This is your check-in post for today. The poll will be open from midnight Universal or Zulu Time (8pm Eastern Time) on Sunday, February 22, to midnight on Monday, February 23 (8pm Eastern Time).
Today's USA versus Canada game was a big deal because NHL players couldn't be in the Olympics for a while. Today was the most top talent on the ice that's been seen ever, because last time USA was in the Olympics we had far fewer NHL players on our roster. This was as close to 'just let all the best players play each other' as we've ever gotten.
I take a lot of pictures of three classes of things:
Cats: This pictures are good on any camera, including my agéd single-lens SE.
Birds: These pics are shit on the aforementioned handheld phone.
Moss and lichens and bugs: These pics are fine on the phone, but could be much better.
My real constraint is my hands and arms. I can't hold my arms above my head, I can't hold a phone still very long, the non-ergonomic controls and shape of a phone are shit, I realistically can't carry a tripod on a hike, and I can't bear weight on my shoulders or the back of my neck for any length of time. (I recognize that this collection of constraints means my pictures will never be great, and that's okay.)
So, questions:
Are there any cameras that have particularly good ergonomics, are particularly light, or have a good reputation for accessibility?
I believe I could get a remote shutter trigger & a remote focus, so I could prop the camera somewhere and get a good pic from a less painful angle; do you know how to choose a hand-friendly one? (Not finger-fiddly, easy to attach & detach, easy to click buttons.)
On a modern camera, is it possible to get lenses good enough for bird pics that are not, you know, heavy? Last time I had an SLR I was taking pictures on film, so that tells you how out of date my knowledge is.
What's the lightest tripod that works well for people with shit fine motor control and no finger strength? I can sort by weight on hiking sites, but hikers put up with a lot of fiddly controls that I can't handle.
(I'm only looking for advice from your experience or from the experience of people you trust. Please don't GoogleKagiGoPT it for me!)
Title: Acquisition Fandom: Leverage Characters/Pairings: Alec/Parker/Eliot Disclaimer: I own nothing to do with Leverage. It's not my toy box and I'm merely playing. Rating: PG-13 Summary: A kitten adopts Eliot. A/N: Written for Butterfly for the 2024 holly_poly.
This week's bread was a Standen loaf, strong brown/buckwheat flour, maple syrup, malt extract - but due to electric scale going weird and giving strange readings, the proportions got very odd and it turned out larger and a lot denser than usual, if still edible.
Saturday breakfast rolls: adaptable soft roll recipe, 4:1 strong white/buckwheat flour, a touch of maple syrup, dried cranberries, turned out rather well.
Today's lunch: Scottish salmon tail fillets baked in foil with butter and lime slices; served with La Ratte potatoes boiled with salt and dill and tossed in butter, buttered spinach and baked San Marzano tomatoes.
My debit card was compromised late last week, and I'm waiting for the bank to get all of the charges reversed. I've been able to cover my most urgent bills (the hotel and my storage unit), but I have a few others that are due that I'm still worried about paying. If I can come up with another $100 or so, it would make a huge difference while I wait for the bank to get everything taken care of.
So I'm going to try to sell a few things and hope for the best. 🤞🏻
First, I have a few Nintendo Switch games for sale:
If you're not interested but know someone who might be, please point them my way. It would help a lot if I could manage to sell at least one or two things from this list.
For payment, I have CashApp ($Settiai), PayPal, Venmo, or Zelle (nancy.lynn.foster@gmail.com).
Title: too many hits off this memory Author:kat_lair Fandom: Telephone - Lady Gaga ft Beyoncé (Music Video) Pairing: Beyoncé Knowles/Lady Gaga Tags: Ficlet, Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Post-Canon, Kissing, Vaginal Fingering Rating: M Word count: 491
Summary:Gaga likes making memories more than she likes revisiting them. Author notes: Well, in a perfect illustration of 'never say never' here is a surprise new installment of the show me your teeth series after, uhh, over ten years. But a) I heard a rumour of Telephone pt2, and b) luckyzukky's prompt of i took too many hits off this memory (from 'Hold Me Tight Or Don't') at likealighthouse's Fall Out Boy Femslash Febrary Ficathon proved inspiring. This is unbetaed so if you spot a typo/mistake, please do let me know.
Anyway, he mentioned that "Stand By Me" was "numbered among the Recording Industry Association of America’s 25 Songs of the Century." This naturally got me curious: A ranked list of things? That's like catnip to me!
So I went to look for it. Turns out that there's no such things as the RIAA "25 Songs of the Century." What there is is the "Song of the Century" list, produced by the RIAA in conjunction with the NEA and Scholastic Inc. It's a list of 365 songs. So where did Rather get this idea of "25 Songs of the Century"? Because "Stand by Me" is #25 on the list, and the Wikipedia entry for "Songs of the Century" only includes the top 25 songs on the list. Apparently Rather (or, more likely, one of his research assistants) looked at the Wikipedia entry, didn't read the text carefully, and based on the table of songs assumed that it was a list of 25 songs.
If you read the text carefully, not only do you get the correct number of songs. You also start to question the RIAA's methodology for creating the list. According to the entry, "[h]undreds of voters, who included elected officials, people from the music industry and from the media, teachers, and students" were asked to select the songs. These voters were selected by the RIAA (and one is forced to ask "how many students does the RIAA know?"), and of the 1300 voters selected, only 200 responded. Seems kind of sloppy and haphazard.
Then, if you read the list, you see that the voters were rather sloppy and haphazard in their definition of a song: #7 on the list is the entire album of West Side Story, which is not "a song." Altogether there are 18 albums on the list: 11 Broadway shows, 6 jazz albums, and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Obviously I don't have a copy of the instructions that the RIAA sent to the voters, but I think we can all agree that (with the exception of Thick as a Brick and possibly a few others) an album is not a song.
Also, just as an aside, I think 2001 (when this survey was conducted) was a bit premature to be choosing the most impactful songs of the 20th century.
All that being said, I think any other such list would be just as subject to being haphazard and subjective, and on skimming over the list I do think it would be an enjoyable and/or interesting list to listen to. Plus, unless you were born on February 29, you can figure out what day of the year you were born on and then look at the complete list and see what song your birthday corresponds to. (Mine is "Fight the Power" by Public Enemy.)
Reading: Last week I finished Stephanie Burgis' Wooing the Witch Queen (fun!) and read Heated Rivalry. I opted to just skip straight to the actual HR novel rather than first reading the Scott/Kip novel, which worked out fine, since I also had that context from the show. I enjoyed it a fair bit, but now I'm in the awkward position of wanting to see the next chunk for Shane and Ilya but no more urgently than after I finished watching season 1 of the show. The choices now are a) read the entire series (presumably doubling back to actually read book 1), b) skip ahead and read The Long Game, or c) hold off entirely and wait for season 2 of the show.
I also read a few more volumes each of Hikaru no Go and The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, but I'm still in rereading territory with both. (I think I've already read up to vol. 12 of Kurosagi, but for Hikaru, I think the odds are against me really realizing when I've hit new territory until I go to enter a volume in Goodreads and find it's not already on my Read list there.) Watching:scruloose and I are caught up on both The Pitt and Frieren, and we finished Midnight Mass last weekend (a very solid, intense ending).
With my crunch time at work starting, it's not an ideal time for us to start a show that's a significant time commitment or that's going to leave me desperate to see a next episode when work is eating most or all of my evenings. It's possible this will result in me just showing scrulooseHeated Rivalry, since it's apparently our key cultural export of the decade and all. *g* Only six episodes and I don't have to worry about being impatient to see what happens next or about being spoiled.
(I still don't feel actively fannish about HR at all, but am enjoying being adjacent to it and seeing all the fannish excitement and meta and such. I have saved many fic recs to my read-later list on A03, but have yet to actually read a single one [and may never, given how slowly I go through fic--there's still a steady stream of Guardian fic I haven't read that also goes on that list].) Weathering/Working: We have what sounds like a significant nor'easter blizzard arriving at some point tomorrow, with heavy wet snow. Will this be where our luck fails for the season and we lose power for the first time? (I'm completely astonished that it hasn't happened yet. Probably it's not really because the generator and backup power are warding that off, like carrying an umbrella around...)
And of course the spring crunch is set to start tomorrow in the late afternoon, right around when the storm is likely to be in full swing. Will the weather have much impact? (Mainly, I guess, in terms of Those Who Speak all being able to make it there safely; I kinda hope that there's some kind of backup power in their actual building, but I don't know for sure one way or the other.)
Title:in the darkness with you Word count: 4,233 Fandom: 镇魂 | Guardian (TV) Pairing: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan Rating: Mature Content tags: Blind Zhao Yunlan, First time, Hand-Feeding, Finger-Sucking, Clothed Sex, Zhao Yunlan's oral fixation, Episode Related, Episode 21, Missing Scene, Blindness Arc A/N: Many thanks to china_shop for beta-reading.
Summary:
Zhao Yunlan woke to the smell of citrus, sweet and strong in the air. Without fully turning his face out of the pillow, he slitted open a sleep-heavy eye - to complete, unchanged darkness. Reality came crashing down like a landslide. Right: still blind.
Fandom: Stranger Things Pairings/Characters: Will Byers/Mike Wheeler Rating: Explicit Length: 59,047 words Content Notes: Bullying and homophobia. Creator Link:harriet_vane Theme: Inept in Love, Pretend Couple, Friends to Lovers, Canon LGBTQ+ Characters
Summary: Will needs a date to his mom's wedding. Mike volunteers.
"I have an idea," says Mike.
Ice cubes form in Will's stomach. "How dangerous is it? Like, should I call Dustin to talk you down, or should I call Nancy to be ready to drive us to the hospital?"
"No," says Mike, "you can't tell anyone or it won't work."
"Or what won't work?" Will asks. It's like picking up a rock you know a spider will be under.
Mike gets up and closes Will's door. Hopper doesn't make them keep it open but sometimes Will does anyway, because every now and then lying around alone with Mike on his bed just makes his chest ache too much. If the door is open he can tell himself You can't do anything right now, someone will see.
Mike leans back against the door. His eyes are lit up with that special maniacal gleam that the Wheelers get right before they do something insane, like when Nancy says, "Then we have to go kill Vecna ourselves," or whatever. "Take me to the wedding," says Mike.
"Yeah," says Will slowly, "you'll be at the wedding. Obviously."
"As your date."
Reccer's Notes: They've fixed Hawkins' Upside Down problem (though this predates the final season), and it's the kids' senior year, and Will is worried his mom is worried about him, so Mike hatches a plan to be Will's (fake) date to Joyce and Hopper's wedding because of course he does. That means we've got Will pretending to pretend he's into Mike and Mike playing gay chicken against himself and...losing? winning? both?? Neither of them is doing a great job (or any job) communicating, but their fake relationship thrives and does what all the best fake relationships do, becomes real. A sweet friends-to-lovers romance with just the right amount of agonizing feelings.
There's a feeling, I hope, a unidentifiable but deeply uncomfortable burn, felt by white women, who don't know, but should know, how many private brown group chats are typing.
And as I don't want to take on a cringe middle-class racist white woman (at this point there's about five of them that I have at various times decided not to take on, all terribly right-on, right-thinking, probably-vegan feminist pro-Palestine queer white women), that is all I have to say about that.
...Cake! This one combines two hot and happening trends: gray and ombre. Plus polka-dots, which will never go out of style.
Let's hope gray doesn't, either, because pretty much my entire house is painted gray. Some people might think that sounds depressing, but just look at this cake:
Then I learned that it was modeled after a Vera Wang gown, and I felt totally smart and stylish for a second. Then I looked down at my ensemble of mismatched sweats and slowly lowered my hands from their 'raise the roof' position.
Isn't it great how all the ribbon and fabric look like actual ribbon and fabric? Just amazing.
I sure hope you enjoyed today's gorgeous gray gateaux and that your Sunday is especially sweet!
******
P.S. I was browsing "gray whale" things to link today - because whales are awesome -but then this blue whale butter dish popped up and it's so stinkin' cute you get it instead:
Candy Hearts Exchange has been revealed, and I now know (well, I was already pretty sure) that sanguinity wrote my lovely gift fic There My Heart Forever Lies! It is a 16K (for a 300 word minimum exchange!) Flight of the Heron story that riffs off the musical Brigadoon, which I had never heard of before, where Ardroy is saved by being taken out of time. I especially appreciate that the story took time to develop Keith's relationship with Francis as a counterweight for his eventual choice.
As for me, I wrote the following for sanguinity (which of course she guessed)! We do keep getting paired up in exchanges, which is no wonder considering the rareness of the fandoms. I had fun writing Laurent being his usual earnest, passionate self, while also, well, rising to the occasion. Thanks as always to garonne for beta reading. <3
In Which Laurent Rises to the Occasion (4150 words) by Luzula Fandom: The Wounded Name - D. K. Broster Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Laurent de Courtomer/Aymar de la Rocheterie, Aymar de la Rocheterie/Avoye de Villecresne Characters: Laurent de Courtomer, Aymar de la Rocheterie, Avoye de Villecresne Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Pre-Poly Summary: Aymar despairs of clearing his name and leaves France, leaving only a letter behind.
This early PC platformer is of no small historical interest, as it was the first game released by everybody's favorite totally uncontroversial and non-resented game publishing company, Electronic Arts. Like most of their titles then and now, it wasn't developed in-house; Michael Abbott and Matthew Alexander get the design and programming credit for this one.
But you don't need to me to tell you the illustrious history of EA (or, as it was briefly called at its inception, "Amazin' Software"—and I can't tell you how disappointed I am that we don't live in the timeline where they kept that name). I guess you also don't technically need me to tell you about this ridiculous game and my memories of playing it while being unable to identify most of the characters and objects it contains, but I'm going to go ahead anyway.
Hard Hat Mack is... well, it sure is a game. You can find it on abandonware sites, but I couldn't really get it to run well on any version or emulator I tried. The DOS version (which I had as a kid) runs too fast in DOSBox by default, but when I reduced the clock speed I found that it lagged badly when multiple objects were moving, which made the second level pretty much unplayable. We probably shouldn't hold our breaths for EA to offer a re-release, and maybe that's for the best.
Title:Hold Me on AO3 Artist:mific Rating: Gen Fandom: Heated Rivalry Characters/Pairings: Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov Notes: Made in Procreate for the ICE OUT donation challenge, and for challenge #75 - Romance
We have the following PHs looking for a loving home.
PH 9 - Superman (Movie 2025), The Librarians (TV 2014), Leverage (US TV 2008), Star Trek: The Original Series, The Mandalorian (TV), Star Trek: Voyager, Constantine (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Crossover Fandom
PH 10 - Marvel Cinematic Universe, KPop Demon Hunters (2025), Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia (Anime & Manga), Heated Rivalry (TV), 9-1-1 (TV), Arcane: League of Legends (Cartoon 2021), DCU (Comics), Marvel (Comics), Teen Wolf
PH 11 - Hazbin Hotel (Cartoon), Bugsnax (Video Game)
PH 12 - The Mummy (Movies 1999-2008), Original Work
Title: Out of the Shadows Fandom: The Hobbit (2012-2014) Author:rodo Length: 2,398 words Rating: 6+ Characters: Legolas & Tauriel Disclaimer: Everything belongs to Warner Bros. et al. Beta: starsprightly A/N: written for Nicky_Gabriel during 2026’s candyheartsex
Summary: To Tauriel, Legolas was barely more than a stranger – until the day she stumbled into saving his life.
Title: Fallen In Battle Fandom: War of the Worlds (1988-90) Author: badly_knitted Characters: Harrison Blackwood, Paul Ironhorse. Rating: PG Setting: Seasons 2, Episode 1. Summary: An alien clone of Colonel Ironhorse wreaks havoc on the Blackwood Project. Word Count: 200 Content Notes: Nada. Written For: Challenge 507: Amnesty 84, using Challenge 15: Double. Disclaimer: I don’t own War of the Worlds, or the characters. They belong to their creators.
PSA: The Donald Strachey movie, On the Other Hand, Death, is currently available for purchase from Amazon for $4.99 (I think the SD version is $2.99). They are also available to those who have Here TV.
I bought Ice Blues on sale a year ago, and I was thinking about the movies tonight, so I thought I'd check. They are so good! If you like film noir style, detective stories, with LGBTQ+ characters and themes, and an adorable ship, these will not disappoint!
It was especially amusing as I was getting some Sonny/Rico vibes from Don and Tim. LOL. Just a couple of little things (they aren't really anything alike). I think it was the 'married couple' vibes, and how well they know each other. I don't know why. Maybe extrapolation. I think this is very much how Sonny and Rico will be together in my future fic where they are an established couple.
But Don and Tim are so wonderful together. You shouldn't miss them!
One of these days, I'm going to give the books a try...
I just got back from my second concert in several months, this one by Suzanne Vega. I first heard her music in 1986, a few months after her first album came out. I was in college, had MTV on, and saw the video for her utterly brilliant song "Marlene on the Wall' (video link). The next day I went out and bought the album, and loved pretty much all of it, and then several months later I saw she was coming to St. Louis, in a (thankfully inexpensive, since I was a poor college student) small venue on the waterfront, and I went to the show, and loved it.
She has a new album out, and my partner and I went to this show, and she started off with “Marlene on the Wall”. It was a very good, if slightly odd show, in that by far the majority of the songs were from either her firs two albums or her most recent album, with no more than one song per album (if that) from her other seven albums.
I was going to shop around Jackson but once I got there apparently everyone in a 100 mile radius showed up. It was hilariously crowded so I cut my day in half. I did get to the coffee house and like the jackass I am saw one open table and three people in line so I threw my shit on that table got all comfy then got in line. I wrote. I finish that chapter I've been trying to finish for a month. I started a new story. I might share it tomorrow to see if it feels like it would draw you in.
I couldn't recycle today because it looked like none of the 8 dumpsters had been emptied since I was there last week. People were trying to toss stuff a top the mountains. I noped out of that, hit the library and Kroger (I guess this snow tomorrow is going to be worse than I heard?) which was packed to the gills.
I also managed to hit Tractor Supply. I now own six black ducklings and a dozen of mixed peeps. Okay not really but probably only because I love to travel and can't take care of farm animals. I did get onion sets though and my brush on a stick so I can clean the kitchen floor. This is a Liberman (like my broom) 15$. All the other brands were 40$ and up. I'm like dudes, it's a brush on a stick. I can buy two of this one for one of yours and yours didn't seem considerably better.
There was a handmade lemonade 'food' truck in the parking lot. I got the holy water lemonade (strawberry, peach, something I'm forgetting and blue curacao and I nearly drank it all in one go I ate the lemons in it to. Have I mentioned I love lemons? (bought another half dozen of them today)
I saw a facebook announcement that the Bourbon City steampunk already has their panels filled up and I didn't get an email so I guess I ain't one of them. What sucks is I have the tickets but its on graduation. BUT they're also doing a writing thing so I am going to try that too. Who knows. I might just tell my bosses I have a convention. Do they need to know what kind?
And I am already sending my panel ideas to the Gettysburg steampunk thing. I mean I left it too long on Bourbon but it's early days for Gettysburg.
1. So nice to get back to my routine at home. I tried my best to stick to the things I could while away but it's not the same and it's definitely a source of stress.
2. Carla got some frozen char siu fried rice from Trader Joe's and it's really good. Making fried rice from scratch is an easy meal, but I wouldn't mind keeping a bag of this in the freezer for times we feel like something even easier.
3. A moth got in the house the other day and Carla was able to get some really great pics of Ollie when he was laser focused on the moth.
My daughter “Melody” is in the midst of the terrible twos. Five or more meltdowns per day over normal frustrations/limits are typical. Recently, my mother-in-law, “Darlene” took Melody and my 6-year-old son out to run errands, and true to form, Melody had a blow-up. It was how Darlene handled it that has me seeing red. She told Melody that she was leaving her in the store and that she could find her own way home, and left her screaming on the floor! She then moved off with my son, out of my daughter’s view, and waited for several minutes before coming back for her. I only learned of this later when my son told me what happened.
When I confronted my mother-in-law, she claimed her method was helpful because Melody behaved afterward. And she said Melody was “never in any danger” because she kept her in sight at all times. After this, I no longer feel safe with Darlene going places with the kids without my husband present or me. Sadly, my husband is no help. He agrees that this was a good “lesson” in behaving for our daughter and that his mother used to do it to him and his sister when they were kids! Please tell me I’m right in telling Darlene her days of taking the kids solo are over. —Pissed
Trying to clear my calendar and hunker down for the next few days in light of the storm had me allowing myself a little bit of panic buying in the form of another bottle of olive oil. It's not on the same level as rescheduling an appointment because I know there's no point trying to get anywhere farther than two blocks, maximum, come Monday, but it helped a bit.
I'm also charging up my devices as something of an insurance policy and made sure to return all my outstanding library checkouts. Again, something that only helped a bit, and still helped. Mostly I'm now waiting for it to arrive so I can finally enjoy the snow. The build-up to it isn't nearly as enjoyable.
Damn, they came so close to taking out Canada and getting silver. Ah, well. Still, we've got squids taking home bronze and they were key players on their teams. Kaapo Kakko scored again.
(Kakko should be one of the Kraken's top scorers, but he was out most of the season with an injury and seemed to have the yips once he got back, was slow to get his groove back. This sidequest may have helped him a bit.)
I didn't watch the game, because I was at a write-in at Steeplejack.
Just in case you had any doubt that beer is a religion in Portland:
Damn, I need to go there with my real camera.
I considered catching the finals tomorrow, more to see the medal ceremony than the game, but the Fins already have their medals? They didn't wait and do them all at once like with the women's game?
Still sad that Finland didn't manage to take out Canada, despite that early lead. Still, some squids got bronze and overall squids had very good showings on their teams. Anyway, here's hoping Canada deletes USA tomorrow. I'm not really attached to Canada or any of their players, I just want USA's first line humiliated if possible. I can dream!
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