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Thursday is laughing at the crazy world (and possibly sleep deprived)

The world continues to be just a bit crazy?

It was a pretty day, and almost 9/11 weather but not quite. Also for the first time ever - I was in the Financial District on 9/11. About fifteen minutes away as the crow flies to the World Trade Center footprint. It is still called the World Trade Center - we just don't call it that - we call it the Freedom Tower. Trauma leaves its scars.

I thought it would be an issue? But it really wasn't. I work in a building that is closer to Battery Park and Staten Island Ferry, not near the World Trade Center. I can see the Freedom Tower out of my office window, but I'm not really near it? And so didn't run into any of the crowds or political power brokers who felt a need to make an appearance (basically all the mayoral candidates), Frump didn't go (he went to the Pentagon instead - because NY kind of made it clear he wasn't welcome), but he also came to the city, to visit the site in the afternoon and to go to the Yankees game (most likely will get booed again - like he did at the US Open). The only downside of NYC, is everyone and their entourage feels the need to come here. But, on the bright side? It's a huge city, so I don't tend to see them.

Speaking of Frump. Mother was amused that he sued the Wall Street Journal ("WSJ")for $81 million defamation suit, and Rupert Murdoch (aka Fox News, Tabloid King and Frump crony, owns the Journal and didn't back down and even let Fox cover the story. She couldn't remember what it was about. I was reminded today - via a headline on Mozilla Firefox home page, with CBS News covering it (also ironic considering), and an email from one of the many news outlets that I keep unsubscribing from and they keep ignoring me.

The skinny? ( Read more... )

Honestly, the satire writes itself now, doesn't it? No wonder SNL gave up.

In other news, Frump's NASA and a bunch of folks at Frump's Pentagon are worried about a globe that a bunch of drones tried to unsuccessfully take down.

US House UFO Hearing regarding US Missile Strikes on Unidentified Object - and it Bounces off of it

( Read more... )

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wed 2025

Write Every Day September 2025 - Day 11

Quote of the Day:

I'm always alive to the possibility -- anytime there's a good poem there, I leave everything else and write the poem. Sometimes it comes thicker and faster than others, but there's never been a period in my life when I haven't had my antennae out ready to receive a poem.

—Thomas Disch, interview in Strange Horizons (2001)

Today's Writing:

Not as many words as yesterday — not quite 250 — but good ones! \o/

Tally

( Days 1-9 )

Day 10:

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

cornerofmadness,

goddess47,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

yasaman,

ysilme

Let me know if I missed you, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet. And remember, you can join in at any time!

we've barely even been touristing, we've just been relaxing

Whew! Now ensconced in Hay-on-Wye for our pre-planned rest day between finishing the organized hike and spending a week on our own on the coast, first in Fishguard and then in Aberystwyth.

We had booked the cab driver who's been bringing our luggage from place to place (Sharon) to give us a lift partway along our second-to-last hike, from Knighton to Kington. She remarked that a lot of the hikers with our company do that, so she'd gotten curious and looked at their website, and boggled a bit at how strenuous the hikes are! She dropped us off at a beautiful meadow beside a stream, and off we went again.

I don't think I have anything in particular to say about the hike? It was fun and gorgeous, it didn't rain on us until the last half hour or so, we met lots of other hikers coming the other way (and often their dogs), including some our age or older who were backpacking all their luggage with them, wow. They did specify that they're staying in B&Bs, not camping, but even so that's much more than I'd want to carry, not to mention clamber up steep wooded hillsides in storm winds and hail with! Of course, they may be doing much gentler hikes. Anyway.

We walked through innumerable sheep fields, although possibly not any cattle fields that day. There's pork on every menu but we haven't seen any signs of pig farming, except that just after Sharon dropped us off, as we were getting ourselves oriented and booting up the navigation app, a truckload of pigs went along the road; we couldn't see them but we could hear them snorting.

The trail mostly parallels Offa's Dyke; sometimes it runs atop it, but apparently that has really contributed to its erosion. Still, Geoff did have me climb up on a scenic bit so that he could get a photo of what he wanted to call "hot dyke-on-Dyke action." I pointed out that I'm bi, not lesbian, and have never identified as a dyke, and he admitted my point but still wanted the picture. I made him promise not to tell that joke in public, and yet here I am, posting it!

(Today he took a picture of me by the River Wye that he has captioned "Wye Shoshanna? Wye not?" I told him that, considering I named our wifi network "Because Fi," he could have that one for free.)

Food in general has been...fine. Most of the B&Bs offer the basic British full breakfast of an egg, a sausage, some beans and/or black pudding, some bacon, a grilled tomato half, and some toast, plus a self-serve spread of cold cereal and sometimes yogurt or something. There will also be a vegetarian version. (The first hotel we were in, in Bishop's Castle, had, among other things, whole almonds and dried apricots on the cereal-toppings bar, and we sneaked some for trail food. They also had a genuinely varied breakfast menu, and I got an excellent avocado toast with an egg. But it turns out that they spoiled us for the other places we've stayed.) Most of our dinners have been in the same hotel/pub/B&B we've been staying in; some were pre-reserved as part of the hike, presumably either as part of the deal between the hiking company and the hotel or just because the town was so small there weren't a lot of options so the hiking company wanted to ensure we'd be able to eat. (And indeed, most days we staggered in tired enough that we were very glad not to have to figure out what to do about dinner!) Anyway, over the days I've had a perfectly-decent-but-nothing-to-write-home-about pork roast in cider gravy; and a "sizzling chicken stir-fry" that turned out to be basically fajitas without the tortillas, except that the sauce was differently spiced; and something that was called a casserole but was much more like a loose stew. Geoff has had some good fish and chips and a nice pie and some tasty brisket and tagliatelle that was unfortunately mixed in with beans in a disappointing tomato sauce.

Two days ago was the day when, having had a shorter hike than usual because of getting a ride, we arrived at the hotel around 3:30 instead of collapsing through the door at 5:30, and the front entrance let us right into the bar, and on the end of the bar right in front of us as we came in was a glass cake stand displaying gorgeous wedges of Victoria slice. And I had a sudden craving. Geoff always has a pint of beer with dinner, and I often have a half; sometimes I haven't felt up to alcohol at all, especially our jetlagged first night, and once for a change I tried a local cider, but although I liked my initial taste of it it shrank on me (the opposite of "it grew on me") over dinner and by the end I found it nastily sour. But somehow as we arrived that afternoon I absolutely craved a big glass of rich red wine and a wedge of cake. So I had them! A made-that-morning Victoria slice, and a delicious fruity merlot that wouldn't be too tart next to it, and I had a very cozy happy slightly tipsy afternoon! And then that evening we had the best dinner we've had so far, one of the best meals in years. Their menu offered both a minted lamb shank and a hoisin roast duck, and we got them both and split them, and they were both amazing.

We'd told Sharon we'd want a lift partway on the next day as well, since the final hike, as planned, involved 830 meters of cumulative uphill, whereas the shortened option was only 510. But then we looked again at the distance; the full hike is 25 km/15½ miles, which is ridiculously more than we can do in a day, and we belatedly registered that even the shortened version was 17 km/10½ miles, which would still be quite a long day for us. And we checked the weather forecast that evening, and it was for wind and thundershowers all the next day; and when we checked again in the morning it had got even worse. And so we said fuck this, we've paid our dues, and called Sharon first thing in the morning to ask if she could just bring us all the way to Hay-on-Wye along with our luggage, and she said of course. Phew. We had pleasant conversation as we drove along; she said it was nice to actually meet some of the hikers whose bags she's always shifting! Her husband's a taxi driver as well -- I get the feeling that "Knighton Taxi" the company is just the two of them -- and their son drives a timber lorry for his father-in-law's company.

She also confirmed what we'd heard elsewhere: that it had been incredibly dry until this week, and the rain was desperately needed. Farmers have already been feeding their stock winter feed, because there's been nothing for them in the fields. So I don't begrudge the rain (as

rydra_wong quite correctly commented, we are experiencing Authentic British Weather), although it is, er, personally inconvenient. Thank goodness my passport seems to have safely dried out!

Our B&B here, called "Rest for the Tired," is yet another centuries-old building; we're on the top floor/attic in what's basically a little suite, with a door leading to a little entrance hall with our bedroom on one side and our bathroom on another. All the beams and doorways are so low that Geoff has to be careful not to bang his head, and even I have to take the same care when coming down the stairs from our suite. As in most of the places we've stayed, there's just a shower stall, no tub, and this is the second place where the shower has an on-demand water heater with a separate, unmarked power supply that you have to know to look for and turn on before it will produce any water. At the first place Geoff, who had never seen that setup before, thought the shower was broken, but I showed him how it worked, having remembered it from decades-ago visits to the UK and having noticed an otherwise inexplicable pull cord in the bathroom. Here, we had seen a mysteriously unlabeled and rather intimidating red switch high up on the wall of our little hallway, outside the bathroom, and hadn't investigated because it looked, well, mysterious and official, like flicking it might cut off the house's power or something. But this morning I got up to take a shower while Geoff was still in bed, and when the on-demand water heater had no power light and did not respond to its On button, I investigated the mysterious switch with the help of standing on tippy toes and shining a flashlight on it, by which I could see that, whatever it was, it was set to Off. So I figured it was worth a try and switched it to On, whereupon the power light came on on the water heater and I was able to have a shower.

It's a functional but minimal shower stall, a big bathroom with zero counter or storage space anywhere near the pedestal sink but a huge counter and cabinet all the way on the other side of the room, and a toilet that only flushes if you pump the handle juuuust right, and then the plumbing shrieks and moans for a couple of minutes as it refills. And there's a nasty ammonia/cat pee smell in the back corner of the cabinet, under the sloping roof. Also it got quite chilly last evening, and although there are wall radiators in both the bedroom and the bathroom, they were ice cold. (And the bedroom window can't shut fully, because the latch mechanism is old and misaligned, and the wood of the window frame is rotted.) I googled to see if there might be any way to turn the radiators on ourselves, and got helpful web pages saying essentially, "It's easy to adjust these old-fashioned steam radiators! All you need is a pair of pliers, a wire, a needle, a towel and bucket, and access to the boiler!" So I eventually texted our host, an eighty-year-old woman named Mary.

Backtrack a moment: we had of course arrived hours earlier than expected, because we'd skipped the hike. The B&B building was unlocked but unstaffed; Sharon just heaved our bags into the front hallway, as is standard procedure. We poked around inside but didn't see anyone. A note taped to the door said that for B&B info before 4:00, ask at the bookshop next door (actually most of the ground floor of the same building, the B&B just has a narrow front hall and a stairway up); after 4:00, phone Mary at [number]. It was a little after 10, but the bookshop wasn't open, so we phoned Mary, who answered in a very energetic old-woman voice and said her cleaner would be in momentarily to show us our room. We didn't get the cleaner's name but she is also an energetic old woman, and rather deaf, to judge from the loudness of her voice. Mary also arrived as we were settling in and we chatted for a while. I am so glad these days to be able to answer "Where are you from?" with "Canada"! I mentioned that from here we would be catching a bus to Hereford, and she burst out that she was so glad I'd said it properly, "not like the awful way the Americans say it." Now I'm totally paranoid about saying it wrong!

Anyway, I texted Mary about getting some heat instead of phoning because it was almost seven pm at that point and I think of texts as much less intrusive than phone calls, especially at odd hours. But she didn't respond, so I texted her again at eight, and again she didn't respond; but at eight-thirty we found that the radiators had started putting out some heat: not much, but enough that I wasn't almost shivering any more. I texted once more just to say that everything was okay now. And then she phoned me at almost nine, not seeming to have read the texts but opening with "You called Rest for the Tired?" as though she were returning a missed call. I explained and we said goodnight, and then thirty seconds later she phoned back, returning the second text/call, not realizing I was the same person she'd just talked to. I had also initially texted Sharon, the taxi driver, to give her as much notice as possible that we wanted to change plans without interrupting her likely breakfast time, and then phoned when I hadn't heard back and it had reached a more reasonable hour, and she hadn't indicated she'd ever seen it. Maybe people here don't text routinely, the way people back home do?

Hay-on-Wye is famous for its bookstores, of which there are eighty gazillion, or possibly somewhere around 25-30. Mostly they're amazing warrens of used books numbering in the thousands, and if I ever read on paper any more I would probably be in heaven. They're a big reason Geoff wanted to spend an extra day here, but I'm already carrying two books he brought with him that don't fit in his pack, and if he wants to buy anything here he's going to have to have them ship it home. We wandered around town a bit yesterday and poked around several of them, but didn't do more than lightly browse. We also looked through the (much smaller, and new books rather than used) queer bookstore, delightfully named Gay on Wye, where I had fun standing in front of the romance and sf sections going "That author came out of fandom, and so did she, and so did she..."

COVID-related commentary

We're not masking in our hotels/B&Bs, or at meals; we ate our very first dinner outside, but since then outdoor eating hasn't been feasible. And we've kind of let slide masking in shops, even when we could, partly because they often have their doors standing open. We haven't seen a single other person masking, although no one has been weird about it when we were. But being indoors unmasked when it's not necessary has been making me a bit uncomfortable (although we are using an antiviral nasal spray, for whatever good it may do), so I remarked on it to Geoff yesterday and he agreed that we would go back to masking when feasible. And the very next shop we went into, which was Gay on Wye, as we were just leaving after looking around for a while, pondering souvenirs and gifts, spotting fan authors gone pro, etc., I heard the guy at the register telling a customer/friend, "I had COVID last week, and it's left me with walking pneumonia."

And I just. I mean. Brother, for your own sake you should be home in bed, not working, but I don't know if you get sick time, I don't know if you're broke, I don't know if there's anyone else to mind the shop, I don't know your life. But if you had COVID "last week" you are plausibly still contagious with it, plus the pneumonia, and you're not even masking? SURE AM GLAD WE WERE. That definitely reaffirmed to me that we should go back to being more careful, jesus.

We had dinner last night at a pub next door called the Three Tuns, in a building that dates back to the sixteenth century. Geoff had the decent but ultimately somewhat disappointing aforementioned brisket tagliatelle, and I had an excellent pizza with hot salami and nduja and chili oil. We looked for other options for tonight, but everything we found nearby was either lunch-only (most of the restaurants in town), or disproportionately pricy, or basically a sports bar, or in one case had a series of terrifyingly bad Tripadvisor reviews within the last few months, so we're just going back there tonight; it's decent and convenient.

Today was the weekly town market! So after we made the mistake of having breakfast at our B&B -- I mean, it was fine, it was the usual "full English breakfast" except without beans because Mary despises them, it's just that that meant we were full when we went to the market -- we went to browse the market! Lots of fantastic breads and pastries, lots of veg and meat, a cheesemonger with it must have been at least thirty kinds of cheese, lots of pies, lots of jams and preserves, lots of clothes, plus everything from handmade soaps to jewelry to beautifully carved wooden canes. We admired many many things, and then decided to stock ourselves for a picnic lunch on a riverside walk. Geoff got a chicken, gammon, and jalapeno pie, and also a chocolate almond croissant (filled with almond paste and covered with sliced almonds, and then covered on top of that with chocolate and chocolate chips); I got a ciabatta roll and a small wedge of a cheese called Ticklemore that was described (I took a picture of the little display sign) as "mild, delicate cheese with a firm, slightly crumbly texture; citrus, grass, and earthy notes," and also a peach. Then we stopped back at the B&B to fill a water bottle and set out for the riverside.

It was almost strange to be setting out on a gentle stroll, with no time pressure, no expectation of strenuousness, and no intention of being out more than a couple of hours! We sauntered along the wooded riverside path, occasionally seeing the river between the trees (once seeing what may have been a heron) and also seeing some really skillful life-size carvings in tree trunks and stumps: a fox carved sitting on a stump, so realistic that for the first split second we thought it might be real; an owl atop another tall trunk and another owl peering out of a hole; and a bird of prey in mid-flight, depicted as just skimming with its talons the tree trunk it had been carved out of.

Eventually the path opened up into a large meadow, and we took advantage of a sunny interval to sit on a conveniently placed bench, looking out across the meadow and river, and eat. My cheese was delicious; Geoff's croissant was ridiculously over the top but also delicious in its own way. So restful! So civilized! So not being hailed on! Although it did rain, briefly but torrentially, on our way home; we just sheltered under a tree in the lee of a church wall for ten or fifteen minutes until it passed. And then we came back to the B&B to lounge about, and blog, and also we need to repack our bags because, being here for a whole two consecutive nights, we have somehow let them explode all over the room, and tomorrow morning we have to haul our own luggage for the first time in almost a week, onto a bus and then a train to our next stop, the coastal town of Fishguard.

We did have a fun conversation with Mary over breakfast this morning. She checked that we'd eventually been warm enough last night, and told us that when she was little, her family lived in an old castle -- until the roof fell in when she was five, and then they moved to what they called the mini-mansion, what had originally been the dower house or similarly associated building, I forget exactly what she said; it had had only twenty-six rooms(!), but they only used a small part of the house. And it was always cold; there was a fireplace at each end of the house, but unless they had company there was only ever a fire in one of them -- "and no more logs on the fire after nine pm!" her grandmother would bark. The kids slept in a huge old iron bedstead, two at one end and two at the other, heads in different directions, under layers and layers of quilts. The place got much warmer after her family eventually had the front door replaced and the whole front sill rebuilt; the old door had broken and rotted through in holes. And they eventually replaced the old, old window glass and crumbling window frames with new frames and triple-pane insulated windows. But when she was a child...wow. And, I mean, if she's eighty or so (we didn't ask, but she mentioned that her husband is 88), that was in the 1950s -- that's not so long ago!

(It occurs to me now that it did not occur to me then to ask about the plumbing in her childhood home. Now I'm curious!)

She also told more stories of terrible American tourists she's encountered: people who were rude or demanding. She tends to trail off a little and leave things to implication rather than being brutally specific, but she had a great deal to say about the American woman who complained vociferously that there was no refrigerator in her room ("This is a B&B. If you want a refrigerator, go to a hotel") and then couldn't find her boots and accused Mary's husband of stealing them. "Are you sure you didn't pack them in your bag?" asked Mary; "you did arrive here by taxi, not on foot." "Of course I didn't pack them," snapped the woman, "do you think I'm stupid?" "Well, let me help you look," said Mary, upended the woman's bag and dumped everything out, and lo, there were her boots. "I think you owe me an apology," said Mary, but she didn't get one. There were more stories about that woman, too; but apparently her traveling companion was lovely, sent Mary a beautiful little painting she'd done from a photo she'd taken of the B&B (Mary showed it to us), and still sends her Christmas cards! The two women hadn't even known each other before deciding to travel together.

Now I need to wrap this up and do a little packing before we go to dinner!

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MDZS Time Warp Exchange

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Multifandom - Word Crimes: A Problematic Exchange!

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Current Mood: tired

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memage

Wedensday is exhausted

I didn't sleep that well last night, allegedly got seven hours, but with a lot of intermittent wake-ups.

I listen to sleep stories at the moment, via Calm, to get to sleep - for the most part, it is working. Depends on the sleep story.

Catiching up on September - Question a Day Memage

6. What’s the last book you read – did you enjoy it/would you recommend it?

This is hard. Mainly because I'm in another reading slump, and have started and given up on a lot of books lately.

So, the last one I finished and recall? Was Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt (I linked you to another person's book review - who liked the book, while I slogged through it and had issues with the narrative style and writing.)

It's about an elderly woman's friendship with an octopus - who helps her figure out what happened to her son, who went missing decades ago. The book is more focused on the quirky characters than it is on the plot, so as a result the plot is haphazard at best, and depends largely on the stupidity of its characters to move forward. And the characters are remarkably dense.
The octopus has to work overtime to help them figure things out.

I don't know - it's a popular book? I just didn't like it. Although I did finish it - which is more than I can say for the last seven books I've tried to read.

7. Is there anything you know is an extravagance, but you still pay for it regularly because you want to treat yourself?

Sigh. Most likely my television streaming subscription services, and the matcha lattes I get. Also an occasional gluten-free baked good (chocolate chip cookie, donut, muffin...brownie).

8. Can you take a nap and still sleep well that night, or are naps just for when you are unwell?

No. I only take naps when I'm sick or haven't slept the night before, and my body dozes off (so not feeling well). I'm not much of a sleeper. And if I nap, I get groggy and can't sleep at night. Everyone in my family seems to have this problem.

9. When you look outside, what do you see right now?

It's night, so the silhouettes of trees and leaves,reflections of things in the windows (pictures on my walls, easel, chair, stained glass stars hanging from window sills) and a dark sky, also for a while a spotlight. It's the week of 9/11 and they shine spotlights in the sky to remember the twin towers. It looked like the moon - so I wondered if it was, and realized, no a spotlight - the light went to the ground like a spotlight. It's gone now. Saw it last night too.

10. Are there any confectionary bars they don’t make any more that you miss (describe them)?

Okay, not sure what this is? Oh, candy bars.

I don't think there are any that I loved that they don't make any more? Ponders. No. Even saw a Whatmacallit recently. I just can't have them any longer. But that's not because they aren't being made.

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Project Moon Anniversary Exchange

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Ladies' Bingo 2025-2026 (Round 13)

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wed 2025

Write Every Day September 2025 - Day 10

Quote of the Day:

Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying in six weeks; he claimed he knocked it off in his spare time from a twelve-hour-a-day job performing manual labor. There are other examples from other continents and centuries, just as albinos, assassins, saints, big people and little people show up from time to time in large populations. Out of a human population on earth of four and a half billion, perhaps twenty people can write a serious book in a year. Some people lift cars, too. Some people enter week-long sled-dog races, go over Niagra Falls in barrels, fly planes through the Arc de Triomphe. Some people feel no pain in childbirth. Some people eat cars. There is no call to take human extremes as norms.

— Annie Dillard, The Writing Life (1989)

Today's Writing:

I wrote 714 words, using yesterday's method, with equally good results!

Tally

( Days 1-8 )

Day 9:

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

cornerofmadness,

goddess47,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

trobadora

Let me know if I missed you, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet. And remember, you can join in at any time!

Current Mood: excited

Entry tags:

October Daye: Lost Words exchange

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No hike today

The forecast for our last day of hiking was for thundershowers all day, so we said not today, Satan, and rode along with our luggage to our final stop on this part of our trip: Hay-on-Wye. We arrived a little after 10, walked around a bit (often in light rain), changed some euros we've had kicking around for six years, poked our noses into some of the many bookshops the town is famous for, and have now collapsed in our B&B; Geoff is snoring next to me, and even I, who virtually never nap, can hardly keep my eyes open. Taking the day off was a good call.

Oh Yuletide

I'm having a much harder time coming up with nominations than in past years. Part of the problem is that I've mostly been reading nonfiction, and that I catch up with shows years after they first start up. I didn't expect Phineas & Ferb to have more than 4000 stories in AO3, and the number for Elementary (tv) is almost equally high. Forget writing Strange New Worlds.

So that leaves me with one TV series with not that many stories -- Dark Winds -- and one of the old Georgette Heyer novels that I haven't written about yet.

I always try to choose things that are easily available, more or less. *stares at bookshelves that need weeding.*

And none of the nonfiction I read is likely to have enough of a fandom. Or any, actually.

At least I have a few more days to come up with something...

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and now i want to clean my computer

don't say I never gave you anything...

At this link are Charlie Warzel's Atlantic story about Epstein's birthday book, and also links to the birthday book, the non-prosecution agreement, his will, and what appears to be an address register. You can read all of it for yourself if you want. Note that the address register was scanned sideways. All the documents are PDFs.

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The "very" belated return of the Good News Report...

Sorry, it's been a while, and I don't know about anyone else? But I've found the news to be a bit tiring. And have emotionally distanced myself from it for the most part - for my own mental and emotional and physical health. Every time I look at it - I feel like I'm watching an absurd ping pong match to the death, between all the States, Federal Courts and Social Activists vs. the corrupt and ineffectual wannabee fascist Federal Government & their cronies. But hey, it is entertaining from a Civics/Student of Government perspective, also if you are a litigation attorney specializing in constitutional law and civil rights law, and anyone who is into political satire and not currently living in the US or affected by its policies. Basically if you are living on a remote island in the China Sea, and in which case, you're probably clueless.

Anyhow, despite all that, here's a list of good news items that I've found.
As always, keep in mind good news is in the eye of the beholder, and mileage may well vary on the below.

Good News Report from the Resistance and their Global Allies

( 100 Good News Items )
***

Quotes

* " “If something really matters to you,” Beverley Fehr, a University of Winnipeg psychologist, told me, “there’s a vulnerability in sharing it with someone else.” When we declare a favorite book, movie, or album and introduce it to others, Jeffrey Hall, a communications-studies professor at the University of Kansas, told me, “what we’re doing is saying, ‘This is an aspect of my identity that I’m willingly putting out there in order for other people to know me. And if you reject this thing, you reject me.’” Tom Vanderbilt, the author of You May Also Like, said that recommending something to someone can be like giving a gift, in that “it says something about you, but you’re also trying to anticipate what they might like.”
- The Atlantic

*“When things go wrong, don’t go with them.” – ELVIS PRESLEY

* "Hike your own hike." - Sleep Story (Calm).
***
Lusting after a Vacation

Ah, something to lust after: Skillcations to exotic places...such as photography in Uganda, Knitting in Iceland, cooking in Italy...
***

Nice News Book Rec: The Call of the Honeyguide: What Science Tells Us About How to Live Well with the Rest of Our Life by Rob Dun

( brief description )

***

Music Rec

In 1975, “Bohemian Rhapsody” became an instant classic. While countless covers (from The Muppets to Glee) have paid tribute to what’s considered one of rock’s most enduring anthems, Queen has never authorized a translation of the song — until now. Fifty years after the single was released, a new version is delighting fans, this time in the Zulu language and performed by South Africa’s acclaimed Ndlovu Youth Choir.
( Read more... )
We’d say mission (above and beyond) accomplished: Watch the music video to decide for yourself.

https://nicenews.com/culture/queen-bohemian-rhapsody-zulu-version/

( Music Video of Zulu Translation of Bohemian Rhapsody )

New Substack post

At some point within the last 400+ years your ancestors came to North America, and then (for many of you) to America. What do you know of their journey?

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wed 2025

Write Every Day September 2025 - Day 9

Quote of the Day:

"Before you become a writer you must first become a reader. Every hour spent reading is an hour spent learning to write."

— Robert Macfarlane, Landmarks (2015)

Today's Writing:

I sat down and wrote 431 words, free-writing, mostly complaining, expecting nothing much. But it actually produced something useful. ~~Maybe I should just complain more.~~ Writing is so weird.

Tally

( Days 1-7 )

Day 8:

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

goddess47,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora,

yasaman,

ysilme

Let me know if I missed you, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet. And remember, you can join in at any time!

This is GOOD

We have completed our day's hike with only a little bit of rain at the end, had lovely showers, and are ensconced in the pub; Geoff is just having coffee but I have a quarter-liter of red wine and -- for the very first time even though I've watched all of GBBO -- a Victoria Slice. The music is eighties hits, when we walked in it was Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

This is good.

Entry tags:

wales

(no subject)

Yesterday's hike wasn't supposed to be as hard, and the forecast was for sunny and cool, with a brief chance of rain around three.

Guess what happened. Just guess.

The morning was lovely, especially since I've now figured out how to combine the paper directions (which are sometimes quite confusing; I remember them being much better on the hikes we did years ago!) with the company's shiny new GPS phone app, which is great and shows the trail on a topographic map and a little dot showing where we are and even sounds an alarm if we stray more than fifty meters from the path, but of course checking it all the time burns battery. (We've never come close to running out, and I have a battery backup charger, but even so I prefer not to be constantly checking it. But sometimes I have to!

We met a lot more hikers that morning, coming the other way, than we had the day before, and exchanged cheerful words with them (and often their dogs). That was nice; I enjoy cheerful exchanges with strangers! It was one of the things I really missed during the most isolated COVID years.

Around 1:45 we were about to begin the hardest section of the day's hike, a long and extremely steep ascent up a narrow muddy/rocky trail. At the top, though, we were promised a beautiful, mostly level walk a couple of kilometers along the top of the line of hills, getting glorious views of the countryside. Before embarking on the climb we stopped for a snack, and the sky looked a bit forbidding, with the wind increasing and the temperature decreasing, so we decided to put on raingear (and I put back on the Merino wool midlayer I'd been too warm for an hour before) and cover our packs. I mean, for whatever good it might do me, but after yesterday's debacle I had packed pretty much everything in plastic bags inside the pack. As I got my rain pants on over my trousers, it did indeed start spitting a bit, nothing major.

Well, as we clambered laboriously upward, the rain got harder. And harder. Finally, halfway up the hillside, we started hearing a little thunder, so we stopped and took what shelter we could under a tree. After about maybe fifteen minutes Geoff looked upwind and said, "I think the worst of the storm has passed us by, though it will definitely keep raining; shall we start hiking again?" Whereupon it began thundering much nearer, the wind speed doubled, and it began vigorously hailing. Sideways.

But, I mean, our only choices were to continue the hike or to go all the way back down and backtrack along our trail to pound on the door of one of the few houses we'd passed and hope someone was home whom we could ask for shelter. And the thunder and lightning did finally move away, at least, and it's easier and safer going up a slope like that in bad weather than going down. So once the t&l had moved away, maybe another fifteen minutes? I have no sense of time, but anyway we struck out again, climbing slowly and with infinite care (and liberal use of our hiking poles) until we reached the top and could start along the high path.

Where, of course, we were completely unprotected from the wind and whatever it decided to throw at us: sometimes hail, sometimes rain. We weren't at too much risk of getting dangerously chilled because of our raingear and because we were able to move quickly and keep our warmth up that way (and before, the effort of struggling up the steep ascent had kept us warm enough), but it officially Was Not Fun. Or at least, it was type 3 fun! My rain pants eventually soaked through. Geoff had water in his boots again. The only view we had was of solid grey, no scenery distinguishable.

We struggled through that for...maybe half an hour? I sure wasn't pulling my phone out to check the time (or, with a few exceptions, to navigate; thankfully we were following a well-marked walking route at that point). It finally started clearing up around the time we finally started descending again, and by the time we were on the last gentle green walk into our next town, it was sunny and cheerful and blithely denying it would ever have done such a thing to us!

As we entered town we also crossed the official boundary, leaving England and entering into Wales. The town has set up a photo op station, and Geoff got a picture of me with one foot on each side of the Official Line.

And when we finally staggered into our next hotel room, we were desperately grateful to find that the en suite included a big bathtub; I don't think we've ever done this before, but we immediately ran a really hot bath and got in together, just soaking all the chill out of our bones. (We'd actually wanted to do it the day before, but that hotel only had a shower stall, and it wasn't a very good shower, either 😥) It was absolutely lovely and sweet, just how we wanted to relax for a while.

We have had really nice conversations with other walkers on the paths and in the hotels/pubs. The scenery, when visible, is beautiful. Despite everything, we are enjoying ourselves!

But we've booked a ride to shorten today's hike, and will do so for tomorrow's as well, because oh my aching feet. Even the short version of today's hike has a cumulative uphill of 600 meters -- yesterday's was 750, I think? The regular version of today's would have 800. Tomorrow's, our last hike day, would be 830, which, HELL NO, it will be shortened to 510.

Entry tags:

MCU15 > prompt tables

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Entry tags:

The Prompt Dump

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