edithmorningstar

#Purrcy was both happy and regal, sitting in my seat on the sofa with the sun coming the skylight on it. See how he smiles at me in Cat!
#cats #CatsOfBluesky

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby is lightly curled on a brocade cushion, looking at the camera with ears alert, whiskers spread wide and white, eyes light green and pupils just slits. He is clearly very happy, as sunlight shines on the cushion and most of him.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby is lightly curled on a brocade cushion, looking at the camera with ears alert, whiskers spread wide and white, eyes light green and pupils just slits. He is clearly very happy, as sunlight shines on the cushion and most of him.

I sat out on the porch to eat breakfast today, and the local hive of feral honeybees was awake, buzzing about looking for nectar. The crabapple flowers are opening, so they seem to have their timing just right. The carpenter bees were also out, inspecting the eaves. It was really good to have that 1/2 hour, even though it was so late in the morning (I had errands to run before my stomach was ready for breakfast) that I didn't see or hear any migrants.

mecurtin

In general Purrcy is *not* allowed on the kitchen counters. But he seemed extremely interested in the back corner here, so I let him jump up and poke around as part of his Rodent Control Officer duties. No results at this time, but Constant Vigilance! is his watchword.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby looks back at the camera over his shoulder from where he stands in the corner between a tile wall and an uneven stone one. Plastic containers can be seen next to him. He looks quite concerned, but his eyes are a beautiful gray-green.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby looks back at the camera over his shoulder from where he stands in the corner between a tile wall and an uneven stone one. Plastic containers can be seen next to him. He looks quite concerned, but his eyes are a beautiful gray-green.

Purrcy jumped up on the kitchen Chair O Love and he was feeling *feisty*! He discovered a gap between the blanket & the chair, explored it, and saw that it was Good.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby crouches on a gray-green blanket-covered chair in a kitchen, looking a little wild.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby crouches on a gray-green blanket-covered chair in a kitchen, looking a little wild.

A gray-green blanket is draped across a chair. The white-furred nose of a tabby cat peaks out the bottom, whiskers spread but eyes invisible.

A close-up of Purrcy the tuxedo tabby's face as he peers out from under a gray-green blanket on a worn brown vinyl chair. Only his eyes, little pink nose, and wide-spread whiskers can be seen.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby peeks out from where he crouches in a nook made by a gray-green blanket draped over a worn brown vinyl chair. His eyes look very large and solemn, his paws very small.

People on Bluesky were discussing a tweet by a TERF called June Slater, who posted:

These trans women. Do they ever do things like women actually do, run a home, cook, put the washer on, get the kids to school, visit relatives in care homes, budget the bills, clean the house, chauffeur kids about? You know the reality of being a woman!

One of the boggling aspects of this "thinking", to me, is the way she doesn't seem to be able to conceive of MEN cooking or taking care of children or living spaces.

Katherine Dickinson said

there’s a weird expectation of childishness in men among these women to the point it’s like these women aren’t attracted to functioning adults and it’s like two steps from Why Don’t You Take A Seat With Chris Hansen territory

And I remember things I'd read about the history of housekeeping and service work that I wrote up here, and wondered:

Compared to the US & the Continent, Brits tended to be resistant to labo(u)r-saving home tech & reliant on servants for the middle-to-upper classes right up to WW2. After the War, *huge* shock of not having servants like before, & I think maybe upper-middle/upper-class men just ...use their wives?

bcuz before the War they were certainly childishly dependent, by US standards. e.g. Gentleman's service flats, in UK, were bachelor apts with cleaning, cooking, and personal valet services provided. No equiv in US AFAIK

I looked at some stats about household work, but there's basically nothing about how the lives of upper-middle-class or richer people live in different countries.

Ach, I shall quit this now and finish my Andor re-watch, so Dirk and I can watch the new eps when they drop on Tuesday.

lannamichaels

Via

sophia_sol most recently! And this reminded me that I haven't done the April hits meme yet, oops.

1. How many works do you have on ao3?

1,158

2. What's your total ao3 word count?

3,109,186. Caveat that this includes a lot of co-written fics, including a very long one where I didn't write much on it overall. Knocking out the stuff I didn't write myself probably removes about a million words.

3. What are your top five fics by kudos?

1. Scenes From An Inconvenient Espionage Love Story. - Les Mis/James Bond - 2,581 kudos as of this writing
2. Earthlings Gonna Earth. -- The Martian -- 2,450 kudos
3. Things To Do In New York City When You're No Longer Brainwashed. - Avengers - 1,478 kudos
4. The Family Dursley. - Harry Potter - 1,310 kudos
5. Interstitial. - The Martian - 1,104

4. What fandoms do you write for?

Complicated question, but my actively working on WIPs are Vorkosigan fandom and Harry Potter at present. Other fandoms on WIPs started in the last 3 years's folders in scrivener (2023-2025): Discworld, Westing Game, The Parent Trap, Pride & Prejudice, Hero Elementary (a spitefic sequel to the spitefic Hero Elementary fic I've already posted), and Glass Onion.

5. Do you respond to comments? why or why not?

Sometimes. I used to try to reply to all comments and I do not do that anymore.

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I've done some stuff to characters but possibly the one that qualifies most here is not actually angst but one that someone asked me about the ending specifically for reccing for a specific person reason and I had to say "do not rec this to that person dealing with this stuff": Not Like I Faint Every Time We Touch. (Star Wars), which is Jyn Erso having a crush on Leia Organa, who is straight.

So it is not angsty! But also I tagged it "The Most Accurate Thing I Have Ever Written" and I am not one to overuse freeform tagging in that manner.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

So this is cheating but the Petyaverse has the happiest best ending in the world because it all built up to that (with diversions) and once I got to the end, it was all definitely over, so that was nice. Happiest for me, happiest for the characters, happiest for the ability to do a character and story arc!

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Yep.

9. Do you write smut?

Yep.

10. Do you write crossovers?

Yep.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Yep! There was, apparently, a college newsletter in Alberta (?) -- somewhere in Canada, I think it was Alberta -- that had a segment called Tim (as opposed to Time) and they ripped off one of my LOTR fics. Just reproduced it entirely without attribution (but with the same title). To this day I have no idea why. Like, certainly it was to mock fanfiction, that goes without saying, but it also didn't seem to have any mocking? Did someone just submit it as a gag? As an original story?

Someone in fandom gave me some lawyerly things to say to them and I sent it to them and they took it down.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yep!

13. Have you ever cowritten a fic before?

Yep!

14. What's your all time favourite ship?

I mean. I haven't read it in at least a decade, but Aragorn/Boromir really was something, wasn't it. Many fond memories.

15. What's the wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

Teenage Single Dad Gregor Vorbarra, earliest notes date in the file is December 2016.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Action and description.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I used to do this and then it was like, why. Why do this. When I could just write "X said in Y language" right after it. Also then you have to deal with translations. Plus getting someone to give you the phrase in the other language in the first place, or rely on Babelfish (but I date myself). Not worth it!

When I read a fic, by the way, I am never looking into the end notes for translations, and since I read a lot on my phone, I also can't hover for them. Either I can work it out by context or it's not actually important to the story or it's so incessant that I give up and close the fic. Those are the options. Me keeping the end notes open in another tab and going back and forth is not happening.

How does this mesh in with the glossaries I usually remember to add to fics in Yinglish? Absolutely it doesn’t but also Yinglish is English, right? Right? :P

(Also those fics are short and the Yinglish is the point, the glossary is just there to be helpful, but it's not like oh hey, this character is French, let's have a discussion in French.)

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Star Wars.

20. Favourite fic you've ever written?

~~My favorite child is~~ I scrolled through the entire stats list on ao3 for this question and I am settling on Hogwarts by Allen Ginsberg. It's probably my best pastiche and it was harder than the Fight Club one.

IDK. There's fics I like and fics I'm meh on and fics I dislike, but I can't really come up with an all-time favorite.

I keep wanting to turn this into "what's the most experimental" or "what was the hardest" but anyway, actually, here are the most personal ones -- because that's quantifiable and easy enough to answer: And Enoch Still Walks With God. (Highlander) (if I were posting that today I'd be brave enough to use Chanoch not Enoch but anyway), the soul is innocent and immortal it should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse (Vorkoisgan), and Waiting For Methuselah. (Highlander).

mecurtin

For some weeks now I've been attending Invisible's "What's The Plan?" Weekly discussion/organizing meetings with co-founders Ezra & Leah.

I've been taking notes on the meetings, I'm going to start writing them up to share. I'm not going to claim to meet journalistic standards, but I'll do my best to cover the ground & pull out the good quotes. You can watch the video here.

I've been taking notes on the meetings, I'm going to start writing them up to share. I'm not going to claim to meet journalistic standards, but I'll do my best to cover the ground & pull out the good quotes. You can watch the video here.

Please give me feedback on format, style, level of detail. I'm posting here first because I trust you guys most, I may post elsewhere or turn it into a bluesky thread, dunno.
( cut for length, US politics )

mecurtin

It was evening, and time for ... *Shenanigans!* #Purrcy had to zoom about as I went GRAR! and then there was the Tossing of Crinkly Toys. As you can see from his eyes he was very wild and fierce, not to be tamed by external forces.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby crouches behind a wine box where it sits between a wooden and a tile floor. His pupils are blown wide, his whiskers splayed out and forward: the hunter lurks!

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby crouches behind a wine box where it sits between a wooden and a tile floor. His pupils are blown wide, his whiskers splayed out and forward: the hunter lurks!

I'm at that point in Pesach where I'm hungry all the time because nothing feels like food. Hm. Dirk is having tortilla chips, I think I'll follow his lead ..

lannamichaels

Title: The Dendarii Vorbarras.
Author:

lannamichaels
Fandom: Vorkosigan Saga
Rating: G
Archives: Archive Of Our Own, SquidgeWorld

Summary: The first thing Serg's boy says to me is, "hello, Grandmother".

( Still trying to give Gregor a support system )

mecurtin

I was up too late, and Purrcy definitely felt it was time for me to get to bed. He was waiting right there! Pre-cuddly for your convenience!

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby sits in loaf position facing the camera not quite directly, pupils wide, ears alert. He's sitting on a red blanket on the bed, a blue blanket can be seen behind him. What a cute guy.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby sits in loaf position facing the camera not quite directly, pupils wide, ears alert. He's sitting on a red blanket on the bed, a blue blanket can be seen behind him. What a cute guy.

This was actually from a few days ago. Last night I made every effort to go to sleep early, because both Mr Dr Science & I had to get up early (for us) to call the Well Manager people & see if they could come repair our system. Or at least I was doing that, Dirk was going down to see if he could get water out of the tank to flush the toilets.

Huzzah! We were in luck! They were able to come over and do all repairs by 10:20. What a relief! There is NOTHING that I miss about modern life more than running water, NOTHING. My back has been hurting to the point of crippling me today because I moved too many gallon jugs yesterday, even one at a time.

Today's weather was really nice after a run of cold and wet, and a band of storm across the southern US that kept migrants back. So a bit after noon I saw Purrcy was looking out the window and I saw a Tufted Titmouse really rollicking it up in the bird bath:

grainy picture of a Tufted Titmouse bathing exuberantly in a red granite bird bath

grainy picture of a Tufted Titmouse bathing exuberantly in a red granite bird bath

and then a bit later my first warbler of the year, a Yellow-Rumped of course, a male in full breeding plumage, getting the grime of travel off his feathers. That was really cool. I also saw that the Carolina Chickadees are definitely going in & out the bird house I cleaned out. Seeing the Yellow-Rump, I went & sat on the front porch with my binocs, and in an hour I also saw a Palm Warbler, Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker, Brown Creeper (early for here!), and heard a Pine Warbler, as well as most of the Usual Suspects -- at mid-day, which is usually nap-time for birds. It was extremely restful and happy-making on a day with too many non-happy-making events.

mecurtin

With well-trained staff one can lounge comfortably and have exciting playtime brought to *you*!

Purrcy wanted a little light frolicking, but not enough to actually get up and move.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby lies on his side on his carpeted cat rest, reaching up with his paws to bat at the leather strings flying about from a wand toy. An open woods stretching down to a road is visible out the window behind him.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby lies on his side on his carpeted cat rest, reaching up with his paws to bat at the leather strings flying about from a wand toy. An open woods stretching down to a road is visible out the window behind him.

Well, we had a bunch of things planned for today. At least Mr Dr & I got our sheets changed! [gold star!] Then we discovered that ... there was no water ... [investigation montage] it turns out the pump that moves the water from the well management tank (which holds the water as it's slowly pumped up from our feeble well) to the house has died. On Sunday, of course.

Eventually I got hold of someone from the company who can fix it, but too late in the day for them to come today, so I have to wake up early in the morning to call them or meet them or something. And I had all these plans about what I was going to do or write today, but they've been totally destroyed.

My brain is just ... wet noodles. I'm going to lock this down, go to sleep, hope tomorrow works out better.

mecurtin

I was working at the table in the kitchen, getting food ready for the freezer, and Purrcy was sitting on the baseboard/window ledge at my feet. He gazed at me when I looked down, no demands, just love. It's really great.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby is lying on the windowledge, draped over the edge a little to get warmth from the baseboard next to it. His wide, light green eyes are gazing up at the human whose blurry leg is just visible at the edge of the frame.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby is lying on the windowledge, draped over the edge a little to get warmth from the baseboard next to it. His wide, light green eyes are gazing up at the human whose blurry leg is just visible at the edge of the frame.

I need to put food away and go to bed. I'll try to write more tomorrow.

mecurtin

Purrcy was up on the back of the sofa not just because of the sunlight, but because Young Dr Science was lying down it, reading. The humans must be monitored! And purred at, as you can probably tell from the smug, happy expression.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby is crouched on top of a brown fake-leather sofa in a patch of sunlight. His ears are alert, his whiskers extended, his nose very pink, his expression very happy. It's a good life, being a cat.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby is crouched on top of a brown fake-leather sofa in a patch of sunlight. His ears are alert, his whiskers extended, his nose very pink, his expression very happy. It's a good life, being a cat.

There was no food in his dish and no coffee in my cup. Purrcy had yelled me out to the kitchen, insisting that I perform that most important first task of the day: PETS. Mere bodily sustenance for either of us was secondary.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby's head, shoulder, and arm are visible on a blanket-covered chair, as he lies there being petted by a white person's hand. The hand, which is wearing a gold wedding band, s starting to look a little old, but I promise the owner still feels a lot younger than that inside. Purrcy is very happys with the pets, and is treading the blanket with his extended paw.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby's head, shoulder, and arm are visible on a blanket-covered chair, as he lies there being petted by a white person's hand. The hand, which is wearing a gold wedding band, s starting to look a little old, but I promise the owner still feels a lot younger than that inside. Purrcy is very happys with the pets, and is treading the blanket with his extended paw.

It's been very hard for me to keep my focus over the last few days. Thank goodness for the Murderbot trailer.

Mr Dr Science and I watched The Residence and enjoyed it very much, even though pretty much every single thing they *showed* about the bird-watching was wrong, wrong wrong. But the way they talked about birding, how you have to approach it, was right. So I could roll with it, and we both really loved the show.

ursamajor

I've been baking my way through Molly Yeh's Sweet Farm all month. I made the One-Bowl Any-Butter Cookie Bars for choir (peanut butter and tahini because those were the jars I was trying to finish off the tail ends of; I also added dinosaur sprinkles on top because DINOSAUR SPRINKLES). I baked up the Potato Chip Chocolate Chip Cookies for a birthday party, and there were zero leftovers to bring home from that.

Saturday night, I was flipping through the book, trying to decide what to make for the picnic my food writing class was having the next day, and the Cherry Mahlab Linzers caught my eye. I randomly had mahlab on hand, because while we were waiting to pick up pizza from a new-to-us place awhile back, I was browsing the halal market next door, and they had little jars of mahlab and mastic at the counter. And we also had a full jar of cherry jam in the cupboard! ... but I did not feel like doing anything fussy like making sandwich cookies.

So I kept flipping, and came across the Jam Bars, Three Ways. Raspberry coconut cinnamon! Plum hazelnut fivespice! Apple marzipan (almond) cardamom! Which all sounded delicious, but I was missing at least one if not both key ingredients for each of the suggested options. But I was still thinking about the cherry mahlab combo, and decided it was time to pull one of my usual moves: smash the two concepts together and end up with:

Cherry Mahlab Jam Bars

1 cup unsalted butter (2 American sticks), room temp
133 g sugar
1t mahlab
1t rosewater - this replaces vanilla in the original jam bar recipe
260g flour - we were out of AP flour, but had bread flour on hand
1/2t kosher salt
40 grams macadamia nuts - somebody ate the almonds I thought we had on hand, so going through the nuts we actually had, I decided the macs were probably going to be the most neutral against the unknown strength of the mahlab taste, especially compared to walnuts and pecans
4 oz (half of an 8 oz container) halva - I modeled my filling off the apple marzipan filling, and used half a container of pistachio halva to supplement the nuts
1/2 cup cherry jam

1. Preheat the oven to 350F. Line a square metal baking pan with parchment so that you have handles to lift the bars out when they're baked. (The original recipe calls for an 8" pan; I used a 9" and it was fine.)
2. Cream the butter, sugar, mahlab, and rosewater in a mixer until fluffy.
3. Add the flour and salt, and mix until combined.
4. Press about 3/4 of the mix into the bottom of the baking pan until evenly covered.
5. Parbake the bottom crust for 15-20 minutes, until you can see a bit of browning around the edges.
6. While the bottom crust is parbaking, chop the nuts, then add them to the remaining crust mix and combine with your hands until you have a coarse crumble. Repeat with the halva, trying not to blend it in too much.
7. Take the bottom crust out of the oven and let it cool for 5 minutes. Once cool, spread your jam onto the crust evenly, leaving a 1/4" border around the sides. Top with the crumble.
8. Bake for an additional 25 minutes, or until browned on top.
9. Cool completely in the pan. Once cool, remove the bars, and slice. (I did 4x6 to make 24 bars; the original recipe calls for 4x4.)

Current Mood: hungry

lannamichaels

PART TWO.

( Read more... )

lannamichaels

End of Sanhedrin! I am really amused that we're going to have Makkos (lashes) over Pesach, and Shevuos (oaths) over Shevuos.

This perek... this was so much agadata. So much. I kept getting behind, there was so much agadata and I kept having to follow various references, and it was so much agadata. On the other hand. The actual topic of the perek, I didn't care for. I recall many years ago, I was at a place, and this was long enough ago that having the entirety of mishna and gemara in my pocket was still a new thing. There was a piece of paper with some quotes and one of them was the kol yisrael yesh lahem chelek one, which is very familiar to me from constant pirkei avos. And then a person said to me, you know what comes after that right? And no I didn't recall, so out came my phone and I looked up the citation and-- yes, everyone has a chelek in olam haba. Except for this, that, and something else that honestly sums up to everyone. There was one time where it was saying the generation of the desert doesn't have, and I wanted to be like "including Moshe? You get that's including Moshe, right?". Alas no one brought that up.

So now that's up with invei hagefen that has been fully ruined for me via daf yomi. Oh well. C'est la vie.

My notes behind cut. On to Makkos! Which I have gotten emails about going "hey it's a great one to start with, it's 23 days!" Which is true, but a large percentage of those days is Pesach. So that's going to be exciting (tm) but at least Sanhedrin ended at the perfect time for those who need to do a Taanis Bechoros siyum tomorrow (not me).

...THIS IS TOO LONG TO POST. HAVE TO CUT IT IN HALF. GOOD JOB, AGADATA.

( Read more... )

un refrain courait dans la rue

Purrcy, bees

Two Purrcys; housework

Meme: 20 questions for fic writers

Indivisible What's The Plan meeting, April 17; Edited

Purrcy

"The Dendarii Vorbarras." (Vorkosigan Saga) G

Purrcy: birds!

Purrcy & the "joys" of home ownership

Purrcy says Happy Passover

Two Purrcys, TV

cherry mahlab linzers x jam bars base = cherry mahlab jam bars

Cherry Mahlab Jam Bars

[Daf Yomi] Hadran Alach, Maseches Sanhedrin & Sanhedrin perek 11: Chelek -- 2/2

[Daf Yomi] Hadran Alach, Maseches Sanhedrin & Sanhedrin perek 11: Chelek -- 1/2

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