Thursday, July 17th, 2025 12:09 pm
I do realize that #irfanview is a fairly obscure tag that I used a lot recently on tumblr, so I guess you could say I gamed the system. But I was a bit surprised to see that somehow one of my pictures is currently "the" picture for the irfanview tag? (It's the freeware program I use to edit my photos and make blue frames around everything that doesn't move and even around some things that do)



How did that happen? It's not that I object, and the picture is clickable and leads to the post its from and it's attributed and all that. It's effectively the same as getting reblogged. But it's like, if it's a reblog I get my notice. Here, I got nothing. Is this something I agreed to in the ToS?
Wednesday, July 16th, 2025 10:30 pm
- As mentioned, I signed up for [community profile] battleshipex. I guess this was a good decision(??), becuase I've now written 8400 words across six fics in the past six days. That plus an impulsive art piece meant I capped out for board 1, which feels like absolute crazypants. I hope I like the fics okay when I go back and edit them...

I might be a little burned out now. If my team reaches board 2 before I leave for my trip, then maybe I will feel like writing a couple more things, but if not, that's also fine. I've more than doubled my participation the other year I played, so!

- I continue to play Cult of the Lamb. It's so fricking cute. I've beat the main boss and am now indulging in the extras like sending my cute followers to the mating tent where they make eggs that hatch into more cute followers. My only complaint is that the music is extremely repetitive, just one samey jingle for the home base and another for combat.

- The Oasis tour has started, and I've been trying to avoid hearing too much about it, but I DID have friends sending me tons of photos and videos from the first couple of nights, and they hugged?? Noel CRIED????? They walked out together, and Liam took Noel's hand and lifted it like he was a prizefighter? Have I mentioned Noel CRIED.

The first gig was July 4, which meant I was getting all this at the same time I was trying to be social at a cookout.
Me on the outside: So you finished that degree? Congratulations!
Me on the inside: OH MY GODDDDDDD THEY HUGGGGGGED.

I peeked at the forum around that time, and everyone there was absolutely euphoric. Cannot WAIT to see it all for myself! SOON.
Thursday, July 17th, 2025 12:02 am
Today was certainly a day. Well, technically yesterday at this point since it's a few minutes after midnight, but still. I haven't gone to bed yet, so we'll just call it "today" and be done with it.

More under the cut. )

And once I get out of the shower, I have something like five or six more things that I have to get done online before I go to bed despite it already being after midnight. I'm going to have so much fun in a few hours when I need to get up early to take care of some things before work. 🙃
Wednesday, July 16th, 2025 08:04 pm
1. Well, the door repair guys did not come today, but they rescheduled for next Tuesday, which is at least not that far away. And I still took my day off, since I'd already said I was going to, so that was nice.

2. This morning I broke a glass bottle in the sink and got a couple small cuts on my hand and one bigger one on my finger, but thankfully it's not "going to the hospital" level. Rather than being a slice, it seems to have cut a little chunk out, so it was bleeding a lot and awkward to bandage. It's my right hand, but my second to last finger, so not a finger I use a whole lot.

3. Since the guys cancelled on us we were able to go to Disneyland earlier, which meant less traffic and less heat (though it was still warm and sunny). We had a really lovely lunch at a restaurant we haven't eaten at in ages.

4. Ollie tongue!

Wednesday, July 16th, 2025 05:20 pm
We ended up going down to the park earlier than planned since the door repair guys had to cancel on us. Bummed about them having to reschedule but I was very glad to get an earlier start.

Read more... )
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Wednesday, July 16th, 2025 07:58 am
smaller plot bunny banner



How's everyone doing? I'm having a devil of a time with a particular WIP. I seem to have let myself be distracted by other things (reading fanfic, re-reading Murderbot, procrastinating in general--omg even vacuuming).

Why is it so hard to just open the folder and work on it? I like the story, and I like where it's going. But I'm at a point where decisions must be made to move forward.

Decision fatigue is definitely a thing.

How's everyone else doing?
Tuesday, July 15th, 2025 09:18 pm
1. I had two meetings today but both went quicker than I thought they would.

2. The guys are coming to fix the back door tomorrow (they got the part in that they needed to order), so I decided to take the day off and then we can go to Disneyland afterwards for lunch or dinner.

3. Gemma is very put out at being interrupted.

Monday, July 14th, 2025 09:45 pm
Authors have revealed!

I wrote: everybody's on the run, Cuckoo (2024), Ed/Gretchen and Gretchen & Alma, post-canon, 2k. This fic was a surprise. I matched on Creator's Choice of Fandom, which meant I could write whateverfandom I wanted, and fresh off finishing my 20k Re-Animator fic, I planned to write more Re-Animator. I came up with several ideas, managed to write a solid 1100 words on one, and just completely stalled out. Instead I wrote this entire fic on the day of the deadline.

I think it turned out okay, though! I enjoyed this movie so much when I saw it earlier this year, especially the messy worldbuilding, and the ending is very wish-fulfillment, I feel, for a certain kind of viewer (which I guess I am, lol). It was fun to try to imagine what the immediate aftermath of everything might look like for these three.

Meanwhile, I received: You, Me, and the Serum Makes Three, Re-Animator, by [archiveofourown.org profile] psychomachia. Dan/Herbert, mpreg, 3k. Absolute galaxy-brained way to knock Dan up, A+. Just a very fun series of relationship development and pregnancy vignettes.
Monday, July 14th, 2025 08:53 pm
1. Back to work today. Not too much going on. I got stuff done and was able to get home at a decent time, so that was nice.

2. When Carla was in Chicago she saw the Mitsuwa there was selling Tokyo Banana, which is really hard to get outside of Japan. She regretted not buying any, and didn't see it at Mitsuwa here, but when I googled, I saw people saying H-Mart was selling it, so she went to H-Mart today and they had it in stock! Alas, we'll have to wait until next year in Japan to have the sakura version again, since that's seasonal, but I'm sure the original will be just as delicious (we actually didn't try the original in Japan because the sakura one was too good and we just bought more of that instead).

3. Lately everyone loves to hide in this box. Only one I haven't seen using it is Jasper.

Monday, July 14th, 2025 08:33 pm
We've now played four half-day sessions of our "Stars Without Number" campaign and I'm having a lot of fun.

Our party owns and operates a mining ship, and our first two sessions featured quite a bit of asteroid mining, and also a rescue mission and exploration. Then the space pirates attacked! Not us directly but the space station we are currently based at, so we helped fight them off. And then our latest session was mostly shopping & intel gathering & planning: it sounds like there's an entire fleet of pirates, likely from outside the system, and they've sabotaged and possibly taken over several stations/planets/routes. We'll find out more next time!, which sadly won't be until September because of vacations.

I really like my character. I'm a teleporter! (Talk about wish fulfillment.) Partial psychic/partial expert, because I thought being a full psychic would be overwhelming and I was mostly interested in one discipline anyway. Being able to teleport is so cool. I can teleport 1000 kilometres already and take three people with me.
I'm also really happy with my role in the party. In our main campaign I'm the youngest cat in a group of older and more headstrong cats, which I found difficult sometimes. This time I decided to play a character with more authority, and I've enjoyed it a lot. While all of our party members own the ship together and have equal say, on the bridge I'm the captain; and more importantly, I'm the one keeping track of our money and inventory. (Idk why our GM was surprised that I made a budget and business plan after the first session ^^ )
Our DM told us to prepare back-up characters in case we die, and I did, but I really hope I survive. I even ordered a nice mini figure for her :) As a party I think we've good odds of survival: we have a medic, a biopsionic (=healer), and I can teleport us out in emergencies. Fingers crossed.

I also really enjoy the system, both the setting and mechanically. Playing in a sci-fi world is a welcome contrast after around three years playing in a fantasy world as cats. And playing someone with supernatural abilities feels especially cool after three years as a non-magical archer.
One thing I didn't expect to enjoy this much is leveling up. In our previous system we earn adventure points and we can spend those on improving abilities/skills/etc., but it's more gradual, which tbh makes more sense in-universe. Buuut, leveling up just feels cool. Especially when I can pick new abilities.
What I like less is how ship combat works. So far it's been a little tedious as it seems like half the party always has very little to do; but I suspect that's also because our combat options as a mining ship are limited. We'll see how it goes. We just upgraded our weapons because of the pirates.

Once again our GM has underestimated how long it'll take us to get through his plot so we'll have to see how far we get/what happens when our fifth cat comes back from her year abroad. But until then I really look forward to our next adventures.
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Monday, July 14th, 2025 02:52 pm
I was at the gym this morning using the lat pull down machine that's in the free weight section. I'd done two reps when one of the muscle guys came over and said he'd noticed I was using a narrow grip, and he thought a different attachment would work better for me. Read more... )

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Challenge #4

Fun House
Journaling: What is making you smile these days? Create a top 10 list of anything you want to talk about.
Creative: Write from the perspective of a house or other location.


These guys, MCR! I've been enjoying watching footage and seeing new photos from their concert so much. My love isn't as intense as it was in my height of bandom days, but it's still there, and I still think Mikey is hot like fire.

Seeing him with his bro, how happy he looked throughout that surreal, weird and yet awesome show, well it made me smile, too. Also, comments from Gabe and Travis on Mikey's Insta post, it was like being thrown back in time in the best way.

So, lets go old skool and have a top ten plus four picspam. behind here )
Sunday, July 13th, 2025 10:44 pm
1. I finished another of these 300 piece Disneyland anniversary puzzles from the multipack. This one went much faster than the Mickey head shaped one, but was still fun.



2. Tonight we saw Paul F. Thompkins' Varietopia again and it was a lot of fun.

Read more... )

3. New favorite picture of Molly.

Sunday, July 13th, 2025 10:56 pm
In tonight's game, the rest under a cut for those who don't care. )

And that's where we left off.