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andrewducker

1. How to weigh an octopus in only 8 wriggly steps: (tags:octopus weight video )

nanila posting in

awesomeers

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished! Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

azurelunatic

My immunotherapy infusion yesterday may have been my last!! I have a scan on Monday that will probably say that. Belovedest celebrated by cracking into the Strategic Redpop Reserve. This will mean much more leeway to leave town and such.

Colonoscopy results: mostly normal, one pre (not sure how many pre-s to put here) cancerous "lesion", and all of them removed. Repeat in two years, this time with Extended Prep. (My understanding of "lesion" and the medical definition may not align entirely well.)

Started the new injectable after the colonoscopy. I can definitely feel the impact. It remains to be seen exactly what kind. One of my friends has a new injectable too; she's getting some sinus clearance from it. Of all the random effects.

After the infusion, Belovedest and I trekked up-city to pick up a package for

alexseanchai. All Pampered Chef, and a high proportion of likely goodies vs. likely duds. There were some varying scrub brushes. The utensil/knife scrub brush looks like dentures that are actually a scrub brush, but I can see that coming in handy. There was also a quarter-sheet pan with two eighth-sheet pans. And then we trekked back down when Belovedest realized they'd left their tablet at the cancer center. Freakin' ADHD. We're on The Assassins of Thasalon in our progress through Penric.

I have a smallish makeup hobby. Part of that is sometimes going all Weird Barbie on my face with eyeliner or whatever. Tonight I've convinced myself (via iridescent green eyeliner) that some kind of moon phase forehead jewelry might really slap.

kaberett

In My Ridiculous Pen Collection, I have a Lamy 2000 (largely inspired by Ant Newman of UKFountainPens waxing lyrical). I got it second hand, as with all but one of my pens; the one that showed up cheap came with an F nib.

( Read more... )

nanila posting in

awesomeers

clauderainsrm posting in

therealljidol

The Wheel has spoken and the prompt for this week is:

Happy Detritus

The deadline to link your entry back to this post is Sunday October 12th at 7pm ET.

Have fun!

clauderainsrm posting in

therealljidol

*spins the Wheel*

TWIST!

*spins the Wheel again*

Oh. Oh my.

We have Pandora's Box. That hasn't been seen in Idol for quite some time! (Season 9/2014)

Inside it is all sorts of things, but you won't know what you can pick until it's opened.

Whoever has the

*spins wheel to determine most/fewest*

FEWEST number of votes, without being eliminated will receive the right to pick something out of Pandora's box!!!

clauderainsrm posting in

therealljidol

I posted in the comments section for the Voting, but for those who missed it, there was NO empty vial found this week. What does that mean? I guess that is, literally, for me to know and you to find out! ;)

But before we get on with that, we have to say goodbye to someone. Someone that we just said hello to recently!

Goodbye to

fausts_dreamAt this point I will point out that we are this far in and still have 4 other "back into the game" options on the Wheel. Which seems ridiculous to me. But hey, it's not like I'm the one in charge here. The Wheel is. ;) I just work for it this time around!! I hope you will stick around to see what opportunities it will spin next.

(and of course with all of the chaos at the end of voting this time around, we came within a single vote of a 4 way tie!! So every vote matters!)

diffrentcolours

Recently, I went away with mother_bones and cosmolinguist to Scotland. This is a roughly annual trip to see V's son L who lives up there. He works in a hotel in Stornoway, and can only get time off out of season, so we usually go up in mid to late September after most of the cruise ships have stopped. Between the last ferry sailing from Ullapool to the island being about 5pm, the 8-10 hour journey and V's difficulty with mornings, it takes us two days to get up there and two days to get back.

On the way up, we planned to stop off in Stirling, in a hostel which had a room for 3 adults. We got stuck in a very long tailback after a lorry had shed its load, so I can now say that I've had a nap in the fast lane of the M6. This meant we got to Stirling later than planned, and had takeout delivered to our hostel. E and I went to explore the town, making our way up to the castle despite the late hour, enjoying the dark hilly streets. We stopped off for a pint in The Portcullis at the castle, and spotted the looming silhouette of the Star Pyramid which deserves a future look.

The morning after, we drove out of Stirling past The National Wallace Monument but didn't stop there. After a couple of hours driving we broke for lunch at the Ralia Cafe, a traditional haunt for us. I took a photo of E standing by the metal Highland Cow statue outside. I picked up a leaflet for the Highland Folk Museum in the next town, just off our route, and we stopped for a while to inspect a number of rebuilt and recreated buildings in a field, including a traditional Hebridean blackhouse. Weirdly, we ran into some Mancunians who recognised me and E from the Queer Kiki drinks on Thursday which we've only attended twice!

We hit our big snag as we were on the road between Inverness and Ullapool - the evening ferry was cancelled with about an hour's notice. This left us stranded with nowhere to sleep, along with a few hundred other people. We tried phoning around hotels and B&Bs in Ullapool itself but everywhere was booked out. Eventually I found a hotel in Strathpeffer, almost as far back as Inverness, where we could stay for the night. We grabbed fish and chips and a pint in Ullapool, then doubled back for an hour's driving before collapsing in bed...

cosmolinguist

I woke up this morning and didn't want to go to work because I was scared. My body was scared, after yesterday.

I am so used to this feeling from previous jobs and stuff: the physical way the anxiety settles into my arms and legs and chest and head, my skin and muscles and eyes and everywhere, it gets everywhere. But I don't remember if I'd ever felt it in this job -- or if I have, it's been in recognition of a high-stakes day (an important person I need to impress, a big deadline) or something unpleasant (a meeting I don't want to chair).

Today looked perfectly innocuous according to my calendar and my to-do list. But then so did yesterday, and that didn't protect me.

When I finally got out of bed, I would've been late for the usual morning meeting, and we were supposed to have a team meeting today too, but luckily my manager was working elsewhere all morning so neither happened. It was such a gift, this nice gentle start to the day and a few hours that were free of the possibility of such scariness.

And I did have a meeting that included my manager this afternoon so we interacted normally. That helped my body and brain a little too.

I had counseling after work, and of course I had lots to talk about. Sometimes I feel like I just talk too much and don't get enough of my counselor's perspective that I'm paying so much for: I am happy to pay for some thoughts that aren't already in my own head, and then I hardly let her get a word in edgewise while I babble about how the struggles in politics, my workplace and even my baseball fandom are all leaving me struggling under hypernormalization.

Anyway, at the end she was able to make the point that my nervous system has been activated a lot, and it shuts down the frontal lobe where stuff like communication happens, leaving you only with fight-or-flight type shit (or freeze or fawn, my usual two). She wasn't surprised that I was unable to speak a few times yesterday. So that was reassuring, because as the world's most talkative person, who doesn't know what I'm thinking/feeling if I can't talk (or write here) about it, it's so rare and uncomfortable to end up unable to speak! It does feel like a goddam Racacoonie situation so I'm also soothed by the fact that the internet seems to call this "amygdala hijack." Hijack is the exactly right word for it!

Anyway my counselor also told me that connection with other people is a great way to address this. I had told her about listening to the old friend telling me about life in one of the cities where Trump has sent the National Guard, the Jewish guy we made friends with on Sunday... She said this is great, and that was a perspective that I wouldn't have otherwise that's useful and good for me now. But of course it's not just about such worthy connections: spending Saturday with some of my favorite people was also good for me, catching them up on the goofy details of my almost-accidental hookup since I hadn't seen them since it happened a couple of months ago -- even reminding myself of that day enough to tell them about how it came about left me in a noticeably better mood for a couple hours after.

These are long-term mitigations of course; in the short term she talked about breathing and how exhaling for longer than you inhale can help. This amused the hell out of me just because it was only last night that D was talking about recognizing the breathing count (one or two beats longer on the exhale than the inhale) from our yoga instructor being present in what he was doing at the time, which was the Guided Meditation event in Fallout 76, of all things.

The next time some well-meaning person asks "Have you tried yoga?" you should ask them "Have you tried the Mothman Cult?"

kaberett

This morning I had Physio at The Hospital Up The Road, which is a really good way to get me to actually go to the allotment (which is round the back of the hospital site, so the way this usually goes is I cycle to the allotment, drop my bike off, and then cut through to the opposite side of the site where Physio Happens, thereby not needing to faff about with bike locks).

Upon my return from physio (which was not... great; I got probably-a-cold two and a half weeks ago and my cardiovascular-respiratory situation is still Distinctly Not Happy) I actually paid slightly closer attention to my saffron bed -- the last couple of trips I've been all "ugh, nothing doing, I should really weed but UGH clearly the saffron has all DIED yes I KNOW that this is the traditional time of year for me to be convinced that The Saffron Has Died only to discover--" and indeed not only were there multiple clumps of saffron, most of them have flowers that are clearly going to happen Any Moment Now.

So today I have come home with six saffron strands, and am expecting A Bunch More, and have reinspected the saffron containers on the patio and established that one of those has them starting to come up as well -- and so now, obviously, I need to work out what to do with the RIDICULOUS RICHES represented by... maybe like two dozen strands of saffron. (Yes I also have a stash of shop-bought.)

Saffron & bay custard tarts with sticky blackberries? More saffron and cardamom panettone pudding (which we know we like)? Saffron rice pudding? All the saffron recipes from Sweet, which is possibly going to be my next cook-(almost)-all-the-way-through project? Lebovitz's saffron ice cream, to go with the planned quince sorbet? Saffron buns? Literally any of the obvious savoury options??? SO MUCH CHOICE.

andrewducker

I think it might be autumn.
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

jazzyjj posting in

awesomeers

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished!

Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

jazzyjj posting in

awesomeers

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished!

Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

kaberett

Reading. So many things. Or at least it feels that way. Unsure if actually So Many.

( Melzack & Wall, McRobbie, McGuire, Duncan, Stock )

( Cookbooks )

And I am now TWO months behind on Dreamwidth. TWO. Ahahahaha.

Playing. Several more rounds of Fluxx.

Tukoni: Prologue, "a point-and-click puzzle adventure" featuring beautiful botanical art. Very very much enjoyed this tiny snippet (a mushroom! that makes it rain! when you pat it!) and am mildly dismayed at the five-year gap between the release of this prologue and the subsequent demo of what will theoretically be a full game...

Cooking. ALSO SO MANY THINGS.

another recipe from East: chilli tofu
green beans in tomato sauce with fennel seeds, feta, and toast, loosely inspired by a thing out of the latest Ottolenghi cookbook (in the sense that I went looking for confirmation of my sense that the thing I was thinking of doing would work, found it, and promptly carried on with my intentions rather than the recipe I was distinctly less into)
smitten kitchen's vegetarian cassoulet, with the addition of Dubious Protein Chunks
a quince cake, which I made a lot of modifications to, and of which I am dubious, probably because of those modifications (but A seems to like it, so that's a win)
hazelnut and treacle Welsh cakes, leaving us with two remaining recipes of any interest in the tourist-tat Welsh cakes cookbook (cranberry + white chocolate is a no, as are the two recipes containing bacon; double choc chip is a maybe, and I'm willing to consider that Caerphilly + leek might have merits but A is distinctly more dubious)
soda bread! notable because (i) not sourdough, (ii) using the buttermilk culture I have successfully kept alive this time around (and have now refreshed), and (iii) I ignored all of the instructions about Handling It As Little As Possible and as a result it achieved Structural Integrity, which I usually do... not manage

Eating. I have successfully worked out how to make Wagamama's current menu provide me with food I will actually look forward to, which is A Great Victory. Located the last of last year's seasonal Dark Chocolate With Raspberry and have been gently nibbling it. QUINCE. And another variety of apple from an abandoned neighbouring plot at the allotment; this one is Very Crunchy and Very Red but not particularly flavours.

(The tree that got planted so as to encroach on my plot is some kind of cooker, unsure which, because my usual approach to cooking apples is James Grieve from my mother's garden...)

Making & mending. I think that, inspired by some helpful answers on reddit, I have got my clicky fountain pen clicking reliably again? It was doing a thing where it wouldn't lock, and it was pointed out to me that probably the issue was going to be located in the knock not at the trap door, so I... wrote the pen dry, rinsed out the ACCUMULATED DUST OF THE YEARS (THANKS DADFORD ROAD), and since then it's been behaving beautifully. Long may it continue.

Growing. There are still tomatoes? Also kohlrabi. I only managed a single flying visit to the plot this week; at some point soonish I'm going to need to get A to take me over with the car so I can retrieve from the greenhouse the various peppers I'm hoping to overwinter. I do not appear to have been issued with a Non-Cultivation Order in this round of inspections, which is a very welcome surprise!

Observing. A has seen the bat! I have not seen the bat because I have been Preoccupied with Other Things (misc). But the bat has not yet put itself to bed for the winter. <3

rmc28

Term is starting, and I'm aiming to play for one of the university ice hockey teams this season (yes alongside Kodiaks 2), and there was a taster session aimed at postgraduate students on Friday evening, with a 90 minute break between it and my usual late-Friday-night Warbirds training. So Friday evening I worked a little late while waiting for the worst of the rain to pass over Cambridge, then cycled home to get my gear and over to the rink to help out with the taster session. All the roads and cycle paths had a lot of litter of leaves and small twigs from the blustery day.

( ice hockey, vaccinations, more ice hockey )

Today has been my first "nothing actually scheduled" day in weeks, months even. I have been enjoying doing very little apart from reading and spending too long scrolling Instagram. While I did enjoy the many many videos about Kpop Demon Hunters / ice hockey / women's football & rugby that I watched today, I finally decided to turn on the iPad's screen time restriction for the Instagram app to cut down on the time wasted that way in future. The machines are better at distracting me than I am at having willpower, so the machines can cut me off too.

liv

Content note: mentions antisemitic murders and police violence. I personally am completely safe, I'm only talking about dealing with news.

It's around midday Yom Kippur. I'm leading the morning service with a tiny community in the southwest corner of England. There's a slight hiatus as this congregation only have two Torah scrolls, so we have to roll through from the first reading in Exodus to the second reading in Leviticus, saving the second scroll for the afternoon reading from Deuteronomy. (In this community, like most of the Progressive world, our second reading is Leviticus 19, not the verses that are sometimes used as clobber texts to support homophobia.) While there's milling about, the volunteers running the tech for Zoom approach me at the bimah and let me know that there has been an attack in a synagogue in Manchester.

( reactions ) Also, I am deeply grateful for the kind people who checked in with me personally when they heard the news, and for all the leaders, Muslim, Christian and civic, who sent messages of support to the Jewish community and continue to be in solidarity with us.

Current Mood: scared
Current Music: Avinu Malkenu

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Mamihlapinatapai

Distracting and a danger to maximum efficiency

Interesting Links for 09-10-2025

Just One Thing (09 October 2025)

Health (good news)

[stationery] contemplating a self-indulgence

Interesting Links for 08-10-2025

Just One Thing (08 October 2025)

Prompt - Week 12

Twist Reveal - Week 12

Results - Week 11

Stornoway Road Trip 2025: The Journey Up

Hypernormalization and hijack

[growth] SAFFRON

Interesting Links for 07-10-2025

Photo cross-post

Just one thing: 07 October 2025

Interesting Links for 06-10-2025

Just one thing: 06 October 2025

vital functions

Windy weekend

Yom Kippur

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