musesfool: tom mcrae lyrics icon (i was born in a summer storm)
[personal profile] musesfool
Imagine my excitement at reading this interview with Bob Mould this morning: How Bob Mould rediscovered the great, lost live Husker Du record not because of Hüsker Dü, whom I liked but didn't love, but because he mentions that Sugar reunited. I LOVED SUGAR!!! If I Can't Change Your Mind is 3 minutes of PURE POP PERFECTION and one of my top 5 songs of ALL TIME. Back in the 90s, I saw Bob live solo at least twice (once pressed right up to the stage beneath him and his guitar at...Irving Plaza? I think?), and saw Sugar in concert at least once (maybe twice?). Copper Blue is full of great songs, as is Bob's first solo album, Workbook. (Black Sheets of Rain was also good but less accessible, imo.)

If Sugar actually tours, I might leave the house to see them!

I have other, less fun, work news, but I should probably save it for a locked post sometime later. Sigh.

*

unwillingness to claim us

Nov. 6th, 2025 03:05 pm
musesfool: a loaf of bread (staff of life)
[personal profile] musesfool
Alas, despite me getting up early this morning, the cleaning ladies did not come! They did say last time that my regular appointment might need to be moved going forward, but then I got the confirmation email for today and figured maybe that wasn't happening. But they did not show up so I emailed the company and they were very apologetic, and now they are coming on Saturday at 9 am.

on Sunday, I'm going to my sister's to make the apple pies for Thanksgiving, since my brother-in-law, who does all the holiday cooking wants to simplify* what needs doing on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, which has traditionally been the day we make pie.

*"Simplify" should be in quotes, because for Christmas, at least, we keep telling him we're good with an apps and dessert style menu (personally, I keep advocating for pajama!Christmas) to no avail. He gets about 90% of the way there and then is like, but what if someone wants ziti? or ham? so idk. He also won't cut back on the antipasto, which is what everyone ends up filling up on, so then no one wants the big meal that follows.

On Thanksgiving, I personally would prefer a roast chicken to turkey, but truly, as long as my brother brings the stuffing and there's pie, I don't really care about anything else. The fancy cranberry relish is nice, and I won't say no to a dollop of mashed potatoes, but overall, I really do only want the stuffing.

Anyway! I took Monday off since we are off Tuesday for Veterans Day, so my plan is to make char siu again on Saturday and then finally try to make pork buns on Monday. We'll see how that goes.

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Call for Volunteers 2026

Nov. 5th, 2025 02:34 pm
tjs_whatnot: (Default)
[personal profile] tjs_whatnot posting in [community profile] snowflake_challenge

It’s coming up at that time of the year again and we wanted to let you know that the Fandom Snowflake Challenge will be happening again in January. We are very excited about hosting another round! To make the upcoming round as awesome as it can possibly be we are looking for volunteers to help us out! Here are the details on what the requirements and expectations of volunteer mods are for you to consider.

Requirements and Expectation of Volunteer Mods


General Volunteer Requirements:


All volunteers will have the opportunity to help us mold the challenges by helping come up with what challenges we offer and when we offer them. 


Volunteers must be willing to interact with a lot of people who have different interests and levels than you and some of them, you might be the only interaction they receive. You must be able to offer support and encouragement or alert other mods to the need. 


We have 4 levels of involvement that can fit most people's availability. 

1) Poster and First Comment Responder

2) Comment Responder

3) Other Site Organizer 

4) Graphics


Poster: We have 19 posts scheduled (15 challenges, one introduction, one meet the mods, one wrap up post and the friending meme.) You can sign up for only one if you'd like, or more if you're able. 


Responsibility of  Poster: create the post using the template provided. Seek feedback if you'd like. Post into the community, and then notify us in the mod community so we all know it's there.  Then you are the first responder to that post. You don't have to answer every comment or read every post after. But you'll be the one getting the notifications as the challenge progresses so you'll have the sole responsibility of cheering on the stragglers.


Second Responder, Third and (hopefully) Fourth Responder Responsibilities

✔️Help poster respond to comments on the community post (we get an average of 150 participants per challenge) 

✔️Take turns commenting on each post of our participants. 

✔️Communicate with other volunteers throughout the month.


Other Site Organizers Requirements


We need volunteers familiar with other fandom spaces that aren't Dreamwidth if we want to have a presence in these spaces. This will require adapt each Dreamwidth post to making a post on your site, which may include fixing links, removing or altering HTML, sharing a small quote and linking to the Dreamwidth post, tagging appropriately, and/or removing or altering images to your site's specifications. You should be prepared to post the above 19 posts listed under Dreamwidth Poster and you should also be prepared to make additional posts as needed on your site to share any applicable graphics, share your site specific tags, or otherwise interact with your site participants. 


Depending on your site, you may need to keep track of a tag, reply to comments on your post, keep track of reblogs, keep track of direct messages, or otherwise monitor your site for participant entries. You need to interact with participant entries in some way, such as commenting, reblogging, Liking, or whatever is possible on your site. Ideally, each site should have an additional volunteer (or volunteers) to help with posting and commenting on your site which might involve creating site specific templates, communicating outside of the Dreamwidth mods community, and other mod duties (like answering asks, checking an inbox, or maintaining a community.

 


Graphics:


We'd love to have someone with graphic abilities to help us create some banners and icons. Only requirement other than making awesome pretties is to supply the coding needed to post it.


It really is a lot of fun, made more so by the inclusion to as many people from as many fandoms and spaces as possible. 




runpunkrun: Dana Scully reading Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space' in the style of a poster you'd find in your school library, text: Read. (reading)
[personal profile] runpunkrun
Amina al-Sirafi, who, at a low moment, describes herself as a criminal, a sinner, a foul-mouthed middle-aged woman with a bad knee, is a Muslim pirate in the 12th century, retired. She lives off the grid and takes care of her daughter and their crumbling home, but—isn't it always the way—that one last job pops up that she can't refuse, on account of the extortion.

Her adventures include cons, jailbreaks, battles at sea, an ex(kinda)-husband, superpowered wizards, exotic explosives, even more pirates, giant tentacle monsters, an island filled with bird people, and a ship's cat that's no good at catching mice. But first she has to get the band back together.

I really enjoyed this. It's energetic and funny and tense and full of naturalistic historical detail. It's also quite violent and gory, which I enjoyed less. But the crew is a squabbly family that would do anything for each other, the settings are described with care, and Amina's foul voice and bad knee make her entirely relatable. I felt like her flexible relationship with the principles of her religion was handled well, especially when balanced with her unwavering faith in god, and I appreciated seeing the world through her eyes.

Contains: graphic violence, gore, descriptions of dead bodies; doing things your religion tells you not to; threats of rape; fear of heights; a character questioning their gender (if applicable) that may lead to some feelings of misgendering.

and he backhands it down ice

Nov. 4th, 2025 07:35 pm
musesfool: LION (bring back naptime)
[personal profile] musesfool
A few years ago - I feel like it was sometime in mid-2020 - I bought a pillow that was 1. supposed to be "cooling" and 2. supposed to be good for side-sleepers, and reader, I hated it. Also it fucked up my neck a couple of times, but it was not cheap, so I kept using it. Until earlier this year, when I began trying to make my whole sleep experience better. I couldn't find the pillows I'd had prior to purchasing the crimes against my neck pillow, which I'd liked but had worn out, so I ended up getting something similar, on sale from Quince, so I was able to get 2. Which would not have been my first stop, but they were highly rated, down-alternative pillows available in 3 different firmnesses (I went with medium). It turned out to be a good purchase, because I like them so much better than the old side-sleeper pillow, which I now use between my knees.

I also finally ended up buying not a big fluffy white comforter as I was looking for earlier this year, but a white "cooling blanket" from Rest. It was a NYT Wirecutter recommendation, and it was on sale, which made me feel slightly better about spending money on it. And I do like it. I like it enough that I bought a second one in navy blue to switch out while the white one is being washed. The one thing I dislike though, is that to get the full "cooling" effect (I put it in quotes, but the material is some kind of tencel thingy that cools off very quickly, so even when I feel too hot, I can kick it off and pull it back on after a few minutes and it is cool again), is that you can't use it with a top sheet. And I know some people never use a top sheet, but I was not one of those people until I bought this blanket. But the whole point is to have this fancy cool material against your skin. *hands*

It is lighter than a comforter and probably won't work if you need weight on you to sleep, but along with the pillows, and the percale sheets I've been using since the days of frequent hot flashes and night sweats (which have thankfully become much rarer these days), I've found my sleep has definitely improved. It also helps to keep the bedroom as cool as possible. Tbh, being hot is the #1 reason I can't sleep, and even now, after all these improvements, I do still sometimes have a bad night of sleep for whatever reasons, but I feel like it's a lot less often than it used to be.

In other news, I was off today for Election Day, but since I voted by mail, I didn't have to go anywhere. I ended up taking care of some chores around the apartment that needed doing since the cleaning ladies will be coming on Thursday. And now I'm watching the Rangers lose to Carolina. Sigh.

*
runpunkrun: combat boot, pizza, camo pants = punk  (punk rock girl)
[personal profile] runpunkrun
Moody photograph of the ocean from an outlook. In the foreground, two dirty hands claw their way up over the edge toward the viewer. Text: Mystery & Suspense, at Fancake.
[community profile] fancake's theme for November is mystery & suspense. If you have any questions about this theme, or the comm, come talk to me!
musesfool: a loaf of bread (staff of life)
[personal profile] musesfool
Some Sunday sundries...

- Baby Miss L was sick for Halloween, but I did get a lovely picture of her from the previous weekend where she, her mother, and my sister were all dressed as witches. <333

- I made another pot of garlic and bread soup this evening and it's so good and my apartment smells like garlic and olive oil (in a good way).

- However, for the first time ever, cutting scallions made my eyes tear up like cutting onions - I guess the white part is really oniony.

- Yesterday, I also made the dough for those Levain-style chocolate chip cookies and I had one this morning and they're so good. I will be baking one off each morning for breakfast this week.

- Call me crazy, but every time I see that commercial with Paul Skenes (and Questlove and Francisco Lindor), I think it's Josh Allen at first. They look alike!

- Amazon is actually listing book 8 of Dungeon Crawler Carl (Parade of Horribles) but only on audible or in hardcover. Why is there no kindle listing??? The release date is either May 26, 2026 or June 2, 2026 - I have seen both.

- Despite my difficulties with audiobooks etc. I did try the first DCC audiobook, but the narrator sounds like he's an out of shape 40-year-old, not a jacked 27-year-old, so it didn't work for me on that level as well as the various other levels, though Donut's voice was fantastic.

- Still no word that I can find on a date for Alecto the Ninth.

- I was pulling for you, Toronto! Sorry about that. *hands* Was a great series, though, even with that ending.

- and now no more baseball until March. *sadhair*

- At least the Rangers have won a couple of games? Though I don't have a lot of optimism for their season. And I really dislike Chris Drury and his way of being a GM, and unfortunately it doesn't look like it's going to change any time soon. Sigh.

*

getting his shot

Oct. 31st, 2025 08:48 pm
musesfool: Zuko & the dragon (lucky to be born)
[personal profile] musesfool
Happy Halloween! Have a recs update:

[personal profile] unfitforsociety has been updated for October 2025 with 8 recs in 5 fandoms:

* 5 Batfamily
* 1 Avatar: the Last Airbender, 1 Dungeon Crawler Carl
* 1 The Pitt/ER crossover

*

So does anyone know why the AO3 icon doesn't show up anymore when I do the "@ username . ao3" thingy here on DW? I've been noticing it for months now, but kept forgetting to ask.

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and all the papers lie tonight

Oct. 30th, 2025 07:36 pm
musesfool: tim/kon (if it helps you breathe)
[personal profile] musesfool
got some good news at work I can't talk about yet, and then got more good news that we should be able to meet payroll through the end of the year (and hopefully get our SNAP and WIC funding to make us whole when it is finally released), and then got a $200 check from the State of New York for ~reasons~ (inflation refund? idek). all in all, a pretty good day.

I also had a dream last night where maybe I was Tim Drake? And I wanted a Robin-themed birthday party that I never got until I actually became Robin? idk, but it was very sweet.

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it takes an ocean not to break

Oct. 29th, 2025 07:47 pm
musesfool: head!Six (and they have a plan)
[personal profile] musesfool
I really enjoyed this season of Slow Horses, though 6 episodes is too short. I don't need a full 22-episode season, but like 8 or 10 would be better. spoilers for all of this season )

I keep thinking about reading the books, but I haven't worked up the energy to do that yet.

There's still so much other TV I need to catch up on, but probably not until the World Series is done. I've been enjoying it a lot, though I went to bed on Monday night in the 12th inning, not really thinking they'd play 6 more! And when I woke up, I was like, as I expected Freddie Fucking Freeman walked it off, because that is what that guy does. Ugh.

Tangentially, I thought this was a really good read: Matt Berninger traded his notebook for a baseball. And the words kept coming. I'm not a huge fan of The National but I do like some of their songs and this was interesting.

*
runpunkrun: Dana Scully reading Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space' in the style of a poster you'd find in your school library, text: Read. (reading)
[personal profile] runpunkrun
It's 1993 and Kimberly Keiko Cameron (aka "Skim" because she's not [idk, the reference doesn't really land for me—like skim milk? so, not skinny? not white?]) is sixteen and goes to an all girls school in Canada. She's learning to practice Wicca, has a cast on her dominant arm, a crush on her drama teacher, and doesn't seem to like her best friend very much.

Ah, teen angst. Rendered here in a flat, sketchy greyscale with a lot of attention to faces and hair, which makes the main characters easy to identify, especially as the smooth, delicate rendering of Skim's face evokes ukiyo-e, a style of Japanese art popular during the Edo period (1615–1868). It makes her stand out and even seem out of place, like something from another era. It's an interesting contrast to the swoopy bangs and hoop earrings of her peers, all of whom appear to be white.

The story's pretty low key for its content—an inappropriate flirtation, the suicide of a popular girl's ex-boyfriend, the tension between Kim's divorced parents, a growing realization of what it means to be queer—and the central interest is the conflict between Kim and her best friend, though it's not clear if they're growing apart or were never really suited for each other, and being in love in a way that makes it feel like it might destroy you. It's clear it's slowly destroying the teacher, even as Kim seems blissfully unaware of this, a disparity that's handled with skill and that hints at the full size of the adult world while simultaneously rendering the hyper-specific compressed world of a teenager, allowing both to be true.

Contains: f/f; teacher/student romance; frequent references to suicide (including jokes) following one off screen; use of gay slurs.
musesfool: Chidi & Eleanor (feelings are stupid)
[personal profile] musesfool
Holy forking shirtballs, The Good Place isn't on Netflix anymore! And when I tried to cue it up on Prime, it wouldn't play - I got an error. So I ordered the dvds. I can't be having with this bs anymore. I also need to buy Leverage at some point, and The Expanse. Maybe I will for Christmas this year, as long as I'm not furloughed or anything.

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to get out and find a tight end

Oct. 26th, 2025 03:10 pm
musesfool: these are but wild and whirling words (writing is a form of prayer)
[personal profile] musesfool
As seen all around these parts, the AO3 alphabet meme:

Rules: How many letters of the alphabet have you used for [starting] a fic title? One fic per line, 'A' and 'The' do not count for 'a' and 't'. Post your score out of 26 at the end, along with your total fic count.

A - Another Gravity (Firefly, Mal/Zoe)
B - The Boys of Summer (Hot Corner Rag) (SPN, Sam & Dean)
C - Courtship Rituals of the World's Most Awkward Superheroes (Avengers/Amazing Spider-Man, Steve/Peter)
D - the dream of flight persists (Star Wars/Firefly, Anakin/Kaylee)
E - Eight the Hard Way (Ocean's 8, Amita/Daphne)
F - The Forces Ranged Within Us and Against Us (SPN, Sam/Dean)
G - Girl, You're Like a Weird Vacation (Blue Beetle, Brenda/Paco)
H - The Hubbert Peak (Dark Angel, Max/Alec)
I - The Injurious Internet Meme Incursion (The Middleman, Wendy, MM, & Ida)
J - Joy has he whom she embraces (Amelia Peabody, Peabody/Emerson)
K - Katie, Bar the Door (DCU, Jason, ensemble)
L - A Little Less Conversation, a Little More Action (Ocean's 11, Danny/Rusty)
M - Mother Is the Name for God (Star Wars, Leia & Padme)
N - No Exit (Star Wars; Darth Vader/Ahsoka)
O - Only where love and need are one (L'Engleverse, Adam/Joshua)
P - Paint a thank-you on my palm (Six of Crows, Inej, ensemble)
Q - Quality (LotR, Faramir)
R - Retail Therapy (DCU, Cass, ensemble)
S - Stuck in the Middle with You (Star Wars, Anakin, Obi-Wan, Ahsoka)
T - There's Still Time to Change the Road You're On (Star Wars, Anakin, Luke, Leia)
U - Until the Sea Shall Free Them (The Iliad, Achilles/Patroclus)
V - Visiting Hours (DCU, Alfred & Jason)
W - with our way lit only by stars (Earthsea, Ged/Tenar)
X - Xue Bai, Xue Hong (Firefly, Mal/River/Simon)
Y - you and your high top sneakers and your sailor tattoos (Avengers, Steve/Darcy)
Z - The Zombie Love Bug Concatenation (SPN/The Middleman, Dean/Wendy)

26/26, out of 950 stories on AO3. I ignored the ones that start with parentheticals and numbers. I also went mostly on vibes, so it's not a real overview of my stuff, but it is one title for every letter of the alphabet.

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