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I was mistaken for an academic this afternoon at the bookstore which made me want to go home and shoot myself in the head, but when I actually got home a package of white chocolate and lemon Milanos was waiting for me from

selkie and I managed to get a picture before the rain started of the previously mentioned neighborhood decoration.

Every single review I have encountered so far of Death by Lightning (2025) has proceeded from the assumption that the reader and by extension the viewer has never heard of Charles Guiteau and only vaguely, perhaps dutifully of President James Garfield and I just don't think Sondheim fans are that thin on the ground. At least it should popularize this particularly indelible fact.

Current Music: The Last Dinner Party, "The Scythe"

Title: hockey smile
Fandom: NHL
Rating: G
Content notes: None apply
Summary: icons of NHL players sporting their best gap-filled smiles... just because it's a cliché doesn't mean it's not true. XD

( hockey smile )

Ever wondered how I churn out so much rhyming poetry?

Meet my beloved RhymeZone.com, extensive rhyming dictionary.

Also endorsed by Florence Welch and Seth Meyers, quite recently, in a charming interview.

Current Mood: the rain in spain
Current Music: I sort of hate to ask it, but what's a rhyme for basket?

My sister texted me yesterday to let me know she's sick so I shouldn't go over there today, so I did not. So today, instead of making pie, I made Chinese pork buns (pic). I made the pork yesterday and used the leftovers today - I used boneless country ribs because they are fairly cheap and I don't like dealing with bones. I can't seem to get a good boneless pork shoulder these days - last time I ordered a bone-in one, it was supposedly 3 lbs, but it was 2 lbs of bone and 1 of meat, which is not the best ratio for the money - so I go with the boneless country ribs instead (the ones from Costco are especially good).

*

I shouldn't have been so enthusiastic the other day about how much better I've been sleeping, because of course, on Friday night, I had a terrible night's sleep, tossing and turning and just unable to stay asleep after several hours of trying to fall asleep. Last night was much better. *hands* Sometimes, it just be like that.

While I was lying awake, I was thinking about Dungeon Crawler Carl, as I have been wont to do lately, and trying to figure out his relationship with Bea, because I find it kind of baffling. ( spoilers through book 7 )

*

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: Rams vs Niners on tv

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Current Mood: content

Celebrating. Anniversary. <3

Reading. ( Ravindran, Link, Stocks )

I have also: been skimming a variety of pain-related academic publications, and: printed out not one but TWO translations of Treatise on Man for the coming week's work reading.

Playing. Things!

Gently pootling along in I Love Hue.
Inkulinati! Delighted by having made it along the High Combat route on the second map page of my journey with... really minimal damage sustained; also very pleased that having worked through most of the Academy and now having made Progress on my Journey I now have enough of an understanding of mechanics that Proper Shared Activity is viable. (... had a Very satisfying Pushing A Helmeted Dog Off Its Level when it had considerately broken down a neutral gate for me.)
Fluxx! A particularly ridiculous game, that spent a whole bunch of time Draw 1 Play 1 and then suddenly exploded into Draw 3, Play All, Rich Bonus, Poor Bonus, Party Bonus, and Inflation, among others.

Cooking. Um. Three things from [the Roti King cookbook]9https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/466240/roti-king-by-sugen-gopal/9781837832118)! Surprised by how Very Into the beetroot thingy I was, and the pumpkin stew Grew On Me over the several days we spent eating it.

Also a tomato salad from East, which I was meh about -- but hey, that's one more thing crossed off that particular cookbook list!

Eating. This weekend we have had Many Avocadoes (which are a Special Treat), and also A made me blueberry pancakes for breakfast this morning.

OH and a variety of Things To Share from The Artful Duke in Bromley: macaroni cheese not particularly exciting but also very definitely not Cold Sad Soup, and therefore very welcome; sweetcorn "ribs"; three bean chilli nacho Situation; halloumi fries with hot honey. This occasioned the realisation on my part that "hot honey" is upselling for "sweet chilli sauce", which I find very amusing.

And a big pile of tomatoes my mother sent us home with, along with a chunk of Schwarzbrot :)

Exploring. Bromley "zoo"!

Making & mending. ... I got one of A's mildly problematic fountain pens writing earlier today and then promptly made it stop again. Gonna keep poking at the nib. (Tines were misaligned. Fixed that but/and they are now also a bit too splayed for capillary action to work properly; I think this predated my starting to mess around with it...)

Growing. The Mystery Habanero fruit are getting bigger. I am extremely impatient about how much bigger I need to wait for them to get before I can taste one to see how bad an idea eating it neat was.

All the various patio saffron are coming up, but the trough do not seem to have any interest in flowering this year, so I am going to need to Have A Think about what to do to make them happier. Honestly the answer is probably "buy another bag of bulb compost and bury 'em deeper".

There are currently three poems available from this week's fishbowl, and I'm working on the next. If you're still shopping, now's the time to make your choices.

Current Mood: busy

Life found in a place scientists thought impossible

Life defies limits in the deep sea—microbes flourish where Earth’s chemistry seems too extreme for survival.

Deep beneath the ocean, scientists uncovered thriving microbial life in one of Earth’s harshest environments—an area with a pH of 12, where survival seems nearly impossible. Using lipid biomarkers instead of DNA, researchers revealed how these microbes persist by metabolizing methane and sulfate. The discovery not only sheds light on deep-sea carbon cycling but also suggests that life may have originated in similar extreme conditions, offering a glimpse into both Earth’s past and the limits of life itself.

Extremophiles are fascinating.

Also, I really want to play with that blue serpentine mud to see if it would stand up to pinching, coiling, slabbing, or throwing and what would happen to it in a kiln. It looks like clay. I am betting it would fire either to a soft blue-gray (nice) or a sky blue (so much wow).

Current Mood: busy

⌈ Secret Post #6883 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

( More! )

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 30 secrets from Secret Submission Post #983.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

from Requiem by Anna Akhmatova
(translated from the Russian by Stanley Kunitz & Max Hayward)

Not under foreign skies
Nor under foreign wings protected -
I shared all this with my own people
There, where misfortune had abandoned us.

Instead of a Preface
In the terrible years of the Yezhov terror I spent seventeen months waiting in line outside the prison in Leningrad. One day somebody in the crowd identified me. Standing behind me was a woman, with lips blue from the cold, who had, of course, never heard me called by name before. Now she started out of the torpor common to us all and asked me in a whisper (everyone whispered there):
"Can you describe this?"
And I said: "I can."
Then something like a smile passed fleetingly over what had once been her face.

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Current Mood: worried
Current Location: on my Chandler/Joey chair
Current Music: Watching Tulsa King

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

Current Mood: worried
Current Location: on my Chandler/Joey chair
Current Music: Watching Tulsa King

Joe helped and Cloud "helped." :)

warped floor loom

I'm waiting for my intended handspun weft yarn to finish drying in the sun outside before setting up my shuttle. :)

Title: Missing in America
Fandom: None
Rating: G
Length: One page
Summary: If found, please return.

( CW: US politics content )

This week's bread: Dove's Farm Organic Seedhouse Bread flour, nice.

Saturday breakfast rolls: brown toasted pinenut with Marriage's Light Spelt - perhaps was a bit too sparing with the pinenuts after the excess of last time?

Today's lunch: pheasant breasts flattened a little and rubbed with coriander seeds and juniper berries crushed with salt and 5-pepper blend, panfried in butter and deglazed with madeira, perhaps slightly overdone; served with kasha, garlic-roasted purple sprouting tenderstem broccoli and 'baby' (adolescent) leeks halved and healthy grilled and dressed with a grain mustard vinaigrette.

Decided I am not going back over the hell that was dental this past week. More happening this week. And next year.

No, I wanted to share the "food crime" I made today:

So the other day I saw a post, ostensibly about food crimes:

Butter Chicken Poutine
Folks, that sounded tasty, and I asked

ilyena_sylph if I could. She said yes.
The sauce was store bought as typical for me, I added browned hamburger, and I made home fries from scratch.

Tasty meal was had. Very filling. Our son was over, so I had the joy of feeding him in addition to us. And tonight will be Mozzarella Ravioli with Garlic Marinara with mother-in-law. Food is love, people.

Title: Time Cannot Erase
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Author:

veronyxk84
Characters/Pairing: Buffy (implied Spuffy)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: grieving
Word count: 100 (Google Docs)
Spoilers/Setting: Set post-series, some time after 7x22 “Chosen.”
Summary: Buffy’s grieving the loss of Spike. 1st person narration.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction created for fun and no profit has been made. All rights belong to the respective owners.
A/N: Title borrowed from the lyrics of “My Immortal” by Evanescence.

Challenge: #496 - Missing

Also for: #475 - On My Mind by

drabble_zone

—
( READ: Time Cannot Erase )

Title: lost things
Fandom: Thunderbolts
Characters: Robert “Bob” Reynolds/John Walker (pre-relationship), also Yelena and Ava show up
Length: 1,119 words
Rating: Teen
Warnings: mental health issues, angst, pining, mild swearing
Notes: part of the Watchtower Tales (no need to read the other stories first or at all)
Summary: Bob steals John’s phone. Yelena makes him give it back.

( lost things )

BBC: New flu virus mutation could see 'worst season in a decade'

Today is cloudy and much colder. Bits of snow and grauppel are falling from the sky. Last night it drizzled a bit.

I fed the birds. I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 11/9/25 -- I went out looking for more bits to use in the lantern terrarium, but didn't find much. It started snowing more briskly, enough to collect in places on the ground, which counts as First Snow.

EDIT 11/9/25 -- I went out looking for more bits to use in the lantern terrarium, and found a bit more.

I've seen a large mixed flock of sparrows and house finches.

EDIT 11/9/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 11/9/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

I am done for the night.

Current Mood: busy

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Page Summary

sovay - I know, I've seen the scythe in its sheath
highlander_ii in fan_flashworks - NHL : icons : hockey smile
petra - All Aspiring Poets: Learn This One Neat Trick
musesfool - doing the humpty-hump all the way to the end zone
glinda - Having emotions at the picture house (isn't that why we go?)
kaberett - vital functions
ysabetwordsmith - Poetry Fishbowl Update
ysabetwordsmith - Extreme Animals
case in fandomsecrets - [ SECRET POST #6883 ]
muccamukk - Poetry of Our Time, also
pushkin666 - Sunday poem - Torso of Air by Ocean Vuong
pushkin666 - Book Meme
yhlee - Saori WX60 floor loom: warped!
drabblewriter in fan_flashworks - No Fandom: Junk Journal Page: Missing in America
oursin - Culinary
senmut - Nov 9 not quite misc.exhausted.me
veronyxk84 in fan_flashworks - Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Fanfic: Time Cannot Erase
fadedwings in fan_flashworks - thunderbolts : fanfic : lost things
rydra_wong - PSA: this is a good year to get a flu jab
ysabetwordsmith in birdfeeding - Birdfeeding

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