glass_icarus | Reading

On May 8th, I offered to read the first five books people recced - assuming they were available (preferably from the library) - and I'd give a short review [https://bethbethbeth.dreamwidth.org/701769.html].

This is the sixth recced book review.

Rules for Ghosting (2024), by Shelly Jay Shore (recced by mx-sno on bluesky)

Yes, this is a romance (gay cis man/bi trans-man), but it's also a story about family dynamics, grief, birth and death, found family, Judaism, and a dog named Sappho.

Oh, and ghosts!

I'm passing on the rec, but I'd offer two caveats:

One...if you have anxiety surrounding death rituals, including taharah (the "ritual washing, purification, and dressing of a deceased Jewish person before burial"), you might want to think twice.

Second, on a pure story level, there's sometimes a little too much "not telling people important things either for their own good or because you don't know how to start the conversation" for my personal tastes, but for all I know, that's your favorite trope. :)

However, Rules for Ghosting is generally an interesting, good-hearted story with a clever premise and a diverse group of likable characters.

schneefink

I cooked! Literally. (It took a surprising amount of effort not to address a non-existent "chat" here xD) There's a completely arbitrary (and very silly) distinction in my brain about what counts as "proper" cooking, and most of what I prepare for myself doesn't or barely counts. But today I made a pasta-tomato-ham casserole, which undoubtedly is proper cooking, and it was very good.
I really wanted to properly cook something because I'm currently house-sitting and the house has a very well stocked kitchen - I'm envious of their spice selection - but it turns out that not having my own tools, like working scales, and knowing where everything is is a disadvantage and it about evens out. (Most of these spices I don't even know what to do with tbh.)

I've also played quite a bit of Beat Saber already. Got a some expert level completions, but only managed normal for other songs. It's nice to play outside, too.

I've barely seen the skunk I'm house-sitting for, he's still in his winter phase apparently and eats little and mostly sleeps all day, and the one time he saw me he ran away. Nothing to worry about, according to his owners; he's getting old for a skunk, too. Beforehand I was mildly apprehensive about him demanding lots of attention, now I'm more worried that I wouldn't even notice if something was wrong.

Last weekend I played Islets, an indie metroidvania by the same solo dev who made Crypt Custodian. I only meant to try it out on Saturday and ended up playing for six hours, and then I finished the next day with 95% completion. It was a lot of fun! Importantly, movement feels good, and the exploration is fun. I played on easy because there were some bullet hell bosses and I don't like those, but on easy it was fine.

mxcatmoon posting in

thisfinecrew

There's so many bad things going on requiring our attention that the cuts/firing in the meteorology and climate science communities gets less attention, but having a fully staffed NOAA is an important issue. Right now, there is a 100-hour livestream going on to call attention to how vital these services are, especially as hurricane season is upon us. I have it on in the background right now.

What can we do? Watch the livestream, call our Representatives, and go to 5 Calls for sample script/letters.

Info and schedule: The Weather and Climate Livestream

Direct YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rG4ePBqD-E

kaberett

... include:

six months on from surgery: what's recovery looking like?
this is actually secretly mostly (but not entirely) about Pilates
grousing about getting the Framework actually set up Adequately under Debian (power management noooot doing what I want it to and the GPU seems to keep falling over; have not yet had time/brain to sit down with either the guide to Debian 12 or cross-referencing the way the Linux battery life tuning thread disagrees with the various guides for Ubuntu (which is an officially supported distribution)
What I Am Up To This Week

But everything is Very, so for now you just get the list.

halfcactus posting in

poetry

2 poems from Mary Oliver's Red Bird collection.

Red Bird

Red bird came all winter
firing up the landscape
as nothing else could.

Of course I love the sparrows,
those dun-colored darlings,
so hungry and so many.

I am a God-fearing feeder of birds.
I know He has many children,
not all of them bold in spirit.

Still, for whatever reason—
perhaps, because the winter is so long
and the sky so black-blue

or perhaps because the heart narrows
as often as it opens—
I am grateful

that red bird comes all winter
firing up the landscape
as nothing can do.

Invitation

Oh do you have time
to linger
    for just a little while
       out of your busy

and very important day
for the goldfinches
    that have gathered
       in a field of thistle

for a musical battle,
to see who can sing
    the highest note,
       or the lowest,

or the most expressive of mirth,
or the most tender?
    Their strong, blunt beaks
       drink the air

as they strive
melodiously
    not for your sake
       and not for mine

and not for the sake of winning
but for the sheer delight and gratitude—
    believe us, they say,
       it is a serious thing

just to be alive
on this fresh morning
    in this broken world.
       I beg of you,

do not walk by
without pausing
    to attend to this
       rather ridiculous performance.

It could mean something.
It could mean everything.
    It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:
       You must change your life.

musesfool

I slept through for a full 7 hours last night! right up until my alarm went off, actually, without waking up once!

I also got some fantastic videos of Baby Miss L going nuts about TATOES and BROCCOLI and also some mouse game she plays on my sister's tablet. She is such a character! <333

I haven't started the new season of Poker Face or Andor yet - I am still in HGTV mode. No emotional investment, and it satisfies both my nosiness about other people's houses and my need to be judgy about other people's aesthetic taste without hurting anyone's feelings.

Every time someone says they want to go BOLD with color and their palette is black and white I want to punch them. (I'm not saying black and white can't be a bold choice, just that it's not a bold COLOR choice.) Everyone wants POPS of COLOR but then the color turns out to be greige. I just...find it wearisome sometimes. I get it if you are doing a quick refresh in order to sell, since allegedly neutrals sell better? But these are people supposedly doing their "forever homes" or their "dream homes" so why not pick something interesting? At least a little bit? In the downstairs powder room??? I'm begging you, please!

Ahem.

If you asked me what my preferred home decor aesthetic is, I would say beachy with lots of blues and greens in various shades, and okay, a lot of white, a little gray, and some occasional wood or wicker accents. Definitely would want hardwood floors (or LVP that looked like hardwood). I'd want a large zero-access shower with a built-in bench with some fancy tile, and I wouldn't want to waste space on a tub (or double sinks, since I live alone), but I would like more linen/towel storage.

I would obviously want a large chef's kitchen, with FULL SIZE appliances and a big range - I don't go for that countertop stovetop and wall oven set up, I'd want a bigass stove with six burners - and I certainly wouldn't put it (or the sink) on an island. I'd like a large butcher block work surface and a breakfast nook with an eastern exposure, but don't need a formal dining room or a ginormous island. I do like white upper cabinets, probably with reeded glass doors, and then a color on the lower cabinets - a cobalt blue, maybe, or a deep teal.

The place I might go a little modern/industrial/maybe even avant garde would be in the light fixtures. I have seen some WILD chandeliers and lighting options on these shows and some of them are gorgeous.

Obviously I worked a lot of this out in the time between going into contract on my apartment and finally closing, so I was able to pick stuff out that all kind of went together, because I absolutely understand being a renter for years and not really being able to put your stamp on a place. (all the people who already live in their own houses who have no sense of their own style, though - they kind of baffle me, because didn't they paint/decorate their house? I get maybe not knowing what your architectural style is but these are mainly people in their 30s and older - they should have some sense of what they like, shouldn't they, even if they can't pin it to a specific style?)

Anyway, I don't need people to do their own homes in my preferred style, and some of these homes turn out to be gorgeous, but it would be nice if everyone wasn't doing the same things across several different home renovation shows. I guess HGTV has a bit of a house style? But if you've watched any of it, you can see why Keith and Evan from Bargain Block are my favorites - they actually do a lot of fun different things (or they used to, anyway), where even if it isn't something I'd choose, it still has a strong sense of style.

*

Current Mood: okay
Current Music: Knicks-Pacers on tv

incomplete_ruler posting in

smallfandomfics

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

yui_miyamoto posting in

anime_manga

Fandom : Eyeshield 21 / アイシールド21Author : Yui_Miyamoto
Story Title : Keeper.
Rating : G
Genre(s) : Romance, General
Main Character(s) : Hiruma Youichi, Anezaki Mamori
Summary : After Eyeshield reveals himself, Mamori confronts Hiruma.
MFG…Warning(s) : None.
Disclaimer : Eyeshield 21 isn’t mine and belongs to Inagaki Riichirou and Production I.G.

Livejournal / Fanfiction.net / AO3

vass

(One day early or thirteen days late, depending how you count.)

Books
Finished reading Freya Marske's A Restless Truth. Despite how long it took me to read it, it was a good fantasy romance novel. If it weren't the middle novel in a trilogy with m/m couples for books one and three, I'd be reccing this one to nearly every f/f romance reader I know, actually. As it is, well, that recommendation stands if either you read m/m too or don't mind reading book two of a trilogy as a standalone when it really would work better as book two.

It's not a heist novel, but it pushed some of the same anxiety buttons for me that heist plots do, which is probably at least part of why it took me so long.

A thing I'd like to note: a lot of times when I read f/f romance by an author who mostly writes m/f or m/m, the f/f doesn't ring very convincing to me (same problem with m/f romance authors writing m/m.) This was Freya Marske's second published novel, so I don't know what she "usually" writes, but this did ring convincing. I believed that Violet was bi, and I believed in Maude's lesbian awakening, and I believed in their attraction to each other.

My paper copy of Cameron Reed's The Fortunate Fall arrived in the mail. I read it back in uni (borrowed from the Rowden White Library in the early 2000s) but hadn't owned it until now.

About midway through Jazz Money's how to make a basket, a 2021 book of poems in which Wiradjuri words grow up through the cracks of the English.

Started reading KJ Charles' Death in the Spires. (Waiting for the "in spires" pun to drop.)

Not books but literary analysis: I read Andrea Long Chu's 2022 article Hanya's Boys, on Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life. I haven't read the novel itself, and don't think I want to. And I think Chu is very incisive and good at what she does. But also: wow, mean. Maybe the meanest literary review I've read in I don't know how long. Came away feeling defensive on Yanagihara's behalf as someone who has ever read even one whump fanfic.

Fandom
Prophet:

rydra_wong posted her post-canon 'a word you've never understood'. I don't know that I can recommend it to people who haven't read Prophet (I can recommend they read Prophet and then read Rydra's fic) but if you have read the book and liked it and are someone who reads fanfic then I unreservedly recommend this fic. I've been looking forward to this one since Rydra started writing it (under extremely stressful writing conditions) and I'm so happy she did.

Comics
I cackled out loud (very loudly) at the (nsfw-ish) recent Dumbing of Age strip titled 'Fingering'. And then went "aww" in a sad way at the next page. Joyce and Dorothy are both going through some things, and afaik poor Joe has no idea.

Making
Made another linocut, this one a bookmark-shaped print of stacks of books. It came out nicely: I'm pleased. I like the idea of bookmark-shaped lino printing: it's a manageable size for a project, and produces objects I can use, or that I can give as gifts without worrying about giving clutter.

Tech
Felt the urge to spend some days spending more time changing my laptop's window manager configurations than talking to people. You know how it is. And it does look better than it did before, although somehow I changed the lockscreen without realising I'd done so, which was a bit of a shock when I locked the screen for the first time after that.

It was after I wrote that post (Tuesday last week, I think?) that my laptop's wifi card started disconnecting randomly while I was using it and needing the external wifi/radio switch[*] jiggled to reconnect it. Then it stopped reconnecting and I had a crash course in Linux kernel drivers for WWAN, WLAN, and Bluetooth, what rfkill does, the difference between soft-blocked and hard-blocked wifi, etc.

( cut for length )

Games
More Slay the Spire: still no infinity deck, but I got the 'Ooh, Donut' achievement for killing Donu with a Feed card. So that was satisfying.

Garden
I bought a little (less than one square metre) pop-up greenhouse tent thing, set it up outside, and planted the basil cutting there. A few days later I woke up and found that it was gone. Tent and all.

I have no idea what could cause that. Did I not put the stakes in deep enough? Did some basil-loving animal come into my back yard? ???

Weather
It's finally cold. Cold enough, in fact, that last week I purchased an electric foot warmer for those "oops, my toes are all corpse white" times. I'll keep looking for a less e-wasteful solution, but I'd like to still have toes by the time I come up with it.

Miscellaneous
Last week I had to get a routine blood test. I noticed that there was a case under the exam bed across the room from the chair I was in. I couldn't tell what instrument it was, it was a bit too broad and flat for a trumpet. Banjo, maybe? Ukulele? "Aha," I thought: "an opportunity to make small talk as the humans do!"

When it was my turn in the conversation to provide a line, I asked "What instrument do you play?"
"I actually don't play an instrument," the phlebotomist said. "It's funny that you thought I did..." and then followed my gaze to the case. "Oh! That's not an instrument. A patient gave me that. She was cleaning out and thought I might like it. It's actually an arm. A rubber one, for practising giving injections. She thought I could give it to the company, but they have their own training materials. I'm not sure what I'll do with it. Fancy dress, maybe?"

siria

( ER, Seasons 9-11 )

( The Librarian: Quest for the Spear )

musesfool

The bbq was fun, even if the weather was chilly and rainy. We saw a huge double rainbow after it rained, and one of them was the most vivid and long-lasting rainbow I ever saw. it was pretty amazing.

Baby Miss L had a grand old time her in personal ball pit, and dancing to both the 90s playlist (it was a 90s-themed party) and later to her own favorite Elmo songs. She was really vibing with Pantera and Alice in Chains - that child is going to be in the mosh pit at the club before you know it.

In other news, Alyssa tried the confetti cookies and really liked them. This morning, she texted me like, "this is exactly what they're supposed to taste like!" Anthony and my sister also liked them, so I guess it's just me, but thy were disgustingly sweet to me. *hands* Trish also liked the brownies, so that worked out too! I will definitely have to make the brownies again, so I can taste them. My sister made ice cream cone cupcakes for the party, which I guess she used to make for the kids to take to school for their birthday's back in the day, so there was a nostalgia factor involved. They were good, though I still like my chocolate cupcake recipe best. *g*

Now I'm watching the Mets, though really, I'm listening to the local radio broadcast because good lord the ESPN broadcast is the worst. Simply terrible in all aspects.

*

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Mets vs Dodgers on tv (radio)

kaberett

Reading. ( Bridget Collins, Feather (lalaietha), Jenny Lawson )

Listening. More Hidden Almanac, including First Appearance of Pastor Drom; slightly grumpy with myself for dozing through a chunk of it (to a greater extent than I realised; I did get snippets, but missed more than was apparent at the time) and am steeling myself to relisten.

Cooking. More from East: aubergine katsu curry with pickled radish (meh on my part, but A liked it), roasted carrots and cabbage with gochujang (meh on A's part, but I liked it enough to nibble at it between meals even though I'm unlikely to make it again), asparagus and mangetout with chilli peanut crumb (not actually worth spending in-season asparagus on outside the Cook Everything In This Book project, but pleasing given that context).

Eating. WILD ASPARAGUS is I think the most exciting thing I have eaten this week.

I have been Disappointed by Wagamama. Much less disappointingly, I have been plied with blueberries and yoghurt. Finished the hazel-bay-rye-and-rhubarb cake; have made some progress on the birthday cake I got sent home with.

Exploring. I am currently Away From Home. There are postbox toppers. One of them is Many Round Hedgehogs; another is Sea Creatures including Mollusc. I am sort of curious about who else I might spot in the area.

Making & mending.

Growing. ... I did not get cucumbers started. I did get some more squash into the ground (well, raised beds), and planted out a bunch of tomatoes, and at least two kinds of pea are now flowering, and I will be mildly resentful if I get home and discover all the strawberries have been eaten.

Did I mention that my established rocket remains established? I was a little concerned that I'd buried it under too much manure, and then it showed up in the next bed over.

Observing. BABY WOODPECKER.

siria

The True Purpose of Tables
Doctor Who | Doctor/Rogue | ~1000 words | Missing scene for 15.07. Thanks to

trinityofone for betaing.

(Also on AO3)

( Rogue's doing the right thing. )

schneefink

I've never read "The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System," but the fandom is very into canon divergence and (time travel) fix-it and so am I. At this point I've read so much fic for it that I keep thinking that I probably should read canon – but I have a strong suspicion that I wouldn't like it as much as the fic.

airplane view of the self by

Nonymos
114k, Airplane-centric time travel fix-it
Summary: Airplane Shooting Towards The Sky gets a do-over.
Aha, that first go was pretty traumatic, but surely everything will be much easier this time! Surely the System won't mess it up for him! Right? Right?
Why I love it: I love a good time travel fix-it and I really enjoyed this one, featuring identity crises, mysteries, romance, but most importantly character and relationship development.

pride is not the word I'm looking for by

Tossawary
408k, Airplane-centric canon divergence fix-it
Summary: Shang Qinghua goes to take a self-indulgent peek at his baby protagonist son and gets a kick to the shrivelled heart for his troubles. He gave up on changing the story years ago! Yet he finds himself helping his protagonist son's adoptive mother anyway. Just this one change won't matter too much, right?
One little change leads to more. Shang Qinghua never meant to care, but he becomes invested in making sure that his new family survives the looming plot. With the changes to the world cascading around him, with his position as a traitor pulling him between his sect and a certain ice demon, and with the protagonist growing up so quickly, how is one displaced author meant to ensure that everything turns out all right?
A Pre-Canon to Canon Divergence story.
Why I love it: I love canon divergence stories where you can really follow how small changes snowball and then suddenly everything is different. This one does that very well, and I really enjoyed the ~OC and plot changes.
The author has many other SVSSS stories that I also enjoyed.

I Wish You Were My Husband by

Feynite
110k, SY/LBH harem AU
Summary: AU based on The Dreamer in the Spring Boudoir (familiarity with that story's not required).
Wherein Shen Yuan transmigrates into a harem intrigues romance novel (gay edition), Yue Qingyuan really fucks up, Liu Qingge is not suitable for his job, and no one even remotely sees Luo Binghe coming.
Why I like it: A very tropey harem fic, perfect for when one is in the mood for something like that (and can tolerate a very oblivious protagonist.) Comes with over 500k of extras, sequels/AU/crossovers/etc., that I also enjoyed a lot.

sanguinity

Jashar Awan, Every Monday Mabel (2025)

Children's picture book about Mabel's weekly ritual of getting ready for the breathlessy-awaited, much-longed-for visit of the garbage truck. Mabel's family is indulgent of but largely indifferent to her fannish interest -- but all across the city, other small children are also devoted fans of the garbage truck...

Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House (1959)

It's always odd to come late to a cornerstone of its genre. There are so many elements that were presumably fresh at the time of first publication, but which now ping as much-worn if well-beloved tropes. (In hindsight, it seems pretty clear to me that Stephen King was, directly or indirectly, influenced by Shirley Jackson.) And yet for all that the horror aspects of the story were defanged by my having first encountered them elsewhere, I enjoyed this story immensely. The characters are richly and deftly portrayed, and Nell is already one of my favorite faulty narrators, as her story unfolds into multiple layers of self-invention, misdirection, and supernatural influence. There's a whole bunch of chewy stuff here about why and how Nell in particular was targeted by the house, and especially the house's offer of home and belonging while simultaneously guaranteeing she would never know the same.

Note to

garonne, who asked elsewhere if Theodora is canonically queer in the original English: yes, she is. It's discreet (e.g., the text refers to Dora's "friend" instead of her "girlfriend"), but for anyone who is familiar with the coded language that used to predominate for queer relationships, the implication that she's a lesbian is unambiguous.

Lois McMaster Bujold, Komarr (1998)

Read-aloud with

grrlpup; first-read for her and re-read for me.

I remember being underwhelmed with this one the first time through, and it's true, all the stuff with Tien is just... awful. (It's not bad writing! The character is just numblingly sloggingly awful, exactly as he's meant to be. I appreciate the depiction of the dynamics of getting caught in an awful marriage, but that doesn't make the experience of reading about him any more pleasant.) Sadly, even after he exits the book, he still haunts the narrative. But I do love Ekaterin, and the Vorthyses, and a bunch of minor characters -- the two accountants, while getting only a half-dozen pages each, were great favorites of Grrlpup. And the climax is glorious; Miles is correct to be smitten with Ekaterin.

( politics of occupation )

angry_asian_man_feed

Posted by Unknown

http://blog.angryasianman.com/2025/05/they-call-us-strangers-in-land.html

Jeff Yang and Phil Yu present an unfiltered conversation about what's happening in Asian America.

What's up, podcast listeners? We've got another episode of our podcast They Call Us Bruce. (Almost) each week, my good friend, writer/columnist Jeff Yang and I host an unfiltered conversation about what's happening in Asian America, with a strong focus on media, entertainment and popular culture.

In this episode, we welcome Michael Luo, executive editor at The New Yorker and author of the book Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America, an epic narrative history of the Chinese in America, and their more than century-long struggle to belong in the face of bigotry, persecution, exclusion and racial terror. Michael talks about the real-life racist incident that partially inspired the project; the complexities and quirks of Chinese American immigration history; some of the fascinating stories and characters he uncovered during his extensive research for Strangers in the Land; and the alarming parallel connections between past and current debates on immigration, citizenship, and our multiracial democracy.

Read more »

http://blog.angryasianman.com/2025/05/they-call-us-strangers-in-land.html

angry_asian_man_feed

Posted by Unknown

http://blog.angryasianman.com/2025/05/they-call-us-sinners.html

Jeff Yang and Phil Yu present an unfiltered conversation about what's happening in Asian America.

What's up, podcast listeners? We've got another episode of our podcast They Call Us Bruce. (Almost) each week, my good friend, writer/columnist Jeff Yang and I host an unfiltered conversation about what's happening in Asian America, with a strong focus on media, entertainment and popular culture.

In this episode, we welcome Dolly Li, documentary filmmaker, journalist and cultural consultant on Ryan Coogler's epic vampire blockbuster Sinners. We discuss Dolly's documentary on The Untold Story of America's Southern Chinese, and the deep-rooted origins of the Mississippi Delta's Chinese American community; how Ryan Coogler's own family connection to the Delta Chinese inspired the Chinese characters in Sinners; and how Dolly worked with the filmmakers to make the movie historically accurate and authentic as possible -- right down to that one horny line of Chinese dialogue. And of course, we offer our own hot takes on Sinners.

Read more »

http://blog.angryasianman.com/2025/05/they-call-us-sinners.html

tielan

There's no room for in it for my brain, no space in my schedule for watching, no community to drag me along with them.

And also, I've become resigned to the fact that I will never get stories about the characters that I want. That my interests are not anywhere near the interests of the majority of viewers, and because what counts is eyeballs (or reader pages, or whatever) then the characters I love - or the archetypes I want to see - are not going to appeal to most people.

It's a little demoralising, and makes it hard to write.

Not to mention the state of the world is steadily wearing on us all. Not just the AI (fuck AI) but also the world and all it's harms. All the hopeful stories I had for analogues and spin-offs of our world are presently crumbling while watching Ukraine, Gaza, the authority of the current US Administration, the right-wingers, Christian Nationalism - not to mention all the tech issues.

*sigh*

I can't remember if it was John Green or someone else (might have been Hank Green) who said during the 2020 election process that he was hesitating over starting a new book, because a 2nd Trump administration would create a very different world to one in which 45 only managed one administration. He was, as it turns out, exceedingly prescient on that front.

kaberett

Analogy of the day: car reversing sensors. Warn of impending, potential tissue damage, as distinct from actual tissue damage. Sometimes panic about A Plant, or The Bike Rack. Sometimes totally fail to miss the six-inch tall bollard that makes things go crunch in a way you don't notice until later.

Book purchase of the day: The Painful Truth, Monty Lyman, recced by a friend as popsci/popmed and one I'd nearly wound up buying yesterday anyway (... and a National Trust baking book to go with it).

Book purchase of the tomorrow, probably: Fitzgerald's Clinical Neuroanatomy and Neuroscience 7^th ed (2015), recommended via a NYU med student reading list (Cambridge's all appear to be paywalled and I'm sulking).

Links for further perusal: introductions to the nervous system on Biology LibreTexts and Health LibreTexts.

Reorganisation: possibly I am going to want to rewrite the introduction again (though the words do keep being useful), but crucially while murbling at A I think I have concluded that actually the reason the structure doesn't make sense is that neuroanatomy doesn't want to be the middle section, it wants to be an appendix. But I'll want to, er, know slightly more neuroanatomy before actually settling on that...

musesfool

I'm so tired of people blowing their deadlines and making it my problem. But at the super last minute, it did finally come together so I was able to log off at 3 pm (it's the first Summer Friday of 2025, and we get to sign off at 2:30 until Labor Day).

My sister is having a birthday bbq tomorrow for my oldest and youngest nieces, who share a birthday, and one requested Smitten Kitchen confetti cookies (even though I told her I found them too sweet) and the other requested brownies (which is why I asked about brownie recipes yesterday - I don't make them often anymore so I don't have a go-to recipe). I couldn't lay hands on dutched cocoa for love or money today, but it turns out that the King Arthur "triple cocoa" or whatever it's called, works in recipes calling for dutched cocoa, and I have that. *hands* But like, nobody even has Hershey's special dark! I was surprised by that. Anyway I ended up making these King Arthur Fudge Brownies and they smell fantastic, though next time I will probably try the microwave to melt the butter instead of doing it on the stove - I did it in a pot on the stove and even on low heat, it got so hot that I had to wait like 30 minutes for it to cool to the temperature required by the recipe (110° - 120°F), so it took a lot longer than I planned for. Other than that, the recipe is really easy. I guess because you beat the cocoa into the eggs, you don't have to worry about the hot butter/sugar mixture scrambling them (you laugh, but that happened to me once with the old mascarpone brownies recipe when I added the melted butter!).

I hope they both enjoy them!

I also bought a banana squishmallow for Baby Miss L, because her response to them has been A++ hilarious every time.

Hopefully the weather tomorrow cooperates. It has rained here so much. Today it rained all morning and then the sun came out late in the afternoon, and then...it poured while the sun was out for a while, and the temperature has lingered in the low 60s. I mean, I'll take the cooler temps for sure, especially at night, but I'm really tired of the rain.

In other news, last night I fell asleep on the couch when I was trying to read, so when I woke up, I decided to just go to bed, and for once, couch sleepy did translate to bed sleepy and I ended up sleeping for almost 10 hours last night! It was glorious! But I don't think I can realistically make myself go to bed at 10:15 every night. *glances at clock* I mean...¯\_(ツ)_/¯

*

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Mets vs Dodgers on tv

Profile

just another fork-tongued dragon lady

November 2022

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Page Summary

bethbethbeth - The Sixth of the Recced Book Reviews: Rules for Ghosting
schneefink - Food and games
mxcatmoon in thisfinecrew - Weather and Climate Livestream
kaberett - things I wish to consolidate the cope to talk about
halfcactus in poetry - Mary Oliver: "Red Bird", "Invitation"
musesfool - what a find by O. G.
incomplete_ruler in smallfandomfics - Fic: something precious to hold onto (Paradox Live) [PG]
yui_miyamoto in anime_manga - fic - [Eyeshield 21 / アイシールド21] Keeper. (g, one-shot)
vass - Things
siria - 2506 / ER, Seasons 9-11; The Librarian: Quest for the Spear
musesfool - at the knees with a cutter
kaberett - vital functions
siria - 2505 / Fic - Doctor Who
schneefink - May recs: 3 long SVSSS fics
sanguinity - Recent Reading
angry_asian_man_feed - They Call Us Strangers in the Land
angry_asian_man_feed - They Call Us Sinners
tielan - I don't have the space for fandom anymore
kaberett - [pain] notes
musesfool - makes the one-hand catch

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Page generated May. 30th, 2025 08:30 am

then there are blackbirds

in a heaven of blackbirds

Reading

The Sixth of the Recced Book Reviews: Rules for Ghosting

Food and games

Weather and Climate Livestream

things I wish to consolidate the cope to talk about

Mary Oliver: "Red Bird", "Invitation"

what a find by O. G.

Fic: something precious to hold onto (Paradox Live) [PG]

fic - [Eyeshield 21 / アイシールド21] Keeper. (g, one-shot)

Things

2506 / ER, Seasons 9-11; The Librarian: Quest for the Spear

at the knees with a cutter

vital functions

2505 / Fic - Doctor Who

May recs: 3 long SVSSS fics

Recent Reading

They Call Us Strangers in the Land

They Call Us Sinners

I don't have the space for fandom anymore

[pain] notes

makes the one-hand catch

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November 2022

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