cimorene: The words "EGG AND SPOON RACE" in bright turquoise hand-drawn letters (egg and spoon race)
[personal profile] cimorene
I'm not a stranger to cramps in the arch of my feet! That's part of the reason that I stopped wearing high heels. I wore some knee-high leather boots that came to just below the knee as a young woman, shortly after the year 2000, usually in the fall and winter (purchased in the US, before moving to Finland was on my radar, so they were kind of for warmth but in a climate that wasn't cold enough to necessitate purchasing actual winter boots). They only had like a 2-3" heel, a chunky one, as was fashionable at the turn of the millennium, so they weren't a challenge to balance or particularly uncomfortable for ordinary walking around. But I soon noticed the pattern of cramps in the arch of my foot after days when I wore them, and that made me want to stop.

But I haven't had much of that problem since then. Read more... ) However, just in the last few years I've occasionally noticed a twinge or mini-cramp that goes away after a few seconds specifically in the arch of my left foot. It's never lasted beyond a moment or two until like... last week once when I was walking up the stairs and then yesterday in the grocery store, when it suddenly twinged so hard into a cramp that I spent a minute and a half limping and whispering "Ow, ow, ow!" until it subsided.

It doesn't have to be caused by age, of course, but I don't know what else could have caused it, unless it is protesting the fact that I have not been walking enough in the last year. I used to have a tennis-sized hard rubber ball to roll on the arch of my feet, when I was working on my feet a lot in retail. But I can't remember where I put it.
musesfool: key lime pie (pie = love)
[personal profile] musesfool
Stayed up too late last night and got a late start this morning, so I am already behind on my plan. But I will try to go to bed earlier tonight and get up earlier tomorrow to get back on track. Unfortunately, there is another planned water shut-off for plumbing repairs from 9 am - 12 pm, so I'll have to make sure to make the coffee required for both the chocolate and the mocha cupcakes ahead of time (it has to be room temp anyway), as well as making sure I have an extra bowl for handwashing.

I did get all the fig cookies made and packed into the cute cookie tins I bought so I'm not always giving away my ziploc containers (they are useful and they changed the shape so I can't get any more of the ones I really like), and the pork buns as well (pics) but I didn't eat dinner until after 7 pm and now the dishwasher is running, so I'm done for the night.

oh, I wanted to note that this year, I bought some fancy holiday/red-and-green sprinkles from KAB for the cookies - normally I just use multicolor nonpareils, but these look kind of festive, I thought. I also got red/green sprinkles for the funfetti cupcakes so I will be very on-theme.

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6-day plan, day 3 )

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Various Links 12/14 - 12/21

Dec. 21st, 2025 04:53 pm
senmut: 3 blue seahorse shapes of varying sizes on a dark background (General: Seahorse Triad)
[personal profile] senmut
Yesterday was eaten alive by yuletide pinch hits, so day late with these.

~ Samson and Delilah gifs - young Angela Lansbury the Hottie

~ Smokin' MoTown - Temptations, Miracles, Stevie, Smokey, Vandellas, and Supremes in one photo

~ Art of Dorian Pavus and the Iron Bull in a bath

~ Trans Art for Maevaris Tilani

~ Beowulf Essay titles? - anecdote from a professor

~ Xuanji Tu - A mathematical art of poetry
musesfool: a lit red candle (light in the darkness)
[personal profile] musesfool
So I may have been a little...over ambitious in purchasing eggs and butter and expecting it all to fit into my tiny apartment-size fridge. I did get all of it in there, but there was literally no room to let orange rolls rise overnight so I knocked that off the list. Maybe I will do them for New Year's morning instead.

I also had an unfortunate start to the fig cookies. I made the filling yesterday and I might have put too much cocoa in as I thought it was the bottom of the container so I just dumped it in and well, there was more than I expected in there. *hands* It's fine. Then when I made the dough earlier, it smelled weird. I think maybe the Crisco had gone off? Idk, but I threw out what I'd made and did it again with the newly opened can of Crisco and it smelled correct, so I didn't really get to make cookies this afternoon as planned, but I might make some after dinner, which is how we did it when I was a kid - every night for the 2 weeks before Christmas we were in the kitchen making fig cookies.

I did marinate the pork country ribs last night and they are now in the oven roasting, so that at least is on track.

I also watched Wake Up Dead Man yesterday, and I liked but didn't love it? I'm not sure why? spoilers )

This is a long essay about the movie (spoilers, obvs) that goes much deeper into it: Entirely Too Many Thoughts About Wake Up Dead Man by Leah Schnelbach.

Oh, the timer just went off so I have to take the ribs out of the oven, so I guess I'll just hit post!

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6-day plan, day 2 )

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Deck the roof with loud repairmen

Dec. 19th, 2025 06:50 pm
azurelunatic: Log book entry from Adm. Hopper's command: "Relay #70 Panel F (moth) in relay. First actual case of bug being found" (bug)
[personal profile] azurelunatic
My hyperfocus does still work to the extent that when I was reading earlier today, I tuned out the various scraping and occasional hammering noises from the roof. I could not, however, sleep through the hammering.

Which is perhaps why Belovedest is on the shopping trip without me today. I was too cold and tired to get ready, let alone go out into the cold and dark.

Staycation!

Dec. 19th, 2025 06:40 pm
cofax7: Smash Williams smiling (FNL - Smash Glee)
[personal profile] cofax7
I probably didn't need to, but I have taken all of next week and the following Monday off. My workload is fucking insane but fuckit, I can only do what I can do, as multiple people told me this week.

I have just borrowed Cahokia Jazz and a YA novel by EK Johnston from the library, so I'm set for that. And I'm meeting my oldest friend in the world in LA next month, so she can go to the desert for the first time, so we're sending each other links and stuff, and that's fun.

Tonight I will set up the batter for those insane Dark and Stormy cookies -- though I do them as bars, it's so much easier and the texture is more controllable -- and tomorrow I will make a crustless quiche for my BIL's birthday. Sunday is a cookie exchange, Monday is wrapping. It's gonna be a nice week, or it would be if not for all the rain.

Why did the rain wait until I was on vacation?

Happy holidays to y'all!

Fandom Fifty: #43

Dec. 19th, 2025 08:21 pm
senmut: A purplish hued seahorse in water (General: Purple Seahorse)
[personal profile] senmut
2017, will I even have THREE? Maybe. My son might have gotten me to watch movies.

huh, five total, only one of which was fully his fault.

~Wonder Woman - This is where I admit I was more in it for Nielson and Wright than anything else. Decent movie.

~Thor: Ragnarok - Son's fault, Cate might have drawn me in. Fun enough, and Tessa wowed me.

~Coco - Possibly second favorite film of the year. I really appreciated getting to see this concept come to life. Dear movie makers, give me MORE cultural fests!

~The Shape of Water - All my choice, so glad I did, yes I read the book, I think the movie lands better.

~Star Wars: The Last Jedi - And this is when my, at the time, 40 year streak of watching SW in the theater ended completely. I'd seen things from people I trusted that this was not a movie I wished to spend that much money on. Did eventually get the DVD and watch it, and ... well. I still haven't bought the next one in the trilogy or watched more than a few excerpts.

Pluribus 1.08

Dec. 19th, 2025 06:21 pm
selenak: (Breaking Bad by Wicked Signs)
[personal profile] selenak
In which someone becomes Sheherazade, but is it Zosia or is it Carol?

Spoilers go on the charm offensive )
cimorene: closeup of four silver fountain pen nibs on white with "cimorene" written above in midcentury vertical roundhand cursive (bounce script)
[personal profile] cimorene
I've been thinking about Wake Up Dead Man some more even though I haven't gone and looked up the list of books, because I am not ready to purchase new ebooks yet, and that's what I'll have to do for the ones there I haven't read before.

Meanwhile though, I have been rereading some Agatha Christie. I am not exactly a giant Christie fan, but I have read most of Agatha Christie's works (and usually multiple times) because I like Golden Age mystery as a genre and my MIL was a superfan, so I have had convenient access to paperbacks of Christie's works.

And I realized with a start yesterday that while the setting and setup in Wake Up Dead Man is in some respects is EXTREMELY typical of Golden Age detective fiction, in another it's very very unusual - Some spoilers )
musesfool: "We'll sleep later! Time for cake!" (time for cake!)
[personal profile] musesfool
I am officially on vacation - I don't have to go back to work until January 5th! Now the bakepocalypse can begin! I've made more work for myself, but I think it will all work out - I've been planning it in my head, and this is how it goes (please take "run dishwasher" as a given at least once and probably twice each day):

6-day plan )

I think adding in the roast pork and the pork buns and the orange cranberry rolls might be kind of nuts? But also having that food on hand will let me eat breakfast/dinner without having to do any real cooking or ordering in. (I will also have some ham and cheese to make sandwiches if it comes to that, and some granola bars for snacks/breakfast if the orange cranberry rolls don't happen.) And I think I do have time before the cupcake baking begins in earnest.

What I'm considering now is whether I should make the frostings and immediately put them in piping bags (with specific tips in) for storing in the fridge instead of trying to do the transfers all at once on Christmas Eve morning the way I usually do. Filling the bags and then keeping them in tupperware might be easier? But I've also found that sometimes my "time-saving" plans end up making things worse, so idk.

Anyway, that's my plan for the next 6 or so days! It's a good thing I enjoy cooking. *g*

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Aggressive trees and greenery

Dec. 18th, 2025 03:08 pm
cimorene: Olive green willow leaves on a parchment background (foliage)
[personal profile] cimorene
The last time [personal profile] waxjism rearranged plants she put the three biggest ones - trees, they are trees - all at the west livingroom window.



Left to right (above) are Benjamin the ficus benjamina or weeping fig - inherited from Wax's granny and at least 25 years old; Jules Feiffer the pachira aquatica or money tree - bought as a baby from a nursery because I really wanted it (love the braided trunk) between 2014-2016, so it's pretty old, but it's only ever grown up and it never gets any fatter and barely has any roots; and Nelly the Hibiscus × rosa-sinensis, known colloquially as Chinese hibiscus, China rose, Hawaiian hibiscus, rose mallow and shoeblack plant - this was MIL's pride and joy and I think Wax said it's older than her, so probably at least 50 now. Jules especially is apparently crazy about the light there, even though the grow light died and Wax replaced it temporarily with a normal lightbulb. The window is a jungle.

The north window shelf is covered with three Thanksgiving cacti, two dormant orchids, a philodendron Henderson's Pride, and a polka dotted begonia. This shelf has been more cluttered at times, but it still gives a very strongly planty impression.

On actually enjoying games

Dec. 18th, 2025 10:02 am
flamebyrd: (Default)
[personal profile] flamebyrd

I quit two phone games recently and want to work through some feelings about it.

Farm RPG

I started playing Farm RPG a while back because I was looking for something that was like Stardew Valley but more idle focused.

On the surface this is the case, but it’s not so much an idle game as it is a clicker. Some resources accumulate over time once you've bought the upgrade, but for the most part you are clicking to obtain them. Fishing is a twitchy “click on the moving dot” affair. Farming involves waiting (minutes, hours, days) or expending an item, but is not very profitable.

There are villagers to befriend (not marry) and quests to complete, but there’s a cynical snideness to the writing that didn’t really work for me. Some quests require items you get from sending your animals to the slaughterhouse, which I didn't want to do and used workarounds that just take longer (weeks/months instead of days.)

All of this I could deal with but I’ve reached a point where I cannot progress in the story without putting the raptors I have raised in a fight club and I just don’t want to. They’re good raptors! The only alternative I could see would involve many, many more months of grinding.

And then one day I missed finishing my daily quests, took a step back and asked, am I actually enjoying this game? Am I looking forward to doing the daily tasks or is it tedious?

So I’ve stopped.

nb. there is a social aspect to the game which I turned off shortly after starting. Maybe I would have enjoyed it more if I engaged with the community.

Pokémon TCG Pocket

If you want the feeling of opening packets of collectible cards with cute art but don’t want the clutter or to spend actual money, this game is almost perfect! You can open 2 packs a day for free! You can make decks and battle (against the computer or online)!

You can spend real life currency on a monthly subscription to open an extra pack a day, or à la carte to reduce the time until you can open new packs. But I wasn’t even tempted.

I quit because quitting Farm RPG made me question if I actually enjoyed this game too, and I thought how long the app takes to load every time, how unlikely it is that I’ll ever complete my collections, how I always battled in auto mode because it was slow and not interesting to me… so I’ve quit.

--

What games have you recently quit? What are you Actually Enjoying right now?

I have been trying to read more but ironically most of the time this is more engaging than playing a game and leads to more time on my phone.

wychwood: Sheppard is in denial (SGA - Shep in denial)
[personal profile] wychwood
Today I mostly Power Automated. Or attempted to. I had to call in the expert several times, and at least one of them he was like "yeah I don't know why it's not working either", which was at least validating. My first flow is now sending emails, although I still need to tweak it a bit.

Also: honestly what sort of bullshit is it that you can't get Microsoft Forms to send an email to the person who filled out the form with their details in! That's been, like, basic form functionality for at least fifteen years, and it's all very well saying "oh well you can do it with Power Automate", but that is much more complicated than ticking a "send submissions to user" box and requires access to a whole separate system plus someone to set up all the permissions for you to use whatever Outlook mailbox, etc etc etc...

Anyway. I have three? four? forms that my boss wants me to have up and running before Christmas. Now I've got all the accesses and permissions configured that should hopefully be possible, which is good because I did promise...

On the home front, I have now ordered all the remaining Christmas presents I can do before Christmas Day itself (why do so few places allow you to buy gift-cards to ship on a particular date!), wrapped all the physical things I already have, sorted out the last grocery delivery before Christmas so I won't accidentally starve, and checked in with my siblings to discover that other people have been working on the stocking presents for my parents, and what isn't bought is at least planned.

I built a beautiful tracking spreadsheet that shows what each parent is getting, calculates how much each of us has spent, and checks that against the notional budget for hopefully easier working out who owes what to whom once we're done. And so far no one has got super mad at me for being "bossy" or declared refusal to participate, which is unfortunately what tends to happens. I'm trying to back off now while we're still OK!

Now off to choir!
musesfool: gold star christmas ornament (follow that star)
[personal profile] musesfool
So I packed up my jars of candied pecans and my bag of "prizes" and schlepped into the office today for our big huge holiday party - it was 5 departments' worth of people, so like 90 of us, so instead of everyone sitting in a room and eating together, we mostly stayed in our little departmental groups, but the beer-free beer pong was INCREDIBLY popular, Name That Tune also had a good turnout, and the food was excellent. Assistant J did a bang-up job organizing various game stations for people to play - there was also Jenga and Uno available, and a couple of gaming consoles he brought in so people could play Fortnite. *hands* I commended him and told him everybody loved it. And I did not have to lift a finger, except to bring the bag of prizes, aka, my stash of small gifts I've accumulated across the year but haven't given anyone yet, so there was a couple of packs of playing cards still in their wrapper, a couple of candles, 2 cute notebooks, some mini puzzles, and some holiday soaps. I also had a travel mug and a bigger candle to use as extra gifts for the secret gift exchange in case someone didn't show up, and it turned out my boss had given her secret exchange gift to someone else, so she ended up using the mug, and I gave the candle to a co-worker who tried to sign up for the exchange a week after I'd sent the assignments out. I felt bad about telling her no, but there was no way to make it work, except for me giving her the extra gift in the moment - she seemed really touched by it. And of course, several people asked me why I hadn't gotten a gift and I was like, I know who everyone is giving to, so it doesn't feel right to participate, but they didn't seem to buy that logic. *hands* I stand by it though.

I did get some lovely gifts though - a Calamityware mug from my boss, a couple of candles (one apple-and-cinnamon scented and one Frasier fir scented), a bottle of mango jalapeno hot sauce, and some Korean snacks from the co-worker who recently went to Seoul on vacation. And I got to leave at 3:30, so I was home by 4:45, which is truly a blessing. I also got to see and hug a lot of people I haven't seen in months, so that was also great. I truly do like most of the people that I work with, and I do miss seeing them, but ugh, it is so not worth going into the office more frequently to do so, imo, because so much less work gets done (even on days when there isn't a party). I probably won't go back until March if I can help it. *g*

Oh, and most importantly, my candied pecans were a hit! One of my attorneys basically ate the whole jar while he sat at his desk and the others all seemed genuinely excited about getting into them. So that worked out well.

Two more days and then I am on vacation for the rest of the year! I can't wait!

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