kaigou | read

Sable peed in Beast's slipper.

I mean, on the one hand, the wee was neatly contained and in a washable place. Way better than on the carpet. On the other hand, ew! And phew, does cat urine stink.

The slipper was rinsed, washed in the machine, soaked, dried outside, washed again, dried outside again, and *seems* to be odour-free. I did suggest the option of new slippers, but we'll see.

*

In other, even odder news, I got THREE comments on AO3 yesterday, all for different stories. As my usual score is one kudos per day (I want to type kudo, but it doesn't look any righter), this was a charming surprise.

glinda

I need some help/advice. (I definitely still know at least a few fannish Canadians right?)

So I’ve been thinking about going on holiday later this year, maybe end of September, beginning of October. Originally I’d planned either coastal Spain or bimbling around the low countries on an inter-rail ticket. (My local airport flies directly to Schipol, trains from there around Europe are easy.) There is - as of like a week ago - an absolute shitshow going on with the new post-Brexit passport controls/biometrics for UK travellers with the current advice being to get to the airport at least 3 hours early. And look, this may all be sorted by September, but I got caught in the post covid/Brexit nonsense on a work trip to France a few years ago - fucking running with a giant rucksack of Camera kit through Charles De Galle airport from passport control to my gate with a gate agent - and I’m not keen to repeat the experience. So between programmes the other day I pulled up seat61 intending to look at fun inter-rail options via Eurostar because, so my internal monologue went if I need to be at the airport that early I better be flying transatlantic at least. And like fuck am I going to the states while Trump’s in office…

…Yeah.

So back in 2008, when I worked in a call centre and used to plan train adventures between calls to keep myself sane, one of my favourite ‘and while I’m dreaming I’d like a pony’ plans was to do the ‘Canadian’, through the Rockies, across the prairies, across a fair chunk of Canada really. I spent way too long looking at pictures taken out the domes of the viewing carriages along that route. It was out of my budget, and oh goodness, I could not cope with the logistical uncertainty - the train shares tracks with freight, which has priority, so when it’s late it’s not minutes it’s hours, even now with the adjusted compensatory timetable they still recommend you don’t book onward travel or flights for at least 24 hours after your expected arrival time. But all these years later, I can afford it - not the fancy ‘prestige’ option, but the tiny individual sleeper cabin? A couple of nights in Toronto and Vancouver at either end to explore those cities and act as a buffer zone? Totally do-able.

Given the state of the world right now, neither Japan or Australia feel entirely feasible right now - I was never going to be willing to fly via Dubai, it was always going to be via Singapore, nonetheless - the logistics are just beyond me right now. But Canada. I could do Canada. And I’ve wanted to do that specific train journey for a very long time. I’d half planned to get my other bathroom re-done, but the thought of taking that money and turning it into a new bathroom suite when there’s so many places I’ve never been and things I’ve never done, just feels so pointless. I want to knock a destination off my life-list.

So Canadians - or just folks who’ve spent time in Canada - what’s your advice? What am I missing/not taking into consideration? Which direction do I go: East to West (with a detour to Vancouver island) or West to East (with a detour to Montreal?) What time of year? (I was thinking Autumn colour but I’m persuadable. However, I remember Chicago in February, and my friend C’s other bridesmaid flew in to meet us from Manitoba, and nothing she said made me want to do Winnipeg in winter…Would Spring be a better choice?) Should I stop off along the way? If so, where? Have I, in fact, lost my damn mind?

mood curious
music Alanis Morisette - Head Over Feet

umadoshi

(Thank you for the comments on my post yesterday about Claudia. I'll try to respond at least a bit.)

Reading: I finished Rachel Reid's Tough Guy, and then my digital hold on Adrian Tchaikovsky's Shroud came in from the Queens library, so I started in on that. I'm maybe a bit more than halfway through that now? It's interesting and I plan to finish it, but it took a long before I actually got interested, and I mainly kept reading through that chunk because I've enjoyed the handful of Tchaikovsky's other work that I've read quite a lot more than I was enjoying the beginning of this one, so I kept figuring I'd give it a bit longer. I doubt I'll wind up loving it, but I do want to see how things play out.

Watching:

scruloose and I have finished everything we were watching! (And glancing at last week's proof-of-life post to see where we were then reminded me to cancel Crave just now, so yay for that. We'll be back eventually, Crave.) "Everything" in this case was the second seasons of OPLA, Frieren, and The Pitt.

My thoughts on Frieren at this point are, I think, more to do with the experience as filtered through its translation, and I'm going to ignore that for now and instead say the most important thing that I can possibly say at the end of that week of TV watching.

And that thing is this: against all odds, the live-action One Piece (which, as I have said countless times aloud and probably at least once here, if not more, should never have worked at all because it's One Piece, FFS) pulled off Chopper. I am floored. I am agog. I am delighted. I am still sort of mumbling "WTF???" about it under my breath once in a while. CHOPPER.

I won't say that he ever feels so natural to me that I forget he's a marvel of technology onscreen, but he works, and the voice is wonderful, and somehow even when I was at my most aware that he's not being performed by an actor in intensive makeup, he felt like...a stuffed animal/puppet brought to life? Not like CG? (Nothing like the plush Luna from the Sailor Moon drama, for the record.) It's incredible work and I love him so much. (I should also note that I haven't watched any making-of material, so all I know about the creation of Chopper is what Naye mentioned about his huge, shiny eyes accurately reflecting what he's looking at.)

As for what I'll/we'll watch next...I still haven't seen past the initially-released chunk of Justice in the Dark, so I'm trying the tactic of seeing if

scruloose will watch it with me, which means an excuse to start over and refresh myself on the drama, as opposed to my blurry combination of memories from watching those episodes and from reading the fan translation of the novel ages ago.

scruloose is willing to at least give it a shot, so hopefully even if they don't wind up sticking with the show, I'll get some momentum on it.

mood enthralled

umadoshi

( years-ago pet loss; old grief and random thoughts )

mood melancholy

umadoshi

Our planter is here! Getting it wasn't actually a saga, but it felt a bit like one. ( TL;DR: delivery service annoyance )

We also both took yesterday off (and I'm off the rest of the week, but got up at my usual workday time today in hopes of getting a fair amount of manga work done), and ventured out to buy veg seeds for the planter. (We also still need to get soil/fertilizer/etc., but want to read up on it more first. I think I might order a hard copy of The Vegetable Gardener's Bible, which I got on sale in ebook recently and like so far.)

Yesterday's important lesson: when noting down which seed varieties we like the looks of, include the source, because our local store, at least, has separate displays for each originating company, and knowing that would make it much easier to check for the various varieties. Anyway, here's what we wound up with (descriptions are in my last post):

Basil: Devotion.

Cabbage: Early Golden Acre (green) and Serpentine F1 (savoy).

Spinach: Bloomsdale and Renegade.

Lettuce: Brighton (Butterhead), Black Seeded Simpson (green leaf), Red Salad Bowl (red leaf), Grand Rapids (green leaf), Freckles (romaine), and Drunken Woman.

mood busy

carenejeans

Write Every Day April 2026 - Day 15

This is my last day hosting for this month! Tomorrow, head over to sanguinity's place. See you there!

Quote of the Day:

"Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic."

— Jim Jarmusch, quoted in Austin Kleon's Steal Like an Artist.

My Check-In:

Alibi sentence! Because, er, I was lazy! ;-)

Tally
( Days 1-13 )

Day 14:

badly_knitted,

carenejeans,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

dswdiane,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora

Day 15:

china_shop

Let me know if I missed you, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet. And remember, you can join in at any time!

pensnest

Beast and I just watched 'Smoke', a series on (I think) Apple TV about an arson investigator and a police detective who have a couple of arsonists to chase.

Taron Egerton is really, really good in it.

*

( The rest of this post is about twenty-five years out of date! )

carenejeans

Quote of the Day:

"Take time to be bored. One time I heard a coworker say, 'When I get busy, I get stupid.' Ain’t that the truth. Creative people need time to just sit around and do nothing. I get some of my best ideas when I’m bored, which is why I never take my shirts to the cleaners. I love ironing my shirts—it’s so boring, I almost always get good ideas. If you’re out of ideas, wash the dishes. Take a really long walk. Stare at a spot on the wall for as long as you can. As the artist Maira Kalman says, 'Avoiding work is the way to focus my mind.'"

Austin Kleon, Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative (Workman Publishing, 2012)

My Check-In:

Some work on the Neverending Project...*thud*.

Tally
( Days 1-12 )

Day 13:

annavere,

badly_knitted,

carenejeans,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

dswdiane,

goddess47,

luzula,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

trobadora,

ysilme

Day 14:

china_shop,

Let me know if I missed you, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet. And remember, you can join in at any time!

carenejeans

I dunno, Monday the 13th sounds scarier than Friday. ;-)

Quote of the Day:

(Another go-to author…)

"A work in progress quickly becomes feral. It reverts to a wild state overnight. It is barely domesticated, a mustang on which you one day fastened a halter, but which now you cannot catch. It is a lion you cage in your study. As the work grows, it gets harder to control; it is a lion growing in strength. You must visit it every day and reassert your mastery over it. If you skip a day, you are, quite rightly, afraid to open the door to its room. You enter its room with bravura, hold a chair at the thing and shouting 'Simba!'"

—Annie Dillard, The Writing Life (Harper & Row, 1989).

My Check-In:

Alibi sentence. But for a better reason this time… We had some friends come visit at the bookshop — it was closed, so it was a private party! Very nice relaxing lunch, conversation, and books. 8-)

Tally
( Days 1-11 )

Day 12:

annavere,

badly_knitted,

carenejeans,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

dswdiane,

goddess47,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora

Day 13:

china_shop

Let me know if I missed you, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet. And remember, you can join in at any time!

umadoshi

Our impending new raised planter is still showing as scheduled to arrive tomorrow while we're both home/not working, so here's hoping!

We just spent a while sifting through some seed listings on the Halifax Seed website (and I mostly kept myself from looking at tomato seeds, since we are not growing any tomatoes from seed*).

*I really wish there were some indication of what tomato varieties will be offered as seedlings, and also wish I knew if the different plant nurseries tend to offer similar varieties of tomato seedlings or not. (ALSO-also, we need to decide whether to focus on trying a few different types to see how we like them vs. focusing on a few determinate plants with the intention of just processing most/all of the fruit into sauce.)

(The seedling sale from a relatively nearby nonprofit that I'm hoping to make it to does offer a short list of potential varieties of things, with the caveat of "These are all the options that we have intended to grow but as all farmers and gardeners know, not every crop pans out. We apologize in advance if some of these options are unavailable, or not ready." For tomatoes, it says "Roma, Brandywine, Scotia +more! / Tropical Sunset, Sungold, Red Torch +more!")

But as noted yesterday, we don't plan to put tomatoes in the actual planter anyway. Thoughts for the actual planter so far: ( thoughts + variety notes )

mood hopeful

carenejeans

Quote of the Day:

(Another quote from Elizabeth McCracken, because it's what I'm reading and because I ran out of quotations and don't have time to look for more elsewhere. I really recommend her book; it's weird and contradictory and funny. Before the quote below she's actually arguing against having to feel like you have to write every day, heh.)

"And yet I persist in believing that I’m a real writer. I’ve never doubted that I am. My work, yes, I have doubted. My work ethic, and my reputation. Not my identity. I write; I am a writer. My qualifications are that I say so."

— Elizabeth McCracken, A Long Game: Notes on Writing Fiction (HarperCollins, 2025).

My Check-In:

A good chunk of the Neverending project.

Today there is no adulting! I insist!

Tally
( Days 1-10 )

Day 11:

badly_knitted,

carenejeans,

cornerofmadness,

dswdiane,

goddess47,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora

Let me know if I missed you, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet. And remember, you can join in at any time!

umadoshi

Seasonal crunch is over! Feels like freedom, if you ignore the part where I still have, y'know, a job + freelance stuff. Increased freedom. We'll go with that.

My day off yesterday entailed such thrilling things as sleeping in and then taking ages to get up because Jinksy came to snuggle*; finishing my breakfast and tea by around noon; getting some banking done; washing my hair; vacuuming the two main levels of the house; spending several full hours being a cat-lap for Sinha; and starting in on a new novel for the first time since March Break or so.

*When I texted

scruloose to say good morning, they said, "When my first alarm went, it was competing with Jinksy over on your other side rumble-purring so hard I swear the mattress was reverberating with it."

Reading: A couple more chapters of Braiding Sweetgrass, and I've finished Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks, which has a fair number of recipes but is, as the title indicates, more of a family history than a cookbook.

And last night I didn't want to spend much mental energy on choosing what fiction to read, so I decided to just go with Tough Guy, the third Game Changers novel. I imagine in the not-too-distant future I'll pick up the ebook "box set" of books 4-6 just to have them on hand.

Watching: We're caught up on The Pitt and have seen five episodes of One Piece season 2, and I imagine we'll finish the latter before backtracking for the last couple-few episodes of Frieren. (I've also made note of this elsewhere, but to reinforce it in my brain: after The Pitt finishes, I need to remember to cancel our Crave subscription again.)

Eating: After the crunch ended on Thursday,

scruloose and I ordered from a new (?) Korean BBQ place (bb.q Chicken) that a stranger in the local Bluesky feed had mentioned was good. We tried the bone-in Classic Fried Chicken (very minimal spicing, but very solid) and the boneless Golden Fried Chicken, the description of which didn't indicate any particular spiciness, but it turned out to be right on the edge of my comfort level...but also a really delicious seasoning to go with the heat, so I'm counting that as a definite win. The place offers a whole array of flavor options, so I imagine we'll be trying it again.

Weathering/Growing: Yesterday was sunny and relatively warm, and now we're back to a slightly-chilly rainy/damp stretch, but a few days in the forecast will theoretically get back up into the double digits.

At my instigation, we're going to take another stab at Doing Garden Stuff this year. ( VERY preliminary notes )

mood thoughtful

carenejeans

Quote of the Day:

(Another quote from Elizabeth McCracken.)

"Any writer’s ideal craft manual must be bespoke, like a suit, made to measure. Write a manifesto aimed only at your own work without worrying whether it applies to or offends anybody else in the world. Address, in your silent heart, punctuation, plot, character, all your picayune concerns and grandiose plans, all the things that made you want to be a writer. Make it living, an armor-clad list that might change. It will be dearer to you than any other guide."

— Elizabeth McCracken, A Long Game: Notes on Writing Fiction (HarperCollins, 2025).

My Check-In:

Alibi sentence! An angry one! Adulting, gah. It's also why I'm behind on comments. 8-(

Today should be better!

Tally
( Days 1-9 )

Day 10:

badly_knitted,

carenejeans,

cornerofmadness,

dswdiane,

goddess47,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

the_siobhan,

trobadora,

ysilme

Let me know if I missed you, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet. And remember, you can join in at any time!

firecat

This is an ~30-minute episode of a Vox podcast called “Today Explained.” There is a transcript.

”How fan fiction went mainstream: The community that underpins Heated Rivalry, explained” by Danielle Hewitt and Noel King

It’s a pretty good intro to fanfic and how it’s become something publishers and creators of TV/movies pay attention to. They interview Francesca Kappa, a co-founder of the Organization for Transformative Works, which created AO3.

Things I learned and some bits I liked:

AO3 was created in part to prevent commodification of fanfiction and the social connections it facilitates.
“one of the projects that I worked on in the early days of the OTW organization for transformative works was that we were being contacted by women in their 70s and 80s who were like having to move in with their kids or going into nursing homes and they had like 3,000 fan fiction zines.”
It was claimed that AO3 is “much bigger than Wikipedia.” I’m not sure what metrics they’re using to come up with that.
[AO3 is] “structurally unenshittifiable” because “we don’t have customers and we’re not a business.”
(Discussing copyright) “it would have been terrible if Shakespeare had to, like, negotiate with Netflix for the right to Hamlet and then didn't get it. Like, that's the world we live in, right? We're like, Netflix owns Hamlet, it has a five-year option, Shakespeare really has a great idea for it, but like, no, I'm really sorry because JJ. Abrams is going to do Hamlet.”
(I need to know which circle of Hell shows JJ Abrams’s Hamlet on repeat, because I really want to avoid it.)

carenejeans

Quote of the Day:

"Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."

— E. L. Doctorow

My Check-In:

Neverending Project! It was a soothing break from the adulting, at least. 8-/

Tally
( Days 1-8 )

Day 9:

badly_knitted,

carenejeans,

china_shop,

cornerofmadness,

dswdiane,

goddess47,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

trobadora

Let me know if I missed you, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet. And remember, you can join in at any time!

hokuton_punch

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

mood ecstatic

pensnest

...was a palpable sense that you, as a vocalist, were—CATFOOD
It was so perfect, I just had to laugh.

Why no, I do not pay YouTube and yes, the advertising can break in at awkward times

But when I came home after chorus last night I happened upon a Richard Marx episode of Stories To Tell, on YouTube, from about five months ago. It's here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGyiVEWcVcU

The guests are JC Chasez and Lance Bass, and it is lovely! Really interesting, from both of them, from different perspectives on the early days of Nsync to how Lance really felt about being unable to come out to JC's work on the Frankenstein musical (Playing With Fire), all kinds of stuff. And Richard Marx genuinely likes them both and they like him. It is just a delight to listen to. And it is almost an hour and a half long.

Marx mentioned Candide—okay, Candide? anybody? What did JC do with that?

carenejeans

Quote of the Day:

"No process is wrong that leads to a first draft of a book."

— Elizabeth McCracken, A Long Game: Notes on Writing Fiction. HarperCollins, 2025.

My Check-In:

Neverending Project is neverending. ;-)

Tally
( Days 1-7 )

Day 8:

annavere,

badly_knitted,

carenejeans,

cornerofmadness,

dswdiane,

goddess47,

luzula,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

trobadora

Let me know if I missed you, or if you wrote but didn't check in yet. And remember, you can join in at any time!

pensnest

Sycamores, now. Sycamores.

The sycamore tree is a glorious thing. It is a handsome tree, tall and straight and with majestic and elegant branches. Its leaves are lovely and, in autumn, spectacular.

And it is evil. It is out for world domination. A sycamore tree's one ambition is to fill the entire temperate zone with sycamore forest. Its seeds sprout everywhere and are relentless. Miss one, and you have a sapling three feet tall which takes enormous effort to extract, or a five foot high growth which must be KILLED WITH FIRE.

I plucked about fifty baby sycamores this morning when I had only gone into the garden to pick some kale. Grar.

whois

锴 angry fishtrap 狗

to remember

"When you make the finding yourself— even if you're the last person on Earth to see the light— you'll never forget it." —Carl Sagan

October 2016

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
						1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30	31

summary

pensnest - pussycat, pussycat, where have you been?
glinda - Oh Canada...
umadoshi - Weekly proof of life: media intake
umadoshi - Six years on (CN: far-from-fresh pet loss)
umadoshi - Planter and seeds acquired!
carenejeans - Write Every Day April 2026 - Day 15
pensnest - the road goes ever on and on
carenejeans - Write Every Day April 2026 - Day 14
carenejeans - Write Every Day April 2026 - Day 13
umadoshi - Garden pre-PRE(?)-planning. Or something.
carenejeans - Write Every Day April 2026 - Day 12
umadoshi - Weekly proof of life: less-crunchy days ahead | media | Korean chicken | initial gardening thoughts
carenejeans - Write Every Day April 2026 - Day 11
firecat - Look, the outsiders have discovered fanfic again
carenejeans - Write Every Day April 2026 - Day 10
hokuton_punch - FFFX WINNER POST
pensnest - every word I say is true
carenejeans - Write Every Day April 2026 - Day 9
pensnest - this new life has begun

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strange bedfellows

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This is my last day hosting for this month! Tomorrow, head over to sanguinity's place. See you there!

to remember

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