onedeadplotbunny | Member Posts

We went on just a short walk last Tuesday. We were going to go to a movie, so wanted just something easy and quick to get out for a little bit. So, Pelican Pond it was. No pelicans, though.

Over on the left, a couple ducks, then a couple large turtles, and so many cormorants! Especially love the one with wings spread.

We did see the first monarch we've seen this year!

Just four more pictures:

Another shot of the monarch!

The cormorants when we first walked by.

When we came back after turning around, there were suddenly more!

And next to the cormorant branch, a nice big turtle, and a duck showing off the very nice purple in her wing.

We also saw a little snake and a bunch of other birds. It was nice to get out for a bit, even if we didn't want to do very much.

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my apartment

lebateleur

It's been a rough year for my houseplants. A bunch are fighting mealybug. Many of the ones that aren't have some weird sort of polyp-y mold infesting the soil. The ones that don't have mealybug or mold Have Feelings To Express about the seesawing humidity and light levels with which 2025 has graced us.

Despite my best efforts, I've lost dozens since January and am in danger of losing my peace lily, which was was flourishing beautifully until suddenly it wasn't. So it was with great delight that I encountered this beauty on the sidewalk, waiting to be rehomed:

A picture of a peace lily.

It's currently sitting next to my original peace lily, in the hopes that it will lend some pep to the latter.

これで以上です。

raisedbymoogles

there's a digital art courses humble bundle and I'm tempted to pick it up, dust off my old tablet and give "learn to do art that isn't shit" one last try.

dhampyresa

1. I feel like if you're chronically ill you should get exempt from being non-chronically ill.

2. I thought I was better, but then I got irrationally grumpy over a book review having the "The Art and Making Of Arcane" in their background. It's no one's fault the French edition is out of print, I just wish I had that book.

starwatcher

"Giant" is their description, not mine, but they tout 1,500 books on sale.

Note that you can select different retailers in the top drop-down menu, and specific genres in the list to the left.

Sale ends at "midnight." They never say which midnight, but I suspect it's one of the U.S timezones, which are UTC-5 to UTC-8.

Pass this on wherever you like.

lassarina

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rhi

So I asked some friends on a Discord server what items they had from their families and still used. It came up because I was making tea and using an old metal ball tea-strainer I'd inherited from my namesake great-aunt, who, honestly, left me a lot of things. And I was wondering what the rest of you have inherited and still have, and which ones do you still use?

I have furniture, and baking gear, and a cookbook from the 1950s from Aunt P. Mom gave me kitchen stuff for my first apartment in college and those nested mixing bowls are still good and useful (and uncracked; I held them up to the light to see) after at least 60 years and gods know how many moves. I have a Webster's Unabridged Dictionary from one of Dragon's grandmothers, easily 6" thick of marble endplates doorstopper from the 1950s and honestly, if I have to look up something, it's probably in there. His other grandmother gifted me cast iron we still have.

What about the rest of y'all?

Oh, and as for what I found? Aunt P's cookbook has recipe cards tucked in and two recipes written on the front end paper. Might have to make these cookies soon.

( Jumble Cookie 'recipe' )

Current Mood: content

beatrice_otter

I use the same name everywhere so I am

beatrice_otter on AO3. Treats are awesome.

I would rather get a story you were happy with than "well, she said she liked x, so I guess I have to do x even though I don't like x and/or am not inspired that way." This letter is long with lots of suggestions and preferences if you find it helpful, but feel free to ignore it if it is not helpful. I'm fairly easy to please; I've been doing ficathons for over a decade and am usually very happy with my gifts.

The most important thing for me in a fic is that the characters are well-written and recognizably themselves. Even when I don't like a character, I don't go in for character-bashing. If nothing else, if the rest of this letter is too much or my kinks don't fit yours, just concentrate on writing a story with everyone in character and good spelling and grammar and I will almost certainly love what you come up with.

I have an embarrassment squick, which makes humor kind of hit-or-miss sometimes. The kind of humor where someone does something embarrassing and the audience is laughing at them makes me uncomfortable. On the other hand, the kind of humor where the audience is laughing with the characters I really enjoy.

General Likes and Dislikes

other things to keeep in mind:

I like stuff that takes side characters and puts them center-stage, especially when the characters and/or actors are marginalized. I enjoy seeing them come to life.
I don't like it when marginalized characters get relegated to the sidekick/supporting/helper role so that it can be All About The White Dude.
I like it when female characters are more than just the Strong Female Character(tm) or The Nurturer.
I like fluff
I like angst with a happy ending
I like stories that make me think about things in a new way.
I like to know that culture matters to people, and to see how different cultures interact and where the clashes are.
I like unreliable narrators.
I like acknowledgment that different people can have different points of view without either of them being wrong.
I like stories that engage with problematic aspects of the source, and which deal with privilege in one way or another instead of sweeping it under the rug.
Worldbuilding is my jam, I am pretty much always up for explorations of why the world is the way it is. I love hearing about the economics, the politics, the religion, the clothing, the history, the folklore, all of that kind of stuff. And I want to know why it matters--how is all this cultural background stuff affecting the characters, the plot, everything. You don't have to do deep worldbuilding, but I'll enjoy it if you do.
I don't like it when plots hinge on characters being selectively stupid, or selectively unable to communicate. Like, if they are stupid or a himbo or whatever in general, or have problems communicating in general, that's fine! Or if they canonically have a blind spot in that area, again, it's fine. But if it's just "the only way I can think of for this plot to work is if the character spontaneously and temporarily loses half their intelligence and competence," then I'm going to spend the rest of the fic wondering why the character didn't just ____?
I like AUs, but not complete setting AUs (i.e. no highschool or college or coffee shop AUs, and especially not mundane AUs--nothing where you keep characters but drop most of the worldbuilding). I like fork-in-the-road type AUs, where one thing is different and the changes all result from that one thing, and you explore what might have been if such-and-such happened.
I like the concept of sedoretu marriages.
I like historical AUs, but only when the author actually knows the history period in question and does thoughtful worldbuilding to meld actual culture of the time with the canon.
Crackfic is really hit and miss for me, sometimes I love it and sometimes I can't stand it. Basically, if it's the characters we know and love in a ludicrous situation, that's great. If they're OOC or parodied in order to make something funny ... it's not funny to me.

I like plotty, gen stories, and plotty stories in general. I don't care for explicit sex, particularly when it's just thrown in for teh porn. I'm asexual; a lot of the time I don't even bother to read the sex scenes. Romance is awesome (as long as both are in character and the romantic plot doesn't hinge on one or both of them being an idiot). I love it when friendship is held up as important and not secondary to romantic relationships and blood ties.

Please no incest or darkfic. I define "darkfic" as stuff where there's a lot of suffering and no hope even at the end and all the characters are terrible. Angst with a happy ending is fine, I enjoy it, but there's gotta be a payoff. Even an ambiguous ending is fine! But there has to be some note of grace or redemption or hope somewhere, it can't just be "people are awful and the world sucks, the end." I define incest as siblings and/or parents, cousins don't count.

I love outsider perspectives and academic takes on things. In-universe meta (newspaper articles, academic monographs--especially with the sort of snarky feuding common in actual real-world academia, social media feeds in current day or future worlds) is awesome.

Also, I'm picky about European historical clothing details. You don't have to talk about it at all! In fact, if you don't know much about historical clothing, I would prefer if you didn't mention it at all. My pet peeve is corsets: no, they weren't a restrictive tool of the patriarchy, no, they didn't interfere with most women's daily lives, no, most women weren't wearing them so tight they couldn't breathe.

I like religion but I'm picky about it. Basically, Christianity is deeply weird compared to most other religions, and a lot of people whose only experience with religion is living in a culturally-Christian nation assume that what they know about Christianity is some sort of universal principle of What Religion Is Like, and that's just not the case. For example, in Christianity what you believe is more important than what you do. This is not to say we Christians don't teach and practice Christian ethics or have rituals we are very attached to, but rather that if you don't believe in Jesus Christ, it doesn't matter what rituals you participate in or what ethical things you do, you are not a Christian (although you may be a "cultural Christian"). Every Christian group has at least a minimal core theology that members must affirm, but participation in ritual is far less rigidly a requirement. Most other religions rank what you do (both ethically and ritually) as more important than what you believe, and it is often quite possible to be a member in good standing if you participate in the practices and rituals even if you believe none of the teachings. Anyway, point is, if you are doing worldbuilding for a fantasy or SF or otherwise non-Christian religion ... unless it is explicitly a Christian-analogue, it should be different from Christianity. Question your assumptions and see where that leads you, and I will be fascinated and thrilled.

( Fandom For Robots )

( Rivers of London )

( Goblin Emperor )

( DS9 )

( Star Wars Legends )

( Enola Holmes )

( Babylon 5 )

( Enterprise )

( TNG )

( Sense8 )

mistressofmuses

Last week we went up to another of the county parks. This time we went to Reynolds Park, which is one we haven't been to before, though I know my mom has mentioned enjoying it before.

We of course arrived just in time for a few little rumbles of thunder to start up, ha. Every time!

From near the start of the trail, dark clouds moving in.

There were some really neat mushrooms under a tree along the trail.

Sixteen more pictures:

The trail we started out on is called the "Songbird Trail", which certainly lived up to its name! There was a massive flock of probably 20 or so mountain chickadees. I love them: they have an eye-stripe, unlike the more typical black-capped chickadees, and their call sounds a bit like they have a sore throat. I of course failed utterly to get any decent pictures of them. :/

A couple soldier beetles, makin' more soldier beetles.

There were tons of soldier beetles on the asters. I liked this one, because the one over on the left was grooming, haha.

A dramatic dead tree.

This bit of trail is fairly short, and we turned around when we approached where it meets up with another trail. We wanted a fairly short trail, as Alex was having a bit of a rough day, and we didn't want to be out too terribly long.

I love how strangely tall this tree is compared to the rest.

Some lovely flowers!

As soon as we were back in the trees... a deer! (I got this picture from Alex; I didn't get a good shot of her.)

Some neat mushrooms on a downed tree.

Alex started having some issues with his knee and his neck, so we took a break.

There's a huge blue spruce off to the side of the trail, with nice big branches that create a perfect little "fort" underneath the tree. (It's a lot like one that we had in our yard when I was a kid.) There are some logs set up underneath as seating, and it's a very nice spot to rest.

Bella was happy to take a snack break. (She was also happy to get pine sap on her, and she *still* has a small patch of it on her side...)

No thoughts, head empty.

There are some really cool mushrooms below the tree! This one, right above a large burrow of some kind, does give some big "mess with this and end up in fairyland" vibes.

There's a fallen tree right next to the big one we were sitting under, and I was quite taken with the variety of mosses and lichens growing on it.

Also under the tree, a neat cocoon. Looks like probably a moth of some kind, but no idea what kind!

More lichens on the tree. I just like them!

Yet more of the soldier beetles.

A tailed copper. Super cute! Very little, and I love the tiny tails.

And back toward the trailhead, we went up along the creek a little ways, in case Bella wanted to wade. There was a patch with SO MANY pond skaters, lol.

I'd definitely like to come back and do more of the trails at this park. There was another loop that we'd thought about adding on to the fairly short trail, but since Alex was having a rough day, we decided not to. It was a lovely trail, if short, though.

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my apartment

lassarina

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ride_4ever

Assorted due South haiku that I wrote in April for International Haiku Day (April 17) and National Poetry Month. Some -- as noted in my AO3 AN -- are derived from prompts of the dSC6D snipppets comm on DW.

Title: Two due South Double-Stanza Haiku in Honor of April's International Haiku Day and April's
National Poetry Month
Author:

ride_4ever
Fandom: due South
Category: Gen, F/M
Relationship: Benton Fraser/Victoria Metcalf
Characters: Benton Fraser, Victoria Metcalf, Ray Vecchio
Rating: General Audiences
Length: 63 words
Fic on AO3.

Title: Five due South Haiku in Honor of April's International Haiku Day and April's National Poetry
Month
Author:

ride_4ever
Fandom: due South
Category: Gen
Characters: Implied characters: Benton Fraser, Diefenbaker, both Rays, Robert "Bob" Fraser, Jack
Huey, Tom Dewey
Rating: General Audiences
Length: 78 words
Fic on AO3.

Title: Three due South Haiku in Honor of April's International Haiku Day and April's National Poetry
Month
Author:

ride_4ever
Fandom: due South
Category: Gen
Characters: Benton Fraser, both Rays mentioned or implied
Rating: General Audiences
Length: 42 words
Fic on AO3.

Current Mood: poetic
Current Location: near the lake they call Michigan

lebateleur

The benefits of having put myself on a media diet for mental health are not just improved mental health, but a vastly improved attention span and more hours in which to deploy it reading. I finished over 1000 pages of novels this week, including the last two books in The Rosenholm Trilogy. Excellent life choices, Past Me.

What I Finished Reading This Week

Forget Me Not – Gry Kappel Jensen
This book is not well written in 365-degrees. Jensen completely ignores the plot- and worldbuilding elements that don't interest her (e.g., a coherent and consistent system of magic; a coherent and consistent curriculum at the novel's magical school; an explanation of how said school continues to operate when its students and teachers routinely end up severely maimed or dead; an explanation of how said school could even exist in modern Denmark to begin with; an explanation as to how none of the characters are crippled by severe trauma, PTSD, and survivor's guilt). But the storytelling aspects that do interest Jensen--the rivalries, friendships, jealousies, resentments, and loyalties of adolescent women; the various manifestations of adolescents' relationships with their parents; murders, conspiracies, and dark revelations; crazy plot twists and cliffhangers (some of them cleverly foreshadowed without being immediately obvious); an overarching mystery that spans all three volumes--shine. Moreover, Jensen's technical chops improved considerably in the second volume as compared to the first. These books are by no means literature, but they are a vastly fun read, and I look forward to starting the third.

Nightshade – Gry Kappel Jensen
First off, the bad. ( Read more... )

TL;DR - Neither this book nor the trilogy are perfect, but they are extremely entertaining reads despite their weaknesses: an MCU movie versus The Lord of the Rings. Approach them with the appropriate expectations you will enjoy the heck out of the read.

What I Am Currently Reading

The Chosen Queen – Sam Davey
I turned immediately back to this volume after finishing The Rosenholm Trilogy.

The Eagle of the Ninth – Rosemary Stewart
This is my current mass transit reading volume.

What I'm Reading Next

I did not acquire any new books this week.

これで以上です。

flipflop_diva

This week's entry is part of an Intersection, where there are two prompts and each person in the partnership takes a prompt and writes a story that connects with the other person's. My partner is

legalpad819 and her entry can be found here. In chronological order, my entry comes first. But if you like reading stories and then reading the prequels after, you can start with hers!

( The baseball bat lay where it had been dropped )

This was written for the new season of

therealljidol, Wheel of Chaos! If you liked my entry, please consider voting for me, my amazing partner and all of the other incredibly talented contestants. You can find all the entries here. Look for the voting post on Wednesday night!

thisbluespirit

I was feeling a bit better yesterday and typed up this, which I've had in my notebook since spring, for A Fatal Inversion. It of course ended up less shippier than planned and maybe even darker than canon warrants, idk. But it was where my brain went when I rewatched it. (The first time around it's a sort of reverse murder mystery; the second it's an intense character study of the fallout in those involved.)

For

genprompt_bingo,

allbingo,

100fandoms &

100ships, because if I'm going to write super obscure fic that probably won't make sense if you don't know canon, I might as well make it count!

Revisions (1529 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: A Fatal Inversion (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Rufus Fletcher/Adam Verne-Smith
Characters: Adam Verne-Smith, Rufus Fletcher (A Fatal Inversion)
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Dark, references to murder, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Flashbacks, Community: 100fandoms, Community: genprompt_bingo, Community: allbingo, Community: 100ships, Pre-Canon, Past Trauma
Summary: Adam and Rufus try to resume their friendship where they left off. It's not the best idea.

Tomorrow I go to have my eye test, so no doubt I'll be around a bit less again, although I'll try to post the last AU_gust bits still if I can - they add up to a bingo line for

allbingo and it would be a first if I actually got it completed within the month, lol. (We'll see).

white_aster

Hiya all. Not dead yet! Still TRYING MY BEST here. Not a whole lot to show for it, but TRYING! :insert that determined kiddo making a fist gif here:

Anyway, books!

Stuff I've Read:

Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove - A ship and a medicbot try valiantly to get past their programming and forge an alliance because monsters keep KILLING THEIR HUMANS! I loved this so much. Highly, highly recommend. The beginning wobbled a bit for me because I wasn't sure what tone it was going for (there's some aspects of humor, but it was unclear how serious/feelings this was supposed to be). Once I got my footing though? Mwa, perfect. Actually went and bought a copy.

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones - A very, very slow horror book that was dragged down by my dislike of two of the three main POV characters. Still, a very interesting take on vampires I'd never seen before.

The Art of Solitude and Alone With Others by Stephen Batchelor - Went through a bit of an introspection kick. TAoS was a solid book on Buddhist philosophy with some personal experiences with hallucinogens thrown in. Kind of slow, but interesting reading it with AWO, which was a much more "advanced" and philosophical take on some of the same themes.

City of Stairs and City of Blades by Robert Jackson Bennett - I really like this series, even more than his newer one. Fun, smart characters, enough mystery to keep things interesting, and some very thought-provoking takes on colonialism and its associated ills in a somewhat faux-early-1900s kinda-AU world. Have picked up the third book in the series already.

August Kitko and the Mechas from Space by Alex White - Oh this was fabulous in all senses of the word. Far-future alien kaiju mecha invasion space opera with a heavy MUSIC focus. It also got points for making me like the very entitled and shallow rockstar character DESPITE those characteristics usually putting me off, because they actually are also quite charming and smart. I am SAD that this has not gotten more attention (and that none of my libraries have ordered the second book....)

Wearing the Lion by John Wiswell - Solid "meh". I liked Someone to Build a Next In well enough, but this just didn't click with me, for two reasons: it was very Greek mythology (bug or feature?), in that the gods were just terrible people, and yet you're forced to be in Hera's entitled and self-sabotaging POV for half the book, while in the other half you're forced to be in Heracles oblivious high tragedy POV. Neither really appealed. Also, though the idea of a found-family-inflected trials of Heracles structure was neat, said trials and said found family were just never really fleshed out and felt shallow. :shrug?:

Nine Goblins by T. Kingfisher - Fun! A squad of goblins get teleported off a battlefield and have to figure out where they are and how to get home. This had a bit of tonal whiplash in that Kingfisher way, where it's fluffy and funny but then takes a hard turn into dark and disturbing (while trying kind of awkwardly not to be so realistic that we have to worry about things like executing POWs), but it was funny and didn't overstay its welcome.

What I'm Reading Now

Fiction: Moonstorm by Yoon Ha Lee and the above-mentioned City of Miracles by Robert Jackson Bennett

Nonfiction: Stories Are Weapons by Annalee Newitz and The Technological Republic by Nicholas Zamiska and Alexander Karp

thisbluespirit

I managed to post one of the other AU-gust ficlets I did - this one for the prompt "Dragons" for B7. (Also for

100_women prompt #68 fire &

allbingo Crime Classics square "Green For Danger.")

Green For Danger (751 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Blake's 7
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Jenna Stannis, Roj Blake, Kerr Avon, Liberator (Blake's 7), Zen (Blake's 7)
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Dragons, Ficlet, AU-gust | August Writing Challenge, Community: allbingo, Episode: s01e02 Space Fall, Community: 100_women, Liberator/Zen is a dragon, Alternate Universe - Fantasy
Summary: There's freedom or death waiting at the end of this tunnel...

mistressofmuses

This week, a frog. Much bigger than Guava Splash, ha.

I feel like I spent this whole week very tired (though to as bad a degree as Alex was.) I did manage not to nap after work at all though. It was a mostly good week. Work was a lot mellower, having reached the end of our busiest season, and I was also reasonably productive at home. We had one nice, if short, hike. I read a decent amount, if still not quite as much as I would like. Even a small bit of writing, if only at the very end of the week.

Goals for the week:

I did read more (and finished!) Little Eve
I mostly finished the writing intro
I did not start on the blurbs for the writing
We did go meet up with a friend (for shady plastic horse dealings in a parking lot, ha)
We spent some time outside
I did not get caught up on DW
I did not update my reading page
I did not work on reviews of the books read in August
I did make one of my needed phone calls
I voted in the Organization for Transformative Works board election
We did go get crickets
I did water the plants
I did not go to the bank
I did clean out the katydid habitats (and set up the one for Three)
I paid the car insurance

Tracked habits:

Work - 5/7
Household Maintenance - 6/7
Physical Activity - 2/7
Wrote 500/1000+ Words - 1/7 - over 500 words
Wrote on 2nd+ Draft - 0/7
Meta Work - 4/7
Personal Writing - 6/7
Other Creative Things - 4/7
Reading - 7/7 - mostly I was reading Little Eve, but also read some Duma Key with Alex, and I did read along with some Dracula Daily
Attention to Media - 7/7 - Sunday we rewatched Prey, which I still liked, I listened to a Re: Dracula ep, and we had exploration videos in the background; Monday we watched the first three eps of the most recent season of Black Mirror; Tuesday I listened to a Re: Dracula ep, and we went to see Weapons, which I had mixed feelings about; Wednesday we watched a paranormal video, then exploration videos in the background; Thursday we watched the last three eps of Black Mirror; Friday we watched the season finale of Alone, then the first three eps of season 03 of Squid Game; Saturday had paranormal and exploration videos in the background.
Video Games - 0/7
Social Interaction - 6/7

Total words written: 551 on writing intro

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my apartment
Current Music: Catch and Release - Silversun Pickups

badass_tiger

My first time! I've been an avid fan of VGC for several year, but I've always just thought of myself as a spectator. Well, last year I went to the Birmingham regional championships, intending to simply watch, but my sister convinced me to join a side event. And it was fantastic. I joined another the next day, then more at EUIC. I was still largely apathetic to Scarlet/Violet but whenever I'm playing face to face against an opponent, it's exhilarating. And so I decided that with the new season, I would give competing a proper go.

( Read more... )

mistressofmuses

Continuing from my previous post: part two of the trip back to Castlewood!

Spoilers: we made it to the dam, lol.

A very lovely little lizard.

Sixteen more pictures:

The trail that heads up toward the dam was a little steeper and quite hot, but we headed that way. This section of trail is actually the other end of the trail we'd taken in from the west end of the park, the one we'd had to turn around on and then missed our turn back to the parking lot, ha.

And finally:

The dam was in sight!

That trail leads up to this one, a very short little jog that goes up and around the ruins.

It's dam(n) historic.

We headed down first, around the base of the dam along the creek, where the trail then climbs steeply up along the far side of the dam wall, to the top, and then back down the side we'd approached from.

Parts of that steeper trail up are almost hard to follow; there are a lot of rocks arranged to serve as stairs, but if you aren't at the correct angle, they blend in really well. Bella, brave pathfinder, did not struggle with it as much as I did; despite being very hot and tired by that point, she was excitedly charging up with no struggle to find the correct path, haha.

Climbing up a bit higher. Do Not try to get in the culvert thing, haha. And it's hard to see, but up at the corner of the dam wall is the flimsiest looking ladder.

Looking across the canyon, you can see just a bit of the other side of the dam. Just a pile of stone, really,

Finally, panting and wheezing, we made it up to the top. There was a cute little rock wren!

(Ha, erected.)

There's a fence so that you can't go any farther, but looking across the canyon along the top.

Informative Sign about the dam collapse in 1933. Some neat historical photos! Basically it was effed from the start: it leaked from the beginning, and sandstone erodes very readily.

After this we headed down the other side of the dam, which was a much less steep trail than the side we'd gone up!

At one point a very large snake (I think a yellow-bellied racer?) slithered across the path right in front of me. It went *directly under Bella* and she didn't even notice! I didn't get a good look at the snake, it was so fast, but it looked decently big, and mostly looked smooth and grey, so I'm about 85% confident in the yellow-bellied racer ID.

Poor Bella was pretty exhausted as we were heading back. She was dragging! Rather than head back on the second half of the loop, we crossed back over the creek to go back to that spot by the creek we'd taken a break at before. She didn't even resist when she was nudged into the water, so she was definitely pretty hot!

She felt better pretty fast after a cool-down in the water and a snack, though, ha.

(Except that we think she may have been stung by a bee! She was laying in the sand, and reached over and bit at something, then jumped up and started shaking her head. I found the dying honeybee, which had lost its stinger. I'm not sure that the sting actually "took" though; Bella was acting like it a bit with the head shaking and like she was trying to spit something out, but there was never any swelling at all, and about five minutes later she seemed utterly over it. Poor girl had a rough time of it for a bit!)

I've been really good about applying sunscreen this year, and hadn't gotten a single bad sunburn, for possibly the first summer ever! ...Except that apparently I managed to miss just the backs of my upper arms this day, and by this halfway point of the hike Alex had noticed that I was burning. Ouch!

After Bella had recovered from her exhaustion (and possible bee sting!), we headed back across to the second trail that would take us back to the trailhead.

This was a very well-fed looking lizard! So fat! It was hanging out with the other lizard from above the cut, but they ran to opposite sides of the rock when we approached.

After a bit, we saw a little set of stairs heading back down to the creek, so we decided to head down and see if we could get to the water again.

This spot was even prettier than the first place we'd found, I think!

There was a nice flat rock to sit on, and the water was shallow and slow, and so very peaceful.

Alex basically declared his intent to just live there now, haha. I don't disagree!

Bella even *wanted* to go wading.

Alex reached down into the water to rinse his hands off, and this little toad basically just hopped into his hands! So cute and little!

(If we hadn't just adopted Guava Splash, we might have come home with a new toad.)

Small toad, back in the creek.

At one point I looked down behind me, and there was a very large crayfish approaching along the bank, haha.

Bella contemplating the creek.

Finally we did have to move on, but it really was a beautiful spot.

One last picture:

More mud-dauber nests! I love them.

The hike back was pleasant, until the very end where there's a pretty steep bit back up toward the trailheads. By that time I was very tired, and going *up* more was a struggle, lol. (Considering how much hiking we've done this year, I had hoped my endurance would have improved a bit, but no such luck!)

This was a lovely hike, and that second half of the loop was possibly my favorite of the trails we've hiked in the park. (I know it was Alex's.) I'm glad we finally made it all the way to the damn dam! I'm sure we'll wind up back there again.

Current Mood: content
Current Location: my apartment
Current Music: Hounds to Hamartia - Poets of the Fall

taichara

The weekend was humid as fuck but I survived despite the humidity and the bus hell. Work was surprisingly Okay[tm] despite some individual wtfery (I say, with one shift left to go) ...

This weekend ...

- FFBE JP is shutting down in ~two months, just barely cresting its 10th anni. I am a few different flavours of something about this, mostly atm being annoyed that jp is getting an offline "Memorial Edition" that will allow revisiting the story and such when we got no such thing for gl last year -- and as long as this thing exists I bet Squenix will do nothing with the world and characters. (related: fuck Octopath Traveller.)

- Over three nights, probably ~2-3ish hrs a night, I wrote ~5k for a draft for

iddyiddybangbang. Never discount the power of spite, no u and Just Starting. (it is a Gundam thing and that's all I'm saying because my traitor brain will decide I'm finished otherwise.)

- Just when I thought I had run out of ability to pull my hair out by the roots because of Granblue, here we are. End of the week is sure going to be a Thing.

- I spent an inordinate amount of time chewing on Gatchaman related thoughts and things for a couple different reasons and now I've fallen into a (shallow) rabbit hole that's probably going to lead me into writing a post of some kind navel gazing about what Tatsunoko seems to consider Gatchaman canon/in-continuity/whatever. Man I just want to poke Ken and Joe with sticks, brain, why you gotta do this x_x

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Finishing Fics... Finally

January 2019

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
		1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30	31

Page Summary

mistressofmuses - Tuesday, August 19: Pelican Pond
lebateleur - Friday Fauna: Fortuitous Finds Edition
raisedbymoogles - you'd think i'd learn
dhampyresa - Grump grump
starwatcher - "Giant" ebook sale, Aug 29th only
lassarina - leave and things
rhi - Families and finding things
beatrice_otter - Dear Fic In A Box Author
mistressofmuses - Monday, August 18: Reynolds Park
lassarina - What Are You Playing Wednesday
ride_4ever - Fannish 50 Challenge 2025: Post # 25: due South Haiku
lebateleur - What Am I Reading Wednesday - August 27
flipflop_diva - LJ Idol Wheel of Chaos — Prompt 7 — BAT (An Idol Intersection)
thisbluespirit - Fic: Revisions (A Fatal Inversion)
white_aster - What We Weading Wednesday - Not Dead Yet edition
thisbluespirit - Ficlet: Green For Danger (B7)
mistressofmuses - Habit Tracking: Week 34 (August 17 - August 23)
badass_tiger - Joined a local grassroots on Saturday
mistressofmuses - Tuesday, August 12: Castlewood Canyon (Again, But The Other Side This Time... Part 2)
taichara - countdowns, rundowns, ruminations

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