vilakins | Reading

Today was the last workday in this year. And I worked at home, finished the job around 15:00. In this year too, I have had many interesting or enjoyable jobs, also countless unpleasant and unreasonable moments too in the office. But anyway I survived them! So after work when I went for shopping to nearby supermarket I also went to a small confectionery nearby and bought 2 pieces of cake, enjoyed teatime with mother :) Now, all my job in 2025 has finished! I would forget them for a while and enjoy the end of year and the new year holidays (12/30 - 1/3) !

mab_browne

And if I'm lucky I'll be over the worst of covid bout #2 before 2026 begins. At least this one, so far, is less vicious than bout #1.

thisbluespirit

I've been having a lovely

yuletide, in the right sort of place to do reading through it, if not much else! So much so, there should be a recs post to follow soon. But first of all, of course, my lovely gift!

It was for Enigma, which I was excited enough about just for that, but it is also excellent - a really well-done layered look at Tom & Hester running into Wigram a few years post-canon. Plus, my recip turned up to leave a comment on my assignment, so Yuletide 2025 is a win! \o/ (Even more so, as that other Enigma ficlet I mentioned? The author replied to my comment to say that they'd watched the film because of my promo post, so double yay and bonus outside-of-Yule ficlets!)

After the End (1472 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Enigma (2001)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Tom Jericho, Hester Wallace, Wigram (Enigma 2001)
Additional Tags: Post-Canon
Summary: Summer 1949. An encounter in a Parisian park.

katriona_s

Today it's wonderful fine, the cloudless blue sky! In our garden, there still were some fruits on persimmon trees - it's rather unusual in the end of December - and many birds gathered to pick at them, I could enjoy the cheerful ,sometimes noisy XD birds' song all day.

Maybe tomorrow all the fruits would be gone, so I picked some for us, the last harvest of this year :)

One of our garden cats, the white female has relaxed in the sun on our wooden verandah for hours. Then I saw her scratching the foam polystyrene box I had put under the verandah, the fragments of it were scattered (Nooo!).

She came to the window to beg some treat with some pieces of foam polystyrene on her whiskers - looked so funny!

So, this was a peaceful, fine day and I have dome many small housekeeping tasks :)

selenak

For some Darth Real Life reasons, I had less time than usual during the holidays to delve into the Yuletide archive, but I did have some chances, and here are some early results. ;)

Akhenaten - Glass

The lone and level sands stretch far away: or, Egptian historical fiction. Based on the opera, but can be read without having heard it yet knowing who Akhenaten was. Poetic and intense.

Greek Myths:

Mothers of the Brazen Spear: Andromache and three of her sisters-in-law after the Trojan war. Based on Euripides.

Homophrosyne: Penelope through twenty years.

Born with Teeth:

To Bite the World: in which Will and Kit talk and role play Richard III and Anne Neville. Matches the play really well.

Bride of the Rat God - Hambly :

A closer kinship: the crucial moment from the novel's backstory when Christine shows up in England to whisk Norah away. This is one of my favourite Barbara Hambly novels, and the characterisation of both women is perfect.

Copenhagen - Frayn:

Quantum Game Theory: Four alternate timelines where the Copenhagen meeting never happened, and one where it did. Clever, moving and profound.

Farscape:

Look after the Princess: in which Katralla from s2's Princess trilogy wakes up post- Peacekeeper Wars (there are plot reasons) to find herself in a mad adventure with Aeryn Sun. And Aeryn's baby. And the usual Farscape insanity. Really feels like an episode in the best way, and fleshes out Katralla to boot.

Also, there are still free spots if you want me to ramble on something on the January meme.

Current Location: Bamberg

katriona_s

Last weekend, I took some twigs from my garden and put them into a small flower vase, for their small red leaves were beautiful.

I didn’t expect they would last long - those tiny leaves would soon fall. Though the red leaves haven’t fallen much, I have enjoyed the nice colour of them for a whole week, and surprisingly, even some tiny flowers appeared on one of the twigs.

These are originally spring flowers, but escaped from the outdoor coldness, they bloomed. The tiny but great wonder of the nature!

feng_shui_house

The PNC (US) consumer price index for the gifts in the 12 days of Christmas. (Note: the people are paid for their services. No human trafficking involved.)

https://www.pnc.com/en/about-pnc/topics/pnc-christmas-price-index.html#gifts

selenak

Christmas Greetings to all with my annual nativity scenes pic spam!

( Franconian Bethlehem awaits )

Current Mood: chipper
Current Location: Bamberg

selenak

What a great thing to wake up to in my part of the world - the Yuletide archive is open! (Usually here in Germany it's noon before that happens.) Merry Christmas to all who celebrate, and peaceful holidays for everyone. I will do my annual pic spam later, but for now, here are the two lovely Foundation stories I got, both Demerzel-centric, the former from her pov, the second from Cleon XXIV's - last season's Day, in other words - , and both superb in their characterisations.

Remembrance (3416 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Foundation (TV 2021)
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Characters: Demerzel (Foundation TV 2021), Hari Seldon, Cleon XXIV
Additional Tags: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, mix of book and tv series canon
Summary:

Demerzel wanted to scream back at him, to explain how this was all his fault, Cleon the First damning them all to this nightmare fate that none of them could escape.

But she said nothing, and walked away. Like she always did.

standard deviation (4805 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Foundation (TV 2021)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Cleon XXIV & Demerzel (Foundation TV 2021)
Characters: Cleon XXIV (Foundation TV 2021), Demerzel (Foundation TV 2021)
Additional Tags: Character Study, Artificial Intelligence, Complicated Relationships, Mother-Son Relationship, Loyalty, Yuletide 2025, Yuletide Treat
Summary:

He can’t get a rise out of her, and can never push hard enough that she pushes back. Human mothers eventually raise their voices, yell back, get upset. You can fling hurtful words at a human mother. But as far as he can tell, it never lands with Demerzel; there’s no heart there to twist the knife into.

(Relationship study for what slowly went wrong between Cleon XXIV and Demerzel. Spoilers for all of season 3.)

Current Mood: jubilant
Current Location: Bamberg

katriona_s

Yesterday morning when I walked to the office I found a glove on the road. It's a beige glove with a big ribbon and fake fur fringe - glove for woman. They were not old nor worn out. Someone must have dopped it, maybe she would come back to find the lost glove. I picked up and put it on the neaby fence to prevent it from being run over by a car or stepped on by a passerby, then started walking again. Then after a ten-meter walk I found other glove on the road X( The owner had dropped both of a pair of gloves! I picked the second glove, walked back to the fence to put it with the first one.

I don't like losing something (of course!), whenever I lose or drop something, even a small thing, I feel depressed - not only because of my loss, I feel sorry for those "things" and feel sad. So I hoped the glove woud return to the owner's hands.

The next day, this morning, I again walked to he office on the same way, and found those gloves were still on the very fence. They were wet after the rain during the night. The owner could not find them, or she have not tried to find them. I felt sorry for that abandoned gloves...

Some days ago, Krurun on my futon mattress which I have folded at the end of my room XD

labingi

The 1970’s TV show Emergency! is a treasure. If you want a reminder that society can be decent and humane, (re)discover it today. Emergency! follows the adventures of two paramedics (Roy and John) and the firefighters and hospital staff they work with. It’s low on plot, high on the specifics of various rescues and medical procedures, interspersed with human interest and light comedy. Though it is sometimes pulse-pounding, things almost always turn out okay and interpersonal conflicts are almost always slight. It’s a feel-good show about competent people doing their jobs with professionalism and compassion.

Below the cut are three things I especially like about Emergency! No spoilers to speak of; there’s not much to “spoil.” ( Read more... )

oracne

1. Work load at dayjob has been low this week; we got out at noon yesterday, and today I can log off at 12:30 pm. We are then off through January 2 for winter break (yay, academia). I had a couple of small things I was able to resolve this morning, go me!

2. I did not send out Xmas cards this year, but I appreciate every one I received. I hope to be back to it next year.

3. I am thawing out a chuck roast to cook later this week, probably Friday. My tamarind-sauce-flavored vegetable soup from Sunday, which includes silken tofu, grape tomatoes, carrot, potato, and green beans, is very delicious, especially with a couple tablespoons of congee dumped in. Last night, I finished off my bag of post-surgery chicken nuggets and baked sliced golden potatoes at 425 degrees F with olive oil and salt.

4. I have been listening to a ton of Xmas music, so at least I am somewhat in the holiday spirit. I did not have energy to pull out my ornament tree and dress it up, but we have a smaller one downstairs so I moved it from the corner onto the dining room table--the ornaments were still on it from last year! We have some cards propped around the base, and I have more on the little desk in the guest room. I didn't use my usual space in the back room because it would block my DVD screen, which I need for the Blake's 7 watchalong and possibly even some Shakespeare.

5. I have tentative plans for Xmas afternoon with local friends. I want to get started on my fancy wooden turtle puzzle (which I have had for several years), and also to do some mending of clothing. I especially want to try needle-felting a hole in a very old black cashmere cardigan (commercially knitted); I was wearing it when I broke my elbow years ago, so couldn't wash it for weeks, and it got a moth hole under one arm before I was healed up. I am not sure if the hole is too big for felting. We shall see. I have washed it after its long storage!

reapermum

And so we reach the end of Advent, or at least the last photo I'm posting. This is the crib in our other church (we have two in the parish, one built when it became legal in Victorian times and the other a modern one to serve the new housing estates that doubles the size of the town.)

selenak

In which Buffy Summers already knew that the hardest thing in this world is how to live in it, Carol.

( Spoilers have to choose between the girl and the world )

Current Mood: impressed
Current Location: Bamberg

reapermum

Nearly ready for Christmas in the late 70s. It's from the archive and I'm wondering what was actually in those parcels. I see a bottle on the left.

reapermum

The flowers and foliage are coming into church ready for the flower team to start making the Christmas displays. Our contribution is always the holly. Most years it's a competition between the birds and the flower team as to who gets the berries. This year we don't seem to have any birds in the garden, I assume because of the outbreaks of bird flu which is killing so many of them. The the church has the best branches of berries than they have had for years.

azdak

Last night I watched the latest Knives Out installment, Wake Up, Dead Man, and it clearly wanted to be about Christian faith and MAGAdom, and I guess that is was what it was indeed about, but it makes the extremely weird decision to examine American fundamentalist evangelical Christianity by pretending that it is part of Roman Catholicism. It pretends to be Catholic by using the language and visual trappings of Catholicism, and some of the structures like confession, but you can tell it is really about a wannabe megachurch because:

( Read more... )

katriona_s

This morinng it's cold! They said the temperature was about 3°C early in the morning. Then there came the sun still the air is very cold. I came to the office, though today I have felt tired and sluggish for hours, could not do my job properly :( I feel like I was getting a cold. I was sitting at my desk but literally just looking at the computer... I was not sleeping but thinking nothing, spacing out. I don't like this, this is just waste of the precious time! I just wanted to go to bed and sleep... X(

selenak

Aaaaand the first teaser for Nolan's Odyssey is out. In some ways, my "will be the opposite type of adapatation of The Return " expectation came true - i.e. firm emphasis on the adventure on sea part of the story - in some it didn't, because Nolan seems to go for a traumatized war veteran aura around Odysseus (and his men) as well. Also - is that Tom "Spider-Man" Holland as Telemachus? This conjures up a few weird images. Oh, and, to give credit where credit is due: the aesthetics are gorgeous.

Watch on YouTube

Speaking of Greek myths adaptations, I never read a single one of the books, but I am following the tv series adaption of Percy Jackson on Disney + and am charmed. Definitely much closer to the myths than either Disney's past endeavours (*cough* Hercules *cough* or Marvel's relationship to Norse mythology), though am confused to why the second season apparantly (we haven't seen him yet, he just keeps getting mentioned in dialogue) has decided to include Polyphemus as a villain and yet no one has mentioned ( a major mythological spoiler. )

There are still free spots on the January meme list. Greek (and Roman) myths opinions totally count as a topic. Ditto if you want me to speculate how the Odyssey would have been adapted by: a) Orson Welles, b) JMS (given the Tennyson of it all on B5), c) Ronald D. Moore. Bonus: Charlie Chaplin.

Current Mood: bouncy
Current Location: Bamberg

julesjones

A happy Gauda Prime Day to all who celebrate. :-) Let us raise a glass to toast Chris Boucher, the man who made this day in 1981 one that many of us will never forget.

reapermum

I like having a set of Advent candles every year, even thought I don't light the candles in case they set fire to the artificial flowers, ribbon and the greenery.

reapermum

These are some of our festoons, we like festoons an put some up every year. And now the BBC is telling me that they are very fashionable this year. The latest look for your decorations is Retro apparently, meaning the 80's and 90's. And here was me thinking 50's and 60's.

katriona_s

My mimosa tree, which I have planted in our backyard some years ago, has overgrown, I have trimmed it several times in the past but it has again grown too much. And it had countless small flower buds - must be beautiful in coming spring. Though we (I and mother, especially my mother) worried its roots would also overgrow and destroy the concrete block wall, I gave up to wait for its bloom and asked the gardener to cut it. I have treasured the tree for years so it's not an easy decision :(

The overgrown mimosa tree next to the block wall.

Yesterday morning the gardener came to cut it. His work was quick and efficient, I enjoyed looking at his work in spite of my regret about the mimosa flowers.

He cut the branches to small pieces to load them onto the small truck. I asked him to leave one branch but it doesn't have flower buds so in the next spring I'll see no mimosa flowers :(

Do you see the stump and small branch grown from its foot? I'm not sure if I could keep the small tree (and it would soon grow!) but I will talk to the gardener how I can do with it. Sometimes I remember the countless small flower buds which would surely bloom wonderfully in Feb - but now never bloom - and feel sad, feel like I have killed beloved small animal...

But, before the gardener came, I cut some twigs from the tree and put them in flower vase. The flower buds are too small and no yellow colour still these twigs are beautiful, I think.

reapermum

Isn't this a beautiful piece of art decorating the window of a business in the town centre? I don't think it's a commercial transfer, it looks more like it's airbrushed directly onto the glass. I think it may be a tanning studio, and if one of their staff did draw it they are very talented.

selenak

In which someone becomes Sheherazade, but is it Zosia or is it Carol?

( Spoilers go on the charm offensive )

Current Mood: pensive
Current Location: Munich

watervole

It's surprisingly hard to gain weight when you actually want to.

I'm down to 48.2k (go back four or five years and I was probably closer to 58k)

The loss is because my insulin doesn't work as effectively as it used to, so what I eat isn't all converted into useful energy for the body.

I'm now eating larger portions at meals, and I'm adding in snacks of nuts/cheese/fruit/other nibbles between meals, but the catch comes whenever I'm ill.

I gain gradually, then I get an asthma attack. One steroid course, and I've lost half a kilo.

Then I catch a bug from Theo - sick one day and not eating the next - I lose weight again.

It's rather like the old analogy of a frog climbing out of a well. As fast as I climb up, I start to slip down again...

But, at least I know what the problem is, and I'm doing what I can to improve it. As long as I can stay well, I'll hopefully get a bit more weight and energy...

It's still important to avoid foods with a high glycemic index - if too much sugar enters the system, it gets overloaded and enters shutdown mode for a while - that causes blood sugar to spike (which is a BAD thing). one thing I've learnt from what I'm being taught is that bananas have a high GI - best to only have half a banana, unless they are very small ones.

andraste

Caught In The Undertow (9931 words) by Andraste
Chapters: 6/6
Fandom: Hazbin Hotel (Cartoon)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Alastor/Vox

Summary: It takes Vox a long time to find out what the radio demon wants from him, and that Hell really is what you make of it.

Or: five times Vox wanted something out of Alastor (and mostly didn't get it) and one time Alastor wanted something back (and did).

katriona_s

This morning before 5am the nature call woke me up. I went to the toilet, back to my futon bed and slept again - then had a dream. In the dream I was going to leave some office I've visited in unfamiliar town, but there was no local bus nor taxi service going back to the train station. So I decided to walk to the station and asked for directions to the staff of the office. Her answer was quite unclear and useless, though I had my smartphone and iPad in my bag and thought "OK I'll check the way on Google Map". In real life I'm always clumsy about using the IT devices so naturally, in the dream my smartphone didn't work well and I got lost and just wandered around the narrow streets. There's nobody on the streets I could ask the direction, and I even was not sure which station I'd like to go to. I was totally lost and helpless... Then the alarm clock woke me up. Phew!

But, I thought... I feel like I have been always getting lost in my life like this dream. ... do not know the direction, can not understand the situation in which other people seem to feel comfortable, do not know how I can get the information to manage the situation, cannot find the people who would help me...

The reason I often do not know "how" might be that I am careless, and do not have much interest in other people and society. Since my childhood I have spent much time to indulge in fantasies. Now fully matured I don't fantasize much but my interest in other people or in society doesn't increase much XD And to me, who tend to lean on my own fantasy and abstract ideas, my house, my job, and my friends are kind of anchors which fasten me to the real world. With them, I can feel I belong to this world, not a complete outsider.

This year some of my longtime friends have passed away. I miss them - first, for the friendship, but also, for the sake of my own sense of reality...

feng_shui_house

During a free shipping promo, I ordered 2 mouse pads from Shutterfly with my photos, then I thought about it and ordered an extra of one of them a few hours later, and then the next day I realized I'd missed a chance to do another one I'd been thinking of doing.

They arrived today only 2 days later than estimated, which is pretty good for free and this time of year.

They look good. Smell a bit plasticy, so I left them on the back table to air out before I put them into 'gift storage'... ok, back to other work.

Currently have the sewing room in a jumble- going to make a fake fur/plush rug to cover up a bare cement patch of floor so I pushed aside the bags and bags of sorted by length strips of fabric I'm cutting for a log cabin star quilt in order to reach the sewing machine.

Feels good to use up stuff. While looking for plush found more stuff to throw out. I'm trying to unhoard at least SOME. :^)

reapermum

These were lights in Lichfield. I always liked looking at them as I walked back to the car after the December meetings of Lichfield Science and Engineering Society. But they weren't there last year. In fact the Three Spires Shopping Centre had very few lights up at all, nothing that needed a ladder in fact.

Reading page

The last workday in 2025

I had a lovely Xmas

Yuletide

foam polystyrene

Yuletide Recs 1

Tiny white flowers

US cost of the 12 Days of Christmas gifts...

Colour in the Bleakest Midwinter

Yuletide!

Please find them...

I Love a Good Emergency!

Five Things on Xmas Eve

24th December

Pluribus 1.09 (Season Finale)

23rd December

22nd December

Knives Out III

I don’t feel well today…

Homer adaptations. Strike 2

Happy Gauda Prime Day!

4th Sunday in Advent

20th December

Good bye my mimosa

19th December

Pluribus 1.08

Diabetes and weight

Hazbin Hotel Fanfic: Caught In The Undertow

lost in this world

Yay, my mousies arrived.

18th December

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