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Elden Ring also has the summons mechanic.

Which is how the fandom ended up with a sort of folk hero who appears as a naked man with a jar on his head holding two katanas and soloes the game's hardest boss for you:

IGN: We Spoke to 'Let Me Solo Her,' the Elden Ring Community Hero We Need and Deserve

YouTube: Let me solo her. 3rd summon solo Malenia (you don't have to know the game to appreciate that this is someone doing something perfectly)

sasha_feather

Gratitude / Self-reassurance / fighting against negativity bias!

1. The animals seem happy and content. I don't go to the barn every day and sometimes I feel bad about that, but I suspect I'm stressing over nothing, or channeling other stress into this area. The cat and dog make me laugh and are good companions. Again I stress sometimes with Sally the dog, but, it's probably easier to be crabby with her than with my family.

2. The house is reasonably clean, it's warm inside, the hot water is working, etc.

3. I have some friendly and wonderful neighbors.

4. My parents are doing well. My mom is so much better now that she's in the assisted living place rather than the nursing home. Just a huge relief.

5. I got to chat with two good friends today, Jesse and Emily, and it was a real mood lifter.

6. TV I'm enjoying: The Pitt, FallOut, Heated Rivalry.

7. On YouTube I watch the Handsome Podcast almost every single day. This is 3 queer comedians (Tig Notaro, Fortune Feimster, and Mae Martin) chatting and being silly.

8. I've been playing Terra Nil on my laptop and I can't rec it highly enough. I feel like it is meditative in the best way and really helps my brain chill out. The game play is very similar to Sim City, but instead of building a city you get to reclaim wasteland and turn it into wilderness. Very easy to learn, but challenging enough to keep me engaged. Click-only means it's easy to play in bed with my beloved Left-handed mouse, and doesn't bother my right shoulder. Sound design is relaxing, the graphics are pretty. Minimal reading makes it migraine compatible for me, and i can control the motion. It's not timed. Thank you to my friend eruthros for buying this game for me.

vass

Books
So far this year (since January 1) I've read Margaret Killjoy's The Immortal Choir Holds Every Voice, listened to the audiobook of Alexandra Rowland's Running Close to the Wind, am reading Victoria Goddard's Plum Duff, and started Evelyn Araluen's The Rot.

Games
Quoting my own complaint elsewhere: the worst part of Hollow Knight is the runbacks. Each time my desktop switches itself off I need to turn it on again, restore my browser tabs and do other "just booted" chores, see what troubleshooting data I can get now, check what steps I can take next, then start the game again to find out whether whatever I tried this time worked. Then two minutes later my computer crashes.

Have also been doing Redactle and Squardle with

kaberett, and cryptic crosswords with

shehasathree.

Tech
As you may gather from the previous section of this post, I am having technical difficulties. So it goes.

Crafts
No active progress yet, but the yarn I ordered arrived. This is for weaving with my mother's old knitter's loom which she gave me for my birthday last year.

Actually, no, I'll share the complaints I emitted while trying to decide what yarn to order (huge thanks to Iphys on the Lays server for sorting me out on this.)

( cut for length )

Garden
No ripe tomatoes yet, but they're still alive. Raspberry bush looking very sad indeed. Harvested a little bit of parsley and oregano for cooking purposes.

Cats
Didn't enjoy the hot weather last week. Neither did I.

Nature
Hot and windy. (This is an understatement. Last week there was a heatwave and my whole state, as well as those nearest it, was at either "extreme" or "catastrophic" fire danger. I was in one of the "extreme" parts, and unpleasantly aware that on the fire danger scale they use, "catastrophic" is 100 out of 100. Meaning, your area can be at 99 and yet not catastrophic.)

It cooled down after that, but summer is very much not over, and there are places all over the state that are still on fire.

redbird

In no particular order:

*Last night, I talked with cattitude and adrian_turtle about possible text for my mother's gravestone. I emailed this to my brother today, with a note that these were what I was thinking of.

*I went to TJ Maxx to look for slippers. Disappointingly, there were none that came close to fitting: the ones that might have been in my size were all significantly too tight across the top of my foot. I was wearing thin socks (specifically, lightweight compression socks). It continues to be annoying that not buying slippers (for example) is as tiring as buying some.

*Also, my hips started hurting while I was in the store, so I decided not to look for other things, but headed home with only a quick stop at CVS, and not a grocery store.

*Today was definitely a good day to be outside; yesterday wasn't particularly, and tomorrow is likely to be a lot colder than today (with an afternoon high a little below freezing, so not horrible for January in Boston).

*I got email today from state senator Pat Jehlen, about a bill to ban the use of masks by law enforcement. This is noteworthy because I haven't lived in her district since 2019, and didn't think I was still on her mailing list.

*The skin on my fingertips, and on the rest of my hands, is doing a lot better. I will need to remember to keep applying the serious lotion, so it doesn't start splitting again. However, my shoulder is bothering me, which may be from doing a lot of mousing when I was avoiding using the keyboard.

dirty_diana

Okay, I have successfully not defaulted on festivids and am trying to shake off the doomscrolling, and now I am going to rescue some drafts and catch up on January Posting! In order because that is simply How My Brain Works.

*

snowflake_challenge
1. The Icebreaker Challenge: Introduce yourself. Tell us why you're doing the challenge, and what you hope to gain from it.

I'm dirty_diana or sweeter_than. I write, draw, and vid, read and watch a lot of tv. I am hoping to get back into using dreamwidth a bit more steadily with this challenge, and also I guess enjoy some transformative fandom community vibes? Since I have been very much on the edges of that recently. Been reading other people's posts and feeling warm and fuzzy about everyone. ❤️

2. Loosely defined! Post about your pets, pets from your canon, anything you want!

I've never had a pet. Allergies. I do have a horrible antisocial roommate and surprise! she has a horrible antisocial cat that hates me for some reason. Pets from canons, hmm, Rivals has this very cute shaggy dog, Gertrude! Played by a cute little doggie actor named Ponti. Also in Rivals is the character of Rocky the horse, I think Rocky is actually a retired showjumper but now he gets to chill and eat grass and get pats. The Rutshire Chronicles series is generally full of animals, but in a very English way where it's all dogs and horses and many of them have jobs, lol.

*

and Talk Meme! still open for questions I can belatedly fill here.

Tell me about a small, nice thing you did for yourself recent(ish)ly? from

chase_acow

Do I do enough nice things for myself? Now I'm not sure. I am recently enjoying bulking up my art supply collection, even though frankly I owned enough art supplies to begin with. But I hang out on art tik tok, and to a lesser degree art youtube, and man those people are always showing you cool products. I am trying to not get sucked into the Being a Consumer of it all, but it is also worth it sometimes to not overthink whether you Deserve the fun thing, whether you'll use it enough or with the right skills, etc. I am currently messing around with acrylic paint markers? (Markers and pens are in general great for me because my nemesis chronic fatigue is never going to pull out an entire set of paints.) I did this raspberry lemonade piece for

doodle4doodle. I will show you all some more acrylic pen art at some point, but if I stop to scan things now this post will never get up, lol.

*

And I should say: for Yuletide I wrote The Heart of the Matter, a Rivals Rupert/Taggie fic. Pining, kissing. And featuring Gertrude and Rocky, in fact.

I got whatever you ask for, that’s what i’ll be by vialethe, also Rivals, Rupert/Taggie. RuTag are adorable in London, topped with a spicy daddy kink garnish.

It was a year where I didn't recognise many fandoms, but this Travelers fic was quite nice? Marcy figures out the holidays. And both the Blood on the Clocktower fics were just the right amount of mysterious and creepy.

That's it for now, the catch up will continue!

Current Mood: tired

redbird

As is sometimes the case, I only heard about Christie and his part in the anti-apartheid fight after he died.

Renfrew Christie was a white South African scientist and member of the paramilitary wing of the African National Congress. He went to Oxford University and studied South Africa's history of electrification "so I could get into the electricity supply commission’s library and archives, and work out how much electricity they were using to enrich uranium," he told the BBC. That in turn let them figure out how much enriched uranium South Africa had, and many bombs it could build.

When he returned to South Africa, he was arrested and, after 48 hours of torture, wrote a forced confession, which he told the BBC was the best thing he ever wrote

noting that he had made sure the confession included “all my recommendations to the African National Congress” about the best way to sabotage Koeberg and other facilities.

“And, gloriously, the judge read it out in court,” Dr. Christie added. “So my recommendations went from the judge’s mouth” straight to the A.N.C.

Christie died of pneumonia last month, at the age of 76.

I'm linking to

siderea's post, which includes the text of the (paywalled) NY Times obituary.

kaberett

Expanding on one of the things I mentioned yesterday: for Pain Project reasons, I'm interested in knowing what you learned about atoms at school, and roughly what age you were. I'm especially interested in whether (and when) you were exposed to the Bohr model (there's a nucleus, with electrons orbiting around it at fixed distances) and the current consensus model (electron orbitals defined as regions where an electron is most likely to be found).

( Read more... )

maryquitecontrary

✖ Read 45 min. per day.
✖ Drink something while reading.
✔ Log reading/thoughts on DW.
✔ Read an owned, unread book.

I almost didn't read yesterday, even my 10 minute minimum. 😬

Current reading: "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (10th Anniversary Edition)", by Michelle Alexander
Minutes read: 10
Pages read: 5
Progress: 5.2%

( Read more... )

maryquitecontrary

✖ Read 45 min. per day.
✖ Drink something while reading.
✔ Log reading/thoughts on DW.
✔ Read an owned, unread book.

I've only been meaning to read this book for...15 years? Oops.

Current reading: "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (10th Anniversary Edition)", by Michelle Alexander
Minutes read: 15
Pages read: 17
Progress: 4%

( Read more... )

chicating

Maybe.(I'm not really clear on some of the rules since my dad retired and I get the retirement amount of Social Security, but it also stinks that SSI is so punitive, since the people on it got disabled younger and/or don't have much work history...that's mean, not protective, in my opinion of course.) After trying to drag through a bill that raises asset limits for years, I thought about it one day: Like, fuck the asset limits. (showing off that big policy brain and keen ear for messaging that have made me obscure) Give everyone the retirement amount once they show that they are disabled...it's not princely, but it could meet a modest nut. Which is supposed to be the point of all of that, not some game where you see how much they let you lie.(and, you have to because the amounts are too small for an honest life with any pleasures in it.)
Instead, they create accounts so that teens and twentysomethings can Save Up For College, because tell me again how school fixes everything.(I don't actually know that I know anyone who does this, but I'm too old and haven't mentored in ages. Maybe it rocks. Still seems a bit convoluted.)
Which brings me back to my title and how there is a certain irony in how many fundraisers my activist, yet SSDi- having ass gets invited to. I mean, I don't exactly need them to "give me money"--I had gifts from the holidays and I like contributing, but it does feel like the consideration flows in the wrong direction sometimes.

althea_valara

Snowflake Challenge: A flatlay of a snowflake shaped shortbread cake, a mug with coffee, and a string of holiday lights on top of a rustic napkin.

Challenge #8

Talk about your creative process.

Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it.

Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so. Also, feel free to entice engagement by giving us a preview of what your post covers.

Okay, I can do this! But I'm creative in different sorts of ways, so I'm going to break it down by area.

Fiber Arts

I have 800 finished objects on Ravelry, so I've made a LOT of stuff. Most of the time, I see a pattern and go "OH THAT LOOKS FUN I WANT TO MAKE THAT!" and do. Sometimes I've made stuff for craft-alongs, like I used to be active in Dishcloth Weekly and Hat of the Month groups. And sometimes, I make stuff to fill a Nerdopolis theme (Nerdopolis is a crafting challenge on Ravelry where we get themes to craft to, like "Architecture" or "Cats vs. Dogs").

I do create my own patterns as well, and those have mostly come by because of fannish passion. The first time I recall making something from an mere idea is Olive, from Final Fantasy Brave Exvius. She was a very strong unit and I was lucky enough to pull her AND get her geared pretty well, and I just loved her and so I made her. I hadn't done many dolls or toys at the time, and I was more confident with crochet, so I winged a design with separate pieces for her limbs. It worked out okay, but she was BIG and FLOPPY.

I eventually had ideas to create more FFBE dolls. I adored Lasswell, for instance, so made him... and Lasswell adores Rain, so I had to make a Rain for my Lasswell. This time, I found a doll pattern designed by someone else and altered it for my use - the limbs are attached as you make the doll so it's much more sturdy. But the clothes were designed by ME. I pretty much took other patterns I was familiar with and used them as a guide, shrinking down the pattern considerably.

[Image Description: Handmade dolls of Rain and Lasswell. Rain's on the left and has a shock of blond hair. He's smiling and wearing a green tunic with a red kilt on his waist. Lasswell is on the right. He has long black hair and a serious look on his face. He's wearing a white shirt, black pants, and a flowing purple coat.]

I made more FFBE dolls, too, but then wanted to branch out into other Final Fantasies. I was showing off my latest FFBE doll in the Final Fantasy group on Ravelry, and the moderator admired the dolls but lamented that she couldn't crochet... and well, CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.

So I designed my own knitted doll pattern, utilizing knowledge I had picked up over the course of my knitting career. I made Rinoa from FFVIII (which I seem not to have a good picture of here on DW, and I'm running out of time so can't upload one at the moment) and eventually made Aerith from FFVII:

[Image Description: A doll of Aerith from Final Fantasy VII. She's got brown hair pulled back in a braid, and is wearing a pink dress with a flounce of lace at the hem. The dress is accompanied by a cropped red jacket.]

I'm pretty fearless with my crafting. Yarn is forgiving, and many mistakes can be fixed with some patience and practice. I continue to get excited and make things. It's not all fun, though - I'm currently knitting a cardigan for myself and well, I am a fluffy lady which means a LOT of long rows and it's tedious and feels like I'll never finish. But I persevere, because I want the end result.

(and I wrote this section last. I need to post it and get ready for Stitch Club! feel free to ask questions about my creative process if you have them!)

Fanfic Writing

I'm still fairly new to fanfic writing. Oh, I had thoughts of writing fanfic way back in the Sliders and seaQuest era but as far as I can recall, it was just thoughts and I didn't follow through. I did briefly play a character in an RPG on LiveJournal, and that was mostly fun except for when it was not (drama behind the scenes).

Back when I was playing that character, I was still able to daydream. So I'd be sitting on the train going to work, giggling because I was imaging my character doing silly things (we were a comedy RPG) and it was FUN. These days, it's hard to daydream, and so well, I didn't write fanfic for about ten years because I had no ideas.

Then came the Final Fantasy Kiss Battle in 2021. I remember asking if it was okay if I left prompts even though I doubt I'd write anything, because I do NOT write, and they said "sure!". But then I was reading prompts, and

lassarina prompted "FFV, Bartz/Gilgamesh, duel" and well, my brain exploded: I had an idea!

So I opened up a Notepad++ tab and started writing. I shocked myself by not only completing that fic, but being the first that year TO post a fic. Here it is:

A Long-Sought Duel (676 words) by AltheaValara
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Final Fantasy V
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Gilgamesh/Bartz Klauser
Characters: Bartz Klauser, Gilgamesh (Final Fantasy V)
Summary:

Bartz finally finds what he's been searching for.

For Snowflake Challenge 5,

visualjyushi asked how to start a story and that led to some really good conversations. This is what I wrote:

I got my start for A Long-Sought Duel partially based on the Kiss Battle prompt (FFV, Bartz/Gilgamesh, duel) but also by thinking about what a duel would be like. Duels are passionate, and it just so happens that Bartz is associated with the Wind Crystal, which is the crystal of passion. So I started with him feeling lackluster and missing passion in his life, and at the end of the short story, he finds it again.

I'm still having problems daydreaming, so I can't come up with ideas without some sort of prompt. But I am currently delighted by my Ladies Bingo card because I have ideas for SO MANY of the prompts, and have 5 WIPs already. I haven't worked on them in a while, so it might be time to do so tonight.

But yeah, most of my writing IS from prompts now. I have self-prompted a few times, like for this fic:

if you like it, then you should've put an earring on it (243 words) by AltheaValara
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Final Fantasy XIV
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV)
Additional Tags: Fluff and Crack
Summary:

The Warrior of Light's luck comes through once more in Eureka.

So I guess I *am* capable of coming up with ideas on my own. But yeah, I love a good prompt.

Neocities (Fanscripts)

Last year during Snowflake, I built the bones of my Neocities site and launched it live. It's a repository for my Final Fantasy story summaries and fanscripts.

I can tell you how I first got into writing fanscripts. I was heavily playing Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, a mobile game, and I felt its story was on par with the stories of the main 16 games in the series. And I realized: it's a mobile game, so someday it will be shut down and I will never ever get to experience the story again. That made me all kinds of sad, so one day I wandered down to our kitchen with my tablet, some paper, and a pencil. I made myself a cup of hot cocoa, then started replaying the story from the Room of Recollection, hand-writing down the story.

I finished writing down season 1 four years and four months later. It took 434 sheets of paper. But by gods, I did it.

I originally posted the story in a Dreamwidth journal, which was fine but not always the best for navigation (all my navigation links broke when I renamed the journal). I had name squatted on Neocities a few years back, and I thought well, let's put them there.

Working on Neocities is a delight for me. My degree is in math and computer science (I double majored), so I have programming in my background and it's been really fun to stretch that muscle. When I first started working on transferring the files over from Dreamwidth to Neocities, I was hand-coding the HTML because there wasn't much HTML in my original entries. That was tedious and time-consuming, though. Well, I know a bit of Python, so I wrote a Python script to process my files and automatically put in the HTML. The script doesn't make the prettiest HTML file and there's some tweaking by name I need to do, but it took a process that could take hours and made it less than a second to run the script, plus about 15 minutes to tweak by hand.

When I started working on the FFBE script, I did not have a computer of my own, hence handwriting the script. I'm so glad I was able to document Season 1, because I do adore the story. Unfortunately, the game did shut down about two years ago. When they announced End of Service, I valiantly tried to extract the Season 2 story from the game files, but I was not knowledgeable enough to do it. If I had been able to, it would have saved me a LOT of time and effort.

The game is gone, but it lives on at YouTube. So I've started going through the Season 2 videos and making a script for them. Some might argue it is wasted effort since the YouTube videos exist, but I think there's value in having a written script. For one, it may help fanfic writers because it'll be searchable--and that thought delights me.

I've expanded my efforts on Neocities and am now writing fanscripts for Final Fantasy XIV and Final Fantasy XI as well. FFXI, at least, is not so bad because Windower (a popular third party tool) can make logs of the game text as you play. Alas, it triplicates lines, but I have a handy Python script to clean that up.

Final Fantasy XIV, I started by writing summaries of the story as I played through each expansion and patch, but as I went on, those 'summaries' got longer and longer and now I'm pretty much writing a real fanscript for Shadowbringers. I might go back and do fanscripts for the prior expansions, too, if I have time.

Current Mood: creative

mdlbear

Today I am thankful for...

Garlic. Other aliums, but mostly garlic. Also chlli peppers.
And pickles.
Antidepressants, when they work. That remains the subject of experimentation at the moment. Same for antihypertensives. NO thanks for conditions that require that kind of experimentation.
Getting the medical appointments I need. NO thanks for having to use a phone -- including navigating menus in a language I don't know -- to get them.
Grocery (and other) deliveries. (It's worth noting that our family does not have a car, and that Scarlet-the-carlet is currently out of commission.)

Current Mood: grateful
Current Location: Schildhaven in Den Haag
Current Music: not very much this week

linky

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

Current Mood: tired

fayanora

I decided, this year, instead of spending money on a calendar, why not print free ones from the Internet, since I have a working laser printer and can always go to the library if I need to save toner. January's was just a random January 2026 calendar page.

However, a few days ago the Internet was out for several hours, so I made a February 2026 calendar based on what my computer's calendar said the month would look like. Moreover, I spent the time to number it in the number system used on Traipah, for funsies. It's a base-6 counting system, meaning you can count really high with just two hands. I think you can count to 55 with two hands before you have to find a different way to count the 100's place. Of course, 55 in base 6 is only 35 in our standard base ten, and then 100 in base 6 is 36 in base ten. To get to 100 in base ten, you'd have to count to 244 in base 6.

Anyway, so because this February -- like most of them -- only has 28 days, that's 44 in base 6. And in the Traipahni number system, everything is reversed -- right to left. So 10 is 01, 12 is 21, 100 is 001 and so on. And they don't use the same characters to represent numbers either. The 1 looks like a capital I in a sans serif font, 2 is a V because there are two lines in a V, three is a triangle, four is a + or an X, five is a pentacle, and 0 is O. This calendar prints the Traipani numeral on top, under that is what that number means in its native base 6, and then on the bottom corner under those two is the date in base ten.

Without further ado, here it is:

Click on it for a bigger copy.

Current Mood: creative
Current Music: Night Club - Scary World

soc_puppet

Just a drive-by update for the sake of updating.

1) Happy birthday to my younger brother today! I got him a shirt with a smiling Mimic that says "I'm still a treasure"

2) I made an appointment for tomorrow morning for the Career Services department at the local community college, so I'm another step closer on my goal of becoming more employed

And now I move on to my night time routine. G'night!

Current Mood: sleepy

redbird

I thought that all the money had been transferred from my mother's IRA account at BNY to my account at Fidelity at the end of December.

Last week, I got a message from Fidelity saying that a transfer couldn't be completed, and BNY needed to talk to me. That message was _exactly_ the same as the one I got in November, so I wasn't even sure this was a real thing rather than a glitch.

After several days of wrestling with phone trees and leaving messages with my advisor at Fidelity, I tried BNY again this afternoon. That wound up being a long phone call, including a long time on hold while the person I was talking to looked things up.

What he was able to tell me is that there is some amount of money greater than zero still in my mother's name at BNY, possibly capital gains on the money they had already transferred. The person I was talking to said he couldn't tell me how much, but that based on this call, I could have Fidelity call BNY and tell them to transfer this money.

But that would be too simple: Fidelity said they would need a current statement on the account. So, back to BNY, whose system is set up to provide information to people with accounts they can log into. The available workaround is for them to send me a request form, and for me to attach a copy of my mother's death certificate, and my driver's license, and then I should have it in 1-5 business days.

In the meantime, I have emailed my brother, who told me that any amount of money still in Mom's name in 2026 would complicate things for him as executor. (I was pleased to be able to email him on December 30 and tell him that the transfer had finally been completed.)

sage

( books (all Pratchett) )

yarning
Listed Rockstar Lestat & older Daniel Molloy made to order art dolls. Finished and listed the teal bunny from last week. Worked on donation hats & gave them to my children's shelter contact at yarn group on Sunday. Had a good time there, working on another hat. Sold a valentine catnip heart.

healthcrap
doc appt Friday, where I asked for a referral to get a shingles shot. Doc appt Monday, where we talked about my weird blood cells. I am still titrating off the med I'm slowly quitting.

#resist
#50501 Jan 20th Free America Walkout. 2pm local time.

I hope you're all doing well! <333

chicating

for "knots", which might have been different, further from the holidays.

She pulled at the ribbon of the small, compact package, that kind of put up a fight. Looking at the shiny blue paper and the neat wrapping job(She couldn't see any tape!) she wondered why the knotted ribbon that someone had fluffed up and made fancy, was green instead of white or silver, which seemed like the logical, stylish choices someone at the store might make. "Wow, good things come in small packages." For a moment, her cheeks got hot, because they'd just taken things to the next level recently, and she hoped he didn't think...well, never mind. In one of those moments of partial telepathy that she might have been glad had skipped a beat, he said "I got you a green one because it's your favorite color."

sixbeforelunch

two log cabins with snow on the roofs in a wintery forest the text snowflake challenge january 1 - 31 in white cursive text

Challenge #7: Three (or more) things you like about yourself

This is hard. I am actually pretty comfortable with and positive about myself these days, but when I try to think about specific things I like about myself, my mind goes blank. Hmm.

( Okay, I think I've got three )

Current Mood: thoughtful

sonia

Over the weekend, I was heading out on my bike early in the morning, and saw a small kid's book in the street just off the driveway. I picked it up to toss it to the sidewalk and went on my way.

When I got back, I was pleased to see it was gone, but then saw someone had propped it up on our fence. The next time I was going out, I took it with me and put it in the nearby Little Free Library, even though it mostly has grownup books.

When I was walking home, I ran into a couple with a two year old whom I often see walking up the block, and whom I had chatted with at a recent neighborhood gathering. I saw that the kid was happily clutching the book, and said, "Oh good, you picked it up!" They said he has been obsessed with that character.

Yesterday I was biking home from an appointment, and I saw a phone lying next to a parked car in the street. I pulled over, leaned my bike against a pole, and picked it up. It had a drivers license in the case with the address of the apartment building across the street. There was no way to get in or ring a doorbell at the gated front entrance, but there was a door open around the corner.

The people inside were noisily doing something which sounded kind of like having sex, laughing, maybe just roughhousing, but ... door open? I stood there hesitantly, and a maybe 8 year old kid inside gestured to the other people and they came out (dressed, whew). I said, "I'm so sorry to bother you, but this phone was in the street. Is this (building address)?" They said yes, and they recognized the name on the license and said she's at work. I turned the phone over to them.

I only realized later that it might be unsettling for a Black family to have a white lady come stand at the door. I'm glad I approached them with softness.

So that's two things put closer to where they belong, and hopefully a bad day averted for the phone's owner. Not sure how her phone ended up on the ground next to the driver's side door of a parked car if she's at work.

Access Fandom

improving disability access in fandom

Side note re: Souls and summons

Gratitude / Self-reassurance / fighting against negativity bias!

Things

six things make a post

meet me at the record store, to find out who i was before

In memoriam: Renfrew Christie, who sabotaged South Africa's nuclear weapons program

What were you taught about atoms?

75 Booked: Day 24

75 Booked: Day 23

If I had a "War chest" that lasted for two years, it might be a crime...

Snowflake Challenge 2026 - Challenge 8: Your Creative Process

Fiber Arts

Fanfic Writing

Neocities (Fanscripts)

Thankful Thursday

Community Thursday

TPNN numeral calendar

An update of update-y-ness

inherited IRA, part too many

What I'm Doing Wednesday

Another long-lost prompt...

snowflake day 7: things i like about myself

Found in the street

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January 2026

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