hot days

2025-Jun-22, Sunday 15:15
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[personal profile] unicornduke
this is the last day we are open for strawberry picking. the season is ending with a sputter, the rain has done the berries in. There is a few out there and will continue to be, but it isn't worth being open. It is currently 85F with 77% humidity, so the real feel is at 90 although there is a good breeze today. Tomorrow and tuesday will be worse. The air is so thick. Raspberries and blueberries are ripening early, the first blueberries have color already even though they weren't ripe, same with the raspberries, so we'll need to be ready to open for those. 

I helped my dad lay plastic in the field this morning and it was still almost too wet to get the machine in the ground, it's wild how much rain we've had. We got extremely lucky, there was a storm that came through just east of us, traveling south east in a line that fully missed us. But it was likely to be a couple inches of rain if it had hit us. 

I have a fan in my little building so I'm fine while I do computer work and wait for the stragglers to come and pick. Bonkers that people are coming to pick right now. Not many but still. 

I'm planning to get up early the next two days, work for a while and take afternoons off to go sit in the creek. 

Yesterday, we closed the strawberries since there wasn't a lot ripe and I went and did a fun thing. I drove up to The Shire of Sterlynge Vayle for the Spring AEthelmearc Academy and had a nice time. It was a very low key and chill event, with classes being decent and I chatted with a bunch of random people. Lunch was delayed for an hour and I'll admit, it was running low by the time I got to line, so it wasn't super filling. I got really tired around mid-day as well, so I spent some of the extra time dozing a little bit. I learned about how viking sails were made, silk spinning and accidentally learned fingerloop braiding. I also was the only person to stop in for the Sign Herald class, and learned a bunch and also that might be a thing I could commit to trying to do. Mistress Gytha taught me and I felt a bit bad for her since she said she was the only one doing sign herald work in the kingdom more or less. So there's a need and I have the basics down. So I might try and brush up on it. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to stay for court to see Mistress Gytha sign. With the lunch delay and how tired I was, I headed home after the fingerloop braiding class and got home around 5:30pm and was so tired. I met some nice people in the kingdom that I might see again at other events. I want to go to the A & S Faire but I suspect it's too soon to get another saturday off farm work unless it rains that day. Which it might given how the weather is going. 

A mistake I made was wearing my binder the whole day. I usually wear it all day and it's fine and I felt fine when I put it on, but I forgot that something about my truck seat makes the binder uncomfortable. Regular seats are fine, standing is fine, just my truck seat. So lingering coughs from the illness were aggravated and my seat irritated my chest. Next time I'll bring something to change into for the drives out and back. 

I'm hoping the Chatelaine for the local group gets back to me soon, but if they don't, I'll need to find some other way to contact them. I would really like to get involved with the local SCA group....

I think the illness I had might have been the new covid strain. My mom tested negative, but it's possible her tests were expired. But it sounds a lot like what I had and also it's lingering in a way that most stuff normally doesn't. The snot continues and the cough is still going although it might be aftereffects. I'm pretty tired still in a dozing off in the evenings before bed. But also there's a lot going on and the weather is hot, so it all might be contributing. 

After we close at 5, I'm going to do some mowing with the little stinker (has a roof) and then go down to the creek to dunk myself. Lots of water and electrolytes. Napping. 

Birdfeeding

2025-Jun-22, Sunday 14:19
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Today is partly sunny and sweltering. It's 87°F and the heat index is 95°F. :P A beautiful day to stay indoors and write!

I fed the birds. I've seen a small flock of sparrows and house finches, several mourning doves, and a fox squirrel.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 6/22/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 6/22/25 -- I watered the plants on the new picnic table.

EDIT 6/22/25 -- I watered the old picnic table and house yard, and the septic garden.

I've seen at least one, possibly two bats. Lots of fireflies are out.

As it is getting dark, I am done for the night.

Pride Month

2025-Jun-22, Sunday 12:45
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[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Duck Prints Press is doing a set of 10 pride dragons that will be available on stickers and other swag.  These are kawaii dragons rather than fierce ones, but sometimes people want a non-confrontational signal.
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[personal profile] tcpip
I must prefix this entry with a note of appreciation to Kate R., for looking after "mes animaux de compagnie", Mayhem and Mayday, during my first recent trip to China and Rafe EC for the second. It's good to have such excellent neighbours in my life. My companion ratties are now approaching an entire year of age, which, by a rule-of-thumb, is about 30 years on a human scale. As always, I prefer to let my rodent friends a free-range lifestyle and in this case the study is their home. Poor Mayday, however, is currently in protective custody as his larger brother has power-groomed him a little too much, and his back has too many bite marks. Whilst he disagrees, I assure him it's for his own good, and he seems to be recovering in his relative solitude, spending most evenings snuggled up on my shoulder; it's good to be a rat in my home.

This week, after returning from China, I have, as can be expected, caught up with a lot of work-related business. But I have not neglected my social life either. Kate took me out to the "Ballet of Lights: Sleeping Beauty". It was a very family-friendly affair and, as Kate described it, "P-plates for experiencing ballet". But it was at the Capitol Theatre, a venue I adore, and the costumes with embedded lights were attractive and effective. The following day I caught up with Mel during the day, whom I haven't seen for too long, and then Liza D. for dinner and discussion about her forthcoming performance. The following evening I found myself at Carla BL's Winter Soltice gathering where conversation was vibrant and diverse, but spent most time with Julie A., who joined me today at the Australia-China Friendship Society meeting which was addressed by Dr Fiona Swee-Lin Price on bi-cultural experiences, history, and understanding. Frankly, the presentation was nothing less than glorious, and all attendees thought very highly of the presentation and insights.

It has not been all smooth sailing on this return week, however. I have, unfortunately, experienced a couple of disappointments, one in the form of an otherwise knowledgeable person who stubbornly refused to accept a descriptive error on their own part that was objectively wrong. This occurs more often from political partisanship and typically results in increasingly aggressive responses as the cognitive dissonance kicks in. The other, which I look upon from the benefit of extensive lived experience, is a somewhat sub-optimal life-choice for the person, assuming they care about their future success, but normatively it's their prerogative. In situations like this, one can only offer future support, and then we will remember ("memories in future tense", as "The Church" described it decades ago).

Book Bans

2025-Jun-22, Sunday 00:03
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Oregon has passed a bill to protect school libraries from book bans.

Another win for freedom to read legislation on the West Coast this week, as Oregon’s state House of Representatives passed Senate Bill 1098 on Monday, a bill that will protect access to books in school libraries. It’s great news: books can no longer be banned solely because they discuss sexuality, religion, or other topics, nor can books be removed because they are written by someone from a protected class. SB 1098 now goes to the governor, who is expected to sign it into law.


I'm delighted to see laws against book bans spreading. To promote this, point out that it will save lots of time and therefore money that is currently wasted dealing with attempt after attempt to tell other people what books they can't read. Most people love saving time and money, and will thus support the effort even if they don't care about books or freedom.

Philosophical Questions: Harm

2025-Jun-21, Saturday 23:56
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
People have expressed interest in deep topics, so this list focuses on philosophical questions.

How far should governments go to prevent its citizens from causing harm to themselves?

Read more... )

Update: Shimmying over to OC territory!

2025-Jun-21, Saturday 21:31
liminalovertea: Updates (phone) (phone)
[personal profile] liminalovertea
I finally got all my thoughts together for Chapter 1 of It Ends With Us. It's one whole job to annotate a book, and a whole other job to turn it into comprehensive commentary.Read more... )

Today's Adventures

2025-Jun-21, Saturday 18:02
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Today we went up to Amish territory.

Read more... )

Welp

2025-Jun-24, Tuesday 15:52
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[personal profile] conuly
We're gonna get in the triple digits by Tuesday. Fun times!

Stay cool, guys.

~~~~~~~


Read more... )

Books

2025-Jun-21, Saturday 16:03
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[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
A Rainbow of Queer Books for Pride 2025: Turquoise

HAPPY PRIDE 2025! For Pride this year, we’re changing up our usual rec lists. Instead of doing books with specific identities or themes, we’re focused this time on cover color! Throughout the month of June, we’ll be doing 8 rec lists, each with covers inspired by one of the colors of the original Gilbert Baker Pride Flag. We drew a little additional inspiration from the meaning behind the color and why it was included in the original LGBTQIA+ flag (in this case, turquoise = magic), but we prioritized color over meaning. The contributors to this list are: May Barros, Rhosyn Goodfellow, Linnea Peterson, Tris Lawrence, Sebastian Marie, Shannon, Rascal Hartley, and Nina Waters.

Birdfeeding

2025-Jun-21, Saturday 12:26
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Today is mostly sunny, muggy, and hot.

I fed the birds. I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 6/21/25 -- Temperature when we went out shopping was 94°F. Temperature in our yard is currently 88°F. Trees sweat so you don't have to!

EDIT 6/21/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio. The evening has started to cool off a little.

I've seen a mourning dove.

EDIT 6/21/25 -- I watered the patio plants and the ones in the house yard including the old picnic table.

Fireflies are starting to appear.

EDIT 6/21/25 -- I watered the telephone pole garden and the savanna seedlings.

More fireflies are out. :D

EDIT 6/21/25 -- I watered the new picnic table and the septic garden.

As it is now dark, I am done for the night.

Series are Scary + Numberwang

2025-Jun-21, Saturday 09:05
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[personal profile] renegadefolkhero

I'm now knee-deep in the first book of an SFF trilogy (I'm tentatively describing it as Science Fantasy, I don't know if anyone actually uses that term), and I have a lot of uncertainty. Not about the books per se, I'm committed and confident I'll finally be able to write this story. I'm a little nervous about writing my first series, because I've only written standalones.

This is probably technically a good time to be switching to a new genre with lots of ????, since a lot of things are changing across the board anyway and the old conventional advice may no longer apply (ranks slowing/freezing on amazon means some of the old promo strategies might not be as effective, etc etc). But I feel like I've gotten off the bus on the opposite side of town and have no idea where everything is.

I've taken steps to reassure myself.

Read more... )

Time for numberwang! It's always fun when my "big counter" ticks up to a milestone:

noombas

This is just for active titles on D2D. I've actually sold over 5,700 books across platforms. My bestselling book has sold 320 copies in like 2 years (and in case you're wondering, YES, it is emphatically one of my stupidest books!). I think I've published 50 books so far, but I delisted the stinkiest ones sales-wise so IDK.

As you can see, even if your books don't sell "a lot," especially up-front, over time it adds up if you keep on truckin'.

I know someone whose recent pen-debut novel sold more copies in one week than I sold from my entire catalog in one year. It would be foolish of me to compare myself to them, even if we were in the same genre doing similar things, because you never really know what's going on under the hood. Even if they TELL you what's going on, you're taking their word for it, not only that they told the truth but that they actually understand what made the difference (oftentimes, we don't unless you've got years of experience in a genre and you keep meticulous records).

You decide what you're asking your pen name to do for you. You decide what's cool. My first year I sold maybe 250 books. I decided 5.7k books in 3 years is cool. YMMV.

Photos: Charleston Food Forest

2025-Jun-21, Saturday 02:03
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[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
These pictures are from Thursday.  I went foraging at the Charleston Food Forest.  It's across the parking lot from the Coles County Community Garden.

Walk with me ... )

Photos: Coles County Community Garden

2025-Jun-21, Saturday 00:16
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
The Coles County Community Garden is across the parking lot from the Charleston Food Forest. It's not the kind where you rent a bed and grow what you want. It's tended by the community and anyone can come pick things to try.

Walk with me ... )
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
We made this tonight. It was delicious! We used some of the pretzel bread that we got at the Marshall Farmer's Market.

Read more... )

Happy Litha!

2025-Jun-20, Friday 20:33
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[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
We did our Litha ritual today.  :D 

Recent Playing: Baldur's Gate 3

2025-Jun-20, Friday 17:33
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[personal profile] rocky41_7 posting in [community profile] gaming
I've fallen into the trap of being so busy playing Baldur's Gate 3 that I haven't had the time to say anything about Baldur's Gate 3 (a problem I've experienced before - which is why I've never yet reviewed My Life as a Teenage Exocolonist). There's also the fact that anyone on the farthest verge of the gaming sphere is aware of this game and has probably already read a least one review of it. Still, I'll throw my thoughts out, for whatever they're worth.
 
2025 has been a strange gaming year for me. Far and away my most anticipated game was Dragon Age: The Veilguard, a game I've waited almost a decade for with baited breath. Baldur's Gate 3 was barely even on my radar—I played a few meager hours of one of Larian's earlier RPGs, Divinity Original Sin 2, which cemented my hatred of turn-based combat and dislike of isometric games. (Which is not a knock on DOS2—it was a very well-done game! Just not for me.) I was not willing to shell out BG3's price for the significant chance that its gameplay would be too frustrating for me to get into the story. Fortunately, my sister handled that issue by gifting it to me for Christmas—a free experiment.
 
In January, as usual, I plunged into my holiday cache of new games, starting with DATV—for more on my disappointment with that, see this review. When I'd quickly burned out on DATV, I turned to BG3, the unknown factor. Admittedly, this game is not optimized for console. Even after its eighth patch, it frequently crashes, particularly in battles with a high number of participants. Its menus and maps are difficult to read at a distance, such as from couch to TV. Its controls can be obtuse as the game tries to cram the huge number of functions onto a controller's limited button scheme. 
 
However, in spite of these flaws, I've been reflecting the last few weeks on how BG3 has nevertheless been so much more fun than DATV, the game I was predisposed to like. What was it, I wondered, that made BG3 more fun? (And sorry--there will be more DA comparisons below.)

Read more... )

Birdfeeding

2025-Jun-20, Friday 17:09
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Today is cloudy and muggy.

I fed the birds.  I've seen a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches.  I also saw a male cardinal and a squirrel up in the trees.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 6/20/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 6/20/25 -- I watered the new picnic table garden.  I picked the first 'Chocolate Sprinkles' tomato and several 'Toscana' strawberries.  I love the Toscanas and will definitely buy more if I see them next spring.

Heat

2025-Jun-20, Friday 13:20
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
[personal profile] readera has a post about heat precautions regarding the heat dome. These are my additions...

Read more... )

Update: Ships and Fandoms unite!

2025-Jun-20, Friday 10:47
liminalovertea: Updates (phone) (phone)
[personal profile] liminalovertea
I recently made a Ship list for the journal (access list only for now, I don't want drama), and realized that I forgot to mention some of the fandoms I enjoy based on that list, so the Fandom list has been updated to reflect the fandoms associated with the ships. 🛳️❤️

Profile

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dorchadas

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