he is throwing a gem tonight

Aug. 1st, 2025 08:36 pm
musesfool: a loaf of bread (staff of life)
[personal profile] musesfool
Anyone got a good recipe for corn fritters? We used to make them when I was a kid, but I have not turned up a recipe in the folder of old recipes I inherited from my parents, and neither my brother nor sister had a recipe. I'm guessing it was probably the Bisquick recipe, but I don't have any Bisquick, so I will probably end up halving the Smitten Kitchen recipe.

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the future was wide open

Jul. 31st, 2025 08:28 pm
musesfool: Yelena Belova in her vest of many pockets (it has pockets!)
[personal profile] musesfool
I spent most of the day glued to trade deadline updates - the Mets did pretty well. I would say they got 90% of what they needed. I would have loved for them to get a top of the rotation starter in addition to 3 excellent relievers, but I guess the price was too high.

I also had to complete a 90 minute cybersecurity training which was incredibly boring and repetitive, but if it finally gets our CEO or our AP department to recognize fake invoices as phishing emails, I guess it's worth it.

***

I finally watched Thunderbolts and I enjoyed it, mostly because of Yelena. She is so great! I'll never stop being mad about what they did to Natasha in Endgame, but at least we got Yelena out of the fun but way too late Black Widow movie. She is fantastic! I also enjoyed Ava Starr. Hannah John-Kamen needs to be in more things. I could have done without Walker, but whatever. He's nothing.

***

Here's the July recs update:

[personal profile] unfitforsociety has been updated for July 2025 with 16 recs in 3 fandoms:

13 Batfamily
2 Percy Jackson/Batfamily crossovers
1 Lord of the Rings

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Bujold impersonator is still scamming

Jul. 30th, 2025 04:55 pm
[syndicated profile] lois_mcmaster_bujold_feed
It is reported...

A person with the email loismcmasterb@gmail.com is out there pretending to be me. This not my email, and This Is Not Me.

This appears to be the same scammer who was impersonating me on X/Twitter and Mastodon a while back. Apparently their protocol is to engage the person in some conversation, and then try to sell them some kind of writing/editing scam.

Pass the warning along...

Ta, L.

posted by Lois McMaster Bujold on July, 30

a little something to make me sweeter

Jul. 30th, 2025 06:55 pm
musesfool: orange slices (orange you glad)
[personal profile] musesfool
I had to go into the office yesterday (for the first time since March! March!!!) and it has wiped me out. I mean, "had to" in the sense that my boss wanted to take us out for lunch since in addition to my birthday in July, 2 other team members had birthdays in late June. We made a reservation at a restaurant about a block and a half from the office, which was great since it was so hot! But not great because the restaurant...didn't exist? There was a sign, but nothing inside the building and the phone had been disconnected. Even though we had made a reservation!

So we stood there for a while in the heat, trying to figure out where else we could go, and I was like, "Pepolino is 2 blocks away, we could go there!" And thankfully, they still existed and were open and had a table for 5 available right underneath the air conditioner, so lunch was lovely after a rough start.

I didn't get a whole lot of work done, but I did have one or two quick conversations of the sort that is easiest in the office since you don't have to set up time - you just run into someone in the hall and chat. Still, not worth having to get up an hour earlier and spend 2 hours a day commuting.

(Also, I ran into oldboss3 and she was like, "wow I haven't seen you in so long! It's so good to see you! Can you send an email for me???" And I was just like, "...I think it's best if Assistant L sends the email, since she will be able to answer any questions received in response and I won't." *shudders* Dodged that one.)

Since I knew I was going to be in the city, I arranged to have dinner with [personal profile] innie_darling and [livejournal.com profile] tenaciousmetoo, which was also lovely!

And then I came home and even though I'd set the air conditioner to go on about an hour before I knew I'd arrive home, my apartment was still unpleasantly warm. Bleh. Took my bedroom some time to drop in temperature too, which is the real key to sleeping well, I think, at least for me. So I didn't have a great night of sleep. But I probably don't have to go back into the office until late September, so I guess it's okay. *g*

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Breaking the Mold

Jul. 30th, 2025 02:07 pm
yourlibrarian: FemaleHeroes-liviapenn (OTH-FemaleHeroes-liviapenn)
[personal profile] yourlibrarian
1) When person after person said they watched Penguin even when it was uncomfortable to keep going with it, it sounded rather familiar. I saw it with The Wire and especially with S2 of Andor. These were stories exploring the failures of systems, their purposes sabotaged by failing to account for personal agendas and human nature.

To me, Penguin and Andor share other similarities of the "it's so well written I had to see more" variety. Both are shows set within a franchise that do not feature the main features of that franchise, and which deal with the ruthlessness of societies in recognizable and everyday ways. Read more... )

2) Finished watching Girls on the Bus. It was apparently meant to go on for another season though I think it ended in a good enough place. Shame though as it really came together as a story of four different women in the same professional arena and the political angles are very familiar. Girls on the Bus is about female political reporters following a presidential campaign and has a nice diversity of characters. It's also interesting to pick up details from actual candidate reporting. Read more... )

3) In movies, I watched Fahrenheit 451 because I never read the book. Had Michael B. Jordan not starred I don't know as I could have gotten through half of it. Depressingly topical yet also doesn't make a lot of sense, since they apparently tried to update it to account for current events. Read more... )

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and it's one and two

Jul. 27th, 2025 07:28 pm
musesfool: The Reyes family, hugging (the family that kicks ass together)
[personal profile] musesfool
I keep intending to post and then forgetting to do so. Nothing much is going on. I pan-fried a steak for dinner tonight and it was delicious but it also reminded me why I do it so infrequently - the smoke condition was intense and ongoing despite 2 fans going and the smell is going to linger. But I ate it with a nice arugula salad and it was good.

Here's a couple of links I found interesting recently:

- Sydney’s Choice How The Bear cooked up season four’s best episode.

- After ‘iconic’ Rangers tenure, Chris Kreider opens up about New York departure: 1-on-1 (do not read the comments)

- Why Your Team Sucks: New York Giants - this is an annual event (for every NFL team) and remains hilarious because in the case of the Giants, it's all sad but true. On this one, the comments are great.

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July Views

Jul. 23rd, 2025 06:21 pm
yourlibrarian: Topher Didn't Do It (OTH-Topher Didn't Do It - yourlibrarian)
[personal profile] yourlibrarian
1) [community profile] icontalking is looking for people to ask questions of their icon making volunteers who stepped forward to talk about icon making and share tutorials as so far they don't have any 😟

In similar "let's chat about fanworks" is the launch of [community profile] fan_writers which includes links to tutorials and meta about writing.

2) In shows I largely skipped through, Gotham season 5 finished in a place everyone might expect. I always found Gotham more interesting in ideas than execution. Read more... )

Did watch all of Hacks season 2 and felt rewarded for that. The last few episodes took it where the audience wanted to go and it felt really satisfying (perhaps one of the best uses of Goodbye Stranger in a finale). Also sadly true to life about women having to gamble on themselves when no one else will, as the Julia series is also revealing. Still only a few episodes in so perhaps more later on that one.

3) Also watched an episode of Otter Dynasty but wasn't keen on its first person voices and it just seemed rather repetitive. It was, however, revealing to me about what I enjoy about nature shows. Read more... )

In other animal related shows, I've been watching Dog House, a UK show about a dog adoption center. Am into S2 since who doesn't want to see a variety of dogs finding homes?

4) In Case Number 101 about why AI can in no way replace competent workers: Red Lobster. Read more... )

5) Watched episode 4.2 of Brokenwood Mysteries and had a pretty good idea of the murderer early on so the real Mystery was of the pixelated arrow. The victim died of an arrow to the forehead, yet bizarrely the arrow was sometimes pixelated and sometimes not and in some shots had been completely erased so that we were looking at a victim with no injury at all! This went on through the entire episode as we saw her in flashbacks. We could not figure out what the purpose of this was since the episode began with us watching her be shot with the arrow so if it was to spare the squeamish this would have been the part to cut!

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nice notice, and other links

Jul. 23rd, 2025 08:26 am
[syndicated profile] lois_mcmaster_bujold_feed
I recently ran across this unusually thoughtful (i.e., flattering) summation of my work:

https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/buj...

Good link for anyone trying to Explain Bujold to their reader friends.

Tangentially, I was also reminded of this little essay, written back before I'd been forced by other people's categorization requirements to bite the bullet and give the Miles series the formal name of "The Vorkosigan Saga":

http://www.dendarii.com/space_opera.html

This essay is also to be found in my e-collection of nonfiction writings, Sidelines: Talks and Essays.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

Ta, L.

posted by Lois McMaster Bujold on July, 23
musesfool: art deco brandy ad (been drinking since half-past three)
[personal profile] musesfool
Today was my first day back at work after my vacation and I did not sleep at all well last night, despite, you know, working from home and didn't have to get up early or anything. I was tossing and turning until sometime after 4 am, at which point I finally fell asleep.

Work was fine - busy, and kind of a lot, but not difficult despite the lack of sleep - but then I sat down on the couch after dinner to watch the Mets and fell asleep for about 40 minutes. *hands*

I'm really glad I took yesterday off too. I 100% recommend adding an extra day onto your vacation if you can - especially if it's a Monday, and doubly so if you actually went away. It makes it easier to get back into the grind, at least for me. I had 333 emails to sort through this morning, and there is way too much going on, as usual, but I timed it so that all of my regular meetings happened while I was out, so this week should be fairly quiet.

On the home front, I've had my new dishwasher for a week now and it is working really well, though I am still learning how to load it. The tines are much closer together and shorter than in my old one, which makes it difficult to get stuff in between them. But it's so quiet! And it doesn't leak! *knock wood* It does take 2.5 hours to run the full normal cycle, but I can live with that.

On the TV front, I finished Murderbot and enjoyed it - Mensah is still my favorite and I wish Bharadwaj had had more to do because I liked her as well.

I also finished the last 2 available episodes of My Life Is Murder because I read they are doing a new season, though who knows when it will be available here. I enjoyed the s4 2-part finale, and I do kind of low-key ship Alexa and Madison, though I also like that they have not had any real romantic interests for Alexa, and those 2 episodes really focused on her lingering grief for her husband.

In other news, Baby Miss L went to Sesame Place this past weekend and the videos of her vibrating with joy over meeting Elmo and Grover and Cookie Monster are amazing!

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Sunshine Challenge #6

Jul. 20th, 2025 05:21 pm
yourlibrarian: No Drama Llama by yourlibrarian (NAT-No Drama Llama - yourlibrarian)
[personal profile] yourlibrarian
1) I have not been keeping up with the challenges given other things going on, but this one grabbed me: What games do you play, if any? Are you a solo-gamer or do you view games as a social activity? Read more... )

2) I've been watching a bunch of things on Max, mostly biographies. I found the Jaws 50 year anniversary documentary interesting as, while I remember the film I've never seen it.

In bios I finished Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed which was a fair amount of surface stuff. Read more... )

3) In movies, saw Shazam fury of the gods which was pretty meh, as it just seemed rather predictable. Also watched Traitor which was a lot more interesting in terms of the undercover spy story. Then saw the Batman Lego movie which was 30 minutes too long (tedious final battle section) but was otherwise entertaining, particularly in all its pop culture references. Read more... )

4) In TV series, I ended up skipping through most of The New Pope just as I had The Young Pope. It just felt rather repetitive. Also watched The Investigation, a Danish production focused on the police activity finding evidence for the actual case of a murdered journalist aboard a submarine. Read more... )

5) Continuing to post trip photos to [community profile] common_nature, the latest being our stay in Hood River

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