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Thanks for the nice comments on the previous entry. They, along with just writing it out in the first place and D holding me tight (normally I am the big spoon but he did a great job at it last night!) helped me have an okay night.

D had asked me, after we turned the lights off, if there was anything I wanted to do today -- the family had no real plans beyond making the homemade vegan wellington for my birthday dinner that D's sister had suggested and I'd gotten excited about before I remembered quite how much work it was last year, oops. But D and I helped and it felt a lot less of a production this year.

Anyway, before that we had no plans and I thought it might be nice to get out of the house and see something of Birmingham. We didn't actually make it as far as the city centre but the local high street allowed D to browse charity shops while I got a long-overdue haircut (I went from the longest hair I've had in quite a while to the highest skin fade I've maybe ever had, so it feels like a dramatic difference!), and we went for a very nice birthday lunch.

My birthday present from D might still be trapped in DRM hell but he told me what it is, and The Feminist Art of Walking by his old pal Morag goes very nicely with the birthday present I've already gotten from angelofthenorth, of short walks/hikes around Greater Manchester. I also got a bookshop.org voucher from D's mum, which can be added to the one that comprised the other part of my birthday present from Miriam, so I have to decide what to get there too, which is so fun.

Weirdly, my birthday also marks a year since Gary died. It feels so long ago but also I can still conjure him so clearly in my memory, and there probably hasn't been a day all year that I haven't thought of him. I still miss him so much.

I've had a much better day, and I'm looking forward to being home tomorrow.

Tags:

ignavia /iɲˈɲa.vja/

noun

1. the sin of sloth or idleness or moral cowardice.

examples

1. Every honest man will admit that a violent effort is necessary to shake off ignavia critica critical laziness, that so widespread form of intellectual cowardice; that this effort must be constantly repeated, and that it is often accompanied by real suffering. ON BELIEVING WHAT WE’RE TOLD. 21 Dec 2004

2. The pity that proves so possible and plentiful without that basis, is mere ignavia and cowardly effeminacy; maudlin laxity of heart, grounded on blinkard dimness of head -- contemptible as a drunkard's tears. Latter-Day Pamphlets. Thomas Carlyle. 1838

origin
Latin

The Divine Comedy, Purgatorio, Canto 18: The multitude of the slothful - Illustration by Gustave Dore

Tags:

PG-13; PotC: At World's End; Elizabeth/Will. Post-trilogy soulmark AU, 1300 words.

Her future was unwritten, the challenges ahead of her many. And yet she would trade none of it for what they had taken together with only their own determination and the skill of their hands.

The Only Rules That Matter

(For

Ekevka in

ficinabox)

Tags:

PG-13; Mummy Returns (2001); Rick/Evy & Rick/Evy/Ardeth. Post-movie, 11,300 words.

Evy O'Connell still loved the scent of books and the organised air of a well-maintained library, but there was nothing like clearing the last shovelful of sand from the entrance to a long-lost wonder of ancient architecture and stepping inside to behold something new.

So It Has Always Been, So It Always Shall Be

(For

Ekevka in

ficinabox)

Tags:

Day 22: 300 words of longfic, yay! Oh, this is a fun bit. How about you?

Tally:
( Read more... )
Day 21:

china_shop,

trobadora,

badly_knitted,

sylvanwitch,

chestnut_pod,

chanter1944,

goddess47,

sanguinity,

cornerofmadness

Bonus farm news: Both housemates now gone away over Christmas. I'm away over the night, too, which means asking neighbors to feed the ducks and the cat, as we have helped out the same neighbors in the past with their cat, hens, and sheep when they were away. I am very happy to have established some good neighbor relationships!

Tags:

write every day

Simply Wize are an Australian company who make a range of gluten-free products that are available in supermarkets and delis.

Their gluten-free puff pastry comes in a packet of four sheets and retail for AUD$11. These are about half the size of your standard frozen sheets of pastry.

Ingredients & Allergens
Starches (Potato, Tapioca, Corn), Water, Vegetable Oil (Soy), Egg, Stabilizers (415, 412), Anticaking Agent (460), Raising Agents (450, 500), Sugar, Salt, Soy Flour, Emulsifiers [322 (Soy), 471], Acidity Regulator (330). Contains Egg, Soy. May contain Milk, Sesame, Hazelnut.

I wanted to make a spinach pie (my recipe is loosely based on spanikopita) and so I rolled out two sheets so they were big enough to fit my rectangular baking tin (27.5cm x 17.5cm x 3.5cm). This made them quite thin and almost filo pastry-like. I did not blind bake, and made sure to drain the spinach really well so that the filling was not too moist. I brushed the top with a little melted butter and it cooked well, had a nice, golden colour and tasted like pastry should. It was not too flaky and the leftovers held together after being in the fridge and reheated.

Aside from the cost, the reduced size of the sheets made it a little awkward to use, but the taste and texture were good.

Mods, I note there is no "!: yeast-free" tag.

Tags:

Last night I slept so badly. Awake and desperate for sleep from 1am until after 4am. I tidied up, and read a book, and did a slow stretching routine, and had some snacks, and stayed off the internet, and petted a cat, and all the slow calming things I do for myself and *did not work*. Bugger.

But this afternoon. Went to bed for a nap after lunch and went down so deep. Slept until four in the afternoon, and wow, so good.

It's a reboot. Turn brain off, wait a bit, turn back on and a lot of the problems just disappear. Anxieties about Christmas, family, money etc stop chewing up all the available CPU and drop out. Very strange to see (& feel) the difference between this morning when I was panicking about lost the letter from the hospital, sausage rolls need cooked, no puff pastry and this afternoon when we found the letter, and honest to god, no one cares about sausage rolls.

And right now happy & cheerful.

I doodled this in front of the TV last night. Looking at it today, I think it might be an accidental, stylised hug. (One person is the yellow and orange upright rectangle type, and the other is glommed onto/around them.) So here, have a hug!!

ION, writing is still stuck, ugh, but I did manage to finish off an M-rated Guardian masturbation flashfic set during ep 4, so there's that at least.

Tags:

art,
writing

Title: Look and Feel
Rating: M-rated
Length: 1280 words
Acknowledgements: Much thanks to

trobadora for beta! <3
Tags: Episode Related, Episode 4, Masturbation, Vague hints of D/s, Handcuffs, Non-explicit fantasies
Summary: Unbidden, he pictures Shen Wei alone in the interview room, composed, proud, and patient.

( Look and Feel )

Tags:

Posted by adamg

https://www.universalhub.com/2025/amtrak-some-commuter-lines-going-nowhere-fast-overhead-electric-wires

NBC Boston reports Amtrak has had to halt all its service to and from Boston because some of the overhead wires that power the trains fell to the tracks. The MBTA is reporting delays on some of its lines that use those tracks out of South Station as well, such as the Providence, Needham, Framingham and Franklin lines.

Topics:

Free tagging:

https://www.universalhub.com/2025/amtrak-some-commuter-lines-going-nowhere-fast-overhead-electric-wires

Posted by adamg

https://www.universalhub.com/2025/bail-set-25000-new-jersey-police-chief-accused-assaulting-his

A Suffolk Superior Court clerk magistrate set bail today - and an Oct. 19, 2026 trial date - for a New Jersey police chief accused of physically attacking his then girlfriend after an argument on a trip up to Boston to take in a Sox game.

A friend of Carmen Veneziano, 47, police chief in Totowa, NJ for the past five years, paid the $25,000 cash bail and the chief was allowed to return to New Jersey - wearing a GPS monitor and with orders to stay away from his ex-girlfriend's hometown - according to court records.

According to the Suffolk County District Attorney's office:

Assistant District Attorney Ian Polumbaum said Veneziano and the victim visited Boston on September 13 and attended a Red Sox game. Veneziano left the hotel room after the two got into a verbal argument late Saturday night. He returned to the hotel early Sunday morning to find that the victim had locked him out of the room. He remained in the lobby for a half hour. Hotel security arrived and the victim allowed him back into the room. While in the room Veneziano became physically abusive, Polumbaum said. He headbutted the victim, dragged her by her feet, held her down on the bed and prevented her from leaving the room. Veneziano also applied painful "pressure points" on the victim's body and threw water on her, Polumbaum said.

The two then returned to New Jersey, but a few days later, the woman contacted Boston Police, Polumbaum said. That led to an investigation and, on Thursday, Veneziano's indictment by a Suffolk County grand jury on one count of kidnapping and three counts of domestic assault and battery.

Polumbaum did not disclose the name of the hotel.

Veneziano voluntarily surrendered on Friday and waived extradition so that he could be arraigned today. His attorney, Paolo Corso, said his client is innocent and noted that several people traveled to Boston from Totowa to support him today.

He is next scheduled to appear in a pre-trial session on Feb. 10 - but likely via a Zoom hearing.

Totowa's mayor announced Sunday he had suspended Veneziano pending the outcome of the criminal case.

Innocent, etc.

Topics:

Crime

Neighborhoods:

Back Bay

https://www.universalhub.com/2025/bail-set-25000-new-jersey-police-chief-accused-assaulting-his

+ Had an extended family dinner today and got to listen to my lovely aunt and cousin talk about how great ChatGPT is, how she's using it to plan a girl's trip to Italy, and how helpful it'll be for writing the speeches at my grandmother's funeral. Fucking shoot me into outer space strapped to a rocket.

+ Got to see the latest Avatar movie at the cinemas. My least favorite of the three, lacking the genuine awe and beauty of the world. What they did try just felt forced, and one character in particular should have been left to die in the second movie ugh.

+ Big plus for the cozy and hazily lit curtain fic promo trailer thingy they did before the movie. IYKYK. Kinda made me wish I had an ear to the ground in that fandom still.

+ I think I've successfully broken through my iconning block!! Shout out to dysfunctional vampires and dysfunctional lesbians.

+ BIG psa: Apple shifted Pluribus to air on the 24th, two days earlier than usual. I'll have to get up extra early to see it before 2 Nøtter Til Askepott, because if not I'll be thinking about it and wanting to all day lol. It's been such a good series for me to watch? There's this whole thing where there's two wolves inside of me, one appreciating the thought and care put into every decision, and how slow it's allowed to move, the second wanting to pick into every detail and tear through it. Both enjoyable in different ways!

I have watched every episode a minimum of twice. It may be my new comfort watch show?¯\_ (ツ)_/¯

❄️ ❄️ ❄️ ❄️
Rec-cember Day 22

( I'd say spoilery for last week's episode. )

Tags:

Just ordered myself a new phone, partly as a graduation gift to myself (thank you, aunt who sent me a check for $100!), and partly because, after more than four-and-a-half years, my current phone is getting a bit buggy. I went super-ultra-budget and got a model that's effectively two years out of date, so I saved a fair amount of money there while still getting a product I'm fairly certain I can be happy with.

My current phone still works reasonably well, but it has a tendency to freeze up from time to time that requires a hard restart to fix—a tendency that's becoming more frequent. The Otter Box phone case I got at the same time is also starting to deteriorate, whereas the area over the power button has been pressed so often that you can barely tell there was ever a button representation there in the first place. So I think it might be time anyway 😅 (I'm about four months short of five years with my current phone, I'm pretty sure I beat the average phone trade-in time with room to spare.)

A part of me is still a bit freaked out, because my phone isn't actually broken yet, and also $129 plus other expenses for a new phone case and screen protector aren't exactly a drop in the bucket for me at the moment, but like. I'm still pretty sure it's time.

Current Mood: nervous

Tags:

acquisitions

For Poetry Monday:

For Leonard, Darko, and Burton Watson, Ursula K. Le Guin

A black and white cat
on May grass waves his tail, suns his belly
among wallflowers.
I am reading a Chinese poet
called The Old Man Who Does As He Pleases.
The cat is aware of the writing
of swallows
on the white sky.
We are both old and doing what pleases us
in the garden. Now I am writing
and the cat
is sleeping.
Whose poem is this?

—L.

Subject quote from Time in a Bottle, Jim Croce.

Tags:

meme,
poetry

2025 is ‘year of the octopus’ as record numbers spotted off England’s south coast:

The common or Mediterranean octopus, Octopus vulgaris, is native to UK waters but ordinarily in such small numbers it is rarely seen. A sudden increase in the population – a bloom – is caused by a combination of a mild winter followed by a warm breeding season in the spring. The ideal conditions meant that more of the larvae of the common octopus were likely to survive, said Slater, possibly in part fuelled by the large numbers of spider crabs that have also been recorded along the south coast in recent years.

(Oy! Ooo are you callin' octopus vulgaris?)

(We will just note that one of the novels by a certain Lady Anonyma featured Cornish wreckers and Sea Monsters.)

There were also

a record number of grey seals observed by the Cumbria Wildlife Trust, as well as record numbers of puffins on Skomer, an island off the coast of Wales famed for the birds.... the first Capellinia fustifera sea slug in Yorkshire, a 12mm mollusc that resembles a gnarly root vegetable and is usually found in the south-west. In addition, a variable blenny, a Mediterranean fish, was discovered off the coast of Sussex for the first time.

Rather creepier stuff to do with animals (or rather, humans doing creepy things with animals) a little less further westwards: New Forest residents unnerved by man leaving animal carcasses by churches

Tags:

Blessed Yule and solstice, friends. May this next turn of the year be better to all of us than the one that's just ended.

Impressively and unexpectedly, we didn't lose power on the weekend (so many people did!); not really coincidentally, Bucky remains undecorated. We also haven't put up any lights or the wreath outside (probably just as well, given the winds), and I didn't even think of that until maybe yesterday. Oh, well.

(I no longer have any real hope of finishing a draft of this rewrite before Christmas, since I'm getting such a late start on work today and we have plans for much of Christmas Eve once

scruloose's half-day of work ends. It's fine. I've been doing other things. *shrugs*)

A few nights ago I guess I ~slept wrong~, as I woke up Saturday with a very unhappy neck. Yesterday was better, and today is better again, and I'm lucky to not have this kind of thing happen more often (*knocks wood*), but it's so annoying as well as painful. Body, if you're taking damage while sleeping, why don't you move to a better position?! Does the conscious brain need to handle everything around here? (Thankfully no.)

Current Mood: sore
Current Music: Tori Amos - Star of Wonder

Tags:

The DIE roleplaying game designed by the Image comic's creators, Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans, plus three volumes of adventures for an unbeatable bargain price!

Bundle of Holding: DIE the RPG

Tags:

bundle of holding

1. Removing my data from various Meta sites-- most of them were there for business purposes, but I want to put my business energies elsewhere AND I don't want Meta to have my stuff floating around to use in their horrible AI nonsense. I'm downloading copies of my data and then deleting the posts (which they make you do one by one). I plan to put up a "where to find me" post for people who may come looking, and I'll keep the usernames for business purposes, but I'm going to focus on my (business) blog (and later newsletter/shop) and that's it.

2. Settling into using Obsidian for my personal data stuff. I think I've got a system set up that I like, and now I just need to add in things. For instance, I'm adding my books read for 2025 into the system and I've set up fun views like this:
A collection of book covers organized in rows

Which is built from a Base which is a table built from metadata in individual entries. So I'm adding books one by one, making sure the imported data is actually correct, and then copying over my notes/reviews. It's a little slow-going but it's fun to see everything in one place. And I've decided I don't care about counting how many pages I read in a year or even how many books I read in a month, just a general yearly total of books read is fine, so that'll make things easier going forward.

3. Listening to music from DEMO FEST 2025! Some recommendations: Error 804's ANGUISH, Morora's Kosovo, The Carringtons' Wild.

4. Downloading interesting pattern images from the Smithsonian digital collections to use for icons and (if I can figure out how) website backgrounds.

Tags:

candyheartsex nominations are open!

Anyone want to coordinate?

I'm considering ( fandoms and ships under the cut )

Let me know if there's anything else you want me to slip in to an empty spot (or anything you're particularly relying on my including!)

Posted by adamg

https://www.universalhub.com/2025/russian-and-saudi-butchers-are-our-best-buds-sure-homeland-threatened

The Department of the Interior today ordered the immediate shutdown of Vineyard Wind, which is already generating electricity, and four other wind-power systems because they pose a dire national-security threat that is so horrible the regime can't really explain it to us, because we might spill the beans to our enemies (Ukraine and Canada, we assume) but it has something to do with radar in a way that does not affect any of the turbines in the country's largest wind-generating state do not (don't mess with Texas wind) .

Free tagging:

wind power

federal

https://www.universalhub.com/2025/russian-and-saudi-butchers-are-our-best-buds-sure-homeland-threatened

Gardening Tools and Immoral Pleasure-Seekers

44

Monday Word: Ignavia

Fic: The Only Rules That Matter [T; Pirates: AWE; Elizabeth/Will]

Fic: So It Has Always Been, So It Always Shall Be [T; Mummy; OT3]

Write every day: Day 22

Product Review: Simply Wize Gluten Free Puff Pastry – 540g

Insomnia

Hug!

Thirst: Guardian: fanfic: Look and Feel

Amtrak, some commuter lines going nowhere fast; overhead electric wires just did not last

Bail set at $25,000 for New Jersey police chief accused of assaulting his girlfriend in a Back Bay h

Our feelings for you haven't changed, Carol.

New phone incoming

“i’d like to save every day / till eternity passes away / just to spend them with you”

The Kraken Wakes?

Slightly belated Yule/solstice wishes + a very low-key update

Bundle of Holding: DIE the RPG

what I've been up to this past weekend

(no subject)

Russian and Saudi butchers are our best buds, but, sure, the homeland is threatened by windmills

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November 2025