yendi

Tomorrow night my wife and I have a meeting where we find out whether the doctors think it's worthwhile to continue to fight my wife's leukemia, or if it's better to just let her go home from the hospital and slowly die in a more comfortable surrounding.

We'd thought we'd beat it. She had a bone marrow transplant last March (from her brother), and up until the end of July, all the tests showed that she was clean. And then she wasn't clean, and had to go back into the hospital, where she missed her daughter's birthday and just enjoyed her own birthday in the hospital. Things didn't look good with her last biopsy, so they're doing another one today.

I worry.

Current Mood: worried

calliopes_pen

The Yuletide tag set is open, so everyone can see what was nominated this year. I am genuinely surprised that someone else remembers Escape To Witch Mountain (1995). And all incarnations of The Tomorrow People (I’ve only seen the 90’s American version) tv shows made it in, too. There are so many things that I need to rewatch or read again before I can confirm what I would love to offer to write or what I want to request. I probably need to locate the Holmes and Watson 1975 tv pilot with Robby the Robot.

These are all the ones that I have a particular interest in after looking—including the ones I nominated, somewhere among them:

The Bloody Chamber - Angela Carter (Mostly going to read this soon)
Carmilla - J. Sheridan Le Fanu
Dracula - Bram Stoker
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson
The Last Unicorn - Peter S. Beagle
Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Urbervilles - Kim Newman
Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
The Real Ghostbusters
The Company of Wolves (1984)
Count Dracula (1977)
Crimson Peak (2015)
The Haunting (1963)
Horror of Dracula (1958)
The Innocents (1961)
Laura (1944)
The Mummy Series
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970)
Sherlock Holmes (Rathbone films)
The Shadow (1994)
Van Helsing (2004)
Dark Shadows (Big Finish Audio)
Dark Shadows (1966)
Dark Shadows (1991)
Dracula (TV 1968)
Dracula: The Series (This is the 1990 version)
She-Wolf of London (TV)

I need to read Nine Coaches Waiting, by Mary Stewart. Tanz der Vampire - Steinman/Kunze is one that Youtube keeps recommending I watch, due to my interest in Dracula musicals. I spotted My Two Dads, which currently airs in reruns on Sunday nights on Antenna TV. Poltergeist: The Legacy is on daily on Comet TV.

I have She-Wolf of London, and the 1991 version of Dark Shadows on DVD, along with Dracula: The Series when it comes to the tv shows section.

Crossposts: https://calliopes-pen.livejournal.com/1022531.html

gingicat

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

Current Mood: confused
Crossposts: https://tigerbright.livejournal.com/1611043.html

krait

I spent far too much of today reading Prince of Tennis Silver Pair slash! I haven't watched PoT in forever, but it was like somebody reached into my head late Saturday night and twisted a dial around hard; I have quite methodically worked my way through the eight pages of Ao3 results and every working bookmark in my collection.

If anyone has any non-AO3 recs, I'd welcome them! Or just babble at me about this (whether "this" is Prince of Tennis, or getting ambushed by weird fic cravings, or that one fandom that you never thought you'd be into) in the comments.

As tends to happen when I fic-binge, I've ended up thinking a lot about what works for me and what doesn't, both for a specific canon and more broadly. This fandom definitely hits a couple of bulletproof narrative kinks for me - especially 'struggling with an unwanted attraction'/'questioning one's orientation' (with a side of 'concealing it in a hostile environment'), and 'deep platonic loyalty' - and that might explain why I'm so invested in a couple of characters from a shounen sports anime, despite having no interest in school settings or sports.

Does anyone else have an "outlier" fandom or OTP that helped shed light on your narrative kinks? (Also, why are a bunch of mine so hard to describe? It's difficult to go looking for more of something when it takes a paragraph and a half just to summarise the basic concept!)

drwex

Four full sets in here that you can pick and choose from. Like any other sets they're going to have better and worse parts and since they're mostly live, none of them is perfectly polished. I've tried to pick sets that have different styles to suit different moods and needs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ctN6DO9Wf4
Dmitriy Redko (AstroPilot) put out a nearly two-hour live psychill set last year. I confess I don't find a huge difference between psy-chill and psy-trance, if you know that style. This is not exactly downtempo, but it's airy, breathy, relaxing. Someone I played this for called it "floaty" music and I know what they mean. Good for destressing, or keeping your head down amid ongoing chatter.

https://soundcloud.com/thedolab/woogiewknd-pumpkin
Pumpkin uses a lot of what's good in Motown, rock, country (yes), and hip-hop from the last couple decades. Some of it is just sampled, some is updated and covered in the course of these two hours. It's fun to listen along and see what you can pick out. Some of it is really obvious (Paul Simon and Talking Heads, anyone?) and some of it is recognizable to people who listen to a lot of EDM (e.g. Zhu's "Faded"). Generally a lot of fun and keeping-you-going tempo without being overwhelming or hard-driving.

https://soundcloud.com/young-nrg-productions/nrg-live-show-uk-2years-w-dj-stex-feat-guest-mix-by-ale-tosses
NRG's live show also clocks in a bit over two hours, filled with tracks from other people and their own remixes. It's much more reggae, rap, bounce, and hip-hop than the previous two, featuring names like Defunk and Tribe Called Quest. The style is more scratch, electro, and breakbeats than my usual but I found it a nice contrast to what we've had so far.

https://soundcloud.com/markusschulz/transmissionasia2017
After featuring a good bit of Markus Schultz's work last time I went looking for a sense of what he's like live and found this, a 90-minute set he did earlier this year. This is a pretty straight-up club trance set, with mostly Schultz's own work on original tracks as well as remixes/mashes. High energy, high BPM even when he's using Sarah McLachlan.

Current Mood: tired
Crossposts: https://drwex.livejournal.com/636815.html

sisyphus_rolling

Am I? The above is a statement that could only be made by someone who either doesn't know me at all or knows me very very wel.

drwex

Last week was Rosh Hashona. We had a fun and very geeky dinner with the family and metamours. And this Friday will be Yom Kippur.

As I do every year during this time I try to reflect on my behavior during the past year and to seek forgiveness for harms I have done to people I know. I'm opening anonymous comments on this post (assuming I've understood Dreamwidth's instructions for that) and invite you to contact me in any way you feel comfortable to tell me what I may have done and how I can make amends.

puppetmaker

NFL viewing is down by about 15% this year according to ESPN and some other sports pundits.

The why has turning into a lovely round of finger pointing at various groups and the call for boycotting for various reasons including a number that seem to revolve around Colin Kaepernick’s silent protest last year that has now blown up into a national issue. Some are boycotting because Kaepernick seems to be being punished by not be hired by a team even though he is so much better than the QB they have on the field. Others are boycotting because they oppose the players who have been exercising their first amendment right both on and off the field. So according to those screaming the loudest, that’s why number are down.

I don’t think that it is at all. I blame the NFL red zone. When you can get all the exciting plays in one place and have your electronic leash tell you when they exist so you can go and watch them, why take 3 hours out of your Sunday to watch a game in hopes of seeing an exciting play? The red zone has ruined it for teams whose markets are not the biggest. In our immediate gratification society, the NFL Red Zone is tailor made for that sort of behavior. Plus you don’t have to listen to the refs ruining the game for your team by some lame ass penalty that was not applied fairly to your team.

I do think that concussion is playing a role in this too. The awareness of the viewing public about what those hits do to those players is very much on the rise. We also come to understand that the absurd contracts that we hear about is for the minority of players and the majority have to try to make as much money playing as they can before they go out on injury or they don’t remember their name. So the violence, that use to be a selling point, now seems to become a detriment.

Also it hasn’t been that good over all. They are still trying to sort out the new rules. The celebration in the end zone has not added to the game for me in fact it is just eating up time that is going to make my show later in the evening because the game is going to go over. The refs use to call the game and, some how, they have made themselves part of the game with their antics. So it can be a long haul with a lot of commercials to see a team that you like play. Thus the immediacy of the Red zone plays.

I really don’t know if they are taking all the other ways to watch games into account.

I do know that college football’s attendance has been better than the NFL but if you consider the absurd price of even a crappy ticket, it is understandable. They have priced their fan base out of their stadiums. The cash cow has moved on and the stands are looking rather empty in some markets. It has become a game for the rich and the working class who might like to attend a game cannot afford a seat much less a hot dog.

So NFL you did it to yourselves. What are you going to do about it.

I am grateful that I can still watch football on a network that is not a cable network but that’s probably going soon as well.

Crossposts: https://puppetmaker40.livejournal.com/1174208.html

fjm

I think most people who used to follow me on LJ are now on facebook but I am cross posting just in case.

After my book on Heinlein went beyond a length that most academic publishers could manage (it may be around 500 pages) I decided to go with a Crowdfunding publisher called Unbound. They can keep the price down to affordable levels.

Of course I would love it if you bought the book:

ebook £12
ebook and hb £35

But what I really need is signal boosting. Please copy and paste.

https://unbound.com/books/robert-heinlein

malinaldarose

It's hot. Really hot. It's hot enough outside that the 75° in my living room seems cool.

But there's No Such Thing as global warming.

Yesterday was the usual busy day. I went out to WickedMart in the morning, as usual, and was treated to a display of staggering rudeness in the greeting card aisle. Long story short: a woman who was blocking the aisle with her cart actually stepped directly in front of me, blocking my access to the section I wanted when I parked my cart farther down the aisle (giving her plenty of room to leave) and stepped around her and her cart. The cow. Even if we were after the exact same card, it's not like they didn't have multiples.

I hate people so much. So, so much.

The rest of the day was chores: writing checks for myself and my grandmother, dishes, laundry, mowing the lawn -- and then watching the leaves fall to neatly cover the newly-bare sections.

Today, I got up early, walked the dog, scooped the litter box upstairs and emptied the little trash can I keep next to it, then scrubbed the rug in the library with bleach water because Kethri started using it for a litter box again this past week (which I discovered when I sat down at the desk in there to write checks), then, just in keeping with the theme of the morning, I scrubbed the toilet, too. (It needed it, anyway.) I also finally went down into the basement and changed the furnace filter, which has been on my list to do for the last month. I don't know why I had such a mental block about it, but I did. But it's done now, so I'll be ready to turn the furnace on at the end of the week (the long range forecast is calling for the high temperature to be only 60° next Saturday).

And then I sat down at my desk to work on eBay stuff, and there I stayed for hours. I was writing up item descriptions ahead of time because I often don't get to relisting unsold items for the length of time that the listings remain available on eBay, and it's a pain in the ass to have to rewrite the descriptions every time I try to list something. So that took me a couple of hours, then it took me another hour to list ten or a dozen items. It used to be a relatively simple procedure to put things up. Now it's a pain in the ass, but at least being able to copy-and-paste the descriptions shortened that process a bit, even if eBay's system screwed up my HTML.

Kethri is perched on a stack of boxes next to me blatting that she wants her dinner. She started half an hour ago. She won't get fed for another hour. Nimue used to do the same thing, and it was one of the reasons I started going out for dinner a couple of times a week all those years ago, because if it wasn't Nimue, it was Cruiser, and I couldn't take the noise. Kethri only just started doing it recently, but it's no less annoying. Yesterday, I actually chucked her out of the room and shut the door to get a little peace.

I feel kind of discombobulated this afternoon. I'm a bit sleepy, probably in part because of the weather. I'm sure the weather is contributing to the discombobulation, too, because it's ridiculously hot for the end of September -- it's almost 90°. In western New York.

I would really like to order a pizza for supper rather than cooking, but it'd cost me $20. On the one hand, that's bit bit much. On the other, I'd get four meals out of it. Bleah.

I won't be watching Star Trek Discovery this evening. I'll catch it later in the week; perhaps tomorrow evening. 9:00 is too late for me, anymore; I can't stay up until 10:00 or later and still get up at 5:00.

Current Mood: sleepy

malinaldarose

twistical: Tortuous, unfair, not quite moral. Used in New England. [James Bartlett's Dictionary of Americanisms, 1849]

calliopes_pen

Yesterday, the bill arrived for Comcast. We expected this month’s bill to still reflect things from before we cut out watching cable due to whatever reason, but no. It’s better than that. This month, we seem to owe nothing, and we have been credited $65. So…next month the bill should be $5 once that's subtracted, until this returns to the expected $70 in November, I suspect.

Odd, but nice for once.

Meanwhile, as I hunt for a new computer, I realized that just in case of any emergency that requires me to go—either due to being forced to travel out of state again, or not—it might be best to search for laptops. So I’ve been looking at the HP* Pavilion 17 inch sort, since that’s held up well for Dad. He hasn’t had any problems with his, since he got it in 2013.

And since I prefer Windows 7, I purchased an OEM for Windows 7 Professional 64 bit, which should arrive sometime next week. I’ll use it once I have an appropriate laptop actually in my possession. I have also done in depth research of the Intel CPU, which one would allow an installation of 7 over 10, and which ones wouldn’t. I think I’ve figured that one out. I have far too many links gathered for all the steps to everything, so that’s what I’ve been doing this week! I also gathered all relating links to drivers that still support Windows 7 in either the CPU of Intel or AMD.

I also asked questions at Reddit, Seven Forums, Tom’s Hardware Forum, and Bleeping Computers so that I would have everything straight. As a side note, from one of those I gained the alternative of the Acer Aspire desktop, should other ideas not work. So that’s why I’ve been a bit quiet—research!

And on a non computer note, The Collinsport Historical Society has their round-up of everywhere that Dark Shadows can be found this Halloween season. If only I had Decades and TCM, I would be so happy on October 28th.

*We have a local place that works on all things HP, so if anything happens, straight to the manufacturer it can go.

Crossposts: https://calliopes-pen.livejournal.com/1021766.html

siliconshaman

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

Current Mood: amused

laurel

The sciatica returned for a bit, though less bad than it had been previously. Enough to be worrisome and annoying and with zaps of bad pain but not constant bad pain. I did All The Things and fortunately it went away after a week or so. Mostly. Was inspiration to keep doing the physical therapy stretches, that's for sure, which I'd skipped for a few days prior to this flare up.

+ + +

The new mattress is great so far, I think. I'm also sleeping with a pregnancy pillow at times (and no, I'm not pregnant and don't intend ever to be pregnant) and it seems to also help with the sciatica stuff. I think. Maybe. (It can be hard to tell.)

+ + +

We now have health insurance through MinnesotaCare! Hooray! Apparently from August onward and I'm still sorting out what we owe for various appointments in August and September and getting those paid for. Sadly doesn't cover the $600+ ER visit in July and I'm cranky about that but we'll cope. There were appeals and all manner of things we had to deal with to get this all sorted out. I think we should be covered for July too given our initial application (that was messed up by a Navigator) was made in June but it is not according to others. Harrumph. But we finally have health insurance we can actually afford and that is a great relief. Now I need to take advantage of it and get all the appointments made.

It works out that the local cheap federally subsidized clinic we've been going to is covered as well as my longtime psychiatrist at HealthPartners so that's excellent. (We went with the Healthpartners plan through MNCare.) I should be able to either go to HealthPartners for an eye exam (as I have my whole life) or to the aforementioned cheap clinic as both are covered. That reallllly needs to be my next appointment given my blurry vision which is blurry. (I really think it's just age-related changes to my eyes but it's trickier to tell for me than most given I'm already both farsighted and nearsighted, among other things. Trying to motivate myself to do that with the thought of new glasses plus, you know, seeing clearer.)

+ + +

I stalled for a bit in my Law & Order: Criminal Intent rewatch, ran into a couple of particularly gruesome episodes which surprised me a bit as I don't think of it as a gruesome show, it's not like Criminal Minds (which I gave up on because it seemed to embrace the truly grisly and gruesome). But that episode with Neil Patrick Harris as a cannibal of sorts? Ew ew ew.

Right after that comes "Great Barrier" which is the Nicole Wallace episode with two different endings. I'm in the midst of that one at the moment.

+ + +

The Minnesota Twins may make the postseason and this is exciting after several years of not very good baseball. Bad baseball. This year the team has been pretty great with all sorts of exciting things going on, during the first half of the season they had a lousy record at home so it didn't feel like the season was going quite as well as it actually was. They've done better at home in the second half so we've seen lots of wins and just plain exciting games.

There are also young players coming into their own, which is great to see.

And then there's Joe Mauer, back to being himself after a couple of years of not doing well due to concussions and changing positions on the field as a result. People were hard on him, but it was clear to those of us who've watched him his entire career that he had to have been struggling with post-concussion symptoms. Heck, in one interview Mauer basically admitted to playing major league baseball while experiencing blurred vision. Can you imagine? He was no longer great at baseball but was still above average. During chunks of at least one season with blurred vision. The big weirdo.

Mauer is my favorite player and it was hard watching him struggle. And certain members of the local media in Minnesota have done their best to make local baseball fans hate the guy. Seriously. Non-local baseball fans are stunned to learn Mauer is hated by a large group of people in Minnesota because honestly what on earth is there to hate about Joe Mauer? Okay, some grumble that he's overpaid but it's not like he's the only athlete who is and it's not like he didn't earn that payday by being the best player in baseball for a time. That's what happens when you award someone for an awesome season or two with a multi-year contract, it just is. And somehow these people who complain forget that Joe Mauer was playing for not a lot of money (as pay for baseball players go) during his first few seasons. The pay for athletes is weird. (Before baseball players make it to the big leagues, they often toil for years in the minor leagues where they are paid far less than even minimum wage and often have to room with host families and do ridiculous things just to find a way to eat. It's bad, you guys, and I get so cranky about this but fortunately there's real movement to improve the situation. I hope. Mauer didn't have to toil like this, but most others do.)

Some of the other things people complain about re Mauer are the sorts of things that seem Very Minnesotan. Minnesotans hating on Mauer for being reserved and Minnesotan is just . . . wrong. And yet many do. Ugh.

Anyway. Watching Mauer get back to being great is a joy, not just because I enjoy watching great athletes be great but because it's a good sign he's recovered fully (or mostly) from his brain injury. I like that. Brain injuries suck and are hard to recover from.

mycroftca

Last night, we went to see Kingsman: The Golden Circle. It's a bit of fun, though I liked the first one a bit better. Clearly set up for sequels.

Today will be devoted to a bit of gardening in the front yard as was a portion of last weekend. Mostly maintenance work rather than any major additions.

And there's my last couple of weeks. Work, I just can't talk about, not that there's anything bad there. I'm still loving my job, no worries there, I'm finding that there's things that I must do that are a bit outside of my comfort zone but I'm getting them done because it's what's right and it's what has to be done.

And then there's happy 5778 for those who recognize the number system...

azurelunatic

Thursday was family games night, with pizza.

sithjawa joined, as well as the partner's large array of siblings and their spouses/etc.

After games were done, my partner showed me Who Framed Roger Rabbit? out of the "You haven't seen that yet?" queue. And we watched more of The Orville, and I tested out my stand mixer by making some cookies.

Friday, in honor of the equinox, I baked a sweet cardamom loaf. Then we did a shopping run, and my partner made dinner.

These past two days have involved a lot of small gas-powered motors around. Partner has summoned a yard maintenance company to take care of some of the tree, bush, weed, and tenacious invasive morning glory things that the ex neglected in the interminable six months leading up to departure. It's been loud, but is so much better looking now. Though there are still some more things left for today, like the stack of lichen-covered branches in the driveway.

puppetmaker

Today begins the 61th journey around the Sun for Peter.

This year has been an interesting one full of ups and downs for us all.

We consider that Peter is still here a real positive in our lives. That he has recovered fully from the stroke is another.

Today is going to be pretty low key where in we do several things that we always do on his birthday.

Tomorrow we are going to the Broadway Flea Market and to see one of his grandsons.

If you want to give Peter a present, may be promote his Patroen account or his books from Crazy 8 Press.

I am grateful that we can celebrate today.

Crossposts: https://puppetmaker40.livejournal.com/1174011.html

avivasedai

Second day went and felt so much better than 1st day of Rosh Hashana this year. ( A long recap. )

Now it's 5 PM on Friday night, erev shabbat. Benito is at the end of his nap - starting to wake up - and the holiday is going to transition to the next holiday. It's time for unease of the soul, thinking about repentance, forgiveness, our relationships with others and with God. First, though, Rick and I are going to be with our friend who lost her mother last year today, and I'm going to think about what to do for Hebrew school on Sunday. I should do more arts and crafts with the 2nd graders, make things concrete for them. Yom Kippur cards - "I'm sorry for X. Next year, I'll try Y." Something on that idea?

This can be a good weekend.

Crossposts: https://avivasedai.livejournal.com/701247.html

rosefox

( Selichot )

( Rosh Hashanah )

It's genuinely disorienting to encounter all these spaces where I don't have to educate anyone or fight to be seen for who I am. Other people have already done that work, and leaders have clearly been receptive to it. (Rabbi Lippman is queer, but I don't assume that cis queer people will be welcoming to or understanding of trans people, especially nonbinary trans people.) I get to just show up and be a human being in human community. What an immense privilege. What a gift. Honestly, that might be the thing that gets me to stick with this—just the pure pleasure of being in a place where I didn't personally have to claw out a space for myself.

Josh met me and Kit in the park and we walked for a while (GMaps Pedometer says I walked 3.2 miles today, most of it pushing a heavy stroller with a heavy toddler; my feet and arms are very tired). I teased him that he should be glad I didn't make him meet the rabbi. But this is my thing, really. Maybe it's my latest three-month hobby. Maybe it'll be more than that. We'll see.

Current Mood: hopeful

theferrett

In case you forgot, I’ll be at Borderlands Books (my favorite place in SF) at 3:00 pm this Saturday to read to you from my new book The Uploaded, sign whatever you put in front of me, and to, as usual, go out for hamburgers afterwards.

(And if you’re extra-special-good, I may do a super-secret advance MEGA-preview reading of The Book That Does Not Yet Have A Name. Not that, you know, you shouldn’t be rushing out to your stores to buy The Uploaded right now.)

I will, of course, bring donuts after my massive DONUT FAIL in Massachusetts, which I still wake up in cold sweats about. I will bring you donuts or die.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

Crossposts: https://theferrett.livejournal.com/2111954.html

Worry

The Yuletide Tag Set Is Open

taking a knee placeholder

A sudden craving

Here's a soundtrack for this week

Thanks, Hun, You're A Great Guy

It is that time of year again

Monday Morning Quarterbacking 2017 Week 3

New Book on Robert A. Heinlein

Sunday Things

Today's Forgotten English Word

The Bill From Comcast, Computer Hunting, And Dark Shadows

Leakage from Terramagne..

scattershot update with talk of health, baseball, TV, etc.

(no subject)

(no subject)

Happy Birthday Peter 2017 edition

Okay. That went well overall.

"Home away from home"

Hey, San Francisco, Come Say Hello To Me Saturday At Borderlands Books!

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