Chip (crisp) tasting

Mar. 27th, 2026 08:03 pm
fred_mouse: Ratatouille still: cooking rat (cooking)
[personal profile] fred_mouse

New-to-me flavour of chips: Thins Potato Chips Margherita Pizza.

Soooo tasty. Strong on the fake cheese, light on the tomato, reasonable on the basil / other herbs.

(brought home by Youngest from a picnic. This might be a short term variant).

Driveby check-in

Mar. 25th, 2026 09:34 pm
catherineldf: (Default)
[personal profile] catherineldf
2026 so far:
  • Massively sick twice with colds that lingered for weeks (still recovering from the last one)
  • Had to put my beloved boy kitty, Shu, to sleep last week (he had a good passing, but it was hard on me). His sister, Ma'at, and I are trying to adapt to new normal.
  • My friend and former editor Lee Martindale passed away and I've been trying to support her widower. Next up: drafting her obit.
  • My city got invaded and two people were murdered by ICE within two miles of my house (I already live 4 blocks from what is now George Floyd Square). We're still dealing with all the after effects, trauma, financial disasters, etc. It's been...a lot.
  • I started a new job at DreamHaven Books in Minneapolis just in time for owner Greg Ketter to get teargassed and turn into a folk hero.
  • I came into some money through Jana's dad's estate.
  • Co-taught a good class at the Loft Literary Center.
  • Got sick with the aforementioned cold during MarsCon.
  • Have gotten Joyce Chng's terrific queer pirate collection, Sailing the Golden Chersonese, into preorder status for release next month.
  • Did sundry fun things like an escape room expedition with the steampunk club, hung out with friends, saw plays and watched some entertaining TV.
  • Worked on submissions for Queen of Swords.
  • Campaigned hard for the Astreiant Series created by Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett to be nominated for Best Series Hugo (please - Point of Hearts is the qualifying title!)
  • Wrote and got an article accepted for Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein. I wrote about a Margaret St. Clair story that is a fascinating historical artifact. And problematic af.
  • Got through Part Two and half of Part Three, so far, of my Data Analytics Certification program.
  • Wrote some thousands of words of new fiction, about which more soon.
  • I turn 63 on Monday, which is kind of wild.
More detail later after I get some sleep.

minimal update

Mar. 25th, 2026 09:14 pm
fred_mouse: line drawing of sheep coloured in queer flag colours with dream bubble reading 'dreamwidth' (Default)
[personal profile] fred_mouse

I'm a week post radiation; I'm still very red, and I have some raw patches in my armpit / outer edge of the breast. I assume this is mostly because I did not do the same prevention there, because I did not realise I needed to.

This means I am doing a lot of going topless; it is fortunately still warm enough to be doing that (although it is down to 22°C at the moment, and even with the door shut I'm a tad cold). I ran out of the ointment the hospital gave me, then the healing gel i was using, and the replacement [personal profile] artisanat found isn't as good.

I have found a couple more books to fit the reading for the fiction part of my project, so I'm going gung ho on that. Am a little frustrated that I keep finding books from the USA, rather than anywhere else.

I have not been keeping up with DW. I've just opened about 20 posts and I think I'm going to end up closing them having skimmed. I have, instead, fallen face first into Heated Rivalry fandom, and very much appreciate [personal profile] chaosmanor sharing their sources for fic. (I have not seen the show, nor read the books. This is unlikely to change. Youngest has been reporting back on the show).

Catherine Update

Mar. 15th, 2026 04:23 pm
catherineldf: (Default)
[personal profile] catherineldf
Where have I been? If you guessed down with another terrible cold, one that made the last one look like a walk in the park, you win! I starting getting sick on Friday and had to skip my panel, then lost my voice on Saturday during MarsCon so I skipped my morning panel and had to whiteboard it with the aid of Michael and Matt for the afternoon one. After that, I has just completely down so we packed up and I stayed home on Sunday. And I coughed and I coughed and I coughed and I did not sleep or talk very much at all for 4 days. Greg was kind enough to let me work from home on DreamHaven stuff so at least I'm not wildly behind on that. Everything else is another story. But in the middle of it all, a good friend died and hey, we put a spiffy new book up for preorder.

On the good side, we are planning on releasing Joyce Chng's mini-collection of queer pirate tales, Sailing the Golden Chersonese, on 4/9! It features beautiful artwork by Dhiyanah Hassan, gorgeous interior design by Terry Roy and lyrical prose by Joyce - who could ask for more! because 2026 is what it is, we have been beset by illness and delays so the print edition may come out a few days after the ebook one, but we are in progress. We will have review arcs for reviewers in the next couple of days so please let me know if you would like one. Preorders are love!

Also: so are award nominations. As I have mentioned a time or two, Queen of Swords Press released new editions of the Astreiant Series by Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett and, because the latest new volume, Point of Hearts, came out in 2025, the series is eligible for the Best Series Hugo. It is not uncommon for books and people to make it on the ballot (and sometimes, win!) by only a handful of votes. Queen of Swords Press is my beloved little postage stamp-sized press - getting this series on the ballot would be HUGE for us! Plus, Melissa hasn't been on the ballot since she won the Campbell for her first novel, despite years of writing terrific sf and f. If you were a member of Seattle Worldcon or a voting member of LA Con, you can nominate! I know the series has a few votes already so please consider putting us over the top to make the ballot!

And I am out of steam and still need to work on a deadline piece. Friend's obit tomorrow. After I call the vet and get a rainbow Bridge appointment set up for Shu. 2026: the gift that keeps on giving.

mark: A photo of Mark kneeling on top of the Taal Volcano in the Philippines. It was a long hike. (Default)
[staff profile] mark posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance

Happy Saturday!

I'm going to be doing a little maintenance today. It will likely cause a tiny interruption of service (specifically for www.dreamwidth.org) on the order of 2-3 minutes while some settings propagate. If you're on a journal page, that should still work throughout!

If it doesn't work, the rollback plan is pretty quick, I'm just toggling a setting on how traffic gets to the site. I'll update this post if something goes wrong, but don't anticipate any interruption to be longer than 10 minutes even in a rollback situation.

life lived in dot points

Mar. 14th, 2026 05:18 pm
fred_mouse: line drawing of sheep coloured in queer flag colours with dream bubble reading 'dreamwidth' (Default)
[personal profile] fred_mouse
  • two more radiation treatments to go; I have a mild (and itchy) looks-like-sunburn across a roughly 20cm square running between my armpit and my midline
  • the new medication I'm supposed to start after radiation is back ordered until May. need to contact the specialist on monday
  • general body health alternating between 'ow' and 'fatigue'. but i'm getting some stuff done
  • mental health - struggling with the cognitive load of daily treatments, but mostly chill.
  • i have started the 'reading fiction' part of my project; the first book has a lot of details, but suffers from coming out in 2020 and thus is showing a lot of the pre chatgpt tropes surrounding AI
  • I am knitting a tiny fifth doctor scarf as a decorative item; it is getting less and less accurate to the pattern as I go on. I only have six of the seven colours....
  • reading? not much.
  • walking home from the hospital? did it the once. have not had the spoons since. have been using the cane more than some.
  • other exercise? bugger all.
  • garden: birds have eaten all but one pomegranate. hoping that one gets ripe enough. guava are ~2cm across; I thought i had done a good job of thinning, but nope. have not thinned the feijoa even that much so argh.
  • family: youngest has a job contract signed; to be starting in ?august.

Profile

jolantru: (Default)
jolantru

June 2023

S M T W T F S
    123
45678910
11121314151617
18 192021222324
252627282930 

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Mar. 28th, 2026 12:20 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios