anagramofbrat | Reading

On Sunday night I ordered pork spring rolls from my favorite place with the idea of having one for dinner, and one for lunch the following day. As I was taking the second bite of my dinner, the Stroppy One turned to me and said that it had way more garlic than usual. He was right, because as he was saying that, I noticed my mouth and lips were burning and felt like welts were rising. I got a refund from DoorDash, and gave the Madwoman in the Attic the second spring roll. Sooooo apparently I'm even more sensitive to garlic than I thought, and I'm really mad about it.

---

My Chemical Romance alert! There's a post on Tumblr that's about the runup to the show with details being constantly added. Apparently setup for the concert has already started, which is unusual. I wonder if that's why there's more time between concert dates; I'd assumed it was because the band finally learned they need to rest between shows, but maybe not. The band has been hinting on social media that these concerts are "so much more than just playing The Black Parade". Needless to say, the fandom has collectively been losing our minds.

(THE CONCERT IS THIS FRIDAY FRIDAY FRIDAY!!!)

Yes, looking forward to this concert is one of the few things helping me cling to sanity right now.

My new vacuum just arrived! A day early!

I know what I'm doing after work.

ETA - And I worked late and ran out of steam. It might have to wait until the weekend. =(

Ellie is a Lipan Apache teenager in a world where magic, vampires, ghosts, and so forth are known to be real. She’s inherited the family gift for raising ghosts, though she only raises animals; human ghosts always come back wrong, and she’s happy with the companionship of her beloved ghost dog Kirby, not to mention her pet ghost trilobite. But when her cousin, who supposedly died in a car crash, returns in a dream to tell her he was murdered, she finds that knowing who killed him isn’t as helpful as one might imagine…

Ellie’s cousin Trevor told her the name of his killer, Abe Allerton from Willowbee, but he didn’t know why or how he was killed. Ellie enlists her best friend, Jay, a cheerleader with just enough fairy blood to give him pointy ears and the ability to make small lights. More importantly, he’s good at research. They learn that Willowbee is in Texas, near the town where Trevor lived with his wife, Lenore, and their baby. Jay brings in help: his older sister’s fiancé, Al, who’s a vampire.
All of them, plus Ellie’s parents and a ghost mammoth belonging to her grandmother, play a part in the effort to solve the mystery of Trevor’s death and bring his murderer to justice. And so, in a sense, will a major character who’s long dead (and not a ghost) but who’s a big presence in Ellie’s life: Six-Grand, her great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother, the last person to have a gift as powerful as Ellie’s… and who vanished forever into the underworld.

I enjoyed this quite a bit. I mean, come on. GHOST TRILOBITE. GHOST MAMMOTH. It’s funny, it’s sweet, it’s heartfelt, it has lovely chapter heading illustrations, and it’s got some gorgeous imagery - I particularly loved a scene where the world transforms into an oceanic underworld, and Ellie sees a pod of whales swimming in the sky of a suburban neighborhood.

It's marketed as young adult and Ellie is seventeen, but the book feels younger (and so does Ellie.) I'd have no qualms handing it to an advanced nine-year-old reader, but it also appeals to adult me who misses the time when "urban fantasy" meant "our world, but with ghosts, elves, and so forth."

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Current Mood: excited

I went to the International Gay Square Dance Convention over Fourth of July weekend. They had over 800 attendees! Not all of them were gay; many were allies or some other form of queer. And many of them were excellent dancers (not all, but enough). And I had an awesome time. Next year's is in Montréal. I'm sad about the timing of this convention, because it interferes with seeing Fourth of July fireworks. (Third of July in my town.) I did not go see fireworks in San Francisco, because it would've been quite the trek, taking a bus up to pier 39. So instead, before I left I discovered that there were some July 2 fireworks near my house, but the place you viewed them from was an extremely well lit parking lot, which kind of washed them out. I took a couple of pictures but they are pretty lame. And next year's convention is July 1-5, so I don't know. Maybe there will be fireworks for Canada Day? (Maybe I should decide that fireworks are bad for the planet?)

San Francisco has gotten to be as expensive as New York! I was glad I had brought little instant oatmeal packets and an immersion heater; it torques me to pay $20 for breakfast.

Today I rented a car and drove down to San Jose to hang out with some people from work. That was fun, meeting people who I only ever seen over WebEx. I didn't actually do any work; there had been some thought that I would, but it didn't happen.

The car rental is kind of annoying; I had reserved an electric car, but when I got there "they are all being charged". I was like "okay, how fully charged are they? Because I don't need them to be 100% charged today". So the agent called back, but was told to call a different station, and nobody answered at that different station and we waited a little while, meanwhile he went ahead and completed the rental process for a gas car; I had said I wanted the smallest one possible, and I got a Nissan Versa, which isn't exactly tiny, and my guess is it will get the usual 30 mpg that pretty much every car gets these days. Anyway, at some point I decided to stop waiting, so I could proceed down to San Jose and have my lunch date. The agent had said "we are required to provide electric cars", which must mean there's some California law about that. But I guess they don't need to provide them in a timely fashion, or at the time that your reservation starts.

After I was done in San Jose, I drove back up to Millbrae for my next hotel reservation, and as I was passing signs for Page Mill Road in Palo Alto, I decided on a lark to drive up it, since that had been the access road to our house in Los Altos Hills. And then I continued up it and drove down Skyline Boulevard and looked at the view of the ocean and the bay from the crest. So I wasted some gas, because it wasn't exactly efficient, driving up a 2000 foot elevation gain. It's hard to believe that I used to bicycle up that hill. I don't know if I could do it today. 2000 feet gain in 11 miles.

Pretty, though, and I got to drive through some microclimate bits where there were tall pine trees that got good foggy watering and various other different vegetation things that must happen with different amounts of water, being a nice contrast from the brown hills dotted with live oaks.

Now that I am in a much cheaper accommodation, of course they provide free breakfast. And free Internet. (The convention had arranged for free Internet, but it's not the default in those expensive hotels.)

oh my flist it is so hot out. *ghasp* if i didn't like my sleep so much i would've gone into work today for the a/c. but sleeeep.

so i've been here a week! and have unpacked more of the kitchen (dishes! mixing bowl! pots! misc utensils!) and the bedroom (jeans! t-shirts! the dress i forgot where i packed it!) and realized yesterday there's one more thing i don't miss about living with someone - i don't have to hear anyone rattling around the kitchen on a morning i want to sleep in. which is very exciting. i do have to unpack some more, tho. and, uh, i think i can hear my downstairs neighbor snoring. O.O i really, really hope he lives alone.

a thing i forgot about the tuesday when it was so hot i had to stay over at my sister's - we had a fire alarm at work. >.< i was on a 10a zoom meeting and suddenly alarms started going off everywhere and a recorded voice said basically GO DIRECTLY TO THE STAIRS AND OUTSIDE DO NOT PASS GO DO NOT COLLECT $200 and when no one else on the zoom had any reaction i just thought oh, so i'm the only one in today. but i went outside and stood in the shade for like ten minutes and then we all went back in. i can't remember what happened but it was something dumb.

anyway. comcast came on thursday so i now have wifi and tv! and have caught up on resident alien. :D i also had to run into harvard square to get my glasses fixed and coincidentally acquire ice cream. orange chocolate chip. DELISH.

for the fourth my sister and i went to a park sort of near her (we went there last year) for fireworks and, uh, ice cream. soft serve. it wasn't crowded when we got there but eventually it filled up and by the time it was dark enough for fireworks there were A LOT of people. fireworks were as usual quite fun and a little kid sitting behind us kept going "wow!" for a couple minutes and then their dad took over and it was INTENSELY cute. i do love a good local fireworks.

saturday i dicked around and went to home sense and home goods and target with my sister for house stuff (got new kitchen towels, did not get a kitchen timer because my stove does not have one, wtf) and then we went out for dinner and saw jurassic park rebirth which overall i think i enjoyed? the story is stupid but let's be honest, you don't watch jurassic movies for the story. you watch for the dinosaurs. and there were some frankly terrifying huge flying ones.

(there were A LOT of previews and most of them were for sequels or remakes except ick (no), bugonia (perhaps), and one battle after another (yes).)

and yesterday because it was hot i zoomed with the mothership, the sister, and cousin pb for iceland and now we are PREPARED. except i need to get a big suitcase because mine broke last year when i went to italy. i even started giving my faculty a heads-up at work and found some admins to look after them in case they need anything. woot.

after that i sat around, met

tamalinn and the tiny dog for ice cream because did i mention it was hot? came home, unpacked some, had dinner, watched andor. it's so good but at the same time i keep expecting people to die.

fifty years ago an exceptionally large time capsule was buried in nebraska. it included letters, photos, art, cassette tapes, and a chevy vega and it was opened on friday. folks traveled even from other states to find the stuff that they or their parents had buried. how cool is that? so cool.

Current Mood: hot
Current Music: resident alien

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5608

Roko don't do it!!!!!

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5608

This weekend I finished my first playthrough of Disco Elysium, a primarily text-based game which involves investigating a murder in a fictional world.

It's difficult to know what to say about Disco Elysium. The game has, as you may or may not have heard, a phenomenal amount of text in it, and you will only encounter a portion of it on any given playthrough. Having been through it only once, I've seen only a fraction of the game's full text. And it has a lot to say.

( Read more... )( Read more... )( Read more... )

We hit five (5) separate instances of this during one (1) workday and thus, in the spirit of Five Things Make a Post, it gets a post:

--circulation canceled a patron's scan request in a uniquely incorrect way that did not in fact cancel it, only sent it to another library under a different transaction ID number (this makes it harder to find and cancel properly)

--shipping service failed to notify substitute driver that our mail comes to the back door, several floors and a one-way street away from the front door, where he came instead

--someone transferred a parent calling about their student's tuition bill to me, an ILL staff

--patron requested not one not two but THREE wildly incorrect citations in a way that makes me suspect genAI

--German thing that is "Collected Works volume 26, part 2 [in 2 volumes]" of what was [presumably] originally "Section 4, volume 3, second part, first half." All of this is abbreviated, in blackletter, on the title pages. Probably the right volume. Who knows

(not included: standard Monday ambient levels of Lightly Cursed)

https://xkcd.com/3112/

After determining that his body was full of pipes carrying iron-rich fluid, our current theory is that the dagger-shaped object precipitated within the wound.

https://xkcd.com/3112/

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Current Mood: curious

( Last time... )

( Now, onto the drabble challenge for this month... )

( The format )

( Timing + current and future suggestions )

( Remember: Feedback is LOVE. )

Saturday and Sunday were devoted to getting MOAR shit done around the house.

This weekend I tried to do at least one 20/10 in each room of the house (that's another UFYH trick).

In the bedroom I took down the Christmas lights in the sunroom, because someone complained about them (technically they’re illegal, but other people have way more fugly illegal junk on their balconies and decks, it’s just that my simple white Christmas lights are at eye level as you walk into our building. Then I weeded the T-shirt drawers, because I’d gotten to the point where I have too many t-shirts to be able to fit them in the dresser and they’ve been piling up on my bedroom chair. Then I weeded the bra drawer, and got rid of anything that I don’t wear or is too stretched out. Then I weeded the underwear drawer and tossed a couple of pairs where the elastic was starting to fail.

I called Mom around lunchtime on Saturday to tell her really quick about an article I’d read that I thought would interest her. We only chatted for a few minutes, because they were busy with their after lunch card game. But then she called me back around 3:00 to let me know that they’d had an offer on the condo they've been trying to sell for months now. And mom accepted before dad could dither too long about it. So yay, the second condo is finally sold!

After mom called me the second time I realized that I was pretty tired. I started exercising this week, and between that and all the housework on Friday, my body was pretty cranky with me. So I had a snack and sat in the Comfy Chair for about two hours. Then I had a long shower and washed my hair, because I wasn’t fit for polite company at that point. The hot shower also helped loosen up my tight back.

I threw in a load of laundry and decided to pretty much call it a day once I got that all folded and put away (which is why the t-shirt drawer got weeded).

Sunday I tried to fix the vacuum, because it’s been clogged and wasn’t sucking. But it turns out it wasn’t clogged, it’s just on its last legs. I ordered a new vacuum, but it won’t be here until Wednesday at the earliest. And my carpets are just grotty, and now I have to wait a couple more days for the new vacuum to come in (and for me to make time to assemble it) before I can do the Hoovering. BAH! I might have to vacuum every day for a week once it arrives, just to see how much dirt I can get up before I pull out the steam cleaner and tackle the stains.

Not being able to vacuum really threw me off, and I can’t say that I got as much done as I’d hoped after I discovered that I wasn’t going to be able to fix it. But I did spend a lot of time just putting random things away, trying to clear some surfaces. Hanging up clothes, shelving books, putting things back in their cabinets or drawers. And things are starting to look SO much better around here. I’ve been slowly getting caught up on tidying, but this weekend was a big leap forward in that I got through enough tidying to actually get to do some cleaning before I ran out of steam. I wouldn’t quite call the house “clean” right now, but the kitchen and bedroom are SO MUCH better than they were at the beginning of the weekend. If I can get in a couple more productive weekends this summer, I will be quite pleased with myself.

This week (month?) I’ll be taking a crack at the books and papers in the living room. I’d really like to move down at least one more photo on the hoarding reference scale. Just to be clear, I don’t think my kitchen or bedroom has ever been worse than a three, but the living room? My living room is probably about a five right now. And I’d like to get it down to a three. But that means purging boxes and papers and books. So purging stuff out of the living room is going to be my ongoing project for the rest of the summer.

Someone posted on our Buy Nothing group that they were getting rid of some candles.

(how is this a Stupid Injury, I hear you ask? I'm getting there, but not in the way you expect)

( minor, non-graphic injury )

Current Music: one of the kpop demon hunter songs, which I wish to stress I don't actually know

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5607

So last week for the hell of it I looked on the Seagate site just to see if there were any external drive sales going on, considering the one with my music library was swiftly approaching critical mass, even despite my attempts to thin it out. As luck would have it, they were indeed having a sale and I purchased a Ridiculously Large External (14TB, almost double the other big external I have, and for a surprisingly cheap price at that). It's taken a few days and a few snags, but said music library has now been moved with lots of breathing room surrounding it. Right now I'm updating the Plex server so it's pointing towards the correct location so it can be shared again!

Meanwhile, we're finally gathering all the artwork we want to put on our pristine white walls! We've been using a prints-from-museum theme for a while now, so we've been buying a few from the local museums (and a few from the MFA in Boston) and elsewhere. Alas, I've run out of the specific size of hooks I need, so I'll need to swing by a local hardware store to pick up more, but eventually we'll be all arted up!

Current Mood: chipper
Current Location: New Digs

I took the vacuum apart today. I thought it was clogged because it hasn't been sucking very well. When I try to vacuum, it's more like it's just pushing the dirt around on the carpets, even though the roller is rolling.

It's not clogged.

I took the whole thing apart, and I used the long skinny brush (looks like an oversized pipe cleaner) that I bought to clean out the dryer vent to make sure that each section of the darn thing was clear. Because the last time I cleaned all the hair off the rollers, I did what I usually do and just sucked up the pile of hair instead of having to pick it up. I had assumed that pile of hair was stuck somewhere in the innards. But nope, it appears that my vacuum has just decided to stop sucking. Even though it's got a (relatively) new HEPA filter and a clean bag.

I bought this one back in 2012, and considering how many times I've replaced the belts, and what the poor roller looks like, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that it's just about dead. I checked Consumer Reports, and then looked around at a bunch of different company websites to try to find the model that I wanted. I ended up buying it off Amazon (curses!) because I couldn't find it anywhere else. So I guess instead of vacuuming today, I'm going to be vacuuming later in the week. *le sigh*

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Current Mood: hopeful

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Current Mood: relaxed

Sometime in the last couple of months, someone posted a link to a site that had interesting looking shirts made of linen, for lower prices than most places charge. I forgot to bookmark it. Can anyone point me to it? or to something else that fits that description, even if you didn't see it here?

Edited to add: A the shirts were less expensive than I expected, which is a large part of why I'm interested. Those may have been sale prices, I don't remember.

Also, the were made of either linen or a linen blend, not "line".

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anagramofbrat

Anagram Of Brat

June 2023

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Page Summary

cupcake_goth - Betrayed by deliciousness
brickhousewench - It's here!
rachelmanija - Elatsoe, by Darcie Little Badger
minoanmiss - Thrre niftinesses
nosrednayduj - trip report
tsuki_no_bara - so hot. so, so hot.
questionable_content_feed - Do The Right Thing
rocky41_7 in gaming - Recent Playing: Disco Elysium
beradan - today on "why would you do that"
xkcd_feed - Geology Murder
minoanmiss - I just remembered something
jalenstrix in labyfic - Drabble #217: Voice
brickhousewench - Weekend Update - Getting Shit Done
beradan - the stupid injury diaries: the one with the candles
questionable_content_feed - Talking Over One Another
jon_chaisson - Moving the music (again) and hanging the art
brickhousewench - Welp, the vacuum has died
minoanmiss - This is probably utterly hubristic of me
minoanmiss - Three Day Weekends Woot Woot
redbird - looking for a link/website

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Page generated Jul. 12th, 2025 10:04 am

anagram of brat

life, love, nerdage, cats, beads, kids, etc.

Reading

Betrayed by deliciousness

It's here!

Elatsoe, by Darcie Little Badger

Thrre niftinesses

trip report

so hot. so, so hot.

Do The Right Thing

Recent Playing: Disco Elysium

today on "why would you do that"

Geology Murder

I just remembered something

Drabble #217: Voice

Weekend Update - Getting Shit Done

the stupid injury diaries: the one with the candles

Talking Over One Another

Moving the music (again) and hanging the art

Welp, the vacuum has died

This is probably utterly hubristic of me

Three Day Weekends Woot Woot

looking for a link/website

Profile

June 2023

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