megwrites | Reading

1. I had another work from home day. I'm about halfway caught up with my email and fully caught up with teams. Tomorrow I've got a couple meetings, so I've got to go in to the office, but I might work from home again on Thursday to finally catch up on everything.

2. When Carla was out today she stopped at Uncle Tetsu's, a Japanese cheesecake chain. They have a sakura cheesecake right now and we had some after dinner tonight and it was sooooooo good. I normally prefer New York style cheesecake to the Japanese fluffier style, but this was really good consistency and the sakura flavor was amazing.

3. I finished playing The Plucky Squire. Overall it's a pretty fun game, but it is not just a straight action adventure game. There are a bunch of (frankly not that fun) mini games for the boss fights and stuff where you have to play other styles of games and that is not what I signed up for. Like for one character's boss battles you play a Mike Tyson style boxing game, for another it's a rhythm game, and for the third it's a Puzzle Bobble type. Then there are some stealth sequences where you have to sneak past enemies who can kill you instantly if they sense you, and if they sense you there is no way to run to escape, even if you're close to a place you could get away. You're just instantly dead. And the final battle is a space shooter type. The good thing is that if you die in a boss battle you can sometimes restart partway through, not all the way at the beginning, and the stealth sequences have multiple checkpoints and you'll respawn there rather than back at the beginning. But I would still have preferred not to have that "variety" in my action adventure game. Still is a fun game, though. But if you suck at those types of games it might ruin it for you.

4. I finished editing all my Disney Japan pics, so hopefully I can get the last day's posts written up later this week.

5. Jasper is just so handsome.

torachan

When I last left off, we had just checked out the big gift shop at the Fantasy Springs hotel and were exploring the land while waiting for our return time for the Peter Pan ride.

( More DisneySea adventures! )

rydra_wong

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/04/protests-erupt-across-the-uk-after-supreme-court-ruled-against-trans-rights/

Many many pictures.

Also, more protests yet to come, apparently, with ones scheduled for Oxford and Cambridge.

spiralsheep

A tale of medieval women crossing the gender line LITERALLY: in 1417 the Bishop of Durham ordered two Newcastle women to dress as drag kings and parade around two churches on six separate days, because he thought it was an appropriate act of penance, and if the Bishop of Durham thinks parading around a church in drag improves one's chance of getting into Heaven then who am I to argue?

Matilda Burgh and Margaret Ushar were ordered to do this penance after they dressed as men to visit the shrine of Cuthbert, one of England's most popular saints (defo Top Five), because the Bishops of Durham had literally built a misogynist blue line of exclusion into the ground around the shrine and only men were supposed to enter. There's more. The women's employer's wife, Mrs Baxter, who was accused of aiding and abetting the "crime" of female pilgrimage to a saint's shrine, disobeyed the Bishop's order to attend his ecclesiastical court and also disobeyed his order for her to attend the drag king parades because she claimed having twins to look after made her too tired ("& uxor prædicti Petri fic eſt fatigata cum duobus gemellis quod honeſte non poteſt comparere"). Clearly I love this entire escapade, although I did feel mild sympathy for the parish chaplain who had to deal with these three ungovernable women and an out-of-touch Bishop, lol.

( Sources in English and Latin. )

torachan

1. I worked from home today, getting a fair amount of catching up done. Unfortunately I forgot that I also had to double check all my stores' budgets for next month today so that did take some time away from the email and teams catch-up, but I should be able to focus more on that tomorrow. (Probably will mostly work from home tomorrow, too.)

2. We bought a sweater for Alexander for his birthday and even though his birthday is not until next week, gave it to him yesterday so he could try it on and see if it fit, and it was a little big so we said we'd be happy to go exchange it. I was just thinking to exchange it whenever we next go, but there was availability today and Carla felt like going to Disneyland, so while I had to stay home and focus on my email backlog, she went and exchanged the sweater and had a nice morning at DCA. She managed to find all the rest of the hidden easter eggs there (eventually with some help from an online guide) and took pictures, but I'm just going to include those with our next trip post rather than make a separate one. They had Lightning McQueen and Mater ones which are super cute, though.

3. We bought a stereo for the garage and it arrived today. As all modern stereos do these days, it also has bluetooth capability to connect to your phone, but she mainly wanted it for playing actual CDs. Her current CD rack is overflowing, so we need to get another and then move the CDs out to the garage so she can have them out there with the stereo. Nice thing is, unless you're standing right by the door or window, even with it turned up pretty loud you really can't hear much from outside. Amazing what insulation can do!

4. I love the look on Ollie's face here, but he was even cuter before I turned on the light and came in. It wasn't dark but was dim enough that he was really well camouflaged in the box!

rachelmanija

In this YA novel published in 1990, six fourteen-year-olds face their inner dragons while they're in an accelerated academic program which includes a class on Beowulf.

I read this when it first came out, so when I saw a copy at a library book sale, I grabbed it to re-read. It largely holds up, though I'd completely forgotten the main plot and only recalled the theme and the subplot.

My recollection of the book was that the six teenagers are inspired by class discussions on Beowulf to face their personal fears. This is correct. I also recalled that one of the girls was a gymnast with an eating disorder and one of the boys was an athlete partially paralyzed in an accident, and those two bonded over their love of sports and current conflicted/damaging relationship to sports and their bodies, and ended up dating. This is also correct.

What I'd completely forgotten was the main plot, which was about the narrator, Eric, who idolized his best friend, Paul, and had an idealized crush on one of the girls in the class, who he was correctly convinced had a crush on Paul, and incorrectly convinced Paul was mutually attracted to. Paul, who is charming and outgoing, convinces Eric, who is shy, to do a speech class with him, where Eric surprisingly excels. The main plot is about the Eric/Paul relationship, how Eric's jealousy nearly wrecks it, and how the boys both end up facing their dragons and fixing their friendship.

Paul's dragon is that he's secretly gay. The speech teacher takes a dislike to him, promotes Eric to the debate team when Paul deserves it more (and tells Eric this in private), and finally tries to destroy Paul in front of the whole class by accusing him of being gay! Eric defends Paul, Paul confesses his secret to him, and the boys repair their friendship.

While a bit dated/historical, especially in terms of both boys knowing literally nothing about what being gay actually means in terms of living your life, it's a very nicely done novel with lots of good character sketches. The teachers are all real characters, as are the six kids - all of whom have their own journeys. The crush object, for instance, is a pretty rich girl who's been crammed into a narrow box of traditional femininity, and her journey is to destroy the idealized image that Eric is in love with and her parents have imposed on her - and part of Eric's journey is to accept the role of being her supportive friend who helps her do it.

I was surprised and pleased to discover that this and other Sweeney books are currently available as ebooks. I will check some out.

queen_ypolita

The travelling portion of today went exactly according to the plan. It was grey and not particularly warm in York in the morning, and in Reading when I arrived there was a bit of drizzle in the air which turned into actual rain while I did a detour to buy some food for work lunches. It has since stopped, and the week's forecast looks pretty nice.

What's less nice is that I seem to have picked up a cold. I woke up with what was not a sore throat as such, but something like that, and felt snifflier on the train than I would have wanted to inflict on the other passengers, but not much I could do about it then. But it's wait and see to find out if it's developing into something or not.

queen_ypolita

Happy birthday,

lexin!

rydra_wong

Rebellion is growing among Labour MPs, so if you have a Labour MP, now is a VERY good and important time to write to them to protest the proposed PIP and other cuts:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/apr/20/the-whole-policy-is-wrong-rebellion-among-labour-mps-grows-over-5bn-benefits-cut

(If you have a non-Labour MP, hassle them too and see if they can be persuaded to do something vaguely useful.)

torachan

1. Back to work tomorrow. I am not enthused about that, but I did really enjoy my time off and I felt like being off for three weeks allowed me to actually disconnect more from work than I usually do if I'm just off a couple days or even a week. I did glance at my email and messages every day, but only responded less than ten times and even when I looked at the phone screen to see the messages, I only did so once or twice a day, rather than multiple times throughout the day. Tomorrow will be the start of a huge catch-up (thousands of messages to get through) and I think I will just work from home tomorrow unless something else comes up, so at least it will be a slow easing back into things. And since it's the last week of the month, there are less meetings, which means for time for catching up.

2. We had a lovely time at DCA this morning. I've heard that easter can be a pretty busy day but while it was getting a little busier by the time we left, it was super light in the first few hours and the weather was great.

3. I love getting shots of the cats looking out the window.

torachan

Last day of the Food and Wine Festival so last chance to ride Soarin' Over California before it goes back to Soarin' Over the World.

( Read more... )

torachan

Currently Reading
The Undiscovered Deaths of Grace McGill
26%. The MC is a cleaner who goes in and deep-cleans the houses where people have lain dead and undiscovered for a long time. She stumbles upon a mystery when two of her recent jobs have had the same dried flower at the scene. Pretty interesting so far.

Architectural Follies in America
16%. This is a short, picture-filled book about various odd buildings in the US. Randomly found it in a neighborhood Little Library. It's interesting.

A Drop of Corruption
23%. This has definitely picked up now and I'm a lot more interested in what's going on. Just haven't been making much progress because I've been off work and the majority of my audiobook time is in the car. Also a note on the audiobook, and I had this problem with the otherwise excellent audiobook versions of The Locked Tomb series, but there are pronunciation changes from the first book! I'm guessing that after the first book's audiobook came out, the narrator got feedback from the author and then made changes for the following books, but it's really jarring and I wish that if the author really wanted names/words said a certain way (or in the case of The Locked Tomb, certain accents used) then they would make note of that first, rather than changing mid-series. (And if it's just the narrator making changes rather than author feedback, I wish they wouldn't make those changes, either. Pick a pronunciation and stick to it!)

Hidden Figures
44%.

Recently Finished
Winterborne Home for Mayhem and Mystery
Sequel to Winterborne Home for Vengeance and Virtue. This felt like maybe there was supposed to be more books in the series and it all got wrapped up quickly in the end? It was all right, but I wasn't super into either book.

The Boney Hand
Sequel to Charlie & Frog. Another mystery in the town. This was cute. Seems like the author maybe wanted it to be a series but there haven't been any more books after this.

The Amelia Six
Middle grade book about a group of girls who win an overnight stay at Amelia Earhart's childhood home, but while they're there, her goggles go missing and they have to solve the mystery. It was just all right.

Murderburg
Apparently originally a web comic, this graphic novel is about a small island town inhabited mostly by criminals. The actual name is Muderburg, but everyone calls it Murderburg. The main characters are not even thinly veiled Morticia and Gomez, though the children are not Wednesday and Pugsly. It was fine. Somewhat funny in places but mostly just there.

Break Out
Heavy-handed graphic novel about a world where mysterious and possibly alien cubes appear in the sky and start randomly kidnapping people. But it only happens to teens, so when the governments of the world have done all they can and can't find a way to stop it, they just say well, it's just a few people here and there, we'll just have to live with it. Then the kids save the day. Obviously paralelling school shootings, but it felt like the message was more important than the story itself, because the plot is just one of those types where so many coincidences happen just right that it feels unbelievable.

Do Da Dancin'!: Venice Competition vol. 1-2
I'm not enjoying this quite as much as the original series, but it's good enough that I'll finish it.

Umimachi Diary vol. 8-9
Overall this series was just okay. I originally read the first three volumes on a limited time free promotion and liked them a lot, but when I finally got around to reading the rest of the series now I just found it kind of dragged. Not bad, but just okay.

jesse_the_k

Declaration of Interdependence from queerspacepunk (aka emmett)

A tiny snippet from a lovely thread

i want to be asked to come over and help put my friend's kids to bed as casually as they might text their spouse and ask them to pick up milk on the way home

i want to stop and pick up milk for another friend because i know their spouse hates the grocery store

i want to buy fruit that i dont like because it's on special and i know people who do

i want to pass lemons over the fence and to take my neighbours bins out when the forget

i want group chats instead of rideshare apps, calls in the middle of the night because someone's at the hospital, lonely or hungry or both

i want to do the dishes in other people's houses, extra servings wrapped in tinfoil and tea towels so it's still warm when you drop it off, a basket of other people's mending by my couch

i want to be surrounded by reminders that 'imposing' on each other is what we were born to do

https://queerspacepunk.tumblr.com/search/interdependence

Today I learned there are graphic resources—icons and banners—on the Archive of Our Own!

https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Banners%20*a*%20Icons/works

(Sadly AO3’s metatags don’t create RSS feeds, so I can’t add one here.)

New DW community for people who archive information from the web: datahoarders

timeasmymeasure provides resources for would-be archivists without tech skills: https://datahoarders.dreamwidth.org/3299.html

Of particular interest to me:

AO3 Downloader: a life-saver for any person who has thought, "God, I wish I could download all of my bookmarks, but that would take sooo long to do individually." Another Github download which is saved by its thorough instructions!

queen_ypolita

My planned activity today was to go to Jorvik, as I had never visited it before. And it was good—I wasn't quite sure what to expect, really, but I think it was better than I imagined. And I suppose at this point in my life I got a bit more out of it than I might have got some years ago.

Otherwise, I spent some time enjoying the sunshine and the delightful Museum Gardens. And having spotted the river cruises the other day, I went on one on the Ouse. It was lovely, sunshine and lots of greenery on the riversides. I think that's been one of the things with which York has surprised me this time, the green spaces. On my previous visits, I think I've spent most of my time on the streets and in buildings and hadn't really got a sense of the parks and trees and things.

My expectation was most shops would be closed today for Easter Sunday, but I spotted more places open than I was expecting. Not that I feel like doing any shopping anyway, but seeing a shoe shop open I did look in.

spiralsheep

- Readalong Wednesday's ancient mar-reminder stoppeth one of three, "Until the thrilling tale is told, this link within me burns..." :D
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Aurora_Australis/The_Ascent_of_Mount_Erubus

- Happy dyed potato day to everyone who celebrates! And for all my neighbours voting in the next couple of weeks, for all our sakes please choose a ticky box as unlike Badenoch / Sunak / Truss / Johnson as possible, thank you. P.S. remember that the potatoes who dyed for our sins are edible unless fertilized when they become treyf. Dark chocolate eggs are safer as they're always both unfertilised and unleavened! ;-)

- Birb log: when I put food out this week I only got half the numbers of birbs feeding at any moment because half of each pair is now on the nest until shift change, so even those birbs who are paired for the rest of the year are temporarily eating alone.

- Potentially improving everybody's habitat: honestly don't know where this last week went.... 13-19. Biologging. Deleting spree on mobile to clear storage. (And keeping up with regular household tasks but not improvements, lol.)

- Writing: I did commit a few prompt acts of versification.

( Lakes, bananas, laboured rhymes, and lock keys. )

torachan

1. We went to the farmers market this morning. I wish it was on Sundays instead of Saturdays because we usually go to Disneyland on Saturday morning, but this week we're going tomorrow instead, so we could go to the farmers market today. Sadly the Filipino tamales guy was not there this week, but we did get some of the delicious chocolate dipped macaroons we've gotten the last few times we went.

2. For dinner we ordered pizza from a fancy local place we have been meaning to try for years and never get around to. Sadly the one pizza I was most interested in from their menu was not available (butternut squash), but we got a zucchini one and a meat lovers one and both were very tasty. Definitely would order from there in the future, though it's not an every day place, that's for sure.

3. Usually I make a chocolate sheet cake for Carla's birthday but because we were out of town, I totally forgot about it, until randomly a channel Carla follows on youtube had a video about it, so I decided to make it today. I don't bake very much anymore and this cake is a lot of work, but it's soooooo good. After I'd already started mixing ingredients, Carla mentioned making a half-batch, but it was too late by then, but for next time I definitely will. We hardly use our large oven anymore and it's become a cupboard instead, so it has to be made in two small sheet pans to fit in the Breville, and that made it a little more annoying, plus we just don't need that much cake. I can give a good chunk to Alexander to take home with him tomorrow, at least.

4. Chloe and Molly were twinning on the bed.

torachan

Up until just recently (April 1st, as it happens), the rides in Fantasy Springs were virtual queue only, so you really had to get there early to lock in the return times, but as of this month, they now have regular standby lines in addition to the paid premier access for three of the four rides (the Tinkerbell ride is standby-only). Still, I wanted to make sure we were in the park right when it opened to get those premier access passes, especially for Frozen, since that is the most popular ride.

So I went over to the park around seven and got in line, and Carla planned to meet up with me before nine. ( That was definitely the right plan! )

cofax7

Hey folks!

Still alive, still employed! Booyah.

Not loving the job right now: it's never boring, but I had never intended to be a manager of people, and it's really quite stressful. Plus, you know, ::waves vaguely:: the omnishambles of everything is not helping.

But I did take the Tornado out for a 7-mile hike this morning, and she behaved quite well, and we just did some agility practice, and she got six weave poles in a row! Five times! So great. (If you have never seen dog agility, it looks like this, although that's one of the top dogs in the UK, and the Tornado is just beginning her agility journey.)

I call her the Tornado because she is Very. High. Energy. (And tends to knock things over.) I fear she will be one of the dogs barking all the way through the agility course.

Anyway, I'm planning some vacation time this summer, although it feels a little weird to be planning an international trip at this time. I plan to do some judicious app-deletion before coming back through Customs, because that's the world we live in right now.

Currently very excited about both Andor and Murderbot! I've already gotten a tiny bit spoiled for Andor, so I think I will have to lock down my browsing for the next few days. I understand the next Star Wars animated show (after Underworld) is also going to be about Darth Maul, and I'm kind of dubious, but maybe they can do something interesting with it. Myself, I would rather have learned more about Omega's adventures in the Rebellion.

I'm halfway through this month's book for book club, but it's heavy going: Therese Raquin, by Zola. I have liked Zola: he's very grounded, very vivid. Not at all romantic. But these characters are really very unlikeable. I may end up skimming a lot to finish by Tuesday.

***

I feel like I'm running out of plotty time-travel fixit fics in which determined heroes (and heroines) go back in time and prevent the errors of their forebearers. I suspect I have not found the right tags on AO3...

In other news, I am listening to Mind the Tags, a charming podcast about fandom, specifically fic-writing fandom. And although the hosts are quite nice, they're so young, and I found myself talking back to them as they fumbled their way through a discussion of the early days of alt.tv.x-files.creative. They tried to talk about show-specific archives and auto-archiving and never even mentioned Ephemeral and Gossamer! There are plenty of us fandom Olds still around!

(Although, how cool is it that Gossamer is still up? WTF.)

Still, it's a very friendly and upbeat podcast full of enthusiasm for fandom and fannish institutions, so I encourage y'all to give it a try if that's the sort of thing you enjoy. I found them because one of the hosts got interviewed by Anne Helen Peterson on her Culture Study podcast, which is also great.

In other other news, I lined up a group of local pals to go see our local minor league baseball team next month! So that will be fun! I like minor-league baseball because it's cheap and low-stakes and you can sit outside and drink beer and eat corn dogs and it doesn't really matter except you're there with a crowd and it's just fun. And all the seats are good.

queen_ypolita

I started my day with some parkrun tourism. It turned out to be a bit of a struggle with the strong wind and a right calf that feels a bit tight. So I wasn't expecting a good time, but after the first little bit it wasn't completely awful even if I kept feeling it. And looking at the whole thing in a positive light, it was still my second best time this year. I need to do more stretching and mobility exercises.

After showering and changing I went to the Yorkshire Museum. I really liked the Star Carr exhibition. There was also lots of see in the post-Roman to medieval exhibition but I didn't feel I quite gave it enough of a chance. Afterwards, I did some aimless walking about, had lunch and browsed books. I was prepared to buy a couple of books, but nothing really caught my attention that way. I had sort of planned for shopping this afternoon, but in the end I didn't really fancy it. And after a grey and rather nippy morning it was actually sunnier in the afternoon, even if it still wasn't very warm. Before the sun came out, I overheard somebody talking about the "October weather", and that seemed quite appropriate right then.

firecat

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/judge-blocks-passport-ban-citing

There’s lots to like in this temporary ruling, but the bit that makes my geeky soul sing is where the judge bases her ruling in part on the ban violating the Paperwork Reduction Act.

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a library of souls

reading

Reading

Daily Happiness

2025 Disneyland Trip #23 (4/5/25) Tokyo DisneySea (Part 2)

If anyone could use a morale boost

In which the Bishop of Durham orders two drag kings to parade around two churches for six days, 1417

Daily Happiness

Face the Dragon, by Joyce Sweeney

Back home

(no subject)

UK people: disability benefit cuts

Daily Happiness

2025 Disneyland Trip #28 (4/20/25)

Weekly Reading

boost: Declaration of Interdependence & 2 AO3 Resources

Lovely sunshine

In which Our Heroine's habitat remains unimproved this week, 16

Daily Happiness

2025 Disneyland Trip #23 (4/5/25) Tokyo DisneySea (Part 1)

Happy Saturday

(no subject)

Judge rules against anti-trans passport ban

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