3 Weeks - 20
May. 21st, 2025 08:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
esteefee
Today I had a bowl of cornflakes for breakfast, my first in a long time, and I realized I slice up my banana the exact same way my pops did: diagonal cuts so the slices fall off the knife instead of sticking to it. I don't remember deciding to adopt his method. But there you go.
How do you slice your banana? Are there other tricks you picked up from parents or friends unconsciously?
Conquerors' Pride, by Timothy Zahn
May. 21st, 2025 08:50 amrunpunkrunMilitary scifi filled with dudes, all of them boring except for the guy who's been abducted by aliens, which is the only interesting thing about him. His dad, brother, and sister—one of five women in the book, and that is an overly generous count—hatch a cockamamie plan to get him back. It's the kind of scheme only Miles Vorkosigan could (accidentally) pull off, and none of these people are as smart, confident, or unhinged as Miles.
The first in a series that probably isn't worth reading unless you already have all three books in front of you, which I did not.
The first in a series that probably isn't worth reading unless you already have all three books in front of you, which I did not.
Being an adult sucks - do not buy furniture from Home Depot
May. 20th, 2025 11:58 pmamalthiaIt looks like the new vanities we purchased from Home Depot may not last longer than 3 years. When my husband and I purchased the vanities we didn't know they were particle board, so that's on us for not double checking. I now have questions as to how is it legal for a store to sell furniture that's going into a bathroom that can't withstand any water exposure?
In any case, the base of the vanity is already starting to warp in some spots and I figured I have about a year to find a replacement vanity.
The question is where do people buy vanities that aren't crap?
I considered maybe just buying a more expensive vanity from Home Depot, one made out of plywood, however based off the reviews that's also a bad idea. Or do people just replace bathroom vanities every few years now, like replacing a couch?
I think what's most frustrating is even knowing we had to be careful with this vanity water still somehow made it to the base, and there is water damage in a spot that makes no sense, but it's there.
In my future dream house, there is going to be TONS of space between sink/vanity, toilet, and shower, and all the walls will have tile going to the ceiling!
In any case, the base of the vanity is already starting to warp in some spots and I figured I have about a year to find a replacement vanity.
The question is where do people buy vanities that aren't crap?
I considered maybe just buying a more expensive vanity from Home Depot, one made out of plywood, however based off the reviews that's also a bad idea. Or do people just replace bathroom vanities every few years now, like replacing a couch?
I think what's most frustrating is even knowing we had to be careful with this vanity water still somehow made it to the base, and there is water damage in a spot that makes no sense, but it's there.
In my future dream house, there is going to be TONS of space between sink/vanity, toilet, and shower, and all the walls will have tile going to the ceiling!
3 Weeks - 19
May. 19th, 2025 01:30 amesteefeeSo what is absolutely stunning to me but shouldn't be, is we have regressed! Regressed but it's packaged as progress, and I went along with it every step of the way like a little lamb. But no more! I'm tired of this commercialism crappy, and when I say this is absolutely the last iteration of laundry detergent I will buy, I mean it!
It's not my fault, I swear, I went from mom buying the detergent at home, to college, where I followed in her footsteps. She swore by Tide, possibly on the advice of one of her new American friends.
First this Tide:
A white powder with cleaning surfactants, sodium carbonate and sodium silicate to soften the water, also possibly bleach and enzymes to break down food stains, and suds reducers and brighteners and fragrances and such.
Then came the innovative! Liquid in jugs! Wow! Just an excuse to charge more, I think. What was wrong with the powder? Oh, because then you could more successfully rub it in your stains beforehand I guess. I dunno. But jugs meant no more cardboard, just plastic, plastic, plastic:
Then, of course, they came out with pods of the liquid. But the pods were even more ridiculous, because some of them came in plastic jugs as well! And! And, it turns out the pods don't melt entirely: they introduce microplastics into the water system as well as the plastic containers getting tossed in the landfill. Oh, joy. (I skipped the pod step. Maybe because some people were reported to have eaten them. I feared becoming a tide zombie.)
So people tried to solve the pod problem by coming up with sheets! And we were so eager to embrace strips/sheets because they came in cardboard sleeves (I am an eco-warrior!) and weighed absolutely nothing on the walk down to the laundry room, we didn't discover until later that the strips themselves were bonded together with microplastics. (*They often contain polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), a plastic-based polymer, which some manufacturers claim is biodegradable, but its biodegradability is questionable and not well-studied.) Oh, woe!
So, Self, does anyone make, I dunno, powdered detergent that comes in a box? Why, yes! Wouldn't you know. So many different ones. I found one called Meliora that's low-sudsing and unscented and literally takes a tablespoon to clean a giant double-load of clothes and my clothes smell *fantastic*. One tablespoon. Jeez, I mean. It comes in a cardboard tin that you can refill from a cardboard box and I will never, ever step away from powdered plain old surfactant again.
My long laundry journey is done.
(And wouldn't you know it, and this just kills me, but Tide still makes):
Sherlock Holmes: Come If Convenient by rudbeckia
May. 18th, 2025 08:48 pmkingstoken posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
fancakeFandom: Sherlock Holmes (tagged as both books and Granada)
Pairings/Characters: Holmes/Watson
Rating: E
Length: 13,317 words
Creator Links: rudbeckia
Theme: Angst with a Happy Ending, courting
Summary: Watson, finally pushed away by Holmes’s lack of regard for his feelings, has left 221B Baker Street and moved into his practice. Holmes is confused—he did nothing wrong! But when Holmes realises (because everyone who gives him advice tells him so) that he is to blame, he knows he has to do something meaningful to win Watson back.
Reccer's Notes: Watson gets tried of Holmes' mistreatment and decides to leave Baker St. Much angst in the beginning, but also a Holmes determined to get his Watson back, cue the wooing! I enjoyed the inclusion of side characters like Mrs Hudson, Mycroft and Lestrade, and there was also an original character, a woman doctor who works with Watson, that I greatly enjoyed. It is tagged as both books and Granada, but I pictured the Granada lads when reading it.
Fanwork Links: AO3
Pairings/Characters: Holmes/Watson
Rating: E
Length: 13,317 words
Creator Links: rudbeckia
Theme: Angst with a Happy Ending, courting
Summary: Watson, finally pushed away by Holmes’s lack of regard for his feelings, has left 221B Baker Street and moved into his practice. Holmes is confused—he did nothing wrong! But when Holmes realises (because everyone who gives him advice tells him so) that he is to blame, he knows he has to do something meaningful to win Watson back.
Reccer's Notes: Watson gets tried of Holmes' mistreatment and decides to leave Baker St. Much angst in the beginning, but also a Holmes determined to get his Watson back, cue the wooing! I enjoyed the inclusion of side characters like Mrs Hudson, Mycroft and Lestrade, and there was also an original character, a woman doctor who works with Watson, that I greatly enjoyed. It is tagged as both books and Granada, but I pictured the Granada lads when reading it.
Fanwork Links: AO3
3 Weeks - 18
May. 18th, 2025 02:50 pmesteefeeomg you guys. you guys.
so this is
runpunkrun 's fault, because she posted about Staged, so naturally I wanted to watch it. I've been wanting to for a while but imdb wasn't helpful bec they said for the longest that I had to subscribe to britbox which, I wish.Anyway, Punk recommended https://Kanopy.com, a service where you use your local library card to log in and stream stuff. I did not know this was an option. What a wonder.
Of course, when I tried, they gave me guff about my library card, which I haven't used in ages because I can no longer read paper. So I called my library. And in times when corporate America is experiencing record high profits and is STILL scaling back on weekend/off-hours support, the San Francisco Public Library picked up at 2pm on a Sunday to answer my call.
And of course the librarian was the absolute sweetest and fixed a number of problems with my account and wished me luck with Kanopy and told me to call back if I ran into any problems.
Librarians, I swear: proof that humanity is of the good.
Anyway, I'm sure all of you knew all of this already, but it certainly bears repeating. And I've watched exactly 2 minutes of David Tennant and Michael Sheen being gloriously ridiculous together on screen and my Sunday is SET.
Thank you, SFPL and Punk!
💖💖💖
"I could be Welsh."
*laughs* "We'd never have you."
"You'd love to have me. You'd beg to have me."
Staged
May. 18th, 2025 09:17 amrunpunkrunI watched this for FREE from kanopy* through my library, and I knew going into it that it was filmed, and set, during the lockdown portion of the pandemic, but I didn't expect it to hit me the way it did. Not that it's particularly engaged with the threat of covid, but iykyk and you know what that underlying constant panic felt like and the vibe was so incredibly familiar to me (a person who has, to this day, never talked to anyone over Zoom or Teams or Facechat) that it immediately took me back to those early days of the pandemic and I was so distracted by amorphous feelings that I couldn't fully concentrate on how cute David Tennant and Michael Sheen were being. I instantly took to Georgia, though, which is a relief because I was afraid I resented her for capturing David Tennant. Though, I mean, she can have the version on this show. He is USELESS. But adorable. I love that he had the same thing on for weeks. And that it was gumboots, shorts, and a hoodie. No shirt, iirc.
Then the second season zooms out and recontextualizes the first season—no longer understood as private communications we were privy to through the magic of the narrative, but now an actual scripted show. That wasn't David Tennant we were watching being useless, that was a character! And here's the real David Tennant and the real Michael Sheen doing press for the show we just watched. Only, as it played with the different levels of characters and public personas and our access to them, even as it was no longer presented as a "scripted" show, it was still perfectly clear this wasn't the real Michael and David, either, though surely there were pieces of them in there? But such is celebrity, I suppose, where you're broken up into bits of ever increasing smallness and scattered throughout time, so everyone knows something of you, but nobody knows all of you because who are you even anymore after pretending to be so many other people?
These are the questions that writing RPF raises. Anyway, while they were writing RPF of themselves, why didn't Michael get his hug at the end? I was very disappointed, but was made to feel like it had no importance after all and I should not be disappointed because this wasn't a script where everything is meaningful, it's just life, where we are forced to make our own meaning, and when denied things often have to convince ourselves we didn't want it after all.
If there had been a third season, how would it have overturned the second? A fun puzzle to think about. Probably some fanfic out there doing that work? I would assume.
* A WHILE ago. This has been in my drafts for quite some time, so out it goes!
A Correction: It has come to my attention that there is a third season, though it's not on kanopy. But I have reports that the first two seasons are still available there.
Then the second season zooms out and recontextualizes the first season—no longer understood as private communications we were privy to through the magic of the narrative, but now an actual scripted show. That wasn't David Tennant we were watching being useless, that was a character! And here's the real David Tennant and the real Michael Sheen doing press for the show we just watched. Only, as it played with the different levels of characters and public personas and our access to them, even as it was no longer presented as a "scripted" show, it was still perfectly clear this wasn't the real Michael and David, either, though surely there were pieces of them in there? But such is celebrity, I suppose, where you're broken up into bits of ever increasing smallness and scattered throughout time, so everyone knows something of you, but nobody knows all of you because who are you even anymore after pretending to be so many other people?
These are the questions that writing RPF raises. Anyway, while they were writing RPF of themselves, why didn't Michael get his hug at the end? I was very disappointed, but was made to feel like it had no importance after all and I should not be disappointed because this wasn't a script where everything is meaningful, it's just life, where we are forced to make our own meaning, and when denied things often have to convince ourselves we didn't want it after all.
If there had been a third season, how would it have overturned the second? A fun puzzle to think about. Probably some fanfic out there doing that work? I would assume.
* A WHILE ago. This has been in my drafts for quite some time, so out it goes!
A Correction: It has come to my attention that there is a third season, though it's not on kanopy. But I have reports that the first two seasons are still available there.
Star Trek AOS: A Guiding Star by BC_Brynn
May. 18th, 2025 11:20 amgarryowen posting in fancakeFandom: Star Trek AOS
Pairings/Characters: Kirk/Spock
Rating: Teen +
Length: 11,213
Creator Links: BC_Brynn at AO3
Theme: Angst with a happy ending.
Summary: My name is S’chn T’gai Spock, and I am six years old. At the age of twenty-nine, I have been involved in an accident that has reduced my physical age and erased my memories accordingly.
Reccer's Notes: Usually, in stories about aging, one partner/beloved grows old, but in this one, Spock finds himself a child again. Despite losing many memories, he knows and remembers Jim, and he is absolutely determined to get back to him. But he has to grow up first. There are a lot of challenges along the way.
What I admire about this story is that both the author and the narrator (Spock) have such singular focus and total commitment to the project. One of the issues the story takes on--and what sets it apart, IMO--is the way that a slightly different upbringing and life path create a different person. It also addresses the sacrifices one must make to achieve a goal. It's absolutely heartbreaking. But, as this theme specifies, there is a happy ending. Also, of course, it's got big meant-to-be energy!
Fanwork Links: A Guiding Star
Pairings/Characters: Kirk/Spock
Rating: Teen +
Length: 11,213
Creator Links: BC_Brynn at AO3
Theme: Angst with a happy ending.
Summary: My name is S’chn T’gai Spock, and I am six years old. At the age of twenty-nine, I have been involved in an accident that has reduced my physical age and erased my memories accordingly.
Reccer's Notes: Usually, in stories about aging, one partner/beloved grows old, but in this one, Spock finds himself a child again. Despite losing many memories, he knows and remembers Jim, and he is absolutely determined to get back to him. But he has to grow up first. There are a lot of challenges along the way.
What I admire about this story is that both the author and the narrator (Spock) have such singular focus and total commitment to the project. One of the issues the story takes on--and what sets it apart, IMO--is the way that a slightly different upbringing and life path create a different person. It also addresses the sacrifices one must make to achieve a goal. It's absolutely heartbreaking. But, as this theme specifies, there is a happy ending. Also, of course, it's got big meant-to-be energy!
Fanwork Links: A Guiding Star
