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[personal profile] mistressofmuses
Last Friday was the other concert that we went to go see:


Aesthetic Perfection, doing an old-school set, plus genCAB and Whorticulture opening.

This one was cutting it a little closer to get there, since I wasn't able to leave work at all early, but luckily the class we were closing at work didn't keep me longer than usual, either. I was able to wear most of what I was going to wear to work, and change what little I needed to on the drive there, haha.

We actually wound up being down there earlier than needed, and had to circle like vultures for about fifteen minutes until one of the driving lanes turned into a parking lane at 7:00. As usual we car-bar/pre-gamed for a bit, then headed to the venue.

We weren't late this time, so we got to see our first opener, Whorticulture.



Whorticulture is a local band, and they've hit at least a little bit of success! We last saw them opening for Solar Fake (last year? the year before?). They got to play Dark Force Fest last month, which was pretty cool.

I've been impressed every time I've seen them, and even having only ever seen them live as an opening band, their songs have been memorable enough that I recognize them every time.

I always figure "hey, I should buy a CD!" and then don't have merch money, so this time was going to be the time! ...They do not have CDs at their merch table. I poked around on Bandcamp and discovered that this is because they do not have any albums... just nine singles released over the course of the last six years, haha. So I did buy their various singles, haha.

Their set was great, as they have been every time I've seen them, and even only getting to play four songs.


Three more Whorticulture pics + a music video embed



"Okay, hold on a minute. Time for an on-purpose wardrobe malfunction!"






Here's their song from last year, "Faust," which I quite like. The video is them being dramatically gothy in the Molly Brown House Museum, which is fun, too.


After that was genCAB. They were supposed to open the last time Aesthetic Perfection came, but had to cancel because the singer had Covid.



Unfortunately I found them solidly... meh. They weren't terrible, but I found myself getting a little bored. I couldn't understand more than a handful of words out of each song (just kind of nondescriptly loud and yell-y.) The singer also seemed... shy? Like he didn't want to look at the audience, ha. He's the synth player for Aesthetic Perfection while they're touring, so I feel like he's had a good tutor in stage presence, but... I mean, I'd be petrified and hate being on stage, so. Glad to have gotten to see them, but not someone I'd seek out to see again/look for as a headliner.


Three more of genCAB





Not really a "good" picture, but I liked the dramatic silhouettes.


And then, Aesthetic Perfection!


This is by far the best picture I got for the night, ha.

It was exciting to see him back, since he swore that the last tour would be the last one in the US ever. (He doesn't live in the US anymore, and he's always very open about the business side of being an artist. Basically it's just prohibitively expensive to tour, in a way that doesn't work out as a financial decision. He's said he'd be willing to tour as a supporting act, and I think he did so last year, but I wasn't interested in the artist he was supporting.)
I think the old-school thing was really meant to be just a single special show, and then expanded to a very small tour, and it was exciting for Denver to have a date added. It's very possible that this one is in fact the last tour, so I'm glad we got to go. (Or maybe there'll be another in a year or two!)

I'm actually less a fan of his older stuff than I am his like... middle stuff. I'm a 'Til Death fan, sorry. Even so, his older stuff has grown on me quite a bit.

He opened with "The Great Depression," which was a good starting song. Having the first words of a set be "Hey you motherfucking son of a bitch!" is pretty good, lol.

Got a lot of other faves from A Violent Emotion (and I'll be honest, while I knew most of the other songs, I don't have the albums they're on. I'll have to get them from Alex, as I'm sure he does, ha.) I was glad we got "Pale," which is one of my favorites from that album, as well as "The Siren" and "Living the Wasted Life."

The final encore song was "Spit It Out," which is a great energetic song to end on. I'm pretty sure that was the song he opened with at the first AP show we saw, way back at Castlemans (RIP a great venue.) The energy of the crowd screaming along with "Spit it out scream, spit it out scream!" does make it a great one to hear live.

Could have done without a small cohort of girls who came in about halfway through the set and pretty viciously shoved their way in front of me, but ah well.


Five more pictures










Bought Alex an Aesthetic Perfection shirt (since the last one he tried to get, he wound up with the wrong one and didn't realize until later. The cut of the one he got didn't work for him, so I wound up with it.)
I bought a Whorticulture shirt, since there's not an album to buy, haha. (Forever sad to have missed out on their "Goth as Fuck" shirts, which were styled to look like the "Queer as Folk" logo.)
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[personal profile] mistressofmuses
(Trying to keep going with the things I planned to.)

Part three of the pictures from the Botanic Gardens last Tuesday. Last Tuesday was better than this week's.


Tiny ducklings are so damn cute.


These were very striking, with the contrast between the upper and lower petals, plus the bright orange pollen!


I remembered these irises from last year. They're so vibrant!


Fourteen more pictures:
We took a break and headed to the Garden's restaurant, "The Hive." Their food is quite good, so it's always nice to get to go there. Mildly spendy, but well worth it for what you get. Their sweet potato fries are the best.


On the path up to the restaurant: mother duck in the middle of her little island, ducklings scattered around the edges. (Though she was not a fan of other ducklings; there was a second cohort of ducklings that were unattended by their parent, and she was pretty vicious about chasing them away.)


A towhee hanging out at one of the tables.


The ducklings came through on a scavenging sweep. They had no qualms about running under our feet.

It started raining a bit, but while it looked like it might last a while, it actually broke up quite quickly.

After lunch, it was on to the iris garden:


Happy Pride from these Persian jewels. :)


Ruffly! These ones smelled very sweet, if I remember.


This was one of my favorites. I love the stripes!


Another that was just a very different color from the rest.

Over by the cuttings garden:


A very striking two-toned lupine!


Ma'am! Attend to your children!! (I'm fairly sure this was the deadbeat neglecting her duckling children, who were frantically swimming around and peeping. Alex was distressed that they were distressed, but she seemed to be heading back in their direction.)

And in the Victorian garden:


I liked the caged succulents!


I love ferns, plus bonus columbines.

Then over to the Shofu-En Japanese garden.


(The informative sign reads: "A Lantern For Peace: This 250-year-old stone lantern was donated in 1964 by Denver's sister city, Takayama, Japan. The Sister Cities program and "friendship gardens" across the United States are symbols of cooperation and cultural exchange.")


And of course, my much-loved koi.


More koi!


Just one more gardens picture post to go.

a fun, but long, day

Jun. 13th, 2025 12:17 am
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[personal profile] kareina
This morning started, as is typical for us on a work day, with his 05:00 alarm. By 05:30 he was on the road to work, as we chatted on the phone, and I was packing my backpack and getting ready to walk to the bus stop. 
 
By 06:20 I was on the bus, but I didn't start work for another 10 or 15 minutes as Brooke was on the bus, so we chatted for the first bit. I hadn't expected to see her again as the school year is over, but she was heading in to make up an exam she'd missed. I enjoy her company, but she is probably going to get a student apartment in town in the autumn, so our paths are unlikely to cross again.
 
I got a fair bit of work done in the morning, and then walked over to the hospital for my next check up as one of the lab rats in the Swedish Glaucoma Nicotinamide Trial.
 
While I felt wide awake when I arrived, the test where you stare at the light in the middle and press a button whenever you see another light blink into existence anywhere else got me feeling sleepy. For the right eye I found my focus slipping repeatedly, but managed to force it back. Then, on the left eye, I actually fell asleep and woke back up immediately a couple of times.
 
Therefore I wasn't surprised when she said i had done worse on the left than in previous visits. Therefore, i will return om Monday to do that test again, and se if there is a real change.
 
I finished up there in a good time to catch the 12:30 bus home, so I did, with the plan to both work on the bus, and more when I got home, to make up for the time missed at the eye doc's.
 
But as I waited for the bus I called Keldor, who was having a slow workday, waiting for parts to arrive so he can resume the current project. 
 
While waiting he came home and picked up the old freezer we are getting rid of, now that we have the better one from his dad. Since he wasn't working, I failed on my attempt to work on the bus, and we hung out chatting till my bus got to Ånäset, where I hopped off and met him, and we went to the Stenfors Antique and second hand store, where we bought lots of things. Hand woven bands, bentwood boxes, wooden bucket style lunchbox with lid, a medieval style saw, a felt sun hat, a mad scientist light bulb lamp, some Asterix comic books, a bunny, and a large wooden box suitable for carrying large scrolls.
 
Home after that fun date I baked some naan bread, and we ate the entire batch. Yum! Then he went out and mowed the lawn, while I sat down and resumed my work day.
 
As we have a workshop on monday, where we will be demonstrating how to filter and export data from the SEAD database, I have started working on a tutorial video for it. 
 
So far it is only the introduction part, explaining the goal of the video, and introducing the various parts of the browser window, but I am pretty happy with it, as I was able to figure out how to zoom in to each portion of the screen as I described it.
 
I have already done the screen capture for the data filtering part of the video, but adding the voice over to that, and adjusting the timing so that the words and mouse action align can wait till tomorrow. 
 
 After putting down the computer I tucked Keldor into bed, then did my yoga and relaxed catching up in social media a little before sewing a cord to my new hat, so it won't blow off in the wind. 
 
Then I crawled into bed and decided to write this. Now it is after midnight, and tomorrow is still a work day, after which we drive to Luleå for Spelmansstämman in Gammelstad, so I should post this and get some sleep.
 
 
 
 
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[personal profile] mistressofmuses


For the start of Pride month, a sticker from NerdyKeppie's "Proud to the Bone 2" pin collection.


And my tiny printout of the show flyer, since we don't get hard copy tickets anymore.

(It's a bit hard to write this from the perspective of it being the week Before, but I'm trying.)

This was a fairly busy week! It was a good week, and I made it through the first big rush of busy, but still feel like I have a lot to catch up on. FastCAT, the gardens, and the concert were all really good. Work was average to fine. I do hope to do more reading and writing next week, since it feels like that's where progress is most stagnant.

Goals for the week:

  • I did post my book reviews for May
  • I started, but didn't finish, catching up on DW
  • I watered my plants
  • I read more of Maeve Fly
  • I did my [community profile] getyourwordsout check-in: 1666 words written in May, bringing the ytd total to 58483
  • We went to the Botanic Gardens with my mom and Taylor
  • We did Bella's FastCAT
  • I talked to mom and saw her briefly on her birthday
  • We went to the Aesthetic Perfection show
  • I wrote up and posted my June writing goals
  • I printed off some short stories for my mom
  • I put my laundry away
  • I still haven't cancelled the dentist appointment
  • I still didn't make it to the bank
  • I still didn't finish part 3 of the snowflake outline
  • Alex did get rent paid

Tracked habits:

  • Work - 5/7
  • Household Maintenance - 3/7
  • Physical Activity - 3/7
  • Wrote 500/1000+ Words - 2/7 - one day of over 1000, one day of over 500
  • Wrote on 2nd+ Draft - 0/7
  • Meta Work - 5/7
  • Personal Writing - 5/7
  • Other Creative Things - 3/7
  • Reading - 6/7 - mostly I started reading Maeve Fly, and read some Duma Key with Alex
  • Attention to Media - 7/7 - Sunday I had some youtube in the background at work; Monday half-watched some exploration videos; Tuesday had storm chasing and abandoned place videos in the background; Wednesday was more storm chasing in the background; Thursday we watched some storm chasing (they found an impressive tornado!) and I listened to music (mostly Aesthetic Perfection in preparation for the show on Friday); Friday we went to the concert; Saturday listened to music (mostly Whorticulture, Solar Fake, and Aesthetic Perfection.)
  • Video Games - 0/7
  • Social Interaction - 5/7

Total words written: 4712 on my book reviews and writing plans

-

I am still very sad, and I'm trying to strike the balance between "being gentle with myself" and "wallowing."

Too many accidents

Jun. 11th, 2025 09:44 pm
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[personal profile] kareina
 Today, just before my 10 am meeting, I got a message from Keldor saying he was fine, but had totaled the work car, and he would give me details later. 
 
It was almost 2.5 hours later before I got the details. Turning right, oncoming traffic he kept an eye on to avoid hitting. The car suddely stopped, hard, against a low concrete barrier he hadn't seen. 
 
Result? Front right tire crunched, and pushed to the back of its wheel well, and some scrapes along the adjecent door panel. He had a headache (which could have come from working in a gas mask all morning), and a tender area on the chest where the seat belt held him in place.
 
After speaking with him I took my elsparkcyckel (electric scooter) out with the plan of heading in to town to run errands. While passing the next building, on the stretch where the pavement is a bunch of small concrete tiles that cause a constant thump-thump-thump sound while rolling over them, I noticed that my rear view mirror wasn't in the best alignment, so I lifted my left hand off the handlebar to adjust it. In hindsight I should have come to a comlete stop first.
 
I hadn't been going very fast, but shifting that hand corresponded with the elsparkcyckel abruptly laying itself down on its side, which, since I had been standing on it, and was still holding the right hand handlebar, meant that I also wound up on the pavement, landing on my right hip/upper thigh, and right elbow.
 
I hopped up directly, and my colleague, who had seen me fall, hurried over to ask if I was alright. I told him I was pretty certain there would be brusing, but I appeared to be fine. He was relieved to hear that. The mirror on the elsparkcyckel, however, was no longer attached. 
 
Having also lost all motivation to run errands, I hopped back on the elsparkcyckel, holding the mirror in one hand, in addition to holding the handlebar, and returned to my office. 
 
After removing my helmet and wrist protection (neither of which made contact with the ground, I think), and my, undamaged long sleeved over shirt I could see that there was a scrape on my elbow.
 
So I grabbed my office bottle of chlorhexidine, the roll of medical tape, and the tube of healing salve, and went to the loo. There I washed and disinfected the scrape, put on the salve, and tape over it. Then I looked at my hip. No scrapes or visible bruising. Lots of "gee, that hurts, and must be a substantial invisible bruise".
 
So then I went up to the lunch room, where I looked in the freezer, found a small ice tray, emptied it into a plastic bag, refilled it and put the tray back into the freezer, then returned to my office and carefully sat down to the computer, nestling my bag of ice against the tender bits. 
 
I got in an hour or so of work till it was time to catch the bus home. I decided not to bring the elsparkcyckel with me, as I didn't want to wrestle it into the cargo cabinet, nor do I want to ride without the mirror.
 
So I just unscrewed the part that was still attached to the handle, and took it, along with the stem and mirror, home with me, where Keldor glued them back together. 
 
Now it is bed time, and I don't want to lay down on my right side, which is a shame, aa that is the side I normally start on.

The inescapable notebook...

Jun. 11th, 2025 11:26 am
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[personal profile] mistressofmuses
Tiny, silly thing that made me smile at least a bit today:

I have a notebook I bought for myself about 13 or 14 months ago. It's my current "writing notebook" that I take with me in my bag so I can jot things down at any time, with no excuse not to write an idea down. I mostly use it at work. (In actual usage it's more of a journal/to-do list/planning notebook, but at least with a bit of a writing bent.) It's got flowers and mushrooms and bugs on it. It's very cute, colorful, and kind of 'cottagecore', I guess. I bought it because I liked it!

At Christmas, Alex bought me the exact same notebook, because "it looked like something you would like!" ...The same one I'd been carrying around for seven months or so at that point, haha. (To be clear, I was happy with it, because it absolutely *is* something I would like! And now I have a spare!)

Today I got to work, and my manager had bought me... The exact same notebook. I had needed a new one for my work stuff, but figured I'd just get a plain one. She bought it because she knew I liked that size, and it was a cute cover that looked like I'd like it. (She has seen that notebook on my desk at work for over a year.)

Help, I'm predictable. But also it's very funny that I can carry something with me daily, and the people most likely to see it don't remember that... But see it and apparently think of me.
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Back in 2011, Alex decided he wanted a dog. He knew he wanted a pit bull, and he knew he wanted to adopt one. We went to the shelter, and he absolutely fell in love with a sweet little pittie... a girl named "Joy." By the time we were able to get the house ready, and set up a chance to meet and greet with my dad's dog who lived with us at the time, Joy had been adopted, and Alex was very sad about it. I remember thinking at the time, though I don't know if I actually said it, "Don't worry; we will find you another dog, and in the end you won't be able to imagine having had a different one."

We went back to the shelter to look at another young, female pit, but during the meeting with my dad's dog she was just a little overly hyperactive for him.

Not quite grudgingly, Alex asked to meet "Montana," a little brown, black, and white male pit bull. He was a cute dog, but not very personable. He stayed in the back of his kennel, not very interested in interacting. We'd completely overlooked him on our first visit, and his informational page said he'd been there for eight months. But the meeting with my dad's dog went well, and he was sweet when we did get his attention, so we took him.

It took us a little while to come up with a name, but we decided on "Cyanide," since he needed a dangerous name, as a pit bull! The shelter said he was two, but considering how much he grew after we had him, we think he was closer to one. (Though considering he'd been there for a while, it probably was closer to one and a half.) We picked New Year's Day as his birthday, since it was as good a day as any.

Cy was one of the sweetest, smartest dogs I've ever known. He really was wicked smart, and it's lucky that he chose to use that genius for non-evil purposes. He was extraordinarily sweet, and one of the most patient dogs in the world. He would tolerate just about anything, even when he didn't need to put up with it. He loved people.

The only thing he didn't like: raccoons.

He had the strongest paternal instinct I've ever seen in a dog, too (though as far as I know, he never fathered any puppies). He adored little baby animals. He was more annoyed by puppies once they got to the exuberant, mostly coordinated stage, but when they were little? He would just melt for them.
At the dog park once, he played tug-of-war with a tiny, floppy little mastiff puppy. He let her lead him around by that rope, just barely sometimes tugging on it, basically letting her win the whole time.
By coincidence we ran into one of my coworkers and his husband at the park once, with their brand new tiny terrier puppy. Cy let that little five pound ball of fluff jump up on him, and then he'd dramatically fall over and roll onto his back, like the tiny puppy had obviously vanquished him.
He adored kittens, too; when we were staying with some friends, they had some orphaned foster kittens who were still being bottle-fed. We let Cy meet them, and he was utterly smitten. He wanted nothing more than to cuddle and nuzzle and groom them. (Probably only partially because they were messy eaters that had cat food on them, haha.) For years after, up until he went deaf, if he heard a kitten mew on a video or something, he would excitedly try to find the kitten.


Cy with Sherlock, our friend's cat. This was one of "his" kittens, though grown up in this picture. (Our friend says she credits Cy with how much Sherlock grew up to like dogs.)


A picture Alex took, Cy at the Chesapeake Bay.


He was a great hiking buddy. This is him at Mt. Falcon.

I wanted to pick out my favorite pictures of Cy, but trick question, because they're all my favorites, so I'm still posting too many.


25 more pictures of my best boy.

He used to have so little white on his face!


Alex and Cy. Just like I thought: couldn't imagine ending up with a different dog.


Me with Cy. We were watching fireworks. He was the mellowest dog; truly nothing scared or bothered him (except being left alone for too long.)


At the dog park, eyes on the tennis ball.


He was always the most majestic sleeper.


On a "cliff edge" at Red Rocks.


Bane of baseballs everywhere!


He used to be so spry! Excited for Alex to chuck the tennis ball already.


Hot dog in the sun at a friend's farm out in Maryland.


Champion slorper.


Helping me carve a jack-o-lantern. <3


His silly hat with reindeer antlers and ear warmers. (It brought joy to the masses, judging by how people in neighboring cars reacted when he'd wear it, haha.)


He loved his naps, and he loved napping on plushies.


My best boy.


Cy in his Pride hat, at fourth of July. Again, bringing joy to the masses. We had so many people stop and smile and comment about the dog in the hat.


His dragon Halloween costume.


Reindeer-on-reindeer violence!


Looking like a model advertising the treats in the background.


His nose. <3


In front of the flowers at the park last year.


Alex took this picture, of both the dogs at fourth of July last year.


Not a great pic, but I think you can tell that this is a cool dog with cool places to be and cool things to do.


He loved blankets so much. All you had to do was hold a blanket up and he would dart over to be under it. He wanted to be tucked in before going to sleep at night.


Fairly recent, I know I shared it already, but it was sweet when the dogs would actually cuddle together.


Cuddling his dragon toy. <3



Today, talk of end of life:
Overnight, around 1:45 in the morning, Cy got up from his bed and was very suddenly extremely agitated. He was making terrible scream-bark-howl sounds, and frantically running around the apartment. It was very scary, and we took him to the emergency vet. They did an exam, and then gave him a sedative that would also help with pain. The best hope was that this was basically "doggie dementia," and that getting some rest would lead to him waking up feeling better, and then we could look at treating the anxiety if it remained.

We took him home around 4:00, but even with their sedative and his usual pain meds, I don't think he ever fell asleep. The physical agitation stopped, and he was laying in his bed, but he was awake and still whining with almost every exhale.

Around 8:00 he started moving around more, though the agitation wasn't where it had been in the middle of the night. We took him outside, which initially seemed fine... then a few minutes later, still outside, he started with the horrible screaming again. Our regular vet wasn't open yet, so we went back to the emergency vet.

They did blood and urine tests, wanting to rule out anything they could: infection, organ failure, drugs or other toxins. Unfortunately in this case, the tests came back normal. His kidney levels were slightly elevated, same as his annual exam had showed, but everything else was normal. (My last, quiet hope had been a UTI/kidney infection; I know that can cause neurological symptoms if it's advanced enough, and as bad as that would be when his kidneys were already bad, it would be something we could try and treat.) The emergency vet said that in absence of any physical cause that it was probably neurological, with the most likely causes being a brain tumor or possibly a blood clot. She recommended we look at this as a quality of life question.

His obvious distress meant it wasn't fair to him to drag things out. I called our regular vet, and she was able to get us an end of life appointment at noon, just about an hour after we were leaving the emergency vet. (We could have done it there, but our vet has been our vet since I was a child; for thirty years she's been the one to help our pets pass when it's time, and I'd rather have had him go there. I suspect she was offering to do this at what should have been her lunch break; she said they were basically double-booked for the whole day. They'd offered us a 5:00 appointment, but that seemed like too long to wait, when he would spend those hours upset.)

We went and got a pup cup from Starbucks. The vet gave us some time with him both before and after. He passed very quickly and quietly.

This was something we knew was coming, though we didn't expect something like this to force it. We thought it would be the end last March when we took him to the emergency vet the first time, the day he suddenly couldn't walk. We were hoping at that point for a couple more months, maybe making it into summer... and he was doing well. Then he had a repeat flare of the back problems on Halloween, and then again the day before Thanksgiving, and two bouts within a month seemed like that was the end; we doubted he'd make it to Christmas. And then he made it to New Year's, and another unofficial birthday. And then we made it past our birthdays, and then a year past his scare, and then long enough for him to get another annual exam... Lots of tiny little milestones, but ones we didn't think he'd reach. It's felt like more than a year of borrowed time, and it's time I'm glad we got with him.

I'm painfully glad this didn't happen a week from now, when I'll be out of state for my grandmother's memorial.

I've been a weepy, sobbing mess all day, and I feel like I'll remain a weepy sobbing mess for a while.


Cy was truly my Best Boy Ever. While he was Alex's dog, always first and foremost, he was also my dog, the first one I was ever primarily responsible for. We had him for fourteen years of his life, whether that life was fifteen or closer to sixteen years. It wasn't long enough. I would have wanted fourteen more years with him, and it still wouldn't have felt long enough.

I already miss him so much.
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Continuing with the trip through the Denver Botanic Gardens from last week!


A very nice clematis, hiding away a bit.


A Persian jewel, extra bejeweled by the rain.


Another really nice columbine. This color makes me think of strawberry lemonade.


Fourteen more pictures:
We headed up the paths behind the Ellipse, toward the "romance gardens" and the "fragrance gardens."


A more classic, blue and white Colorado columbine.


I believe this is elderflower.


Spiderwort.


Looking back towards the Ellipse and the house, with the irises, roses, pines...


The picture does not quite do justice to just how big this iris was. It was huge, and smelled wonderful.


These poppies were really neat, with the sort of ruffled edges.


Itty bitty tadpoles! I think these are toad tadpoles.


Happy Pride from these larkspurs!


More irises with water droplets!


A ladybug larva! They look like little gila monsters.

Over in the "woodland mosaic":


Young squirrel.


Extra spotty ladybug!

And then in "June's PlantAsia":


I love this art piece.


A very pretty fern. :)

Writing Goals/Calendar: June 2025

Jun. 7th, 2025 07:47 pm
mistressofmuses: Image of nebulae in the colors of the bi pride flag: pink, purple, and blue (Default)
[personal profile] mistressofmuses
It's another month! A whole week into another month, actually!

This year has been pretty much a wasteland in terms of writing. Fiction writing, at least. I've gotten some wordcount on non-fiction writing, like reviewing books I've read, or the reflections on last year and goals for this one. Not so much success on the fiction front.

May did not reverse this trend, haha.

My goals for May were:
- push through on the current original WIP
- consider what I wanted to do with the Cyberpunk AU
- look into the snowflake outlining method again, and maybe start using it for the "Worldhopping Fairytale Monstrosity" fic

And how did I do?
- I did not work on the WIP.
- I think the Cyberpunk AU is getting shelved for a while. I still want to write it, but just don't feel any real strong desire to work on it right now. I think it's getting put back into the nebulous "someday..." pile.
- I did look at snowflake outlining again.
- I even started the Worldhopping Fairytale Monstrosity outline with it, though I only got through the first two steps, plus two thirds of the third.

So now...

Goals for June:
- I want to try and finish just one more chapter of the current original WIP
(I want to see if this reignites any enthusiasm for the project at the moment)
- I want to outline (or even just jump into) the second iddy story
(This is the story that I catch myself currently daydreaming about at times, and I sort of want to ride the inspiration high for a change!)
- I want to work on the snowflake outline for the Worldhopping Fairytale Monstrosity
(This is that endlessly enormous project that's had more than two decades of on and off thought about it, which is excruciating to even consider, and I want to just WORK ON IT.)
- I might start thinking about the stupid holiday AU
(I have so little to show in terms of writing for this year, when "get something into a shareable state" was one of the main things I wanted to do! If I start working on this thing now, maybe I can actually have it in a completed state by the time the actual holidays roll around.)

Goals for July and beyond:
- finish the first draft of the original WIP
- get the second iddy fic outlined
- do the Worldhopping Fairytale Monstrosity outline and plan
- figure out some fanfiction to work on (and eventually post)

My biggest barrier for writing still feels like time. We've been busy, and have actually done things on many of my days off, which is a good thing! But I feel like it leaves me with less free time for things like writing. I've also had strings of days where I can't stay awake after work/non-workday activities, and I end up spending a couple hours napping.

I also feel like I'm lying to myself when I say "as soon as I'm caught up on everything else..." because frankly, I'm never caught up on everything else, lol. Not for any length of time, anyway. Honestly, what little writing I did last month did happen during one of the more hectic weeks. I realize it's a matter of making myself do it even when I've got other things going on... but I also find it really stressful and not conducive to writing when I feel like doing it is making me fall farther behind on other things, so it's a struggle.

I'm at a loss for where to find extra time and energy... Avoiding the persistent napping would be a help, but I can't force myself to stay awake on the days where it's particularly bad. I haven't been as good lately about avoiding the doomscroll... I try to catch myself when I'm just fruitlessly switching between apps, but sometimes I let way too much time go by before I realize that I'm not having a good time, haha. Trying to be mindful on that would probably be good (for multiple reasons.)

We'll see how this month goes!

largely recovered from the trip

Jun. 7th, 2025 08:35 am
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[personal profile] kareina
I really enjoyed Double Wars, and the trip to and (most of) the trip home again, but oh, were we tired by the time we finally got home. 

According to Google Maps, the event site is a 15 hour drive to the south of us, if one drives straight through, doesn't stop, and always does the speed limit, no more, no less. No one does that. No one could. Therefore we budgeted extra time. The site opened at 16:00 on Friday, so we hit the road already Wednesday evening, 21 May, at 18:00, stopping in Umeå for a photo at the runestone at the University, in the same building in which I now work. Keldor hadn't seen it before, as last time we tried I was still working for the library, and thus my card didn't let me in that building after hours. This time we also stopped by my office so I could do a quick 15 minute yoga session, as I hadn't had time earlier in the day.

Our next stop was in Sundsvall, around 03:30, for gas and toilet. As we pulled in I saw that the person filling their tank was wearing a sweatshirt with a skull and crossbones on it, so I said "priate!", and Keldor said "that look like Orm. When we got out of the car, Orm came over for a hug. He was on his way home from work, and was planning on starting for Double Wars the next day.

We drove that night as far as the rest area before the Högakustenbron (the bridge on the High Coast), where we laid down on the bed in the back of the van and slept a couple of hours.

We got back on the road at 03:00 on Thursday and drove as far as Keldor's brother's house, a lovely farm in the forest about half way between Gävle and Örebro, where I did my yoga and took a nap, and Keldor drank coffee and caught up with his brother, who was working nearby enough to take a long coffee break and join us (it was around 09:00 when we arrived).

While we were there Keldor picked up some baverhjöt that his brother had prepared. Baverhjöt is a traditional beverage in some parts of Sweden, that many people have never tasted. One makes it by taking the scent glands near a beaver's anus (the source of castoreum) and putting them in a strong alcohol to soak for a long time. That concentrate is then diluted with much more alcohol to become a beverage with a taste that some few people enjoy, and others regret tasting, if they try at all. It is not very common these days, since one needs access to a dead beaver to make it. Castoreum is also used by the perfume industry and for making painkilling salve, as it is high in acetylsalicylic, so I guess that more scent glands from human-killed beavers are used for these rather than becoming baverhjöt, if they are used at all, and I hope that far more beaver die of old age somewhere unnoticed by humans.

Keldor is one of the people who find the taste of baverhjöt pleasant in small quantities, so it amused him greatly to take a small bottle of baverhjöt around to the various evening parties at the event and offer it to people. A few people enjoyed it, a few people regretted being curious enough to taste it, many more were wise enough not to try it (I didn't even try to smell it). But there were enough people who tasted it that the small bottle he'd mixed from the concentrate was empty by the end of the event. He still has some of the concentrate to mix and bring to another event.

But back to the road trip... After leaving his brother's house, we continued on to his sister's place in Vadstena. We had expected to take more time for that part of the trip, as the sun was up, and there are plenty of rune stones to go look at between the two houses. However, it was a rainy day, so we only stopped at three runestones, which meant that we got to Vadstena around 14:00, and went pretty much straight to sleep, getting back up after his sister and her husband were home from work to be sociable for a while before returning to bed for a good nearly eight hours of sleep.
 
On Friday we enjoyed a leisurely morning, packed the things his sister would need at the event into the van, and hit the road at 09:40, giving us just over six hours to do a 4.5 hour drive, so we planned to take in a few more runestones. However, instead we stopped for photos for the view of Braehus from below, and at the cute little town of Grenna, the Polkagris (peppermint candy) capital of the world (first time we have taken that route), where we bought snacks, honey , and a "weather station" (rock on a string) from a cute tourist trap, and the small bottle of alcohol Keldor needed to dilute the baverhjöt. A bit later in the trip we picked up some groceries for the event, which used up the extra time nicely, meaning that we arrived onsite at 16:12 (site opened at 16:00).

I will try to do another post about the event itself, so I will jump straight to the home trip, and why we were so tired when we got here.

The first part of the trip home, starting early afternoon on Saturday 31 May, went very smoothly. Keldor's sister joined us for the drive (she'd taken the train to the event on the way down, arriving a few days after we did, as she hadn't wanted to take so much time off of work.  This was her first event since the one she'd visited around 20 years ago).

Our first stop of the trip was in the town of Bjärnum, just over an hour from site, as I wanted a toilet and Keldor wanted to hit a grocery store to buy some Monster energy drinks. However, the grocery store was right next to an antique/second hand store, so, of course, we had to go in. This was a good idea.

I went straight to the loo, so I missed out on seeing Beatrix and Hartman, who were just leaving, but they paused and chatted with Keldor and Rebeccah. Then all three of us found things we needed to buy. In Keldor's case it was a small cannon. Given that every time we visit a castle or museum that has real cannons on display Keldor always hugs it and says that he wants to bring it home, I knew the second I saw the small (~20 cm tall, 30 cm long) brass model of a cannon that it was going to follow us home. The only surprise was that it took Keldor a couple of minutes to convince himself that it was ok to buy it. He tried walking away three times. It has wheels, they work. He bought it, of course. The shop also had a cafe, with an ice cream bar, so our road trip ice cream was of reasonable quality (we had tried to get road trip ice cream in Grenna on the way down, but both shops advertising "homemade" ice cream were closed).

We then drove all the way to Braehus (around 2 hours) before the next toilet break. After that, we tried to see the runestone at Hovgården, but it is in a forest behind a farm, with no nearby parking.  Rebeccah's husband was expecting us soon for dinner, so Kelsor wasn't willing to stop. We did stop at the church a short way up the road from there, that has two runestones, but it was locked so we continued the 10 minutes on to Rebeccah's house, where we had a delightful evening, and got a good night's sleep.

The next morning we returned to Hov and saw the runestone inside the church and noticed that its other runestone is built into the church wall itself, and visible from outside (so we could have seen it the day before, had we made our spot check). But Keldor didn't want to walk the 400 or so meters to try to find the runestone behind the farm, so that will have to wait till we feel more adventurous.

The Runstone Map indicated that there were more runestones in the next town, Bälbjö, a few km away, so we went there. Bälbjö is where Birger Jarl is from, one of the most significant figures of early Swedish history, as it was he who, in the 1200's was instrumental in Sweden becoming a unified Kingdom under a single king, rather than a bunch of small Kingdoms

From there we made our way gradually northwards, stopping at the occasional runestones. We sent a note to Hjälmer and Sofie, who live just north of Uppsala, to see if they were home and wanted a visit. They did, but were on their way home from a visit with his family, and said they would be home in about four hours. We were just over a two hour drive from their place by then, so we had plenty of time for sightseeing, and enjoyed the stops.

One of the stops included turning at a sign that said "fresh honey", and arriving at the farm on time to see the beekeeper returning from his hives, still in his protective gear. He had only one jar of the fresh stuff currently bottled, so while we waited he went and filled two more, so we would have one to give to Hjälmar and Sofie, one for us, and one to display to the next visitors. 

Then, when we were around a half an hour from Hjalmar's place the "electric fault" warning light on our dashboard went on, so we stopped at a nearby gas station, saw nothing obviously wrong, and when we restarted the vehicle the warning light was gone. So we proceeded down the road.

Some minutes later the light came back on, so we stopped at another gas station, and this time, when Keldor lifted the hood, the car's drive belt was sitting at an odd angle, so he touched it, and it lifted right out, no longer a loop, but now just a flat band. Given that this is the part that transfers electricity from the alternator to charge the battery, it is no surprise that the light read "electric fault". We quickly checked with google, to see what else it does (the Swedish name for it is "multirem" as it is a belt that fills multiple functions), and saw that, among other things, it operates the engine cooling system.

Google was clear that a car can be driven without one, for as long as the battery lasts, but it is very bad to run the battery completely flat. Given that it was 19:00 on a Sunday, in the countryside about a half an hour from the nearest workshop or car part store, which were all closed), we decided to unplug everything electric we could, and risk it.

That was a rather stressful half an hour, as Keldor drove with one eye on the road, and another on the car's temperature gauge, but we made it there safely, and managed to find a parking spot not too far from the entrance to their apartment building.

Luckily, they had a battery charger, so we brought in the car battery and charged it over night so that we would be able to get it to a shop. We had no idea if it was only the broken belt that was an issue. It was a clean break, with no other sign of wear, so there could have been something else that triggered it, but, whatever the cause, clearly we weren't getting home without a new one.

Keldor was pretty certain that replacing the belt was something he could do, if we had a way to lift the car, but we didn't, and it seemed worth letting professionals do it, as they could troubleshoot to see if anything else was wrong.

We also took advantage of the extra tim in town to take the pavilion and ground cloths out of the car and spread them out on the balcony to dry. They were mostly dry before we packed them, but they were much more dry after airing on the balcony for a night, so it was worth the effort of carrying them up.

At 07:00 the next morning (the earliest any of the local car repair shops opened) I was on the phone trying to find a shop that had time to see us right away. The first several ones in the area were busy, but the first of the "opens at 08:00" set I tried said "not today, but we could take a look tomorrow if you like".

So we booked the appointment, and took Monday as a rest day, other than driving the car over to the workshop in the early afternoon, leaving the keys with them, and walking back to the apartment, stopping at the archaeological excavation between the two to chat briefly with them.

It is a pre-construction investigation, and we had only missed a tour and lecture for the public by a couple of hours, but when I identified myself as working at Umeå University for Swedigarch the guy relaxed and filled me briefly in. It is a late Bronze Age or perhaps early Iron Age settlement, and he was able to point out the postholes from the longhouse that they had uncovered. I would have loved to have heard more, but I didn't want to take more of his time; they have a short deadline to get as much info as possible, and possibly find some artefacts, before the bulldozers clear away the evidence to make way for the new foundations.

After Hjälmar and Sofie got home from work we had time to be sociable with them before heading to sleep. On Tuesday morning we relaxed and waited for a call from the shop. When I hadn't heard anything by 13:00, I gave them a call, and was told that they had just finished lowering the car from the lift.

They'd done the trouble shooting, and couldn't find any direct problem with the electrical system other than the broken belt, which they had replaced, and done a test drive to confirm that the battery is once again charging, and they should be completely ready with it in about 20 minutes. That being how long the walk to the shop takes, we got ourselves ready to head over directly.

By 14:30 the car was re-loaded, my water bottles refilled, and we were ready to go. At that point Hjälmar was still a half an hour from home. Given that we still had a seven hour drive to do (if we didn't stop), we made the painful decision to head out directly, rather than waiting for him to get home for one last hug (which, realistically, would have taken at least another half an hour of chatting before we actually set out).

So we set off north, more than 30 hours later than we had originally planned. An hour later we stopped in Gävle to go to a grocery store and visit a toilette, and were lucky enough to see a stand selling fresh strawberries, so I bought a box, and ate them all quite happily.

The next stop was at a beautiful farm in Tröndal, to pick up a quarter of a tree trunk to bring north for Oscar to make archery bows out of. The farm belongs to the parents of Henrik, and I fell head over heels in love with it. I don't want to live further south than I do, but if they were to offer me that farm, I would move in a heartbeat (luckily for my job, they aren't going to so offer). I didn't take any photos of the farm (it didn't feel right to do that in front of the owners; I didn't want them to wonder if I was casing the joint or something, but I did compliment them on it. 

Then we stopped at the medieval stone church just up the road, and got photos of that, but we didn't try to find the Vendel Age burial mounds in the area that they had mentioned, as we really needed to head home.

About a half an hour later I was still hungry, so we stopped at Hudviksvall for dinner at the diner Glada Hudvik, which really surprised Keldor. First that I was willing to eat anything at 18:00, which is late enough that my appetite has often turned off already for the day, second that I was interested in restaurant food at all (I am such a fussy eater that it is really hard to find anything I will eat on a typical restaurant menu, if it isn't Asian or Indian food, which has more in common with the way I cook), third that I ordered the spaghetti with meat sauce (normally I eat only wild game or reindeer on the rare occasion that I eat meat at all), and fourth that I ate all of it (to be fair, I had ordered a child's sized serving--I couldn't have finished a bigger one), and fifth, that I even ate some of the french fries that came with his meal (I haven't eaten deep fried food in years, but just then, they looked good, so I did).

An hour later we paused again, in Sundsvall this time, at a gas station to use a toilette, and then went up the hill to the open air museum Norra Berget, where they once held a Nordmark Coronet tournament in the 1990's. Keldor made finals in that tournament, so he remembers the site fondly, and he wanted to show me the statue of the Skvader, a mythical creature that has the front end of a rabbit, and the back end of a bird. We couldn't find the big statue he remembers (which, according to google, was taken out some years back due to damage from ants), but we found a smaller, cute skvader statue to look at, and got to stretch our legs a bit, including climbing to the top of the lookout tower, as one does.

After that we drove pretty much straight through, with only a couple of toilette stopps. I actually drove a couple of hours, which was good, as that meant Keldor was rested and ready for the final stretch, getting us home safely at 01:30 on the morning of Wednesday 4 June, super tired, and ready to sleep. We unloaded only the ice chest and the bag of pillows that night.




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[personal profile] mistressofmuses
On Tuesday, in part for late Mother's day and in part for early birthday, we wanted to take my mom to the Denver Botanic Gardens. We planned ahead for a day when she would be back from her New Mexico trip, and that she and Taylor could both take the day off from work.

Unfortunately, this wound up being the *one* day that was forecast to be chilly and rainy all day. (We've had rain basically every day for a bit now, but most days it's only for a little while. Tuesday was going to be overcast and drizzly basically the whole time!)

Mom still wanted to go for it, and was glad for the cooler temperatures, rather than walking around on a hot day. (And I was glad for that, especially for Taylor; last year we went and they wound up overheated and miserable, and had to head back to the car early.) Even so, I was a little apprehensive, because I loathe being cold, and I was afraid the cold rain would make it hard to appreciate anything about the day.

I was pleasantly surprised! It wound up being lovely. It did get uncomfortably cold a couple of times, but for the most part it was nice enough with a jacket. The initial drizzle let up within maybe half an hour, and minus another quick rain shower, it was just cloudy. While I prefer sun, the clouds did mean I didn't get sunburn. It was also nice for pictures - easier to get fairly accurate colors without direct sunlight.

And I took way too many pictures, lol. Even when I was trying to narrow it down very significantly, I think I kept... 70? So this will be split into several posts! Sometimes I try to split the posts into "themes" or something, but this time I think I'll just go for chronological through the gardens.

Hope you like pictures of ~water droplets on flowers~ lol.


One of the most dramatic in terms of water droplets!


Kind of an odd one, but I loved the way the water had collected on the seedpod inside this poppy.


This rose is so perfectly classic it looks fake. :)


Fourteen more pictures:
We waited at the entrance for a bit while we figured out our plan for the day.


There are some wonderfully tall yucca. There was also a very loud sparrow! I'm guessing they have nests within the yucca, which is probably the safest imaginable place.


Water droplets on poppy leaves.

In some of the gardens at the front:


I do like the way the water droplets look like little glass beads.



Then the "perennial walk" and a plaza:


Delightfully goth irises.


A ladybug pupa on a rose.


So ruffly!


Very classic rose!


A hummingbird, perched up high.

On the other side of the plaza is The Ellipse, the gardens around the Chihuly sculpture and in front of one of their admin buildings.


The columbines were having an absolute banner year this year! I don't know that I've ever seen quite so many doing so well.


Nice irises.


I like the burnt orange color.


And some lovely lupines!


And some two-toned ones! Plus the admin building (a beautiful converted house) in the background.


(Today was mom's actual birthday! I did stop by to see her briefly after work. I gifted her Overgrowth and the last six months of short stories from Seanan McGuire's patreon. I'm planning on getting some garden plants for her once I have a chance!)
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[personal profile] mistressofmuses


This week, the Baba Yaga hut sticker from the "folkgore" pin collection, by Kim Kuzuri and Aspenhearted. My teal pen died, but the metallic green almost worked!

This was a fairly good week, but a busy one. Time spent with Taylor at the beginning of the week was good. Though as busy as the week felt, I didn't really get very much done. Maybe it was just that work felt like a lot. The concert later in the week was great, and I was very glad we went. Feeling some pressure over how much I have going on next week and how much I also feel like I need to catch up from this week... Not sure when I'll have a good chance to, but I'll try to do more.

Goals for the week:

  • I did get together with Taylor from Sunday - Tuesday
  • We went to our concert on Thursday
  • I did not finish the third snowflake exercise
  • I did finish reading Overgrowth
  • I did not cancel my dentist appointment
  • I did not go to the bank
  • I did do the June tracking grids
  • I did not put my laundry away
  • I did not finish my May book reviews
  • I did go get crickets for Berry Mad

Tracked habits:

  • Work - 5/7
  • Household Maintenance - 3/7
  • Physical Activity - 2/7
  • Wrote 500/1000+ Words - 0/7
  • Wrote on 2nd+ Draft - 0/7
  • Meta Work - 4/7
  • Personal Writing - 2/7
  • Other Creative Things - 0/7
  • Reading - 6/7 - mostly on Overgrowth, but also a good chunk of Installment Immortality with Taylor, a little bit of Duma Key with Alex, and a little bit of my ebook side read
  • Attention to Media - 6/7 - Sunday listened to some youtube and music in the background at work, listened to a Re: Dracula episode and then more music; Monday a very short Re: Dracula and more music; Tuesday, listened to music early and later abandoned place videos; Wednesday had storm chasing in the background and another Re: Dracula, plus music; Friday we finished the last two episodes of The Handmaid's Tale; Saturday a Re: Dracula episode and some paranormal videos in the background.
  • Video Games - 2/7 - Taylor and I played some more Final Fantasy XIV. We played through the second and third parts of the YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse raids (the Nier crossover), finished the Dark Knight and Red Mage job quests, then another extra quest for the general class quests, then the Sorrow of Werlyt trials. Finally next time we can do the next part of Shadowbringers!
  • Social Interaction - 4/7

Total words written: 0

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[personal profile] duskpeterson

The royal sactuary is arguably the most important chamber in the palace. It is here that, in former times, a sanctuarian priest held daily rituals designed to uplift the spirits of worshippers and – I am sorry to say – crush the spirits of slaves. The Emorians, rightly appalled by the Koretians' treatment of their slaves, built part of their new palace over the burning ground just outside the courtyard, which lay within easy sight of the sanctuary.

Despite its despicable misdeeds of the past, Koretia's priesthood has survived to the present day. The Jackal, who is also High Priest of Koretia, holds annual services to honor the slaves who served and died in Koretia; these services are often attended by the few slaves who survived their treatment. Some of these slaves remain dead in mind but come willingly to this service, drawn here by the Jackal, who is the god of death and who therefore watches over their spirits in the Land Beyond. To witness these dead-in-mind men and women gather around the Jackal is a deeply moving experience - a living monument to the Koretian belief that the gods can transform evil into good.

The royal sanctuary was desecrated at the time of the Emorian invasion of 961; the sanctuary was used to stable horses in the years that followed. After the Emorians withdrew from Koretia in 976, the chamber remained empty for many years. In 987, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the liberation of Koretia's slaves by the Emorians, the chamber was rededicated under the name of the Royal Sanctuary of the Living Dead. It is now a memorial to the suffering of Koretia's former slaves.

Conveniently for visitors, the royal sanctuary can be visited separately from the rest of the palace. The sanctuary now has its own entrance, unconnected to the royal residence or any other portion of the Koretian palace.


[Translator's note: The Royal Sanctuary plays a dramatic role in Death Mask.]

Monday: FastCAT

Jun. 3rd, 2025 10:30 pm
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[personal profile] mistressofmuses
On Monday, we took Bella to a FastCAT competition. It's rare for them to be on anything other than a weekend, so it was nice to get to go for a change! This is only the second time I've been able to go with her.

Alex let her go at the start of the run, and I caught her at the end. The first run felt really slow, but was actually a better time than I'd expected. The second one was a fairly decent time, though she'd started to slow down a little bit by the end.


It's Bella!


I was using the selfie camera to try and get a better pic of Bella in the car, but then we took an actual selfie. Sort of, haha. Me, Bella, and Alex. I am not actually choking her.


Five more pictures:

This event was at the Adams County fairgrounds, which had a nice little pond to look out on.


Pelican attaaaaack! (Half-flying across the pond to check out whether some people might feed it.)


Bella's times weren't amazing, but were respectable! Not her best times, but it wasn't *that* long ago that I didn't expect she'd ever get times like these, ha. (They accidentally wrote "2" on her first run tag, but the top one was run #1.)


Little Bella no-ears.


Too Many Pelicans.

After the FastCAT, we were reluctant to head straight back home. We ended up heading out east toward the plains a bit, just to kind of take a drive and see if there was anything interesting. We were hopeful maybe some dramatic thunderstorms might come up, but those didn't happen until later in the evening.

We did stop at a rest stop for a while, and I got to see a bunch of great-tailed grackles, which are quite different than the usual common grackles we get. They're much bigger!


Looking up through the branches of a tree, lots of grackle nests!

We also saw turkeys! And a hawk swoop down and come up carrying a snake, which was pretty impressive. (Sadly, no pictures.)

It was a nice drive, even though we didn't actually get any exciting weather.

(no subject)

Jun. 1st, 2025 11:26 pm
mistressofmuses: Image of nebulae in the colors of the bi pride flag: pink, purple, and blue (Default)
[personal profile] mistressofmuses
I have got a LOT to catch up on, I feel like. I'm not even entirely sure how I got so far behind, except having a night devoted to the concert and a couple nights where all I did was fall asleep, ha.

I will try to get comments and posts caught up on tomorrow! (Though we also have a FastCAT with Bella!)

Books read in May:

Jun. 1st, 2025 10:06 pm
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[personal profile] mistressofmuses
Back up to six books read for the month!

Awakening Delilah by Abigail Barnette
M/M/F Paranormal (shifter) Romance - ebook novella
4/5

Delilah is a deer shifter, the only shifter in her family. Raised in Boston and told always to keep her "condition" utterly secret, she eventually takes a huge chance: moving to Glenn Close, a community in Michigan's Upper Peninsula dedicated entirely to shifters. It will be the first chance she's ever had to be around her own kind after a lifetime of hiding.
There she encounters Miguel, a wolf shifter, and Darius, a bat shifter. The two rescue her from a close call in the woods, and then all three end up sleeping together. Delilah is sure that this was a one-night stand between her and the couple, but Miguel and Darius feel differently; they're sure that she's intended to be their mate, a third member of their pack.


My thoughts, minimal spoilers:
I enjoyed this one! I think I bought it because I wanted to support the author (Jenny Trout; Abigail Barnette is a pen name) when I was reading some of her entertaining recaps of bad books. This was one that she was excited to get the rights back to, and republished for herself, so I bought a copy, since I like poly romance... but that was years ago, and it took me forever to get around to reading it, haha.
I was struck how similar the setup is to the M/M/F story that I didn't particularly enjoy from a couple months ago. ("Breaking the Rules.") The initial setup could sound almost the same: woman moves to a new area, has a minor crisis, and is rescued by a pair of men more established in the area, who are already connected to each other, and the three sleep together; after, the woman expects it to be a one-time thing, while the men want it to be more. The details were very different, but the broad summary is basically identical! Despite that, the the execution was not especially similar at all, and I think this one was a lot better.
I liked the characters better in this one. This is maybe just personal preference, but while Delilah still has some hangups about her past, her arc is a lot more about wanting freedom rather than escaping shame. (Maybe it's more that the other protagonist's escape from unhappiness also came with a push toward seeking conformity, which is probably really the part I didn't connect with.) I also liked that Miguel and Darius are an established couple, as opposed to the "we couldn't be a couple; we aren't gay! We just fuck sometimes" guys from the other book.
This also did not at all do the "oh no, a threesome is so dirty and wrong and forbidden!" thing. Like, Delilah does think a little bit about how it's a new thing for her, and there's a bit of "what would my mother think!", but not at all the same tone. The setting itself is fairly poly-normative, though I don't recall if there were any other background poly relationships portrayed, though there were other queer background characters. Miguel and Darius talk about how forming "packs" of more than two people is common for shifters (even though the species they shift into are all different).
I found the sex scenes less offputting, too. Fewer descriptions that made me wince, lol.


Lord of Souls by Greg Keyes
Fantasy - physical novel
Book two of a duology set in the Elder Scrolls universe; read with Alex
3.5/5

After their failed attempt to kill the master of Umbriel, Sul and Atrebus are cast back through Oblivion, and must go on a dangerous quest to find a monstrous, possessed sword that may help them succeed the next time. Annaig continues her ruthless climb through the ranks of the chefs of Umbriel, eventually gaining access to the lords. Her desire to entirely destroy the island puts her at odds with her long-time friend, Mere-Glim, who has grown to know and care for the ordinary servants and denizens of the island. Back in Cyrodiil, Colin thinks he has uncovered who is behind the plot both to kill Atrebus and to bring Umbriel into the world.


My thoughts:
Parts of this book felt a little bit more... video-game-y than the last book. (Particularly Atrebus and Sul's part, on their quest for the sword. It felt like a game objective.) This is a tie-in for a video game franchise, so that isn't a complaint, exactly, but parts of it felt like they'd be a better game than a book.
The first book felt a little more cohesive... there weren't really too many new characters introduced in this one, but it felt like the perspectives hopped around more. Annaig, Mere-Glim, Atrebus and Sul, Colin, the orc soldier (Maz Gar? I think she was new to this book, actually)... it's a lot of hopping between them. All of those perspectives added to the whole, but some were definitely more interesting than others, I thought.
I don't think I found anything in this book surprising. It was pretty straightforward in terms of what was happening, who was behind it, how they were going to be stopped, etc. The first book wasn't full of shocking twists, but it had a few: the reveal about Atrebus' reputation and heroism, how Umbriel-the-island was creating its workers, who Umbriel-the-being was before he was Umbriel, etc. In this book it felt like we already knew basically everything, and were just watching it play out the conclusion. It was satisfying to see how all the different characters finally got to interact with each other, though.


Aftermarket Afterlife by Seanan McGuire
Urban fantasy - physical novel
Book 13 of Incryptid; read with Taylor
4/5

Mary Dunlavy, ghost babysitter for the Price family, has been freed from her job as a crossroads ghost, leaving her duty to her family as the only job she has. Unfortunately, The Covenant of Saint George has escalated their attacks on the family and on the cryptids of North America, conducting coordinated assaults on various communities. The only thing the family can do is try to take the fight to them, to make the fight too expensive in terms of loss of life for the Covenant to continue. Mary may be happy as a ghost, but she will do anything she can to keep her family among the living.


My thoughts:
A reread for me, reading it with Taylor. This one is good! I enjoy Mary as a protagonist, and getting her perspective on everything, which is by necessity very different than the living family members'. The fact she's been with them so long lets us get little insights and memories of some of the characters we haven't seen in the series proper, like Fran (Alice's mother, who died young, but would be great-grandmother to most of the protagonists.) This was a much darker entry into the series in a few ways, and a bit of a downer at times. There are deaths, and they are tragic, largely for the ways in which they ended those characters' arcs, the things that will be left unfinished for them, as well as the grief left behind for the other characters. Which is good in terms of narratively making those deaths matter! But it sucks!
It also very significantly escalated the conflict with the Covenant. I said it when I read it last year, but I still appreciated the grappling with revenge and the fact that it's not a morally pure act, even when it's the good guys doing it, and even when it may be the best option there is.


Silver Under Nightfall by Rin Chupeco
Fantasy (background f/m/m) - physical novel
3.5/5

Remy is a member of the Reapers, an elite organization dedicated to fighting vampires in the country of Aluria, and he is very good at what he does. Unfortunately, the rest of the organization doesn't seem to agree, allowing political infighting and dislike of his father to affect how they treat him. Vampires Lady Xiaodan Song of the Fourth Court and her fiance Lord Zidan Malekh of the Third Court come to Aluria seeking a peace treaty. Remy is extremely drawn to Xiaodan... and a bit more reluctantly to her fiance, as well. When a bizarre new infection takes hold in the country, mutating its victims into horrific monstrosities, the three agree to work together to find the cause... and to stop the incursions from a group of vampires who are extremely disinterested in anything resembling peace.


My too-extensive thoughts, minor spoilers:
I wanted to love this book, but I couldn't quite get past some of the issues that I had with it, though I did still like it.

Good points:
I did really like the characters and their relationship. I always love poly ships, and canon ones are a joy to me. The characters themselves were all interesting, and I enjoyed their chemistry with each other. They each have their sad backstories, which also interact in interesting ways, and make for good tension. I'd love to keep learning more about all three of them!
It felt a lot like the sort of story I wanted to be able to write when I was a teenager. It reminds me of the sorts of things I'd imagine, now put to page, and that was extremely fun in a lot of ways. Though along with that (and perhaps showing some of the same influences?), this definitely felt like a story and a world where "rule of cool" gets to take precedence sometimes. That isn't a terrible thing, and I was glad it was established pretty early, so that I could read the rest of it with that mindset. Like... Breaker, Remy's super special vampire-hunting weapon, sounds wildly impractical if not impossible to actually use... but it also probably looks cool as fucking hell. Stylistically, it felt like the sort of rad-but-unlikely weapon I'd expect an anime or video game protagonist to have, but I'll willingly buy in because it's cool, even if I don't think it's realistic.
The places where it sort of blends genres are really fun... the setting is a sort of ambiguous historical fantasy, set in a fictional world, but clearly inspired a bit by historical-England-but-with-more-diversity. I thought it really stood out where it bordered on horror, and especially the parts that are essentially mad science. Having parts of the fantasy setting brushing up against in-universe scientific study was interesting. (Emphasis on scientific understanding being something that Malekh was interested in was also a cool aspect of his character.)
I did have fun reading it!

Unfortunately... there were a lot of parts that bothered me. (Mostly clustered in the first half.) The fact that I have so many things to mention here really isn't because I think it was bad... It's more like it was so close to being something that I would have LOVED, I wanted to dig into what kept it from being that.
I really think that most of the issues could have been fixed with stronger editing, both on the copyediting side and the developmental side. While the developmental stuff is more subjective, some of the objective errors absolutely should have been caught by an editor, and it frustrates me how much it seems those standards have dropped in professional publishing.
The parts that bothered me:
A few wrong word uses, which I think an editor should have caught. "It appears we were lapse in our investigation." Not the word you wanted!
There were also multiple incorrect plurals, which again... editing! ("Her hair was so long they brushed the floor behind her throne." There were at least three I noticed within a span of two chapters, but the other one I remember was minorly NSFW (it amounted to "her breasts was...") and I forget the third.) I try not to be TOO pedantic about errors like this, but these are things that should have been fixed, and they happened often enough that it didn't feel like just a random errant typo. It was frequent enough to be distracting.
There were some continuity things that bothered me, too, which I also think a round of editing would have really helped. I'm afraid this sounds like nitpicking, but it's more that these individual things are just examples of a trend that I felt throughout; like the book didn't lean into its own worldbuilding quite enough, and ended up unintentionally undercutting its cool ideas or significant details by not following through on them. (Which I fear is a weakness in my own writing, which may have made my reaction to noticing it stronger, too.)
One was fairly minor: there's a pretty big deal made about Remy sleeping with a noblewoman in exchange for information. She is able to get someone to copy documents that are given to her husband, and then she passes this information along to Remy. But then later, when he's looking at these copied documents, he says he recognizes a specific man's handwriting... The tech of the world would not support this being a photocopy; the implication is that her source copies them by hand, so am I supposed to think that source is accurately mimicking handwriting?? It super threw me out of the exciting intrigue plot.
Another I found confusing... we start with Remy getting a mysterious bit of information from an informant, about a string of killings that he plans to investigate. When he does go look into it, he encounters the first of the Rot-infected creatures, which seems like a big deal. He doesn't know what it is, he's shocked and horrified when he can't kill it, had no suspicion that something like this was the culprit... then they come back to the city, and suddenly it seems like everyone is aware of the Rot. I'll buy it from the Reapers, who are known to withhold information from Remy, but if random civilians are aware of it, he should have been, too. (I was also confused about what the victims of the Rot were supposed to be, since initially it seemed like it was vampires, then no, vampires were actually immune, so it was humans, then yes it was vampires, but only new ones, then maybe it was both new vampires and human victims? I think part of this was the back cover copy inaccurately calling it "a new breed of vampire" and that sticking in my head, so I won't lay that entirely on the writing.)
One other continuity thing isn't an error per se, but threw me off as a reader. We get some exposition about how the First Court—the terrible, evil, and extremely elusive vampires that Remy is personally invested in hunting down—are marked with a tattoo. Then it's explained that it is almost impossible to tattoo vampires (presumably their healing prevents the marks from taking), without one of the Ancient vampires getting their blood involved somehow. That way the characters (and by extension the readers) know the markings are legitimate for identification, since they'd be near impossible to fake. This was a fun detail that I thought was cool! 
A chapter or two later, we hear from an informant that there's a group of vampires killing villagers! They have a distinctive tattoo that the informant doesn't even want to describe! Oh ho, I think, we have our extra evil vampire group sighted! ...but nope. It's an unrelated group of vampires that just also happen to have tattoos, with no explanation given as to why. (It also wasn't even an actual red herring, as none of the characters assumed it was the First Court. But having just established the details about the tattoos, I'm not sure why the characters wouldn't have been suspicious. If it was meant to be hinting at this second group also having connections to an Ancient vampire, I would have expected that to be of interest to one of the characters as well.) Especially coming so close on the heels of the details about the rarity and special-ness of the tattoos, it just felt like it was undermining its own worldbuilding, because apparently that isn't actually a particularly distinct or unique detail after all.
Last bit I want to whinge about: consequences seemed super variable based on what was convenient for the plot. The second time we meet Xiaodan, she uses her special sun-bringer power to rescue Remy, and it leaves her unconscious and incapacitated. After that, they talk about it tiring her, but until [redacted spoiler] it never wipes her out that way again, even when she uses it more often and against bigger/stronger/more targets.
Another example: later in the book, they find out that Xiaodan and Malekh are no longer welcome in Aluria, and it's sort of a cliffhanger to a chapter... But then they have no trouble at all getting into the country. The vampires are turned away when they reach the capital... but the next we hear about them, they're meeting with the queen in the city. This isn't an "error"; I can believe they snuck in somehow, but them being barred from the country seemed like it was going to impede them in some way... and then just was zero barrier at all. It would feel more meaningful if they actually had to overcome the challenges that are set up, rather than just... breezing past them with no evident effort or consequence.

Overall, I did enjoy the book, but I wish so badly that some of the worldbuilding had just been made a little more cohesive. A lot of the ideas are really cool, but then something else sort of contradicts or undercuts them, which was always disappointing.
All that said, I've still added the second book to my TBR, though I don't know when I'll get there!


Where the Drowned Girls Go by Seanan McGuire
Book 7 of Wayward Children
Fantasy - physical novella
5/5

Ever since returning from The Moors, Cora has been haunted by the Drowned Gods she encountered there. They whisper to her from the shadows and in her dreams. They want her back, and the world they offer may be underwater, but it is not the beautiful world of the Trenches, where she was a mermaid. Fearful that their claim on her means she'll never be able to find the door back to her correct world, Cora asks to be transferred to another school, the Whitethorn Institute. This school is dedicated not to helping the children of the doors to make sense of their experiences, but to helping them forget them entirely. They promise that their graduates all become perfectly normal, and ready to integrate into regular society.
The students there are ostensibly there by choice... but it becomes clear that that may not always be true, and that there is something sinister behind the promise to help the students to move on.


My (brief) thoughts:
I really liked this one. I do love me a good evil boarding school. The quote from the school when Cora shows up, "Here, we don't require you to be sure. Here, we're sure enough for everyone." is just skin-crawlingly awful in the best villainous way.
I had enjoyed seeing how Cora got to interact with the Drowned Gods, that whole "something adjacent to the right world, but still wrong" thing, and having that bleed over for her was interesting and I liked it, even though Cora absolutely does not enjoy it in the slightest!
I was glad to see Regan again, our protagonist from the last book.
Fun implied cameo of a cuckoo child (from Incryptid), with a kid mentioned to be certain that they'll escape as soon as they "get the math right."
Overall, it was just a fun story, and the kind of "escaping a controlling evil" adventure that I really enjoy.
While the existence of another school has been mentioned before, it was always fairly neutral in the previous mentions; an alternative option for the students who find their memories of their adventures through their doors distressing or traumatizing, and would prefer to move on to something resembling a normal life. Considering how traumatic some of the experiences in the other worlds can be, that seems like a reasonable thing for some people to want... so finding out that there is something sinister behind that option is something I imagine will become an ongoing arc in the story.


Overgrowth by Mira Grant
Sci-fi/Horror (background m/f) - physical novel
4/5

When Anastasia Miller was a child, she went into the woods and found an alien flower. She never came home, but something that looked like her did. The new Anastasia has never hidden what she is - she is the vanguard of an alien species that plans to arrive on earth, a fact she is compelled to share with everyone she meets.
Even she isn't completely sure that she's telling the truth, and very few of the people in her life truly believe her. Then the signal comes, announcing the approach of the alien armada. Suddenly, people do believe there's an invasion impending, and they do not react kindly to the aliens already hiding among the human race. Stasia herself is torn: are her loyalties with the species she's always actually been, or the world that raised her?


My thoughts, minor spoilers:
I really enjoyed this one! I like Mira Grant (pen name for Seanan McGuire's more thriller/horror work, as opposed to her urban fantasy) and it was nice to have another book from her.
The thing I think I found most impressive, personally, was that I felt like I was going through the same arc as Stasia was, in terms of loyalties, and that was a believable conflict to me. Not that I think that a species that routinely and repeatedly destroys every other species it comes across is a good thing... but I found it was at least presented in a way that made it sympathetic as well. I can't say for sure which "side" I'd come down on were this situation to present itself... but I think ultimately I'd almost certainly make the same choice that quite a few of the human characters do.
(The mild twist, which I won't spoil, about how humans and/or any other species the aliens come to could have avoided their fate was very good, imo.)
I appreciated the ways in which Stasia and Graham complemented each other... while it's not at all a 1:1 comparison, the fact that they bonded over believing each other about their own identities (Stacia as an alien, Graham as a man) was a thing I liked about them.
I also liked that part of Stasia's early thesis about why her species sent infiltrators like her to live among their target species is that they want them to learn to hate the species, and that it is the lesson that some of them end up learning. But later there is the realization that a lot of the aliens, like Stasia, did end up finding relationships and loves within humanity as well, and that the range of emotions matters.
This did not latch onto my hindbrain the way Feed and the rest of Newsflesh did, but I had a good time the whole way through.


I am currently in the middle of four books:
Maeve Fly, my current main read
Buchanan House, my ebook side read
Duma Key, reading with Alex
Installment Immortality, reading with Taylor

Thursday night: Beborn Beton at HQ

May. 31st, 2025 09:37 pm
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[personal profile] mistressofmuses
Thursday night we went to a concert! First one in quite a while.



Beborn Beton is a German synthpop band. Apparently the last time they were in the US was back in 2002, as support for Apoptygma Berzerk (Alex's five-ever favorite obsession.)

If you've ever heard of them, it's probably from their hit (within the goth scene) from 1997, "Another World."

-

I got off of work slightly early, having come in slightly early, which was good... but we still wound up running late. (Had to make a grocery trip that I assumed would be done before I was off of work, ha.)

It took a bit to find parking, though we wound up not too far away. Then of course it took a minute in the car to pre-game.


A very small ladybug landed on the car window as I was getting out.


Rainbow crosswalk.


I like the snake. And of course the queer stuff in the window.

We ran into PJ outside the venue and chatted with her a while. It sounds like she's doing well, which is good. She and Mark broke up last year, which was sort of a shock to everyone, I think, and then she also quit basically all social media (minus a wordpress blog that I never remember to check in on.) But sounds like she's happy in her new apartment, maybe has a new boyfriend, is doing well at work, etc.

Sadly we missed Faces Under the Mirror/Jake's set. ;_; We got inside just as he was finished and packing up. We did get to talk with him for a little while, though.

We were there in time for Voicecoil! (Mark) He played some things that are new to the live rotation, which was cool. Also the single off the album that will be coming out sometime this fall.



Got to chat with him for a bit after his set, as well. He's also doing well, it sounds like, minus some potentially-scary eye surgery stuff coming up.

Then Beborn Beton!


The struggle, even in a small venue, to get all the members of a band at least sort of in focus under stage lighting...

They did play quite a few favorites of mine. I'm a basic bitch who loves the singles, so I was very glad (if utterly unsurprised) that the single from a couple years ago, "Dancer in the Dark," got played (with a joke about whether we should go hang out at a nearby bowling alley, since the music video is, inexplicably, the band bowling.) A few others that I really like from that same album, like "I Watch My Life on TV" and "Last Chance."

Their intro to "Newborn King" was about how yes, it was 1997, and of course he was obsessed with Dana Scully... (the song being about aliens coming to earth.) I mean, same, bro.

And of course, "Another World" as the final encore. (With "yeah, I guess it would be a dick move not to play this one...") Afterwards, Alex said he had forgotten about that song entirely which was very funny to me. That's like... their one song that they're known for, lmao. I'm pretty sure that was one of the songs he sent me before we were dating!


Five more pictures + two youtube links:

Voicecoil! On keyboard is a new partner, Kat. I didn't get to meet her, but it seems to be going well.


One more of Voicecoil.


Beborn Beton, doing their introduction.




I do love catching everyone in a weird position, lol.


The "Dancer in the Dark" music video.


"Another World," definitely what they're still best known for.


At the end, I got one of the setlists!


Which I did get signed. <3

Mildly bummed that "Dr. Channard" (though a deeper cut) apparently replaced "Burning Gasoline," which is one of my faves, but it was fun to hear, too.

It was a very fun show, and I'm glad we had a chance to go out. We haven't been out since... last fall?

One more show coming up next week, too! We were really spoiled for a lot of excellent shows coming through between this and next week, but we had to be choosy, ha.
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