magnetic_pole | Reading

anais_pf posting in

These questions were written by

destined_dreams.

1. What type of hair do you have? (Thin, Normal, Thick, Frizzy, etc.)

2. What color is your hair currently?

3. What colors have you dyed/highlighted your hair?

4. If you could dye your hair any color, what would it be?

5. What is your hair's length?

Copy and paste to your own journal, then reply to this post with a link to your answers. If your journal is private or friends-only, you can post your full answers in the comments below.

If you'd like to suggest questions for a future Friday Five, then do so on DreamWidth or LiveJournal. Old sets that were used have been deleted, so we encourage you to suggest some more!

boxofdelights

The Three Ws are:
1. What are you currently reading?

I'm in the middle of The Great Transition, Nick Fuller Googins, for solarpunk book club. The transition is to a sustainable way of living. There's a lot of horror in the immediate past, and a lot of life that is just gone forever. The two viewpoint characters are a teenage girl and her father. Her father, who did heroic work during the crisis, when he was a teenager, wants to focus on how much better things are now, and how we are all working together to make them even better. Her mother, who did different kinds of heroic work, says no, we can't relax: the people who caused and profited from the crisis still have too much money and power, and they are working to turn us back to the exploitive and destructive path. We have to stop them.

I'm enjoying it, except that the teenage girl has an (occasionally too-vividly described) eating disorder.

2. What did you recently finish reading?

The Correspondent, by Virginia Evans, for Tawanda book group. Much better than I was expecting.
Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut, for classics book group. Last read when I was a teenager, when all that sexism and racism was just normal.
Algorithms of Oppression, by Saffiya Noble, for Slow Book Club. This was a hard read, in both subject matter and writing style, so it was good to have the book club to talk it over with, a few chapters at a time.
A Sorceress Comes to Call, by T. Kingfisher, for SF book group. A delight.

3. What do you think you’ll read next?

The Last Hour Between Worlds, by Melissa Caruso, for SF book group. If I can find it.

tjs_whatnot

Here is my first attempt to making a graphic of a Storygraph Challenge. I completed 3 challenges this year (A-Z Challenge, Read Queer All Year and the Trans Rights Readathon), but making this one exhausted me, so until I find a better way, this will be it for graphics. Maybe one day Storygraph will make some shiny graphics for their challenges, I mean, it's right there in their title, yes?

( A-Z Under Here )

tielan

( for later consumption, or now consumption if you prefer )

conuly

Ms. Marcus says that an occasional poem is a poem
written about something
important
or special
that's gonna happen
or already did.
Think of a specific occasion, she says—and write about it.

Like what?! Lamont asks.
He's all slouched down in his seat.
I don't feel like writing about no occasion.

How about your birthday? Ms. Marcus says.
What about it? Just a birthday. Comes in June and it ain't
June, Lamont says. As a matter of fact,
he says, it's January and it's snowing.
Then his voice gets real low and he says
And when it's January and all cold like this
feels like June's a long, long ways away.

The whole class looks at Ms. Marcus.
Some of the kids are nodding.
Outside the sky looks like it's made out of metal
and the cold, cold air is rattling the windowpanes
and coming underneath them too.

I seen Lamont's coat.
It's gray and the sleeves are too short.
It's down but it looks like a lot of the feathers fell out
a long time ago.
Ms. Marcus got a nice coat.
It's down too but real puffy so
maybe when she's inside it
she can't even tell January from June.

Then write about January, Ms. Marcus says, that's
an occasion.
But she looks a little bit sad when she says it
Like she's sorry she ever brought the whole
occasional poem thing up.

I was gonna write about Mama's funeral
but Lamont and Ms. Marcus going back and forth
zapped all the ideas from my head.

I guess them arguing
on a Tuesday in January's an occasion
So I guess this is an occasional poem.

*************

Link

conuly

No real symptoms, but I'm a little stuffy and super sleepy.

******************************

( Read more... )

torachan

1. I took Carla to the airport this morning before work and she has arrived safe and sound in Wisconsin.

2. Our heat spell is over and it was chilly and overcast today. It might even rain tomorrow, though the forecast has gone down from 50% to like 25%, so maybe not.

3. I love when cats morph into their slug form.

althea_valara

two log cabins with snow on the roofs in a wintery forest the text snowflake challenge january 1 - 31 in white cursive text

Challenge #11

In your own space, grant someone's wish from Challenge #5. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it and include a link to your own post with the wishes you granted if you feel comfortable doing so.

Okay, I actually granted wishes by commenting on folks' posts, but here's a round-up of the ones I did:

1.

catness wanted recs for games featuring cats, so I recced Stray, Sudocats, and Cats Love Boxes, along with a mention of the kitties of Forspoken.

2.

falena asked for book recs and voice recordings, so I recced Connie Willis and Courtney Milan, and also linked to my Twitch stream where they can watch videos of me chatting.

3.

visualjyushi asked for FFVII icons and writing advice; I commented with both when Challenge 5 first went up.

That's enough for now--I might look through the list again later to see if there's more I can grant.

My own wishlist is here - I've already gotten some great comments but I'll link it again in case folks are feeling generous.

Current Mood: lethargic

redbird

There's more evidence that the shingles vaccine reduces the risk of Alzheimer's disease: two more natural experiments (in which people were offered the vaccine based on date of birth or where they lived). One of them comparED the older Zostavax vaccine with the newer Shingrix: https://erictopol.substack.com/p/spotlight-on-the-shingles-vaccineagain

As the blogger, Eric Topol says, "If this vaccine was a drug and reduced Alzheimer’s by 20%, it would be considered a major breakthrough for helping to prevent the disease! But as a vaccine, it hasn't reached any sense of being a blockbuster"

conuly

That is not a sentence I want to read at any time in the morning.

(In celsius terms, it's -10 and feels like death.)

**********************

( Read more... )

trobadora

61% of respondents find shorter fic easier to write than longer! And the majority of respondents mostly write stories between 1 and 10k words. Interestingly, the 10-50k range seems to be the rarest!

For me, I find longer fic easier because I can much more easily come up with ideas for longer stories than shorter. Self-contained small things? I wish I could write them more often! But most story ideas I have want to be longer, alas.

I used to write more shorter fic, but I've mostly lost the knack, possibly because my current fandoms lend themselves to that less? Or it may be me that's changed. *g*

Today's writing

So far I'm failing at gaining any kind of writing momentum this month, but I'm still working on things. A little progress.

Tally

( Days 1-15 )

Day 16:

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

chanter1944,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

goddess47,

luzula,

sanguinity,

shadaras,

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

ysilme

Day 17:

alightbuthappypen,

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

chanter1944,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

goddess47,

luzula,

sanguinity,

shadaras,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora,

ysilme

Day 18:

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

chanter1944,

cornerofmadness,

luzula,

goddess47,

sanguinity,

shadaras,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora,

ysilme

Day 19:

alightbuthappypen,

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

goddess47,

sanguinity,

shadaras,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora,

ysilme

Day 20:

badly_knitted,

brithistorian,

carenejeans,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

goddess47,

luzula,

sanguinity,

shadaras,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora,

ysilme

Day 21:

alightbuthappypen,

trobadora,

ysilme

Let me know if I missed anyone! And remember you can drop in or out at any time. :)

musesfool

I did indeed get in bed by 9:30 last night and slept pretty hard. I probably could have slept even more, but 11 hours is a pretty good night!

For some reason, I woke up with Barely Breathing by Duncan Sheik in my head, and when I wondered to

angelgazing whatever happened to him, she said he co-wrote Spring Awakening, which I did not know, so good for him! From one-hit wonder to Tony winner!

On the Mets front, they finally got a centerfielder in Luis Robert Jr. I guess if he can stay healthy, he'll be an upgrade over last year, offensively at least, though I am still a Tyrone Taylor fan for his A+ defense. #better call tyrone

In other sports news, my attempt to get interested in basketball seems to have done serious damage to the Knicks. They have been losing a lot lately. Plus, everyone I mentioned it to was like, don't do that. I didn't realize people in my wider circle felt that way about basketball. I guess there's always the Liberty! I should figure out when that season starts. Or the Sirens for hockey, but I don't think they've been very good either. Just a bad time all round for NY sports, I guess. And it's not like I'm a fair weather fan, though this certainly sounds like it - it's just I'd like to root for a team that isn't completely terrible, you know? As a treat!

On the books front, there is finally cover art and a real blurb for Dungeon Crawler Carl 8: Parade of Horribles, but still no Kindle* or e-book edition, so I broke down and pre-ordered the hardcover. (I can't do audiobooks. I've tried.) I also decided to do a reread of the series, because I've been trying to map out all the various stuff that needs resolving - and it is A LOT - so I wanted it to be fresh in my mind. So at some point there will be a post that is basically me as that Charlie Day-at-the-murder-board meme trying to figure it all out. *hands*

*I realize that I probably need to do a "free trial" of Kindle Unlimited to get the Kindle edition but I do not want to do that at this time. As the release date gets closer, we'll see if a Kindle edition shows up and I end up cancelling the hardcover, as I would prefer not to buy a hardcover tbh. I have all the rest on kindle, which is where I do 99.5% of my book-reading these days.

So anyway, I guess for the Wednesday reading meme, I just finished a reread of book 1 of Dungeon Crawler Carl and started rereading book 2: Carl's Doomsday Scenario. And I will probably read book 3: The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook after that and so on and so forth. *wry*

***

Current Mood: okay
Current Music: Barely Breathing - Duncan Sheik

silveradept

snowflake_challenge dropped their eleventh challenge, and it's a call-back.

Challenge #11

Grant someone's wish from Challenge #5.

( Merrily a wassailing... )

Current Mood: nerdy
Current Music: ROZEN - Master vs Master

reeby10 posting in

snowflake_challenge

Introduction Post * Meet the Mods Post * Challenge #1 * Challenge #2 * Challenge #3 * Challenge #4 * Challenge #5 * Challenge #6 * Challenge #7 * Challenge #8 * Challenge #9 * Challenge #10 *

Remember that there is no official deadline, so feel free to join in at any time, or go back and do challenges you've missed.

( Fandom Snowflake Challenge #111 )

And just as a reminder: this is a low pressure, fun challenge. If you aren't comfortable doing a particular challenge, then don't. We aren't keeping track of who does what.

pauraque

This is my second post about As the Earth Dreams, though these are the first stories in the book. I missed the book club meeting when they were discussed, so I'm afraid you'll only be getting my thoughts on them.

I also read the introduction and learned that it offers a one-sentence synopsis for each story, so I guess I can use those when I can't come up with a better one and/or don't understand a story's plot.

"Ravenous, Called Iffy" by Chimedum Ohaegbu

( A masseuse attends her mother's fourth funeral, a prelude to her latest resurrection, only to encounter family she's never met. )

"The Hole in the Middle of the World" by Chinelo Onwualu

( In a dystopian future, a refugee sells her memories. )

"A Fair Assessment" by Terese Mason Pierre

( An antiques appraiser summons spirits to learn more about the objects, and encounters her ancestor. )

pensnest

Well. This post is inspired by the relevant Snowflake Challenge, but does not conform to it.

You see, the 6th Snowflake Challenge this year asks for my Top Ten somethings. And that's really hard to do. Top ten books? Impossible. If I kept lists and records of everything I've read and ranked each book, maybe, but lists and records? Me? Ditto songs. Can't do top ten musicals either. I would need a smaller pool from which to draw!

This is where inspiration struck. My socks! I have many fun pairs of socks, most of which were knitted for me by the wonderful

turlough. There are of course others: the ordinary socks, like the long plum-coloured ones that go with my dark red dress, and the plain black ones for concerts. And there are the slightly more fun socks with 'art' on them, like the yellow 'Klimt' ones or the grey ones with 'The Scream' depicted around the ankle.

But the socks of which I speak are the superior socks from my selection. And even then, I cannot readily pick a Top Ten.

So I decided not to do a Top Ten after all. Instead, I shall show you my favourite baker's dozen pairs of socks, and invite you to select your Top Three. Here are the socks.

To expand, click. Meanwhile,

Top pic, top row, left to right:

1 green, yellow, purple, teal stripes in a zig zag. Cheerful, interestingly textured, and perfectly comfortable

2 Gryffindor socks! very comfortable

3 red with leaf pattern, lovely lace design, a couple of stitches too long in the foot for perfect fit

4 the zig zag socks are more of a magenta pic than shows up in the photo, fabulously pink!

5 woodland stripes in a funky design, comfortable and fun

Bottom row, left to right

6 lovely orange socks with great cable section in the middle, pity it gets hidden in shoes. I am wearing them right now.

7 Cheerful red, blue, purple and green stripes, an older favourite

8 Fraternal socks, bought, not gifted by

turlough, comfy though a teensy bit long, and I like the one with the black toe more than the one with the red toe!

9 Llama socks, bought at Royal Norfolk Show. Knee length, useful under dresses

10 Sheep socks, ditto, but not quite as adorable as llamas!

Double picture:

11 pink and purple striped socks, lovely design, good fit, alas that I have worn through the toe and darned badly.

12 Sloth socks! The sloths are rather bigger than I had bargained for, but they actually don't get in the way as they clutch the fronts of my ankles, and they occasioned great amusement at my recent rehearsal.

Individual picture:

13 purple socks with cable design on the outside of each foot. Love these, very comfortable

So. Which ones would you pick as your Top Three?

cimorene

Apparently I have shingles....

Going to the pharmacy for antivirals and bandages when Wax is done with work.

This raises the interesting possibility that I've had headaches and fever for the last week without really noticing because I'm already miserable, huddling in blankets with no energy as my default state in January.

conuly

And posting is rapid. Don't you need a distraction?

delphi

✓

kingstoken's 2026 Book Bingo: eBook/Audiobook

That's a Great Question, I'd Love to Tell You is a 2025 memoir by comedian/musician/online personality Elyse Myers. It's a collection of essays, free verse poetry, and lists that take a humorous but heartfelt look at formative and vulnerable moments in her life, with a retrospective understanding of the anxiety and undiagnosed neurodivergence that often shaped them.

Stories include a childhood fixation on a Magic 8 Ball, overthinking and missing the obvious during a teenage game of Seven Minutes in Heaven, college panic attacks, Parisian dates gone awry, beach encounters gone sour, and conquering the mysteries of gravel roads. Anyone familiar with Elyse Myers' work online knows she has a way of telling a story and getting a laugh while also not being afraid to be earnest. If you haven't seen her videos before, you can check her out on TikTok or on Youtube.

I don't listen to a ton of audiobooks, my main exception being memoirs that are read by their authors. That usually works out for me, but in this case I really wish I'd gone with the print book for three reasons:

1) It turns out the print edition is full of little illustrations and creative formatting that brings a lot to some of the pieces.

2) One of the things I enjoy about Myers is her more freeform and sometimes frenetic delivery, but this was a more sedate and traditional audiobook performance.

3) Related to #2, several stories triggered some secondhand embarrassment for me and having to listen to that be slowly relayed instead of being able to read faster during those was rough.

( An Excerpt )

torachan

1. Got my hair cut this morning. Carla wanted to get hers trimmed before her trip (she's going to Wisconsin for a week tomorrow for her aunt's 80th birthday) so it was the both of us and we decided to pop over to Universal Studios for lunch afterwards. The crowds were so low! If we'd stayed to go on any rides, almost everything was like 20 minutes or less, even the massively popular ones. As it was, we just had a nice lunch, spotted some characters, and came home.

2. Because of the haircut appointment, which was awkwardly timed for late morning, I just made today a WFH day. Did some stuff in the morning before we went, and then had a meeting later in the afternoon. I didn't really have a whole lot on the agenda for today anyway, so it worked out well.

3. Shake Shack is apparently having a Korean inspired menu right now, so we got the burgers with Korean BBQ sauce. They were so good! There's also a chicken sandwich and fries with kimchi powder and dipping sauce, and even a caramel gochujang shake, so if they've still got this stuff on the menu when Carla gets back from her trip, we're planning to try some of those as well. Actually now that I think of it, there's one near work, so I might just go over there for lunch one day...

4. Warming bed + stretching = best combo.