Writing About Fireworks

2025-Jul-04, Friday 15:09
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
In honor of the Fourth of July, here are a few tidbits to enjoy.

Today's Adventures 6/28/25 -- We bought fireworks for our home show, and we watched the show in Tolono.

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Birdfeeding

2025-Jul-04, Friday 14:50
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Today is mostly sunny and hot.

I fed the birds.  I've seen a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches plus a mourning dove.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 7/4/25 -- I checked the south lot and put topsoil in a few low spots, prior to our fireworks show tonight.

EDIT 7/4/25 -- I picked up a trough pot that fell off the old picnic table, restored the curry plant and purple basil as best I could, then watered them and a few other things in the house yard.

EDIT 7/4/25 -- I sowed 6 pots with mulberry seeds.  Half are from a particularly pleasing mulberry sapling near the west end of the old fishpond, the other half from a mulberry that was left on the porch step as if a gift.

EDIT 7/4/25 -- I watered the telephone pole garden and a few seedlings in the savanna.

My partner Doug mowed the ritual meadow and prairie paths.





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The Phases of Not Writing

2025-Jul-04, Friday 07:53
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[personal profile] renegadefolkhero

The writer does well to intimately familiarize themselves with the phases of not-writing, so they can identify the portents. I have three.

  1. Doesn't Want to Write (But Does Anyway)
  2. Doesn't Want to Write (Does Everything Else) a.k.a Blocked
  3. Burnout (💀)

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Anyway, I'm at #2. The blogging engine is going great, thanks for asking!

As for my book, I'm (As of this moment) 80/20 this is a legacy problem. This is my 3rd attempt to write this book, and I've changed a lot as a writer and now I'm pivoting aggressively away from romance (both for personal and practical reasons, and that's a later post lalalala) so there are things that need to be recalibrated. I'll get to it, after I'm done playing with my toys! skips away into coding wonderland

lovelyangel: (Yukinon Wow)
[personal profile] lovelyangel
While there are still a few weeks before we actually begin construction work, I’m having to relocate my existing bookcases – some will be repurposed and some will be given away (probably to ReStore).

The first step is to pack up all the books. It’s like moving, and I hate moving.

ExpandPhotos, Below This Cut )
ysabetwordsmith: A blue sheep holding a quill dreams of Dreamwidth (Dreamsheep)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Today's theme is Historical Fiction.

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Got this little card today

2025-Jul-04, Friday 00:27
fennectik: Meowscarada (Meowscarada)
[personal profile] fennectik posting in [community profile] gaming
So I opened another pack from that Pokemon TCG app and it gave me this



What a nice addition. Already have a MewTwo card so this is getting better as I go along.

In fact, using Mew seems easier than MewTwo giving how little orbs it takes to use the card in comparison. It also gives the option to mimic an attack from your opponent's card they currently have in battle. Quite a nice little card overall.

I like Mew just as well.

Library Status Update #1: A Chronology

2025-Jul-03, Thursday 19:47
lovelyangel: (Chibi Homura)
[personal profile] lovelyangel
Library / Kitchen Floor Plan, Proposed
Library / Kitchen Floor Plan, Proposed
Extracted from my requirements / vision proposal

At the start of 2025 I vowed to finally restart the home library remodel that got put on hold when the pandemic began in 2020. The interior designer I had selected had moved from Portland to California, and I basically had to start over.

Instead of describing everything in detail, I’m simply listing the chronology of events. Excluded is all the email correspondence I’ve had with my designer, Hannah Lichtenthaler at Allison Smith Design. Also, for now, I’m skipping over all the design decisions. In short, here’s how I got to where we are today:

Library Remodel, Chronology of Events
Library Remodel, Chronology of Events
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
FireSmart Canada is pleased to release Blazing the Trail: Celebrating Indigenous Fire
Stewardship
, a beautiful, bound publication that recognizes the contributions to wildfire
prevention of Indigenous communities in Canada
.

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Birdfeeding

2025-Jul-03, Thursday 14:49
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Today is partly sunny and hot.

I fed the birds. I refilled the thistle feeder. I've seen a large mixed flock of sparrows and house finches plus a male cardinal.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 7/3/25 -- I took a few more pictures around the yard, mostly flowers at the end of the driveway.

EDIT 7/3/25 -- I dug up three pots of wild senna and one of purple echinacea that had seeded themselves in the savanna, hopefully to transplant them elsewhere if they survive.

I've seen a pair of mourning doves and a gray catbird. I also saw a very large bird, possibly a vulture or eagle, flying over the field to the west.

EDIT 7/3/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 7/3/25 -- We hooked up the new, flat water hose. The "non-kinking" label is a complete lie; it is the most prone to kinking of any hose I've ever used. Straightening it out enough to work is a bitch. However, it is extremely lightweight and completely flexible, so those are pluses. Also the multifunction water wand is by far the best nozzles I've ever used. I favor with "shower" and "flat" functions the most. The new picnic table garden and septic garden have been thoroughly watered.

EDIT 7/3/25 -- I watered the old picnic table garden and the plants in the house yard.

The corn is tasseling. The pollen hangs heavy on the wind with a sweet, dusty, buttery, golden smell.

Fireflies are coming out.

I saw a skunk in the house yard. I've seen a squirrel at the hopper feeder.

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

Climate Change

2025-Jul-03, Thursday 14:45
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
When rainforests died, the planet caught fire: New clues from Earth’s greatest extinction

When Siberian volcanoes kicked off the Great Dying, the real climate villain turned out to be the rainforests themselves: once they collapsed, Earth’s biggest carbon sponge vanished, CO₂ rocketed, and a five-million-year heatwave followed. Fossils from China and clever climate models now link that botanical wipe-out to runaway warming, hinting that losing today’s tropical forests could lock us in a furnace we can’t easily cool.


I pointed this out decades ago and nobody listened. Now here we are. But hey, someone could roll up this newspaper and beat Brazil with it.

I swear I'm on it...🙏🏻📖

2025-Jul-03, Thursday 09:52
liminalovertea: Updates (phone) (phone)
[personal profile] liminalovertea
It's been a bit of a wild week. I'm finally getting some of my ideas down as fiction, and my wife is challenging me to write at least 2 pages a day for a potential novel or serial.

For me? That's a lot of spoons unless I ramp myself up to it. 🥄 But I want it enough to dedicate a couple hours a day to getting that done.

The book annotations/reactions have taken a bit of a backseat as a result, but I do intend to do that as well--I enjoy it, it's the current IV of nuance that keeps my motivation up. I just need to come up with a more efficient method of note-taking, quoting and turning that into commentary. My current project is a library book, so I need to get that thing read before I have to return it.

I have no idea how many times the library will let me renew...  


I'll definitely be making some re-assessments this weekend. 📆

Weather's cooled down a bit, that's nice

2025-Jul-05, Saturday 19:29
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
Moonpie's foot looks better, we didn't end up having to take her for an x-ray at all.

************************


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ysabetwordsmith: Damask smiling over their shoulder (polychrome)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Thanks to a donation from [personal profile] fuzzyred, you can now read the rest of "In the Heart of the Hidden Garden."  Lawrence gives Stan a tour of two more buildings and two more gardens -- and then explains why.

Bleeding

2025-Jul-04, Friday 17:02
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
Ugh

*****************************


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Birdfeeding

2025-Jul-02, Wednesday 16:20
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Today is mostly sunny and warm.

I fed the birds.  I've seen a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches.  Robins are foraging in the short grass that my partner Doug mowed yesterday in the house yard.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 7/2/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 7/2/25 -- I took some pictures around the yard.

EDIT 7/2/25 -- I watered the old picnic table, new picnic table, and telephone pole gardens.

Fireflies are out.  Cicadas are singing.

EDIT 7/2/25 -- I watered the septic garden.

I've seen a bat over the south lot, which also got mowed today.

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

conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
There will be no other end of the world,
There will be no other end of the world.

Warsaw, 1944


***


Link

Fandom: The Point of Roleplaying Games

2025-Jul-02, Wednesday 11:32
liminalovertea: Purple and pink clouds. (Default)
[personal profile] liminalovertea

"These games just let you become the head of every guild and faction in the game without consequences, it's SO unrealistic!"



Look, if you want to play out your BORING CLEFT-CHIN HUMAN WARRIOR GIGA-CHAD power fantasy in Skyrim and become the head of every guild and faction on the same character, that's your business...but if you were role-playing a specific character of a specific build with a specific personality, would they realistically put in that much effort?

Probably not! 

Why would they? That's a lot of work to put into entities that have NOTHING TO DO with your gameplay style or your character's interests.

Imagination, discernment and reason are key here.

Something I miss from early-to-mid Elder Scrolls games is that they had faction politics. In TES3: Morrowind, if you joined the Mage's Guild, the Dunmer Temple and House Telvanni HATED your guts! There were consequences to your faction choices.

Can we bring back actual consequences, Bethesda? PLEASE? OTHER than Survival Mode? 🙄

June Book Roundup

2025-Jul-02, Wednesday 08:18
unicornduke: (Default)
[personal profile] unicornduke

Read
  • Activation Degradation by Marina J. Lostetter - excellent sci-fi book, some very fucked up stuff, very good. Library e-book
  • The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera - my god this book was incredible. wild. so vivid. just so good. the narrator was excellent as well. library audiobook
  • The Siren, the Song and the Spy by Maggie Tokuda-Hall - extremely interesting worldbuilding, neato plot, lots of queer people and mermaids. packs a lot into a novelette. library e-book
  • When Gods Die by C.S Harris - second in the series, decent murder mystery. physical library book
  • Greenteeth by Molly O'Neil - omg I loved this so much. the narrator was very good, there is epic quests and friendship and aaaaaa. library audiobook
  • Deadbeat Druid by David R. Slayton - it's really been too long since I read the first two in the series, so I didn't actually remember any of the plot. decent anyway. library e-book
  • To Shape A Dragon's Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose - holy shit you guys, this book was really good. very "this person stands up against the colonial power and succeeds" but it was really cool world building and very enjoyable to read. library e-book
  • The Incandescent by Emily Tesh - extremely extremely good. lots of british private school nonsense but that's easily skimmable. plot got extremely good. library e-book
Re-read
  • Uprooted by Naomi Novik - more intense than I remembered, very good. physical library book
DNF
  • Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil - clearly going for Pratchett style humor, not actually my jam and half of the jokes are in footnotes which don't work well on my phone to click. library e-book
  • The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen by KJ Charles - not the author's fault, but I'm pretty sure the audiobook was being read by a computer. There were really weird pauses in the middle of sentences that shouldn't be there and I couldn't get through five minutes of it. Really weird. library audiobook

Problem-Solving

2025-Jul-02, Wednesday 02:19
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
New study backs up 'sleeping on it,' suggesting naps promote creative problem-solving

All groups improved in the dot-sorting test after their nap, but 85.7% of those who achieved the first deeper sleep phase — called N2 sleep — had the breakthrough.

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