I hit Price Chopper and the Bakery while I was downtown. Later I dropped a book off at the library.

I did two loads of laundry, hand-washed dishes, did some house cleaning (swept kitchen and dining room, further swiffered and mopped dining room, and also dusted some of the furniture in the dining room (still have two items to clear off and dust), went for a couple walks with Pip and the dogs, shoveled the sidewalk, cut up chicken for the dogs' meals, placed a couple of online orders, including Chewy, scooped kitty litter, and showered.

We had leftover turkey and sides for supper. I love Thanksgiving leftovers. I read fanfic. Dr. Pol was my evening background tv.

Temps started out at 30.9(F) and reached 34.5. The forecast called for 1-3 inches of snow during the day and an additional ‘less than an inch’ overnight, but we ended up getting much more than that. Pip shoveled off the deck after we ate (and made sure there was a path to the basement for the garage cats, lol!), and then he blew out the short walking trail. So we all went for a walk in the dark, which is kind of nice when there’s snow on the ground.

ETA: I forgot to include this pic of our visitors last evening!




Mom Update:

Mom sounded okay when I called her, ( more back here )

It's that time of year again! Mine are more like New Year cards as I'm slow to start making them.

If you're on my card list but your mailing address has changed, let me know - replies to this post are screened.

And if you're not on my seasonal cards list and would like to be, also drop me a reply below, with your preferred postal name and address. I send them all over the world, so no worries about that.

FutureLearn

Discover Contemporary Chinese: A Taster Course (Chinese Plus)
Following on from the OpenLearn basic Chinese course, I thought I'd look at this one.  I had hoped it would be a good introduction, but it was well over my head, concentrating on the main courses which the taster was promoting, without providing any assistance.  Even if I'd had some basic Chinese I doubt this would have persuaded me to take a further, paid, course with them.


OpenLearn

Getting Started with German 2 and Getting Started with German 3
Continuing with my aim to at least understand something of German when we're there.  Some of the sections were interesting and helpful, others were not within my general interests, so probably irrelevant, since I'm unlikely to want to know the German for something I don't talk about in English.

Introduction to Planetary Protection
I found this very interesting, although why astronomy appeals to me I have no idea.  It covered all sorts of areas: avoiding bringing potential contamination back from other planets and similar bodies, together with not contaminating planets our spacecraft visit.  In addition there was the clear thought that what we learn from these planets etc should be knowledge available for all and not simply exploited by the powerful.

The Gut Microbiome: Balancing the Body
The importance of what we consume and how it's important to maintain a good balance in our gut microbiome.  Apart from the general biology (which begins to go over my head), there's the effect that other areas can have, including genetics and ageing.  I need to tweak my diet, I think.

If I had a nickel for every episode of Xena where the writers had Ares play the role of Xena's father, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot but it is weird. Significantly, 1.20 'Ties That Bind' anticipates some important narrative themes and social stances that the show would continue to develop in later seasons, which gives me more than my two cents to talk about.

[Spoiler warning for 1.20 'Ties That Bind', 3.01 'The Furies', 4.03 'A Family Affair', and 6.04 'Who's Gurkhan?']



In 'Ties That Bind', we glimpse Xena's childhood and observe how Ares operates as an Olympian god, both of which points the show returns to in 3.01 'The Furies'. We also get a glimpse into how and why Xena reverts to warlord-style violence, and how she, Ares, and the narrative recognize that the key to her staying different this time is...Gabrielle. Plot execution could be rougher in S1, and individual character dynamics were not fully fleshed out in some cases, but it's notable when S1 pulls off themes that do harmonize well with later seasons.

'Ties That Bind' does well on a few points here:

( I didn't say it would be easy. )

Quote:


"Make the universe your companion, always bearing in mind the true nature of things-mountains and rivers, trees and grasses, and humanity-and enjoy the falling blossoms and the scattering leaves."

"Go to the pine if you want to learn about the pine, or to the bamboo if you want to learn about the bamboo. And in doing so, you must leave your subjective preoccupation with yourself. Otherwise you impose yourself on the object and you do not learn."

~ Matsuo Basho



Cooking Video:

Food Wishes – Crispy Blooming Onion Fritter:

https://youtu.be/lTHT0Enjsu4?si=rJ40E3DPaaDrRXFa

Didn't really shop unless you count the liquor store (I do). My friend MKF wanted to meet up at Tim Horton's in Athens. We tried to recapture the old Nano energy this year. No one showed up us two but that's okay. We're enough. We're planning to try again in Feb (though that might have to be Saturday afternoons or online). We actually spend more time talking than writing but ah well.

My throat and tooth still hurt. Fun times but I picked up a Skeletonwitch pizza in Athens and taunted my mother with it (I need to buy her one on my way home)

But here's the weird thing. As I left today my landlord's truck was out there with a trailer holding a washing machine...wait? You are putting machines IN our apartment. I DO NOT have one. Now I need to make another phone call. I REALLY need to get my shit together tomorrow and Sunday and clean up this place so I can get him in here.

Also Hazbin Hotel is now officially my most spendy fandom since the Buffyverse (which still wears the trading money for magic beans crown) It needs to have less cool merch.

And now on to the Fannish 50 friday recs. Look, I wrote a thing.


Title: Never Gonna Give You Up

Summary: Angel is gone. Husk disappears into a bottle and stays there until he swims to rock bottom. Determined not to leave Angel with his abusers, Husk sobers enough and proposes his plan to the rest of the hotel. They’ll help him. They may already have plans he was too drunk to notice. All Husk knows he’s never going to give Angel up and desert him.

Rating: teen

Notes: This is open ended (because I’m writing it for a weekly challenge) and certainly won’t be my last speculation on how the hotel crew get Angel back from the Vees.

Content warning – alcoholism and addiction references.

Written for Spikesgirl58’s six word challenge. The words were Faded, Odd, Coherent, Consign, Rise, & Dwell. Also written for the allbingo prompt of Love is putting someone else's needs before your own (a quote by Olaf in Frozen).
Also written for the lyrical titles bingo challenge for the prompt, a meme song. I chose the GOAT of meme songs Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley. Ha, that’s right, I just Rickrolled my whole readership (wearing an Alastor grin right now, or at the very least, Rosie’s).

( Story at above link and under here. Spoilers for the ending of Season 2 )


Dancing In The Dark Hazbin Hotel

Careless Torchwood

Quietly Comforting FAKE

Unexpected Audience Torchwood


There And Gone Torchwood

🪨💥 The Murderbot Diaries

Let the Sorrow Go, Its Half the Battle Hazbin Hotel

Jin Ling's many uncles 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV)魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù

First Steps Toward Freedom Teen Wolf

Drunken Confession Torchwood

Title: Reawakening
Rating: G
Type: Fic
Size/length/word count etc.: 803
Prompt: 041: Dove
Fandom/Ship: The Kingdom; Yang Dongsik | Louis, Jang Yunho | Arthur
Notes/Warnings:
Summary Dreams lead Dongsik to those he’s spent centuries with.

( Read more... )

Find the table with the list of fics here

The Seven Rings by Nora Roberts is the completion of her Lost Brides trilogy, which I've been waiting a year for - and it didn't disappoint! I love the set of characters working together to break the curse in these books - even if they didn't actually properly start working on that until 90% through the third book... I'm sure a lot of readers will have been frustrated throughout this series by the lengthy, drawn-out, mostly mundane nature of the story - but I actually really enjoyed all the stuff with the pets and the characters working on their businesses and the gradual romance and the sailing and the small town community building, etc. The periodic intrusions of the evil ghost were what annoyed me more than anything because it was just so repetitive. A character would be alone in the house, the ghost would frighten or threaten them (often by trapping them in one of the rooms and throwing things at them), they would escape, the other characters would rush round to help and arrive after the fact, and the affected character would explain what happened - over and over and over again, which did get a bit wearing.

And then, when we finally got to the breaking of the curse, it was all over extremely quickly and felt way too easy, with not nearly enough aftermath. Still, those minor annoyances aside, I really enjoyed this whole series overall, and there was a lot to love about how everything got wrapped up in this instalment. I've completed another Nora Roberts trilogy with a very similar format and plot in the interim, so I may not be visiting more of her back catalogue for a while, but I'll definitely give the next trilogy a try when the first one inevitably comes out in November 2026.


The Skeleton Key by Erin Kelly has been on my wishlist for a while, since someone at a reading retreat recommended it to me ages ago - and then I spotted it in a local charity shop last week and immediately read it, since I was looking for a book to round out the month.

It tells the story of Frank Churcher, who writes a book of imagined folklore, with a complex puzzle built into it in the 1970s, which captures the imagination of a group of treasure hunters, who get dangerously obsessed with solving the mystery. This puts various of Frank's family in danger over the ensuing decades, until he decides to stage a media event around the fiftieth anniversary of the book's publication and things derail even further in unexpected ways.

The book is less thriller-y than I expected - in a good way - and much more layered and involving, with a split timeline gradually building up the history of events, and complex family relationships evolving and devolving over the course of the book.

I really liked the main POV character, Nell, Frank's oldest daughter, and the development of her arc with her foster daughter was my favourite aspect of the book. The main mystery was still compelling, though it got a bit too drawn out towards the end. Things didn't resolve the way I was expecting, though, and there were some complex moral aspects to the conclusion that were really interesting.

This kept me engaged throughout and I read it pretty quickly, though I was never tempted to skim.

I literally feel at least 5x better than usual. I don't know if it's because the weather is good or because my hormones are just right, or because the new med is working. I've been on it for 2 weeks, so it's probably the med. WOW. The difference is so striking.

Another poor month, only 6,700 words, bringing my yearly total to just over 110k, so hopefully I will still reach the 120k.

A lot of what I've written has been drabbles, so time to word ratio is poor.  This includes my allbingo Fairy Tales entry, with The Death of Sir Roderick (Sherlock Holmes), a casefic in 9 drabbles.

Nothing more to share this month - there's a couple of ficlets written but not as yet posted to AO3 - they'll be up next month.

And I've just sent my Yuletide fic off to beta.

So, rather like my word count for the month, this is short and sweet!

✨ holiday love meme 2025 ✨
my thread here

continuing the yearly trend of disappearing for ages only to reappear asking for compliments, as i do

Happy Thanksgiving (a day late) to those of you living in the U.S. Happy Thursday to everyone else.

I slept late this morning (7am again), even though Pip got up early due to coughing. (When it’s not a work day, I don’t have to worry about getting Grant back in the house, which means I can stay in bed.)

I put together a tossed salad for Thanksgiving in the morning. My other contributions to the meal were: a cabbage salad, a loaf of banana bread, and butter cookies. (Since I had to make a GF dessert, I figured it had to be something Pip liked, so we decided on butter cookies, as they’re his favorite.)

ETA: How could I forget to mention this!! There was only one pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving Dinner. *g*

I did a load of laundry, hand-washed dishes, emptied the dishwasher, cut up chicken for the dogs' meals, and scooped kitty litter.

I finished the new Inspector Gamache book.

Temps started out at 34.0(F) (at 7am; it was a couple degrees cooler when Pip got up) and reached 41.2, that I saw. The forecast said it was supposed to hit 50, but I never saw that. It was overcast most of the day again.


Mom Update:

Mom ended up agreeing to go to my sister’s for Thanksgiving. ( more back here )

Quote:

"You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you."

"If my life is fruitless, it doesn't matter who praises me, and if my life is fruitful, it doesn't matter who criticizes me."

~ John Bunyan



Cooking Video:

Cooking with Dave – Keto Cheeseburger Mozzarella Sticks:

https://youtu.be/72WSPJqsAfE?si=rztimsZdYR79AGyK

I was up early yesterday and it was lovely, so I decided to take some pics. It's all very lush as we've had a fair bit of rain, mixed with sunny days as hot as midsummer. I think it's going to be a hot one, this year. I tried to include slightly more panoramic shots this time to give you some idea of my small garden which is almost all in pots and wheelibeds, as my rented unit has largely concrete and asphalt around it. Click on each pic for full size.

( pics under here )

For those celebrating, I hope you had a good holiday. Me, I went to this...I don't want to call it a soup kitchen per se, free community meal? Mostly it's there and free for the students who can't go home and for townspeople who can't afford it etc. Helped out. Had lunch of well stuffing and cake and a bit of turkey. the rest is...not to my taste but that's okay. Can't complain about free.

Came home, didn't clean. Wrote some. Did book reviews I forgot to do. Made pumpkin soup, stuffin muffins and threw the rotisserie turkey breast in the oven. Not a bad meal at all.

I have Free HBO, Starz etc this weekend. Have recorded the new Superman movie and 5 episodes of It Welcome to Derry so there's that.

Hope you all had a nice day. I'm thankful for my friends in RL and online.

I ploughed onward through FFVII Remake and ultimately platinumed it, woo hoo, although it’s definitely thanks to Optinoob’s combat guides. His strategy for the final Sephiroth boss fight (which comes after a series of other fights, so you have to manage your characters very carefully to have enough MP etc left) boiled to down to block, counter stance, block, with Cloud, switch briefly to another character once they show up for heals and barrier etc, then back to Cloud (as Sephiroth will instantly target the character you’re playing) and keep blocking/countering until you can get him with a limit break before he unkindly drops Meteor on you - Optinoob when describing this started imitating Sephiroth going “Cloud, why won’t you attack me?” :D

After that I played chunks of FFVII Intergrade (the Yuffie DLC) on hard mode and I haven’t finished it but I jumped back into FFVII Rebirth. I’m still on chapter 12 of this in hard mode, which is exactly where I was storywise in March, but I have now gone back and done all the side quests I’d missed earlier that you have to repeat on hard mode to unlock more character progression, as well as some of the mini games (aargh the mini games. There are too many and I don’t know if I’m ever going to get through some of them, like the pirate’s gallery shooting one and the gambit & gears hard mode games and, omg, the PIANO). Where I am now, though, I really need to unlock Götterdammerung to be able to make it through the next fights, and it’s locked behind a series of excessively tricky boss fights - the six Brutal Challenges. I have done four, again heavily relying on Optinooob, and they were painful slogs.

As a change of pace from repeated party wipes, I picked up Blue Prince, which is a puzzle-solving rogue-like centred around a mysterious mansion, and not only is it great but I have not yet died even once. You are the presumptive heir to the mansion, but to prove you deserve it, you have to find room 46 - the house is a 9 by 5 grid, every day you start in the entrance hall on the middle of the bottom row, and when you open a door you get a choice of possible floor plans to fill the next space - some of the rooms are dead ends, some have items or hints you need, some require specific resources to select them, some interact with other rooms, and some actively punish you by removing resources or limiting your subsequent choices. When I first got a PC, the game I totally fell for was Myst, a puzzle-solving world-building lore-heavy game with (for the time) amazing graphics, and I spent hours on it, not least because this was largely before the WWW and I had no easy way of finding out puzzle solutions. The creators of Blue Prince credit Cyan (who made Myst), and it brings back that same feeling - there’s a massive amount going on here, with intriguing hints of story as well as fantastic puzzles, and it’s very satisfying when something finally works. Last night I entered room 46 (on day 28 of game time) but there’s a surprising amount left to do! It is a terrible game for the “just one more day” because a day can be over in 20 minutes if you have bad luck drafting rooms or can take nearly two hours if you find a lot of stuff, and I also now have all these notes about hints and clues and possible solutions to pore over. Recommended.