beanside: Papa Perpetua V from Ghost (Default)
[personal profile] beanside
It's Sunday and I actually managed to stay in bed until 6:45! For me that's a lazy morning!

Yesterday, I knew we were going out for lunch, but we were planning on Mexican. Instead, as frequently happens, my ADHD brain derailed that. Inevitably on the day of, I'm like "But wait, what if this instead?" It drives Jess insane. I was idly flipping through social media and one of my acquaintances on facebook was somewhere overseas, having High Tea at a hotel. Her pictures of the food were amazing and I was like "I wonder if there's any new teahouses near us?" And it turns out there's a very highly rated one just over the state line, called the Tea Trolley in Delta, PA. Not more than a 45 minute drive. I mentioned this to Jess in my best "I'm sorry I'm a pain in the ass" way, and they were intrigued. So we went for a drive.

It was a pretty pleasant drive and didn't tweak my carsickness like the trip to the winery did, so that was good. We had a little bit of trouble finding it, mostly owing to google not being the most clear, but we figured it out, and pulled in behind an enormous Victorian mansion. They had a ramp at the back, but we went in the front way, and came up the front stairs. As per usual, we'd gotten there super early, so we had a little while to wait, browsing the gift shop. Before too long, our adorable waiter took us to our seats. We were upstairs, which was fine, since the downstairs rooms were packed. The room was wallpapered in burgundy, and the seats were pretty but sturdy, which I as a fat girl very much appreciated. The table set up was very delicate, with fine china, and a dainty floral tablecloth.

I ended up getting the Almond Cookie tea, which is almond, cinnamon and black tea. They brought up this enormous pot of it--had to be at least 1.5 quarts. I know I had five (admittedly dainty) cups of tea, and it still had more to give. The taste was amazing. I plopped a sugar cube in and it tasted so good. I ended up buying a bag of it to take home.

We orded the Full Tea and added soup and salad for $3 each. This brought our total up to a reasonable $31/pp, which still seems a bit on the cheap side. I kind of expect that it's going to be closer to $50. While we were sitting, we saw a couple of the salads go past, and then the soup was cream of crab, so we figured why not?

The salad came first. It was a spinach salad with strawberries, bacon dressign and topped with feta cheese. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Simple, but very tasty. Next up was the soup, which was amazing. Probably some of hte best cream of crab I've ever had. It had just enough Old Bay to give a little burn, and the broth was so creamy with chunks of crab in it.

Then, the tower came. The bottom tier had the savories, which included a cucumber sandwich, a curried chicken salad with radish and mango (Jess ate both of those due to mango allergy.), and a phyllo cup with spinach dip, and then leek bacon mini quiche. (I ate both of those due to Jess' egg squick.) They were amazing. I could have eaten many, many more of them. Then it was up to the sweets, which were a lemon bar, which was okay, but I don't like lemon in my desserts. Jess gave it a thumbs up. There was a tiny pineapple upside down cake which was very tasty. And then there was a peanut butter chocolate cookie dunked in white chocolate and peanut butter, with a sweet peanut butter drizzle. SO good. Rich as hell, so I only ate half, not because I didn't want to. I just also wanted to try the scone.

The scone was a raspberry white chocolate, and was very good. Crispy on the outside, tender on the in, lightly dusted with powdered sugar and with the appropriate accompaniments of clotted cream, lemon curd and a lovely strawberry compote.

All in all, it was a wonderful time, totally worth the 45 minute drive.

Later, I went to the weed store for my sleepy pills. I'm hating the idea that I can't take them to Alaska. There's going to be some tough sleep nights, I think.

After that, I was starting with a migraine, so I went to bed early and napped. It wasnt' a great nap, as I had some nightmares, where I was rude and kind of an asshole to Jess, so I woke up feeling guilty about stuff I did in a dream.

I was wide awake at bedtime, but I put on a video on youtube about Hawaii and soon settled down for a long winter's nap.

Today, I shall write a little set up for our little RP today. I'm looking forward to meeting the new characters, and as long as roll20 behaves while we set up the other players character sheet, we'll have a lot of fun.

I'm going to offer to the other two players that if they want to roleplay anything prior to the game as far as set up, we can definitely do that. We have no games on Sunday next week, so I could sneak in a couple of quick sessions.

After that, I'm going to figure out what to do for dinner, and maybe make the puppy more food. The goat meat and butternut squash was a resounding success, so I'd like to make him more of that. I might also make another chicken, since all either of them need to do is simmer for a couple of hours. I also have ground goat meat that I could fry up with vegetables and make a less wet food. Not sure what starch to put in there. maybe a little bit of quinoa.

Tomorrow, it's back to work for another busy day. I should get more info on when I'm shadowing the dumpster fire after they talk to her. I'm assuming it'll be later in the week, as they need me on the phones on Monday and Tuesday.

At some point this week, I need to do my cologuard screening and maybe my at home pap smear. The joys of aging.

Okay, time to go forth and finish writing the intro for todays session. Everyone have a wonderful Sunday!
[syndicated profile] wrongquestions_feed

Posted by Abigail Nussbaum

Reviewing every installment in a series is a rare accomplishment, even for a prolific critic. Reviewing every installment in a series by Adrian Tchaikovsy, who routinely publishes multiple novels and novellas every year, is surely an accomplishment worthy of note. Few series, however, reward this sort of sustained engagement as much as Tchaikovsky's Tyrant Philosphers series, which I strongly
vriddy: Sakura from Wind Breaker pointing at himself (me?)
[personal profile] vriddy
Now complete!


Acting on instinct | Wind Breaker | Sakura/Nirei/Suou/Kiryuu/Tsugeura | 5.3k words | rated T

Summary: Something shifted for them all in that moment at Kiryuu's house. They all felt it. But Kiryuu was missing for it, so they can't do anything about it.

Not yet.


Read it on Dreamwidth or on AO3.

Food Diary: NYC Spring 2026

Mar. 28th, 2026 11:06 pm
yuerstruly: (doyoung)
[personal profile] yuerstruly

Welcome to my post where I cover literally every single order of food I had during my week-long stay in NYC :)

photos on tumblr

everything goes under the cut because i yapped too hard )

Did my tiny bit

Mar. 28th, 2026 10:00 pm
lauradi7dw: (abolish ICE)
[personal profile] lauradi7dw


Self-referential with multiple meanings, I guess. The actual ice sculpture lasted better than it might have, because it was only in the 30s F. Most of the posters used the F word instead of the tasteful End used here.
I had originally wondered if I could do five activities outside the house today, but both ringing practice and pungmul practice were cancelled, for different reasons. I went to most of Tai Chi, then went home, peed, had a snack, put on extra layers, and went to the Lexington Center No Kings gathering, getting there quite late. There was no real pro-Trump counter protest except for one pickup truck with what looked like teenage boys, who were yelling out the windows and flying a banner with Trump's photo and the words "Do you miss me?" printed on it. I just looked it up, and it's something he said at CPAC in the past. I kept thinking of
Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks



I then walked across the street to the bus stop and took the 62 to Alewife, thence to the Boston Common (with a stop by the Charles Street Hardware store and the CVS on the way from the Red line stop) for a couple of hours there. I left before the Drop Kick Murphys played, but on my way to Park Street station I joined the crowd that was listening in admiration to a large (possibly composite?) Honk-style band.
I visited all the booths that organizations were populating. Two of them had "spin the wheel" activities. There weren't prizes - whatever you landed on was the action you were supposed to do today. In my case, I skipped it. The person minding the wheel was about to explain to me how to check my voter registration (what the wheel stopped on) but I voted less than a month ago, so I'm good. I took a photo. I could try to make myself do an action a day without the cheap thrill of landing on it.
Did I stop the war or stop ICE? I don't think so. I was reminded that there are oodles of people my age out there. I don't really forget that, being part of the Boom and all, but there was a lot of gray hair in both crowds.

Book review: Glorious Exploits

Mar. 28th, 2026 06:55 pm
rocky41_7: (Default)
[personal profile] rocky41_7 posting in [community profile] booknook
Title: Glorious Exploits
Author: Ferdia Lennon
Genre: Historical fiction

Hello friends ヾ(•ω•`)o I feel like it's been a while! Today I finished Glorious Exploits by Irish author Ferdia Lennon. It turned out to be the perfect book to read after finishing my lectures on the Greek and Persian wars, because it takes place in Syracuse during the Peloponnesian War (I caught that reference to the Athenian silver mines!)

The book is written in a contemporary Irish dialect, which put a lot of reviewers off. However, I think it works well for making the language accessible and readable to a modern audience in the sense that reading it, we can immediately tell who is likely educated, who is not, who is being casual, who is being disingenuous, etc. As long as you're prepared for it, I don't think it causes much disruption.

The audiobook is narrated by the author himself, which was fun. It's always great to hear an author's own take on their work. For instance, the way Lampo says "good morning," both to the Spartan guards and the Athenian prisoners of war at the start of the book. This could have been a nothing exchange, but the obnoxious way Lennon says that "good morning" tells us almost right away that Lampo is a guy who delights in being a thorn in others' sides and a guy who thinks he's hilarious

The plot of the story is simple: Gelon, Lampo's childhood best friend, decides they're going to put on a Euripides play with the Athenian prisoners, because the Athenians are the only ones who know enough of the script to pull it off. 

That's all. The story moves at a leisurely pace, with Lampo and Gelon working through various technical snags in this plan and trying to garner support in Syracuse for the idea (there's not much). 

I think Lennon excels at showing characters who are sometimes disappointingly realistic. Gelon and Lampo are not heroes. They are not conscientious objectors to the war. They are not activists against the obvious abuse the Athenian prisoners of war are going through. They're just two poor dudes put out of work by the war, who sort of maybe kind of thing it's not the greatest thing in the world for the Athenians to be tortured or starved to death and possibly someone might want to do something about that, at some point. 

Similarly, the Athenians were undoubtedly the aggressors in the war. They invaded Sicily, they burned other villages on the island to the ground, they fully intended to conquer Syracuse. They allegedly killed Syracusans who had already surrendered. But the book asks, when is enough enough? When have they been punished enough? When have the Syracusans gone from victims seeking justice to perpetrators seeking vengeance? 

Lampo himself, the main protagonist, is a prime mixed bag. His humorous nature makes him come off a bit harmless, but he can be wildly insensitive, even mean, even to people he likes. He can swing rapidly from mood to mood. He's often focused on himself and his insecurities can make him lash out or give up too easily. And yet, it's Lampo, not Gelon, who has the first confrontation with Bitton, a man who roams the quarries beating Athenian prisoners of war to death at random to soothe his grief for his son who died in the war. It's Lampo who inserts himself between Bitton and some Athenian strangers to try to talk the man down. And it's Lampo who urges action at the secondary climax, Lampo who sets that entire plot point in motion when no one else in Syracuse seems to give a shit.

In a way that feels characteristic of Irish tales, Glorious Exploits does not shy away from the gross, unglamorous reality of its story and its characters. It doesn't try to dress anyone up in shining armor or sacrifice the dull reality for a romantic sheen. Yet in the muck and the mire, a shocking gleam of poetry emerges. The play starts off as a lark for Lampo, a silly, ridiculous thing he's doing to humor his melancholy friend, but gradually, it becomes important. And as it becomes important to him, it becomes important to the reader. The plot is slow, and a reader may find themselves wondering why they're bothering with all this--but for me, the later two climaxes of the book hit like gut punches.

I'm still chewing this one over, but I enjoyed it and I would read more from this author. It's not a story that will shock and wow you upfront, but the heart of it really hits if you stick with it.
yourlibrarian: MMMC Icon Yellow (OTH-MMMC Icon Yellow - yourlibrarian)
[personal profile] yourlibrarian posting in [community profile] marchmetamatterschallenge
March Meta Matters Challenge banner by thenewbuzzwuzz


Hello everyone! It's our last check-in before our wrap up post on April 1.

Comment below with any of the following:

1) What tags have you found yourself using the most often?

2) Did you write new meta based on the last post's prompt? Share it here!

Remember, if you post to AO3 or Squidgeworld, don't forget to use the Nonfiction tag to identify your posts, and add them to the March Meta Matters Challenge collection!

Challenge 36:Copious colours

Mar. 28th, 2026 06:08 pm
abyss_valkyrie: made by <user name=magicrubbish> (Default)
[personal profile] abyss_valkyrie posting in [community profile] screen_icons
 
Nutcracker & the four realms, Paddington in Peru, Cleopatra, Rio, Catwoman

https://i.imgur.com/sgocxLp.png
https://i.imgur.com/8RN9Egu.png
https://i.imgur.com/loKrJl2.png
https://i.imgur.com/d2NbQkm.png
https://i.imgur.com/2UteRQh.png
snickfic: b/w still of Grace Le Domas in her wedding dress (Grace Ready or Not)
[personal profile] snickfic
In which I review two movies with main characters named Grace.

Ready or Not 2 (2026). Immediately after the events of the first movie, Grace is kidnapped, handcuffed to her estranged sister, and put into a new hide and seek game against the heads of all her in-laws' fellow rich devil worshippers.

This was a great time. It's not as tightly written as the first, and I have some quibbles, but Samara Weaving is once again and absolute delight, and the cast of rich assholes was a lot of fun, even if they couldn't bounce off each other quite as well as in the first movie because they're not all related to her. I adored Sarah Michelle Geller as Ursula, one of a pair of twins who take the field together, and one of my biggest regrets is that we didn't get more of her and Grace interacting directly. Even with the little we have, I ship it really hard.

I also enjoyed how the movie managed to take multiple key themes and plot points from the first movie and put new spins on them, and I enjoyed the expansion of the lore.

I wasn't totally sold on the sister relationship. I didn't have a problem with the estrangement part or how that got used to retcon in a family member for Grace, but I wanted their history to be a lot messier. "I didn't take you with me when I moved out at age 18 because I didn't think I could take care of you" vs "You abandoned me" just isn't that interesting a conflict to me, you know? Nor does it offer much room for interesting resolution. I've seen people say they found the movie very shippy for sistercest, but I'm not really into it, unfortunately, because they just weren't fucked up enough for me.

Also, this movie was straight to a distracting degree. spoilers )

So: overall not quite as charming as the first, but still very fun.

--

Project Hail Mary (2026). Ryan Gosling stars as xeniobiologist turned middle school science teacher Ryland Grace, who gets recruited for an interstellar mission to try to save the sun from getting eaten by space microbes.

Gosling is the only human being on screen for about 80% of the movie, and he carries the movie so effortlessly that I was genuinely surprised to realize that this movie is by far his most financially successful leading role. He's been getting lead roles for 20+ years, so it feels like oh yeah, of course he's an A-lister, but actually I think this is the movie that is going to cement that for him. And good for him!

The other main character is the rock alien, who is primarily a puppet augmented with animatronics and CG. I wish I'd realized going in that he was mostly practical, because I'd have paid more attention. The sets are also fully practical, and I read somewhere that there is zero green screen work; when Grace is doing his spacewalks and so in, Gosling was being filmed against matt paintings that were touched up later. And you can feel it! This is a megabudget SFF movie that was nonetheless made with love.

There are some other characters in the flashbacks, but the only one I cared about was the administrator of the mission played by Sandra Huller, whom I absolutely loved. She brings such gravitas that it felt like she was in some other movie entirely. I looked her up, and it turns out she starred in that movie Anatomy of a Fall from a few years ago, which I definitely need to see now.

The story itself is really linear, even taking into account the flashbacks in the early part of the movie. There aren't really any surprises here; you'll get the movie you saw in the trailer. I enjoyed all the montages of Grace Doing Science, which I gather is the novel author Andy Weir's big strength. The ending stutters a bit, in the sense that there were about three in a row and it wasn't clear which one was the actual end, and I have some worldbuilding/plot questions about how things shook out, which I assume Weir answered them at length in the novel.

It didn't blow my mind like it seems to have blown a lot people's, but I had a good time. If you're in the mood for a space adventure, especially one with a lot of practical filmmaking, you should check it out.

2604 / The Pitt, 2.12; Ready or Not 2

Mar. 28th, 2026 04:03 pm
siria: (the pitt - robby swag)
[personal profile] siria
I realised the other day that next month, Eldest Niece will turn thirteen. She'll be a teenager. What is time?

The Pitt, 2.12, 6:00P.M. )

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come )

[ SECRET POST #7022 ]

Mar. 28th, 2026 01:51 pm
case: (Default)
[personal profile] case posting in [community profile] fandomsecrets

⌈ Secret Post #7022 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


01.



More! )


Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 35 secrets from Secret Submission Post #1003.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

[ SECRET SUBMISSIONS POST #1004 ]

Mar. 28th, 2026 01:46 pm
case: (Default)
[personal profile] case posting in [community profile] fandomsecrets
[ SECRET SUBMISSIONS POST #1004 ]




The first secret from this batch will be posted on April 4th.



RULES:
1. One secret link per comment.
2. 750x750 px or smaller.
3. Link directly to the image.

More details on how to send a secret in!

Optional: If you would like your secret's fandom to be noted in the main post along with the secret itself, please put it in the comment along with your secret. If your secret makes the fandom obvious, there's no need to do this. If your fandom is obscure, you should probably tell me what it is.

Optional #2: If you would like WARNINGS (such as spoilers or common triggers -- list of some common ones here) to be noted in the main post before the secret itself, please put it in the comment along with your secret.

Optional #3: If you would like a transcript to be posted along with your secret, put it along with the link in the comment!

glitteryv: (Default)
[personal profile] glitteryv posting in [community profile] fanart_recs
Fandom: BTS
Characters/Pairing/Other Subject: SUGA, Jimin, RM, j-hope, Jungkook, V, and Jin
Content Notes/Warnings: N/A
Medium: Digital art
Artist on DW/LJ: N/A
Artist Website/Gallery: [twitter.com profile] mintdr_eam | [instagram.com profile] mmintdr_eam
Why this piece is awesome: Seeing all 7 members wearing Songzio designs for their comeback concert is already greatness. What made these two fanarts worth reccing is how the artist shows the fits' flowy aspects so well. Also extra!kudos for making sure that j-hope's knee tattoos are present as well, heheh.

Link: 🐱🐥🐨🐿️ and 🐰🐹🐻
goss: Bert - show and tell (Bert - show and tell)
[personal profile] goss
Via [personal profile] gingicat:
If you were friends with Rubynye also known as [personal profile] minoanmiss, meravhoffman on Tumblr is collecting photos of her, and of her art and care packages that she sent out, to be part of the Virtual Memorial slide show:

https://www.tumblr.com/meravhoffman/812201183122014208/if-you-were-friends-with-rubynye-also-known-as

(Virtual Memorial takes place on April 12, at 1pm EDT (GMT -4) at a Zoom link TBD)

---

I have received so many lovely postcards from MM over the years, tucked into little corners around my house, and also little homemade Xmas tree ornaments. ♥

Will spend some time this weekend hunting them down, and taking a couple photos to send for the memorial slideshow.

I think it would be nice to include something to signify the destination, just to show how far and wide her kindness traveled. Maybe a flag or flower or something like that. ^__^

(My collection of links and announcements regarding MM can be found here.)

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