ratbones | Reading

I have worked. Uh. A lot. Over the past three weeks. o_o But now it's the weekend, and I don't currently have a rewrite to work on, and March Break lies ahead; the spring crunch isn't finished, but it's on hiatus for the week, and a normal workweek is a breath of fresh air at this point. (Also I'm taking a couple of days off during it.)

Yesterday work wrapped up early enough that I had an actual evening, so I was finally able to start Butterfly Effects, the fifteenth (!) InCryptid book. ("Finally" is a bit of a stretch, I guess, since it's still the release week, but this is a Sarah-narrated book. Mostly. SARAH.)

So my hopes for the weekend are pretty much: avoid napping (I don't find naps restorative and feel groggier after than before I started); finish reading Butterfly Effects; watch this week's The Pitt and hopefully the temporarily-streaming production of The Importance of Being Earnest with

scruloose; get

scruloose to redo my undercut; and (also with

scruloose) do a second round of advance-prepping ten or so bags of the dry ingredients for my breakfast banana bread while also baking up a new batch of loaves. I think that last will also require decanting cinnamons from bags into jars, so maybe we'll manage a bit of other spice decanting/sorting while we're at it.

Current Mood: groggy

ranalore

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Current Mood: silly
Current Location: youtube private box

momijizukamori

Because it came up when I was talking to my dad yesterday, and I remembered I meant to post it here and then forgot - if you haven't seen the Super Bowl halftime show this year, you should watch it. Even if you don't know who Bad Bunny is, or aren't into his style of music. The level of sheer technical skill involved in the staging is next-level, and he very much had a point he wanted to make and most certainly made it.

Watch on YouTube

Bad Bunny's Super Bowl Halftime Show

And if you are interested, someone one Bluesky shared their Bad Bunny 101 write-up, which has links to a bunch of other articles and listening suggestions. Reggaeton is probably not gonna be one of my top genres personally, but I feel like it's good to get out of my listening confort zone and try new things, particularly when it's like, a global phenomenon right now.

starandrea

♥ The daffodils are up!!

( picture )

♥ And irises, my favorite.

( picture )

♥ Plus a fun mystery: I'm like 80% sure I planted crocuses here. Before yesterday I was 100% sure, but what's coming up does not look like crocuses. What will these clever sprouts turn out to be, I wonder. (Scilla?)

( picture )

And now a spring planting calendar update.

♥ Dahlias were potted March 5. The first one stuck its head above soil today and I quickly transferred it from the dark floor of the utility room to a bright succulent shelf. (In other words, I continue to not plan lights for the dahlias.)

It has been one week since they were potted. Nine weeks remain until our frost-free date. For everyone's entertainment and my hope of making better decisions next year, I am tracking dahlia size versus time remaining before they can go outside.

( picture )

♥ Cannas remain in boxes by the back door. No substantive growth I can see; I'm checking them every few days. Temperature is higher than I'd like but steady between 55-60F. Anything below 60 seems to keep them sleeping. Garage temperature was freezing last night and will probably go colder next week, so not yet a better option. If they can stay dormant until the ground unfreezes, I should be able to put most of them in front of the patio where they were last year and let them wake up naturally in May.

♥ Winter sown seeds seem to be behaving themselves, no early germination or wild parties that I've noticed. The containers were seeded Feb 18-21, so it's been about three weeks. At least some of the seeds in there need cold stratification, and I think four weeks is the bare minimum for forcing. For most seeds, 6-12 weeks is recommended. Fortunately it's going to be cold next week, so they'll definitely get their four. After that I'll keep them out of the sun until the end of March and hope for the best.

♥ The six boxes of bulbs I bought accidentally, thinking I would "winter sow" them, have been in the refrigerator for four weeks this weekend. At this rate they should be okay to go in the ground as soon as it unfreezes enough to dig. Whew. (They all require cold stratification, but only to bloom, so even if they don't get enough cold they should be able to put up some leaves and collect energy for next year.)

In unrelated news, Marci and I went to the aquarium yesterday and we both got t-shirts with a manta ray on them that say "just a ray of sunshine." I left mine on the sofa last night and Daphne has been sleeping on it ever since.

tinny

The current round at

retro_icontest was a list of 5 themes, and I picked two: the No Eyes theme, and the Inspo Icons theme, and made three icons for each:

1-3

4-6
Wu Lei x3 | Chen Minghao | Wu Lei | Nothing But You

the inspo icons for comparison

lazuli_reikou |

milkfed |

ieatstickers

I'm happy to receive all kind of comments, including concrit! All icons shareable. Credit for brushes and textures I use can be found here in my resource post.

Previous icon posts:

shipperslist

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hyarrowen posting in

little_details

For large-scale projects, specifically for ships. All my ship-related resources for the era are for the British Navy, and books on colour that I've read have been on artists' paints or dyes.

How would a French Imperial Navy vessel be painted, not at one of the big shipyards? Would it be mixed up on site from raw ingredients, or bought in? Would there be barrels, buckets with lids, cannisters, vats or what - and what would the paint be made of?

Searching online produces info on painting scale models, or contemporary pictures of ships. I found a chapter on ship decoration in Conway's History of the Ship: The Line of Battle but that doesn't have the early-in-the-process details I want. I found an article on the pre-Revolutionary Navy in the International Journal of Maritime History, by David Plouviez, that's too early and still doesn't cover paint.

Thank-you in advance.

yaaurens

Cardiology appointment was.... not particularly helpful.

The good news is, I have a heart! It is, according to the tech who did the ultrasound, anatomically correct and of an appropriate size!

The bad news is, this means I can no longer make Grinch jokes about myself. Alas!

No, really, the bad news is that there is no obvious reason for why my heart rate won't ever slow the fuck down. When we started the ultrasound, it was 140, and only got down to about 120 at the lowest, after lying on a table doing nothing for about 15 minutes. The tech asked about thyroid issues in the family and if I'd been tested for issues there, and yeah, that's been done every dang time with consistently clear results. Sooooooo yeah.

No idea what the next steps are; I'm going to shoot my PCP a message tomorrow if I don't hear from them and ask if they've received the results and what we should do next. I'm hoping the cardiologist himself (rather than the tech) will have some vague ideas, but I am not really expecting much.

Sigh. At least it's not likely my heart will explode any time soon?

shipperslist

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reeby10 posting in

fandom_on_dw

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starandrea

Marci heard the first red-winged blackbird two days ago, and I heard the first woodcock tonight. There are two whole crocus sprouts coming up through the snow in the front garden, plus a tiny bit of new green from the hardy irises, lilies, and stonecrop.

Plants that keep their green under the snow, so I can never tell when they're awake and when they're not, include the recently revealed euonymous, heuchara, ginger, pulmonaria, and lamium. Apparently last year I posted a picture of the first daffodil sprout on March 9, so I have been looking intently for them. Kathy has some, and they're up on the sunny street just south of us, but none in my gardens so far.

I do have these lovely haworthia flowers in my succulent planter, which I have on my calendar to water for the first time this weekend. How neat. Also a picture of Daphne walking with a friend, and some pretty photos of the sun and sky.

( flower & Daphne )

( sunrise and sunset )

shipperslist

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lizvogel posting in

little_details

Okay, I thought I knew science, but after several days of researching this, all I've got is indecision and a headache.

Original fiction, unspecified not-too-far-future time.

My character is the pilot of a small cargo ship in the asteroid belt. (No FTL, no artificial gravity.) Said ship has sufficient radiation shielding to be safe under normal conditions. My idea is that there's an unusually strong solar event (solar flare? coronal mass ejection?), and he has to survive by positioning his ship on the shadowed side of an asteroid (rocks are good shielding), and use his excellent piloting skills to stay there until the storm passes.

1. Does this, theoretically, actually work?

2. I'd like the solar event to be a Coronal Mass Ejection, because some CMEs move relatively slowly, and that gives my character time to make a narratively interesting choice. But is it the CME itself that's hazardous to human life, or a sort of "bow wave" of radiation that precedes it? And if the latter, is that radiation moving at the speed of the CME, or the speed of light? (I keep thinking I have a grasp on this, and then the next source I read contradicts it.)

Guidance appreciated, fellow space enthusiasts!

ETA: Okay, based on comments and additional research the comments inspired, my takeaway is: (1) CMEs can happen with or without accompanying radiation, (2) the stuff in the CME itself is not dangerous to humans, (3) the dangerous-to-humans part of the radiation travels at the speed of light. Which means this story is probably dead; I really needed that longer warning time for the narratively-interesting parts, darn it.

extrapenguin

Went to the ballet again last weekend; will report on that tomorrow I think. Meanwhile, for the music meme, today's prompt is for an underrated song. This is a somewhat hard choice when working with new songs, as something that is new is discovered or undiscovered; overrated and underrated require a certain maturity. So I chose a song from 2023.

an underrated song
Elysion - Crossing Over

Watch on YouTube

prompts under the cut

a song you discovered this month Lady Gaga - Disease
a song that makes you smile Catalyst Symphony - Eden
a song that makes you cry Stratovarius - Shine in the Dark
a song that you know all the lyrics of Deep Sun - Storyteller
a song that proves that you have good taste Synthwailer - Iron Arch
~~a song title that is in all lowercase~~ newest release FlowerLeaf - The Wake
a song title that is in all uppercase Illumishade – ELEGY
an underrated song
a song that has three words
a song from your childhood
a song that reminds you of summertime
a song that you feel nostalgic to
the first song that plays on shuffle
a song that someone showed you
a song from a movie soundtrack
a song from a television soundtrack
a song about being 17
a song that reminds you of somebody
a song to drive to
a song with a number in the title
a song that you listen to at 3am in the morning
a song with a long title
a song with a color in the title
a song that gets stuck in your head
a song in a different language
a song that helps you fall asleep at night
a song that describes how you feel right now
a song that you used to hate but love today
a song that you downloaded
a song that you want to share

china_shop posting in

sid_guardian

Poll #34345 Sang Zan's cave, naming the Hallows, and Zhu Jiu's revenue stream

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 15

View Respondents

Who else has found their way into Sang Zan's pillar cave in the last hundred years (assuming another entrance)?

View Answers

Da Qing (he doesn't remember)
8 (53.3%)

a family of hibernating bears (they had very strange dreams)
12 (80.0%)

Wu Xie, Zhang Qiling, and Pang Zi
8 (53.3%)

Jill Pole, Eustace Scrubb, and Puddleglum
3 (20.0%)

Gollum
5 (33.3%)

other
2 (13.3%)

When Ma Gui and Fu You created the Hallows, why did they call them "sacred"/"the Hallows"?

View Answers

hubris
4 (26.7%)

psyops
2 (13.3%)

the inventions turned out a whole lot more powerful than expected, and they named them as a warning
10 (66.7%)

the Hallows announced how they wanted to be addressed, singularly and collectively
4 (26.7%)

other
1 (6.7%)

How does Zhu Jiu pay off the fight club manager/afford his visits to the hair stylist?

View Answers

Dixing currency/gold
5 (33.3%)

busking
1 (6.7%)

part-time job in the service industry (he’s always late, but no one dares dock his pay)
2 (13.3%)

he mugs ordinary people
7 (46.7%)

he mugs muggers (not on principle; it just cuts out the middle man)
10 (66.7%)

he has a Givealittle and/or Patreon
2 (13.3%)

other (please specify in comments)
1 (6.7%)

Guardian the drama is

View Answers

glorious, oh my heart!
10 (66.7%)

the gift that keeps on giving
11 (73.3%)

shut up, it’s perfect!
8 (53.3%)

the fandom is also made of sparkles *blows kisses to everyone*
10 (66.7%)

LOLLIPOPS FOR ALL!!
10 (66.7%)

shipperslist

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naye

Recently I've been on a free art kick, browsing images of paintings, sketches, sculptures, photos, needlework and so many other types of artworks that various institutions have digitalized. Here are two such fantastic resources.

The Met Collection
Travel around the world and across 5,000 years of history through 490,000+ works of art.

This is where I found this absolutely fantastic 19th century sketchbook. The artist is unidentified - the only information available is that they must have been Japanese (even though the sketchbook was marked "Chinese Drawings"). I loved their art so much I have turned two of their pieces into embroideries! (But that's a different post.)

And then I learned about the Integrated Collections Database of the National Institutes for Cultural Heritage, Japan, (ColBase) where you can find treasures like THIS!!

Painting of a tabby and white cat licking it's paw. It's got its ears back and its eyes focused on the paw. It's originally a painting by emperor Huizong of Song, this copy is by Sakuma Gantaku. It has so much personality it's amazing.

Painting of a tabby and white cat licking it's paw. It's got its ears back and its eyes focused on the paw. It's originally a painting by emperor Huizong of Song, this copy is by Sakuma Gantaku. It has so much personality it's amazing.

See it here on ColBase.

ColBase is a database containing the collections of the National Institutes for Cultural Heritage, Japan. It encompasses the four National Museums in Tokyo, Kyoto, Nara, and Kyushu, the two National Research Institutes for Cultural Properties in Tokyo and Nara, and the Museum of the Imperial Collections, Sannomaru Shozokan.

About ColBase & (very generous!) Terms of Use.

I have spent so much time doing random browsing, and I've found so much lovely art - and several amazing pieces I kind of want to call "ye olde shitposting" for lack of a better term for something that is clearly a little weird and maybe meant to provoke a reaction in the viewer?

Or what else would you call He's Made Up of Many People, which. Yes. That is indeed what's going on here.

But that kind of stuff is in the minority! It's all art that is out of copyright, but some of it still feels very modern, like this painting of Mount Hiei from the 1920s.

Anyway, I can definitely recommend art scrolling as an option to doom scrolling!

starandrea

♥ Plant update
Two of the succulents whose names I can't remember are flowering. That's neat; didn't know they did that. The white-and-purple fuchsia has so many more buds. I have not given the vines a trellis. The yucca is probably not dead yet.

+Winter sowing project week 2: the snow has melted off the top of the containers but it's still around freezing or below at night, so I think that counts toward cold stratification.
+Dahlia tubers: somehow I ended up with 22 pots of dahlia tubers, which is weird because that's how many containers of winter sown seeds I have also.

...after looking up the number 22, apparently numerology likes it. A master number not reduced to a single digit, specifically the master builder, signifying the ability to turn grand dreams into reality through practical execution. Great! Gardens are off to an excellent start, then.

I don't have any lights set up for the dahlias yet, but that's not actually a problem until they put their heads above the soil, so. Take your time, little tubers. I'll probably move the cannas out to the garage to keep them from getting any ideas, but I need to put one of the temperature sensors with them so I can make sure they don't freeze.

♥ Language and writing
The SuperChinese app is great at catching the j/zh distinction, which I'm lazy about, along with zhe/zhi, ditto. It couldn't care less about tones, but luckily I found "Speak Chinese: Learn Mandarin," which is an app with a clunky name and a free chatbot that's a stickler for both tones and grammar. Thanks, chatbot that puts in a period every time I pause. I appreciate you pretending you don't know what I'm talking about when I use the wrong tone.

I was going to write a Chinese fic about Spring Festival this month, but I wrote an English followup to Apparently instead and then made a series called Back to School, because of the time travel. I don't know how much I'll write of it, but it's fun to not feel like I'm "wasting" study time. Probably because all the speaking practice feels like progress.

Or the reading. Those BLCUP readers are finally easy after years of sitting on the shelf. I actually bought Andy Weir's Hail Mary in Chinese, not because I think I can read it now, but because it's something new to aim for. (I now know Mo Dao Zu Shi too well for it to serve as a benchmark, ha ha. I was listening to the audio drama yesterday and I was like, "Surely I've always understood this.")

♥ March challenges

communal_creators time only mini event March 22 - 28
(sign-ups not open yet, sign up for a daily amount of time to create stuff and log it)

no_true_pair Four-Character Mini-Challenge March 26 - 31
(sign-ups open at the link above, list four characters and create to prompts for their interactions)

yaaurens

Escapade was a blast! Me and Airawyn convinced someone new to attend this year, and she fit in superbly. I imagine she'll be back next year. It's always a bit of a gamble, y'know? Want to make sure friend has fun, but also don't want to be tied to friend the whole time. It was great though, the second batch of friends I introduced her to, she went, wait, are you ___? And it was! So they had a grand time chatting about people they both knew. And then later on we were doing something in the con suite and she met Nev and was like, wait, did you write ___? And Nev was like, OMG WHAT I have been recognized by name alone?!?

And seeing pals and hanging out and talking fandom was fun as always. I miss everyone already!

I am also older! (not a surprise, cuz everyone is, but y'know) We went to the Skirball museum to catch the Jack Kirby exhibit right before it closed, and boy am I glad we did. It was delightful. I loved getting to see original art, and sketches, and learn things about the man that I never knew before (like he moved it here near me and is actually buried out here? I need to make a pilgrimage!). The 'rents went along and I think they actually enjoyed it too - we got there just in time to join a docent tour, and that was extremely helpful for them. And me too, but more for them since they had zero background info. Ash cam along too, and that was so much fun getting to see her and spend time with her just doing something fun without work or munchkin involved. (I like munchkin, but I miss just having Ash.) And then we went through the rest of the museum, which was much more mom's speed, as it's a Jewish American museum so it's all kinds of Judaica info that she's super into.

Got a bunch of books for birthday, including the translations of Mo Du and Sha Po Lang, which I haven't started yet. Did finish the last of the Lychford books that I hadn't read yet, and now feel like I want to go back and read all six of them again, in a row, in the correct order. I just really love those novellas.

Work continues, except for my Methodist job, which officially ended today. I imagine it's not a common experience, witnessing the closing of a church. I've certainly not done it before; we've always left instead. So that was sad and hard. Hopefully will be able to keep in touch with people.

I got my first fraud return, and my first IP PIN reject, so those feel like mini milestones, lol. And more military returns, and some pretty wild life stories. Kinda fun, really. Tomorrow I plan on taking my next level-up test, which will get me to three, and then I'll probably start working on the next set of classes because I still have a lot of long, empty days at work.

Didn't go see the Z1L movie for a couple of reasons - time, and Sam mentioned some directorial choices that were visually difficult, so I just said fuck it, I'll wait and small screen it, and spend time with my friends instead. I think that was a good decision.

Dad and I have been working our way through Arsenal Military Academy, which hasn't been too bad, really. This is the most tolerable I've ever found Xu Kai to be, and Zhu Hong's actress is in there too. It's still a stretching disbelief cross-dressing show, but at least a couple of characters have at least acted suspicious about it, lol. It's also made me look up some historical references, and I always enjoy learning new things, so that's fun too, even though what I'm learning is definitely Not Fun.

Tuesday is my cardiology appointment, which I am both looking forward to and dreading. It's one of those, please let them find something, but an easily fixable something, kind of situations. I would like to not have a constantly elevated heart rate any more, thanks, it's been like three years, I'm over it.

Hand specialist appointment, however, is not until JUNE. I need to contact my PCP and be like, please, do you have a second option, because I don't have physio now, and my left arm is getting worse, and waiting another 2.5 months is not gonna be helpful. Or get me back in physio, something.

Goals for the Week: pass the level-up exam. cross the 25 returns mark. start reading sha po lang.

Good Things: friend time! books and having time to read them. dark chocolate peanut butter cups.

umadoshi

Last week was once again mostly swallowed by work and I'm very tired, plus I have to final-read a rewrite this afternoon.

Between Friday night and yesterday, I managed to read a couple manga volumes and

scruloose and I saw the new ep. of The Pitt.

That's all I've got right now.

Current Mood: exhausted

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ratbones

ratbones.net

February 2025

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Page Summary

umadoshi - A scattered weekly proof of life
ranalore - everybody is clever nowadays
momijizukamori - Bad Bunny
starandrea - "you don't stop gardening when you get old; you get old when you stop gardening"
tinny - 6 icons for retro_icontest
shipperslist - for tradition, of course (a 100 cql/mdzs ships fic)
hyarrowen in little_details - Paint manufacture, storage and transport in Napoleonic Europe
yaaurens - good news and bad news
shipperslist - ...
reeby10 in fandom_on_dw - characters20in20 Round 21
starandrea - "bluebird singing on a redbud budding, springtime sure got here all of a sudden" (doug stone)
shipperslist - Reading Wednesday 2026, #10
lizvogel in little_details - Hiding from stellar radiation behind an asteroid
extrapenguin - Monday Music Meme
china_shop in sid_guardian - Sang Zan's cave and other poll questions
shipperslist - gifts and greetings (a 100cql/mdzs ships fic)
naye - Free art!
starandrea - "if it's ten thousand hours or the rest of my life" (dan + shay)
yaaurens - Not Even Close to Weekly Update, 3/8/26
umadoshi - Quick and perfunctory weekly proof of life

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