delight | Recent Entries

Today so far I have spent $160 on pajamas which is insane, and finally gotten back onto the centuries late things I owe people beta reading, which I should have finished essentially an eon ago but I've been drowning and sick; I'm not less drowning and sick, I just also have a computer that doesn't keep overheating and dying as readily.

The quote of the day is definitely “I miss the good old days when the Twelve Systems were reasonably normal, nobody major was at war with anybody else, and the astroshamans were happy plugging their heads into computers and leaving everyone alone.”

I'm sitting here eating insomnia cookies and realizing that when I'm done beta reading I also have to write things, but reading is much nicer at the moment, and send about 300000 emails. But at least I only have one work project at the moment.

My MRI has still not been read, though it's not yet been a week, so I suppose I should calm down about that. (My computer is marking 'week' as a spelling error?)

I do not yet have an iPhone, but I'm going to be getting an 11 in the next few weeks - time to leave Android behind as my retinal issues have progressed to the point where I really need the accessibility features. I'm also more comfortable with Apple's security at this point.

(This is not the post to try to change my mind, I've spent so much money on Android apps over the years it was a hard choice.)

I've used an iPad for many years, so I'm familiar with the basics, but I've never used it for contacts. All my contacts are in Google, so here is the basic question: since I have a Mac, can I use my computer to enter things into contacts on it and have them import to my phone through iCloud, and will it do that automatically?

I don't mind re-inputting them, but I do mind either having to use a phone keyboard (I'm really poor at typing on them and I'm not used to the iPhone one at all - part of the reason I waited until now was previously iPhones were too small for me to even be able to use functionally but the 11 seems big enough!) and even worse is voice recognition. I absolutely despise using voice rec tech, and I realize that the more my vision goes the more I am screwed, but I'm a former selective mutism kid and I just really hate talking. :/

I can set my comment default to Markdown, everything is wonderful. (Also I'm one of those people hugely benefitting from the bigger font, so now that the brightness issues seem fixed, it really is pretty good.) This makes commenting from email much much easier.
Writing is going so slowly, I wanted to have this f/f piece to rachelmanija by mid-July. That is clearly not happening! I'm going to aim for mid-August and hope it's not too late to work into the anthology; if it is, I suppose I can ... do something else with it? I'm not sure what the market is for non-explicit lesbian romance about rescuing lake monsters.
Work is going to hurt my head too much to update at this point: it's mostly good things but wow, starting a CCBHC from scratch is ... wow. And I still don't have a job title! I probably will be working as "shrug" until September. My salary is the same. However, if you're in NYC and looking for work, keep an eye out; right now I'm hiring directors but soon we will be hiring A LOT of people.
Paid account, oops. I could have afforded to renew it two months ago when Brady was on unemployment and getting paid a decent wage.
- Which is now not a thing and he's gone back to work and I still have no immune system, so this is a great living situation we have. Since we can't afford him to be on UI without the $600, he has to go back to work now that massage is allowed in New York (these things actually happened at the same time), but I don't ... really feel safe.
I somehow got back into Flight Rising because this computer remembered my password. I still don't remember my password, but it's a start; I had given up because work's internet couldn't maintain a connection, but it seems like my WFH hotspot can.

Work is having us do Hogan Personality Inventory & Clifton Strengths in order to guide our extended WFH plans since some of us are looking at remaining primarily remote for a VERY long time, and I am... surprised by how many people are bummed by this?

We are getting paid to answer multiple choice questions, and the results will help us with career direction and systems organization tailored to each person. Yes, these tests are possibly boring as shit, but guys, we basically all had to take a semester of IO psych to get our various but interrelated degrees. We know the basics of why this is useful. And we're getting paid to take multiple choice tests?

I would certainly be bummed if we had to write essays, but this is a good move as far as I'm concerned.

I am still on a pandemic response team and it's draining,

I've got research going on,

and a team of people to manage remotely,

and a RPG dragon hatching to run where I had to write a bunch of dragons,

and a few really stressful other work things,

and my dog had a brutal ear infection,

and now I'm surprise, unexpectedly moving

To follow: a post about Bob, because I should like to say things about how awesome he was. (To answer the unanswered, which someone on Twitter did directly ask - yes, it was covid. I apologize for not being able to reply to comments on my last post, and I appreciate you all.)

For now I just want to say that I JUST finished my work project a little shy of 10pm, so for purposes of Camp NaNo, April actually starts tomorrow. In fact, for purposes of everything enjoyable that I do, today did not exist and therefore I have not missed anything and nothing is late.

I'm trying to decide if I want to do an alpha-read filter and share it here or not; it's the medical romance I started in October and got torpedoed on depression-wise. I haven't worked on it or any other writing since, but being stuck in my home makes me a lot less miserable than being forced to go out, so I have more hopes for now!

My coworker, Bob, just died after being admitted to hospital Friday.

I'm sorry I can't put this behind a cut; I can't bring myself to hide it, I need everyone to see his name. Bob. Robert Crawford. An incredible person. He was not young and he was not healthy, but he is still important.

So I went to Iditarod start!!! It was amazing (and now I can change my answer to 'have you ever been on a sled'), but still occupying much of my time because of Igivearod volunteering and tracking stuff, which I was going to do a post on a new org through Igivearod to encourage people to donate every day, but I'm still a little tapped on energy because we got back to New York and went to pick up my dog and the fucking national guard was there because the suburb I lived in as a teen is apparently the epicenter of COVID-19 for the East Coast and has over a hundred cases.

Yeah, so that was a thing that happened while I was getting a sedan stuck in snowdrifts in rural Crystal Lake, AK and enjoying sled dogs and friends.

My mom, a cancer patient who turns 70 this year, is in the process of moving from New Rochelle back into Manhattan, so this is going to be one hell of a week. (I am on DMARDs but I have not gotten the work from home order yet. Yet.)

For Iditarod 2022, I am renting a truck.

While I will technically still be present in New York for the next five days, that time will be overwhelmingly focused on preparation to be gone for eight days. I will be doing my best to keep up on RP things in that time, but am somewhat swamped and am probably missing stuff. After March 3rd I'm going to be even more scarce.

Because it's Iditarod time!

Two of my favorite humans in the world are running: Quince Mountain (husband of Blair Braverman for you Tough Love fans) and Meredith Mapes. I will also be actually getting to meet Nic Petit for the first time, since his C team musher and handler Katie Lloyd was kind enough to arrange for me and some friends a tour of the Dogstead (and I am beginning to think of Katie as a friend, so I hope she feels the same about us!).

Other interesting names to watch are my brother-in-salivary-gland-death Lance Mackey who is disabled and one of the most accomplished mushers of all time in the US, Jim Lanier who is 79 years old, and rookie Laura Neese whose kennel is industry-famous for its literal puppy castle.

I'm also going to be seeing my sister-in-law's burlesque show, so this is an utterly exhausting vacation; I had to schedule another day off for when I get back just to sleep.

TWO QUICK THINGS.

1. My Chocolate Box piece:

The Unexpected (2011 words) by sigalit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Original Work
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Female Veterinarian/Woman Who Keeps Bringing Her Magical Creatures
Characters: Female Veterinarian, Woman Who Keeps Bringing Her Magical Creatures, Original Female Character(s)
Additional Tags: Roc (bird), Dragons, Manticore, winged felines, Wyverns
Summary:
That's the story I promised, the story of how I met the strange woman who is now my wife.

2. More importantly, a friend's dog is in great medical need. My friend has $5.40 in the bank right now. The dog will be getting all care regardless of money, but being able to pay the vet quickly would be appreciated. If you can spare a few dollars, here's me trying to embed a tweet in DW so I don't have to rewrite everything.

This beauty is Cinder. She is a badass athlete and an all-around wonderful dog who I'm honored to e-know.

Cinder is currently very sick, and her fantastic owner needs a little help covering vet costs. Can you give your spare change?https://t.co/hzJDKmMkNZ pic.twitter.com/HlC5XrzBwD
— Rue (@pseudelight) February 24, 2020

ETA: Apparently the answer is 'sort of' but you can't see the pictures. They're good pictures.

Jaw surgery part three time today! I recommend never getting osteomyelitis. It was nearly four years ago. I am still fixing things in my face.

Sorry to the people I promised RP responses to last night who I fell asleep on instead - there are a number of you - I'm going to get there via tablet before they knock me out, it's a three hour drive to get to my specialist.

(Sadly none of this is going to make my face LOOK right again, just hurt less. Looking right is going to require a chin augment at the very least and possibly buccal fat pad removals, and insurance doesn't cover that any more than they do replacing the missing teeth*, because insurance considers TEETH and RECOGNIZING YOURSELF IN THE MIRROR to be cosmetic.

* I have no lower molars on my left, and I may wake up with no upper ones either, don't know yet.)

I'm still dead, but someone made me A Girl and Her Fed fanart! and their style is amazingly close to the comic's while also having its own beautiful quirks!

ALSO IT'S ALWAYS-A-GIRL!PAT, which I didn't explicitly ask for, but which was in my general likes and I'm so glad the idea inspired someone. :D

Downtime (0 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: A Girl and Her Fed
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Hope Blackwell/Patrick Mulcahy
Characters: Hope Blackwell, Female Patrick Mulcahy, Speedy (A Girl and Her Fed)
Additional Tags: Genderbending, Established Relationship, Fanart
Summary:

Hope, Sparky and Speedy enjoy some downtime.

My honorary grandmother just passed; I will be more slow to respond than normal.

Not closing comments but not likely to reply to any either to be perfectly frank.

I have a cover lined up and an editing deadline for this book and I am so stalled on actually writing it. Nothing I do will make my brain go. I know some of this is because my meds still haven't been recalibrated for the season change but my doctors are trying,

Another part is the constant pain from rotator cuff tendinitis, which legitimately never goes away.

But most of it is just ... my brain is useless and I have no idea why I agreed to write this!!! Even though I actually think the story and characters are fine (I've never been able to call anything of mine good), I just, I hate winter. But I don't know when I can even get beta reading in, which it will need, and ugh.

In other news, for the four or five or however many of you there was interested in that Pern game, a quick poll lives here because my co-admin doesn't use Dreamwidth.

Basic premise for people who might be interested: it's a post-AIVAS semi-plotted/semi-sandbox RP (we're considering ourselves administrators & storytellers, not GMs, and storytelling will be open to anyone for whatever plot they might want to run, but you can just tell a character's unrelated side story if you want, whatever, it's all good, have fun) with Thread returning to a society that is totally not ready for it and will be getting calmly decimated on a regular basis. We'll probably be using Google Docs for the majority of play and most scenes will be between 2-3 people (if a private doc with someone you've not written with before sounds intimidating, the most intimidated person is me, trust me). Base rating is R, because this is a haven for people who want to do the darker and edgier. Canon knowledge is not really required and we'll be taking a "what's fun/stands up to actual science" stance over a "what Anne said" stance to some degree.

The pace will be VERY SLOW; while people are welcome to complete scenes in an hour, a day, a week etc the IC time is going to move much more slowly than RL time with the option for time-skips.

Anyone is welcome to fill out that poll so long as you think you're actually likely to engage.

So I did my

chocolateboxcomm sign up.

And only requested three incredibly unpopular fandoms (Emperor's Edge/Forgotten Ages, Spotless, A Girl and Her Fed). I wonder what happens when I match with no one? Although last round I definitely got surprised, even though I put in two more well-known "safe bets," that my official match was on one of these super unpopular fandoms!

Oh, and I guess I can link what I wrote for Yuletide even though I think I have exactly no one who reads this journal who also read these books.

Consistency (1044 words) by sigalit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Emperor's Edge Series - Lindsay Buroker
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Amaranthe Lokdon/Sicarius
Characters: Amaranthe Lokdon, Sicarius (The Emperor's Edge)
Additional Tags: Sicarius and a cat, Yuletide Treat
Summary:
Helping people will always be the way to make them like you, and helping people will always be Amaranthe Lokdon's way.

But I seem to be on track for this to be the sixth year I've done this surveymeme; maybe someday I'll even go back and read them.

( 2019 review. WAY less depressing than, say, 2016! )

I started writing that Treat, what, two weeks ago? ... and then the annual report at work combined with weather migraines meant I never had time to get past the first few paragraphs.

So I'm just, er, cleaning up the first few paragraphs, turning them into a vignette and posting it to Madness. I think that is what you do?

I still want to finish it and write the entire thing I wanted to write, but I also think that's what the NYR thing is for. Am I allowed to do an NYR for something I also did a Madness fill for?

(I'm really glad I decided against actually signing up, because this kind of thing happens this time of year always for me. No time, no energy!)

ETA: it turned out to be 1045 words, so I'm posting it as a regular Treat after all. I guess that's "really short" for me now ... I'm not sure how much it actually met the request :| but it didn't have any DNWs, and did include some general likes!

ETA 2: THings I don't understand - why there are two fics tagged Harry Potter for Yuletide. Maybe this is crossovers? I was trying to see if any actual teeny fandoms of mine are featured besides the one I wrote, and have gotten as far as H. The answer remains 'no,' except for a couple of SF book series that have enough fic and even things like discord servers or DW comms dedicated to them which aren't teeny to me. :P I'm glad to see them there, but I keep hoping to see something like Spotless or the Rachel Peng books!

Trip is doing the "scratch at briefcase to say he wants to go home" thing again ... it's 10:37. Yeah, I think we're at work until 6 today, buddy. I feel bad that he is lying down and licking his paws, but I don't know how to relieve his stress at, um, being in my office, which is not inherently stressful.

I already did my

chocolateboxcomm noms, because I did not nominate anything I'm 100% confident someone else will (like, I don't need to worry about Machineries of Empire or Queen's Thief). I'm really hoping anyone requests either Spotless or A Girl and Her Fed (even if some of my noms were Rachel, Phil, Jason, Santino and Bell so that's kind of more books-ish) because that's what I most want to be writing except for original works.

Work is ALL ANNUAL REPORT ALL THE TIME and I have been hunting down missing data which is why I'm delayed in things I owe people. I promised two people beta reads on fics yesterday, and both of you will be getting them back today, I promise! I have read and enjoyed them, I just need to make my notes slightly more competent and less bullet points on literal post-its. I have a Yuletide treat I need to finish myself, and then decide whether or not I want to ask for a beta, since the only people I know who actually know the canon all can't do it right now ... except for the canon's original author, who said she might do it, but I'm not sure if that wouldn't be a little too weird for the recipient.

Beta reader who doesn't know the canon? Letting the actual author of the canon do it? No beta? IDK.

I was stuck standing in the 16 degree weather waiting for the M96 for half an hour last night and have still not actually recovered, because cold urticaria is the actual worst, but I had dressed like I was doing winter sports so that helped a little. Not enough to block a reaction, apparently.

Hello, New Friends: I'm sorry that this, the first public post you will see, is all complaining.

ETA: Since I have new people on my list and I do not have an about me, please feel free to ask anything you'd like here! Longtime readers can ask things too. I'm also doing the January meme.

Please pretend it is Wednesday, just for the duration of this post.

What I've Read Recently
Finished beta reads of books #1 and #2 of Lindsay Buroker's new urban fantasy series, as well as a reread of the first 3 books in the Rizzoli & Isles book series (the first of which does not have any Isles): The Surgeon, The Apprentice, The Sinner. These are comfort rereads for me and take a couple hours at most to get through, and I need a lot of comfort rereads in winter. Epidemiology cases are also comfort reads for me, because I am a ~~weird~~ perfectly normal epidemiologist and thus find them soothing ... so I also read Diagnosis by Lisa Sanders.

What I'm Reading Now
The Deadly Dinner Party (And Other Medical Detective Stories) by Jonathan Edlow, who is trying to write in the style of Berton Roueché, the writer who made me want to become an epidemiologist in the first place. His works were well-loved by my family and I started absorbing them like an eager sponge at ten or eleven. I now have all the cases completely memorized, so they've lost reread value -- I was glad to find this book, since Edlow really does emulate the style well with all-new cases (even if I'm now so well-versed in mystery diagnoses that I solve many of them ahead of the report, it's still an enjoyable read).

What I'm Reading Next
Greek Key by KB Spangler. It seems like a good place to pause the Rachel series and switch to Hope, and I'm also trying to binge-finish my Goodreads challenge (thankfully I am a fast reader) after a bad couple of months (plus the books I beta read won't show up, since they aren't being published until January/February) so I'm just going to eagerly zoom through everything I own.

Everything is still on metaphorical fire!!! Mostly it's my health, so I have extra no energy for anything.

But I was feeling punchy so I ended up writing a piece actually called Untitled Goose Vig (short for vignette, or a scene with only one PC in it) for Harper's Tale. ~~because no one has done a scene with me in six weeks because everyone is gone for holidays and family stuff and it's really creepy to be the only one on~~

Trip is at least in a decent mood, though he seems to want to spend all of his decent mood asleep, because it's cold and wet. I continue to think the dog has the right way of it. One of his dog friends got diagnosed with heart failure today and we're all really sad, but she's young and there are hopes that she will do well with medications.

I have a bunch of stuff I bought people MONTHS AGO that I never mailed that I was going to try to turn into holiday presents, but the mail is so insane that I might just ... some of you might get random presents in February.

ETA: UGH MORE SNOW COMETH. By 8pm.

sketches & ghosts

partially parented by parrots.

Recent Entries

the actual prep part of surgery prep and other stories

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just so everyone knows I'm not dead:

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the third darkest day

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Disappearing on purpose!

time to find out if I can embed a tweet

the way shorter mobile version of the post I wanted to make

Chocolate Box!

Death in the family

things you probably hear often from writers!

briefly: Chocolate Box (and I guess Yuletide reveal)

Apparently I never finished 2018's and so it's private

Yuletide again

chowder for today

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