One day to go
Dec. 20th, 2025 09:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cathrowanSunrise today at 8:48 MST; sunset at 16:16. I am looking forward to the solstice tomorrow, when the sun starts to come back around.
The Best Option
Dec. 19th, 2025 08:29 pmlovelyangelI don’t remember what I was doing and where I learned that there was a Very Special Edition of Only Bad Options by Jennifer Estep being released this month. I was not on Ms. Estep’s mailing list, so I missed any announcements regarding this book in November and December. (I’m definitely on the mailing list now.)
Whatever I saw was enough to make me visit her site and look at order details. I saw an order deadline of December 12. I happened upon all this on the afternoon of December 10. Not even time enough to overthink this – I submitted an order immediately.
The next day I received very polite correspondence from Ms. Estep that my order form had lost my mailing address – and requested I provide the information – which I did. Also I saw I could request custom text to go with her autograph. I was too befuddled to come up with anything cute (you know... something like... To Amy, forever a Vesper fangirl...) – and I was fine with the default.
Anyway, the order was placed under the wire, and the package was shipped by Saturday (according to tracker emails) – arriving here yesterday, Thursday, December 18. I eagerly opened the box.
This was certainly a case of underpromise / overdeliver. Cradled in a swath of sparkly foil wrap was the book fully and tidily wrapped in paper gift wrap. This gift was for me, so I unwrapped the book – which is beautiful. I’m delighted to have a true hardbound book, far superior to the hardcover trade paperbacks that I own for the Galactic Bonds series. (I don’t trust the binding on those books.) Plus, it’s autographed.
The overdeliver part is all the extras that were included with the book – coloring bookmarks along with a box of crayons to color them with. A pen and notepad. Cute stickers and metallic decorations. And a handwritten card from Jennifer herself. It’s like a little surprise treasure box. Above and beyond!
I’ve lived long enough to know to listen to the Universe – and when serendipity presents an opportunity just before a deadline, I know to accept the sign. As always, I am a very lucky person. There are no coincidences. I would have been sad to have learned about this book after the fact. The new book has a home in the new bookwall.
Previous Galactic Bonds References
Link Salad (Jan 2023)
Tsundoku Winter (Mar 2023)
Tsundoku July (Jul 2023)
One More for the Pile (Mar 2024)
Love in Tsundoku (Mar 2024)
Tsundoku Winter (Mar 2025)
Tsundoku Reset (Oct 2025)
Whatever I saw was enough to make me visit her site and look at order details. I saw an order deadline of December 12. I happened upon all this on the afternoon of December 10. Not even time enough to overthink this – I submitted an order immediately.
The next day I received very polite correspondence from Ms. Estep that my order form had lost my mailing address – and requested I provide the information – which I did. Also I saw I could request custom text to go with her autograph. I was too befuddled to come up with anything cute (you know... something like... To Amy, forever a Vesper fangirl...) – and I was fine with the default.
Anyway, the order was placed under the wire, and the package was shipped by Saturday (according to tracker emails) – arriving here yesterday, Thursday, December 18. I eagerly opened the box.
This was certainly a case of underpromise / overdeliver. Cradled in a swath of sparkly foil wrap was the book fully and tidily wrapped in paper gift wrap. This gift was for me, so I unwrapped the book – which is beautiful. I’m delighted to have a true hardbound book, far superior to the hardcover trade paperbacks that I own for the Galactic Bonds series. (I don’t trust the binding on those books.) Plus, it’s autographed.
 |
The overdeliver part is all the extras that were included with the book – coloring bookmarks along with a box of crayons to color them with. A pen and notepad. Cute stickers and metallic decorations. And a handwritten card from Jennifer herself. It’s like a little surprise treasure box. Above and beyond!
I’ve lived long enough to know to listen to the Universe – and when serendipity presents an opportunity just before a deadline, I know to accept the sign. As always, I am a very lucky person. There are no coincidences. I would have been sad to have learned about this book after the fact. The new book has a home in the new bookwall.
Previous Galactic Bonds References
Link Salad (Jan 2023)
Tsundoku Winter (Mar 2023)
Tsundoku July (Jul 2023)
One More for the Pile (Mar 2024)
Love in Tsundoku (Mar 2024)
Tsundoku Winter (Mar 2025)
Tsundoku Reset (Oct 2025)
podcast friday
Dec. 19th, 2025 07:02 amsabotabby This week's episode is Wizards & Spaceships' latest, "Postcolonialism in SFFH ft. Suzan Palumbo." Suzan is a rising star in the Canadian speculative fiction scene and also just a very lovely, funny person. In the episode, she discusses the tropes and traditions that are baked into genre that reinforce colonialist mindsets, and the BIPOC authors pushing back against it. It's really good go listen.
Go and Stop
Dec. 18th, 2025 07:23 pmlovelyangelSurprising but welcome news – a green light is lit for a Second Anime Season of Yona of the Dawn – more than 10 years after the first season. The manga is just now ending and will hit 47 volumes. I can’t say I’m really excited about the anime; I’m currently more interested in how the story ends.
Speaking of story ends... after ignoring the series all season, yesterday I binge-watched the last 10 episodes of My Hero Academia. The long series ended about as I expected. Except for Ochaco getting shortchanged (as she has throughout the series), I’m satisfied but not delighted with the ending. I don’t think I need to watch this series again.
Speaking of story ends... after ignoring the series all season, yesterday I binge-watched the last 10 episodes of My Hero Academia. The long series ended about as I expected. Except for Ochaco getting shortchanged (as she has throughout the series), I’m satisfied but not delighted with the ending. I don’t think I need to watch this series again.
Gosh, don't you just hate it
Dec. 19th, 2025 01:35 pmconulywhen your boyfriend, who turned out to be a fabulously wealthy member of the magical nobility, insists on buying you an expensive ring, and not just to get at his awful family who all hate you?
Last time that happened to me, I told him, "The ring is nice, but seriously, get your shit together and stand up to your folks, or the wedding's off." And this is why I'm not married today. Fabulous wealth is all well and good, but there are limits, and realistically speaking, you probably can't murder all your inlaws.
Alas, our protagonist is going to take the next book and a half to put her foot down. I can just tell. Unlike any sensible heroine, she's going to spend all her time trying to placate those assholes instead. Honey, it's a wasted effort! If you insist on standing by your man, stand by him by booking a couples spa date - no parents allowed.
(The ring isn't even magical. It's just expensive. I mean, honestly, I would not put up with those people for a nonmagical ring, and here she is insisting that it's all too much, it's too valuable, is he sure he wants to spend what, to him, amounts to pocket change on little old her? Please.)
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( Read more... )
Last time that happened to me, I told him, "The ring is nice, but seriously, get your shit together and stand up to your folks, or the wedding's off." And this is why I'm not married today. Fabulous wealth is all well and good, but there are limits, and realistically speaking, you probably can't murder all your inlaws.
Alas, our protagonist is going to take the next book and a half to put her foot down. I can just tell. Unlike any sensible heroine, she's going to spend all her time trying to placate those assholes instead. Honey, it's a wasted effort! If you insist on standing by your man, stand by him by booking a couples spa date - no parents allowed.
(The ring isn't even magical. It's just expensive. I mean, honestly, I would not put up with those people for a nonmagical ring, and here she is insisting that it's all too much, it's too valuable, is he sure he wants to spend what, to him, amounts to pocket change on little old her? Please.)
( Read more... )
Anybody have any explanatory links?
Dec. 18th, 2025 04:09 pmconulyAs we all know - or anyway, as most of us know - words are capitalized like names if they're used like names and titles.
This most commonly applies to kinship terms, of course - "I gave a present to my mom" versus "When she opened her present, Mom cried" and "I have an uncle who is a firefighter" versus "You're a firefighter, aren't you, Uncle John?"
But there's a few people in the comments asserting that they've never seen this before, they would've been marked down at school, and so on.
It does boggle my mind somewhat that they, I guess, never read fiction in which people have parents, or else don't pay much attention when they do read, but I suppose not everybody is lucky enough to have been raised by a proofreader. However, what I'm posting about is that it's surprisingly difficult to find an authoritative source on this subject online.
The MW and Cambridge dictionary entries only cover this in the briefest way, without an explanatory note. I can't find a usage note by looking elsewhere at MW. I see people asserting that the AP and Chicago styles require this - but I can't actually access that, and searches on their respective websites go nowhere.
I can find lots of casual blogs and such discussing this in detail, but understandably people who think they already know are reluctant to accept correction from random sources like that. Can't quite blame them, though they're still very wrong. Or, I mean to say, they're out of step with the norms of Standard English orthography.
Does anybody have any source that's likely to be accepted? I don't even care about telling that handful of people at this point, I'm just annoyed at my inability to find a link on my own.
This most commonly applies to kinship terms, of course - "I gave a present to my mom" versus "When she opened her present, Mom cried" and "I have an uncle who is a firefighter" versus "You're a firefighter, aren't you, Uncle John?"
But there's a few people in the comments asserting that they've never seen this before, they would've been marked down at school, and so on.
It does boggle my mind somewhat that they, I guess, never read fiction in which people have parents, or else don't pay much attention when they do read, but I suppose not everybody is lucky enough to have been raised by a proofreader. However, what I'm posting about is that it's surprisingly difficult to find an authoritative source on this subject online.
The MW and Cambridge dictionary entries only cover this in the briefest way, without an explanatory note. I can't find a usage note by looking elsewhere at MW. I see people asserting that the AP and Chicago styles require this - but I can't actually access that, and searches on their respective websites go nowhere.
I can find lots of casual blogs and such discussing this in detail, but understandably people who think they already know are reluctant to accept correction from random sources like that. Can't quite blame them, though they're still very wrong. Or, I mean to say, they're out of step with the norms of Standard English orthography.
Does anybody have any source that's likely to be accepted? I don't even care about telling that handful of people at this point, I'm just annoyed at my inability to find a link on my own.
Reading Wednesday
Dec. 17th, 2025 06:50 amsabotabbyJust finished: Censorship & Information Control: From Printing Press to Internet by Ada Palmer. This was really good. Feels like even though it's pretty recent and deals mostly with history, it could use an update as the technology for censorship has advanced rapidly in the past few years, so I hope she/her students are still doing some work around it.
Currently reading: The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. Usually in December, after I've hit my Goodreads goal, I read something that's gratuitously long and would otherwise fuck up my goal if it didn't spill over into January (yay for anything and everything in my life being quantified and gamified, love that for me). This year's winner is my high school English teacher's favourite book, which he recommended but said that we wouldn't get until we hit middle age. Well, now I am middle aged so I'm reading it.
It's a curious book. I always hit the literary classics and go like. Oh. Haha. This is stranger and funnier than I imagined.
Am I enjoying it? I dunno, as much as you can enjoy a 1000+ page book which goes into detail about the breakfast, second breakfast, rest period, lunch, dinner, second dinner, etc. of the character. Which is the point, really—the mountain in question is a liminal space where in theory, the tuberculous patients can leave, but don't. But it's a slog.
Currently reading: The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. Usually in December, after I've hit my Goodreads goal, I read something that's gratuitously long and would otherwise fuck up my goal if it didn't spill over into January (yay for anything and everything in my life being quantified and gamified, love that for me). This year's winner is my high school English teacher's favourite book, which he recommended but said that we wouldn't get until we hit middle age. Well, now I am middle aged so I'm reading it.
It's a curious book. I always hit the literary classics and go like. Oh. Haha. This is stranger and funnier than I imagined.
Me: I guess I will finally read literary classic The Magic Mountain.Thomas Mann: Allow me to introduce my himbo failson, Hans Castorp. He is pure of heart and dumb of ass.
Am I enjoying it? I dunno, as much as you can enjoy a 1000+ page book which goes into detail about the breakfast, second breakfast, rest period, lunch, dinner, second dinner, etc. of the character. Which is the point, really—the mountain in question is a liminal space where in theory, the tuberculous patients can leave, but don't. But it's a slog.
Cold weather is not currently seasonable
Dec. 16th, 2025 09:30 amsporky_ratAll of my cold weather clothing is either military surplus or hand me downs from cousins in the oil fields.
I might need to figure this out. (This is JANUARY weather, not December!)
Watched the weather report today.
Dec. 15th, 2025 04:08 pmconulyToday's temperatures: Started below 20, "feels like" in the single digits. But not to worry, within a week we should be in the 50s!
And they just said that, with no commentary, like it's not absolutely bizarre to go from 19F - 56F within a single week in December.
And it's not just the high temperatures that are bizarre, the low ones are too. I can't speak to the decades before 1990, I guess, but NYC weather used to be temperate - we got more snow, but that's because the winter temperatures were in the snow range - close to the freezing point, not so warm it melted, not so cold that it just didn't happen.
And they just said that, with no commentary, like it's not absolutely bizarre to go from 19F - 56F within a single week in December.
And it's not just the high temperatures that are bizarre, the low ones are too. I can't speak to the decades before 1990, I guess, but NYC weather used to be temperate - we got more snow, but that's because the winter temperatures were in the snow range - close to the freezing point, not so warm it melted, not so cold that it just didn't happen.