sketches & ghosts

I can now reveal that I wrote my highest-kudos-by-1 piece:

but it's an idiot heart (4062 words) by sigalit
Chapters: 7/7
Fandom: The Locked Tomb Series | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Characters: Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Gideon Nav
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Road Trip, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Classic Film References, no plot just vibes, Aiglamene is in this barely, abuse of dialogue, Vignette Chain, Road Trips, Dulcie turned out to be in this barely too
Summary:

It all started when Harrow's flight got canceled.

Well, really it had started four years earlier.

 

One day and eleven hours of drive time with Harrow and Gideon.

"The Atlantaverse" will probably have more in it, considering the response, but I'm now working on a modern setting AU inspired by It Happened One Night.

Who is going?

Who can potentially recommend a more affordable hotel that's close by for a couple of people who cannot afford to rent a car & one of them is mobility-impaired (me, but due to air travel I will be using only a cane which makes me s l o w, unless the con rents wheelchairs). Or is this a terrible idea and we should just stay at the con hotel? Note that I am pathologically afraid of Uber and would want to be able to do this via walking or public transit.

I was nominated for funding assistance back in 2020 but 2020 happened. I'm considering whether I should ask for it again or not since the situation is substantially different and it is not as significant a need though it would still be a help (I just no longer will be able to bring the person whose appearance as my wheelchair-pusher if renting a manual was an option would be a big help but would also result in income loss).

I'm not 100% sure I'm going to make it but I'm trying very very hard to make it happen. A close friend of mine who isn't on DW would be coming with me and they have been to many WisCons, having been a UW Madison grad student.

I owed lots of people things - emails, a few beta reads, a small package, an answer to a question, etc - and I have completely failed at legitimately all of them.

It turns out having an autoimmune flare-up in the first semester of one's doctoral studies absolutely torpedos literally everything ever; I now have a late paper and have failed at 100% of my obligations and commitments to friends.

If I owed you something and you still actually want me to do it, considering it is 100% late at this point, let me know! Otherwise: holy shit, I am sorry. I'm working on cleaning up this disjointed mess that is my life right now. Starting by slowly crawling into RP tags that have been waiting like ... a month and archiving all of my non-institutional email without looking at it to start fresh. 99% of that email is not from actual individual people anyway.

It's not you, whoever you are! It's 100% my disease's inability to handle things like season changes, which it's doing a lot worse than normally this year. I was prepared for some shit, but this is A Lot of shit.

This is just my periodic "still reading, still too drained to comment 99% of the time" post!

I have some new meds again that are letting me crawl back into wakefulness most of the time but make my pain meds work less effectively so sigh. Work is decent. RP is good except when I feel like I have too many things to reply to and am not sure where to start. Dog is good.

Car got towed today because I forgot about summer school.

And honestly I am kind of burned out on work but not because I don't like my work, just because I just want to be able to take off more than one day here and there and that just ... isn't happening for a while. All I ever want to do during the summer is not work. Like my brain is still wired as if there should be a summer vacation.

I can't remember anymore if I have any old school simmers on here — anyone who played Hay! Land or Hoofprints or Paws for Thought or anything along those lines? I was on all the horse ones back in the day, and it was where I really learned to make websites.

I rejoined a new one the other day and am having so much fun with it. You can see my fictional farm at Linden Acres, and if you're interested in joining, come check us out at Show Standards.

The fictional animals are so addictive.

We have reached "can't sleep, guess I'll work," which isn't actually supposed to happen until July, thanks body.

This isn't actually related to the depressive crisis I experienced in early, or the dramatic illness that happened before that, it's just a thing that my body does at times but it feels like it should be.

[sets brain on fire]

[sets job tasks on fire]

Focus has been AWOL for a couple of days now! Come back, focus!

(I'm currently taking an antibiotic and I'm starting to wonder if that is causing this; it's basically as if my brain meds do not exist!)

1. first night of chanukah migraine tradition continues. so far i am waiting for an oxycodone to kick in (having already maxed the ibuprofen, being out of toradol, and the valium having worn off; i've also put sombra gel all over my neck) so that i can try to get that menorah lit and not set the building on fire. (this i have never done. i used to set my sleeve on fire pretty frequently by making a common mistake, though. last time this happened i was 19.) pardon my lack of caps, i have only one arm to work with.

2. i got enough credit card rewards to renew photoshop and lightroom for a year. i missed them both so much. i really need a new DSLR though, since at this point my phone is better quality (12mp) than my actual camera (a nikon D3000 with 10.4mp). but oh, i can make icons easily again. even though everything is still weirdly zoomed out, a "100%" view is actually a 50% view and only at 200% is something the actual size it will be if you put it anywhere else in the world, like printing a photo or putting an image on a website. this is actually super annoying for icons because they sorta blur weirdly at times, but when i was using affinity photo not only did it do this but they blurred TERRIBLY and it made me angry.

3. i have sent out a lot of emails recently and gotten no emails recently. is it that no one is responding to my emails because they didn't get them, or because they do not want to respond, or because they THINK they responded but it's sitting in drafts (i often do this to my boss, which is awkward, except she's realized i have this problem and if i don't respond in 24 hours will email me with "rue, it's in drafts, isn't it" because i am never late with anything) or because actually none of my outgoing emails actually were received by anyone. it's a problem with multiple addresses and so, i do not know. it is a mystery. if you are waiting for an email from me, i probably sent it to you and you may not have gotten it.

4. accidentally responded to a work email (aka the one email that is working) at 9pm. since i tapped out of work at 4pm by mistake, i'm really just making up for the time and not overly excited about this IRB approval for this little photovoice project. believe me. really. ~~i'm lying, it's the IRB approval, i'm really excited about it.~~ so everything about work is great at the moment except for how my macbook refuses to acknowledge that my external monitor exists.

Of course then I had to call an ambulance for my mom.

She's on antibiotics right now and hopefully this was just dramatic side effects, but it could also have been sepsis. A+ awesome fantastic day we're having.

Have I mentioned I'm not allowed to walk my dog and I'm home alone with him right now? My poor baby.

Comments are just off 'cause I can't keep up on replying and even not replying to well wishes just seems weird. I will consider well wishes implied. ♥

Copying and pasting verbatim from my Twitter feed without linking/embedding directly because while I am lazy, I am not "link public DW post to twitter account that is linked to job" lazy.

Are you a TTY user? If so, what device do you use: a mobile/smartphone, a dedicated device, a computer app?

Are you a medical or behavioral health clinic that has TTY relay service? What service do you use?

I'm in the position of having grant funding to obtain new, quality TTY/TRS services for the clinic I work for and have until Thursday morning to decide on what to purchase and where to contract. I'd really value feedback from any and all users on both the consumer and clinic sides. What works? What doesn't?

If you are not a TTY/TRS user (or the guardian of a TTY/TRS-using child), a retweet link would be appreciated. Thanks!

As an individual with speech issues I do sometimes use a relay service, but in no way do I want to base the whole clinic's decision solely on my usage experiences or from a couple of internet reviews. I'd like to get as much weigh-in as possible over the next few days.

If you're someone I know (this is because the account is my first and last name, so I don't want to directly link it to this journal with people I don't know, sorry!) and want a link to the actual tweet to RT, please send me a private message. If you are replying to this post with feedback, consider this a disclaimer that I may or may not have time to respond to comments (I have to get this whole clinic going and ready to bring in staff in just one week and patients in a month), but I enormously appreciate any and all input!

ETA: The several of you who know my full name and went to pull it up & retweeted, thank you. :)