nuggan | Member Posts

Today I have got Somewhat Caught Up on last event's lost property Situation. My GREAT TRIUMPH was, partway through the paperwork, going "... I'm sure that brooch in particular is... Oddly... Familiar..."

-- and indeed upon going back through my records it transpires that I HAD RETURNED IT TO ITS PERSON AT THE FIRST EVENT THIS YEAR.

So my spreadsheet is duly updated and they can have it back again at the last event of the year :)

(Some other victories: cut-price overripe strawberries. More of my mother's birthday cake. Rye and caraway and poppyseed bread. the elderly niter kibbeh in the fridge still being Definitely Food and substantially enlivening dinner. Shitposting in the PD crew Discord. Starting Solutions and Other Problems with A, and the cake, and the strawberries.)

azurelunatic

Suspension of disbelief = I will not start verbally poking holes in the physics of this action movie until we are out of the movie theater

Suspension in disbelief = a frozen state of constant WTF

kaberett

I did not, until a few hours ago, know that diesel was named after Rudolf Diesel, "... who invented the Diesel engine, which burns Diesel fuel".

(Some cheerful things, in brief: turns out shimmer inks really do work better when you thoroughly scrub the feed of your fountain pen clean at least occasionally; I am excited about tomorrow's bread; I was Greatly Honoured by the Toddler in a truly toddleresque fashion the details of which I shall not go into; I have finally got my act together to order a copy of the Roti King cookbook; glorious comfort reread of a thing I'd totally forgotten was even available for comfort reread, and for bonus points there are new bits!!!)

judiff

So we rewatched Paper Girls (it’s on Amazon) and it’s like sooooo Good (well like the characters and actors are soooo good - some of the CGI is like a bit Rubbish) and now we are all annoyed again that there wasn’t a second series and it ends on like kind of a cliffhanger …

(And like even if it got rescued now for a proper ending like Farscape did then the Paper Girl actor girls are like prolly already too old to be the Paper Girl character girls)

But it is like worth watching because having SiFi about cool 12 year old girls on bikes is Awesome. And it’s like realistic about like how stuff like having your first period when you are (like not by your own choice so you dint get to pack supplies) time-travelling would work…
And there’s like lots of cool women and Queer rep and talking about sexism and racism and society stuff as well as laser guns and robots (and like without the sociology stuff taking over and stopping it being a good story)

Watch on YouTube

(Like I know we could read the comics to find out what happens next but comics are like hard for our eyes/flavour of dyslexia)

Current Mood: geeky
Current Location: Grrl!

kaberett

For Redactle reasons, yesterday I wound up working my way through Wikipedia's List of oldest continuously inhabited cities.

This turned out not to be helpful for Terrible Game Purposes, but it did mean that I came across a city in Anatolia, Turkey, "founded by the Phrygians in at least 1000 BC[E], although it has been estimated to be older than 4,000 years old".

The name of this city? Eskişehir.

"Eski" is the Turkish (and possibly Turkic?) word for "old" (antonym of "new" -- antonym of "young" is a different word). "Şehir" means "city".

We are so good at this.

kaberett

Today was Lower Limb Class #2, as ongoing follow-up for the most recent ankle reinjury. (On which status is: still a biiiit weaker when I'm pushing to limits, but not really noticeable in day-to-day life, e.g. I'm no longer regularly wincing when I jar it getting off a bike; definitely still feeling the work up the outside of my right leg when doing e.g. isometric holds on double heel raises.)

I am very amused by how "???!!!" the physios got when I tried to faint from things that "shouldn't" have been significant cardio and indeed aren't by my standards for cardio but crucially involved a lot of moving around and position changes while upright: sit-to-stand, lunges, crab-walking with knees bent. Apparently I have carefully selected for exercise done while seated or prone for really solid reasons, i.e. that would be the orthostatic hypotension. Which I apparently hadn't told the physios about as its own thing. ...whoops.

( notes )

ludy

Specifically the Douz episode of Cabin Pressure

[mouseover text:We should have you at the gate in just under two hours--two and a half if we get pulled over.]

Current Mood: silly

ludy

In the BeforeTimes people would frequent make a screened comment post after BiCon for people to tell them anything or ask questions (and to have the awkward conversations to match people to usernames - which is sadly less of an issue these days unless we can collectively coax a whole load of new people over here).

You do not have to have been at BiCon to play.

So if there is anything that you would like to tell me or ask me or whatever here is a space for it. Comments are screened and will stay screened (DW works more sensibly than LJ did so the journal-owner can reply to screened comments with only them and the commenter being able to see the exchange)
You can be anonymous if you really want but then you’ll never see your comment again (because it’ll be screened) and the only ways I’ll be able to reply that you can see are if I unscreen my reply here or address it in another post…

Current Mood: curious

kaberett

Celebrating. Two birthdays! Both, conveniently, in Cambridge.

Reading. The Age of Seeds, Fiona McMillan-Webster (finished). Cannot articulate why this turned into a bit of a slog (kept running off to look other things up? suspicion about the materials science fluency? difficulty engaging with The Climate Situation for leisure purposes? lots of other things going on?) but I did finish it and I have learned things. Sort of. I at least now have more of a vague outline about how seed dormancy works (on multiple levels) than I did previously, even if I did spend a lot of the explanation going "okay but what does that MEAN???"

Hyperbole and a Half, Allie Brosh. Two chapters left!

I also continue to take steps towards getting my head around neuroanatomy; today I have been particularly annoyed by (1) the terminology of "ganglion", and apparent variation in whether it is used strictly to refer to the peripheral nervous system, and also (2) Nerve and Muscle cheerily providing an incomprehensible-to-me introduction to the concept of action vs resting potentials, and the difficulties inherent in measuring them. This is possibly going to be another case of "read three pages, then go and do a lot more reading elsewhere to fill in". Have also been poking at a couple of wikibooks on neuroanatomy.

Listening. Bats! More than seeing, really.

Cooking. Birthday cake! "No, really, don't use pre-ground hazelnut meal, your mother prefers a more Rustic texture" now firmly established.

Eating. FIGS. SO MANY FIGS. MY MOTHER'S FIG TREE IS RIDICULOUS. We have brought about a kilo home? I think we have genuinely brought about a kilo home and that's after the quantity I've eaten in the past 36 hours.

(Schwarzbrot + Yarg + fig: yes excellent thank you.)

Exploring. Small adventures around Darwin Green and various other Cambridge back streets. Tragically the known black mulberry tree is not quite ready for Significant harvest yet, and also there was someone sitting (and smoking) on the bench once needs to climb upon to reach the majority of the branches that overhang the public highway.

Growing. Greenhouse chillis potted up before vanishing to a field: not dead! Sugar Magnolia: continuing to produce more pods! Tomatoes: still not ripe!

Observing. Many bats. Good dragonfly. Lots of red admiral butterflies on the buddleia. A SQUIRREL in a WALNUT TREE the existence of which I had not previously been cognisant: the pitter-patter of little bits of walnut fruit was somewhat perplexing until the involvement of Horrid Little Hands and Horrid Little Teeth dawned upon me, whereupon I was absolutely delighted to get to watch this creature in Action.

glinda

At the start of last month, I wrote a piece on Brass Banding (the radio series, but also the wider concept) and along the way went down a bit of a rabbit hole listening to the back catalogue of it’s presenter Hannah Peel. The album that I’m writing about today - and that has been on heavy rotation all month - fit that theme admirably as it’s a symphonic piece written for analogue synthesisers and brass band. It’s also absolutely glorious.

Mary Casio: Journey to Cassiopeia is a seven movement work describing an imagined journey by - and I’m just going to quote the press release here - “an unknown, elderly, pioneering, electronic musical stargazer and her lifelong dream to leave her terraced home in the mining town of Barnsley, South Yorkshire, to see Cassiopeia for herself”. Apparently inspired by the quote that “we have a hundred billion neurons in our brains, as many as there are stars in the sky”. In my research adventures looking into the origins and inspirations for the album, I read a review that described it as being like a team up between the Flaming Lips and the Brighouse and Rastrick Band, and that really does hit the nail on the head. (While last month’s album made me feel that I’d have loved it substantially more if I’d encountered it twenty years ago, this is an album that I love now and yet still dearly want to press onto my seventeen year old self because it would blow her mind.) It’s a symphony for analogue synth and brass band - Tubular Brass to give them their due - and achieves that rare thing of balancing both in a way that shows affection and respect for both elements while combining and pushing them into something greater than a sum of their parts.

As I’ve often noted in my Tectonics reviews, even when writing for orchestra, electronic and modern classical composers lean heavily on strings and percussion and often ignore the more experimental potential of the brass section - if they even know what to do with it in the first place, sometimes they miss it out entirely. One of my favourite things about Public Service Broadcasting’s oeuvre is that they know what to do with a brass section - to the extent that when they do live shows, if there’s any non-electric instruments it’s usually a bit of brass. (The do love a wee wind trio of trumpet, trombone and saxophone.) But that’s generally the exception rather than the rule, it’s rare to get something that really explores the joys of brass and syths working together to build a greater whole. It’s incredibly cinematic, music fit for wider screen vistas or a planetarium show. The electronics are dreamy and gorgeous, but it’s the beautifully layered brass that really opens us up to the scale of what’s being depicted. It’s also a piece composed by someone who loves brass band music in it’s own right, who understands how epic and transporting brass - specifically this was written for a colliery brass band rather than an orchestra section, it’s a very specific sound - can be while being at the same time such a grounding and physically solid presence. There’s a gorgeous solo - is it a flugel horn or a cornet I puzzled for ages, the reason I couldn’t identify it is became it is in fact a synth! - in the second movement - Sunrise Through The Dusty Nebula - a segment that evokes both a brass band playing in a village hall, dust motes dancing in shafts of sunlight from high windows, and cinematic shots from the window of the ISS of the sun rising over the Earth amid the darkness of space. This is music for lying in the grass on a pitch black night in the middle of nowhere watching the stars wheel overhead.

The run time is just shy of thirty seven minutes, and if no-one uses it as the soundtrack to a short science-fiction film - ideally animated, perhaps heavy on the homage to both Wallace & Gromit and the works of Raymond Briggs and Oliver Postgate - then they’re missing a trick. (Now I want to use it to re-score A Grand Day Out…)

Current Mood: contemplative

ludy

Ooooo the Hot and Bothered podcast is continuing its series of looking at Romantic Films with a set of episodes talking about Queer Romances. The first one is about But I’m a Cheerleader and it makes me happy because the hosts genuinely love the movie as well as discussing it critically (though it makes me feel old when they talk about it’s “historical moment”

https://shows.acast.com/8db78936-153d-56f6-b6d4-fa61364322f6/6889008e2a38d6f5cbe53c01

There’s also a bonus initial episode with the awesome podcast veteran Kathy Tu discusses Queer Romances Books with H&B’s Vanessa - and they coo over the high levels of Bisexual Inclusion in the genre.

https://shows.acast.com/8db78936-153d-56f6-b6d4-fa61364322f6/687fa506fd9acfeba4871ae9

Current Mood: enthralled

azurelunatic

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/storage/yes-you-can-store-data-on-a-bird-enthusiast-converts-png-to-bird-shaped-waveform-teaches-young-starling-to-recall-file-at-up-to-2mb-s

Taking this proof-of-concept to a ridiculous destination, imagine taking a very simple secret message, converting it to sound, and tasking a starling to smuggle it out somewhere. (This seems very impractical compared to an amateurishly knitted scarf with a code in the seemingly random purl stitches.)

kaberett

Sense Has Prevailed. (There has been an ongoing a Fabric Of The Building thing -- we live in a block with 12 other flats, every owner has a share of the freehold -- and today we had an actual meeting where we Voted and Agreed Next Steps. Via an hour or so of frequently-infuriating back and forth.)
Which we celebrated by stopping at a pub on the way home and making them bring us dinner (and raspberry lemonade for me, and a beer for A) to our outside table in the sunshine, rather than slogging up the hill to bake a potato.
Have made substantial progress on wrangling the post-event lost property paperwork. I have sent so many e-mails.
Continuing to read one chapter at a time of Hyperbole and a Half with A. <3
Many many exuberant and ridiculous flowers on the walk home.
Lots of effusive praise for various bits of Admin: the LRP-related work (including some v high praise indeed for the current GOD management team, which includes yrs truly).
Own bed and good sleep.
Apricots. (Left over from grocery order over two weeks ago, but stored in the fridge and still Very Apricot, about which I am delighted).
Helpful response means I am now unstuck on finishing up my current EYB indexing project. (... which is just as well because another stack of books may have just arrived...)
Really enjoying the handful of combat trousers I got Oxfam to send me. POCKETS.

musyc

( DNF and picture books )

And now the goal set!

Nadine Harris - Deepest Well. NF, psychology and trauma. While the information about traumatic events and their cumulative effects on health was interesting, I ran into the same problem I always do with psych books. Not enough case studies/details. I really wasn't interested in the blather about her personal life, or the multiple chapters devoted to getting a clinic set up and so on. More memoir than case studies and that's not what I wanted. 5/10

Hannah Maehrer - Assistant to the Villain. #1 in series. I love this recent trend of books from the perspective of someone who works for the "villain". Hench was another favorite in the genre. Enjoyed this very much, though it did feel fanficcy at times, and I really don't think there were enough clues pointing to the identity of the Actual Problem. Have bought, though, as well as the second in the series waiting on my TBR. 8/10.

Boyd and Beth Morrison - Lawless Land. #1 in series. Now, I love me some medieval drama, and this had that in spades. The story itself was great, no troubles there, but there was so much telling where there should have been showing. 6/10, will not continue.

Terry Pratchett - Mrs Bradshaw's Handbook. I had some confusion on this one, as I had it on my "owned" list but definitely didn't have it on my shelf. Finally found it buried in my "ebooks to read" folders. XD A lovely addition to the Discworld's world, great illustrations and fun facts. Not something I'd want to buy, since I'm not a completionist, but a grand time for those curious about exactly what sort of travel book the woman from Raising Steam would have written. 8/10.

Eliot Stein - Custodians of Wonder. NF, history. Some individual sections of this were more interesting than others, but that's always the way in a NF book with discrete topics. Overall a good look at some people with skills/training/jobs that are on the verge of disappearing. The Swedish night watchman was a particular favorite, as was the Cuban cigar factory reader. 7/10.

Evie Woods - Lost Bookshop. Bit of a slow and dreamy read, but that really fit with the book overall. At no point was I actually bored or tempted to move on to a different book, it just wasn't a "can't put down" sort of read for me. 6/10.

Tanya Guerrero - Cat's People. I had a note in my tbr file that said "be careful about cat", as the book blurb itself said the cat gets sick. Fortunately, it didn't become one of my "hurled book across room" notes.

Spoiler for people like me who get upset about cats in peril.

There are actually two moments of peril: A. Physical. The cat interrupts an attack/assault on one of the characters and the attacker grabs him by the neck. He isn't hurt much, just really scared. and B. Illness. It's toward the very end, and the cat is found ill. He's found relatively quickly and immediately rushed to a vet where he gets diagnosed with kidney disease. He's treated and taken in by one of the characters.

Lovely book about caring for a stray cat, found family, and the interactions between strangers that become more. 8/10.

Daniel O'Malley - Royal Gambit. #4 Checquy Files. I just love this series. The characters, the world-building, the variety of powers and skills. Overall, fantastic. Finished in two days and only because I had to sleep at some point. XD 10/10, to buy when my fun budget refills.

WOOHOO! Have achieved my expanded goal of 15 complete books read! Shall we push it to 25? Let's see if I can make it! Still four months to go!

kaberett

... this being the style I have already sacrificed one of to The Endless Woodchip. Attempt at loss the first occurred while putting up tent; attempt at loss the second occurred late on Saturday night, when I was rushing from A to B to provide a roll-mat to a player and lost a fight with the bunting we use to discourage people from walking into the tent in places we don't want them to.

It was dark. Nonetheless I spent several whole minutes searching before giving up and resolving to try again in daylight. Consequently I got up good and early to start hunting before the team started carting all of the Objects back out of the storage ISO (all of the in-character valuables get locked away overnight while the tent's unstaffed...) and... discovered it really wasn't going to need much hunting after all.

( Read more... )

Tragically the brass hair stick I pulled out of "freecycle" before letting the players at the aged-out lost objects... wound up getting dropped in a known fairly well-defined location, and vanishing utterly into the ether, despite a good five people having a hunt for it. Ah well; maybe it'll show up next time, and maybe it won't, and either way I am likely to have future opportunities to Acquire More Hair Adornment.

azurelunatic

July 22: I message my symptoms team for a refill on my primary pain med (which is still only the next step up from Tylenol 3). And yet, it's what keeps me from regularly screaming when I exert myself in a way that stresses my right hip. I have 21 + 5 (a week plus a day and 2/3) left.

July 24: A list of detailed follow-up questions from the symptoms nurse, and my detailed reply. About 20 left.

July 25:
Hi [Azz],

I wanted to let you know that [doctor] sent a refill of the [med] to the Costco!

[Discussion of discontinuing another med]

And can I just say how much I enjoy your MyChart messages; I am always impressed at how in tune you are with your body.

Take care,
[Nurse]

Me: It's time to renew my prior auth again, alas.

Nurse: Aw dang!
No worries though, you gave us time (thank you by the way).
I have asked our billing specialist to help with this so we will call the Costco when we get it and then let you know.
Thanks,
[Nurse]

About 17 left.

***

July 26: About 14 left.
July 27: About 11 left.

***

July 28
Different nurse:
Hi [Azz],

We needed a new prior authorization on [med]. We received approval for this over the weekend. However, Costco has been unable to get this medication to process. They are in the process of calling your insurance to figure out where the issue lies.

[Image of prior auth as sent to doctor]

I will keep you updated

Thanks,
[Nurse]

Me: Thanks for the update!

***

A hair bleaching, trip through the shower, and time to drip dry later, I figure I will call Costco pharmacy and see what they've discovered, since they're still open and the symptoms care office is not.

[Call time: 6 minutes 54 seconds]

***

Me: I talked with darling [Don't Panic Pharmacy Assistant] at the pharmacy, who had my back the last time UHC was like this, and we had a real good chat about the state of things at UHC, and she is putting me through for 12 days so I can have some breathing room while you and she go and wrestle alligators. I will get that picked up tonight and we'll see when UHC can be made to see the light.

I drive to the pharmacy.
I receive my jar.
I tell our friend that I was so glad it was her who picked up when I called.
Don't Panic Pharmacy Assistant tells me that when she took my call about the prior auth on my med, the rest of the pharmacy was looking at her funny, because she swapped registers straight out of professional. "Is that a family member on the phone?" And yet again we had words about United Healthcare. Also, the pharmacy we used to go to is shutting down; she has this from her friend and ours, the guy with the Emperor's New Groove pin. He prefers to stay with that company, so he's not coming to Costco.

***

About 8 left, plus 12 days.

kaberett

Reading. Hyperbole and a Half, Allie Brosh, The Book, with A, a chapter at a time.

Also a bit more of The Age of Seeds, but only a very little bit.

Writing. Fun migraine facts: I spent the weekend discovering that writing by hand at speed Just Does Not Work Well. "Stopping" for "stopper", "fascinate" for "fastener", and so on and so forth...

Listening. Songs and stories! Including, apparently, these people + friends.

Playing. Admin: the LRP.

Eating. I may have slightly subsisted primarily on lemon and sugar crêpes. The raspberry and lemon curd toasties remain a delight. Some blackberries from the hedges.

Exploring. Finally (consciously) observed the giant purple cockerel. The Navarr woods at night.

Growing. Actually managed to water the plants before setting off, go me.

Observing. A BAT IN THE MARQUEE. ALSO A GIANT DRAGONFLY. Also the swallows (I think). Stars.

ludy

In a conversation about internet-ness this morning (specifically the sometimes random amounts of time between A sending an email and B receiving it) I used the phrase “like a wheel within a wheel”. And consequently have had this song stuck in my head for the rest of the day.

(There are umpty different versions but I’m particularly fond on this one by the glorious Alison Moyet)

Watch on YouTube

glinda

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Abominations Unto Nuggan

December 2018

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Abominations Unto Nuggan

Member Posts

victory of the day

Disbelief, suspension thereof / therein

Redactle-related fact of the day

Paper Girls

humans: always and forever Like This (affectionate)

[embodiment] physio notes!

Finally the Cabin Pressure / XKCD cross over the world has been waiting for

Letter Box

vital functions

Soundtracking July

(no subject)

Starlinography?

some good things

2025 Reading #10-18

tried really quite hard to lose my hair stick twice this event just gone

Prior Auth, my beloathéd

vital functions

Like a door that keeps revolving in a half forgotten dream

Taking Stock Once More

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December 2018

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