The cats' Chewy order, which is large and heavy is due today, delivery by FedEx. I have made what preparations I can.

#
Wednesday. Sunny, windy and cold. As previously mentioned, I have taped caution tape across the front steps with a sign on it for FedEx, so maybe they'll put the delivery in the garage this time. Fingers crossed.

Another night full of bad dreams and sleeplessness. This is getting to be a habit. Cats are doing what they can but... Firefly is putting in for backup and I don't think we can get backup, really.   No, especially not a dog.  I think we're full up. I also think it would be better if the world weren't, in some places literally, on fire.

Today's days plan is to occupy the comfy chair in my office and sketch out the scenes that need to still be written to finish the book.

Granting, it's not much of a plan, but it is my own.

How's everybody doing?

Dictated to my phone

Today's blog post brought to you by "The Wellerman," which I had forgotten I knew, until it came up on a mix, and I started to sing along...  Here's Nathan Evans singing it for you.


conuly: (Default)
([personal profile] conuly posting in [community profile] agonyaunt Mar. 18th, 2026 10:20 am)
Dear Prudence,

I’m a 21-year-old college student living in a house with five other students. There are three women and three men. We’re having an issue keeping our kitchen clean, and I am the only one who consistently cleans. I keep the floors and counters clean, wash the piles of dishes in the sink, wash dish towels, etc. Anytime I’ve asked people to chip in, they never follow through. I’ve tried not doing the cleaning, but then the kitchen gets disgusting and I end up caving.

I’m not completely innocent when it comes to not always washing my dishes immediately and being messy, but I feel like I clean more often than anyone else. A general chore chart doesn’t work, and I am tired of feeling like my roommate’s mother. How can I get them to take some initiative and do more of the heavy lifting that always falls on me?

—Not a Mother to Five at 21


Read more... )
[community profile] warrington_runcorn_ntdp is a new fan-run community focused on the music of electronic project Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan.

Anyone is free to join, even those who have never listened before! Although if that is you, I'd recommend checking out the project's Soundcloud, Bandcamp, and Youtube to get acquainted :D

Discussion on the community will include, but is not limited to, avourite songs/albums/album artwork, physical media, how you discovered the music, recommendations for similar music, etc.

The current rules are pretty standard: no harassment/discrimination against any other Dreamwidth users; no NSFW/explicit content unless it's directly connected to the community's theme; and please keep any posts/comments on topic as much as possible. Anything else can be decided on in the future.

I ([personal profile] oceangrey) am the current only moderator/admin, but if anyone else wants a similar role just message me or comment on the community's pinned post!
oceangrey: Scene from Withnail and I, showing Marwood peering over a newspaper. (Default)
([personal profile] oceangrey posting in [site community profile] dw_community_promo Mar. 18th, 2026 09:35 am)
[community profile] withnailandi is a community for everything related to Withnail & I (1987). Fanworks/recommendations, meta/discussions, whatever, all are welcome here! Another related community is [community profile] withnailandinsfw, for any more explicit fanworks/discussions.

Although not entirely new (made in October 2025) both communities are unused as of yet, due to most of the fandom being on other platforms. Feel free to join whether you're a casual fan, or if it's your favourite film of all time, or if you're somewhere in between!

[community profile] withnailandi is open for anyone to join, and [community profile] withnailandinsfw is set to administrator-approved due to the community's content.
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
([personal profile] redbird Mar. 17th, 2026 08:27 pm)
I am back from Montreal. The trip home had some annoying delays while they found us an airplane, or figured out how to tow the one they had, or something, but was otherwise fine.

Rysmiel gave me a back rub last night that did significant good for the tension in my neck and right shoulder. I currently have an unrelated shoulder pain, from spending too much time poking at my phone while spending several hours at the airport, but if I'm somewhat cautious now that I'm home, that should take care of itself in a day or three.

I am catching up on some of the PT exercises I didn't do while traveling because they require elastics, or the foam roller, or weights, but doing all of them tonight would be imprudent.
oursin: George Beresford photograph of Marie of Roumania, overwritten 'And I AM Marie of Roumania' (Marie of Roumania)
([personal profile] oursin Mar. 17th, 2026 07:33 pm)

Am still being harried by spam from those dodgy-sounding conferences of very little relevance to my actual interests, happening in v attractive places:

International Conference on Time Series and Forecasting (ITISE 2026) (wot is this even), Gran Canaria (Spain).

6th Current Issues in Business and Economic Studies (CIBES) Conference at the University of Valencia.

13th International Congress of Gynaecology and Obstetrics (okay, is brushing somewhere in the region of Stuff I Have Worked On?) in Kyoto.

But really, YOY?

A new twist on this has appeared via my shiny new academic email address: really weird journals giving themselves out as academic that sound totally synthetic -

Journal of High Speed Networks (not as far as I can see associated with even one of the less esteemed academic journal publishers):

a forum in which researchers from academia and industry can address a wide range of topics related to high performance networking and communication and report findings on concepts; state of the art, emerging standards and technologies; implementations; running experiments; applications; and industrial case studies. Coverage can range from design to practical experiences with operational high performance/speed networks including communication network architectures; evolutionary networking protocols, services, and architectures; and network security.

Is this actually edited by a chatbot?

As, I suspect, is this one:

Invitation to Join Mesopotamian Journal of AI in Healthcare (MJAIH) Editorial Board. - there is in fact a website for the Mesopotamian Academic Press (I see they also publish Babylonian Journals of this and that.

Even without the complete mismatch to my actual realms of expertise here I am sceptical about this enterprise.

conuly: (Default)
([personal profile] conuly posting in [community profile] agonyaunt Mar. 17th, 2026 03:05 pm)
DEAR HARRIETTE: I've recently gone sober for health reasons, and it wasn't an easy decision, especially because my social life has always involved going out for drinks, celebrating with cocktails and bonding over happy hour. When my friends and I went out last weekend, they were pressuring me to drink. I ordered a mocktail, and almost immediately, my friends started to laugh and said that it would be fine to just have one drink. This surprised me because I never thought that my friends would try to force me to do something that would actively have a negative effect on my health. It made me feel unsupported and, frankly, disrespected. At the same time, I don't want to lose my friendships or isolate myself socially just because I'm choosing not to drink. Now I'm anxious about future outings. I don't want every dinner or celebration to turn into a debate about my personal choices. How should I talk to my friends about setting boundaries without making things awkward? -- Sober

Read more... )
yourlibrarian: MerlinOverShoulder-ninneve (MERL-MerlinOverShoulder-ninneve)
([personal profile] yourlibrarian Mar. 17th, 2026 02:01 pm)
1) Whoa, the changes at Tumblr have meant a flood of people signing up for accounts at Pillowfort. I just went through a feed four times longer than usual.

2) We've watched four episodes of Starfleet Academy and are both pleasantly surprised by it. I confess I haven't been very enthused by the new crop of shows. In fact my favorite season was one that it seems most viewers didn't care for, which was S1 of Discovery. Read more... )

3) Looks like it isn't just late night shows that are winding to a close but talk shows and entertainment news. I can see why podcasts would be far cheaper to make and competing with the audience, but I do wonder if most can put out episodes as consistently as is done with larger productions. (I note, for example, that Access Hollywood has four hosts).

4) Not being a reader of Outlander, I had no idea there was a separate Lord John Grey series. A spinoff based on the books sounds great, and you'd think with the success of Heated Rivalry (it was a Jeopardy question this week!) that the timing would be perfect. Granted, a period piece with a large cast would be significantly more expensive, but it also has a built in audience via its linked TV show and books.

5) Watched Zootopia 2 and enjoyed it. I particularly liked how they worked in references to favorite things from the first film without having it slow down or detract from the story in progress. For us this was wolves starting a howl, and the appearance of the sloth. There were lots of little in-jokes (such as the Hulu menu) and things moved along quite well, with fun new characters to meet.

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conuly: (Default)
([personal profile] conuly posting in [community profile] agonyaunt Mar. 17th, 2026 01:51 pm)
Dear Eric: My husband and his ex-wife have 50/50 custody of their 15-year-old son. I despise this child. He is completely useless, rude, disrespectful, selfish, ungrateful and lazy. All he does is stare at his computer screen. I have carefully planned my entire life schedule around his schedule, to avoid being at the house on the days he is there for my husband's 50 percent custody.

My husband has just told me that his ex-wife is moving to another state far away and that he is going to take full custody of his son. This means the child I despise so much is now going to be living with me at my house full time, every single day, and there's nothing I can do about it. My husband refuses to let his son move away with his ex. How do I manage this?

– Fed Up


Read more... )
rolanni: (Nicky)
([personal profile] rolanni Mar. 17th, 2026 08:35 am)

What went before: Still raining, but not pouring. We are this evening expecting, say the weatherbeans, the following: WIND, FOG, FLOODING. Tomorrow, it will be partly sunny, starting out at around 53F/12C and loosing heat throughout the day, until nosediving into the teens tomorrow night, reaching a high of 33F/.5C on Wednesday.

Ah, March. You tease.

The book club has chosen the April book: Theo of Golden, which ought to be interesting, given that the synopsis annoys the ever-livin' life outta me. It will be interesting to see if the author can win me over.

The Cook Unity mushroom pot pie was so good I ferreted out a recipe so I can make my own once I'm off deadline. Speaking of which -- I am now confident of making my deadline, so, yanno, yay.

Also -- I beg pardon to those folks who thought I'd written the poem that is my next embroidery project. Indeed, I Did Not, and it's something that I know so well that it never occurred to me that other people would not have heard of it. The poem dates back to the 800s, and is written in the margins of a book of reflections and/or prayers. Wikipedia can tell you all about it, and give you the other four stanzas, too. Here's your link

And that? Is all I got. Except doing the dishes. That I still need to do.

Everybody have a good evening. Stay safe. And dry.
#
Tuesday. Cloudy, damp, and breezy. We have hit the day's high of 53F/12C as I type, and are headed for 15F/-9C.

Today is St. Gertrude's Day. Hug your cats.

Today, right about now (7-ish am, Maine time), in fact, is also the sixth anniversary of my arrival at Inland Hospital in Bangor in order to undergo a mascetomy. I was one of the last people admitted to the hospital before it closed in the early days of COVID, and it was a tense couple minutes there at intake before it was decided that Steve could accompany me.

Last night was filled with bad dreams, despite all the cats could bring. I believe this morning may call for coffee.

What's happening at your place?
#
Well. The cats have made a Chewy order. I'm glad Firefly has a trust fund. I'm drinking that cup of coffee and wondering if the concept of 'breakfast' is anything I want to entertain at the moment, or if I'll just make another cup of coffee and go to work.

Life is uncertain...


oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
([personal profile] oursin Mar. 16th, 2026 07:17 pm)

This is so much what I've been thinking about a different period that I'm writing about - that it's there, even though people are saying It's Ded, it's just not doing the flashy newsworthy visible stuff or the results are the things are are not, or no longer, happening: The one thing everyone gets wrong about feminism.

***

I am a great admirer of Professor Athene Donald's blog, and I like this recent post: Unintended Consequences - in particular perhaps this apercu:

Business gurus tend to talk about ‘being authentic’ as the right way to lead. But if you are a testy, over-bearing soul being authentic may be very destructive for those around you.

So much that.

***

This is another story about mobility in the world: Looted from a royal palace: The medieval jug now on display in London:

A large bronze medieval jug bearing the English royal coat of arms would be a rare find if dug up in England, but somehow it had ended up in West Africa, in modern-day Ghana, thanks to early trading routes between nations.
Dating from between 1340 and 1405, the jug is the largest surviving bronze ewer from medieval England. Decorated with an English inscription, royal heraldry and coat of arms, it was originally a luxury object — but its meaning changed dramatically as it moved across continents.

***

I've had to do with either this artefact or another very similar in my working days, I did not know about the biological contamination (we didn't know for quite some time about the radioactive notebooks, either): a parchment scroll designed to guard against the dangers of childbirth:

Until now, this scroll’s worn surface and suggestive staining constituted the main evidence for its use in childbirth. However, new research by Sarah Fiddyment, presented in the exhibition, reveals that human proteins found on the scroll’s surface indicate the presence of cervico-vaginal fluid. This is an important breakthrough in the burgeoning field of biocodicology, which seeks out the invisible traces left behind by users of manuscripts, as they held, rubbed or kissed a parchment.

(I hadn't heard that story about the dormouse, but wot she does not mention the Godalming rabbit lady?!).

***

You know, I would have sworn that back in my working days I came across something appertaining to this historic event: How smallpox claimed its final victim, but I'm unable to trace it.

lizvogel: Banana: Good.  Crossed streams: Bad. (Good Bad)
([personal profile] lizvogel Mar. 16th, 2026 12:12 pm)
Feeling overwhelmed by the to-do list as usual, so I decided to just write everything else off for this week, and set the days aside for taking the cat to the vet, taking the car to the mechanic, and especially doing my taxes. Yep, just that; gonna focus on that and get it taken care of and not melt myself down trying to do seventeen things at once. Good plan.

And then I checked my email. What was that, like 20 seconds?

There's a thing I wasn't expecting to have to deal with until late May, and now I have to fit it in this week. And it's just a phone call, but it's a pretty big deal and I'm going to have to do a lot of prep for it, both practical and mental/emotional. And gawd, I just want to curl up with my tax forms and not deal with anything else, and instead I'm gonna have to fucking adult and I just don't wanna.

This always happens when I set aside a chunk of time to Just Do This. It's like blocking out the time creates a magnetic field that attracts other obligations. I wanna hide in a Faraday cage for time management.

cereta: antique pen on paper (Anjesa-pen and paper)
([personal profile] cereta posting in [community profile] agonyaunt Mar. 16th, 2026 10:20 am)
As some of you already know, our wonderful [personal profile] minoanmiss left us on March 3rd. Her loved ones asked us not to make any public announcements for reasons involving her family of origin, but we've been given permission to announce to the community now.

Those here in [community profile] agonyaunt will remember her for her contributions from Ask A Manager, and her insightful comments on family, found family, and other topics. The wider fannish community will remember her for her amazing fiction and her art, particularly her drawings of Minoan culture. Others will remember her for her amazing fruitcake and other culinary adventures.

[personal profile] sabotabby created this lovely portrait. I think I will try to remember her this way.
rolanni: (Default)
([personal profile] rolanni Mar. 16th, 2026 08:18 am)

Monday. Warm and rainy. Today is Tali's 4th birthday. She insisted that we all get dressed up for the occasion and as you see we have done that for her.

Also included in today's pictures are the long backyard and my new embroidery project -- the very first one I have designed myself.

The plan today, as it has been for a number of days, is to write. I am really almost done. I really wish that my brain did not helpfully remember everything I've written as garbage that needs to be rewritten 14,000 times.

So far, Cook Unity has been . . . okay. I only had the one unsatisfactory meal. The butternut squash and lentil soup was marvelous, as was the salmon, yesterday. I have Great Hopes for today's mushroom pot pie.

It occurs to me that my cleverness knows no bounds, as I had booked a Rest Week at Old orchard Beach the week before Memorial Day, which seemed like a good idea at the time. However, I did NOT have a Middle East war on my bingo card, and now I'm wondering if I should cancel because it's very probable that I'm not going to have enough gas to get there.

Honestly, this timeline.

So! How's everybody doing?

Tali's Birthday Photo Album


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