primroseburrows

Previous poll review
In the Fitness trackers poll, 18% of respondents regularly use a fitness tracker to monitor their activity, 10% also use an app, and 16% use the pedometer on their phone; 48% said "other no", proving that I really should have got more granular (and emphatic) for non-adopters. Sorry! (For me, I enjoy some of the "gamification of exercise" parts, but when Fitbit eventually insists that I have to merge my data with my Google account in a few months, I plan to delete the app and use my device as a standalone thingummy.)

In ticky-boxes, FANDOM SPARKLES came second to hugs hugs hugs, 56% to 68%. "I genuflect to the sanctity of the ticky-box" is a reference to/misquote of a line from a Courtney Milan romance. Thank you for your votes! ♥

Reading
Almost nothing. Andrew and I started (barely) The Warrior's Apprentice by Bujold, the first Miles Vorkosigan book, in audio, read by Grover Gardner. And in ebook I've just started Courtney Milan's m/m novella, The Pursuit of... set during the American War of Independence.

Kdramas
I was sure I'd have drifted away from One Spring Night by now in favour of the new thing, but I'm semi-managing to watch that and Undercover Miss Hong in tandem. I love both of them in very different ways. OSN is slow and as full of social nuance as an Austen novel; UMH is silly corporate spy shenanigans and found family.

(In Undercover Miss Hong, the 35-year-old lead is undercover as a 20-year-old, and every time she glances around quickly and her shoulders move too, I think, yep, it's the stiff neck that gives you away. #relatable)

As predicted, Pru and I started Love Scout. I am immediately obsessed with it all over again, ahhhhhh! How am I going to bear the wait between watchings??

Other TV
A bit more of Ponies, but it's so tense that I keep avoiding it. It's only an 8-episode season, and we're halfway, so I should probably bite the bullet and power through.

Episode 2 of R.J. Decker was terribly written, to the point where I don't know if I can keep going. (I think the Movie Briefs podcast may have ruined me for PI shows: I kept going, "Is this witness tampering?" and "Stop revealing case information to suspects!")

More of The Pitt (I am worried about Robbie) (no spoilers, please!!) and Cheers.

And last night we watched the bizarre combination of:

the pilot of The Madison, starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Kurt Russell, a gorgeously cinematic show about loss, grief, and New York "society" people dealing with nature in Montana. It's like the love child of A River Somewhere (Australian fly-fishing show which I happen to own on DVD), Schitt's Creek (but without the humour; just the rich people out of their comfort zone part), and [something dealing with partner-loss], and
The Naked Gun, starring Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson (surprisingly watchable; made us laugh).

We've also watched a bunch of stand-up lately: Marc Maron, Rose Matafeo, probably some others.

Audio entertainment
"Corporations have learned that when you have total buy-in, from everyone, and if you can make it impossible for people to not use your product, you determine what culture is. You just do." Gita Jackson on Tech Won't Save Us. (I am so grateful to Dreamwidth for not having an algorithm!)

Online life
Sign-ups are open for the 520 Day Guardian Reverse Exchange!! Yay!! This is our eighth year, and it's always a great time.

Writing/making things
I finished a round of rewrites on one of my started-for-Yuletide fics and sent it back to beta; now I need to apply the same rewriting strategy to my other started-for-Yuletide fic too. 520 Day assignments will out by the 8th, so that's my deadline for these: three weeks. In theory, that should be do-able.

I'm averaging one fic a month so far this year, which is pretty slow-paced for me, but it isn't nothing.

Life/health/mental state things
( [Dog in burning house; everything is fine.gif, local politics edition] )

Link dump
The Left Doesn't Hate Technology, We Hate Being Exploited by Gita Jackson | Heroes Choose Danger - How to Make Your Passive Hero Active [Screenwriting Tips] by

heyjameshurst (Youtube, 12:57 min) | Night Train with Wyatt Cenac ep 1 (stand-up series made for streaming, but then the streamer went bust).

Good things
520 Day, yay!! FTH, eeee!! Writers' Hour continues to keep me showing up; it's a structure that works really well for me. Kdramas and those of you who recommend them to me. AO3 comments on some of my favourites of my fics. Sunday's long bike ride to buy the best hot cross buns didn't have any negative arm/wrist consequences. The air fryer I inherited is ridiculously tiny, but I'm enjoying it. Good weather. Reasonably good health. (*knocks on wood*) Cat! Andrew!

Poll #34375 Smoke alarms

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 30

View Respondents

Smoke alarms

View Answers

I have some on ceilings/walls
23 (76.7%)

I have some in piles around the place
5 (16.7%)

I have an inadequate number / inadequate coverage
3 (10.0%)

nope
2 (6.7%)

when one goes off, I assume it's serious and take action
7 (23.3%)

when one goes off, I assume it's a battery issue and silence it / take it off the wall
12 (40.0%)

my place/building has built-in alarms, and I trust them
4 (13.3%)

my place/building has built-in alarms, and they go off all the time, argh
0 (0.0%)

other
1 (3.3%)

ticky-box full of pizza, yeah!
16 (53.3%)

ticky-box full of iridescent bubbles
21 (70.0%)

ticky-box full of chopsticks
14 (46.7%)

ticky-box full of hiking
14 (46.7%)

ticky-box full of hugs
24 (80.0%)

jesse_the_k

While he was quite surprised to walk out for his morning on-leash ablutions into heavy snow above his knees, he's really starting to relax.

This morning I reached down to stroke his back and he didn't flinch.

Just now I was resting on the floor by his bed, petting his back. I started to scritch the scruff of his neck, and he relaxed even more, his dark eyes shining up at MyGuy behind the camera. (I'm reclining on my tripled-up exercise pad just behind him, shockingly without glasses.)

( Read more... )

Only 28 days of enforced rest to go!

mark posting in

dw_maintenance

Happy Saturday!

I'm going to be doing a little maintenance today. It will likely cause a tiny interruption of service (specifically for www.dreamwidth.org) on the order of 2-3 minutes while some settings propagate. If you're on a journal page, that should still work throughout!

If it doesn't work, the rollback plan is pretty quick, I'm just toggling a setting on how traffic gets to the site. I'll update this post if something goes wrong, but don't anticipate any interruption to be longer than 10 minutes even in a rollback situation.

jesse_the_k

On his second day, Shadow wandered into our bedroom and leapt up on the bed. I made my creaky crane eh-eh sound which is the closest I get to saying "no" to a dog and he hopped right off. (Clearly, he's had some training.)

This morning we were resting in bed and he stood in our bedroom doorway. I said "Shadow come!" and he stepped inside! And wagged his tail! and then immediately turned around and went back to his crate.

But his tail can wag.

isis

What I've recently finished reading:

The Princess Bride by William Goldman, which - I might have read years and years ago? Or I might have seen the movie (though I don't remember doing so)? Or maybe I just knew a lot about it by osmosis and because of the way certain things about it became memes, so I thought I had read it, but really never had. I don't know. Anyway, I read it because I wanted something light and silly to counteract recent more difficult reading and even more difficult current events, and it fit the bill.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, which I read and enjoyed despite DNFing The Martian due to finding it powerfully boring. (I liked the movie version! I think the story was fine, but the various supporting characters all felt like cardboard cutouts to me.) Here, the initial hook - the POV character waking up with amnesia on what he eventually determines is a spaceship - was very much up my alley, a trope I love! The various supporting characters that appeared in the flashbacks were definitely better than cardboard cutouts, though sometimes they felt a bit stock. However, they ultimately weren't very important, and I really bought into the book with gusto when...

Okay, I read this book basically unspoiled, in that I knew that the main character was on a desperate space mission to save Earth from some sort of extinction event, but that was it. So I'm going to spoiler-cut the rest, just in case someone reading this hasn't read this book, so that you may have the same experience I had.

Spoiler spoiler spoiler!

Okay, if you have been reading my book posts for a while, you know that I am a big fan of stories about human-alien encounters. My last books post included a review of Adrian Tchaikovsky's Shroud, and I mentioned that it reminded me a little of Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward, in the sense that it starts with an environment which is the opposite of anything humans would expect to find life on, and reasons out from physics and chemistry what life might be like in that environment. But really, Tchaikovsky's approach to human-alien encounters is more adversarial and combative, and probably more realistic, than Forward's. Here, there's also an alien whose form and manner is reasoned out from the conditions of the planet where it developed, but its interactions with the human are more Forwardian than Tchaikovskian. Both the alien and the human are mindful that they are there for the same reason - to save their respective civilizations - and they approach their interactions carefully and with much forethought, for the most part.

There are still misunderstandings and near-fatal disasters and scary adventures, enough to make it a compelling, engaging read. I thought the ending was perfect, and I look forward to seeing the movie eventually! In conclusion, ROCKY MY BELOVED ♥♥♥

The Unicorn Hunter by Katherine Arden, which I read as e-ARC from NetGalley. Arden's One True Story (based on the books by her I've read) is that of a woman constrained by her sex and her circumstances who strives for the agency to direct her own life and protect what she cares about. This book is about a slightly-fantasy alternate-universe Anne of Brittany, who chafes against the fate she and her country are headed for: she will be forced to marry the King of France, bringing Brittany for annexation as her dowry.

To avoid this, in desperation she arranges a secret betrothal to France's enemy, the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilien. However, in this version of the world, rulers have diviners who can discern events happening at a distance, and send messages back and forth; to keep it secret, she holds the proxy wedding in the enchanted forest of Brocéliande, which diviners can't penetrate at risk of madness. And there she sees a unicorn, and brings a diviner who disappeared in the forest centuries ago out into the "real" world, setting in motion a chain of events which blur the boundaries between her real kingdom of Brittany and the mysterious otherworld of the "kerriganed", the faerie people of Breton folklore.

If you squint you can see elements of both the Winternight Trilogy and The Warm Hands of Ghosts; a forthright woman who doesn't behave as she should according to the strictures of the day, a figure from a shadowy world who may have ulterior motives, the subtle mix of a realistic world and a fantastical one. Anne is a wonderful heroine who deliberately leads her opponents to underestimate her, who pursues her aims and protects her family with great courage. I really enjoyed this book, especially the afterword in which Arden talks a little about the real Anne, and the real Brittany, and the folkloric Brittany that inspired her.

"The Colorado River Does Not Reach 2030" by Len Necefer and Teal Lehto, on Substack. This is a short story in the form of a news article, in the author's words:

What follows is a work of near-future fiction. It is not a prediction. It is a scenario built from conditions that are measurable today: Lake Powell is at 26% capacity and falling, snowpack at record lows, seven states deadlocked on water allocation, and a federal agency that has been gutted of the expertise needed to manage the crisis. // Every element in this scenario is drawn from published science, existing legal disputes, or political dynamics already in motion. Some characters are composites, some are real. The timeline is compressed. The chain of events is plausible. The unsettling part is how little I had to invent.

It's cli-fi in the model of Kim Stanley Robinson, purported interviews and charts and mocked-up newspaper images and X tweets, the story of the destruction of the west through climate change and human stupidity. It's really good - and (as the author says) plausible and unsettling.

What I'm reading now:

In nonfiction, Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes by Leah Litman. So far it's a little heavily steeped in pop culture references for me, which means references to pop culture I'm only familiar with through osmosis, but it's interesting and persuasive.

In fiction, Blood over Bright Haven by M. L. Wang. So far it feels rather cliche, though I like the worldbuilding. It reminds me very much of the cartoon Arcane.

In audio, I've just started book 2 of the Bobiverse, For We are Many by Dennis E. Taylor. It's fun!

china_shop

Previous poll review
In the Being an audience poll, 41.3% of respondents have been to the cinema in the last six months, 28.3% to the theatre, and 17.4% to a live music gig. I'm curious about the 10.9% who chose "other".

In ticky-boxes, bakery treats came second to hugs, 60.9% to 73.9%, which is an excellent showing. Snow puppies came third with 47.8%. Thank you for your votes! ♥

Reading
Andrew and I finished Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold, so now I know what

minoanmiss meant by SHOPPING TRIP. *takes a moment* Anyway, it was great. I love Bujold's character work and her humour. Looking forward to the next one and getting to know Miles.

Kdramas
Still re-watching One Spring Night, lol. I made a flaily post about it a few days ago, but then realised that my "realisations" were actually explained in the next few scenes, so I don't know if I'm seeing the show differently or just remembering info I learned from the first time around. I've since privated the post, but if you've seen OSN and want to talk to me about it, please do!! I am mildly obsessed.

I also started Undercover Miss Hong on

adore's rec. I'm in the middle of episode 2, and it's great so far. It reminds me of Good Manager (AKA Chief Kim) to the point where I checked if it was the same writer (it isn't), and otoh, the lead is played by Park Shin-hye, who was the nun in the "nun undercover as her twin brother in a boyband" drama, You're Beautiful, which was my gateway drug into the world of Kdramas, so in a way it feels like coming full circle. (Here, she's undercover as a 20yo.)

Other TV
We finished the Return of the King extras (omg, so stressful!). Still watching The Pitt, of course, though I really think it works better all in a bunch, rather than one episode a week. (I won't say "binged", because the most we ever manage is three episodes a night -- that's a lot for us.)

Happened to notice that Cheers is on Neon (NZ streaming service, incl. some HBO), and randomly started watching it -- it's aged surprisingly well! Very white, and the sexism vs feminism tension is front and centre, but Sam is fine, and everyone seems to be having a good time. We'll stick with that for a while and see.

The pilot of R.J. Decker, a new PI show loosely based on a Carl Hiaasen novel. It's very network TV, case-of-the-week and easy-going. Good supporting cast. Seems fine. A few episodes of Ponies, about two CIA widows trying to be spies in cold war Russia. They don't have much trade craft yet, so it's equal parts comedic and tense. Half an episode of SurrealEstate.

My sister and I are still on Fringe season 4, in which the entire multiverse revolves around Peter; I prefer Lincoln. And we watched some Bluey, naturally. Just finished season 1 and started season 2. 🧡💙🧡

Audio entertainment
All the usual suspects. More Movie Briefs, more local politics. And the episode of A Bit Fruity recced by

sabotabby (who gives excellent podcast recs, btw). A Tech Won't Save Us episode about The Luddite Club. A bit of Ad Astra about pacing. I think I'm spending too much time listening to podcasts.

Online life
The 520 Day Guardian Reverse Exchange is coming soon!! We've been doing some behind-the-scenes prep for that. And wheeeee, I won a Fandom Trumps Hate auction (my first time bidding) -- so exciting!!

Writing/making things
Still bashing my head against the two things I started for Yuletide. It would be fantastic to get these off my plate before I get my 520 Day assignment and have to redecorate my brain in Guardian. *plugs away* (I feel like my intuition is offline, and I'm having to figure everything out with my inept thinking brain, why?)

In drawing, I did a practice pic of Zhao Yunlan, and wow, expressions are hard; the difference between worried and scared is, like, a millimetre here, a millimetre there...

Life/health/mental state things
The tsunami of ambient stress is making itself felt in my body. When I bought my new phone, I somehow got six months' free premium Fitbit membership again, so I tried wearing my Fitbit to sleep, to build up a data profile. And yep, an "objective" poor rating makes a subjective bad night's sleep feel so much worse. That's why I stopped doing this last time! So I've stopped again. Also, my resting pulse rate was going up and up for a while there. /o\

Had my free breast-squish day.

Goals
I did not do my goal things from last week. Ah well.

Good things
Sunshine. New (second-hand) red bag arrived this week; I don't think it's as waterproof as advertised, but it's a step up from my sponge of a handbag. Showers and kitties and going out to lunch. Biking and bike lanes. The Bingo fanart I received in

fandomtrees continues to be cheering/soothing. GUARDIAN!!

Poll #34352 Fitness trackers

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 50

View Respondents

Do you use a fitness tracker to monitor your activity?

View Answers

yes, regularly
9 (18.0%)

yes, sometimes
2 (4.0%)

...and an app
5 (10.0%)

I use the pedometer on my phone
8 (16.0%)

no, but I used to
6 (12.0%)

no, but I'm thinking about starting
1 (2.0%)

other no
24 (48.0%)

other
1 (2.0%)

ticky-box full of "I genuflect to the sanctity of the ticky-box"
20 (40.0%)

ticky-box full of otters building obstacle courses
24 (48.0%)

ticky-box of FANDOM SPARKLES
28 (56.0%)

ticky-box full of bears baking blueberry and salmon muffins
21 (42.0%)

ticky-box full of hugs hugs hugs
34 (68.0%)

thisaintbc posting in

ds_noticeboard

Woohoo, big bang sign ups are here!

For primary sign-ups, you can make 20,000-word fics or podfics or equivalent art/vids/craft of any sort, for due South or any other Canadian Six Degrees fandom. There is no cutoff date for signing up - sign-ups stay open until the August deadline.

Check out the sign-up post for this year's schedule - and to sign up!

jesse_the_k

A dozen days ago we brought home Shadow from Underdog Pet Rescue (where we found Bella ten years ago).

Shadow’s had a hard life: not only was he abandoned by his family to live in the street, he got heartworm. Underdog has been treating him, and we have to continue to enforce rest for another 5 weeks. We must walk him on leash even for quick potty trips in the back yard.

He's a skinny minnie — around 40 pounds. He's got super-sleek short shiny black fur — unlike our previous dogs, he's single-coated. He's got maybe 47 white hairs at various spots around his body. There’s a clumpy stripe of white on his chest, but he hasn’t felt comfortable enough to show us his belly yet. Between his ears he’s got the wide head of a pitty, but his nose is long and thin.

We're looking forward to buoying Shadow with the love he needs, and grateful that retirement offers the time. For the first few days his muscles were always tense, and when we moved a hand anywhere within ten feet he'd flinch. He's beginning to unclench, and we've even seen his tail wag a couple times. While we're all bored without romping and long walks, it's a good time to shower him with stinky treats for learning his name and beginning to trust us. He walks pretty well on lead and already knows leave it, ignoring a treat sitting in the middle of my flat palm 6 inches from his nose.

His triangular ears have floppy tips — the left one is always down. His back has two shaved bare squares where the vets injected the second and third doses of arsenic to kill the heartworm parasites. His soulful eyes were so tight in the first week we saw nothing but deep brown iris. Today when Shadow and I were hiding from The Evil Vacuum Cleaner in my bedroom, I finally saw some white in his gaze.

( click for pics )

china_shop

Previous poll review
In the spam SPAM spam poll, 52% of respondents only check their spam folder when they're looking for a specific thing, 30% check it maybe once a month, 10% weekly, and 8% daily. (This question was inspired by gmail sending multiple emails in the middle of threads to spam, wtf.)

In ticky-boxes, blanket cocoons and comfort food came second to hugs, 62% to 74%. Judgy koalas came third with 56%. Thank you for your votes! ♥

Reading
I read Courtney Milan's The Earl Who Isn't, which was just as enjoyable at the others in the series. Her kissing and UST are excellent, and I love everyone in Wedgeford.

Bounced off Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfield, with prejudice. (That was one of my library books.) The first "chapter" (of three in the entire book) was a blow-by-blow account of working backstage at SNL; the second "chapter" (which I flicked through) was lockdown correspondence. I didn't like either of the characters.

I don't know what I'm reading next. Or listening to on my own. But Andrew and I have about 2.5 hours left in Barrayar.

Kdramas
Oh no, I finished One Spring Night and kind of... went back to the beginning and started it again. With occasional diversions into Something in the Rain (which ha, is by the same writer, as well as having vast numbers of cast members in common, so that explains that). At some point I'll emerge from this Jung Hae In fever dream and start something else.

Pru and I finished Family by Choice (I LOVE IT SO MUCH), and next week we're starting Love Scout (\o/).

Other TV
We're on the final disk of extras for Return of the King, and that'll be it. It's stressful seeing the last-minute absolute chaos behind the scenes, but also kind of magical. Still going on The Pitt, and we've watched a couple of episodes of Dinosaur, a UK sitcom about two sisters, one of whom is autistic. I like it!

Got a few things lined up: new seasons of The Lincoln Lawyer and Dark Winds, more Scavengers Reign, there were probably some other things, idk.

Audio entertainment
Writing Excuses, some Better Offline, some What Matters Most (chatty general life psychology/advice), Cross Party Lines (local politics), Letters from an American (just a few /o\), Heaving Bosoms (chatty recaps of romance novels, just for something relaxing to put in my ears), Movie Briefs (lawyers talk about law movies, ditto).

Online life
*hugs you all, so much*

...

Writing/making things
My Yuletide treat is at beta at last. \o/ Now I've started in on my Yuletide assignment fic, unfinished at 7k words. I'm imposing a new structure on it to see if that might make it more finishable. No drawing practice.

Life/health/mental state things
Idk, I'm okay. Getting some things done, at least. Getting a fair amount of sleep and exercise. Doing righteous battle with my health insurer. Spending too much time tweaking my new phone to make it behave how I want.

Goals
This week: make a batch of vegetarian dumplings, make a mini quiche in the air fryer. All my goals are food, hi!

Good things
Sunshine. Helpful, supportive people. The 520 Day Guardian Reverse Exchange is coming soon! Kitty. New phone is mostly behaving itself. We went to a delightfully geeky talk about dragonflies.

Poll #34329 Being an audience

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 47

View Respondents

In the last six months, I've been (in person) to

View Answers

cinema
19 (40.4%)

theatre
13 (27.7%)

live music gig
8 (17.0%)

ballet
1 (2.1%)

opera
2 (4.3%)

sports game
2 (4.3%)

other
6 (12.8%)

ticky-box full of bakery treats
28 (59.6%)

ticky-box full of keeping a paper appointment diary
9 (19.1%)

ticky-box full of rambling around the podcast 'verse getting your ears dirty
8 (17.0%)

ticky-box full of softly squishable snow puppies snuggling in a heap
22 (46.8%)

ticky-box full of hugs to you all <3 <3 <3
34 (72.3%)

omens

This month was a dramatic fall in hours. ~59 in total, minus 3.5 for Polish (ouch) and 6hrs for reading.

( the usual graphs n junk )

Anyhoo, short month. March is already better :D

「 January 2026 | Index | March 2026 」

rants and ramblings of utter randomness

Me-and-media update

Day 21: Shadow Continues to Mellow

Performing some traffic maintenance today

We Have a Tail Wag!

wednesday reads

Me-and-media update

2026 due South/Canadian Six Degrees Big Bang Sign-Ups Open!

We Welcome a Shadow

Me-and-media update

feb 2026 language update

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