![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
Okay back to thirsting for way too many people in this video game.
Sep. 26th, 2025 12:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
moonvoiceI am a simple man who likes simple things and Kate McKinnon being willing to make such a mess of herself on Hot Ones made me incredibly happy.
Anyway this is just a quick break from playing Hades II because v.1.0 launched last night! I got one game in before bed (Toby was unimpressed), and am pretty much just going to be playing extremely badly (god SO badly, I played with the scythe today and just, haha, ah, sigh) and getting more story out of this game. It's fun pinging all the achievements (not that many) from previously gameplay and they're all at 0.1% rarity or whatever because not enough people have played this version of the game yet, it'll be nice to see the numbers go up.
It's humid today. The 20C might as well be 30C. I'm going to really miss winter this year, I'm not ready for summer, and spring is not playing around. She's a fickle thing. (Actually, Luflijka, you're not, I know you're doing your best).
I've been thinking of how antis/anti-shippers sometimes respond to 'don't like don't read' as though it's the worst thing to say, but it's really just the fandom equivalent of 'hey you remember what the safewords are right? You can safeword at any time.' It's like they resent being reminded of their ability to consent to reading fic, because they can't handle any form of self-accountability at all. And that's where we start, right before the bullying and the abuse takes place. Idk how anyone ever feels that an anti-shipper ever has a single leg to stand on, when that's the starting line.
Anyway this is just a quick break from playing Hades II because v.1.0 launched last night! I got one game in before bed (Toby was unimpressed), and am pretty much just going to be playing extremely badly (god SO badly, I played with the scythe today and just, haha, ah, sigh) and getting more story out of this game. It's fun pinging all the achievements (not that many) from previously gameplay and they're all at 0.1% rarity or whatever because not enough people have played this version of the game yet, it'll be nice to see the numbers go up.
It's humid today. The 20C might as well be 30C. I'm going to really miss winter this year, I'm not ready for summer, and spring is not playing around. She's a fickle thing. (Actually, Luflijka, you're not, I know you're doing your best).
I've been thinking of how antis/anti-shippers sometimes respond to 'don't like don't read' as though it's the worst thing to say, but it's really just the fandom equivalent of 'hey you remember what the safewords are right? You can safeword at any time.' It's like they resent being reminded of their ability to consent to reading fic, because they can't handle any form of self-accountability at all. And that's where we start, right before the bullying and the abuse takes place. Idk how anyone ever feels that an anti-shipper ever has a single leg to stand on, when that's the starting line.
piano notes (september)
Sep. 25th, 2025 12:29 pmqueenluathe good news: my partner got me a fancy audio interface* for my birthday <3 so i can pull nice recordings off my piano now! and i broke it in by recording myself playing Verso's theme <3 it was very fun <3
the grind:
( Read more... )
the grind:
( Read more... )
If/when
Sep. 24th, 2025 09:01 pmfayanoraI hope, if/when we get out of this fascist rut we're in, that one of the things that gets done in the aftermath of fixing all the damage is that the Republican party is disbanded, all politicians who were Republicans are barred from any and all public offices for the rest of their lives, we disband the Democrats as well for being ineffectual do-nothings while the ship was sinking, create or promote a bunch of third parties to take their places, and establish mandatory ranked-choice voting. Under the new system, it would be a crime punishable by a steep fine to NOT vote, and you would be able to not just vote FOR someone, but also AGAINST candidates, ranking your votes from "Yes I want this person very much" to "under no circumstances should this person be allowed in office," and everything in between.
The Rapture with a twist
Sep. 24th, 2025 11:43 amfayanoraThe rapture comes, and all the worst people are taken. Suddenly no more fascists, no more bigots, no more hypocritical Christians. Goddess leaves a message for the rest of us afterwards: "I took some bad apples out of your population and fed their souls to my pet crocodile. You're welcome."
Still around? Yes. Still alive? Maybe. Debatable. Possibly resurrected at this point.
Sep. 24th, 2025 06:12 pmmoonvoiceI literally have spent years thinking 'oh I should write something' and then...not. I get so frustrated with myself over it, and I've been thinking and noodling over how I want to use this, and I think some kind of combination of like, sharing photos like I used to (otherwise why am I paying for that SmugMug subscription lol), and reviewing things I'm engaging with, and maybe talking about writing stuff perhaps.
Sometimes I think what Twitter/X and Bluesky and similar platforms (Tumblr) took away was like, a basic functionality of Dreamwidth and LJ before these things existed, of the more light-hearted, less-gravity style of writing, where if I have a simple thought now, or a little rant, it goes elsewhere, instead of here. And then as a result of that, I mentally feel pressured to write long, meaningful entries that have like, deep emotion or whatever, which is just silly really, because that was never how I used this site when I enjoyed it most.
Like yeah I wrote some deep entries, but I had just as much fun - if not more fun - sharing art and photos and cross-stitch etc.
I've seen other folks like 'I'd like to use DW again' but sometimes I wonder if that's just nostalgia. 'I'd like to reminisce on what it used to be like here.' It's not going to be like that again, but there are cool people here, and I'd like to grow my participation here into something new.
In the meantime, I think Glen might be home, so it's time to go let our dog, Tobermory, go greet him lol
Sometimes I think what Twitter/X and Bluesky and similar platforms (Tumblr) took away was like, a basic functionality of Dreamwidth and LJ before these things existed, of the more light-hearted, less-gravity style of writing, where if I have a simple thought now, or a little rant, it goes elsewhere, instead of here. And then as a result of that, I mentally feel pressured to write long, meaningful entries that have like, deep emotion or whatever, which is just silly really, because that was never how I used this site when I enjoyed it most.
Like yeah I wrote some deep entries, but I had just as much fun - if not more fun - sharing art and photos and cross-stitch etc.
I've seen other folks like 'I'd like to use DW again' but sometimes I wonder if that's just nostalgia. 'I'd like to reminisce on what it used to be like here.' It's not going to be like that again, but there are cool people here, and I'd like to grow my participation here into something new.
In the meantime, I think Glen might be home, so it's time to go let our dog, Tobermory, go greet him lol
Don't read this if you're easily queazed
Sep. 22nd, 2025 08:01 pmfayanoraI just watched the most vile recipe ever made by a person. This bloke made a mushroom parfait! I thought I had misheard, or that parfait means something different in Britain, but no. The man actually made a parfait -- basically ice cream -- out of pureed mushrooms and onion. I'm gonna go vomit now.
I mean, I like mushrooms and onions. But as a parfait? This man is clearly insane and needs to be stopped.
Link, if you're morbidly curious: here.
Tags I used when posting this to Tumblr:
I mean, I like mushrooms and onions. But as a parfait? This man is clearly insane and needs to be stopped.
Link, if you're morbidly curious: here.
Tags I used when posting this to Tumblr:
I fucking hate ads
Sep. 22nd, 2025 06:06 pmfayanoraThe ads on the various games on my phone have gotten unbearable. I was fine with them when it was just the tiny X you had to hit. Now what I end up having to do is pressing a link reading "Google Play store" and then I have to hit the back button at the exact right amount of time after clicking that for it to go back into the app, and if I'm lucky, it will then bring up the X to click. More often than not, though, what it does instead is restart the fucking app! Which means restarting the level I was on if I'm especially unlucky, or if I'm just mildly unlucky, any reward that I might have gotten for watching the ad is just fucking gone.
I need to find out if there's an app I can install on my phone that will kill all of the ads or at least put them back to the way they were when it was just pressing the X. Because before this change, I could put up with the ads pretty much indefinitely. But now it's to the point where I get maybe a half hour of play time in before I just fucking give up in frustration.
I need to find out if there's an app I can install on my phone that will kill all of the ads or at least put them back to the way they were when it was just pressing the X. Because before this change, I could put up with the ads pretty much indefinitely. But now it's to the point where I get maybe a half hour of play time in before I just fucking give up in frustration.
Update
Sep. 22nd, 2025 05:26 pmfayanoraI I've gotten well enough that the cough is almost completely gone and more importantly I have been writing again! I've gotten two chapters done in the last two days, and a third may be in the works tomorrow.
What's been helping is that these are "dueling tournament" chapters, so there's a lot of excitement from various featured duels.
What's been helping is that these are "dueling tournament" chapters, so there's a lot of excitement from various featured duels.
partial notes on Gabriel Fauré: A Musical Life by Jean-Michel Nectoux
Sep. 22nd, 2025 01:12 pmqueenluaWhen, in the course of human events, one reads a little bit too much of Marilynne Robinson's incredible prose, and then plays a little bit too much Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and thus gets the two very different types of work all muddled in one's head, and is thus seized with the need to go spit out many thousands of words of Clair-Obscur-fanfiction-in-the-style-of-Marilynne-Robinson, but becomes aware partway through the project that one's understanding of the culture and structure of the Paris Conservatory during the Belle Époque era is incredibly thin, and this lack of understanding is really becoming awkward given that one has gone and invented an entire subplot involving multiple professors at aforementioned conservatory in one's fanfiction based on a passing mention in canon that "oh such-and-such character went to conservatory" and literally nothing else—well, it thus becomes necessary to go read a well-regarded biography of a contemporaneous French composer to amend that lack of knowledge.
Which is how I found myself reading Gabriel Fauré: A Musical Life by Jean-Michel Nectoux (translated by Roger Nichols).
("You really have a knack for nerd-sniping yourself," a friend observed dryly when I explained my present pitiable state of affairs. Yeah I sure do, huh.)
As I've been reading this primarily for convoluted fanfiction research purposes, what follows should not be construed as a review or anything even approaching one (I haven't even finished reading the book yet!), but, more of a... thinking-aloud session? Because there's a great deal that's amused me, and also a great deal that's made me very ponderous, and also stuff that just straight-up confused me (recall my aforementioned staggering lack of historical/contextual knowledge)... and yeah the only way I know how to think these days is via blog posts, apparently.
( Read more... )
Oh, also, one last funny bit about the translation: there's a bunch of words that are left with the French spelling, for no particular reason I can discern? The funniest of these is "rôle," which is always spelled the French way, even though there is no semantic difference to be had there. Whatcha trying to prove with that little hat over the O, lol. Though I guess The New Yorker still spells coordinate and cooperate as "coördinate" and "coöperate" so. I guess we all have our little spelling hangups :P
Which is how I found myself reading Gabriel Fauré: A Musical Life by Jean-Michel Nectoux (translated by Roger Nichols).
("You really have a knack for nerd-sniping yourself," a friend observed dryly when I explained my present pitiable state of affairs. Yeah I sure do, huh.)
As I've been reading this primarily for convoluted fanfiction research purposes, what follows should not be construed as a review or anything even approaching one (I haven't even finished reading the book yet!), but, more of a... thinking-aloud session? Because there's a great deal that's amused me, and also a great deal that's made me very ponderous, and also stuff that just straight-up confused me (recall my aforementioned staggering lack of historical/contextual knowledge)... and yeah the only way I know how to think these days is via blog posts, apparently.
( Read more... )
Oh, also, one last funny bit about the translation: there's a bunch of words that are left with the French spelling, for no particular reason I can discern? The funniest of these is "rôle," which is always spelled the French way, even though there is no semantic difference to be had there. Whatcha trying to prove with that little hat over the O, lol. Though I guess The New Yorker still spells coordinate and cooperate as "coördinate" and "coöperate" so. I guess we all have our little spelling hangups :P
Multnomah Falls
Sep. 17th, 2025 12:22 pmfayanoraI went somewhere on the 4th that I've been meaning to go to for a long time: Multnomah Falls. Of course, I then got sick two days later and because of that, being tired when I got home, and ADHD, I am only just now getting around to posting here about it.
I took a bunch of photos while I was there. It's not a place I can go often, because there's a special bus that has a stop there, and it costs $10 to get there, and another $10 to get back into the Portland metro area. Though there are other interesting-looking hiking places to go further on that route, and it'd be the same $20 round trip.
I had this planned route where I was gonna go to the top of the falls and then continue on to this other waterfall. But I failed to take into account the elevation. GaiaGPS told me what the elevation was, and I just ignored it. I got only a fourth of the way through the planned route before I got too scared and went back. I mean, it was a steep climb, but I've done steeper, and this path was paved so it was a lot easier than it would've been if it had just been gravel or dirt. But past a certain point, they stopped having safety railings, and the potential fall kept getting more and more gnarly looking. Then I turned a corner, found the worst offender, saw the path was getting pretty crumbly looking, and went from "I can do this" to "NOPE" in 0.4 seconds, and immediately turned around and went back. The bridge was scary, as it's narrow and full of people, and made of stone or concrete, not sure which. And I had to go over it twice. I only managed it by reminding myself that the thing was built in 1901 or something like that, and it was still pretty good looking. No obvious problems or repairs, that sort of thing. Oh, and staring straight ahead and dissociating from the knowledge that I was inches from falling to my death.
Apart from pictures, I have a couple souvenirs I bought at the gift shop. One of those safety whistle things, where if you get lost you can call for help with it. It's on my keychain. And also I got a hoodie with the words "Multnomah Falls" on the front, for $20. Which is a pretty cheap price for a hoodie. My other hoodie, with an image of Medusa on it, was like $35 or $40 from Amazon, a year or two ago.
Among the photos are a few screenshots of the GaiaGPS app. Two of them show the track of where I went at Multnomah Falls, and the third has my stats for that hike. And then there's a couple selfies. The rest are mostly photos of the falls, the surrounding mountains, and a few other interesting bits. One of them is a photo of the inside of the bus. But here's the basic stats for that hike:
Ascent 203(-228) ft
Average speed 1.1 MPH
Average moving speed 1.4 MPH
Max speed 3.4 MPH
Distance 0.94 miles
Max elevation 291 feet
Min elevation 60 feet
Moving time: 40:02
Because I had chickened out so early, and because of how long I had spent at the bottom and at the gift shop before heading up there, I missed the next bus and had to wait two hours for the next one back. Which I spent mostly being bored and listening to music, because by then I was too tired to try even part of the trail again, and the only other trail I could find in the area was also steep and annoying, so I gave up on that one pretty quickly.
Have the photos (in basically the order they were taken):
( Photos under the cut. They are clickable thumbnails. )
I took a bunch of photos while I was there. It's not a place I can go often, because there's a special bus that has a stop there, and it costs $10 to get there, and another $10 to get back into the Portland metro area. Though there are other interesting-looking hiking places to go further on that route, and it'd be the same $20 round trip.
I had this planned route where I was gonna go to the top of the falls and then continue on to this other waterfall. But I failed to take into account the elevation. GaiaGPS told me what the elevation was, and I just ignored it. I got only a fourth of the way through the planned route before I got too scared and went back. I mean, it was a steep climb, but I've done steeper, and this path was paved so it was a lot easier than it would've been if it had just been gravel or dirt. But past a certain point, they stopped having safety railings, and the potential fall kept getting more and more gnarly looking. Then I turned a corner, found the worst offender, saw the path was getting pretty crumbly looking, and went from "I can do this" to "NOPE" in 0.4 seconds, and immediately turned around and went back. The bridge was scary, as it's narrow and full of people, and made of stone or concrete, not sure which. And I had to go over it twice. I only managed it by reminding myself that the thing was built in 1901 or something like that, and it was still pretty good looking. No obvious problems or repairs, that sort of thing. Oh, and staring straight ahead and dissociating from the knowledge that I was inches from falling to my death.
Apart from pictures, I have a couple souvenirs I bought at the gift shop. One of those safety whistle things, where if you get lost you can call for help with it. It's on my keychain. And also I got a hoodie with the words "Multnomah Falls" on the front, for $20. Which is a pretty cheap price for a hoodie. My other hoodie, with an image of Medusa on it, was like $35 or $40 from Amazon, a year or two ago.
Among the photos are a few screenshots of the GaiaGPS app. Two of them show the track of where I went at Multnomah Falls, and the third has my stats for that hike. And then there's a couple selfies. The rest are mostly photos of the falls, the surrounding mountains, and a few other interesting bits. One of them is a photo of the inside of the bus. But here's the basic stats for that hike:
Ascent 203(-228) ft
Average speed 1.1 MPH
Average moving speed 1.4 MPH
Max speed 3.4 MPH
Distance 0.94 miles
Max elevation 291 feet
Min elevation 60 feet
Moving time: 40:02
Because I had chickened out so early, and because of how long I had spent at the bottom and at the gift shop before heading up there, I missed the next bus and had to wait two hours for the next one back. Which I spent mostly being bored and listening to music, because by then I was too tired to try even part of the trail again, and the only other trail I could find in the area was also steep and annoying, so I gave up on that one pretty quickly.
Have the photos (in basically the order they were taken):
( Photos under the cut. They are clickable thumbnails. )
Thanks for that bespoke nightmare
Sep. 15th, 2025 06:19 pmfayanoraToday I learned that sometimes, dogs that are supposed to be put down for hurting people get rehomed instead. Great. Now I'm gonna be even more terrified of dogs than I already was. How the fuck is this even legal? If a dog hurts someone bad enough to get a euthanasia order, THAT DOG NEEDS. TO. BE. KILLED!!! No exceptions!
Writing prep work
Sep. 15th, 2025 01:39 pmfayanoraWell, I managed to finish the brackets for the chapter I intend to work on, as much as can be done (I leave a few matches to be determined during my actual writing.) But I am tired at the moment after having lunch.
A bunch of the matches got decided by dice rolls, though, as they weren't very important. What I do is I take two D6 (the kind of dice that most people are aware of), one of which is orange and the other is white. One student gets the orange die and the other student gets the white one, and I roll both at the same time, and whichever number is higher wins the duel.
Anyway, next time I should be able to start actually writing, now that the prep work is done.
This current tournament is a home game for Fae Springs, the first one since book 2. Book two's tournament was against Salem School. This one is against Shawnee Mountains school, which they had a tournament in the previous book against them, at the other school. There's important character reasons for this, but I also didn't want to repeat the setting for it. Hence Fae Springs getting a home game.
A bunch of the matches got decided by dice rolls, though, as they weren't very important. What I do is I take two D6 (the kind of dice that most people are aware of), one of which is orange and the other is white. One student gets the orange die and the other student gets the white one, and I roll both at the same time, and whichever number is higher wins the duel.
Anyway, next time I should be able to start actually writing, now that the prep work is done.
This current tournament is a home game for Fae Springs, the first one since book 2. Book two's tournament was against Salem School. This one is against Shawnee Mountains school, which they had a tournament in the previous book against them, at the other school. There's important character reasons for this, but I also didn't want to repeat the setting for it. Hence Fae Springs getting a home game.
In OTHER other news...
Sep. 14th, 2025 02:49 pmfayanora...I finally felt both good enough and bored enough earlier today that I started planning out one of the important chapters of book 7, with the intention to write. I think I knew the writing part was doomed for the day, given it's a "dueling tournament" chapter(s), and those always take a fuckton of work for me to prepare for since I have to come up with at least a handful of names for the other school's team members (for Singles, Doubles, Melee, and now also Triples), decide how far I want the Fae Springs players to get in each category, fill out the W and L brackets to match, and other miscellaneous planning. So all of that work tends to be exhausting even on good days, and usually takes a few days to finish even then. So I shouldn't have been surprised to get only as far as coming up with a list of things that need to be in the chapter, which this time includes a lot of callbacks to events in book 6, meaning I had to re-read part of one of the relevant chapters because I keep forgetting to write down truly minor character names in the character notes.
Anyway, so I lost energy after finishing the simplest part of that process earlier, the literal first step for this chapter, because I'm still ill. But it's a good sign that I was able to do even that much. I might need to include more in the chapter, but I got the biggest parts written down. And AFAIK I did not forget anything; anything that gets added later will be something I think of later.
Fun fact: Whenever there's no need for me to decide a name for a player in one of these tournaments, I like to come up with funny names for them instead of all of them being "(X school student) (#)" (or more likely "FS1 v SM2")1 or whatever. Some examples: Barney vs Betty, Fred vs Wilma, Tom vs Jerry, Donald vs Mickey, Wednesday vs Pugsley, Shaggy vs Fred, or Tweedle Dee vs Tweedle Dum. It works because I color code the backgrounds of the name tag thingies by school anyway. (Fae Springs is always green.) If I need to give one of those joke names a proper name later, I can just delete the joke name(s) and put in the proper one(s) instead.
~ ~ ~
1 = FS1 stands for Fae Springs (team), player #1. SM here stands for Shawnee Mountains, since that's the school the chapter in question is playing next. The last tournament was against Loess Hills School in Iowa. (Loess is pronounced Lush.)
Fun fact: Loess Hills School of Magic is in the middle of the first featured all-witch city/town in the series, which is named Vanishing Valley, Iowa. The town, which is about the same size that Shenandoah, Iowa was when my family lived there, is located inside a hollow hill, and was inspired by supposedly true stories on Reddit about towns that don't exist on any maps and which the people who stumbled into them can't locate again later even when they know the area very, very well. And having lived half my life in the Midwest and knowing how horrible it is there for anyone outside the norm at all, I figured most Midwest witches would either live in big cities like Chicago, or inside hidden towns like Vanishing Valley, Iowa.
Anyway, so I lost energy after finishing the simplest part of that process earlier, the literal first step for this chapter, because I'm still ill. But it's a good sign that I was able to do even that much. I might need to include more in the chapter, but I got the biggest parts written down. And AFAIK I did not forget anything; anything that gets added later will be something I think of later.
Fun fact: Whenever there's no need for me to decide a name for a player in one of these tournaments, I like to come up with funny names for them instead of all of them being "(X school student) (#)" (or more likely "FS1 v SM2")1 or whatever. Some examples: Barney vs Betty, Fred vs Wilma, Tom vs Jerry, Donald vs Mickey, Wednesday vs Pugsley, Shaggy vs Fred, or Tweedle Dee vs Tweedle Dum. It works because I color code the backgrounds of the name tag thingies by school anyway. (Fae Springs is always green.) If I need to give one of those joke names a proper name later, I can just delete the joke name(s) and put in the proper one(s) instead.
~ ~ ~
1 = FS1 stands for Fae Springs (team), player #1. SM here stands for Shawnee Mountains, since that's the school the chapter in question is playing next. The last tournament was against Loess Hills School in Iowa. (Loess is pronounced Lush.)
Fun fact: Loess Hills School of Magic is in the middle of the first featured all-witch city/town in the series, which is named Vanishing Valley, Iowa. The town, which is about the same size that Shenandoah, Iowa was when my family lived there, is located inside a hollow hill, and was inspired by supposedly true stories on Reddit about towns that don't exist on any maps and which the people who stumbled into them can't locate again later even when they know the area very, very well. And having lived half my life in the Midwest and knowing how horrible it is there for anyone outside the norm at all, I figured most Midwest witches would either live in big cities like Chicago, or inside hidden towns like Vanishing Valley, Iowa.
Illness update once again, and other news.
Sep. 14th, 2025 12:35 pmfayanoraWent to WinCo today for a few things -- decongestant, chicken drumsticks, juice, and old fashioned egg noodles.
I am very glad that I don't get ill with colds or other contagious stuff anymore, this last week being an exception. Because when it does happen, the illness hangs around for fucking forever. I'm mostly back to normal now, but occasionally still coughing and with a little congestion.
At some point in the over-a-decade since I've gotten ill with a cold, the OTC drug companies seem to have stopped making decongestants that do not contain a pain reliever. Which is wild, because I remember when decongestants with added pain relievers were new and controversial.
Okay, there is in fact one exception to that, from what I've seen: I ended up getting the Mucinex knockoff (same drug, store brand), which is okay because I'm mostly still dealing with potential chest congestion (I don't feel anything odd in there, but I keep hawking up phlegm, which is very telling). Though I was reluctant to get it because the last time I had a cold, Mucinex didn't exist yet.1 Also the last time I had a cold, the most common decongestant, pseudoephedrine, was not yet basically a controlled substance because I didn't even hear the word "meth" until years after the last cold I had, and I lived in Iowa at the time; Iowa has been the meth capitol of the US since I was in high school. I may be autistic, but it was impossible to live in Iowa back then and not hear about meth at least a dozen times a day. So yeah; last time I needed pseudoephedrine, you could still buy a few dozen boxes of the stuff without anyone batting an eye about it. Now, reading all the backs of these decongestant meds, I didn't recognize a single fucking name, and there were like 30 different brands. Thirty different brands and the only one that didn't have some kind or other of pain reliever in it was the Mucinex knockoff. Also, I couldn't even find pseudoephedrine on any of them. Has it been banned entirely?
Fun fact: Guaifenesin [gwy-FEH-nih-seen] -- the drug in Mucinex and its knockoffs -- is derived from an Indigenous American remedy, the guaiac tree, which is a plant in a "caltrop" family. Interesting irony there, given that caltrop seeds are like living LEGO bricks with sharp spikes.
On another note, I am slow cooking some chicken, to have chicken noodle soup for the first time all week. Closest I've had to chicken noodle soup this last week was Soon Veggie ramen with some hamburger added to it. Soon Veggie ramen is basically like the Shin Ramyun stuff, but a lot milder. Still spicy, but the half dozen times I've had it, I did not have any diarrhea, so that's good.
~
In other news, my old little grocery cart that I got years ago at Goodwill for $10 finally broke its leg and had to be put down. (Seriously, one of its legs broke off, and now it barely resembles a cart anymore.) Brooke (kengr) bought me a new grocery cart because she has Amazon Prime and I don't, and also I'll be paying her back when I get enough money to do so. (The old one is now a laundry hamper.) It was very easy to assemble, needing no tools at all -- not even included tools. Just push some buttons down and snap things (wheels and the front axle) in place, everything else was already done; it was so easy that I figured it out in two minutes after having completely missed the fact it had instructions included. It only took that long because it took me a minute to realize that the plastic caps on the back axle needed to be taken off first. And it came with an included waterproof liner that fits perfectly and is indeed waterproof (it was raining a lot today on my trip to WinCo), though it does slip off if I leave it on when I fold the cart up. My only complaints about it so far: it moves around on the bus so it has to be held still, which is something I haven't been used to in a long time because my Goodwill cart didn't have any wheels on the front, so it didn't move much when it was on all fours. It was bought used, and was $10, and it lasted at least two years, possibly longer; I don't remember how long ago I bought it.
The only other minor annoyance is that I can't figure out what the manufacturer meant the extra storage basket in the back of it to be meant for, because it's too small for me to put my Gaia bag in there, and the spaces between the slats are so big that most things I put in that rear basket immediately fall out. If it had slats going the other direction as well, it would be more useful. As it is, I'm gonna have to find a bag of some kind that will fit in there. I tried putting my little handbasket that I found in a Free Pile once in there, but it wouldn't fit.
Favorite thing: the waterproof liner thing, its lid Velcros shut so readily that if I didn't know better, I'd swear it was a magnetic clasp instead. In fact, I'm not actually convinced there aren't also magnets inside the Velcro bits.
Anyway, out of words for now.
( PS )
~ ~ ~
1 = Hell, I'm fairly certain that the last time I had a cold, Google didn't exist yet.
I am very glad that I don't get ill with colds or other contagious stuff anymore, this last week being an exception. Because when it does happen, the illness hangs around for fucking forever. I'm mostly back to normal now, but occasionally still coughing and with a little congestion.
At some point in the over-a-decade since I've gotten ill with a cold, the OTC drug companies seem to have stopped making decongestants that do not contain a pain reliever. Which is wild, because I remember when decongestants with added pain relievers were new and controversial.
Okay, there is in fact one exception to that, from what I've seen: I ended up getting the Mucinex knockoff (same drug, store brand), which is okay because I'm mostly still dealing with potential chest congestion (I don't feel anything odd in there, but I keep hawking up phlegm, which is very telling). Though I was reluctant to get it because the last time I had a cold, Mucinex didn't exist yet.1 Also the last time I had a cold, the most common decongestant, pseudoephedrine, was not yet basically a controlled substance because I didn't even hear the word "meth" until years after the last cold I had, and I lived in Iowa at the time; Iowa has been the meth capitol of the US since I was in high school. I may be autistic, but it was impossible to live in Iowa back then and not hear about meth at least a dozen times a day. So yeah; last time I needed pseudoephedrine, you could still buy a few dozen boxes of the stuff without anyone batting an eye about it. Now, reading all the backs of these decongestant meds, I didn't recognize a single fucking name, and there were like 30 different brands. Thirty different brands and the only one that didn't have some kind or other of pain reliever in it was the Mucinex knockoff. Also, I couldn't even find pseudoephedrine on any of them. Has it been banned entirely?
Fun fact: Guaifenesin [gwy-FEH-nih-seen] -- the drug in Mucinex and its knockoffs -- is derived from an Indigenous American remedy, the guaiac tree, which is a plant in a "caltrop" family. Interesting irony there, given that caltrop seeds are like living LEGO bricks with sharp spikes.
On another note, I am slow cooking some chicken, to have chicken noodle soup for the first time all week. Closest I've had to chicken noodle soup this last week was Soon Veggie ramen with some hamburger added to it. Soon Veggie ramen is basically like the Shin Ramyun stuff, but a lot milder. Still spicy, but the half dozen times I've had it, I did not have any diarrhea, so that's good.
~
In other news, my old little grocery cart that I got years ago at Goodwill for $10 finally broke its leg and had to be put down. (Seriously, one of its legs broke off, and now it barely resembles a cart anymore.) Brooke (
kengr) bought me a new grocery cart because she has Amazon Prime and I don't, and also I'll be paying her back when I get enough money to do so. (The old one is now a laundry hamper.) It was very easy to assemble, needing no tools at all -- not even included tools. Just push some buttons down and snap things (wheels and the front axle) in place, everything else was already done; it was so easy that I figured it out in two minutes after having completely missed the fact it had instructions included. It only took that long because it took me a minute to realize that the plastic caps on the back axle needed to be taken off first. And it came with an included waterproof liner that fits perfectly and is indeed waterproof (it was raining a lot today on my trip to WinCo), though it does slip off if I leave it on when I fold the cart up. My only complaints about it so far: it moves around on the bus so it has to be held still, which is something I haven't been used to in a long time because my Goodwill cart didn't have any wheels on the front, so it didn't move much when it was on all fours. It was bought used, and was $10, and it lasted at least two years, possibly longer; I don't remember how long ago I bought it.The only other minor annoyance is that I can't figure out what the manufacturer meant the extra storage basket in the back of it to be meant for, because it's too small for me to put my Gaia bag in there, and the spaces between the slats are so big that most things I put in that rear basket immediately fall out. If it had slats going the other direction as well, it would be more useful. As it is, I'm gonna have to find a bag of some kind that will fit in there. I tried putting my little handbasket that I found in a Free Pile once in there, but it wouldn't fit.
Favorite thing: the waterproof liner thing, its lid Velcros shut so readily that if I didn't know better, I'd swear it was a magnetic clasp instead. In fact, I'm not actually convinced there aren't also magnets inside the Velcro bits.
Anyway, out of words for now.
( PS )
~ ~ ~
1 = Hell, I'm fairly certain that the last time I had a cold, Google didn't exist yet.
