liveonthesun | Reading

My monthly subscribe and save order of cat food arrived and now I have, on hand, more than a month of the same cat food they have loved for a year. And they seem to have fallen out of love with it. Of course. I just wish they had let me know before the order.

Hazel came over yesterday. Mainly I think she just wanted to get out of her apartment and stretch her legs. She didn't stay long. But, she did tell me that her son came to get them this morning and they got a guy from security to come up with a wheel chair for John to go to get blood drawn. They got there and it was closed and only then did they figure out it was today and not yesterday. They are sinking fast. I did get Martha to bring them up a wheelchair to have for a while. She runs a loaner closet where she keeps walkers and wheel chairs and all kinds of paraphernalia. Then Bonny came in for an update. So it was busy-ish. But, fine.

Our mailroom has locked boxes for each apartment for our USPS mail and a cubby for each apartment. The cubbies are not locked and are used for anything - menus, private notes, TR announcements, etc. I have a little fabric pouch on my phone that I carry my mail key in. It's always been annoying because it keeps the phone from lying flat. BUT way more annoying not to have the key when you are in the mailroom. Myrna was always having to make a special trip back home because she forgot her key. A fair number of women carry little purses around with their keys and, of course, men have pockets.

Something came up Saturday when Martha and Bonny and I were chatting about mail keys and Bonny said 'I keep one in the back of my cubby.' GENIUS!!!! She said when she first moved in she saw a woman get hers out of the back of the cubby, open her mail box, and then return the key to the cubby. 'I thought it was a great idea.' Me, too - why the fuck did you wait so long to share it??????

So. That means I now only have to carry my card key. The key that unlocks lock down areas. Like the pool after working hours. If you punch a hole in the card key, it breaks it. I think I can slip it between my phone and the case but my current case is too thin. And I ~~will probably~~, ~~may~~, ~~might~~, ~~could maybe~~, am thinking about getting a new phone when Google makes the next one available in August/September. So I don't want a new case. But, Amazon has one for $4 that will work so ok.

No aqua yoga today which is fine by me. The new guy is way too much inner peace and world saving and not nearly enough stretching. On the up side, his voice doesn't carry well in the pool room so I don't have to hear his crap but still, I'd sure like more good stretching. We rarely have more than two or three people in class and one of them told him the music was distracting. The music was about the only thing interesting and now it's gone. I'm guessing/hoping that soon the class will be, too. I could just quit going but I would love for their to be more water classes so I go to show support and, besides, I was the one who asked for a water stretching class.

I need gas in the car and a trip to the charity shop. I broke my heavy tissue box for the bedroom and I want another and I haven't checked for 'hair' sweaters recently, but I think I might wait until tomorrow when the house cleaner is here.

masterghandalf posting in

das_sporking2

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Current Location: Sanctuary
Current Music: Fog Bound

badly_knitted posting in

get_knitted

Hello to all members, passers-by, curious onlookers, and shy lurkers, and welcome to our regular daily check-in post. Just leave a comment below to let us know how your current projects are progressing, or even if they're not.

Checking in is NOT compulsory, check in as often or as seldom as you want, this community isn't about pressure it's about encouragement, motivation, and support. Crafting is meant to be fun, and what's more fun than sharing achievements and seeing the wonderful things everyone else is creating?

There may also occasionally be questions, but again you don't have to answer them, they're just a way of getting to know each other a bit better.

This Week's Question: What do you like to listen to / watch while crafting?

If anyone has any questions of their own about the community, or suggestions for tags, questions to be asked on the check-in posts, or if anyone is interested in playing check-in host for a week here on the community, which would entail putting up the daily check-in posts and responding to comments, go to the Questions & Suggestions post and leave a comment.

I now declare this Check-In OPEN!

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my desk

sasheneskywalker posting in

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susandennis

And cloudy - that's this morning and it's lovely. I'm beginning to notice incremental day shortness. It's still light at 5 am but not like it was last month. It's still light at 9 pm but not like was last month. Progress.

Yesterday was just a lovely day of OMG-I-am-so-lucky-to-live-here. It just slaps me upside the head sometimes in the most wonderful way.

Today I had nothing on the agenda until I got a text from Richard (one of my volleyball buds and husband of Martha) asking if I would be willing to take him to Costco today to get a new battery for his car. Happy to. He says it will take an hour. Richard is one of those guys who has his own way of doing things and that is coupled by his extreme thrift. He spent his life teaching and then managing teachers of special education. In fact, turns out, one of the teachers he managed years ago, was Jan - the woman who just moved into Myrna's apartment!

So I'll meet him out at the elbow at 10. He has exceedingly long legs. It will be fun to watch them fold into the Smart Car.

Last week, when I took Martha to Fred Meyers, we stopped at Krispy Kreme and I took some mini donuts to elbow coffee. Everyone oood and awed at the donuts and I explained that they had Martha to thank and then they oood and awed at Martha "you got to ride in the little car???!!!" It was pretty funny.

We'll be home in time for baseball. The Mariners beat Houston in a walk off long after I was asleep.

Guess I'd better get dressed. And I need to put in a load of laundry and unload the dishwasher.

porcelainlamb posting in

addme

Name: Bizette

Age: 20

I mostly post about: My characters, my art, my life, and just whatever interests me that day.

My hobbies are: Making art, HTML, anime and manga, video games, writing, listening to music, talking with friends, cycling, reading comics, daydreaming and baking.

My fandoms are: None tbh, but I guess I'm part of the glamfur and sparkledog scenes :P

I'm looking to meet people who: Chill folk who can handle my cheesiness, fellow glamfur/sparkledog or even animecore artists who like RPing, other lesbians and gays, and mature individuals who can engage in good faith.

My posting schedule tends to be: Daily and weekly for the most part due to not having a life, lol

When I add people, my dealbreakers are: Fandom/flavour-of-the-month/fanfiction posting, constant politics talk or arguing about politics, YouTube spam, homophobes and lesbophobes, bigots of all stripes, bad grammar and spelling, inactive accounts/blank journals, Twitter/TikTok types, white saviour types, religious weirdos, gooners/porn addicts, AI "art" bros, and wannabe edgy lords/mean girls (this ain't 4Chan, blud!).

Before adding me, you should know: I'm a black woman with ADHD and Dyslexia; so please be patient with me and try not to be randomly racist lmao. I do post vents, but only when I feel it's appropriate. I'm basically always free to chat; so feel free to message me :D, I do have an edgy sense of humour, but I'm smart enough to tone it down if needed, I'm based in the UK - so I might not see your message immediately if you're in a different timezone, and please avoid labelling me a furry :/

Current Mood: giddy

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Current Mood: accomplished
Current Location: Debriefing For The Next Crusade

silvercat17 posting in

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susandennis

Volleyball was very good today. An excellent number of people and no assholes. Elbow Coffee was pretty good, too. Last night I hit on the idea of using it to unravel sweaters. So I took my sweaters and my vacuum (cause unraveling makes a huge mess of little yarn bits) and unraveled while we coffeed. I thought one or two might want to join in but they did not which was fine. They enjoyed watching me and it was good conversation.

Last night I watched my first Mariner game of the season and it really was fun. When the broadcasters started saying stupid shit, I just hit mute until after the commercial and then turned the sound back on. It worked fine, plus I had closed captioning on anyway. At bedtime, I watched more on my tablet while listening to my book in bed. Glad I spent the $25.

My neighbor across the hall - the Jim who moved in a month after I did - is declining pretty fast. Physically he's fine. Mentally, he's melting. His doctor has told him he cannot drive any more. And he's apparently going to take the advice. He asked me this morning if I'd help him sell his car. He has a Tesla. I just 'chatted' with the local Ford dealership and they will buy it. Yes, I know there are many more ways and he could get lots more money with some of the other ways but... the point is to make the car belong to someone else. That is the only point. So I'm going to suggest the way that is easiest. I may have to end up driving it myself.

Living with old people is a constantly changing environment, that is for absolute sure.

Now I need to go find a remote. I have this wall clock that needs the time changed and taking it down would probably involve wall repair so I need to find the damn remote. It's not in the obvious places so I need to start on the non obvious places. Sigh.

badly_knitted posting in

get_knitted

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my desk

rocky41_7

I first read The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison last year, but I never got around to reviewing it, in part because I didn't know what to say about it. My friends had loved it, and while I'd found it enjoyable, I was still percolating on what I liked (or didn't!) about it. Listening to The Witness for the Dead, a book in the same universe, got me thinking about TGE again, so this month I gave it a re-read. This time, it all clicked.

This book is truly such an enjoyable read. The basics of Maia's tale are not unfamiliar—a seeming nobody is thrust into a position of power no one ever expected them to have—but Addison puts her own fascinating spin on it. It has the same feeling I got from The Witness for the Dead, where the story prioritizes doing the right thing and many if not most of the characters in it are striving to be good people (whatever that means for them). It makes a nice contrast to the very selfish, dark fantasy where you know from the start every character is just in it for themselves (and I do enjoy those too, not to say one is better than other!) The protagonist Maia in particular is put in any number of positions where he could misuse his power for personal gratification—such as imprisoning or executing his abusive former guardian, Setheris—but he, with conscious effort, chooses differently. That is not the kind of person—not the kind of emperor—Maia wants to be. And honestly—there is very gratifying fantasy, particularly today, in the idea of someone obtaining power and being committed to some kind of principles of proper governance, of having some code of honor above their own personal enrichment.

As a longtime Tolkien fan, Addison's focus on fantasy titles and linguistics was delightful to me, even if it kept me flipping back to the opening pages on pronunciations (adored the use of the formal singular "we" and the you/thou differentiation). The various layers of manners, societal expectations, customs, and practicalities with which Addison builds up the elven court makes for such a rich and realistic picture of a fantasy court. You can just imagine how the court's current processes built up over centuries, and Addison does a great job of using the characters around Maia—who are far more familiar with these things—to help define them. Not through infodumping, but through their own reactions and behavior, which create a firm outline of customs and expectations with which Maia and the reader are completely unfamiliar.

And Addison's characters stand out. She pays particular attention to giving details or characterization even to passing minor characters, which serves both to flesh out the court, and to indicate the attention Maia pays to those around him. While a reader—particularly a first-time reader—may be a little baffled by the jumble of fantasy names, I doubt anyone will be mistaking Cala for Beshelar for Kiru, even though they all serve the same function within the story (Maia's ever-present bodyguards). It's clear what a three-dimensional picture she has of this world in her own mind, and I think she does a wonderful job of letting the reader in on that picture.

They're all layered, too. Despite Maia's efforts to be good, he's not a perfect person—he has his own selfish and childish impulses to reign in. Two characters who would have been the easiest for Addison to paint black and white—Maia's father, Varenechibel, who exiled Maia's then-17-year-old mother from court because he disliked her—and Maia's guardian from age eight, his drunkard cousin Setheris—she instead takes time to show had other sides, too. Even the heart of the conspiracy to down the airship whose crash instigates Maia's rise to power by killing everyone else who would have taken the throne before him is given sympathy and rationality, never made into simple hateful caricatures whose downfall we can cheer unreservedly.

I was further charmed by the eventual choice of Maia's future empress, who is allowed to be both passionate and flawed, and who is specifically noted to be physically unattractive. Fantasy as much as romance is often filled to the brim with heart-stoppingly beautiful princesses and queens and warrior women, so it's always nice to see something else. This empress to be may not be beautiful, but I do believe she's the best woman for the job, and that she, like Maia, will do her best.

Then there's the politics! I've said it before, I'll go on saying it: I love fantasy politics. All the fun and thrill of politics with none of the real-world stakes or consequences! I've seen this book described (lovingly) as a story where "nothing happens," but much of what's happening is politics. Maia is not only dropped into a role he wasn't remotely prepared for—he's dropped into a group of people all of whom had/have their own goals and schemes ongoing, and a significant part of Maia's introduction to court is having to figure these things out. Just as there are many keen to rid themselves of an inexperienced and potentially useless emperor, there are many equally eager to find a way to make a potentially pliable and ignorant emperor sing their tune. Addison's writing is very strong here; she balances a number of factions within various parts of the court, and their roles and positions are logical and believable. In fact, one of Maia's strongest skills proves to be his ability to trace a person's opinion or attitude down to its root, and then use that to reach understanding with them.

On the whole, this is such a lovely book, and I'm so glad I bought the copy I have so that it was available for a quick re-read. I will definitely read it again in the future, and I will proceed with the rest of the trilogy about Thara Celehar (who appears here as a side character). I just love the world that Addison has created, and I want to live in it a little longer if I can.

Current Mood: happy

dustandhoney posting in

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Name: Patch
Age: 34

I mostly post about:
Quiet living, books with margin notes, tea blends, visible mending, soft rituals, and the small things that anchor a day — light through curtains, a sentence that stays with you, a note Rae once wrote.

My hobbies are:
Reading (especially secondhand or annotated books), mending clothes by hand, brewing tea like it’s a spell, walking in the woods, archiving, journalling, and noticing the in-between moments.

My fandoms are:
Discworld (especially the witches), gentle fantasy, soft folklore, The Last Unicorn, Stardew Valley, and anything that feels like wool and wonder.

I'm looking to meet people who:
Love longform blogging, notice quiet details, have soft rituals of their own, and enjoy the kind of friendship that builds slowly and kindly over time.

My posting schedule tends to be:
Weekly-ish — sometimes more if I’m feeling thoughtful or tea-drowsy.

When I add people, my dealbreakers are:
Cruelty masked as “honesty,” bigotry, mockery, or a lack of care for the softer parts of others.

Before adding me, you should know:
I’m quiet and sentimental, I tag generously, and I write as if I’m tucking things away in a drawer. Rae (she/her) appears often in my posts — she’s someone I love, even if I rarely say it aloud. If you like slow friendships and soft mornings, I’d be glad to meet you.

mific posting in

fancake

Fandoms: Stargate: SG-1, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Characters/Pairings: Jack O'Neill, Teal'c, Sam Carter, Daniel Jackson, Sarah Connor, Cameron, John Connor
Rating: Gen
Length: 1886
Creator Links: cofax on AO3
Themes: Working together, Action/adventure, Crossover, Time travel, Teams, Robots and Androids

Summary: SG-1 meets a very intense woman with two heavily-armed teenagers in a warehouse in Modesto.

Reccer's Notes: A short fic about Sarah Connor's team helping Jack's team while on a mission in the past, dealing with a Terminator. Gripping action - and an intriguing and worrying AU in terms of the future of this crossover Earth. As Jack says: "That's just ... great." (Need to log in to AO3 to read it)

Fanwork Links: Temporary Alliances

yourlibrarian posting in

common_nature

Our destination for day 2 was Hood River. We loved this spot, both because of the view and the convenience of its location, parking and our rooms over the breakfast area.

This photo was the view from one of our rooms. It was not only a pretty view but one that changed all day long, as people at the inlet end point took kayaking, paddleboard and canoeing classes. I'd never seen a motorized paddleboard before but they were in use too, along with jet skis out on the river and parasailers.

We also got to watch birds diving for food, and trains and cargo barges go by on the river. We even saw a cruise ship once!

( Read more... )

rocky41_7

Oof. Today I threw in the towel on Margaret Killjoy's The Sapling Cage because I'd rather be alone with my thoughts than sit through another three hours of this book. This is a fantasy book about a "boy," Lorel, who disguises herself as her female friend to join a witches' coven (She's a transgirl, but her journey on that understanding is part of the book, and she refers to herself as a boy for much of the story.)

First, I will say that I think Lorel is a protagonist written with love; clearly Killjoy wanted her to be relatable and sympathetic, and someone eager for a trans fantasy protag may be willing to forgive the book's many weaknesses for that. That said...

I was shocked to realize this book is not categorized as Young Adult/Youth literature. Lorel is 16 at the start of the book and she's very sixteen. She makes all the sorts of stupid, immature mistakes you would expect from a teenager, which makes her a realistic character, but also deeply frustrating to read as an adult, particularly since the first-person narration puts us right in her head. The book feels young even for a sixteen-year-old; it reads more like a preteen novel about teenagers.

The book itself feels incredibly juvenile, both in prose and in narrative. The writing is simplistic, the narrative barely there, and the worldbuilding painfully thin. The book infodumps on the reader constantly, going into detail about things that are then never relevant again and don't connect into any kind of overarching picture of what this world is like. Reads very much like the author just throwing a bunch of things she thought were cool at the reader without actually thinking about how they would impact her world or the characters in them.

The opening chapters were a warning, because it was exactly the kind of rushing through the necessary set-up to get to the plot the author's actually interested in that I might have written when I was sixteen. Lorel comes up with this (allegedly very dangerous) plan to take her friend's place, convinces both her friend and her mom this is okay, and gets the boot out the door at lightning speed. Where the author might have taken time to thoughtfully build up the world Lorel lives in and what she's seeking or giving up by seeking witchhood, she clearly can't wait to get to the witches, and so skips over the rest of that stuff.

It's not even clear why witches exist or what they do besides run around and get chased out of places. At 68%, the entire story has been has been the witches walking from one place to another, being unwelcome, and having some random little dangerous encounter which is resolved in a page or two. Not only do they have no plan for dealing with the individuals or organization causing the blight at the center of the plot, they also seem to have no plan for improving their PR or for dealing with the "whelps" (pre-apprentice stage witches, where Lorel starts out) or any organization to their group at all. They seem to just wander around the world following magical sources with no goals, plans, or purposes. There's barely even a dim philosophy holding them together. All of this makes it a little baffling why any parent is promising their kid to the witches, which is the case for most of the whelps.

There are also other groups: "knights" of various branches who stand in near-universal opposition to witches, and "brigands" who seem to be highwaymen. Killjoy must have wanted to establish some balancing dynamic between them, but it just comes off like sorting characters into factions (This character wants to be a Knight, this character wants to be a Witch, etc.) as shorthand for having to get into that character's personality or worldview. Although the knights are frequently presented as enemies of the witches, we learn basically nothing about them (except that Lorel's best friend has joined them, which seems like it should cause some conflict between them, but it doesn't), and the brigands are treated as some group akin to knights or witches, rather than a synonym for "criminal," which is a pretty broad term.

The teenage whelps do a lot of dumb things, but the witches also consistently fail to adequately prepare them for the various dangers they encounter. I realize they're supposed to be tough mentor types, and that tracks with the dangerous lives witches lead here, but they come off remarkably irresponsible to their charges. They also seem to prioritize physical combat above anything else they could be teaching the whelps, for reasons they never explain, and the whelps seem as often a burden to the witches as the next generation of witches themselves.

The inter-character relationships are very predictable, you can see the whole outline of them from the very beginning, and nothing happened that was surprising. The characters themselves are flat and shallow and there's very little variation between them, and certainly not in their speaking style. I could not identify anything about the fellow whelps, except Didey who is the mean one and Araneigh (she will always be RNA to this audiobook listener) who is the one Lorel has a crush on.

The majority of conflicts set up are solved almost immediately, with the exception of the main plot about the blight and the issue of Lorel's gender identity, which makes it grow tiring to encounter some new problem which you know will be over shortly. These are often the opportunity for Killjoy to introduce some fantastical creature which will never matter again outside of this one scene and whose existence does not figure into any cohesive worldbuilding. (And for a very minor, worldbuilding-related nitpick, how does Lorel know what "adrenaline" is? The technology of this world is at a medieval level at most.)

I also hated the audiobook narration. I've never disliked one so much before that it was distracting me from the story, but here we are. The narrator uses a phenomenally grating flat and nasally voice for many of the characters, and is prone to trailing off into a near-whisper, which makes managing the volume a pain. She also mumbles: I couldn't tell if Lorel's fellow whelp was "Hex," "Pex," "Ex" or something else for several chapters, and it wasn't until over 60% through the book I realized the name of Lorel's hometown was "Leadston" not "Ludston." Thought she was just mispronouncing "dame" the entire time until reviews revealed the witches' titles are actually "Dam So-and-so."

It has some nice messaging about growing into yourself and accepting your differences and learning to get along with others, but so do a lot of other books that are better-written.

This was a very disappointing book, and I will be avoiding anything else from this author going forward. Possibly when I was a teenager I would have found it entertaining, but I'm not sure even then. It just feels so very hollow.

Crossposted to

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booknook , and

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susandennis

When Scott and Julie were here, we were studying the map - the route they were about to take. I noticed that they were skirting Iowa near the teensy little town where my nephew lives. So I said, wouldn't it be fun if you were to pop into his town and deliver him something from me!

Mistake 1 was not studying the map carefully enough. It was three hours out of their way and a very boring three hours. But, once the idea came out of my mouth, they were determined. And nothing I could say would dissuade them.

My brother gave me two wonderful, meaningful jigsaw puzzles. He had them made especially for me. I had solved them both so sending them was perfect. When I need them back, to solve again, I know right where to find them. So into a Chico bag I had on hand and into their car and off to Iowa.

My nephew bought a house a few months ago and moved. I had new new address but, since Google has contact info in about 15 places, I didn't get the change in the right place and gave Scott and Julie the wrong address. They delivered with pictorial proof.

So I sent my nephew a text with the photo and told him he needs to clean up that crap off his porch.

This is how I found out I'd fucked up the address. ARUGH. His response was, 'no prob, I'll pop over and pick it up now!' followed quickly by 'oh shit, I forgot that I walked to work.' He called the people who live in his old house and they secured it and he picked it up after work.

He liked the puzzles a lot and was delighted at the creativity. And then nothing. I waited as long as I could stand it and finally said

"no questions about how the package got there?????????????????"

"Oh yeah, come to think of it... how?" OMG

He was impressed but he did want to make sure I told them the mess on the porch wasn't his.

kind of a fun goat rodeo.

kingstoken posting in

fancake

Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairings/Characters: Twelve/Missy/Jack
Rating: M
Length: 11,681 words
Creator Links: Trobadora
Theme: Working Together, time travel

Summary: This is what it takes to hold together what has been sheared apart.
Or: The Doctor, Jack Harkness and Missy encounter a weapon from the Time War.

Reccer's Notes: Jack visits the Doctor to berate him for releasing the Master from the vault. While he's there, something terrible is happening to time itself. The Doctor and Missy have to work together with Jack's help to stabilize their timeline. The author does such a great job showing you these little snippets of possible timelines, and giving you just enough that you want to know more. There is a sex scene between the three of them, but it makes sense in the context of story, and is about so much more than just sex. If you like Twelve and Missy and have always wanted to see what it would have been like to throw Jack into the mix, then please read this one.

Fanwork Links: Ao3

badly_knitted posting in

get_knitted

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my desk

a merry sunshine

overstock>over it

The Scrolls of the Ancients: Chapter Forty-Eight, Chapter Forty-Nine, and Chapter Fifty

Check-In Post - July 20th 2025

DC: Jason Todd-centric Exchange 2025

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Thousand Shinji, Final Thoughts (For Those We Despise, Die In Ignominy)

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Check-In Post - July 19th 2025

Recent Reading: The Goblin Emperor

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SG-1/Terminator: Temporary Alliances by cofax

Hood River

Recent Reading: The Sapling Cage

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It was a great idea, but...

Doctor Who: Shear Force by Trobadora

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