victorian221b | Member Posts

Well, it's Wip Wednesday but I got myself thinking, somehow, that it was Tuesday. Which is to say that I don't have my post ready again. Whoops! Just like last time, I'll aim to update this tomorrow. Here's hoping this won't be an ongiong trend orz

stonepicnicking_okapi

Today is National Clam Chowder Day in the US (and I got a can at the store and enjoyed it) so today's word is...

...chowder.

a soup or stew of seafood (such as clams or fish) usually made with milk or tomatoes, salt pork, onions, and other vegetables (such as potatoes)

origin

French chaudière kettle, contents of a kettle, from Late Latin caldaria

Here's The Ultimate Guide to Chowders: https://www.thedailymeal.com/1138211/what-to-do-with-leftover-salmon/

dustbunny105

We're about to be halfway through the last week of February and it's only now hitting me that it's the last week of February. I know this isn't the first time this month I've expressed surprise over the perpetual flow of time but, Idk, this is just wild to me. I guess I thought the back half of the month would drag because I'm looking forward to TFcon in a couple weeks.

Of course, there were also things I wanted to do this month that I haven't done yet, so maybe that accounts for the way time is flying...

Ah, well. I won't say that I'm getting that stuff done, on account of I don't want to set myself up, but I'm not ready to count it out just yet. We shall see!

stonepicnicking_okapi

I haven't done a proper News & Views in several weeks so here goes.

1. We got a couple of inches of snow Sunday night. I was terrified Monday morning but I made it to jazz man in one piece and it melted enough for me to take Indian lady to physical therapy. Also, in the middle of making myself sick about whether I was going to survive my commute, my body decided it would be a great time to start menstruating. WHAT?!

2. On the heels of

spikedluv's death, one of the members of my meditation circle died on Friday. She had had several rounds of chemo AND remission over the years but two weeks ago went into the hospital with severe dehydration (c-diff) and never rallied. She had a tremendous amount of energy (she was 70) and 5 young grandchildren. An amazing person.

So I am feeling my mortality. Nobody knows how much time we have, do we? I feel more urgency about some things. I want to see BTS perform in August and I want to get to 221B Baker Street as soon as I can. Also, given my work (home care for the elderly) I am sensitive to quality of life and what that means to me.

3. Speaking of quality of life, I signed up for another weight loss program (not Weight Watchers, which I've tried THREE times and not Noom, which I did once). I am not going to describe it, because I just started like 20 minutes ago but it isn't a drug (and a British lady runs it so I like her voice, this is important to me). No judgement, but those drugs scare me. We'll see how it goes.

4. Annoying things. Air force guy's family didn't cancel my session today so I drove out there suspecting they'd gone to chemo...and I was right. The door was locked. And granddaughter told me to go home. Then I talked to my sister and she insisted on mis-using pronouns for someone in a story she was telling, finally tell me (after I corrected her five times) that 'they' was plural and to use it singularly was arrogant. The co-worker my sister was talking about went MISSING. Sheesh.

5. Boys are switching from winter sports to spring sports this week and next. Winter running to track and indoor soccer to outdoor soccer. Let's hope Mother Nature cooperates.

6. I got to run outside today at the lake because of cancelled session. Yay. Now I am headed to my Alzheimer lady.

March is coming very soon!

---

( 1-23 )
24. love of animals
25. unconditional love
26. forbidden love
27. ecstasy
28. the beloved

--

Day 24: love of animals

I have known for a long time I am missing the gene (or synapses) that allows me to connect with pets but I do love animals (and wish them the best, wherever they are). And I love this series: how about frog making a valentine for toady?

Watch on YouTube

sanguinity

I wrote two works for

candyheartsex!

During the anon period, there was a tumblr post going around about how you should follow your heart and write fic for that 300-year-old novel! Write fic for that 70-year-old movie! And I had to laugh, because...

Renewed Liaison for parnassus
Les liaisons dangereuses | Dangerous Liaisons - Choderlos de Laclos
Marquise de Merteuil/Vicomte de Valmont
Canon Divergence, Fix-it, Parley

I sue for two items only: peace, and a renewal of the true amity that once existed between us.

This was a pinch-hit I picked up early. I've long hated the resolution of the novel, where Merteuil is cast low while Valmont is nearly valorized in death. (God forbid a woman be evil!!) So I wrote a new ending for them, one that is more symmetric in consequence, leaving them both war-ravaged, but with a path to become allies again.

Will they ride again, leaving ruin behind them? We can only hope. ;-)

There My Heart Forever Lies for Luzula
The Flight of the Heron
Ewen/Keith, Ewen/Alison, Keith & Francis
Brigadoon AU

After Culloden, word reaches the British garrison that Ewen Cameron is skulking at Ardroy. As a test of his loyalty, Keith Windham is sent with a company of men to arrest him. Keith goes, but is determined to protect Ewen however he can.

Ewen, however, has been granted a miracle: for Ardroy and all its people to vanish into the Highland mist, reappearing only one day in a century. Life will go on just as before, no longer touched by wars, armies, or time…

So, last year I watched the Gene Kelly version of the musical Brigadoon, which for those who don't know, is about a Highland village that gets snatched out of time in the mid-eighteenth century, only returning to Earth for one day every hundred years.

And on hearing this, I was like, "Oh, that was obviously to protect the village from the fallout of the '45..." And then it turned out the whole backstory for the miracle was to protect the village from witches. Witches!

And I thought "Well, that's stupid. Obviously a fix-it is required!" Quickly followed by, "You know, I have a handy '45 fandom right here..." And "Not only do I have a handy '45 fandom, there is an EMPTY SPOT ON THE MAP where Ardroy should be... just as if Ardroy had once upon a time been snatched away into the clouds!"

So I wrote a couple thousand words right then, wrote a couple thousand more while I was in Japan, and... then got inextricably tangled up in plot difficulties and let the whole thing languish, neglected.

But then I got assigned to

luzula in

candyheartsex! Luzula likes AUs that have a supernatural element, and she's actually been to that empty glen where Ardroy should be, and it was all too perfect an opportunity to pass up. So on a weekend visit to my mom, I spent the entire four-hour drive blocking out my proposed plot to

grrlpup, and satisfied that it was doable if I wrote fast, I wrote some 2K words that day. And then... kept doing that.

So. Um. Is this an absurdly long story for an exchange with a 300-word minimum? Yes. Sorry. (I hope I didn't cut too much into your free time last week, Luzula!) But it was a beautiful excuse to finish a story that might not have gotten finished otherwise, and the oppty to gift it to someone who has actually seen that empty glen.

Anyway, 16.7K, eventual happy ending, and no knowledge whatsoever of the musical is required.

So in fact it was only a 250-year-old novel and a 70-year-old movie, but still pretty close to the mark!

cimorene

After reading most of John Dickson Carr's books — maybe 25? — I've moved onto a few recs for more GAD (Golden Age Detective Fiction) by other people that I picked up recently.

I read The Bride Wore Black by Cornell Woolrich, the famous midcentury author of Rear Window and a whole heap of other bleak thrillers, apparently. I might read more later. The Bride Wore Black was obviously, to me, from the first sentence of the recommendation, a major inspiration behind Kill Bill. Tarantino is on my shit list, but I really enjoyed some of his movies, and Uma Thurman in Kill Bill is just iconic to me. Anyway, TBWB is a series of five short interludes where the Bride stalks and then kills five men in revenge. Her motive and even her identity are gradually revealed. This isn't a descendant of samurai films: she uses a new method each time, as well as a new disguise. If your curiosity is piqued, here's the review by JJ of The Invisible Event which sold me. I wouldn't rate it as highly, although it was a great read that I fully recommend; I couldn't put a book with a flaw this big on a Best Of list, and the whole last episode doesn't work for me, with a disappointing and rushed solution that felt too shallow. ( Read more... )

Yesterday I read another book from that list, Home Sweet Homicide by Craig Rice. This is a 1944 YA comedy murder mystery about the children of an ADHD single mom mystery writer trying to solve the murder that happens next door in order to matchmake their mom with the investigating detective. It's full of 1940s slang and affectionate family squabbles, the children outwitting and misleading the cops as they collect clues, and lots of evocative scenes of preparing and eating food and casual mentions of 1940s suburban life that were fascinating. The tone isn't just comic, but it isn't really a serious murder mystery, either; the puzzle and the mystery take a back seat to the children's adventures. But it's so much fun to read anyway that I heartily recommend it. The only significant flaw is the cops being sympathetic, but at least they're also constantly outwitted by the kids. Here's JJ's review that sold me. I should also say that this book predates the existence of the modern YA genre, and all the markers and conventions that I can't stand in it. I describe it as YA on the basis of the reading level, the child protagonists, and the less serious and complicated mystery.

dustbunny105

Quite unexpectedly, we got more snow! On and off since yesterday morning and it may keep up until tomorrow afternoon. Mostly just flurries and none of it has stuck so far, at least not that I've seen. Still, I was pretty taken aback! Especially since it's been warm for the past week and it's supposed to be warm for most of this week. We've got some rain and thunderstorms on the way, so maybe this little cold snap got confused and thought it was time for blackberry winter, lol.

stonepicnicking_okapi

( 1-21 )

22. obsession
23. agape

24. love of animals
25. unconditional love
26. forbidden love
27. ecstasy
28. the beloved

--

Day 23: Obsession

Fandom: BBC Sherlock
Rating: Gen
Summary: Sherlock gives Mrs. Hudson a gift after a case.

( Read more... )

Day 24: Agape

And for Music Monday, here is a very pretty instrument song "Agape" from the film If Beale Street Could Talk

[Agape (/ɑːˈɡɑːpeɪ, ˈɑːɡəˌpeɪ, ˈæɡə-/;[1] from Ancient Greek ἀγάπη (agápē)) is "the highest form of love, charity" and "the love of God for [human beings] and of [human beings] for God".[2] This is in contrast to philia, brotherly love, or philautia, self-love, as it embraces a profound sacrificial love that transcends and persists regardless of circumstance.]

Watch on YouTube

cimorene

One of the many things we learned by doing them wrong when initially renovating this house when we bought it was that you can't just go to the hardware store and buy an affordable faucet for a sink.

I mean, you can, but you shouldn't. There are cheap, crappy faucets at these stores!

What you should do is buy the reliable, standard, plumber-recommended workhorse brand of faucets, even if they cost a lot more.

So we have three faucets in our house, and two of them are ones we picked out at a hardware store and have given trouble from day one, and one is one that the plumber brought with him, and is a standard model of the standard brand that is in all the apartments around here.

The crappy kitchen faucet finally, after being a headache for the last six years, reached the end of its usable lifespan a couple of days ago when I turned it on and there was a loud KACHUNK! noise and then the two little plastic screen-thingies that were apparently just GLUED in the opening shot out into the sink. They were broken and impossible to put back. Since then the faucet has just had a big round open end like a garden hose (lol), and when you turn it on the water shoots out and sprays across whatever you're wearing unless you very carefully turn it on only a little tiny bit.

We have learned our lesson and are going to buy the same brand that's in our downstairs bathroom sink this time. We are not 100% sure if we can install it ourselves, in spite of having watched people installing sinks so many times in videos. I guess I need to watch a few more of those and then if we give up we can always call a handyman (we hope to avoid this because we don't like calling people).

dustbunny105

Okay, so the sleep-fixing didn't really happen and neither did most of the rest of what I wanted to do this weekend, lol. Kinda figured it might not but at least it wasn't a total loss. I'll keep working on getting my sleep fixed this coming week and see if it helps. I can only imagine it will, at least a little.

stonepicnicking_okapi

I did two collages but I am only happy enough about the card for my sister to share. Made with Michael's craft store packet of Chinese New Year stickers. The black is actually gold, I just closed the lid of the scanner so it's black. And the print under the lower left side is Japanese, but I am 100% certain my sister won't know the difference.

stonepicnicking_okapi

( 1-19 )
20. infatuation
21. maternal love
22. obsession
23. agape
24. love of animals
25. unconditional love
26. forbidden love
27. ecstasy
28. the beloved

---

Here is a snippet from At Bertram's Hotel which inspired the double drabble below with the theme of infatuation and the second part ties into Nemesis and the theme of maternal love.

...Jane Marple, that pink and white eager young girl...Such a silly girl in many ways...now who was that very unsuitable young man whose name—oh dear, she couldn’t even remember it now! How wise her mother had been to nip that friendship so firmly in the bud. She had come across him years later—and really he was quite dreadful! At the time she had cried herself to sleep for at least a week!

Nowadays, of course—she considered nowadays...These poor young things. Some of them had mothers, but never mothers who seemed to be any good— mothers who were quite incapable of protecting their daughters from silly affairs, illegitimate babies, and early and unfortunate marriages. It was all very sad.

---

Day 20: Infatuation

Title: Mother's Wisdom
Fandom: Miss Marple - Agatha Christie
Rating: Gen
Length: 200
Summary: Jane Marple bumps into a crush years after.

( Read more... )

---

Day 21: Maternal Love

So for this I am doing my All of Agatha review of Nemesis. So this is the last Miss Marple novel written (though Sleeping Murder would be published later, it was written in the 1940's and put in a vault), published in 1971.

Nemesis is a brilliant story with so much lovely foreshadowing and character exposition and misdirection. And it also evokes a nauseating amount of cringe and revulsion for the modern reader.

So the plot is that Miss Marple gets a vague assignment from Mister Rafiel (the rich man of A Caribbean Mystery) after that man's death and she goes on a tour of homes and gardens and eventually works out that Mister Rafiel's no-good son who is in prison for killing his girlfriend didn't actually kill her. The plot is very well done, and it has many great elements, foreshadowing with the use of plants, harkening back to Miss Marples earlier cases, interesting characters including the lawyers who think this is all crackers and the best lesbian duo in canon after Hinch and Murgatroyd of A Murder is Announced (Cook and Barrow, the women hired to protect Miss Marple). So many wonderful things and I love the story.

But...

Agatha Christie is the very LAST person in the world you want to get love advice from, ANY kind of advice for ANY kind of love. And she has definite opinions about what a 'real mother' is. Adopted mothers are not real. And adopted mother love can never match biological mother love and is, in fact, twisted and warped and deserves punishment (and is punishing). But then (as in the quote above) she says that the problem of 'modern' girls is that their mothers are no good. She has a lot of very old lady 'get off my lawn' ideas about young people and their sexual behavior.

And she has extremely warped ideas about marriage, why people should get married, the expectation of infidelity, roles of husband and wives. There are two sections that proffer undiluted rape apology. Really, I was beginning to think she was getting worse as she got older but then I remember The Man in the Brown Suit and decided she had always been like that.

But...

it's a great plot and Miss Marple saves the day and wins 20,000 pounds and probably enjoys the partridge she buys with her winnings very much.

dustbunny105

I've been lazy this past week, ngl. Hate to blame it all on my poor sleeping schedule but, well, bad sleep really will do you in. I'm hoping to correct that for this coming week and be a bit more productive.

( Read more... )

stonepicnicking_okapi

I am doing the book bingo set up by

kingstoken. More information here: https://kingstoken.dreamwidth.org/122578.html

I'm attempting to fill each square with a different author so only 4 squares at the moment.

B-3: Figures Without Facial Features on the Cover: A Heart Full of Headstones by Ian Rankin. The next-to-final book in the Inspector Rebus mystery series. Rebus is a Scottish detective with every single cop stereotype present. The plot starts off with a domestic violence case involving a cop and leads to police corruption and, in the end, Rebus attempting to murder his archnemesis crime boss.
B-4: Pet/Animal Companion: And to All a Good Bite by David Rosenfelt. This is in the Andy Carpenter mystery series. He's a defense lawyer who also runs a dog shelter in Patterson, New Jersey. The plot involves a case, a client falsely accused of a crime, and art forgery and a dog named Rebus. Full of quirky characters. Audiobook narrated by Grover Gardener.
G-2: Author You've Never Read Before: The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst. In the romantasy genre. A sheltered librarian has to flee a capital city in revolution with contraband spell books. She flees with a sentient, talking plant to her home island. Audiobook narrated by Caitlin Davis
O-5: Job/Profession in the Title: The Secret Hangman by Peter Lovesey. This is a Peter Diamond mystery, a police detective in Bath (UK). The case involves couples being hanged. Diamond is a widower who starts dating again. Audiobook narrated by Simon Prebble.

purplecat

Photo into a museum case with a Vortex Manipulator and Teleportation Bracelet prop from Doctor Who.

firecat

“But I had an epiphany. You know what all this sycophancy constantly being told you’re right, that you’re brilliant, that every decision is flawless? That sounds an awful lot like being a billionaire.”

[sic - perhaps the grammatical error is to show the writer is not an AI]

"The Secret Tool AI Uses to Seduce You: Explained," by Taya Graham and Stephen Janis

I use AI to get answers to simple questions and I hate when the bot addresses me personally. I hate it possibly to an irrational degree. (Even when someone else shares with me an AI convo they had, I get mad.) Do you use AI for anything and what do you think of this design choice?

dustbunny105

I've been trying to avoid putting tasks off until the weekend. But while blocking out Saturday as a big cleaning and reorganizing day is hit or miss, ngl, the hits do hit hard. So! I'm already up later than I meant to be, on account of who I am as a person, but I'm looking to get a good sleep and then be Productive tomorrow.

Most of what I need to get done is just a collection of small tasks I've let pile up, tbh. And I want to make a sweep of my toy collection. I've got TFcon next month, as I mentioned recently, and I want to be able to bring my purchases back to a properly organized space. Plus I have some displays I just want to reset. I'll probably leave that for last. It'll be the most fun of the tasks I intend to tackle, so I can think of it kinda like dessert, lol.

evilinsanemonkey

Happy Friday!

What fanworks have you enjoyed this week?

I Really enjoyed Sheepsquatch Stole my Rodney by

friendof_dorothy - Eerie, Indiana: the Other Dimension - Mitchell gets out of dodge, and goes looking for Rodney.

Current Music: Orville Peck & Bu Cuaron - Mienteme

cimorene

When we lived on the outskirts of Turku, going into downtown to run errands was already a bit of an Expedition, because it entailed a pleasant or idyllic walk to and from the bus stop of about 6-8 minutes, plus about 20-25 minutes on the bus, and then walking around the city center - possibly overcrowded, but full of beautiful buildings and trees.

Now that we live in the country, I'm still closer to the Turku city center than many people are who live in a North American metro area. I can walk to the bus stop (5 minutes, unpleasant scenery) and take a bus that puts me down near the center in about 50 minutes. But that trip feels excessive for a shopping expedition.

There's a big shopping center called Skanssi between us and Turku that is more convenient, about 35 minutes by bus, but the bus doesn't actually stop that close to it so you have to walk like ten minutes (it is very much designed to be visited by car, unlike the city center). And the mall itself just has RANCID VIBES. I hate being there! It's something about the interior architecture and the lighting maybe? The actual finishes are nice, the decor is fine, the lighting isn't UGLY. It is pretty dim inside, which has to be on purpose, but it's more like they were trying for a cozy or intimate or restful light instead of glaring? But instead it's oppressive in there. I always just want to get out. The K-Citymarket hypermarket attached to it is our closest Citymarket*, and it's much more brightly lit but still feels looming, oppressive, suffocating, sullen, and unwell. And I honestly do not know why! Maybe it's not actually the light, maybe it's sounds outside the regular hearing range or something?

So I've been thinking for a week whether it's preferable to go to this rancid-vibed mall, 35m by bus + 10-15m walk, or all the way to Turku, 50m by bus + 5-10m walk. The former SHOULD make me feel better because of the walking and fresh air, and I usually prefer less time on the bus because it's less chance to get trapped near someone's perfume; but would the rancid vibes counteract that?

*The other stores vary in vibes, but none of the ones near us are even close to this bad. Citymarkets Kupittaa and Länsikeskus are both reasonably Ok, and Prisma (Citymarket's competitor, the other Finnish grocery chain) Tampereentie is a little worse, while our closest Prisma at Itäharju is mostly nice, with some bad vibes in one end of the supermarket side. The nicest hypermarket near us is Citymarket Ravattula, Littoinen. I like this one so much more that I ALMOST would go to it instead (it's nearly 40 minutes by car, instead of 15 or so to Itäharju).

dustbunny105

We had kind of a weird issue at work today.

One of the lab techs brought me a couple of cases I'd accessioned. Each had been read by a different doctor and both doctors had realized there was something off about the specimens. Namely, they didn't match the gross reports they'd come with. It was eventually determined that the specimens for the cases had somehow been swapped.

Now, that's already a big yikes. But even worse? While the specimens had been collected on the same day they had not been sent to the lab on the same day. Which means they somehow got mixed up despite not being in the same batch of cases. That suggests some very inattentive labeling. And the thing is, these two cases only got caught because they were the wrong specimen type-- one was supposed to be a nail, the other skin. It makes me wonder how many other cases could've been messed up and gone unnoticed because they were both skin or both nail specimens...

Oh, and for a bonus annoyance, the client lab recognized the cases when I took them over for corrections. To be clear, the lab is not responsible for labeling, so this wasn't their fault. But they mentioned that the cases had looked weird to them upon processing. This isn't the first time I've taken something over for corrections and they'd said that something had looked wrong. And just as in those instances, all I can think is-- why didn't you people do something?? This could've been fixed before it got to me!

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Victorian 221b

February 2023

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Victorian 221b

Member Posts

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Word: Chowder

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February LOVE-Fest: Day 24: Love of Animals

Candyheartsex reveals: Dangerous Liaisons, Flight of the Heron, and Brigadoon

Two books

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February LOVE-Fest

the good faucets

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Collage Journaling: Chinese New Year

February LOVE-fest: Day 20 & 21: Infatuation & Maternal Love

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Book Bingo: February 2026

Random Doctor Who Picture

Got insincere flattery?

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Fanwork Friday

Stores with rancid vibes

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February 2023

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