yuletide | Member Posts

Growing vaguely anxious about the party on Saturday.

*sigh* My three current mantras are:

My mother's standards of entertaining do not need to be mine.

My friends will not judge me for having a lived-in house.

People do actually like me and will turn up.

I've made a slice, a cake and icing, and will be cooking some chicken wings in soy sauce on Friday. I'm thinking about making a bean salad with a bit of a vinegar zing...

Yesterday, I gave the back door and frame a coat of oil, and it's been a bit whiffy through the house. So the cats didn't sleep in the laundry last night, and around 2am Smokey came by to insist she get to come in and sleep with me. Around 4am, Mal decided to join us. And around 6am, my alarm went off.

I have to get the back porch table cleared this evening, box as much stuff as possible (worry about sorting later).

Tomorrow is going to be hellishly hot, and the hot weather is going to continue on through to Saturday. Argh. It's going to be painfully hot outside, and I was kind of counting on being able to hold it outside...

sweetsorcery

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Current Mood: clumsy

brithistorian

Presented without comment, except that I have always loved Jim Henson and I agree with this quote 100%:

"When I was young, my ambition was to be one of the people who made a difference in this world. My hope is to leave the world a little better for my having been there." - Jim Henson

yhlee

I'm informed this is a 1981 Ashford Traditional. I pounced on the secondhand listing as spinning wheels in working order (especially modern-ish wheels) are very scarce in my region, especially at a low price point. She's in incredibly good condition and spins beautifully! She's my first Saxony wheel, to go with the Ashford Traveller. I'm also told the bobbins ought to be inter-compatible (I have bobbins for both the larger and smaller flyers).

The pink-magenta is IxChel's North Ronaldsay blend (North Ronaldsay Sheep 40%, Blue Faced Leicester 30%, Silver infused Seaweed 10%, Mulberry Silk 10%, Cashmere 10%).

veleda_k

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Current Music: The Mystic's Dream- Loreena McKennitt

dragoness_e

I thought we'd have more time together. He wasn't supposed to get dementia this young, and he isn't supposed to be dying in hospice now. He'll never get to read the books I'd planned to write, and he wanted to so much. We'll never get to play another TTRPG campaign together, and I had some ideas for one I really wanted to do with him. I'll never get to see Yosemite with him. We were supposed to have another 20 years together, at least. His father is still alive at age 92, and he should have lived at least that long. I won't get to retire and move north with him, and go on hikes in the woods with him.

I've been slowly mourning the possibilities being cut off one by one as the dementia advanced, but there was always a slim hope that it was a form of dementia that could be fixed or controlled with medication. Now there is no hope; he is dying. There are no more possibilities with him, and I grieve.

Current Mood: sad

brithistorian

About a month ago, NMIXX came out with their latest sing, "Blue Valentine."

Watch on YouTube

I loved it — I've listened to it so many times! One part of it really confused me, though: From the start of the prechorus (at 0:40) until the beginning of the chorus (at 0:56), the tempo suddenly drops, then has an accelerando until the chorus begins. But I was really confused, though, because the line "You'll always be my blue valentine" in the chorus took the same amount of the time as when the same line was sung at the beginning of the song, but it felt faster. Fortunately, when React to the K (a YouTube channel that feature classical and jazz music students reacting to K-pop songs) did their video reacting to this song, they had an entire section where Liam (a classical percussionist) explains what's happening rhythmically during the prechorus — it took him almost 2 minutes to explain what happened in that 16 seconds of the song, but to me, it was worth it — I'd listened to that part of the song over and over so many times trying to figure out what was happening there, so it was great to finally understand.

lannamichaels

As superhero movies go, this is a very good superhero movie. As regular movies go, I kept being annoyed about the seriously compressed timeline and some really basic suspension of disbelief, like "is anyone going to say Lex Luthor is lying about translation" because, uh. Also, how does anyone know Kryptonian? So many little things just drove me up the wall.

However! It was a good movie, and the Clark/Lois stuff was very well done, I actually really loved their interview/fight because it worked so well in with characterization, it didn't strike my "I cannot, I cannot, I cannot" that I tend to have about couples arguing.

The main effect of the movie was, after it was revealed that Lex had people going over every inch of every Superman fight so he could get a single strand of Superman's hair so he could clone him -- I went and reread some old favorite Smallville fics. Good times.

The movie also did something I noticed with the Knives Out 2: Glass Onion film, where it made the Cool Evil Rich Villain... not come off very compelling on the slash goggles. I did not walk out of this movie shipping Clark/Lex, even though I ship Clark/Lex. Lex Luthor, played by Why Do I Recognize Him Oh That's The Boy From About A Boy, is very well done and very well performed and is not a magnificent bastard and he has zero chemistry with Clark, but not in a way that detracts from the film. This is not a film where Clark and Lex have ever been on good terms; this is not a film where they even ever knew each other. There was nothing about the movie that was in the same flavor or theme as Smallville, but hey, always fun to go reread some stuff.

But for a movie that did Lois so well, did we have to have Eve The Awful Clingy Obsessive Wannabe Girlfriend with Jimmy who did not want to date her, just wanted info from her? That was so hard to endure. I think worse of the movie for making that decision, it casts a long tail on the movie even a week after I finished it, like "oh yeah so that was a movie that made me go reread some old fics from 20 years ago, and also had this unnecessarily misogynistic sideplotline played for laughs (?)".

Nathan Fillion also appeared to be treating this film as "I will do bad acting on purpose to show that my character is a buffoon" but mostly it just came off annoying.

I also have a nit to pick with this movie that is solely from watching it with the DVD closed captions, which kept noting when the main Superman theme was playing, which is: the soundtrack to this movie is ... well, it's got some perfectly acceptable pop songs peppered in. But the rest of it is just so bland.

But this movie is better than every MCU movie I've seen, with the exception of Captain America 2: A Good Spy Movie With I Guess Absolutely Zero Repercussions For The Worldbuilding Oh Well.

ysobel

Back in 2018-19, Loki spent about 9 months in a cone, because he wouldn't stop killing his tail. ( cw: mention of medical saga )

And then randomly, he stopped. Since then he does still attack his tail sometimes (occasionally seeming extremely annoyed by it) but without making it bloody. I sort of get the impression he doesn't really understand that his tail is even attached to him, let alone part of him. Sometimes he shoves his tail down, stalks to a different bed, and gets upset that it followed him. Sometimes it feels like, to him, he bites the wiggly thing and then it bites him back.

But regardless, he wasn't doing serious damage.

Until last week.

We noticed a spot on the underside of his tail that he seemed to have licked bare. Then it bled a bit. So Friday was Vet Day. They shaved the area, cleaned it up, and gave him an antibiotic shot because it looked like he had just ... chomped way too hard.

So he's back in a cone. Hopefully it's just for the 10-14 days recommended by the vet. But. It's a different spot, but he does have history with, erm, tail issues.

If he continues with his tail the way he did in 2018... ( cw: mention of potential medical procedures )

Right now the dogs are banished from my bedroom so that Loki can have easier access to food/water and to litterbox. They are confused by this. Loki has been extremely clingy, jumping on my lap pretty much every time I'm in there and sleeping on me probably 80% of the night. I don't actually mind providing extra cuddles! But I think all of us will be happy when things go back to normal...

moon_custafer

Found a whole YouTube channel about spiders, very informative, but I also like that the theme song is just:

(The video maker, his voice doubled with recording technology, singing lackadaisically) THESE are the SPIDERS in your HOUSE

Sometimes he changes it up: THESE are the SPIders in your YAAAARD.

This one also has some nice footage of St. John’s, Newfoundland: THREE DAYS with SPIDER SCIENTISTS

For the video on spider cognition: The MINDS of the SPIDERS in your HOUSE

eller

It's that time of the year - I may not celebrate Christmas, but I celebrate everything around Christmas, just because. (Yes, I have an Advent calendar again, too. Okay, three Advent calendars. (In exchanges with artist friends, because store-bought calendars are boring.) You get the idea. I really like all the Christmas-y stuff!) Part of that is, of course, the food. So, here's some very classical Christmas baking! (Hazelnuts! Orange marmalade! YAY!) A bit early, but... I don't care. The supermarkets are starting to play that awful music, so, if I have to live with that, at least I can have the good stuff of the season as well, right?

Boyfriend already made an Advent wreath last weekend! (No candles, just branches and glittery stuff.) He met with some friends and they crafted together. :)

Adventskranz-2-mini

And I baked.

( Just in case you are interested in the (very simple) recipe... It's behind the cut. )

kekse-1-kl

These... Won't survive long... XDD

umadoshi

I complain sometimes about time and the surreality of the passage thereof and whatnot, but this morning I had several minutes of genuinely wondering if the way the year is barreling toward its end meant the first Sunday of Advent had already passed without my even noticing. I'm not sure if something about the timing of US Thanksgiving threw me off, or if it's as simple as my not having put "Advent begins" on my calendar, which I think I usually note in advance. (In practical terms it'd be fine; as it happens, I'm planning to use a "burn a bit every day of December" Advent candle, which probably means not breaking out the wreath for the four Sundays. But still.)

I often have weird dreams and don't usually remember much about them, but until today I'm not sure I'd ever before woken up from a dream where I was watching a movie? In the case of this dream, I was at the theatre watching what was officially a Newsflesh film adaptation, but in the sense that (from what I know of it, never having seen it) the World War Z movie is based on that book, which is to say, really not at all. ("Lead" characters who were supposed to be Georgia and Shaun, yes, but nothing to do with [*checks notes*] characters-as-people, zombies, viruses, or politics, and possibly not journalism, either. I think there was some sort of lab creating humanoid/animal mixes of some sort, possibly giving them guns.) It went on for quite some time.

My dream-self was appalled, of course, but at least glad to think Seanan had presumably gotten a decent chunk of money for the rights. She's got cats to feed!

maevedarcy

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pauraque

In my ongoing journey to play games from as many countries as possible, I ran across this early example of a game from Hungary. It was developed by Pál Balog with music by Zoltán Mericske, and was brought to English-speaking audiences by the British company Andromeda Software, who specialized in producing English localizations of games made in the Eastern Bloc. (They were the ones who introduced Tetris to the West.)

white bird carries a twig to a nest in a tree

white bird carries a twig to a nest in a tree

Bird Mother (or Madár mama in Hungarian) is, as you might have guessed, a game where you play as a mother bird who must build a nest, feed her babies, and protect the young while they fledge. (It's also an early example of a game with a female protagonist!) You might also guess from the release date and the English subtitle "Life's a Struggle" that the game is hard, and you'd be correct in that as well. I was actually impressed by how uncomfortably infuriating the game is to play.

( more about the game and a little info on personal computers in Communist Europe )

You can play Bird Mother in your browser if you wish to be reminded that whether you build your nest in the First World or the Second, life truly is a struggle.

duskpeterson

Some elders of the borderland still remember the months in 949 when Daxis's Border Port was crowded with war refugees, caused by the outbreak of war between Koretia and Emor.

For a place of somber history, Border Port is an exceptionally cheerful town. Border Port is the only port in the borderland, though you can easily journey to the borderland from points north and south. Disembarking at Border Port, however, places you immediately into one of the liveliest locations in the borderland.

"Lively" is a euphemism for "rowdy." Do not – I repeat, do not – wander here unescorted if you are a woman. Families with small children will probably want to pass through this town quickly, taking overnight accommodations elsewhere.

Unmarried men, however, are likely to enjoy their visit. Sailors have long made this town – one of the oldest ports in the Great Peninsula – their place for recreation. Daxions have happily met their needs. In this mild climate, entertainment is year-round and usually takes place on the streets. Daxion bards sing on every corner, Emorian jugglers stand in every doorway, and Koretian dagger-throwers lay claim over every handy wooden wall. Look out for the last; dagger-throwers don't offer warning before they throw.

Many of these entertainers will have bowls at their feet. These are for coins or – if you do not yet possess peninsularean coinage – for gifts of food. Be generous in your offerings; bards in particular are inclined to offer commentary on stingy listeners, in the form of excruciatingly derisive ballads.

"But what about the women?" Many a northern mainlander has asked me that question. Houses of prostitution are indeed abundant in the Border Port. I mention this, not in order to encourage this distasteful trade, but because these houses are often overlooked by mainlanders who come to the Great Peninsula in search of wives. See the section on courting for more information.

[Translator's note: Readers can take a trip to Border Port in Death Mask.]

nocowardsoul

[Originally posted on Tumblr, edited a little bit]

Out of several park and forest themed books I decided Avalanche Patrol (1951) by Montgomery Atwater sounded potentially interesting. Atwater (1904-1976) wrote 11 outdoor juvenile novels, and like many authors he worked in the field he wrote about. He was known as the father of avalanche research in North America.

Chapter 1: Paid Ski Vacation
Brad Davis gets yanked out of class because his Uncle Bob, “Chief of Wildlife in Region One of the U. S. Forest Service,” received an urgent message. Whitecaps National Forest wants a man for emergency duty. Brad is a skier, but Uncle Bob and his other Uncle Lane started their careers “before the time of the ski craze” so they primarily use snowshoes.

Is Brad an orphan? Orphan aren’t very common in career fiction; most protagonists have good parents.
( Read more... )

kantayra

I think I might have at least one weird thing going on each week for the rest of the year? Fortunately, at least some of those weird things are 'staycation where I don't have work'. So, this week is Thanksgiving and is one such example. I do need to cram in at least one emergency practice session so I'm ready for our ice rink's holiday exhibition, but otherwise I have Wednesday through Friday free. Then next week it's two exhibitions, and then the week after that it's our synchro competition, and then I think is when I start my Christmas vacation, which runs through New Years. So, yeah, that's a lot of extra stuff. On the plus side, though, it's not snowing yet!

Here's what's going on fandom-wise:

Exchanges due in November/December (fffx, ficinabox part deux, yuletide_admin + mystery pinch-hits and treats + future sign-ups): I'm now at 5/7. I got a cool thing that ate my brain done! I did some research on FFFX, but no writing, and no writing on YT either. My goal this week is to pick up one more PH, and then write some on YT and FFFX if I have time. If I don't get YT done this week, next week it's going to be my top priority.

Reveals! Here's the stuff I wrote for cuppajoexhange and seasonofdrabbles:
- Look, Speak, Touch, Take - Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan from Guardian - priest, and my assignment for cuppajoexhange. I mean, what more can I say about these two? I love writing them, obviously, because they're tons of fun. (And, yes, Zhao Yunlan is shameless and horny, thank you for asking! And so is Shen Wei.)
- One Bitten - Also Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan from Guardian - priest, my assignment for seasonofdrabbles. They did not suddenly get less horny or shameless in this, either.
- What's in a Name - Jonathan Pine/Richard Roper from The Night Manager, a PH I picked up for cuppajoexhange. This is one of the secret things I was watching a few weeks back. I had watched the first few episodes some years ago, but then the people I was watching with marathoned the rest without me, so I never finished. But! This was a great excuse to rewatch the whole thing, which a fun spy-thriller, exactly what you would expect from John Le Carre, and it was fun writing a little post-canon reaction piece to it as well!

Nope, nothing new on Femslash Salad Bar...

Watching-wise, I finished the other undisclosed thing, but that one is still undisclosed.

BNHA: Planning to start catch-up on this one this week, since I don't have anything else on my to-watch list!

Wakenhyrst by Michelle Paver - Finished it, and it was quite good! The horrible father suffered adequately, and I had many laugh-out-loud moments with the unreliable-narrator stuff in his journal, where he's talking about how rational and important he is, and he's clearly just a sexist asshole nutter. Sad book, though - poor Maud, and poor Clem!

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke - This is now my top priority, since it's due back at the library in a week. Now that I've cleaned off the most of my plate, and I'm off work Wed-Fri, this is very doable, though. I'm liking this all right so far, but I wouldn't say I'm gripped or invested yet. I will report back next week when I'm done!

I'm still reading an undisclosed thing, but it's not the highest priority right now. I'll get back to that once I finish JS&MN, though.

Dear Door - When I have time, I'm still reading a chapter here and there of this.

Goals for this week: 1) Finish JS&MN! 2) Pick up/complete a PH. 3) Write more on YT & FFFX, time-permitting. 4) Resume catch-up on BNHA. 5) Eat lots of turkey.

lannamichaels

Title: The Deere Files Podcast Presents: The Heirs Of Samuel Westing.
Author:

lannamichaels
Fandom: The Westing Game
Rating: G
Archives: Archive Of Our Own, SquidgeWorld

Summary: What do a Supreme Court Justice, the chairwoman of the board of the largest employer in Wisconsin, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, the inventor of Hoo's Little Foot-Eze innersoles, and a dead union organizer who didn't exist have in common?

( There was no such person as Barney Northrup )

umadoshi

Reading: I finished August Clarke's Metal from Heaven (really good, with gorgeous writing) and read Into the Broken Lands, which was my first Tanya Huff book in...probably a couple of decades, honestly. Also really good. (I have a bonus soft spot for her because she was GoH at the local SFF con one year when I went in high school.)

Currently reading: Rebecca Mahoney's The Memory Eater.

And

scruloose and I are close enough to the end of Network Effect that we could probably finish it tonight if we really tried; annoyingly, it's due back at something like 6 PM today, and we can't get it finished by then, so we're gonna have to renew it. >.<

Cooking/Baking: I mentioned having apples we needed to bake with early in the month, and what we wound up going with was the Easiest Ever MOIST Apple Cake from RecipeTin eats, chosen in large part based on our available springform pans. It's tasty (we took the last pieces out to thaw for this evening), but I can't say "moist" is one of the first words it brings to mind. (It's not dry or anything, just...a perfectly pleasantly-textured cake.)

Tonight's dinner plan is Smitten Kitchen's Roast Chicken with Schmaltzy Cabbage. (It calls for a green cabbage and we have a Savoy, but hopefully that'll be okay.) Last weekend when we were out erranding we bought said cabbage, some carrots, and some broccoli (all still in the fridge), and some spring mix (fortunately not still in the fridge), but then we had a HelloFresh box to get through.

Buying vegetables is presumably the first step to actually cooking them, and I made sure to at least mostly choose some that would last a while. >.> The Bee Wilson book I mentioned recently has a section specifically on learning/practicing different cooking techniques with carrots, so I'm hoping to actually make use of the bag of carrots with my own hands. We'll see how that goes.

Householding: The upright freezer in the garage has been making unhappy noises and needing to be poked at periodically to keep it running. Time to get a new one, I guess. >.< Everyone loves appliance shopping!

Current Mood: hungry

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Yuletide

while we tell of yuletide treasure

November 2025

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Page Summary

tielan - exhausted
sweetsorcery - How do I do it?
brithistorian - QOTD: Jim Henson on life goals
yhlee - emotional support spinning
veleda_k - Um, hi? (Mighty Nein reaction)
dragoness_e - I thought we'd have more time
brithistorian - SOTD: NMIXX, "Blue Valentine" (plus bonus music theory)
lannamichaels - Superman (2025)
ysobel - (no subject)
moon_custafer - Spider Videos
eller - Baking. Hazelnuts. Orange marmalade.
umadoshi - Discombobulation and dreamstuff
maevedarcy - Official public whining post
pauraque - Bird Mother: Life's a Struggle (1984)
tarlanx - Seasons of Fandom R1 - CH17 - Various
duskpeterson - FIC: Border Port (Tempestuous Tours)
nocowardsoul - Recap: Avalanche Patrol by Montgomery M. Atwater (1951)
kantayra - Lo! The Season of Weird-Ass Schedules is upon us!
lannamichaels - "The Deere Files Podcast Presents: The Heirs Of Samuel Westing." (The Westing Game) G
umadoshi - Weekly proof of life: reading | foodstuff | impending appliance shopping (>.<)

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Yuletide unofficial chat

Member Posts

exhausted

How do I do it?

QOTD: Jim Henson on life goals

emotional support spinning

Um, hi? (Mighty Nein reaction)

I thought we'd have more time

SOTD: NMIXX, "Blue Valentine" (plus bonus music theory)

Superman (2025)

(no subject)

Spider Videos

Baking. Hazelnuts. Orange marmalade.

Discombobulation and dreamstuff

Official public whining post

Bird Mother: Life's a Struggle (1984)

Seasons of Fandom R1 - CH17 - Various

FIC: Border Port (Tempestuous Tours)

Recap: Avalanche Patrol by Montgomery M. Atwater (1951)

Lo! The Season of Weird-Ass Schedules is upon us!

"The Deere Files Podcast Presents: The Heirs Of Samuel Westing." (The Westing Game) G

Weekly proof of life: reading | foodstuff | impending appliance shopping (>.<)

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November 2025

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