vital functions

Sep. 14th, 2025 11:59 pm
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett

Reading. Tiny bits of Solutions and Other Problems and The Painful Truth.

Listening. More Hidden Almanac.

Exploring. Chester, including Chester Zoo!

Eating. Almost all of my favourite field foods, including raspberry and lemon curd toasties, noodle pots with the addition of the prepped salad bits (spinach! red onion!), the giant lemon and sugar crepes, and flapjack. ("Almost" because the cake options CHANGED.)

Observing. The Milky Way. Something that might have been some kind of satellite or might have been some kind of shooting star. CHESTER ZOO, etc. At least one field bat.

BATS

Sep. 9th, 2025 09:56 pm
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett

Between one thing and another we wound up having a semi-impromptu mini-break in Chester, including a few hours at Chester Zoo.

... where we went into the bats enclosure and were transfixed for about an hour, basically from the moment we walked in until chucking-out time.

It's a big dark room, artificially crepuscular, with lots of trees (dead) for roosts, and somewhere in the vicinity of 350 bats (Seba's short-tailed and Rodrigues fruit bats). THEY WILL COME SO CLOSE TO YOU. THEY WILL COME SO CLOSE TO YOU. They were flying well within a foot of our faces. You could FEEL THE WIND FROM THEIR WINGBEATS.

And A was greatly honoured by one LANDING ON THEIR TROUSERS.

There were many other Excellent Creatures -- the Humboldt penguins in particular were very excited by the rain (so much porpoising), and the giant otters were indeed giant, and there was an enormous dragonfly, and the flamingos went from almost entirely asleep (including one baby that had not yet got the hang of the whole one-leg trick) to YELLING INCESSANTLY after being buzzed by the scarlet ibis.

Extremely good afternoon out, 13/10, would recommend.

umadoshi: (Cult of the Lamb 01)
[personal profile] umadoshi
As of last week, we've lived in our current place for sixteen years. (As ever, I selfishly appreciate that one of the people whose wedding we attended the day before we moved always posts about their anniversary, which reminds me of how long it's been.) Just a few more years will make this the place I've lived longest in my life. (My childhood home currently holds the record at eighteen years.)

We've had some more rain, but still not nearly enough, and enough people haven't been getting on board with the water commission's request to conserve water (apparently there's been no noticeable drop in overall usage) that we're now expecting mandatory conservation to roll out sometime this week. (Does anyone know what that'll actually look like? LOL no.) Fun times. Good work [sarcastic], everyone.

Our tiny, tiny tomato plant that we brought home so shortly before hitting official "we're in a drought" status has tiny, tiny tomatoes on it! They are very green, and I have no idea what their odds are of ripening properly, but given that the drought means we've only actually watered the plant once or twice since potting it, I'm surprised to see fruit at all. Good work [sincere], Tiny Tim.

Under the circumstances, I'm just as glad that we didn't actually try to do any gardening in earnest this year, which we might have if we'd gotten our very own hose installed on the back of the house earlier in the season.

Sometime next year, Cult of the Lamb is getting its first paid expansion (not to be confused with the...three? four?...free ones that they've released). Will I touch another game before that comes out? Precedent says no! But I'm very excited about this one.

Close. Ish.

Sep. 9th, 2025 03:29 am
davidgillon: A pair of crutches, hanging from coat hooks, reflected in a mirror (Default)
[personal profile] davidgillon
 I had one of those login challenges: someone in X is trying to log into your account, if it's you enter the code we just sent.
I'm used to X being well outside the local area, but the latest one sets a new record. Rather than Kent it was "someone in East Kilbride", so outskirts of Glasgow and only 435 miles out!
umadoshi: (hands full of books)
[personal profile] umadoshi
No proof-of-life post happened over the weekend, but I did get some reading done last week.

[personal profile] scruloose and I have started listening to Exit Strategy (Murderbot 4).

Fiction: I finished and enjoyed The Future of Another Timeline (Annalee Newitz) and now I'm reading Saint Death's Daughter (C.S.E. Cooney), and am maybe halfway through? This one has a lot of detail going on on the worldbuilding front, and after reading the first chapter or two one night and then not getting back to it for a couple of days, I had to go re-skim right from the beginning before carrying on, which is unusual. (A glance or two back, sure. Actually rereading the whole beginning? Not so much.)

Non-fiction: I finished Goblin Mode (McKayla Coyle) and can't say I got much out of it; I'm still reading Daniel Sherrell's Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World.

vital functions

Sep. 7th, 2025 10:50 pm
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett

Reading. Lake of Souls, Ann Leckie: finished the Radch stories; on to The World Of The Raven Tower!

The Painful Truth, Monty Lyman: in progress; not yet Cross with it but also not yet Impressed by it.

More Dreamwidth catchup.

Listening. More Hidden Almanac!

Eating. SO many tomatoes.

Exploring. Poked around Preston a very little!

Growing. ... SO many tomatoes. More watering system established at plot (so hopefully all the peppers will still be alive and well upon my return). Sowed some probably-past-it seeds.

Observing. A saw a deer on the drive up to Preston! A proper big one with antlers and all! We were very impressed.

Also the local owl Yell.

That sort of person

Sep. 7th, 2025 11:51 am
naraht: Moonrise over Earth (Default)
[personal profile] naraht
I had a visitor this week: a very earnest German Shakespeare scholar and teacher who I met last year on a writing retreat. She was swinging through Oxford to attend a conference and stayed in my guest room for a few nights.

When she came into my sitting room she first admired my bookcases, as one does, and then did a double take: "Oh! You have a really big television! What do you watch?"

"Cycling, mainly," I said, but this didn't help. Didn't compute. I could practically see steam rising off the top of her head as the gears clashed. And actually she's the second friend of mine who's been visibly perplexed by my TV.

No doubt they had assumed I'd be the sort of elitist literary snob who wouldn't allow such a thing into the flat. Whereas in fact I am such a massive elitist literary snob that I don't feel any lurking status threat from the presence of a 55" flatscreen. (Plus my favorite cycling commentator is a devoted fan of Fitzcarraldo Editions, so.)

Very minor anecdote but I've never seen anyone so obviously realizing in mid-stream that they'd gotten their assumptions about my preferences and habits all wrong. Do you ever find that you surprise people by liking something that you "shouldn't" like?
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett

Or at least "the other line I meant to highlight from the Wikipedia article":

There is increasing evidence that the smooth muscle that lines the airways becomes progressively more sensitive to changes that occur as a result of injury to the airways from dehydration.

I had only taken 700ml of water with me; I'd blithely assumed I'd be able to top up at the café and then had Too Much Social Anxiety to ask or even check whether they had a jug out, because that's a thing my brain is definitely Doing at the moment. ... and then on the way back I was desperately thirsty and stole most of A's water, and I am just personally finding it Very Interesting that the thing my body wanted me to do most was More Fluids.

all things very

Sep. 3rd, 2025 10:11 pm
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett
  1. Have achieved More Event Prep: both the arrows catalogue updating (albeit not printing), and Folding All The Potions that printed successfully.
  2. Friend is watching Orphan Black for the first time. I am getting Yelling. It's DELIGHTFUL.
  3. Yesterday, leaving the lower limbs class that has been prescribed in an attempt to reduce the risk of reinjuring my ankle again, I... turned my ankle. (This is not the good bit.) In more or less the same way I did in April, that was the motivation for the current round of physio, but whether it was the exercises having actually helped anything at all or the fact that I was wearing different (and more supportive) boots or just pure luck, while it's a bit sore it is not e.g. refusing to bear weight any time I don't pay adequately close attention to how I load it, so I'm counting that one as a win.
  4. We forgot New Elephant Day on Monday (Sheldrick Wildlife Trust calendar) so instead had New Elephant Day today... AND IT AN ADORABLE BABY RHINO. 13/10, etc.
  5. I am nearly at the point where I think I might be able to read the Wikipedia page on action potentials and derive meaning from it? I'm definitely slightly less confused about the cell biologist's definition of depolarization than I was even yesterday...
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
[personal profile] kaberett

multiple colours of sliced tomatoes, prominently featuring some blue-black with red stars

(By "today's" I mean not "all of those harvested today, nor even yesterday" but rather "the tomato course with dinner".)

I really love the ridiculous stars on the tops of the Blue Fire.

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