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Lake Lewisia #1273

In the high heat of summer, the woods sweated pine sap thick enough to ensnare anything that brushed against it. Trapped against the trunk, she could only listen to the pine cones popping open like tiny fireworks going off and raining their seeds down to the needle-cushioned ground. Some day in the far future, she would be found, encased in amber, surrounded by the frozen fluttering of seed wings and pollen, kept company over the ages by incautious insects and the tree that loved her too much to ever let her go.

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LL#1273

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collecting words like tasty snacks: loach

Maybe it’s just me, today, but I came across the word loach (which I’m positive I’ve heard before; it’s a type of fish after all, and sounds familiar) and the word is so delicious, it makes my mouth water.

Strong contender for next year’s word of the year? I guess we’ll see.

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ship logs: wipdate

WIPdate June 2025

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Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Betting On Trains - Hem

Take my business.

Things which I don't get to say nearly enough: "Can you break a hundred?"

To make things as simple as possible, I got paid in cash earlier today, and to make things really simple, it was a mix of twenties and hundreds to use as few bills as possible. I'll freely and happily admit it cut down on the volume of currency being exchanged. It also struck me that while $100 is a standard unit of currency, it's an atypical one, which isn't a combination of traits I see much.

My plan was to break them into twenties if the bank was open for customers, or deposit them intact in an ATM kiosk if it wasn't. On the walk to the bank, I decided to buy a luxury imported British film magazine at Barnes & Noble, and in thinking about how to pay for it, I asked the clerk my question.

Then I said it was fine, and handed over $21 to more easily make change for the $15.50 price tag. A much more ordinary type of payment. I took the hundreds to the bank and deposited them at the ATM, as I'd planned.

And for a moment there, just a brief moment, I had a glorious glimpse into another life where I always asked that question.

Weather's cooled down a bit, that's nice

Moonpie's foot looks better, we didn't end up having to take her for an x-ray at all.

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Current Mood: exanimate
Current Music: nothing now

Second day in.

Thinking it'd look more professional, I went with a messenger bag instead of a backpack today. As professional as it may have looked, I'm going to go back to the backpack. So much easier for so many things on so many levels, not the least of which is being able to ride a bike. Yes, I know bike messengers do it all the time. No, I'm not a professional bike messenger, and I'm unwilling to try. Especially if I'm already wearing a nice dress.

There wasn't much time to read at work, mostly because I'd been given an actual task to do: sorting through patient folders and setting aside old records to discard. Not as much fun as it'd have been if I'd had an MP3 player with me, and still satisfying to see the piles start to rise, and space in the drawers start to emerge. Where there's space in a drawer, there's objects to be discovered, and found my second office perk. A stain remover stick's not much, but it's still something I could take home with me. The first thing is a large can of cold brew coffee sitting in my fridge, waiting for a morning I need a jolt beyond all meaning.

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Lake Lewisia #1272

Something small and light flitted among the heavier tomes in that Accidental Library, only a few pages thick and folded up like a praying mantis. The zines were not juveniles, nor were they parasites, for all that they liked to populate the small, unused corners of the colonies and often built themselves from scraps and remnants of the bigger books. They were, perhaps, best understood as distant relations, ones with punk tendencies and transient habits, united nonetheless by their hearts of knowledge.

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LL#1272

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challenges: sunshine

Sunshine Revival 2025: Challenge #1

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Bleeding

Ugh

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A Song on the End of the World by Czeslaw Milosz

On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
There will be no other end of the world,
There will be no other end of the world.

Warsaw, 1944

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Link

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book log: reading wednesday

Reading Wednesday

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The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

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(no subject)

New computer is now up and running. I am just about finished moving in, I think.

I mentioned that because my current monitor is really old, an adaptor was necessary to deal with obsolete cables, but that Husband could just pick one up as click and collect and the whole process was only delayed by a few hours while waiting for the shop to open.

Turns out that wasn't the last of our problems! This old monitor was constructed in such a way that the sockets are in a little cavity on the back, probably so that there wouldn't be anything sticking out and looking unseemly or something. What nobody had foreseen, however, was that cable + adaptor was too tall for said cavity!

Creative solution: Having first determined to his satisfaction that all the electronic bits were elsewhere and the bottom edge of the cavity was indeed just plastic, Husband proceeded (with permission) to make a hole in it.

It was a nothing to lose situation, really. Alternative to it not working was to get a new monitor. Alternative to not trying was also get a new monitor. So you might as well try, right?

Result: Works fine and you can't see it.

Current Mood: calm
Current Music: Tupelo Honey - Van Morrison

July the First.

It was such a slow first day, midway through the afternoon, I was being paid to sit there and read. It won't be like that every day - not even other days this week - and even if it doesn't get repeated, I can savor having had it for a little while.

So far, it's a front desk job like all front desk jobs: phone calls, emails, appointments, office supplies. People called, I called them back. Documents were scanned into the computer and copies were made. The clients were largely punctual and there's no music playing. While I doubt I can get away with headphones or a radio, there's a fan I may use for white noise to make the periods of sitting around, waiting for more nothing to happen, a little easier to get through without having to fall back on monetary compensation. Even if I got through a large chunk of some reading today.

Though I suppose longhand writing notes are always an option. If I remember to bring the right notebooks tomorrow.

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"Drabble: Anti-Brooklynians." (Captain America) G

Title: Drabble: Anti-Brooklynians.
Author:

lannamichaels
Fandom: Captain America
Rating: G
Archives: Archive Of Our Own, SquidgeWorld

Summary: Aliens wrote Shakespeare, the Earl of Oxford built the pyramids, and Steve Rogers was never Captain America.

( I started this in 2019 and then ignored it every time I saw it instead of getting it to fit wordcount )

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Fic reading stats & fanwork recs, June 2025

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Current Mood: nervous
Current Music: Tin Angel - Joni Mitchell

Valentines and maple leaves.

Ending the month with good news: I've got a new gig. It's full-time and starts on a week where I'll have Friday off, so it'll be an easy adjustment and a decent way to test out if I'm cut for it long-term. Or even medium-term, into the next couple of weeks until the usual receptionist gets back.

I'll be doing scheduling, some emails, some phone calls. Front desk work on the Upper East Side. It'll be easy to get there, and it'll be done indoors and sitting down. I don't think it's going to be all that relaxing and I'm going to have to go back to doing workouts at night in my apartment instead of at the gym for the duration. But it's just for a little while, to see if it's a good fit.

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Lake Lewisia #1271

This weekend will see our streets taken over by masked vigilantes, superpowered villains, and transforming magical girls, but have no fear! These will be entirely fictional for once, and any destruction is expected to be limited to costume sewing crises and possibly a brawl in the signing line for Abernathy Clovis (creator of the comic series My Dad Was a Virgin Sacrifice). That’s right, it’s the Lake Lewisia Comic Convention, where we celebrate all the kinds of weird we pretend to be when we need a break from the kinds of weird that come naturally to us.

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LL#1271

Speaking of fictional lawfirms, we finished new Matlock

( Season finale spoiler )

During the Christmas episode we saw the firm's acapella group, which might have just been an excuse to highlight one character's amazing singing voice. Anyway, they were singing White Winter Hymnal, and I'm going to just post two quick videos, the original version and a different acapella cover:

Watch on YouTube

(Those lyrics can't be entirely right - surely the pack is swaddled in their coats, not swallowed?)

Anyway, you'll notice that in the first one they weirdly pronounce "the" with a "long e" (the vowel in pee) before the words "white snow". Does that strike anybody else as a weird place to do that?

Crossover time!

I was looking up fictional law firm names and you know how Angel has the evil law firm Wolfram and Hart? Apparently NCIS has Wolfram, Hart and Donowitz. No word on if they're evil. Are they evil?

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