Friday Afternoon, Capclave
Sep. 20th, 2025 09:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydamorehouseWhen last we left our intrepid heroines, Naomi and were off to see what fun Japanese shops we could shop. The only place that was open when we set out (around 10 am) was Maruichi, a grocery store, 1.1 miles from the hotel. It was probably the most fun we had shopping. I tried Boss Coffee Black hot, not out of a vending machine (as it proper) but, even so, it was quite good. I liked this place because I could listen to customers and shop workers speaking a language I’m trying to learn.
I think I’ve talked about this already but I’m at the halfway point in the 13th Warrior language acquisition montage with Japanese. I will embed the video I’m referencing below, so you know what I mean. But, the point in the scene where Antonio can pick out about ten words out of a hundred? That’s me right now.
In the same mall was a kielbasa shop which was filled with other fun Polish goods and goodies. We spent a decent amount of time just window shopping (and gift buying) at these two places.
The other Japanese shops, however, weren’t open for another hour or more and so Naomi and I wandered back down the Rockville Pike checking out all the other little places along the way. We found a fun little tea shop run by an Indian couple who were very charming. Since Mason never reads my blog, I can tell you that I picked up a couple of really nice gifts for him (as my son has turned into a bit of a loose tea connoisseur,) including a cute tea ball where the counterweight is a book reading cat.
Surprisingly, the Tesco (the departo) was a bit of a bust for me. Naomi’s guest liaison had hyped up this store’s stationary section and so I’d gotten my hopes up. Alas, what they called stationary was actually just a packet of lined paper. Not even with a cute bit of art at the top. Very strange. Very disappointing. Tesco, however, had an absolutely mind-boggling number of Lay’s chip flavors and Kit-Kats, etc. It was interesting, thinking back on the Reddit thread comments, that the only language besides English that I heard spoken there seemed to be Mandarin. (I can not say for sure, but it certainly wasn’t Japanese.)
Naomi then took me out for my very first ever conveyor belt sushi. What fun!
Image: the conveyor belt with sushi
I was brave and tried raw squid (not sure I’ll be doing that again!), but otherwise we ate far too much. This place also had robot servers--two different types, a little train that brought small snacks, and an actual robot that brought bigger appetizers and then complained that it had to get back to work. I found it very charming.
Image: the little train-like robot that delivered small snacks. I failed to get a picture of the larger robot.
Then we came back to the hotel room long enough to take a quick break and rest our feet.
I will admit that at this point I “snoozled.” Snoozling is what my family calls those kinds of half-naps where you’re easily wakeable for a chat, but also just as likely to drift into the zone where you might start snoring. You know, snoozling.
From there we went to registration to begin the con. Program participants all got individualized schedules printed on the back--and I was reminded that this was something I wanted to be able to do for our Gaylaxicon folks. This means, I’ll be doing them? But it’s really SO NICE. It feels like a perk to the programming participant, you know?
Naomi had a panel right away at 4 pm called “Morally Grey Characters” which I sat and listened to. Zack Be was the moderator and he did an excellent job, actually. He’s apparently a psychologist by trade and you could kind of tell from the way he talked to some of the folks who asked questions at the end--like he was able to coax out the shy ones, and firmly, but respectfully shut down the rambling ones. I will admit that I wasn’t super riveted by the topic. I am a fan of morally grey characters, but the panel ended up focusing more on how to write them than recommendations on where to find them. I wanted the latter.
Then I was on an absolutely banger of a panel on SF and Romance. The other folks on the panel were fantastic:JL Gribble, Morgan Hazelwood, Sherin Nicole and Andrija Popovic. The conversation was dynamic and informative and I had a tremendous time.
Even cooler, I was wandering towards the con suite thinking I might scrounge up dinner there when JL Gribble invited me out to dinner. I hung out with them and one of their writer friends and had one of those fun con experiences where you go out to a meal with someone you barely know and have a fantastic conversation. At the same time Naomi was off being interviewed in a very similar vein by Scott Edelman for “Eating the Fantastic,” (https://www.scottedelman.com/wordpress/tag/eating-the-fantastic/) which basically hopes to recreate that magical con experience. So, that was kind of a cool coincidence!
Naomi and I met up again at her reading, whereafter I turned into a pumpkin.
There is something that is happening to me now that I am older where I just don’t want to talk to people after 9 pm. I don’t know what that’s about. I still consider myself an extrovert, but I am starting to experience the uniquely introverted experience of being “peopled out.” I’d had my fill of strangers. Time for bed.
I was up this morning early enough to discover that the Starbucks in the hotel has a broken espresso machine. So, I ended up across the street for our lattes again. Today is my busiest day, so I'll have a lot to report tomorrow.
I think I’ve talked about this already but I’m at the halfway point in the 13th Warrior language acquisition montage with Japanese. I will embed the video I’m referencing below, so you know what I mean. But, the point in the scene where Antonio can pick out about ten words out of a hundred? That’s me right now.
In the same mall was a kielbasa shop which was filled with other fun Polish goods and goodies. We spent a decent amount of time just window shopping (and gift buying) at these two places.
The other Japanese shops, however, weren’t open for another hour or more and so Naomi and I wandered back down the Rockville Pike checking out all the other little places along the way. We found a fun little tea shop run by an Indian couple who were very charming. Since Mason never reads my blog, I can tell you that I picked up a couple of really nice gifts for him (as my son has turned into a bit of a loose tea connoisseur,) including a cute tea ball where the counterweight is a book reading cat.
Surprisingly, the Tesco (the departo) was a bit of a bust for me. Naomi’s guest liaison had hyped up this store’s stationary section and so I’d gotten my hopes up. Alas, what they called stationary was actually just a packet of lined paper. Not even with a cute bit of art at the top. Very strange. Very disappointing. Tesco, however, had an absolutely mind-boggling number of Lay’s chip flavors and Kit-Kats, etc. It was interesting, thinking back on the Reddit thread comments, that the only language besides English that I heard spoken there seemed to be Mandarin. (I can not say for sure, but it certainly wasn’t Japanese.)
Naomi then took me out for my very first ever conveyor belt sushi. What fun!
Image: the conveyor belt with sushi
I was brave and tried raw squid (not sure I’ll be doing that again!), but otherwise we ate far too much. This place also had robot servers--two different types, a little train that brought small snacks, and an actual robot that brought bigger appetizers and then complained that it had to get back to work. I found it very charming.
Image: the little train-like robot that delivered small snacks. I failed to get a picture of the larger robot.
Then we came back to the hotel room long enough to take a quick break and rest our feet.
I will admit that at this point I “snoozled.” Snoozling is what my family calls those kinds of half-naps where you’re easily wakeable for a chat, but also just as likely to drift into the zone where you might start snoring. You know, snoozling.
From there we went to registration to begin the con. Program participants all got individualized schedules printed on the back--and I was reminded that this was something I wanted to be able to do for our Gaylaxicon folks. This means, I’ll be doing them? But it’s really SO NICE. It feels like a perk to the programming participant, you know?
Naomi had a panel right away at 4 pm called “Morally Grey Characters” which I sat and listened to. Zack Be was the moderator and he did an excellent job, actually. He’s apparently a psychologist by trade and you could kind of tell from the way he talked to some of the folks who asked questions at the end--like he was able to coax out the shy ones, and firmly, but respectfully shut down the rambling ones. I will admit that I wasn’t super riveted by the topic. I am a fan of morally grey characters, but the panel ended up focusing more on how to write them than recommendations on where to find them. I wanted the latter.
Then I was on an absolutely banger of a panel on SF and Romance. The other folks on the panel were fantastic:JL Gribble, Morgan Hazelwood, Sherin Nicole and Andrija Popovic. The conversation was dynamic and informative and I had a tremendous time.
Even cooler, I was wandering towards the con suite thinking I might scrounge up dinner there when JL Gribble invited me out to dinner. I hung out with them and one of their writer friends and had one of those fun con experiences where you go out to a meal with someone you barely know and have a fantastic conversation. At the same time Naomi was off being interviewed in a very similar vein by Scott Edelman for “Eating the Fantastic,” (https://www.scottedelman.com/wordpress/tag/eating-the-fantastic/) which basically hopes to recreate that magical con experience. So, that was kind of a cool coincidence!
Naomi and I met up again at her reading, whereafter I turned into a pumpkin.
There is something that is happening to me now that I am older where I just don’t want to talk to people after 9 pm. I don’t know what that’s about. I still consider myself an extrovert, but I am starting to experience the uniquely introverted experience of being “peopled out.” I’d had my fill of strangers. Time for bed.
I was up this morning early enough to discover that the Starbucks in the hotel has a broken espresso machine. So, I ended up across the street for our lattes again. Today is my busiest day, so I'll have a lot to report tomorrow.
Almost two weeks' worth of reading
Sep. 19th, 2025 10:54 pmumadoshiThe seasonal crunch at Dayjob hasn't even started yet (so soon, though) and I already feel like I'm falling behind. >.< But I've been reading, so here's a fairly bare-bones post about that.
scruloose and I finished listening to Exit Strategy, and reluctantly are not moving forward until after said crunch period. This is a good resting point. We're both really enjoying these, which isn't really a surprise (heaven knows everyone raves about the Murderbot audiobooks!) except that I so thoroughly think of myself as not being someone who takes in much(/any) audio media other than music. It's possible that these are the first audiobooks I've listened to since...maybe since some Robert Asprin book on cassette during a family road trip when I was a teenager (which I only recall even that much of because the reader's delivery of "'Gleep', said the dragon" has stuck with me), and whatever snatches of audiobook I've heard while road tripping with Ginny and Kas.
Saint Death's Daughter (C.S.E. Cooney) was a really good read and rather brutal; I imagine I'll pick up the sequel at some point.
Julie Leong's The Teller of Small Fortunes was a much softer book (it may count as "cozy", but that seems to be a very subjective classification). It didn't leave much of a mark on me, but I enjoyed it.
The most recent novel I finished was When Women Were Dragons (Kelly Barnhill), which was one of those books where I didn't think I had much idea of what it would be like but then found it was nothing like I'd (subconsciously, I guess) expected, based on having read a few sentences about it somewhere. It too was good, and the fact that both the tone and the actual unfolding of the concept threw me is on me, not it.
Now I'm reading The Starving Saints (Caitlin Starling), but I'm only a few chapters in.
Non-fiction: Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World is not a fast read, but then, I didn't suppose it would be. Slow progress is still being made.
I mostly don't mention cookbooks I've read, but a couple days ago I finished reading the ebook of The League of Kitchens Cookbook: Brilliant Tips, Secret Methods & Favorite Family Recipes from Around the World by Lisa Kyung Gross and the Women of the League of Kitchens Cooking School, with Rachel Wharton. And then the second book of collected Murderbot novellas (3-4) popped up on Book Outlet, tempting me to place an order even though I ordered from them pretty recently, and they also had the hard copy of The League of Kitchens Cookbook, so I pounced on it.
I don't remember where I heard about it, but someone somewhere mentioned it and then I snapped it up a while back when the ebook was on sale. I had no real idea what the League of Kitchens was until I was reading, and it turns out to be such a neat thing! From the book copy:
(One thing I really like about the book is that the recipe instructions are broken down into incredible detail. I pretty much always want more detail than I'm given when learning something or being asked to do something. When I was still very early in the book, I was excitedly calling out toscruloose about how the recipe I was reading--which was not for something super-complicated, I don't think--was broken down into seventeen steps. SEVENTEEN. Yes, please!)
scruloose and I finished listening to Exit Strategy, and reluctantly are not moving forward until after said crunch period. This is a good resting point. We're both really enjoying these, which isn't really a surprise (heaven knows everyone raves about the Murderbot audiobooks!) except that I so thoroughly think of myself as not being someone who takes in much(/any) audio media other than music. It's possible that these are the first audiobooks I've listened to since...maybe since some Robert Asprin book on cassette during a family road trip when I was a teenager (which I only recall even that much of because the reader's delivery of "'Gleep', said the dragon" has stuck with me), and whatever snatches of audiobook I've heard while road tripping with Ginny and Kas.Saint Death's Daughter (C.S.E. Cooney) was a really good read and rather brutal; I imagine I'll pick up the sequel at some point.
Julie Leong's The Teller of Small Fortunes was a much softer book (it may count as "cozy", but that seems to be a very subjective classification). It didn't leave much of a mark on me, but I enjoyed it.
The most recent novel I finished was When Women Were Dragons (Kelly Barnhill), which was one of those books where I didn't think I had much idea of what it would be like but then found it was nothing like I'd (subconsciously, I guess) expected, based on having read a few sentences about it somewhere. It too was good, and the fact that both the tone and the actual unfolding of the concept threw me is on me, not it.
Now I'm reading The Starving Saints (Caitlin Starling), but I'm only a few chapters in.
Non-fiction: Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World is not a fast read, but then, I didn't suppose it would be. Slow progress is still being made.
I mostly don't mention cookbooks I've read, but a couple days ago I finished reading the ebook of The League of Kitchens Cookbook: Brilliant Tips, Secret Methods & Favorite Family Recipes from Around the World by Lisa Kyung Gross and the Women of the League of Kitchens Cooking School, with Rachel Wharton. And then the second book of collected Murderbot novellas (3-4) popped up on Book Outlet, tempting me to place an order even though I ordered from them pretty recently, and they also had the hard copy of The League of Kitchens Cookbook, so I pounced on it.
I don't remember where I heard about it, but someone somewhere mentioned it and then I snapped it up a while back when the ebook was on sale. I had no real idea what the League of Kitchens was until I was reading, and it turns out to be such a neat thing! From the book copy:
Founded in 2014 by Lisa Kyung Gross, the daughter of a Korean immigrant and a Jewish New Yorker, League of Kitchens is a unique cooking school that empowers immigrant women to share culinary expertise and culture through hands-on cooking workshops, both in their homes and online. The instructors pass on their knowledge, skills, recipes, and most importantly, their secrets for how to cook with love. At its heart, League of Kitchens is a celebration of the invaluable contributions of immigrants to our food culture and society.IIRC from the intro to the book, they don't/didn't go searching for people from specific backgrounds as instructors; rather, it's about finding people who match what they're looking for, regardless of their country of origin. (Here's their current list of instructors.) Some classes are taught online, which is tempting, although I don't realistically like my odds of ever actually signing up.
(One thing I really like about the book is that the recipe instructions are broken down into incredible detail. I pretty much always want more detail than I'm given when learning something or being asked to do something. When I was still very early in the book, I was excitedly calling out to
scruloose about how the recipe I was reading--which was not for something super-complicated, I don't think--was broken down into seventeen steps. SEVENTEEN. Yes, please!)
Pre-Con
Sep. 19th, 2025 09:24 amlydamorehouse Things don't kick off here at Capclave until after 1 pm, and I am, unfortuntely, an early riser. At least with the time zone shift waking up at Saint Paul 6:30 am is a much more reasonable (for most people) 7:30 am here.
I let Naomi sleep in and went in search of coffee. The hotel has a Starbucks so, in desperation, there's always that. But I live in hope of a good latte. I didn't exactly find one, though Chateau de Rockville Cafe wasn't bad. As I told my wife this morning, it was more bakery than coffeeshop. I might try a place called The Espresso Bar (GPS thinks it's a 7 minute walk from the hotel (on the other side of the metro line, which is directly behind the con hotel.)
For reasons known only to Rockville, the little strip malls around the hotel seem to be filled with Japanese-themed shops. There's even a place called Teso Life, which porports to be in the style of a Japanese "departo" (department store.) The internet tells me, howeve, that it is not a Japanese company. This is an American company that is importing the vibe, if you will. There is an Eibsu, which is a Japanese grocery store with a lot of Japanese products and just a ton of other places like this. I don't know if this is a Japantown little corridor in Rockville or just a quirk.Okay a quick jaunt over to Reddit tells me that where we are, the Rockville Pike, does in fact have a small community of Japanese immigrants/Japanese Americans. I am warned, however, that the Teso Life is actually owned by a Chinese company. Apparently, the Maruichi Japanese grocery store and Temari Japanese cafe on Rockville Pike, are both run by Japanese expats.Regardless, I'm excited to check it out. And we need to do something for awhile.
I'm glad I packed a pair of shorts, however. In my little jaunt for coffee, I managed to get very sweaty. It's warm here today. Shawn tells me that y'all in the Twin Cities got a lovely thunderstorm last night.
Okay, I'm off exploring more exciting news as it breaks.
I let Naomi sleep in and went in search of coffee. The hotel has a Starbucks so, in desperation, there's always that. But I live in hope of a good latte. I didn't exactly find one, though Chateau de Rockville Cafe wasn't bad. As I told my wife this morning, it was more bakery than coffeeshop. I might try a place called The Espresso Bar (GPS thinks it's a 7 minute walk from the hotel (on the other side of the metro line, which is directly behind the con hotel.)
For reasons known only to Rockville, the little strip malls around the hotel seem to be filled with Japanese-themed shops. There's even a place called Teso Life, which porports to be in the style of a Japanese "departo" (department store.) The internet tells me, howeve, that it is not a Japanese company. This is an American company that is importing the vibe, if you will. There is an Eibsu, which is a Japanese grocery store with a lot of Japanese products and just a ton of other places like this. I don't know if this is a Japantown little corridor in Rockville or just a quirk.Okay a quick jaunt over to Reddit tells me that where we are, the Rockville Pike, does in fact have a small community of Japanese immigrants/Japanese Americans. I am warned, however, that the Teso Life is actually owned by a Chinese company. Apparently, the Maruichi Japanese grocery store and Temari Japanese cafe on Rockville Pike, are both run by Japanese expats.Regardless, I'm excited to check it out. And we need to do something for awhile.
I'm glad I packed a pair of shorts, however. In my little jaunt for coffee, I managed to get very sweaty. It's warm here today. Shawn tells me that y'all in the Twin Cities got a lovely thunderstorm last night.
Okay, I'm off exploring more exciting news as it breaks.
The long sewage nightmare is over
Sep. 19th, 2025 03:48 pmcimoreneThe plumber and the digger have left after tamping the dirt back down and pouring some new gravel where the car parks! The septic tanks have been removed and the separate rainwater drainage is in place!
The sewers from the tenant side do not empty into the tank under the garage anymore (that's still there though, but it shouldn't be able to give us any trouble unless we get like a month of flooding rains and a leak)!
It's all brown dirt and gray gravel again now, but here's a few pictures Wax took of the excavation earlier.
We have lost a few bushes and possibly some hostas, as well as a little flat cement pad that we didn't want, to the piles of dirt and digging. We will need to buy a few baby bushes (rhododendron maybe?) and a bunch of clover seed which hopefully might manage to outcompete the grass. And set the cement paver path back in place. All that has to be done during the autumn, before the frost, so... here's hoping. Also a city tree on the corner of the lot had a lot of its roots cut off and unfortunately a lot more on the other side last winter when the city dug up the street to fix the pipes. It's probably not gonna survive that, I guess.
I have been feeling full of anxiety and suspense when actually a lot of things are going well. This stupid open septic tank issue has been oppressing and terrifying us for a year. Monday and Tuesday are my last driving lessons and then I take the test (tons of anxiety) but my teacher and I agreed I've been doing pretty well. Wax and I have managed to cook together a bit more often, even.
The sewers from the tenant side do not empty into the tank under the garage anymore (that's still there though, but it shouldn't be able to give us any trouble unless we get like a month of flooding rains and a leak)!
It's all brown dirt and gray gravel again now, but here's a few pictures Wax took of the excavation earlier.
We have lost a few bushes and possibly some hostas, as well as a little flat cement pad that we didn't want, to the piles of dirt and digging. We will need to buy a few baby bushes (rhododendron maybe?) and a bunch of clover seed which hopefully might manage to outcompete the grass. And set the cement paver path back in place. All that has to be done during the autumn, before the frost, so... here's hoping. Also a city tree on the corner of the lot had a lot of its roots cut off and unfortunately a lot more on the other side last winter when the city dug up the street to fix the pipes. It's probably not gonna survive that, I guess.
I have been feeling full of anxiety and suspense when actually a lot of things are going well. This stupid open septic tank issue has been oppressing and terrifying us for a year. Monday and Tuesday are my last driving lessons and then I take the test (tons of anxiety) but my teacher and I agreed I've been doing pretty well. Wax and I have managed to cook together a bit more often, even.
Follow Friday 9-19-25
Sep. 19th, 2025 01:02 amysabetwordsmith posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
followfridayGot any Follow Friday-related posts to share this week? Comment here with the link(s).
Here's the plan: every Friday, let's recommend some people and/or communities to follow on Dreamwidth. That's it. No complicated rules, no "pass this on to 7.328 friends or your cat will die".
(no subject)
Sep. 18th, 2025 06:53 pmmalurettePar petits bouts, j'ai fini de regarder la première saison de Miraculous Ladybug. Qu'est-ce que je peux dire, c'est assez fun, mais je ne crois pas que je m'en ferais un fandom. Ne serait-ce que parce que j'arrive tellement en retard dessus. C'est un peu beaucoup répétitif jusqu'ici, j'espère que ça va commencer à changer dans la saison 2 ?
Pour l'instant je m'amuse à relever les différences subtiles qui indiquent que ça se passe dans un un univers paralèlle (outre la différence majeure que, y'a des superhéros et des superméchants magiques). Genre, Paris a l'air plus petit et beaucoup moins peuple (14 élèves dans une classe de 3ème au lieu de 34 ??) et sans aucun touriste (le Trocadéro quasi désert ??)
Septembre qui compte 31 jours, Hidalgo qui a pris cher, la ligne 33 St Lazare-Austerlitz qui n'existe ni sur mon plan papier ni sur le site de la RATP mais les bus ça peut changer, les lignes de métro 17 et 20 très en avance sur le programme, le Stade des Princesses...
Too French, Didn't Read: Malu started watching Miraculous Ladybug and is bugged that their alternate universe Paris is a tad offshut up it's fiction and tongue-in-cheek clichés!
Pour l'instant je m'amuse à relever les différences subtiles qui indiquent que ça se passe dans un un univers paralèlle (outre la différence majeure que, y'a des superhéros et des superméchants magiques). Genre, Paris a l'air plus petit et beaucoup moins peuple (14 élèves dans une classe de 3ème au lieu de 34 ??) et sans aucun touriste (le Trocadéro quasi désert ??)
Septembre qui compte 31 jours, Hidalgo qui a pris cher, la ligne 33 St Lazare-Austerlitz qui n'existe ni sur mon plan papier ni sur le site de la RATP mais les bus ça peut changer, les lignes de métro 17 et 20 très en avance sur le programme, le Stade des Princesses...
Too French, Didn't Read: Malu started watching Miraculous Ladybug and is bugged that their alternate universe Paris is a tad off
Busy Week
Sep. 18th, 2025 08:02 amlydamorehouse So either I will have a lot more to say over the next several days here on DW, or I will go silent for another long stretch. I'm leaving for the Washington DC area at 2:30ish today. Yeah, I know. It's a very weird time to be headed to DC, but DC is where Capclave is. Technically, Capclave is in a hotel in Rockville, MD. I'm going because naomikritzer invited me as her "comealong" friend. As it happens, Minnesotan author (and friend to both of us,) Marissa Lingen will also be there because she's up for the WSFA Small Press Award for her short story "A Pilgrimage to the God of High Places" which appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue 406 (May 2024). So that will be nice.
Y'all, I have not flown in an airplane since before the pandemic.
My family travels a decent amount, but almost always by car. I'm not necessarily nervous about air travel, but airports in the DC area have not been having the best time lately. So, you know, if you have spare white light, thoughts, prayers, rituals to your dark gods, etc., I would appreciate them. I am taking the travel stone. The travel stone probably deserves its own entry, but the basic story goes like this: once when Shawn was worried about getting lost when I needed to seperate from her, I picked up a piece of gravel from the ground and said, "This is ensure that you make it home safely." She made it home safely. Now, that stone, dubbed "the travel stone" has traveled with us overseas and across country--pretty much any time we leave home. It has even spawned an offspring, since Mason needs his own travel stone now that he's a world traveler of his own.
I am also taking along my whole ass computer. I could get along with just my phone, I suppose, but my phone lately has been very touchy about wanting to turn on when I hit the on button. Plus, I dunno. As I noted in previous journal entries, I have four panels, which is very good given what I nobody I am to the DC area fandom, but Naomi is a Guest of Honor. However, four panels for three days is very light for me, locally. Also I am a morning lark and am often up HOURS before the first panels ever start. I suspect I might have some time on my hands. If that's the case, I will find a nice corner of the hotel or a pleasant coffee shop and give you a con report. I mean, I promised one for Diversicon and then didn't deliver until after it was over. Still, there's something about being far from home an up hours before anyone else you're traveling with that I hope will be more conducive to writing to you. We'll see. Again, send those rituals to your dark gods and perhaps it will happen.
Okay, I've finished my breakfast. No more stalling. I should finish packing up the remaining things (including this computer) and do the light housecleaning that I promised my family I'd do before I left.
Hopefully, I'll write soon, but, if I fail, see you on the flipside!
naomikritzer invited me as her "comealong" friend. As it happens, Minnesotan author (and friend to both of us,) Marissa Lingen will also be there because she's up for the WSFA Small Press Award for her short story "A Pilgrimage to the God of High Places" which appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue 406 (May 2024). So that will be nice. Y'all, I have not flown in an airplane since before the pandemic.
My family travels a decent amount, but almost always by car. I'm not necessarily nervous about air travel, but airports in the DC area have not been having the best time lately. So, you know, if you have spare white light, thoughts, prayers, rituals to your dark gods, etc., I would appreciate them. I am taking the travel stone. The travel stone probably deserves its own entry, but the basic story goes like this: once when Shawn was worried about getting lost when I needed to seperate from her, I picked up a piece of gravel from the ground and said, "This is ensure that you make it home safely." She made it home safely. Now, that stone, dubbed "the travel stone" has traveled with us overseas and across country--pretty much any time we leave home. It has even spawned an offspring, since Mason needs his own travel stone now that he's a world traveler of his own.
I am also taking along my whole ass computer. I could get along with just my phone, I suppose, but my phone lately has been very touchy about wanting to turn on when I hit the on button. Plus, I dunno. As I noted in previous journal entries, I have four panels, which is very good given what I nobody I am to the DC area fandom, but Naomi is a Guest of Honor. However, four panels for three days is very light for me, locally. Also I am a morning lark and am often up HOURS before the first panels ever start. I suspect I might have some time on my hands. If that's the case, I will find a nice corner of the hotel or a pleasant coffee shop and give you a con report. I mean, I promised one for Diversicon and then didn't deliver until after it was over. Still, there's something about being far from home an up hours before anyone else you're traveling with that I hope will be more conducive to writing to you. We'll see. Again, send those rituals to your dark gods and perhaps it will happen.
Okay, I've finished my breakfast. No more stalling. I should finish packing up the remaining things (including this computer) and do the light housecleaning that I promised my family I'd do before I left.
Hopefully, I'll write soon, but, if I fail, see you on the flipside!
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit
Sep. 17th, 2025 10:49 pmmarycatelli posting in booksJeeves and the Feudal Spirit by P.G. Wodehouse
Another Jeeves novel. Spoilers ahead for the earlier ones.
( Read more... )
Another Jeeves novel. Spoilers ahead for the earlier ones.
( Read more... )
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit
Sep. 17th, 2025 10:49 pmmarycatelli posting in book_loveJeeves and the Feudal Spirit by P.G. Wodehouse
Another Jeeves novel. Spoilers ahead for the earlier ones.
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Another Jeeves novel. Spoilers ahead for the earlier ones.
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Recent Reading: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
Sep. 17th, 2025 12:15 pmrocky41_7 posting in booksLast night I finished Becky Chambers' The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, a sci-fi book about a motley crew of spacefarers who "drill" wormholes to enable rapid travel across space for the diverse galactic alliance known as the GC. At the start of the book, they are offered a bid on a particularly difficult, lucrative job, and can't resist taking the bait.
This should be (another) lesson to me in not going all-in on a creator because I've enjoyed one of their works. I loved Chambers' To Be Taught, if Fortunate, and I've heard plenty of internet praise for The Long Way, so when I saw it at the bookstore recently, I dropped $20 on it readily. If I hadn't, I probably wouldn't have bothered finishing it.
First - if you picked up this book looking for the femslash, it's barely there, and it's a lot more friends-with-benefits than romance. The other two romances in the book get a lot more attention. This isn't a complaint from me, but if what you really want is F/F romance, it's not really here.
This is a character-driven book with barely a plot, which wouldn't be a problem if the characters were interesting. As it is, they are functionally interchangeable: a crew of people who are all optimistic, friendly, emotionally open, painstakingly polite, and obsessively well-intentioned (except for the one guy who's a Jerk, who exists to be a jerk whenever the scene calls for someone who needs to be less-than-fanatically-polite or there's a chance for Chambers to squeeze in another instance of his being a jerk, even when he's technically right). There is no character growth to speak of; none of these characters changes at all between the start of the book and the end. There's no complexity to anyone.
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This should be (another) lesson to me in not going all-in on a creator because I've enjoyed one of their works. I loved Chambers' To Be Taught, if Fortunate, and I've heard plenty of internet praise for The Long Way, so when I saw it at the bookstore recently, I dropped $20 on it readily. If I hadn't, I probably wouldn't have bothered finishing it.
First - if you picked up this book looking for the femslash, it's barely there, and it's a lot more friends-with-benefits than romance. The other two romances in the book get a lot more attention. This isn't a complaint from me, but if what you really want is F/F romance, it's not really here.
This is a character-driven book with barely a plot, which wouldn't be a problem if the characters were interesting. As it is, they are functionally interchangeable: a crew of people who are all optimistic, friendly, emotionally open, painstakingly polite, and obsessively well-intentioned (except for the one guy who's a Jerk, who exists to be a jerk whenever the scene calls for someone who needs to be less-than-fanatically-polite or there's a chance for Chambers to squeeze in another instance of his being a jerk, even when he's technically right). There is no character growth to speak of; none of these characters changes at all between the start of the book and the end. There's no complexity to anyone.
( Read more... )
[film] Monster house
Sep. 17th, 2025 02:08 pmmaluretteTitle: Monster house
By: Gil Kenan
Language: English (+closed captions)
Type: 3D animation
Genre: horror
Length: 1h38
Release date: 2005
Where: on Netflix
(CGI made by motion capture to emulate stop-motion; a bit weird looking)
In 80ties, a suburb in the US. Losers DJ and "Chowder" Charlie, plus teenage entrepreneuse Jenny, investigate the mystery of the house opposite DJ's. It's not just inhabited by a cranky old man, it actually eats stuff, possibly people!
Ok that was harsher that i expected. Wow.
By: Gil Kenan
Language: English (+closed captions)
Type: 3D animation
Genre: horror
Length: 1h38
Release date: 2005
Where: on Netflix
(CGI made by motion capture to emulate stop-motion; a bit weird looking)
In 80ties, a suburb in the US. Losers DJ and "Chowder" Charlie, plus teenage entrepreneuse Jenny, investigate the mystery of the house opposite DJ's. It's not just inhabited by a cranky old man, it actually eats stuff, possibly people!
Ok that was harsher that i expected. Wow.
(no subject)
Sep. 16th, 2025 09:20 pmskygiantsI liked the Korean movie Phantom (2023) enough that I decided to hunt down the novel on which it's based, Mai Jia's The Message -- in large part out of curiosity about whether it's also lesbians.
The answer: ... sort of! The lesbians are not technically textual but there's a bit of Lesbian Speculation and then a big pointed narrative hole where lesbians could potentially be. It is, however, without a doubt, Women Being Really Weird About Each Other, to the point where I'm considering it as a Yuletide fandom (perhaps even moreso than the movie, where the women are also weird about each other but in a more triumphant cinematic way and less of an ambiguous, psychologically complex and melancholic way. you know.)
The plot: well, as in the movie, there's a spy, and there's the Japanese Occupation, and there's a Big Haunted House where we're keeping all the possible spies to play mind games with until somebody fesses up. Because the book is set in 1941 China, there are actually three factions at play -- the Japanese and collaborators, the Communists and the Nationalists -- and for the whole first part of the book, fascinatingly enough, we are almost entirely in the head of the Japanese officer who's running the operation and choreographing all the mind games in an attempt to ferret out the Communist agent in his codebreaking division. The result is sort of a weird and almost darkly funny anti-heroic anti-Poirot situation, in which Hihara is constantly engineering increasingly complicated locked-room scenarios designed to get the spy to confess like the culprit in a Thin Man movie, and is constantly thwarted by his suspects inconveniently refusing to stick to the script, even when presented with apparently incontrovertible evidence, placed under torture, lied to about the deaths of other members of the party, etc. etc.
The suspects include several variously annoying men, plus two women whom we and everyone else are clearly intended to find the most interesting people there: quiet and competent Li Ningyu, cryptography division head, mother of two, whom everyone knows is semi-separated from an abusive husband, and who somehow manages to keep calmly slithering her way out of every accusation Hihara tries to stick on her; and her opposite, loud bratty chic Gu Xiaomeng, whom Hihara would very much like to rule out as a suspect as quickly as possible because she's the daughter of a very wealthy collaborator, and who seems moderately obsessed with her boss Li Ningyu For Some Reason.
Both book and movie spend, like, sixty percent of their length on this big house espionage mind games scenario and then abruptly take a left turn, with the next forty percent being Something Completely Different. In the film this left turn involves DRAMATIC ROMANTIC ACTION HEROICS!!!! so I was quite surprised to find that the book's left turn ( involves spoilers )
The answer: ... sort of! The lesbians are not technically textual but there's a bit of Lesbian Speculation and then a big pointed narrative hole where lesbians could potentially be. It is, however, without a doubt, Women Being Really Weird About Each Other, to the point where I'm considering it as a Yuletide fandom (perhaps even moreso than the movie, where the women are also weird about each other but in a more triumphant cinematic way and less of an ambiguous, psychologically complex and melancholic way. you know.)
The plot: well, as in the movie, there's a spy, and there's the Japanese Occupation, and there's a Big Haunted House where we're keeping all the possible spies to play mind games with until somebody fesses up. Because the book is set in 1941 China, there are actually three factions at play -- the Japanese and collaborators, the Communists and the Nationalists -- and for the whole first part of the book, fascinatingly enough, we are almost entirely in the head of the Japanese officer who's running the operation and choreographing all the mind games in an attempt to ferret out the Communist agent in his codebreaking division. The result is sort of a weird and almost darkly funny anti-heroic anti-Poirot situation, in which Hihara is constantly engineering increasingly complicated locked-room scenarios designed to get the spy to confess like the culprit in a Thin Man movie, and is constantly thwarted by his suspects inconveniently refusing to stick to the script, even when presented with apparently incontrovertible evidence, placed under torture, lied to about the deaths of other members of the party, etc. etc.
The suspects include several variously annoying men, plus two women whom we and everyone else are clearly intended to find the most interesting people there: quiet and competent Li Ningyu, cryptography division head, mother of two, whom everyone knows is semi-separated from an abusive husband, and who somehow manages to keep calmly slithering her way out of every accusation Hihara tries to stick on her; and her opposite, loud bratty chic Gu Xiaomeng, whom Hihara would very much like to rule out as a suspect as quickly as possible because she's the daughter of a very wealthy collaborator, and who seems moderately obsessed with her boss Li Ningyu For Some Reason.
Both book and movie spend, like, sixty percent of their length on this big house espionage mind games scenario and then abruptly take a left turn, with the next forty percent being Something Completely Different. In the film this left turn involves DRAMATIC ROMANTIC ACTION HEROICS!!!! so I was quite surprised to find that the book's left turn ( involves spoilers )