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cmcmck posting in

Dothill is on the moorland side of town and is an interesting combo of marshland, wetland and lakes.

This path takes you in once you walk through Donnerville Spinney to get there:

( More pics! )

Current Mood: photographical
Current Location: 'ereabouts

oursin

Happy birthday,

el_staplador and

mrissa!

staranise

I have an American friend who would strongly prefer to move their family to Canada. 2 adults, 4 children; both adults have degrees and professional credentials that would transfer across the border. They're currently looking for work, both abroad and in bluer states than theirs.

The question they asked me was:

Is immigrating to Canada something we can do on our own or do we need an immigration lawyer? I have been looking at requirements and it all seems straightforward enough, but I don’t want to be unpleasantly surprised

Any thoughts on the process would be welcome, like if/when a lawyer is needed, or if/when agencies that promise to help with the moving process are actually worth their fees.

Thanks! Comments are screened for people who'd rather stay private, and I'll pass the messages along.

fred_mouse

Today's random discovery, of someone saying that they had half-arsed looking up details of something:

extremely causal research

.. that's what we want!

torachan

1. Second day of soft open was a wild ride. People lined up before the store opened. We made double the sales of yesterday. All without any advertising about the soft open. The only advertising was about the grand open tomorrow.

2. Some of you may remember a couple years ago I was working on a project to transition to a new inventory system at work and really dialing back my area manager duties to focus on that. Then they put it on hold because they were redoing the whole thing from scratch. Now they are back at the point where the IT side needs feedback from store operations, and they need more time devoted to it than anyone can do while juggling other job duties, so I was told today that I will be fully working on that for the next year or so and only lightly helping out with area manager stuff (currently there is no one who can actually take my place). I will get a bigger raise than the small annual raise I just got, and I can work from home if there's nothing I need to go in to the office for. I will miss all that audiobook time from driving but will not miss all the actual driving.

3. Look at that perfect Molly curl!

fred_mouse

Artisanat is looking at a world map colour coded by what the emergency services phone number is. Some amount of conversation, and I leaned over to look at the map, to discover that Australia, Aotearoa, Brazil, and some of the north coast of Africa are the same colour. Which, what?

When I look at the legend, it is 'has a code only used in that country'. So, for those of you not in Aus, the emergency services code is 000. It used to be that for mobile phones it was 112 but I'm not sure if that is still the case (Youngest tells me that they couldn't actually do 000 on a previous phone because that would have brought up 'characters not otherwise accessible' and not zero).

summersgate

Snake Eyes.

I've been keeping busy with washing and packing up the clothes for goodwill that Hazel didn't want anymore. I've condensed 10 big black garbage bags of stuff into smaller sized white bags of the good stuff by being very ruthless. This picture is of a sash that was on a pink and black satin dress. The dress couldn't be saved but I cut this beaded part off before I threw it in the garbage.

I'm watching an Italian series called Everything Calls for Salvation (2024) on netflix - dubbed. It's pretty good. About a young guy who ends up in a psych ward. The characters are interesting.

sanguinity

Intro/FAQ
Days 1-15

My check-in: Wrote and published a drabble, thereby achieving baby's first B-I-N-G-O, hurrah!

Day 25:

china_shop,

sanguinity

Day 24:

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

callmesandyk,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

glinda,

goddess47,

luzula,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

yasaman

( more days )

When you check in, please use the most recent post and say what day(s) you’re checking in for. Remember you can drop in or out at any time, and let me know if I missed anyone!

yourlibrarian posting in

common_nature

Our last waterfall of the trip, Starvation Falls. Smaller than the others with a little creek running down near the parking lot.

( Read more... )

ao3_news_feed

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/32026

Organization for Transformative Works: Election News

The election season is in full swing! As part of the election season, we have a chat with our candidates coming up soon. You can also find links to the candidates' answers to your questions at the bottom of this post.

Chats

There will be one public chat with all three candidates that will last 90 minutes. Chats will take place in our public chatroom (Discord).
It is scheduled for:

Saturday, August 2, from 21:00 UTC to 22:30 UTC – Live chat with all candidates (What time is the Candidate Chat where I live?)

During this chat, chat attendees will have the opportunity to ask the candidates questions not already covered in their platforms, bios, and Q&A, as well as to ask individual questions of specific candidates. New questions will only be accepted for the first hour of the scheduled chat time to make sure candidates have time to finish them all.

We hope that you can join us for this chat!

Please note that though the link to the public chatroom is already active, chatting capabilities will not be enabled until approximately half an hour before the chat begins.

Read on to learn more about using Discord.

On the login page, you'll need to provide a screen name.
Once you enter the server, you'll find a list of users on the right and a list of chat rooms on the left. Settings are available via the gear icon on the lower left, near your screen name; there you can choose, among other options, whether you prefer a dark or light chat room appearance.
There are three rooms available to chat attendees who are not candidates or Elections Committee volunteers: general, candidate_chats, and open_chat.
- General is where you'll find a list of rules for the chats. Please read through these carefully before entering the other two rooms.
- Candidate_chats is where the candidates will answer questions and debate amongst themselves. Only the candidates and moderator will be able to chat in this room.
- Open_chat is where all attendees can participate and talk to each other. We ask that you try to stay on topics related to the election. A moderator will be in the room, so if you have a question for the candidates, you can signal the moderator with o/, the candidate's name, and the question. Use o// if it's a follow-up question to the current discussion.

Q&A

When we posted the Board candidates’ bios and platforms, we asked the public to submit additional questions for them. Once again, our sincere thanks to everyone who did so! We have already posted candidate answers to Q&A questions.

To navigate answers by individual candidate, please use the links below:

C. Ryan S.

Elizabeth W.

Harlan L.B.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/32026

susandennis

People unwilling to learn how to use computers should not be allowed to touch them. Or should have live in 24/7 IT Support.

Jackie, new girl, came out to the elbow to find me puzzling. "Susan, can you help me?" "I'll try, what do you need help with, Jackie?" "That IT guy installed Gmail on my computer and now all my Xfinity icons are missing."

It did not get any better. Once there, she waived her hand in front of the screen and asked Where are all my icons? She had clicked on Chrome. She had no bookmarks. I suggested she contact the guy who worked on her computer. "But he won't come today, it's Friday." She's actually probably right there. We logged into her Xfinity mail account and the situation did not get better.

What are the icons you are looking for? It would help if I had specifics of what they were. "All the things I go to every day."

Reminded me of the old gag - What's the Soup du Jour? Answer: Soup of the Day.

Although she clicks on these icons every day, she had no idea where or what she was clicking on - could not give me a clue. "It's all my important stuff." So, Jackie, easy to say in hind sight, but you might want to make a note of the specifics - if it's newspaper, what newspaper exactly. If it's a group, what group exactly. Then she started with the snark. "Those people (meaning the IT guy) aren't very responsive, are they? I put in a work order a week ago and he just came today."

Actually, not really his job to install stuff for her at all, that was very nice of him to do.

"So you won't help me." Yep, that's correct. "Jackie, I'm sorry, but I don't know your computer or how you have it set up to use. You need to go to whoever set it up for you originally or back to the guy who made changes."

AND get the fuck out of my face. I did notice, when I went into her apartment, that she had a jigsaw puzzle in progress in her den. I said a little prayer of thank you that she does not work our puzzles in the elbow.

sanguinity

It took me yonks, mostly because I got stuck on my fifth fill (did it want to be a drabble or a full-length fic? I have scrapped SO MANY WORDS trying to figure that out), but behold! I have achieved a Bad Sex BINGO!

( Bad Sex Bingo card )

Behold the fills! Three drabbles, one double-drabble, and a 221B:

Only One Of Us Is Taking This Seriously: Ridin' Bareback, Sesame Street, Bert/Ernie
Accidental Somnophilia: The Sweet Snore of Success, ACD Canon, Holmes/Watson
Embarrassing ER Trip: Perk of the Job, Doctor Odyssey, Max/Avery/Tristan + Rosie
Furniture Break: Bang! (Goes the Bed), Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Holga/OFC
Wish You'd Get Off the Phone: Baggywrinkle, Bush/Hornblower

I would also like to direct your attention to a delightful podvid inspired by the Bert/Ernie drabble: Ernie Bangs Bert's Big Bass Drum, by

ks_reads.

Happily, I completed Bad Sex Bingo just in time for me to receive my bingo card for Keep Fandom Weird:

( Keep Fandom Weird bingo card )

Some of those seem substantially less weird than others ("Epistolary" has far too venerable a literary history to qualify as "weird", imo), but there are nevertheless some fun possibilities there.

*...tents fingers evilly as I contemplate subjecting my characters to some terrible indignities...*

maju

I'm making a loaf of sourdough cinnamon raisin bread today, and you'd better believe I'm keeping a very close eye on it so that it doesn't rise too much, considering that the temperature outside is around 95°F/35°C. Yes, the a/c is set to 78°F (so I'm comfortable in here) but sourdough bread is extremely sensitive to both heat and humidity and rises much more quickly in hot weather.

I had a good night's sleep last night but even though I felt refreshed when I woke up, I had decided last night that I would have a lazy morning - i.e. no early morning exercise (or later exercise either) so I didn't get up when the alarm went off, instead I lay around in bed reading for almost two hours. Basically the whole day has been lazy apart from making the bread. It's forecast to be very hot for the next week or so, and I'm really not looking forward to it. I'm kind of tempted to skip the exercise for the whole week, but I know I'd end up feeling bad if I did that so I guess I'll be forcing myself out in the early mornings as usual.

My alarm didn't go off before its set time this morning, but I had ordered another one yesterday which arrived today so I won't be using the old one any more. Hoping the new one doesn't develop the same fault. (It's a different brand, and cheaper too.)

pegkerr

Every week, as I go through my daily routines, I have a continual thought running in the back of my mind: what will this week's collage be about? What is at the top of my mind? What am I mulling about? How can I put it into visual terms and make it interesting?

This is the sixth year I've been doing these collages every week, and so perhaps it is not a surprise that certain thoughts and themes come up repeatedly. This week, I've been preoccupied with my ongoing cough, which seems to be the result of a terrible summer cold that has jump-started my asthma again. Well, I'm sick of talking about my problems with coughing, and I hate the thought of being an aging lady who has nothing better to do than complain about my health. And I've made collages about this subject before.

So I thought I would do a collage about my bedroom, as I'm quite pleased with the artwork I've put up. But again, I have done several collages on the subject already. See this, this, this, this, and this.

Realizing this, I felt stuck. Wouldn't I just be boring people? And that, I noticed, roused a strong reluctance in me to get started on doing something this week.

That thought triggered the memory of another conversation I had this week. I was moaning to Pat Wrede about my struggles with the book I'm attempting to write, the sequel to Emerald House Rising. "The things I struggle with the most in writing are twofold: I have a difficult time coming up with a plot. I just have such a hard time figuring out what happens next.

And I get stuck because of the paralyzing fear that I am boring people, because I have nothing interesting to say."

As I struggled with the decision over what my collage should be about this week, I recognized (again) that this is a significant neurosis of mine. I was so dreadfully wounded years ago when my best friend of twenty-five years cut me entirely from her life. In her last conversation with me, she made it clear that she had become weary of listening to what I had to say about my life.

Even now, sixteen years out, I still haven't entirely gotten over it.

Here is the artwork I have purchased that I love so much: a tree (you know my affinity for trees) that is a static silhouette on the wall that somehow gives an impression of movement:

tree on bedroom wall

I stared at that tree and I thought about the fear of boring people, and of things that come up over and over again--and then I saw the connection. This tree is an embodiment of autumn: the leaves are blowing away in the wind. Soon, all the leaves will be gone. And the winter will come and the tree will become quiescent, and then the leaves will bud out again.

As I contemplated that, my fears seemed absurd. Who would be so nonsensical as to say that because spring comes around every year, it is meaningless? Is that not what nature does? What life does? Is that not the nature of reality itself?

Suddenly, a verse from Ecclesiastes 1:9 came into my mind: "That which hath been is that which shall be; and that which hath been done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

I am entering the last third of my life--looking at retirement and moving toward the ending where I will have to sum it all up. What has my life meant? Does it matter that things come up over and over again? I have always taken such comfort from ritual (St. Lucia Day, washing my face with dew every May Day, eating strawberries every July 6, holiday gatherings with my family), and what is ritual, after all, but things that repeat?

This, as I said, is an inner neurosis. But because I am aware of it, I challenge it in my mind when it starts to oppress me, and I will not let it overcome me.

Yes, things come up again and again. But that does not mean that my life is meaningless, or that my thoughts are not of interest to others. There is comfort and wisdom that may be gained from seeing things with new eyes, even as they recur. And I need not be self-conscious about that.

Here is this week's collage:

Image description: An artistic rendering of a tree made out of wood, blown by the wind. Birds and windblown leaves give an impression of movement. The tree is silhouetted against the sun in a sunset-colored sky.

Under the Sun

29 Sun

Click on the links to see the 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 52 Card Project galleries.

Current Mood: contemplative

cosmolinguist

Speaking of Ian McKellan's Twelfth Night, radiantfracture has a post up for an asynchronous watch party. I have a ticket, we're all watching, I'll probably be in the comments there.

susandennis

The very big news around here is that we are getting not one, but two Asian grocery stores here in Issaquah and one of them is my very favorite from my old neighborhood - Uwajimaya!!! And it will be very nearly the closest grocery store to me! HMart is also moving here, not far but not as close. Mucho excitement. I don't know when either is opening. Probably not until next year but hallefuckinglooyah!!!

I also learned yesterday from Bonny, that I am off the default Hazel and John taxi list. They apparently went to her earlier in the week and asked for a ride to the doctor and she told them yes and then decided it wasn't convenient so she went and told them no but also suggested they use Lyft which they have done quite successfully in the past. They had totally forgotten about that. They do it through the front desk receptionist and it works fine for them. So WHEW!! John called me yesterday and he said the doctors told him he has amyloidosis. Google tells me this is rare and treatment is chemotherapy, organ transplant or targeted medication therapy. No cure. And it sounds pretty fucking fatal for an 89 year old. But John has not been told any of this yet. At least I'm not longer responsible for them.

Mid morning yesterday I got several email and texts that the shades install guy's wife had a baby Wednesday night so no shades install. This actually was good news as I was just not up for it yesterday. No word from them since so today won't be it either. Which is fine.

Today is new menu day. We still have today and tomorrow for the scrumptious tenderloin steak and caramelized onions. No nasty spinach swap last night - whew!!

I do think it's pretty weird that when I find a meal I love, I am perfectly fine with having it every night for a week. After the week, I'm ready to move on. I'm ok with variety but I am also happy to have a great meal on repeat.

My Netflix month ends today. I'm all caught up. If/when another something comes up that I want to see, I'll start it up again. I have Apple + and PBS Masterpiece running now at reduced rates (thank you, Amazon) and a fair amount to watch on both. And, of course, the Mariners. I've gotten pretty good at keeping my high priced feeds managed so that if I'm not watching, I'm not paying.

But, my big TV find lately has been the Roku channel. They now have all the British Sewing Bee episodes!! Except, of course, the latest season that just started last week. But, I'm guessing it will be added eventually. Also they have all episodes of that bake off after show. It's dumb but interesting for a few episodes anyway.

Nothing happening today which is lovely. I think I'll get dressed and go downstairs to pick up the menus and my Amazon package which was just delivered to the lockers. After that, who knows??

oursin

I don't think this is just me being An Old and thus cranky - or maybe my crankiness just dates back a long way - because this was a thing that used to annoy me back in the day when listservs were a thing and I was on quite a number relating to various aspects of history.

So anyway, somebody on bluesky asked a question about how to find certain kinds of records for C19th, and was aware that this was a question usefully addressed to archivists &/or historians -

- but didn't actually state WHERE they wanted records for. Which is really of considerable relevance to whether one can respond e.g. 'Have you checked The National Archives Discovery'? (or, 'I expect you have already checked TNA Discovery, but here are some further possibilities....')

I made a bit of a cavil about this in a quote, indicating that this was a peeve of mine (dear sweet pet peeve, I stroke you) and they got a bit miffy, and said, read down thread for details.

Thing was, they had plenty of wordage left over to specify parameters in original post.

Why should I have to do that work to find out if this is a query I can usefully address out of Mi KnowinZ?

Some people on listservs used to be particularly bad, in that sometimes they didn't specify general period, either: what were we, telepaths???

This is the obverse of this thing I may have whinged about, which is that thing where I have asked for, say recommendations of readings on a very specific topic, or maybe very recent work on [topic], or similar, and somebody immediately shoots back something amazingly broad-brush and general that anyone in the field will have read and of very tangential pertinence to actual query.

(Honestly, and they expect people to be able to provide prompts that will come up with astonishingly helpful and correct answers from AI, mutter, fume, antimaccassar set to stun.)

nanila

Welcome to a post in which I give unnecessarily elliptical answers to perfectly straightforward questions.

one place you volunteer (or would like to)? Why?

I don’t volunteer consistently at a single venue / charity, but I do public outreach talks for societies and schools. I do it because people seem to like hearing about space, and I’m enthusiastic about it.
one book you'd like to see made into a movie? Why?

I’d still like to see “Neuromancer” visualised. I understand it’s being made into a TV series
one creature (living, extinct, or mythical) you'd like for a pet? Why?

I’m quite happy with my cats, thank you. We are exquisitely compatible.
one place on Earth you'd like to visit? Why?

I’ve travelled a lot in my life. A LOT. I haven’t been to the largest variety of places - mostly North America and Europe with a couple of visits to Kenya - and to be honest, I am not as enamoured with it as I used to be. There are two places I’d still like to see: my father’s birthplace, and the Great Barrier Reef. But if I don’t get the opportunity, I won’t feel like I haven’t seen enough of the world.
one talent or skill you'd like to develop? Why?

I’m pretty good at not spending much time reflecting on the actions of people who have hurt me or made it obvious that they dislike me. What I’d really love to do is have the ability to make that no time at all. Life’s too short.

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Ricky Buchanan

Not Done Living!

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A walk to Dothill

(no subject)

Interesting Links for 26-07-2025

Canadian immigration question

typo du jour

Daily Happiness

Today I learned..

friday

Write Every Day: Day 25

Starvation Falls

2025 Candidate Q&A and Chat Round Up

IT support rant

Bad Sex BINGO + Keep Fandom Weird

(no subject)

2025 52 Card Project: Week 29: Under the Sun

Trans what you will

Friday

Grumpy academyk hedjog

The Friday Five on a Friday (gasp!)

Interesting Links for 25-07-2025

Profile