts but for the couple of months it is cool and I don't wear socks but for pickleball when I'm in shorts. So why all the socks?

I dumped a bunch a few years ago but apparently not enough. So I made a pile:

I'll be adding some other stuff from the back of the closet and then off to Goodwill. I've only been in a Goodwill once in the past 40 or so years but now have a need. I've dropped off more than I can even remember when we relocated in 2018 and I cleaned out my life the first time. I've got some drop offs other than my socks. Several pairs of pants are clown size and I have to wear suspenders to keep them up. Just the long stuff. My shorts adapt.

But I do need long pants so I'll be looking.

Having pants that fit the smaller me keeps me in the mindset that I don't need to get bigger again. I've still got another 15 pounds to lose so I don't want to buy new stuff that will soon be too big. So Goodwill.

See what I can find.

I will miss some of those socks.

Writing is the worst hobby

minoanmiss

Sunday, February 8th, 2026 12:50 pm

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Current Mood: amusenoyyed

Fic Posted!

lightbird

Sunday, February 8th, 2026 12:28 pm

So, further to my post from yesterday, not only did I post the fic, but I managed to flesh it out to over 500 words, so it now qualifies for a fill on both my bingo cards!

Here is the post on

halfamoon.

And on AO3: Baby Sis

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Why I love being an English language partner

jesse_the_k

Sunday, February 8th, 2026 10:32 am

Every week for most of the last 30 years, I have volunteered as an English language partner. Since 2024, I’ve treasured my time with two people who’ve learned English as a foreign language. I get to spend time with people who have weirdly requested that I correct their pronunciation and grammar. It’s a pleasantly zen task: listening carefully then offering precise feedback about a language I love. In return, I’ve enjoyed learning their stories from Chile and Taiwan/Germany/hiking world-wide.

( how I found people ready to learn )

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How to Like Ballet, Part 3

chestnut_pod

Sunday, February 8th, 2026 08:17 am

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Tags:

dance

Bones rules

marycatelli

books

Sunday, February 8th, 2026 11:07 am

Bones rules; or, Skeleton of English grammar by John B. Tabb

Turn-of-the-last-century grammar lessons. Basic, sound grammar, with some additional interest in his choices of sentences to analyze. Many from poems, and with some interesting placing of the parts of a sentence.

He does note that any word can be used as a verb, even then.

Bottles are emptied, to be filled up with tears

dolorosa_12

Sunday, February 8th, 2026 03:34 pm

I spoke with sister #1 on Friday morning, and for various reasons the conversation left me with lingering miserable feelings for most of the weekend, and a real lack of motivation to do much. Nevertheless, I persisted and tried to do happy things in spite of myself.

Yesterday, Matthias and I caught the train and then the bus out to St Ives for another beer festival held in a church. The weather outside was miserable, but the atmosphere indoors was bubbly and cheerful. People brought their small children, and dogs of various sizes, and sat around chatting in the pews. We bumped unexpectedly into R and K, two former students from our niche subject department in Cambridge (the pair started their undergrad degrees the same year I started my MPhil, and I attended all the undergrad medieval Welsh classes at the same time as R) and their toddler son. They live in Windsor now, and I don't think I'd seen them since before the pandemic, so it was somewhat surprising to see them at a random beer festival in St Ives! The world is at once big, and small.

Matthias and I finished up our St Ives excursion with a drink in a tiny cocktail bar (the whole space only has about twelve seats in it), then a very hasty dinner in a restaurant in order to catch our bus back and make it home at a reasonable time. I do enjoy these days out to nearby towns and villages, and should remember to do things like this more often.

Today — because I was trying to be kind to myself and my bad mood — I cancelled my 8am swim and had what passes for me as a lie-in (i.e. I still woke up without an alarm at 7am but lay around in bed until 8am instead of immediately getting up), before going on a walk with Matthias. Without a car, there aren't many options in terms of walking (there are about four routes we can take), so it was the same loop walk we did on New Year's Day, which goes along the river, then through leafy suburban streets, before ending up in the market square, taking just over an hour. We drank hot drinks from the coffee rig, and sat in the crisp wintry sunshine, watching the world go by.

Other than that, it's been a day for pottering about at home with the Winter Olympics on in the background. I haven't really been able to focus on reading (although I did finish a reread of Vanessa Fogg's beautiful little fairytale of a novella, 'The Lilies of Dawn,' while eating lunch, and I enjoyed Rebecca Ferrier's The Salt Bind — nineteenth-century smugglers, miners and Cornish folklore, with the sea an ambivalent and constant presence — earlier in the week), and in general I just feel a bit scattered and unfocused. But I've got hibiscus tea, later I'll light the wood-burning stove, and yesterday was the first evening of the year in which the sun set at 5pm, and that's enough light and softness on which to build.

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January (plus early February) TV shows

dolorosa_12

Sunday, February 8th, 2026 01:10 pm

I mostly finished five TV shows in this past month, but left it until today to write everything up as the final episode of one show only aired on Friday. As is common with my TV viewing, it was a mixed bag of genres. The shows were:

The Lowdown, a tale of local political corruption starring Ethan Hawke as a local journalist and secondhand bookshop owner attempting, ineptly, to uncover the truth behind the suspicious death of one of the members of a wealthy, prominent family. It's run by the same showrunner behind my beloved Reservation Dogs, and written with the same blend of offbeat surrealism, slightly sentimental affection, and incisively sharp focus on the poverty, deprivation and racism festering in declining American cities and towns.

Season 2 of A Thousand Blows, Stephen Knight's take on the nineteenth-century East End. As with the previous season, it's a wild, lurid tale of audacious heists, rival criminal gangs battling for dominance, boxing matches offering opportunities for the show's impoverished characters to claw their way into financial security, and larger-than-life people with larger-than-life emotions, told with a comic book sensibility. As a standalone series, I would have enjoyed this, but as something following on from Season 1, I found it a bit lacking. It was as if all the previous season's character development was reset, and there was never any sense of real risk: characters felt protected by plot armour from suffering any consequences.

I Love LA, a comedy miniseries about a group of self-absorbed Gen Zers trying to make it in the entertainment industry (social media influencer, manager of said influencer, costume designer to pop stars, nepo baby daughter of successful actor), which was almost painful in its humour. It's brilliantly acted and written, but excruciating if you find secondhand embarrassment at the obliviousness of characters always on the brink of disaster hard to watch.

Season 2 of The Night Manager, which picks up close to a decade after the previous season (an updating of a Le Carré novel for the Arab Spring era) finished. This new tale of twenty-first-century spycraft deals with corruption, international arms dealing, and external attempts to meddle politically in Colombia, and is well written and well acted with its stellar cast, even if some elements strained credulity. It's a wild ride from start to finish — tense and engrossing, with some incredible and audacious twists. Bring on Season 3!

Spartacus: House of Ashur, a spinoff from the cult favourite Starz series about the revolt and subsequent crushing of enslaved gladiators in ancient Rome. I have to say I thought the concept was a bit far-fetched and ridiculous (a canon-divergence AU in which a secondary character — who died towards the end of Spartacus — gets offered a second lease of life in the afterlife, and lives again as a freedman, the client of Marcus Crassus, and the owner of the house of gladiators in which he, and Spartacus were previously enslaved), and I'm still not sure why the show exists, but I can't deny it was entertaining. It has the same wall-to-wall gratuitous violence (slow-motion, comic-book style punches and blows by sword and spear, rivers of blood spraying around the screen), nudity (equal opportunity) and sexposition, the same bizarre dialogue choices (all the characters speak without the use of definite and indefinite articles, and absent possessive pronouns, as if translating directly from Latin — I honestly wonder how the actors are able to speak such contorted lines without difficulty), and, underneath all the sex and violence, a serious story about the limits of respectability politics. (In other words, a marginalised person can expend all his energy adopting the trappings and values of those privileged in his society, swallow every insult, and do everything in his power to cater to their whims and give them what they want, and it will still never be enough for him to gain material comfort, safety, or their acceptance of him as their equal.) I assume it goes without saying that if you're looking for historical accuracy, or even a sense of internal narrative coherence, this is not a show I'd recommend: it's 90 per cent vibes, and you just have to go with that. In the show's final five minutes, it makes a narrative choice so wild and so left field that I was almost astonished by the audacity, making it clear that — if it does return for a new season — it will be operating not just in canon divergence, but in full blown alternate history.

I feel as if the common thread tying together all these shows is character who think they are very clever constantly worsening their own situations due to their inability to think more than one step ahead, and making poor, reactive decisions instead of pausing and trying to think more strategically beyond their immediate circumstances.

Tags:

tv shows

What does the word "grocery" mean, no, really? [econ, curr ev]

siderea

Sunday, February 8th, 2026 12:47 am

Hey, does anybody happen to know the answer to this question?

Back when Mr B and I started doing joint grocery orders, I started analyzing our budget like you do. In the course of doing so, I discovered something I hadn't realized: about a third of my "grocery" budget wasn't food. It was:

• Disposable food handling and storage supplies: plastic wrap, paper towels, aluminum foil, ziplocs, e.g.

• Personal hygiene supplies: toilet paper, bath soap, shampoo, skin lotion, menstrual supplies, toothpaste, mouthwash, Q-tips, e.g.

• Health supplies: vitamins, bandaids, NSAIDs, first aid supplies, OTC medications and supplements, e.g.

• Domestic hygiene supplies: dish detergent, dish soap, dish sponges, Windex, Pine-sol, laundry detergent, bleach, mouse traps, e.g.

None of these things individually needs to be bought every grocery trip, but that's good, because they can add up fast. Especially if you try to buy at all in volume to try to drive unit costs down. But the problem is there are so many of them, that usually you need some of them on every order.

This fact is in the back of my head whenever I hear politicians or economists or social commentators talk about the "cost of groceries": I don't know if they mean just food or the whole cost of groceries. Sometimes it's obvious. An awful lot of the relief for the poor involves giving them food (such as at a food pantry) or the funds to buy it (such as an EBT card), but very explicitly doesn't include, say, a bottle of aspirin or a box of tampons or a roll of Saran wrap. Other times, it's not, such as when a report on the cost of "groceries" only compares the prices of food items, and then makes statements about the average totals families of various sizes spend on "groceries": if they only looked at the prices of foods, does that mean they added up the prices of foods a family typically buys to generate a "grocery bill" which doesn't include the non-food groceries, or did they survey actual families' actual grocery bills and just average them without substracting the non-food groceries? Hard to say from the outside.

When we see a talking head on TV – a pundit or a politician – talking about the price of "groceries" but then say it, for example, has to do with farm labor, or the import of agricultural goods, should we assume they're just meaning "food" by the term "groceries"? Or it is a tell they've forgotten that not everything bought at a grocery store (and part of a consumer's grocery store bill) is food, and maybe are misrepresenting or misunderstanding whatever research they are leaning on? Or is it a common misconception among those who research domestic economics that groceries means exclusively food?

So my question is: given that a lot of information about this topic that percolates out to the public is based on research that the public never sees for themselves, what assumptions are reasonable for the public to make about how the field(s) which concern themselves with the "price of groceries" mean "groceries"? What fields are those and do they have a standard meaning of "groceries" and does it or does it not include non-food items?

This question brought to you by yet another video about the cost of groceries and how they might be controlled in which the index examples were the ingredients for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but, as usual, not the sandwich baggy to put it in to take to school or work.

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Sunday Word: Hebetude

sallymn

1word1day

Sunday, February 8th, 2026 04:11 pm

hebetude [heb-i-tood, -tyood]

noun:
listlessness, lethargy, or laziness of the mind

Examples:

Though the pandemic-induced hebetude still prevails in day-to-day affairs, the high-octane election campaign and heated political arguments have oozed a degree of anxiety and buzz into the mundane lives of the lesser mortals (Shan A S, LDF sitting pretty; UDF, NDA hope to upset its applecart in Vamanapuram, The New Indian Express, March 2021)

From that solitude, full of despair and terror, he was torn out brutally, with kicks and blows, passive, sunk in hebetude. (Joseph Conrad, Nostromo)

So you think you are saving yourselves from madness, but you are falling into mediocrity, into hebetude. (Italo Calvino, Difficult Loves)

This hebetude of all faculty was the merciful, protecting method that Nature took with her, dimming the lamp of consciousness until the wounded creature could gain sufficient resiliency to bear a full realization of life. (Robert Herrick, Clark's Field)

Benumbed, exhausted, sunk in hebetude, she waited until she could wait no more, until intolerable suspense drove her blindly. (John Russell, Where the Pavement Ends)

Origin:
1620s, from Latin hebetudo, noun of quality from hebes 'blunt, dull', figuratively 'sluggish; stupid', a word of unknown origin. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

Hebetude usually suggests mental dullness, often marked by laziness or torpor. As such, it was a good word for one Queenslander correspondent, who wrote in a letter to the editor of the Weekend Australian of 'an epidemic of hebetude among young people who … are placing too great a reliance on electronic devices to do their thinking and remembering.' Hebetude comes from Late Latin hebetudo, which means pretty much the same thing as our word. It is also closely related to the Latin word for 'dull,' hebes, which has extended meanings such as 'obtuse,' 'doltish,' and 'stupid.' (Merriam-Webster)

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Awash in a sea of diamonds

cornerofmadness

Saturday, February 7th, 2026 11:04 pm

Or at least that's how the snow looked in the bright sunshine. I didn't try to get out of here today but I should have apparently. It's supposed to snow again tomorrow.

I am struggling to do the declutter thing but I did get the top of the jewelry box cleaned off and untangled about a dozen necklaces. Also realized the jewelry box on top the big jewelry box (I love jewelry so I have lots) was empty. It's now filled with anime fandom pins. I need to find a display for them.

This whole day seemed to slip past me in a very unsatisfying way. So I have little to report so have science Saturday

RFK Jr. Once Celebrated Raw Milk. Now, A Baby Has Died From Bacteria Linked To Unpasteurized Dairy Guess th is is going on the micro discussion board for class

Review Of 52 Studies Finds No Fitness Advantage For Trans Women Over Cis Women There are admitted flaws to the study but it does make a good point (that will be ignored by those who don't want it to be true)

A Subterranean City Of Salt Has Been Preserved Within This Cave-Like Mine For Centuries This has been on my bucket list for years

Heard The Rumor Earth Will Lose Gravity For 7 Seconds On August 12, 2026? Here’s Why It’s Rubbish FFS

Dry Scooping: Scientists Have Warned Against A Potentially Deadly TikTok Challenge.

When Vampire Bats Become Close Friends, They Start ‘Talking’ Like Each Other

Physicists push thousands of atoms to a 'Schrödinger's cat' state — bringing the quantum world closer to reality than ever before

Preserved hair reveals just how bad lead exposure was in the 20th century

James Webb telescope solves mystery of 'forever young' vampire stars from the dawn of time

More than 43,000 years ago, Neanderthals spent centuries collecting animal skulls in a cave; but archaeologists aren't sure why

Current Mood: blah
Current Music: The Gorgon

Tags:

science

Another Meme Because Why Not

minoanmiss

Saturday, February 7th, 2026 10:54 pm

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Current Mood: amused

Signal Boost: Heated Rivalry ICE OUT: Donations Period Open until Feb. 14th

celli

Saturday, February 7th, 2026 07:21 pm

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[navel-gazing] reading, fast & slow

kaberett

Saturday, February 7th, 2026 11:21 pm

At some point in proceedings (depression? pain? migraine? dense technical text for the PhD? poetry?), I realise, I have gone from reading Unusually Quickly to still reading More? Than Population Norm? (75ish books last year, of which 15ish were graphic novels or otherwise not-a-novel's-worth-of-words), but no faster than I'd be able to read the text aloud -- "hearing" each word in my head, and often rereading sentences repeatedly.

This is in contrast to how I type, which is much faster than I can speak comprehensibly (... though I now recall that I am in fact often asked to Slow The Fuck Down when providing information verbally).

I have over the last little bit been tentatively experimenting with trying not to read each word "aloud", mentally, and instead treating The Written Word as something that doesn't always need to be (pseudo-)vocalised.

It feels weird. It's an active effort. I am extremely dubious about the impact on how much information I retain; Further Study Required. I think this is probably how I used to read (when?); I'm not sure what changed; I'm unsettled.

(And I want to post something to Dreamwidth before bed, and this is a thing I was thinking about a lot while almost-but-not-quite finishing Index, A History of the -- I'm at a point I'd ordinarily count as "finished" but obviously it is in this instance both important and rewarding to read the index, all two of it, so here y'go.)

Tags:

books

Festivids

settiai

Saturday, February 7th, 2026 06:12 pm

Well, I was planning on trying to get this post finished before reveals, but I didn't manage it. So I've now updated it to include the names of the vidders as well.

Sadly, I haven't had time to watch everything from this year's Festivids, but I at least have watched the vids in fandoms that I'm familiar with and am caught up on (as there's a few that I'm behind on that I skipped because of the risk of potential spoilers). Here are some of my favorites from the ones that watched:

( Vids under the cut. )

Current Mood: accomplished

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Free!! Bonus added craptacularity!!

somedayseattle

Saturday, February 7th, 2026 03:03 pm

Written a couple days ago but forgot to actually post....

Boy oh boy oh boy. What a swell past couple of days. I went to the emergency orthopedic to see about these ridiculous blisters. Yep, I thought I had an infection. Dr. Melissa cut off the dead skin so it could start to heal. On my left foot two little toes and the big toe have no skin on the underside as well as a sizable patch beneath the knuckle of the big toe. On the right side, again three toes, but a long three inch stretch From the top of the toenail down the side of my foot. The second layer of skin is red and looks like it’s bloody when in fact, it’s not. Nasty shit continues to ooze slightly, soaking the gauze and the ace bandage on top of it all. I was hoping this would just be a slight inconvenience, but it looks like it’s going to take a few weeks. I have an appointment on Tuesday to go to the wound clinic. Nobody has ever said wound clinic in a positive way. This fucks up my therapy for the next couple weeks. It’s hard to learn how to walk when you have no skin on the bottom of your feet. I was going to post a photo or two, but I’m sure it would violate LJ standards.

Dr. Melissa asked me what I thought of my primary care provider Dr. Irvin. He’s OK I guess. Nothing great about him but nothing sucks. She said she was reading my prior records and told me I was “a medically complex“ person. The translation is there’s a bunch of fucked up shit that Dr. Irvin seemed to forget to mention. My D3 levels are startling low. There’s some issue with my hemoglobin, my diabetes is up and down sideways, and I am constantly running out of breath,,,,likely a cardiovascular issue. I can see how you can forget these little minor things as they don’t end up to a whole hell of a lot. You know other than them killing me and shit.

I swear to God, Rod and Todd if it ain’t one thing it’s another. The Universe has been fucking with me for three years. I wish I knew What I had done in a former life to deserve this circus. Whatever it is, it must’ve been a doozy..

I Finally Wrote a Fic!

lightbird

Saturday, February 7th, 2026 02:32 pm

It's a tiny ficlet of 250 words so unfortunately not enough to fulfill a prompt on either of my bingo cards. I'll be posting it tomorrow for

halfamoon.

Tags:

fic,
writing

How to Like Ballet, Part 2

chestnut_pod

Saturday, February 7th, 2026 10:27 am

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Tags:

dance

Postcard of the Day

fflo

Saturday, February 7th, 2026 12:49 pm

Still processing

bill_schubert

Saturday, February 7th, 2026 09:35 am

Dana and I went to a luncheon at a local 'Independant Living' place on Thursday and it turned out to be more of a foundation rattling experience than I anticipated.

We are not ready to make a change like that yet. Not even close. We could afford to do it. Everything paid for. Everything right there. But the downsizing would be crippling for us. I think if it were me alone I could deal with it a bit better and if I weren't around Dana would just have to. But the entity that is 'US' is not ready to be reduced so much. Not nearly.

This is a place that has no continum of care but has support and third party help. But it is otherwise like living in an apartment anywhere. But without a kitchen and the laundry is down the hall. So maybe more like a hotel room with a nice dining restaurant on site.

The people were really nice and I do think there is a lot of support staff. They have managers living in the building so there is 24 hour support if needed.

Part of my problem is comparing it to Timber Ridge which is Toyota to Rolls Royce unfair. We have a Timber Ridge type place here too and will likely get dressed up and look but I don't think we can afford it.

There is one in the middle that I think is most likely. It is continuing care and, I think, nicer.

But we're not ready. Unless and until we get to the point that we can't manage the living we have now I think we'll stay. As I've recently come to realize we're only a single event from that at any given time but if something happens that triggers our long term care insurance then everything has changed anyway. Anything short of that we'll deal with it.

I'm thinking we might look at maid service which would help a lot. Schedule it when I can take the dogs out. Maybe.

The luncheon did make me look at our situation with a more critical eye. It was a little depression inducing so I've been working through it but am, for the moment, happy to be on the other side and committed to being here for another five years or so. At least.

Meanwhile, my plan to build up our savings and investment is working. I'm putting Dana's social security into investments each month and we're nearly back where we were last year before all the medical costs hit us. That investment situation should only get better. And our house is retaining something over $100k in value were we to sell. So we're safer than many even with inflation chipping away at the monthly income.

Not ready to change just yet.

GenPrompt Bingo: A Moment of Clarity/Understanding

senmut

Saturday, February 7th, 2026 09:29 am

AO3 Link | Hunting Gone Wrong (1144 words) by Merfilly
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Wars: The Clone Wars [2008] - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Suicide/Suicidal Ideation
Characters: CC-1119 | Appo, Original Female Character(s)
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Suicidal Thoughts, Child Murder
Summary:

Appo is on a death world, hunting, but maybe he was the prey... and the wrong one at that.

Hunting Gone Wrong

They were being hunted, picked off one by one on this death world. Appo wasn't certain what he'd done to anger his Lord, but being sent to hunt a Force User had seemed easy enough on the data pad.

The reality was proving brutally different, and he was down to just two members of the original six that had followed him here to capture the rogue Force User for Lord Vader. Nor could he just comm for back up; the Exactor was pursuing the rag tag Rebels that had been in the system when they dropped.

Appo pulled up a map of the world, narrowing in on the fissure-laden landscape of this island. The Force User had taken out the other drop ship while they were in atmo before ditching from the ship and letting it crash. A small part of him decided it was rather fitting that they were all marooned, and Appo's chances of a pick up were a lot better than the Force User's.

TK-1138 let the world kill him, spooking at a noise and falling into one of the hissing fissures. Appo looked at the last surviving man of his squadron and ground his teeth inside his helmet. They might only be fleshborn, but he'd spent time fine-tuning the training that CC-2224 sent them out with.

They had to be the best to be 501st, after all. That had never stopped being true, from the before-times to now.

"Stay here, get the communication unit pieced together. Fleet should be back any time now."

"Yes sir."

Was the trooper relieved? Hoping Appo was the next victim? It didn't matter. Appo had to catch this karking —

The pain in his head came back, as that slip into his first language usually sparked it.

It was bad enough he held tight to his name.

He'd forgotten what it was like to hunt by himself. Even in his plastoid, it was easier to move and hide and track than when he was half-focused on keeping a squad alive.

He thought he was closing in on the Force User. He was fairly certain they were even injured. All he had to do was clear this climb, and he'd be close enough to be sure. Just a little more to climb —

— and a noise drew his eyes up, to see a face with white marks on bronze skin, blue and white marks on the horns and headtails alike, but eyes like his own staring holes into his soul.

The Jedi were traitors, manipulating the whole war, killing his brothers to cling to their power. The Chancellor said so, and he was their Supreme Commander. The General believed it. Appo followed orders, led the men up the stairs, and they started quartering the Temple, clearing out the traitors of all shapes and sizes.

It didn't matter that this one looked like the Commander. She'd been a traitor too. He brought his blaster up for a clean shot, waiting until she deflected two others to take his own.

He ignored the voice screaming in the back of his head that she had been just a kid.

Appo blinked at the bright light all around him, his concealing helmet (bucket, a piece of him remembered) gone, and him trussed him up as firmly as he'd meant to do to her once he caught the Force User.

She was tossing an EMP grenade in a hand, pacing in front of him.

Just as suddenly as she'd overcome him on the climb, she was there, kneeling in front of him.

"It would be more merciful to kill you," she said. "To you and to my father."

Clone dark eyes staring out of a face like hers.

"I don't feel like being merciful today." She clicked the detonator, and Appo's world disappeared for the second time in less than an hour, this time consumed by searing pain in his skull, the kind that came when he remembered the before times.

Vader's Fist.

Torrent Company.

Memories, like those of two different men, warred within him.

Torrent won.

He found himself retching up the nutripaste he'd been rationing himself since landfall. She at least tilted him with the Force so he didn't get it on himself.

Appo looked at her again, recognizing the hard jawline and set of the eyes as The Captain's trademark resolve. The lines of her marks might scream of the Commander, but he didn't think this one was going to try and make it all better like Commander Vod'ika had tried time and again, after the bad campaigns.

"So, when I take your binders off, I'm not going to stop you if you choose the easy way out," she said in a hard voice. "Didn't even know that kriffing monster still had any of you. Was supposed to be him I was facing down here."

"You… tried… to bait VADER?!" he asked, but of course a child of those two would be that brazen.

She didn't answer, just staring at him with unblinking anger at him for not being the right prey.

The easy way — he knew just what she meant, and as her features blurred with the earlier, rounder face of that child in the Temple, he thought he just might.

"You said your father," he managed to get out instead. "The Captain lives?"

"Somewhere out there. It's not like he and I could work together once I was old enough to go out on my own."

The binders fell away from him, and his gear was right there. A tiny piece of him suggested he go for his blaster, not to take the easy road, but to try and take her down, like he'd been told to.

Just like he'd been told to murder children. And atrocities that made that pale in comparison, ever since the day he followed his General into haran.

"What's the hard way?" he asked, and that got a blink, then a flex of the too-small lekku.

"I take you to a rehab specialist, away from the fighting, and you figure out if you can make peace with the man that chip made of you."

"Will he come there? Or her — kriff." The face and lekku had gone hard all over again on the pronoun. "She's gone?"

"It's why I joined up. He lived, when she didn't come back to us. And I'm not going to stop until he goes down."

"Small part of getting off this rock?"

"Got that covered." She turned to start walking down the easy side of the rise.

A few minutes later, he was following, with just the weapons and rations, hard as it was to leave the armor's protection behind.

She didn't say a word, and he kept following. Maybe, in her, in what she offered as the hard way, he'd find a way to his honor again.

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Capriconning

billroper

Saturday, February 7th, 2026 09:06 am

Day 2 of Capricon (Day 1 for me) is down in the books and it's time to head over and open the dealer table.

This, of course, depends on my ability to get four teenagers back into the car...

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the icon is for the fic i have been failing to write for seven years now

ranalore

Saturday, February 7th, 2026 12:42 am

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Location: yikes imma need to go to bed here now

Tags:

(no subject)

skygiants

Saturday, February 7th, 2026 12:53 am

Festivids reveals have SNUCK up on me they are happening TOMORROW and I have NOT had time to watch all the things I wanted to watch but! here are some things I very much liked anyway!

First, my own three (3!!!) beautiful vids:

Sharp Dressed Man, for Jeongnyeon: The Star Is Born, a glorious celebration of Theatrical Fashion

Touch, for the film Phantom, tense & wistful lesbian tragic romance!

and Ready to Fight, also for Phantom, TRIUMPHANT KINETIC ACTION

I did not expect to receive vids for either of these sources and they are all beautiful and perfect to me!!

And now, an incomplete list of other vids I really really liked and/or was impressed by and/or laughed my ass off at:

who wants to live forever (17776: What Football Will Look Like In The Future)

Congratulations, You Survived Your Suicide (Disco Elysium)

Everything I Need and PC Dyke (Dykes To Watch Out For)

nothing and everything (Hamlet) (the SONG CHOICE)

The Man I Knew (Jesus Christ Superstar)

Here (Labyrinth) (THE SONG CHOICE!!!)

ASSHOLE (Looney Tunes)

Let's Get This Over With (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead)

Ya Ya (Sinners)

There Is No Ship (Steerswoman)

man (Victor/Victoria)

I hope some of you enjoy some of these as much as I did!

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festivids

Sending one up for my Guardian Angel

cornerofmadness

Friday, February 6th, 2026 11:09 pm

I woke to zero no snow. It was due in at 2 AM. It starts instead exactly at 930 but friday is now a half day for me. I leave at noon. In those 2 1/2 hours it had snowed about 3-4 more inches. I can't see the road in town. Worse, I can't see it on the major highway but traffic is moving...until 1 1/2 miles from my place. Ahead of me I see two 18 wheelers skid, jack knife and bump into each other. I pump the brakes and naturally I'm not stopping. Worse, the 18 wheeler next to me also can't stop and he begins to jack knife. Luckily I DO stop without hitting anyone or skidding out. The 18 wheeler stops without taking me out.

No one behind me hits me. I'm like well a) glad I wasn't crammed and hopefully that stays that way b) I'm gonna be here forever c) I forgot my ereader. I call my parents to have something to do and then realize after dad says 'go grade something.' oh right I DID bring 6 folders of grading to do. that kept me busy for the next hour and 10 minutes. The truck drivers came back to be sure we were all okay. So no one was hurt. the big tow trucks come and the road is opened on one side and immediately the chucklefuck in the pick up behind me starts BLARING his horn at us. Dude, the cop is still in the road. When he says we can go we will.

I finished that vampire story about 800 words over. I might leave it that way because they said they'll read a little over and that's not that much.

I wrote something for

halfamoon Here you go

Title: Bad Girl Gone Good

Summary: Cherri finds herself doing things she never imagined herself doing like writing letters and thinking about changing her ways.

Rating: teen

Notes:Written for spikesgirl58’s 6 word challenge. The words were Tangible, Imaginary, Patch, Sheet, Persuade & Breakable and halfamoon's prompt of the outlaw

( at the above link or under here )

And here's my friday fannish 50 recs

14 Days of Valentine's Day Hazbin Hotel

The Hazards of Being Jack O'Neill Stargate Atlantis

Battle Of The Library Torchwood

When In Rome Stargate SG-1

Return of the Hale Pack Teen Wolf

Late Night Arrival The Owl House

Lost Love, Lost Life Torchwood

the Love Songs of the Urban Borahae Bird 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS

Weirder Weather Torchwood

Episode 2: Exist Ugly Dolls

Vulcans Don't Feel Guilt (Usually) Star Trek: Enterprise

Not Everyone Gets a Second Chance Inspector George Gently

talk (let's have conversations in the dark). Merlin

Wait for Back-up Prodigal Son

The heart on the right side. The Nightmare Before Christmas

Consequences 9-1-1

honesty is the best policy 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV)魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù

nightmares The Amazing Digital Circus

Ombrielle The Amazing Digital Circus

In the Know Teen Wolf

Resting MCU

Current Mood: grateful
Current Music: Bookish

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How to Like Ballet, Part 1

chestnut_pod

Friday, February 6th, 2026 04:54 pm

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Current Mood: determined
Current Music: Viens, Mallika -- Marianne Crebassa & Sabine Devieilhe (Delibes)

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dance

Mail Call

senmut

Friday, February 6th, 2026 07:10 pm

sweettartheart thank you for the lovely card.

Tags:

rl: correspondence

fic: your curious body sitting on the shore [m/m, Heated Rivalry]

raven

Friday, February 6th, 2026 10:52 pm

the inevitable daemon AU, omgggg.

your curious body sitting on the shore (5481 words) by raven
Fandom: Heated Rivalry (TV)
Relationships: Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov
Characters: Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Yuna Hollander, Rose Landry
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Daemons

It’s not just that Ilya’s daemon is impressive. Like… a wolf. A fucking wolf. Yeah, Shane is impressed by that. It's that hockey players shouldn’t have daemons at all.

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preposterous puzzle: thoughts so far

kaberett

Friday, February 6th, 2026 10:45 pm

The context is Simone Giertz's Incomplete White Puzzle, which A got me partly to troll me and partly because they thought I'd enjoy it and partly because getting the bundle of all three puzzles gets you 20% off individual list prices.

Current status: 105/"500" pieces in their final positions, plus another 57 no longer singletons. I have several semi-sorted categories including (in the halves of the box) "could plausibly have come from a reasonable puzzle" and "bullshit", and (on the table) Swoopy Bullshit, Offset Noses, Weirdly Straight, Multi-Nose Bullshit, and Featureless Curves.

( THOUGHTS )

I am having a very pleasant and soothing time, and I am trying to break up the hyperfocus by instituting a rule of Get Up And Do One Unit Of Something Else After Every (Contiguous) Piece Placed, and yes that is me rules-lawyering after the fact...

2026 52 Card Project: Week 5: Maeve

pegkerr

Friday, February 6th, 2026 03:28 pm

So I have recently had something non-terrible happen. I have acquired a new car, a 2023 Hyundai Tucson. This has been an extraordinary leap forward in technology for me. In fact, I have remarked that driving it after years of driving my old 2000 Toyota Camry, I feel rather like I am piloting a spaceship.

It has seat warmers! It has a video console! You can move the side mirrors in before entering the garage! It has a backup camera!

This may seem like old hat to you--to anyone who is driving anything built in the last decade--but it is entirely wondrous to me.

I name my cars in alphabetical order, boy-girl-boy-girl. My last car was named Lafayette, so this one needed to be a girl's 'M' name.

Given recent events, I decided that I needed a warrior queen's name and settled upon Maeve.

Image description: Background: deep space, seen over the surface of a planet. A black car (Hyundai Tuscon) sits on the planet surface. A sleek spaceship hovers overhead.

Maeve

5 Maeve

Click on the links to see the 2026, 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 52 Card Project galleries.

Current Mood: pleased

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2026 52 card project

News from the Midway Trenches (St. Paul)

lydamorehouse

Friday, February 6th, 2026 02:34 pm

The news continues to be not great... and hopeful, all at once.

ICE is supposedly shipping some 700 of its roughnecks off to other parts of the country, but if anything they seem to be sending the slackers away? The ones who are making their quotas seem to still be on the ground and out in force.

The mutual aid folks I work for, the Food Communists, had one of their deliverers get boxed in by ICE vehicles on Wednesday, demanding to know where they thought they were going with all those groceries and where did all that come from anyway? The driver apparently made oblique noises about having come from a food distribution warehouse and the ICE agents said, "You mean that church over there?" clearly indicating the church basement that my folks operate out of. And, then, apparently, getting their lines directly out of the villain's playbook, the ICE guys added, "Shame if anything were to happen to that church." Then they threatened to dump all the groceries the next time they spotted this guy. The Food Communists are keeping (and I am not inflating this number) 13,000 households fed. If that network went dark, people would suffer.

That threat happened on Wedensday afternoon. When Mason and I wandered in for our usual shift on Thursday we were told to go away until later in the day in order to keep the numbers of volunteers low so that everyone could be protected. The organizer there was really shaken by the threat and was wearing a bulletproof vest. By Friday (today), I saw some activity at the church as I was driving home from the mosque. Y'all you'll never guess what I saw! The Food Communists were being visibly protected by VETERANS FOR PEACE. This is a bedfellow in the revolution I would not have predicted, but here we are.

As I've started saying, "Worst timeline; best people."

Meanwhile, at the mosque today we all heard from another organizer that apparently the Goyim Defense League, actual Neo-Nazis, have rolled into Midway and, last night, apparently, stabbed one of the peaceful protestors at the Bridge Brigrade (which is what we call the loose collection of people who pick a random highway overpass bridge to hold up signs on) two blocks of my house, at Aldine. The protestor is okay? But, STABBED. JFC. The irony, of course, is that even though a lot of the sentiment is "F*ck ICE," around here I would say that a good 75%-85% of the signs say things like "We love our immigrant neighbors" and "ICE Out, Love in." Not sure why the antisemites have a particular beef with the anti-ICE people, but maybe they think we're all being funded by someone from one of their conspiracy theories. Who knows. F*ck those f*ckers. Also NOT WELCOME here.

Speaking of my mosque duty, I have finally personally been handed a heart-shaped donut by someone who was driving around doing nice things for the protectors. The mutual love here is really something special, y'all. It is life giving. In part because it's so random and so loving. This person was wearing a hijab and so perhaps she was especially doing nice things for folks in front of mosques or other Somali-immigrant places, but I wouldn't swear to it. She seemed like she had a car full of donuts and was just handing them out to people she saw protecting, which is so 100% Minnesota's response to this crisis. She was so pleased to be helping us help others. Like, so many smiles. So many thank you, no THANK YOUs getting bandied about. It was delightful. And given that I spotted my second ever "definitely ICE with those bandanas over their faces" vehicle, a really, really welcome bit of joy among all the fear and tension.

This part is fully difficult to explain to people not from around here. Like, you don't understand the random, chaotic, yet somehow fully organized nature of this resistance.... and how much goddamn love is going into every moment of it. The Veterans for Peace showed up for the Food Communists! Like, within two days!! And it feels like for every stabbing or act of shitty Nazism, twenty thousand more people are haphazardly driving around and handing out hot cocoa and donuts to people with whistles (an exaggeration, surely, but it is absolutely HOW IT FEELS on the ground.) Sure, one guy flipped us off, but the the amount of support and genuine acts of kindness outnumber the bullshit a thousand fold.

I believe we will win. I believe we will win because this community is standing strong and continues to grow and is motivated not by hatred or greed, but by LOVE and kindness and community. When those sh*theads realize that their bonuses aren't forthcoming, their health care will never actually kick in, and their paychecks bounce, their motivation will evaporate. We will still be here keeping our neighbors safe. We'll still be making cookies for each other and feeding our hungry and sheltering our vunerable and singing.

Speaking of, I have to tell you one other crazy thing.

People actually now have forms they give each other in case they go to a high-risk protest or an event where they think they might be arrested or detained. Our neighbors came over last night with one and a set of keys to their apartment. This form is terrifying, you all. It says things on it like, "If you don't hear from this person by ___ time, contact the following people..." I felt extremely honored to be handed this responsibility, but holy crap. What is this timeline? How are we in a place where my literal neighbors have to hand me a list of who they were with and who should take care of their cats in case they are disappeared?

Of course, we had this solemn exchange of information and what did I say when they were leaving? "Have a good time!" (God, I felt stupid.) Also, the "speaking of" of all this is that I believe they were headed to what we colloquially call "band practice" here in the Twin Cities. Band practice is the folks who set up outside of hotels that are hosting ICE personel and make as much noise as possible all night long. Every grain of sand in the gears, my friend. Every grain of sand.

A tiny sign on a stick no larger than a chopstick with the words, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere...whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."

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Book Review: Lieutenant Hornblower

osprey_archer

Friday, February 6th, 2026 04:02 pm

Although Lieutenant Hornblower is the second book chronologically in the Hornblower series, it was one of the later books written in the series. So, although the narrator is in fact Lieutenant Bush rather than Hornblower himself, it is very much a Hornblower book, which has the presumably unintentional effect of making Bush sound absolutely obsessed with Hornblower.

Oh, sure, he’s constantly running down Hornblower’s appearance (he looks like a scarecrow! He looked like he dressed in the dark and forgot to straighten his clothes!)... but that just shows he’s extremely aware of Hornblower’s appearance, as he rarely comments on how anyone else looks. He stares at Hornblower’s beautiful, skillful, fascinating hands (yes, he actually describes them as fascinating), and wonders if admiring a junior lieutenant smacks of French equalitarianism. He watches Hornblower drink a bucket of water from the well, which sluices down his chin and soaks his white shirt, and “The very sight of him was enough to make Bush, who had already had one drink from the well, feel consumed with thirst all over again.”

I mean yes they did just complete a sneak attack during which no one had a drink in the tropical heat for at least 12 hours, but also WOW. That’s what seeing Hornblower in a wet shirt does to a man, huh!

And then Bush is wounded, and the last thing he remembers before he blacks out is Hornblower’s pleading, tender voice… his gentle hands… the feeling of being safe and comforted by Hornblower’s presence… And once he’s in hospital on land, Hornblower brings him an entire basket of tropical fruit, and Bush is so bowled over he barely manages a “Thank you,” and then they just gaze at each other, which, let’s be real, is probably Hornblower’s preferred love language: Significant Looks.

Then later on Hornblower gets appointed captain, and Bush is so thrilled and so drunk that he ends the night stumbling down the hall, both arms around Hornblower’s neck, bellowing “FOR HE’S A JOLLY GOOD FELLOW” at the top of his lungs as Hornblower helps him to bed. One presumes that Forester simply cut out before Bush dragged Hornblower in for a sloppy drunken kiss and Hornblower patted him awkwardly on the shoulder and fled.

So yes, all the people who recced Hornblower on the grounds that it is very slashy are 100% right. Amazing. This may in fact be the high point of slashiness for the series, as it seems unlikely that Hornblower POV is ever going to be quite as obsessed with Bush as Bush is with Hornblower (the series after all is not called Lieutenant Bush), but we shall see.

Oh, as for the actual plot, ( spoilers )

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The shittification comes for us all

sorcyress

Friday, February 6th, 2026 03:49 pm

So Forest appears to be enshittifying, which is a huge bummer --it had been a genuinely good app with a great premise¹. It did not need to go insane with bonus features and subscription plans. It was exactly the sort of thing that I was thrilled to have purchased, once.

(Honestly, I was even thrilled to have purchased it twice, because owning it on both iOS and Android was okay, actually).

But every single time I've opened it, it's immediately thrust a "HAVE YOU CONSIDERED TRYING PLUS?!" ad into my face. I believe this has also been the case when I finished planting my most recent tree. I have it running now, and if it does that again, I might honestly be through, because...gross. Part of the reason for buying the "pro" version was so that it didn't have ads. Ads for your own product still count as ads, fuck off.

It is my most curmudgeonly opinion that the internet was genuinely better when I was a child. It is also irritatingly correct. And yeah, obviously I am making this post on ~~livejournal~~dreamwidth, because nowhere else is even close to the acceptable place to do so.

(Okay, I mean, someday I'll get around to actually making my own website and that would be okay for it. But until then!)

Anyways, I really set this particular Forest timer to keep me off my phone while I try and wrap up at work and go home for the weekend, so while writing my words³ isn't *un*productive, it's also not quite optimal. Ta!

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Set a timer to plant a tree. If you use your phone for any purpose² before your timer is over, your tree withers and dies. Otherwise, it gets put in your little "forest" which you can browse by day, week, month, or year. There's also a thing where you get a little bit of "coins" every time you successfully plant a tree, and so you can use those to purchase more species and stuff to diversify your forest.

2: You can set a small whitelist of approved phone uses, so like, an emergency phone call from your parents will still get through or whatever

3: Man, speaking of enshittified websites. I stayed on the original.750words for like three years after they launched the new site, until it finally got too buggy/deprecated. And the new site is just...bad. It has so many stupid glitches and irritating quirks and I'm acutely aware of this right now because I wrote my words there, and they can't fucking figure out the difference between enter as single and double spacing, which means when I copypaste words from there to here, I have to go through and delete two extra blank rows between every paragraph.

Also I can't use tab to indent and ctrl-z doesn't work. I love the concept of the site so much, and I genuinely want to help them with their current little push of "actually we'd love to see if we can get a lot of users" by writing a nice advertisement, but your product is worse than it was in 2010 and I kinda can't promote that for you.

numb

xinas_island

Friday, February 6th, 2026 11:33 am

Just home from the Dentist appointment.
The whole right side of my face will be numb for a while, and it feels so bizarre. 😄

I love our new Dentist office. I mentioned that at some point I would like the final metal filling replaced. And they were like "We had a cancellation in the spot right after your appointment, we can extend your appointment and get it done too if you are ok with that happening today". Um, Ok. Do it.😄

So now I have three teeth freshly drilled and filled.

Also found out that two of the teeth have cracks in them that were hidden by the old fillings (probably occurred when I still had the metal fillings?) They want to keep an eye on those two for sure, to make sure they don't advance or start acting up. She thinks that the upper one may need a crown next year, but the lower on can probably go five years before needing a crown.

The lower tooth (that was next to my metal filling tooth) had a cavity under its old filling. She took care of it, but since she had to clean up reeally close to the nerve she told me to call them immediately if I start having any aches/pains/ or extended sensitivities start happening, as I'll need a root canal ASAP if that happens.

Our Insurance covered almost everything. 💖Total was over $880, and we paid $131., so that was good.

Cleaning in July should be around $227 each, with out coverage. So now we're armed with those numbers for July's appointments. 😄

Current Mood: numb
Current Location: Vancouver Island