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mific posting in

drawesome

Congrats to those who took part in this challenge!

Deep pink banner with clusters of red and pink hearts and challenge text.

Entries submitted for Drawing Challenge #75 - Romance:

Ya Tebya Lyublyu by mific - Heated Rivalry, Teen
Sophie at the Ball by mekare - Bridgestone, Gen
Lovecore MJV by queervanilla - Arcane, Gen
Hold Me by mific - Heated Rivalry, Gen
A Better Future by tally - Overwatch, Gen

As usual, this challenge as well as all of our previous challenges will remain open, so you can continue to submit entries to the community any time after the Round Up date. Be sure to tag your art post with the challenge name, so that it can be added to the list.

Thanks to all who participated in this challenge! :)

lovelyangel

It’s the last day of my month – and I have to say that it was a great month overall (if we ignore how much time I spent on PDXWLF... but other than that...) I had some excellent indulgences – and then my friends and family spoiled me as well.

Birthday Gifts from Family and Friends

My kids loaded me up with books I wanted, and Trisha and Nancy lavished me with fancy caramels. (My tsundoku stack is again huge – but we’re not talking about that right now.)

On Sunday, my kids and I celebrated my birthday with our favorite pizza. I got our usual order. With 18% tip, the total bill snuggled in just under $100, but I don’t mind. It’s worth it to us.

Abby’s Pizza for our Family Dinner
February 22, 2026
iPhone 13 mini photo

I also have a coupon from Abby’s for a free mini pizza for my birthday, so I’ll be making a return trip tomorrow. Actually, I have several coupons/offers for free birthday food – and they all expire on March 5, so I think I’m set for lunches for next week.

The month was too busy with the PDXWLF overload – but this is the last time, and next year Angel’s Month will be more relaxing. The trend is good. This year, I enjoyed being spoiled – a lot.

silver_chipmunk

I got up at 9:00 and had breakfast and coffee, showered and dressed, and went to my Al-anon meeting.

The weather is beautiful though that will change over the next few days. Oh well.

The meeting was very good. Then we went to the diner, I got a ride with S as usual. I had my usual bacon, egg, and cheese on a toasted English muffin. Nothing to drink though today.

After we finished, I took the bus into Flushing rather than coming back home, and met

mashfanficchick and we went to the food court of one of the Chinese markets. Ze had lunch, and I had a tea drink. Then we went to the market and ze shopped while I tagged along and looked at stuff, and thought maybe I'd come back another day and buy some things.

Then we split up and I came home. It was too late for the Starsky and Hutch chat, so I puttered with the computer, trying to get it's serial number (I eventually did).

At 7:00 I started trying to Team the FWiB. I had so much trouble that eventually I said to Teams me on my phone, while I worked on getting it up on the computer. So we did that. I did get the computer up and we got on that, but the connection was awful.

The books I ordered for Middle Brother's birthday were supposedly delivered today. They were not here. Either they lied about the delivery or they were stolen. I am very annoyed abuot that.

I should say something about the bombing of Iran. It's sickening. And as the FWiB pointed out, look now for more terrorist attacks in America in retribution. And can this administration keep us safe from them? I doubt it.

So that was the day.

Gratitude List:

1. The FWiB.

2. My meetings and the people there.

3.

mashfanficchick

4. Nice weather.

5. I did manage to get the serial number.

6. The computer seems to be working OK at the moment.

Current Mood: drained

disneydream06

Last night around midnight the forecast was calling for 3 1/2 inches of the white stuff.

Then by morning it was down to just over 2 inches.

When I woke up this afternoon, we had close to 6 inches of the bloody stuff. :o :o :o

In a couple of days, the forecast is calling for rain. UGH!!!!!!!!!!!!

kaffy_r

Dysfunctional Families Close Ranks

Whatever the horrors that Iran's theocracy has visited upon its own people - and they are horrors, as the grieving survivors of at least 7,000 Iranians killed by the regime in the past few months can attest, and the relatives of untold thousands killed in the years since 1979 - people in Iran will put that aside and stand against what we've done to them in the past 36 or so hours.

Your family may break your bones, bruise your mind, or force you down into heartbreak. You may hate your mother or your brother for what they've done to you. You may dream of revenge.

But when the neighborhood bully comes and strikes them down, injured or dead, then turns to you with a smile and says, "You're welcome," and expects you to go to your knees and thank him for that violence? You may well jump on the bastard's back and close your fingers around his neck, or hook them into his eyes, because they were your weight to bear, your sorrow to work through.

Didn't we learn this when we "freed" Iraq?

Apparently not.

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Location: the home office
Current Music: Ateez "Nasa"

dialecticdreamer

Work Discussion
By Dialecticdreamer/Sarah Williams
Part 2b of 2, complete
Word count (story only): 1367
[Friday, May 15, 2020, 1:30 pm]

:: After work, Aidan gets home to an unexpected, but not unwelcome, chaos. Part of the Edison’s Mirror (Teague Family) story arc. ::

Back to Late Arrival (part 2)
To the Edison's Mirror Landing Page
On to

Rory hummed. “Is… is it hard to make?”

Vic’s laugh pealed, filling the room. “It’s so unbelievably easy that you’ll be amazed. The hard part is straining out the seeds, oh, and the shirt and pants you’re going to sacrifice to the culinary lares,” he warned, laughing through every word.

“Dibs on the strainer,” Ed volunteered, chuckling. “Well, Mac and I will do it.” His brow furrowed for a moment, but it smoothed away with his sigh. “We’ll just sacrifice a shirt and pants so pick the ones that you don’t like, or ones that are damaged.”
( Read more... )

Current Mood: awake

shadowkat

1. Finished watching a sweet Japanese film entitled Rental Family - starring Brendan Fraiser as a struggling American actor in Japan, who lands a gig with an organization that hires actors to play roles in real family dramas. The film is directed and produced by Hikari.

Here's the synopsis: ( mild spoilers )

I went in blind? But found it to be interesting and moving, dealing with the complexities of human nature/connection and cultural differences. I fell in love with the characters, cried at the end, and found it a moving antidote to the aggravated misanthropy I'd been feeling off and on lately.

It's playing for free on Hulu, if you want to give it a shot.

2. Also watched, much earlier in the week while ill, Ghostbusters: AfterLife - which is directed by Jason Reitman, and stars Carrie Coon, Paul Rudd, the kid who played Mike in Stranger Things, and two young kids who are actually pretty good in it (possibly the best things in it), and the remaining stars from the original making cameos.

It's okay? Coon and Rudd are underused. They did more with Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis in the original. The focus is of course on the kids, so think...Goonies meets Ghostbusters? I miss the 1980s films, where kids were utilized better, and there were better scripts, and far less focus on bad CJI. The effects were even better in the original flick. This felt kind of cheap in places (Muncher was definitely showing his age), and not quite as many ghosts. It also references the original a lot, without explaining it - so it kind of assumes you've seen the original Ghostbusters and remember it vividly? (I don't, so it took me a little while to figure a few things out, which I did - relatively quickly. So it's possible?)

It's also on Hulu.

3. Finished Bridgerton S4 - which had dropped the final episodes today. I didn't enjoy this season and used Rental Family as an antidote to my feelings of general misanthropic annoyance. It was aggravating to say the least and no, did not, provide the promised satisfying ending. If anything it wrapped it up a bit too quickly and neatly, and let the villainous step-mother off with barely a scratch.

It's the Cinderella trope or a reworking of it, which doesn't quite work for me. ( Read more... )

This season admittedly adapted the most controversial of the Julie Quinn Bridgerton romance novels, entitled "An Offer from a Gentleman". I'd hoped they'd change the novel, do to the controversy surrounding it, and make it a gay romance, since Benedict has been portrayed as bisexual. A m/m Cinderella trope would be have at least been different, and far more interesting. But alas, no. (I can see why - that's very hard to do in this sort of series and remain true to the historical romance genre. Also that's a lot for a writer to take on? A Cinderella class problem and a gay romance at the same time.). But in the end, the only thing they really changed was the ethnicity of the heroine, from what I know of the books (which is very little - I've not read them, nor plan to).

Bridgerton is actually a good example of the difficulty of book to television adaptations, and how they aren't always faithfully adapted, and sometimes that's a good thing, and sometimes not, depending on your perspective? The series is adapted from a popular 21st Century group of romance novels by Julie Quinn, surrounding a titled and wealthy family and their friends in Mayfair London. While it doesn't change a lot of the plots (outside of S3, which did veer away from the books a bit along with the whole Lady Whistledown thread), it does change a lot of bits and pieces of the world and historical period (dicey that - considering it's a regency romance series - albeit not necessarily a faithful one), also changes the genders, ethnicity, and sexual orientation of various characters in order to be inclusive, and for sly social commentary. I wouldn't say it is a biting social satire (Austen, it's not - few romances are), but it is a satire of manners. More politically correct Georgette Heyer, than Austen.
( spoilers )

Oh, Netflix has grabbed a few series - it has all four seasons of Veronica Mars now, also West Wing, Grantchester, and various others.

lovelyangel

For a tech person, I’m pretty old school when it comes to certain things. For example, I don’t subscribe to any of the streaming music services (although I do have YouTube Music as part of my YouTube Premium subscription). Apple Music is especially problematic as Apple actually removes your own copies of music from the Apple Music app and replaces those songs with its own master copies – whether you like it or not. It’s possible to lose unique or special versions of songs in your library.

So I’ll never subscribe to Apple Music – and I manage my music library the way I always have since the days of ripping CDs and filling my iPod. I have too much music to download it all to my iPhone, so I sync only selected playlists and albums.

Years ago my playlists started getting corrupted. The songs were correct and played properly – but some (maybe half?) of the song/album cover artwork got randomly replaced by cover art from a different song in my library. It was super annoying – it’s been super annoying for years. But the music played fine, and I largely ignored it.

I had made a couple attempts to research a fix, but what I was told to do seemed like a horrid and dangerous pain – so I didn’t even make the attempt.

Today, though, I decided to research the situation again. I was a little more confident now that I’m armed with Kagi. I did a search for iphone music showing wrong album cover, and the top three results were immediately informative and useful.

So on my iPhone I went into Settings > General > iPhone Storage > Music > Edit > All Songs and deleted all the songs. Then I connected the iPhone to my Mac and resync’d all of my playlists – twice. (I’ve learned that I need to activate the SYNC action two times, and it’s the second time the app Syncs that the music gets transferred.) The Music app informed me that it was downloading 2000 songs to my iPhone.

When that was done, I checked my phone – and all album covers are correct! I’m very happy about this!

A Playlist on My iPhone 13 mini

I’m pretty happy with Kagi, too.

edelsont posting in

talkpolitics

I do not approve of my country's (the United States') having gone to war against Iran.

When we knew that it could happen, but before it had, I assumed that my reaction, when and if that day came, would be primarily one of anger (toward my own government).

That assumption turned out to be incorrect.

My saying this does not, however, indicate any shift from disapproval toward approval. The shift is not in what I think, but in what I feel.

That does not fit within the framework of moral judgment. It is simply grief.

Current Mood: sad

days_unfolding

Lily's affection is a little self-serving. She is very lovey-dovey when she wants food. Oliver, on the other hand, likes snuggles.

Woke up at 9:30 AM.

I bought a Black and Decker drill on Amazon plus screwdriver bits. I also signed up for an Udemy course on using a drill. Might as well learn to use it right!

The dogs don’t want to come in. Sigh. I really want to take a nap.

I’ve decided that I want “Time to Say Goodbye” played at my memorial service. (I’ve been planning it and will put instructions in my NokBox.) That song has been haunting me since the Olympics. And it has Italian in it!

Finally got the dogs in and fed us all. Nap time. Gracie: Bark bark bark bark. (Cat cat cat cat!) Me: Gracie, yes I know. Shut up!

Bella likes the larger Milkbones. I was leaving the box open for her to get them at will, but she’s eating too many of them. I need to stash them away. Somewhere. It’s a big box.

Hmm. I’m looking at Grand Prairie Friends for volunteering. But I need to wait and see if I hear back from the Humane Society and Park District before applying for something else.

Ate lunch. AccuWeather says that rain will start in two minutes. I want another nap. Overslept my nap.

I’m in shock over the strikes on Iran. We’ve messed with Iran before, and that didn’t go well, so let’s do it again! Plus, what happened with consulting with Congress? We already know that Trump thinks that he can do whatever whenever, but this is the most serious thing yet. (I had to dig for my outrage though because I mostly feel numb. My mom would be screaming though.)

Fed us all. Daily life meanders on. I want to go to bed early.

adafrog posting in

fandom_checkin

This is your check-in post for today. The poll will be open from midnight Universal or Zulu Time (8pm Eastern Time) on Saturday to midnight on Sunday (8pm Eastern Time).

Poll #34306 Daily poll

Open to: Access List, detailed results viewable to: Access List, participants: 22

How are you doing?

I am okay
14 (63.6%)

I am not okay, but don't need help right now
8 (36.4%)

I could use some help.
0 (0.0%)

How many other humans are you living with?

I am living single
9 (40.9%)

One other person
9 (40.9%)

More than one other person
4 (18.2%)

Please, talk about how things are going for you in the comments, ask for advice or help if you need it, or just discuss whatever you feel like.

conuly

This is some wag the dog garbage, but with worse naming, isn’t it.

troisoiseaux

Read Home Sweet Homicide by Craig Rice, an absolutely delightful 1944 murder mystery in which the three precocious children of a widowed detective novelist go meddling in the murder investigation next door, while - as a side project - trying to set their mother up with the lead detective on the case.

Read Beowulf! I just saw a one-man show called Beowulf, A Retelling in a pop-up bar at a local arts center, which was a very good introduction to Beowulf, since it was literally just a guy telling the story in his own (conversational, compelling) words, weaving in references to modern heroes and villains* as a sort of touchstone for how parts of the story would have resonated in ye olde days and using instruments for sound effects, like a violin bow across the strings of an electric guitar for Grendel's dying screech. It was very cool! Obviously then had to actually read Beowulf (the Francis Gummere translation; it was the first one available) and I'm glad I had the crash-course version first; it helped to know the shape of the story and have something to mentally translate it back to. (Plus, if I'd had to figure out how to mentally pronounce Healfdene and Ecgtheow on my own, I think I simply would have not.) What really struck me was the sheer sense of time of it all— the oldest known Old English poem, and possibly a story that was hundreds of years old by the time it was written down, and still there were recurring mentions of "heirlooms", which might be a quirk of translation but does suggest the weight of history behind this story that's already really, really old!, and also I found myself reading/listening to it like, okay, yes, I can see what Tolkien got from this.

( footnote )

Current Music: Grendel's Mother - The Mountain Goats

sistawendy

I knew when the news app on my phone chirped in the small hours of this morning that something bad had happened. The Wendling lost sleep last night about the brand new Iran war, and I find myself wondering if a 28-year-old with AuDHD is likely to get drafted. The Persian Princess, now living on the far side of the US from me, has mixed emotions to say the least.

And in a sign of approaching spring, the motorcycles are back on the highway near my place. Believe it or not, I like them, ss long as they're riding at reasonable hours as usual for the large groups.

Current Mood: blah
Current Location: the living room of the Devil Girl House

cosmolinguist

Thanks to otter for sharing this video the other day: Emotional Neglect: Healing from the Hidden Trauma of What Didn't Happen

I got around to watching it and it hit me so hard I needed to write this huge long thing about it. It's mostly transcript of the parts of the video that I wanted to make a note of, because it's not very accessible to me otherwise. But my thoughts are sprinkled around the block quotes of course.

( Emotional Neglect )

( Emotions Draw Our Attention to What Matters to Us )

( Shame, and Phobia of Inner Experiences )

( Existential Loneliness )

( Unconscious Self-Abandonment )

( Sensitivity to Rejection )

( Using Emotions to Connect Your Inner World to the Outer World )

yourlibrarian

1) I happened to catch the Heated Rivalry episode on NPR's 1A, and they mentioned these HBO stats: "The audience on HBO went from 53% women the week of December 22 to roughly two thirds women by January." This apparently refers to viewers and not signups to the service, so it makes me wonder how they know these demographics? Also, I would have thought new signups would be the bigger success rate for a streamer.

2) When we heard this news story on Wait Wait this morning, my partner said, "So it was Llama and Order" : https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/crime-fighting-llamas-catch-thief-by-surrounding-him-in-a-field-until-cops-arrive/

3) Americans now listen to podcasts more often than talk radio, study shows

What's interesting to me about this is that for a long time I had been reading articles about "when is podcasting going to break through". The surge in 2020 is unsurprising -- it's when a lot of people discovered podcasts, but then there's an immediate drop the following year. Meanwhile radio drops in 2020 because so many people listen to it mostly while commuting, which fewer are doing. ( Read more... )

4) Apparently we'd better prepare for a large wave of dementia patients in coming decades due to early wave Covid infections.

5) Had one of my best nights of bowling, at least in terms of outcomes. Normally my goal is just to break 100. I almost did so in game 1, did 114 in game 2, and 141 in game 3. This followed a 20+ minute delay when our lanes (which had been getting balls stuck all evening), stopped altogether and wouldn't lower pins. We were eventually moved to a different set of lanes to finish game 2 and do one of the fastest game 3s I've ever played. Paid off though!

Poll #34304 Kudos Footer-559

This poll is anonymous.
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 7

Want to leave a Kudos?

View Answers

Kudos!
7 (100.0%)

soc_puppet

I think I may have walked five miles today in while playing Pokémon Go, and my legs are not going to be happy about it tomorrow.

I am trying desperately not to care about the shameless money-grab that is special backgrounds, but alas, it's not working very well.

Anyway, Happy Pokémon Day/Weekend/What-have-you, the trailer for Pokémon Winds and Waves also got to me more than I wanted it to, Nintendo clearly has my number on speed-dial.

Current Mood: exhausted

cosmolinguist

I started getting a migraine halfway through lift club this morning.

I ignored it of course -- just the aura, at that point -- knowing that I'd have a while before it got, y'know, debilitating.

I enjoyed the rest of the exercises. I did nearly fall both at the beginning and the end of the escalator I took to get from the tram to the train, oops. But also I got home fine, via B&M for medicinal snacks -- mostly sugar, which I often crave during migraines, but also one particular 59p instant ramen thing that I suddenly needed, and enjoyed very much for my lunch.

It was that rare rough day for the whole house: D's IBS was playing up and he had to make his brain work on paperwork so much this afternoon that when he finally emerged I wondered if migraines were contagious (luckily he perked up a little after eating something). V slept through all their alarms and so has been off-kilter all day. I slept for four hours this afternoon and after that reached the point where I felt okay unless I tried to move or even think too hard.

Then we watched a Starfleet Academy episode and as soon as Sam mentioned Our Town I was like ...you come to me, on the day of my migraine, and now I'm gonna have to cry? (Crying is fine but a physically unenjoyable experience for me at the best of times. Which, we've established, today is not.) (I got a tear in my eye, but even that was only at the very end.)

Like I've said here, Our Town is largely responsible for why I write almost every day here. "I can't look at everything hard enough" fucking haunts me (of course we heard that line in the episode), and it's important to me to look at things as hard as I can while they are happening.

tl;dr: People are actually bad at predicting how much they'll enjoy reading back what they've written about their lives! Writing about the ordinary experiences of your life can be even more cheering to you when you go back and read them than the extraordinary ones.

A nice reminder on an excessively ordinary day.