mindstalk | Network

I know I'm not as bouncy as I was a year ago but I'd hoped our annual visitors wouldn't notice. Only Odi did.

Odi has been talking for a while of moving down to Eastbourne in the hazy future to look after us- her sort of parents- in our old age. She's now saying that because of my steep decline she needs to firm things up.

Is my decline really so steep?

Well, my health ain't bad. The blood tests I had done a couple of weeks back have revealed nothing wrong. Except for a little too much cholestrol. The doctor is prescribing statins and I've said "OK" in order to keep him sweet- only I might forget to take them.

But I am slower, weaker, wearier......

Do I mind? No more than I mind any change in my circumstances. It would be nice if things always stayed the same, but boring perhaps.

I see movement out the corner of my eye. I look. For a moment I think it's a mouse or vole sitting on the floor. Then I recognise that it's a feather that has drifted in through the open patio door

It's a pigeon feather.

I see more movement at the door -and, blimey, it's a squirrel. It almost comes in the house then thinks better of it and scurries off.....

Feathers are common round here but squirrels ain't.

I love pigeons, I love squirrels. And all the more because lots of people think them a bloody nuisance.

Both of them showing up at the end of this post- which reveals more personal stuff than I usually do- feels like Dame Nature giving me a nod and a wink.....

https://www.gocomics.com/frazz/2026/08/28

Eclipse first, the rest nowhere! The moon was just beginning to dent sootily in as we left the house. Our headlights caught a fox with a coat like copper-flooded seas trotting across the road with a rabbit in its mouth, the least subtle of metaphors. Our star-watching hillside was silhouetted with other observers and occasionally their telescopes clambering out of the false dusk of the horizon like the saucer-legged Zeiss projector of my childhood. The one nearest us mysteriously packed up a few minutes from maximum, but we heard others whistling and shouting as we approached 96% and one small child in light-up sneakers flashed down the slope like fireflies. We never saw the full red moon in the rolling clouds, but we could see its smoked-glass tint creeping toward the tenacious bright rind that winked so sharply out at one point in the haze that a whole set of stargazers yelled. The ebbing shadow gave it a cat's-eye look above the rooftops as we came home. It was kind of the fox to lend us back the light.

Current Music: Animal Collective, "In the Flowers"

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

Watched most of the "disappearing" until totality, just came in. Beautiful night for it where I live.

Posted by Sunruner

https://archiveofourown.org/works/91493551

by Sunruner

[Spoilers for Parameter Lock chp 31]

Going on a date with its crush-now-partner was amazing. Being outed to its classmate-now-confidant was not. Three has had a stressful evening.

It would like to be less stressed, if its ComfortUnit will indulge it for tonight.

Words: 9379, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Series: Part 3 of Parameter Release

Fandoms: The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Categories: Other
Characters: SecUnit 3 (Murderbot Diaries), Original ComfortUnit Character(s) (Murderbot Diaries)
Relationships: SecUnit 3/Original Construct Character(s) (Murderbot Diaries)
Additional Tags: Porn Without Plot, Porn with So Many Feelings, Stone Top Three, dildo, Oral Sex, Anal Sex, 69 (Sex Position), Multiple Orgasms, Probably didn't happen but should have, Service Kink, Comfort Sex, Penis in Vagina Sex, Missionary, Three tries to follow safe sex protocols, Cass is literally built for this, Safe Sane and Consensual

https://archiveofourown.org/works/91493551

Madelyn Returns
By Dialecticdreamer/Sarah Williams
Part 1 of 2
Word count (story only):
10 pm on Wednesday, 6 December of 2017]

:: Jules finally gets to chat with Madelyn. Part of the Lodestar arc in Polychrome Heroics. ::

The dishwasher stopped, clicking, sighing, and offering a single gurgle of draining water. In the silence, Jules heard a muffled groan and the snap of something wooden as it cracked. “Oh, crap,” Madelyn whispered. In the quiet home, the words carried as easily as the hum of the refrigerator.

Jules was already moving. He rapped once on the bedroom door. “Madelyn?” he whispered.
( Read more... )

Current Mood: anxious

Making a telehealth appointment happens on Qwell. You find your practice, you find your doctor, you find a time. You sign up and Qwell sends you an email about it.

The appointment itself happens on another website, Klara. There's no mention of this in the Qwell email. There's no mention of this on the practice's website. Klara sends reminder messages that you can only read on Klara, because even though I gave it my cell phone number, it's not sending anything there.

The practice's website mentions Klara in the context of saying it has a "message us" button powered by Klara. The button makes a pop-up window which doesn't work on Firefox.

I'll give them this: my medical information is so secure, I can't even get to it.

Current Mood: infuriated
Current Music: nothing now

1. The upstairs AC at work has been broken all week (supposed to be repaired today but wasn't by the time I left work) and it's feeling pretty awful due to the heat outside, even though the sales floor is still nice and cool. So yesterday I got on Amazon and ordered a desk fan (on the company account since it's their broken AC that's requiring this) and it arrived today. Not as good as having actual working AC but it's pretty powerful for as small as it is and just the air circulation helped a lot.

2. Carla went to the dermatologist recently and got a bunch of pre-cancerous spots taken care of, so I was already thinking I should get all my moles and such checked out just to be safe when I suddenly developed a dark patch on the back of my neck last week, so I contacted my doctor to get a referal and while I haven't actually gotten the referal yet, I did get an email back saying she was reviewing it. (This is not an insurance situation where they like to deny stuff just because, so there's no worry that it would be denied.)

3. Look at her little paws!

"has decided to leave us" my foot!

*snorts*

https://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5905

Chobits had some problematic elements imho

https://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5905

The insanity that is ~~The Real LJ~~ Idol starts soon, and I expect most of you on my f-list probably have no idea what that even means!

So, I thought I would post a link to the FAQ here to see if I can get a few more people interested in playing. It's an online writing competition with "weekly" prompts and deadlines, and I've participated in it since season 8. I missed about 2 1/2 years of it, due to the aftermath of our house fire, but apart from that I've been there for every season and mini-season.

The type of entry you write is up to you. People regularly write both fiction and non-fiction, in regular story formats, poems, and more.

I hope some of you will be joining me!

Spent the past week or so scrolling through the entire (filtered) Linked Universe fandom tag on AO3 to find stuff to read. I think I died a little inside at least three times.

Anyway, despite everything working against me I managed to find some cool new LU fic I've never read before! So here's a list of them, because I have to justify the time spent on this somehow :)

(and if you don't know, Linked Universe is a Legend of Zelda AU where 9 Links from different points of the timeline are on a time-and-space-hopping adventure to stop a greater evil from destroying the timeline entirely or something like that.)

( Bookmarked fics here: )

I'll post the other fics I bookmarked this month at...some point.

In 2021, I started to get really bad insomnia. This almost exclusively manifested as waking up in the night or early morning and not being able to get back to sleep, usually because my brain was working too hard. Too many thoughts!!

I spoke with multiple health professionals, including a sleep specialist and my therapist, and no one had any ideas that helped me. I tried melatonin, THC gummies, middle-of-the-night yoga, progressive relaxation, upping my exercise regime, listing out all my thoughts... nothing worked consistently. I was regularly either going 1-2 hours short of sleep every day or spending up to 12 hours in bed in order to get the 9 hours I actually needed. Maybe most frustrating was all the times I was advised to form a bedtime routine, when getting to sleep at bedtime was never the problem. Everyone seemed mildly flummoxed by my form of insomnia.

Friends, I finally figured it out. I got the cheat code, and now I'm sharing it in case it works for any of you.

It turns out I have anxiety. This spring I started taking a mere 10mg of escitalopram (Lexapro) daily, and my sleep problems are basically gone. I can get up to pee and then just... go back to sleep. I cannot even tell you what a gamechanger this is, or how much more energy I have, or how great it is to feel like I can trust my own body again to do the thing I need it to do.

Am I really pissed that I had to diagnose this myself and ask for an anti-anxiety med all on my own, because no professional I spoke to in five years suggested it? Ha ha, don't even get me started. But better late than never!!!! So if you have the same kind of insomnia and haven't tried an anti-anxiety med, maybe it's worth looking into.

There's nothing to unify these--you can dip in as you please.

( I reread a book )

( adolescent cardinals )

( nighthawks )

These next are not under cuts because they're photos.

Tobacco-drying season
I remember when we moved here how surprised I was to learn that tobacco is grown here, but it is. Connecticut River Valley tobacco is used for cigar wrappers. They hang the tobacco in these barns and then take out every other wall slat to let the air pass through to dry the leaves.

A tobacco barn with its doors open so you can see the drying tobacco, plus fields

A tobacco barn with its doors open so you can see the drying tobacco, plus fields

My sweetcorn
I grew like five corn plants. This is usually a disaster because the kernels of corn only develop if each and every strand of silk is pollinated by the stuff that falls from the top of the corn, which is hard to have happen when you're relying on just the wind and when you only have five plants. But I shook the top part of the corn into my hand and pressed the stuff that fell onto the corn silk, and look at this pretty ear of corn!

A perfect little ear of corn

The kernels are a little small, maybe, but they are all there! Each strand of silk must have gotten what it needed.

Current Music: Monte: Sonic Forest (Déjame Respirar)

Gretchen and I got married 32 years ago today, which makes this the last of the big power-of-two anniversaries that we are likely to see, because 64 years will be quite a stretch. The previous one was 16 years ago, when the kids were both very small, a condition that no longer obtains.

Gretchen is not sure how we managed to get here, but the answer surely is "one day at a time".

Tomorrow will be another day. :)

so instead have a pointer to the watchface I have settled on for my Garmin, because: rainbow.

(the main thing I wanted was a face that I didn't hate the look of that actually told me how many steps I have done so far today that didn't round to 1sf. that it lets me shoehorn in a bunch of other useful-to-me information is a bonus. and did I mention? rainbow.)

Wednesday reading on a Thursday:

what I've just finished:
A Trade of Blood by Robert Jackson Bennett, the third Ana and Din mystery, and I think maybe the best one yet? ( spoilers ) (also, nb: I am using an Elementary icon, but this series is a Nero Wolfe analogue, not a Holmes one! I am just saying!)

The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman, the third Thursday Murder Club mystery, which I enjoyed. Again, the mystery wasn't all that mysterious, but I do enjoy spending time with the characters.

Daggerbound by T. Kingfisher, the sequel to Swordheart. I enjoyed it. It's always fun to revisit the world of the White Rat, and this romance was slightly different from her usual.

what I'm reading now/next:
I don't know! I have so much fic open in tabs, so maybe that for a bit? But also so many books and do I want to stop while I've got momentum? idk idk!

*

In work news, I received a supposedly final presentation today from a program team and when I opened it, it was 1. not in the approved organization template and 2. ALL IN COMIC SANS WTF. But it came to me with alleged approval from the higher ups, so I need to ask my boss if I can at least fix the font before I send it out. (I'm still missing the slides from a different team, so it's not delayed by this or anything.) I just...how does this happen in the year of our lord 2026???

*

Current Mood: baffled
Current Music: and they won't stop coming either by the life i've had so far

Here are a few photos of the barn swallows around our lake. I went to take out the trash and recycling, and they were everywhere, swooping around for insects. I think they were probably making up for lost time after the rain, or maybe insects are easier to grab in humid air?

They'll swoop under the stairs to grab bugs by our front doors, and will swoop in and out of our balcony area for the same. We are cheering them on in eating up all those gnats, aphids and mosquitoes! They're fast though, hard to catch on film.

( Read more... )

Profile

mindstalk

Home page

August 2026

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
						1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30	31

Page Summary

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Style Credit

Base style: Abstractia by chiming
Theme: White Lace by nornoriel

Page generated 2026-08-28 07:37

Rich and Strange Aeons

Network

Visitors

Friday, August 28, 2026

Couldn't stop that spinning force I felt in me

I love java, sweet and hot

Lunar eclipse

Beacon Hill

Elder Scrolls Big Bang

Madelyn Returns (part 1 of 2)

Infosec.

Daily Happiness

a mention in monthly "all hands" meeting

Just Like In Her Animes

Idol is on the horizon...

Linked Universe Fics I Bookmarked This Month

insomnia PSA

soy bosque lluvia y flores

32 Years On

i am out of brain

and all the problems of the world won't be solved by this guitar

Birds in Flight 1

Profile

August 2026

Page Summary

Expand Cut Tags

Style Credit