i would lift mine eyes unto the hills if the cloud ever shifted
Mar. 1st, 2026 04:22 pmI had a very strange dog encounter this week. I was coming back from my asthma check-up when I noticed that someone was walking a dog on the other side of the road that was staring at me super-intensely. There were parked cars on that side, and every time it got to the gap between two cars it would turn and STARE. Then I crossed over, and it turned around to stare at me some more. The walker was trying to pull it along, so it started turning around and then lying down so it could keep staring at me. Eventually I passed them, and it just lay there and STARED as I went past. They overtook me again going up to the footbridge, but I could hear him saying "stop turning around!" to the dog after they got out of sight, and when I came down the other side it spotted me and turned around and lay down to stare again. It was honestly hilarious - it wasn't barking or anything like that, so I didn't feel intimidated; I couldn't tell how it felt about me, but it was fixated. Genuinely no idea what was going on in that dog's brain.
Our retired conductor S was back for the rehearsal last week, and it was nice to see him, but also really weird after spending the last couple of months auditioning new people! I felt much more aware than usual of his habits and quirks, instead of them just being the baseline that everyone else is compared to. It's going to be a relatively informal concert, with some fun tunes (I'm a sucker for Rutter's The Lord Bless You And Keep You and I don't mind admitting it). But this week we're starting the Brahms German Requiem, which is epic but awesome, so I'm looking forward to that.
Culinary
Mar. 1st, 2026 03:50 pmLast week's bread held out, unto there being (just) enough for frittata (onion &thyme) for Friday night supper.
On Friday evening I made some Famous Aubergine Dip (had wild pomegranate vinegar, yay) to take to book group (happening this evening), but have not made foccaccia due to other attendees' gluten issues. Will take carrot sticks instead.
Saturday morning breakfast rolls: basic buttermilk, 3:1 strong white/dark rye flour.
Today's lunch (a bit early because of having to set off to book group): partridge breasts rubbed with crushed white peppercorns, thyme, rosemary and salt, panfried in butter and olive oil, deglazed with madeira; served with kasha (have now discovered the correct proportions, and this sort does not go mushy, either), purple tenderstem broccoli, for which I sauteed chopped ginger and fennel seeds in olive oil and then added the broccoli and stirred around for a bit, then added a few tablespoons of water and steamed for half an hour, and gingery-grilled baby courgettes.
Small Fandoms!
Mar. 1st, 2026 04:16 amThe community is open all year for any sort of creations for small, tiny, and dead fandoms. Post your stories, art, icons, meta, and everything else.
Shorter month, shorter posting, it seems - Late February 02026
Feb. 28th, 2026 11:21 pmAlso up top, Dreamwidth is recruiting volunteers who would be willing to file documents in United States courts talking about the chilling effects on your speech and online activity that various state laws trying to curb social site use by teens would have, and especially from parents who would be willing to detail the way those laws would interfere with your parenting decisions. Comments screened, signing up is not committing to writing such declarations. Also, risks involve things like having to use your wallet name, and possibly having your wallet name and your Dreamwidth identity linked in publicly-available court materials or at least materials available to the state and the court.
(Because South Carolina is the latest entity to join the circus, South Carolina users are especially helpful right now, but all kinds of states have legislation that's looking to join the circus. Why South Carolina? Well, they're charging people with "contributing to the delinquency of a minor" by being an identified adult in a teen-focused anti-ICE school walkout planning chat and expressing support for the walkout. Among other things they're trying to do to supposedly protect teens from the corrupting influence of adults.)
The worry about the presence of new media is perennial and perpetual, but it's not the new medium, or the new screen, that is the issue, it's the way that content is designed and presented that's trying to fragment attention and deep thinking. Accessibility and multimodality are awesome things, but there's a lot of design work that's been put into keeping us scrolling and viewing ads rather than using our tools to think and engage deeply.
Dr. Gladys West, whose precise measurements of the planet made it possible for the Global Positioning System network to come into existence, and therefore commercial (and military) satellite navigation, has died at 95 years of age. Another contribution of painstaking measurment and mathematics that undergirds so very much of the technological world today.
The Reverend Jesse Jackson, civil rights activist and occasional punchline of a joke, has finished his ministry at 84 years of age.
( What Have the Fools, Grifters, and Bigots Been Up To This Time? )
Last for tonight, twenty-five years of a very popular early-Internet meme, matching visuals to the "Invasion of the Gabber Robots" by the Laziest Men on Mars, who would also give us the Pusher and Shover robots in a different viral video.
(Materials via
2026 Disneyland Trip #11 (2/28/26)
Feb. 28th, 2026 10:05 pm( Read more... )
Daily Happiness
Feb. 28th, 2026 08:50 pm2. I got a new corner shelving unit for the garage and put it together today. I meant for it to go in the corner between two of Carla's CD shelves, since something needs to go in that space, but it turned out to be too large. The shelves can be moved out a little from where they are now to allow something larger between them, but if they're moved enough to make space for this, it'll block an outlet on one side and either go further behind the couch on the other side than I'd prefer or we'd have to move the couch further down (which could be done but idk I like it where it is). But there is another corner that also needs something and it looks perfect there. That's the corner where we had the Christmas tree, but there's still plenty of room to put the tree there again even with the shelf in place.
3. It was very warm today so we decided to go to Disneyland for dinner rather than breakfast or lunch, and it was the right choice. It was actually very pleasant in the evening.
4. Yet another cat enjoying the new lounger.

Projects and Bunnies
Feb. 28th, 2026 10:16 pmRandom Plot Bunnies in Progress
~ Fulcrum and Rex time travel to before Anakin runs to Mace. - NEEDS CANON REVIEW
~ Sequel to Retrieval - 93 WORDS
Potential Bunnies Pending Further Bouncing
~ Rachel and Joe meet with BOTH finally aware in Closing Up Shop
~ Drizzt's fallout/Vierna's reactions in the Divining Destiny universe
Finished
~ An Atin universe that is more like The Second Clone War or Mine, All of Them - 10 chapters, 1k each - READY TO POST
Youtuberecs
Feb. 28th, 2026 12:00 pmWe also now also have a nice backlog of video recs to browse, all organized within our tag system. ♥
Chilling Effect by Valerie Valdes
Feb. 28th, 2026 02:46 pm3/5. Adventure scifi featuring a Latina space captain trying to go straight with her ragtag crew, until the space mob kidnaps her sister.
I enjoyed the first half of this – repetitive but in a rompy way, messy family dynamics, great crew of women and aliens, unapologetic about the Spanish sprinkled in and not spoon-feeding translations of everything, did I mention Latina space captain. But it overstayed its welcome by a good 40,000 words and the last third is a hot mess. For real, if you find yourself as an author doing a “character is secretly a [redacted!]” okay, fine, but then if you do the exact same plot twist with literally the exact same redacted on a different character 30 pages later, you’ve just got to stop yourself and cool it, you know?
Points for cute interspecies romance (though I’m me, so I have questions about how the fade-to-black sex worked, exactly).
Content notes: Violence.
(no subject)
Feb. 28th, 2026 06:46 pmI've had some really intense days, between work being extremely busy and other responsibilities, and today, a Saturday, was supposed to be my day off. Properly off, off. Sleep in late, zero plans except to wash my hair and tidy up around the apartment. Watch TV, maybe write a little, cuddle in bed. Rest.
Instead I was woken up at 8:26am by a missile siren.
Those sirens haven't stopped so far, it's currently about 7pm. At some point I stopped counting how many there were. On average there have been about one every 20-30 minutes for me, since the first one. Which means in the morning there were about 1.5 hours of quiet, and then there were hours in the afternoon with a siren every 10 minutes.
I say siren, but of course what I mean is I hear massive explosions happening in the air above my building. I can't go downstairs, nevermind for a walk, because of how frequent it's been, and how genuinely scary.
For the past ~six months I've been walking past destroyed city blocks several times a week, on my way to catch a tram to work. Entire streets with houses wiped out completely, apartment complexes reduced to rubble. And then a radius of many more streets with "only" shattered windows, knocked out doors, cracked walls from the shockwaves. Building after building after building. Turn after turn after turn. Until I get to the tram station, and then ride for 30 minutes to the skyscraper where I work, that stands next to the ruins of another skyscraper, that was destroyed by a missile.
I'm not good in the mornings, I don't eat dinner most days, my meals are breakfast and lunch. So I wake up hungry and need to eat something as soon as possible to start functioning.
Because today was planned as slow and lazy, I didn't think I'd need to function quickly at all. I thought I'd lazy about in bed, and then slowly assemble food depending on my level of energy.
Instead I had to hop out of bed and run to a bomb shelter. The bomb shelter that's in my house, that will not actually protect me in any way in case of a direct hit (see destroyed buildings above) but will help in case of a shockwave.
I was so exhausted afterwards I collapsed in bed. And then another siren. After that one I knew I had no choice, I HAD to eat or I was going to start collapsing. But I wasn't capable of cooking. Of course, there's no food delivery, because bombs falling from the sky.
I managed to at least change out of my PJs and make tea, and then the third siren happened.
The tea - green, fresh leaves, the very finest kind I have, from a small company that imports directly from farmers in China, because I knew this was the small effort that would make all the difference today, rather than some emergency teabag - did help me focus a bit, at least. Feel a bit more human.
After the fourth siren I knew cooking was out of the question, and rifled through the mishloakh manot I got from work yesterday (how fortunate we had our work event before the holiday itself) for any sort of candy with substance. There was a chocolate wafer snack, so that's what I ate, and then tried to move on with my day.
Which is to say with trying to do something other than just cuddle in bed and run to the shelter every time there was a siren (as there were a lot).
I felt... bad. Generally nauseous, unfocused, slightly out of breath. Exhausted, even when I was watching stuff on TV from the couch.
I tried to cling to some kind of productivity. I emptied and refilled the dishwasher. I put on laundry. I thanked all the gods above and below that I happened to already have food in the fridge for lunch, even though just heating it up turned out to be a challenge. It took 3 tries, with different sirens.
I only ate lunch when I started to feel like I was about to faint. Before that it was hard to make myself heat up food, or think about eating. Everything is just so scattered in my head.
It's time for dinner now, since I didn't really have breakfast.
Even though I know I should just try to go to sleep. I'm sure there will be endless sirens in the night. If an hour goes by without one, I'll be surprised.
I'm feeling faint and weak again but there's no energy to cook and no food delivery, of course. It took 2 sirens for me to boil a few eggs. Once they cool down I'll do that. I need to think about tomorrow's breakfast as well.
Tomorrow is work. The schools and so on are closed, but I work in tech and the company is global and our survival - my paycheck, my ability to stay afloat - depends on everyone believing our productivity is unaffected by these events.
So, work from home as usual. Half my local coworkers were 100% working from home anyway because Ramadan, so in a way it's all business as usual.
I know I need to take care of myself. Food. Cooking. Seeing people, even though travel anywhere including to a neighboring building is impossible right now. Creating a more or less correct estimation of how functional I can be at work so I can make decisions based on that.
Not doing well, and didn't actually want to write this post. Instead, want to write about the things that make me happy. Media, mostly, but also fic.
But I can't because just writing this, which has seemingly spilled out of me unbidden, has been to much effort and energy, and I need to go rest now.
Bits and bobs
Feb. 28th, 2026 04:21 pmWe Were Here: The Untold History of Black Africans in Renaissance Europe:
In his groundbreaking documentary, We Were Here, Kuwornu shares the diverse African presence in Renaissance Europe that he found: princes, ambassadors, saints, artists, scholars, and knights—all revealed through art from the period.
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This is an older piece but I don't think I've posted it before: Taking Photos of the First Women’s Liberation Conference
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Q&A: Bidding farewell to the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust:
The Shropshire site, which comprises 10 museums and 35 listed heritage buildings, is transferring to the custodianship of the National Trust on 2 March after a challenging period that saw it grapple with severe flooding and falling visitor numbers.
Supported by a £9m government investment, it is hoped the takeover will secure the site’s long-term future and enable it to benefit from the National Trust’s high profile and visitor expertise.
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Ultraprocessed food: whaddya know, It's All More Complicated.... People want to avoid ultra-processed foods. But experts struggle to define them - not all are junk foods.
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Daily Happiness
Feb. 27th, 2026 08:44 pm2. We've been having another heatwave, but I think today was the peak. Tomorrow's supposed to be pretty hot, too, but then cooling off again from Sunday.
3. Another cat enjoying the new lounger.

It is TIME!
Mar. 1st, 2026 10:38 pmMy first auction has:
Doctor Who: Classic Doctor Who (1963-1996)
New Doctor Who (2005-present)
Star Trek: The Original Series
Star Wars: Original Trilogy / Prequel Trilogy / The Clone Wars, EU Legends / Rogue One
My second auction has:
Any fandom I've created for before
DC: Birds of Prey / Justice League / Justice League International / Teen Titans / Young Justice
Legend of Drizzt - R.A. Salvatore
Offering 5-10k words, minimum bid $5


