the deep moans round with many voices

assorted daily stuff

Wed, 15 Jan 2025 04:56:22 GMT

I had a dentist appointment this morning to fix an old filling that had gone bad. We were also initially scheduled to do a second filling at the same time, but the dentist decided that since one of the affected teeth was in the upper right quadrant and the other was in the lower left quadrant, doing both fillings would potentially leave me with no good chewing surfaces if either tooth was sensitive after the Novocain wore off.

So now I have a THIRD appointment scheduled for January 28. *sigh*

On the bright side, the filling replacement seems to have gone well and I am not, in fact, having any pain. I also got the dentist to shave down the little scraggly bit on the filling she replaced a couple weeks ago, so it is no longer snagging food, my floss, or my tongue. \o/

Other things done today:

1. Completed a renewal lease and made good progress on creating a key plan for the 1st floor of one of our largest buildings.

2. Uploaded a batch of my 2023 Three Sentence Ficathon fills to AO3.

3. Refilled my blood pressure meds.

4. Bought groceries (and upon getting home immediately realized several items I forgot, so I made a new list)

5. Prepped for laundry tomorrow.

6. Wrote one (1) Three Sentence Ficathon fill.

And now I shall go to bed. :)

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welcome to January

Fri, 03 Jan 2025 17:38:53 GMT

Some stuff:

1. Flew out to Minnesota for Christmas and some ancillary visiting -- I left Monday afternoon (12/23) and returned home on Saturday (12/28). The flights out went smoothly, but both legs of my trip home were significantly delayed, which was annoying. Anyway, it was good to see Mom, Dad, Vicky, and Aunt C again.

2. Mom seems to have finally internalized that I am serious about moving to Minnesota this June and is now lightly panicking about logistics and my impending job search, which is... well. I am glad she cares! I am glad she wants to help! But it's also very tiring.

3. I thought I had finished all my Not the IRS paid training by the end of the year, but apparently they lied to me when they said all the training would be in X section of the company intranet. Actually half the training was still on Y section of the intranet (where all of it used to be) so I had to go take care of that portion yesterday. But now, finally, I seem to have ticked off all my mandatory boxes.

4. We rented an apartment to a guy with a start date of January 2 and I wanted to stage/photo/video it before he moved in. However, despite the apartment having sat vacant since FREAKING JUNE, our Maintenance department didn't finish turnover until Thursday morning and then the tenant showed up three hours early, so there went my plans. *sigh* However, I did manage to stage/photo/video a different apartment this morning, which is good because in theory we have someone ready to sign, pay, and move in this afternoon.

5. I am attempting a habit pledge for Get Your Words Out this year, after not writing much at all for a few years. I would like to get back into writing and I think a habit pledge is more useful for that than a word count pledge. :)

And now I think I will go grab some lunch before returning to work.

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miscellaneous family stuff, plus writing

Mon, 13 Jun 2022 20:03:10 GMT

We left the island on Sunday afternoon, so as to briefly overlap with Aunt Cara's visit to the Twin Cities. (She is now retired and is planning to move back to Minnesota from Chicago, and wanted Mom and Nick to help her out with her first baby steps in that process.) We had a nice family dinner, and now Aunt Cara has left to drive home, Dad and Nick are out buying a power cord for Nick's weed-whacker and some fence repair supplies, and Mom is at Urgent Care to get her injured foot checked out after we collectively convinced her to stop ignoring it and proclaiming it was totally getting better, really it was. *headdesk*

Meanwhile I am taking advantage of a free kitchen table and outlet and getting a little writing done. I have added a bit over 275 words to chapter 18 of The Guardian in Spite of Herself -- admittedly, most of them are a description of Tengai, but I'd been stuck in the scene in question for a while and last night I finally realized that what I needed at that point IS, in fact, a detailed description of Tengai, because the town layout becomes relevant later on and this meeting between Eiji and Kisame is exactly where that becomes less of an infodump and more of a "I am showing you around my town so you can work out a defense plan as per our potential contract" thing.

I think I'm gonna see if I can finish the scene and get started on scene 4 (Naga-tachi reacting to a message from Konoha). :)

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not an ideal day, all things considered

Wed, 19 Jan 2022 04:22:31 GMT

Things that happened to me today:

1. Drove over a big chunk of ice that tore loose part of the plastic shield under my car engine. The plastic segment is now hanging down and scraping against the road when I drive, which makes a horrible racket and cannot possibly be good for my poor car. I have made an appointment with Goodyear to get it looked at tomorrow, and will get Mr. Geniality to drive me from Goodyear to work.

2. My kitchen sink clogged up again, the same way it did at the end of October. I dumped as much of the standing water as I could into my bathroom sink (which is draining fine), and have texted Landlord Dude to come unclog it tomorrow.

3. Found a dead mouse in the cabinets under the kitchen sink. *sigh* It had been there at least a day, long enough for ( gross details about dead animals ) Anyway, I flicked it out into the snowy waste of the back yard (I didn't want to shovel my back steps just to dispose of a mouse), scrubbed down the shelf, and bleached the daylights out of the snap trap.

I will need to set a new trap after Landlord Dude fixes my drains.

...

In other news, the Three Sentence Ficathon fill that got away from me is now 2,075 words and counting. What even is my life. *headdesk*

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writing, argh

Mon, 17 Jan 2022 01:53:12 GMT

I was like, "I will write a tiny Magnus Archives fill for this prompt, in which an OC gets eaten by an evil teacup that is a joint manifestation of the Vast and the Spiral!"

Eight hundred words later, this turned into a story about work and dreams and toxic relationships and I am only just getting around to where someone finally gets eaten by the evil teacup, which is actually an evil hand-thrown mug and which I think has decided it likes its new owner and is going to eat her horrible girlfriend instead.

*hands*

Brains, man. How do they even work.

...

...

Also I did laundry, ordered some file cabinet drawer inserts, and baked a batch of Laddie's hotdish for dinner, because I could. Now I think I shall procrastinate again by putting new sheets on my bed. *wry*

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wherein Liz considers WIPs

Fri, 08 Oct 2021 03:31:08 GMT

Fanfiction stories nominally in progress (for some degree of "in progress"):

( Read more... )

...

Some of these are deliberately not time-sensitive and I keep around to poke at on random occasions. Others are very far on the backburner because of how my life has gone over the past decade or so. And some others I would very much LIKE to be working on regularly, but, you know, *gestures at the general state of the world* Also I am very busy at work and all my efforts to establish a regular writing schedule keep falling apart for various reasons.

*sigh*

Maybe I could ease myself back in gently by editing an older story instead of writing entirely new words? I never did get my Magnus Archives/Doctor Who story edited to the point where I'm willing to post it to AO3, which is a crying shame...

*ponders options*

Ah well. Whatever I end up doing, right now I should go fall into bed. I have a 4-hour drive either tomorrow evening or Saturday morning.

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the best part of vacation is the lack of pressure :)

Fri, 18 Jun 2021 02:00:33 GMT

Day three of vacation: very satisfactory. :)

I got up at 9:30am instead of 11:30am, made myself a nice breakfast (scrambled eggs, English muffins, a clementine, tea), and then spent the day mostly reading (in the cabin and down on the dock), working desultorily on a puzzle, and doing some dinner prep and cleanup.

I also took a two-hour afternoon nap, which was lovely. I intend to pay down a significant portion of my chronic sleep debt by the time I leave the island.

Tomorrow should be cooler, and Mom and I plan to go on a hike -- possibly all the way around Windigo, possibly in the morning. Other than that, my schedule is wide open.

Hmm.

In reading news, yesterday I finished Harrow the Ninth, which is indeed a head trip. But in a good way! My one quibble is that the narrative voice which is eventually revealed to be ( spoilers ) doesn't have quite the right word choices before the reveal, though there are some hints. Anyway, I am now desperately curious for the third book.

I have started A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine (who I was interested to learn is married to Vivian Shaw (who I somewhat "internet knew" from Homestuck fandom) -- I am always a bit surprised to be within six degrees of contact, however loose, to people whose books I read), and while I haven't gotten far enough to have much of an opinion, I can definitely say I'm not bored. :)

In nonfiction realms, I am working through Medieval Maritime Warfare by Charles D. Stanton, Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error by Kathryn Schulz, In the Interim: Strategies for Interim Ministers and Congregations (2nd edition), and An Imperial Possession: Britain in the Roman Empire by David Mattingly. I tend to have several books on the go at any time, and switch between them based on my mood for any given day or hour.

In writing news, I opened the file for "Guardian" chapter 18 and skimmed through the parts I'd previously written, but did not get any farther than that.

I am also slowly continuing to crosspost my Three Sentence Ficathon fills to AO3, which feels nice and productive. *wry*

And now I think I may go to bed, so as to continue paying down my sleep debt and be in good shape for a hike tomorrow. :)

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I feel like all my posts lately are some variation on "I am very busy at work, argh"

Sun, 06 Jun 2021 03:15:22 GMT

Things I wanted to get done today at work: MANY

Things I actually got done: MANY, but, and this is important, NOT NECESSARILY THE ONES I MEANT TO DO

Events have a way of disrupting plans, you know?

Ah well, I created the move-in and inspection form tracking sheets that Ms. Random Numbers and Ms. Busywork wanted, wrote and sent three leases (and wrote-but-didn't-send a fourth, because that's waiting on some additional information), answered various inquiries, showed two groups around some apartments, signed out some keys, entered some work orders, and prodded someone into signing a lease they'd been dithering over. (Turns out, saying (truthfully!) that you have another applicant and are going to send them a lease in an hour unless Person A actually signs the lease they've been sitting on for two days often produces results -- either, "Oh whoops, sorry, here's the lease and payment!" or "Actually I found another place." I don't particularly care which; I just want the apartment out of limbo, you know?)

I also generated a bunch of work for our new temp to deal with on Monday, so she's not sitting around with nothing to do and going home early. Annnnnnd I kind of left a bunch of stuff on Mr. Geniality's chair for him to deal with on Monday, but he and I each "own" some key spreadsheets and for the sake of clarity we don't mess with each other's workflow in those areas. (Other spreadsheets are joint and we both muck around in them, but in some cases it saves a lot of trouble if someone is designated The One Who Maintains Spreadsheet X, so nothing gets missed or double-entered or whatever.) Also I don't do downtown landlord reference checks from the Collegetown office, because that's just asking for confusion, so that's all on him for a couple days. (I did my part and sent an email, but the landlord has not responded so the next step is a phone call.)

-----

In non-work news, I am gradually crossposting all my Three Sentence Ficathon fills to AO3. The slow pace is partly because I'm trying not to flood anybody's inbox, but also because I don't usually feel up to posting more than a couple-three per day.

And now I am heading to bed, because it was beastly hot today, I'm tired, and my feet hurt.

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wherein Liz does some internet housecleaning

Sun, 30 May 2021 21:31:09 GMT

There is something really lovely about being able to catch up on sleep without worrying that sleeping my fill means I won't have time to do all my day-off-work chores, you know?

Anyway, I've been slowly organizing my Three Sentence Ficathon fills and tacking summaries onto the ones that need them, in preparation for cross-posting them to AO3. I also finally got around to cross-posting some older mini-ficlet prompt meme fills, and should get the final one of those up this evening.

It feels nice to get back on top of some organization stuff I've been letting slide. :)

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assorted things make a post

Thu, 20 May 2021 04:12:34 GMT

Things done today:

1. Another day of the "Ye gods and little fishes can you maybe please ask for leases one at a time? deluge." *flops exhaustedly*

2. Last night I potted my peppers (is it just me or does that sound vaguely dirty? I think it's the alliteration), and this evening I moved them outside. I also sprinkled more detergent on the moss that has infested the porch timbers, and sprayed animal repellent.

I must remember to tell Landlord Dude that he needs to rebuild the porch this fall, once I am done with my container garden for the year.

3. Called my dad and chatted for ~45 minutes because it's nice to catch up. Apparently my childhood congregation is once again embroiled in real estate conundrums. This is deeply unsurprising, because that congregation has been embroiled in a multifaceted slow-motion real estate conundrum since about fifteen years before I was born. (To simplify: the original sanctuary and parish house were built circa 1900, when the congregation was much smaller and cars were not particularly a thing. Since then, the congregation has significantly expanded and also realized that having no parking lot will do nothing but get you into endless fights with A) the neighbors and B) the local city council and zoning board.) So we commiserated about rent and mortgages and church governance woes for a while. (My dad has studiously avoided serving on the Board for decades. (My mom was not so successful and served two terms when I was in high school and college.) Instead he has basically become the institutional memory of the finance committee, which is arguably more responsibility.)

4. Finally finished the damn Murderbot Diaries ficlet I'd been poking at since early/mid April. I'll post it here at a later date, but for now you can read it here: Sense of Self, 1,845 words. It's a very belated response to a Three Sentence Ficathon prompt of Any, any/any, daemon AU.

5. Listened to yesterday's new Sawbones episode. :)

---------------

Yesterday I voted in the school board election. Preliminary results have the budget passing, but the board election was tight enough that final results are still pending.

I think there's also a local election coming up in June, but I need to double-check the dates to see if I'll be out of town and will therefore have to acquire an absentee ballot.

---------------

And now, to bed, because tomorrow is my 9am-5pm day rather than my usual 10am-6pm schedule, so I need to get up an hour early.

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brief update

Sun, 28 Mar 2021 19:33:30 GMT

I'm at Not the IRS, very bored. I had one client scheduled, but they no-showed (to be perfectly honest, I was half expecting that, because this person has a habit of no-showing appointments) so I have been sitting around doing some websurfing, some writing, and some reading on my Kindle app.

I intend to leave early because there is literally no point in me being here and I have more useful things I could be doing with my time.

My right wrist hurts more than my left wrist did at a similar period. I think this is because my right hand is my dominant hand so I keep trying to use it by reflex and then I get stabbing/throbbing pain in weird and unfamiliar places -- for example, I keep getting horrible twinges in my right ring finger because something is pulling on a nerve that normally is not involved in turning my hand. I am trying to be more conscious and careful about motion, but it's going to be an uphill battle.

Anyway, hopefully I should be able to post a ficlet this evening, after which I will try to get a few more things crossposted to AO3.

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writing and healing

Tue, 16 Mar 2021 21:26:59 GMT

Today while bored at Not the IRS (after my client left), I opened up an old file and wrote about 500 words of "The Guardian in Spite of Herself," chapter 18.

This would be easier if I remembered more of my timeline details (and/or had emailed myself my timeline and outline files along with the chapter draft file), but even so. Progress!

I think part of the reason I'd been stuck for so long was that I got hung up on my own perfectionism and forgot that this story is, first and foremost, intended to be FUN. (I mean, along with the death and emotional trauma and horrible moral dilemmas and such. Those are also important.) It is about FOUND FAMILY and PEOPLE TRYING TO DO THE RIGHT THING and occasional COOL NINJA FIGHTS.

So I have decided to just write and worry about fixing it up after the fact. Thus far, this plan seems to be working fairly well. :)

We'll see if I make any more progress before the end of my shift.

-----

In non-writing news, my hand and wrist continue to heal well, though the scar and the skin right around it is dry and intermittently VERY ITCHY. I am dabbing on lotion whenever I notice it feeling a bit tight or dry, and slathering the area in vaseline or an equivalent at night, to hold any moisture in. (This is not practical during the day, because the scar is, of course, on my hand and the greasiness would get EVERYWHERE. Alas!)

The scar should be quite narrow once fully healed, and the only really noticeable segment is the part where it happens to run along the exact path of one of my palm lines, so they're sort of reinforcing each other's slight dip.

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wherein Liz is very sore and tired

Thu, 04 Feb 2021 01:34:52 GMT

Yesterday I shoveled far too much snow, both because clearing one's sidewalk is just what you do (I mean, it's also legally mandatory, but I like to maintain a minimal standard of human decency) and because I needed to dig out my car and driveway (twice! bleeping snowplows!) in order to make it to my afternoon/evening shift at Not the IRS.

Today I got up early and shoveled far too much snow AGAIN, because it had snowed somewhere between another 8 and 12 inches overnight. UGH.

...

In other news, I have written a few things for the current iteration of the Three Sentence Ficathon and will post a collection over here sometime this week. I will, as always, be posting in sets of 6.

I like 6. 6 is a perfect number -- and I mean that both aesthetically and technically. :)

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my parents used to do this when reading kids' books aloud to me and my brother

Mon, 01 Feb 2021 06:57:18 GMT

I did a little thought experiment on myself while reading Andre Norton's Uncharted Stars, where I mentally rewrote the two secondary characters (Ryzk and Zilwrich) as female. There was no plot requirement for those people to be male, so why not? That one change improved the book immeasurably.

I think I'm going to start applying that technique to other Norton books (and what the hell, probably to any classic sci-fi and fantasy I read or reread). It really does drive home how the absence of women is as much a problem as bad depictions of women, you know? *sigh*

Changing Zilwrich's gender required no rewrites whatsoever: injured alien archaeologist is not a gendered plot role. I think if Ryzk had been written as female from the start, their introduction scene would need to be slightly altered because a drunk woman alone in a seedy bar is a different vibe from a drunk man alone in a seedy bar... but hey, maybe that would make the scene in question a bit less morally iffy! (If you wanted to be more drastic in the rewriting, it could result in two secondary characters -- Ryzk and a companion -- that could heighten some later tension in terms of divisions of opinion among the spaceship crew, but that's a more ambitious proposition.) Other than that, literally nothing that needed to be changed to make Ryzk a completely reasonable depiction of a woman, because there was nothing particularly gendered about that depiction in the first place aside from pronouns and that bar scene.

I now kind of want to reread the book and swap some background characters as well. Let's have female shady gem dealers! Female space pirates! Female squid-crustacean aliens who communicate via gesture-to-sound interfaces! Female hardscrabble ice planet merchants who've been dreaming of recreating a legendary trade their parent made! Etcetera.

I have, over the years, become more and more committed to the idea that unless there's a pressing plot or character reason for a character to be male, they should be female by default. (Cis and trans both welcome!)

I have been thinking this past year or so that nonbinary is also a good option. I need to start making random characters nonbinary as well -- this is a little trickier, particularly when working in somebody else's sandbox that has gender assumptions pre-installed, but challenge is good for the soul, yeah?

...

Anyway, bed now. :)

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2020 writing roundup and analysis

Wed, 20 Jan 2021 22:08:42 GMT

2019 version // 2018 version // 2017 version // 2016 version // 2015 version // 2014 version // 2013 version // 2012 version // 2011 version // 2010 version // 2009 version // 2005 version

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A Year in Writing: 2020
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( January )

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( February )

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( March )

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( April )

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( May )

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( June )

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( July )

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( August )

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( September )

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( October )

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( November )

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( December )

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2020 Fanfiction: 69,725
2020 Original: 4,975
2020 Total: 74,700

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( Analysis )

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And that is that for the year. :)

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various things make a post

Mon, 28 Dec 2020 01:50:12 GMT

In the event, Susan and Patrick's garage door opener broke, and then the failsafe emergency cord broke. So they were stuck for several hours trying to essentially disassemble their garage door in order to get their cars out and return to Madison. Fun times!

They did escape eventually, and I drove over to exchange gifts around 9pm instead of 4pm. We sat outside in the freezing cold and then took a short walk in the freezing cold (and dark; it was very dark) and talked for... 45 minutes, give or take? That sounds about right.

So that was nice.

This morning Mom, Dad, and I had quiche for breakfast, which was tasty and also not something I'd ever thought of as a breakfast food even though logically it fits neatly into the "egg dish" category. Cultural preconceptions are weird! I also did a tiny load of laundry so I returned to Ithaca with no dirty clothing. Occasionally I manage efficiency. *wry*

The drive went smoothly, and I only passed two cop cars that had pulled other drivers over. Oh, and I should mention I currently have the Sienna minivan instead of the Camry, because the Camry needs its annual service checkup and also it looks better for registry and insurance purposes if it actually spends some time physically in my parents' possession.

...I really need to buy a car. I think with my sideways promotion I may finally have enough money for that. And while I don't want to move (I like my apartment! I am used to all its quirks!), if I had a car I could probably find somewhere cheaper a bit further out of town, to sort of equalize the financial outlays.

Anyway, I am safely back in Ithaca. I have partially unpacked, eaten dinner, and hastily paid my January rent. I should probably also write my thank-you notes -- I've picked out the cards and put stamps and return address labels on the envelopes -- but somehow that sounds like too much work. Ah well. Perhaps I will continue browsing the Yuletide archive instead, or maybe even write some words of my own.

Oh! And speaking of words: as of last night, I am exactly 88 words short of reaching my getyourwordsout goal for 2020. Admittedly my goal was only 75,000 words, but considering how little I wrote in 2018 and 2019 (and that I only hit ~70,000 words for 2016 and 2017), I think that is a pretty cool accomplishment!

I have signed up again for next year, at the same 75,000 word target. I feel that I have gotten a bit more back into the habit of writing, but I don't know that I have it in me to hit 150,000 words, which is the next lowest goal.

...

You know what? I am going to go write things now. *resolve face*

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wherein Liz complains about writing

Sun, 08 Nov 2020 03:36:03 GMT

I'm trying to write a hurt/comfort ficlet with the hurt being hypothermia.

I've got the hurt part down. I am not having any trouble whatsoever with the hurt.

The comfort part, though.

...

...

I think either I will have to deus ex machina myself a shortcut, or this is going to grow into a proper short story rather than a ficlet. Blargh. Why do I write myself into corners like this?

(Because I live for worldbuilding and character interactions, obviously, but shhh, allow me to pretend these are unforeseen woes rained down upon me from vague and mysterious external sources, okay? Okay. Good.)

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Mini-Ficlet Prompt Meme: because long!fic is horrible and my brain is dry

Sun, 18 Oct 2020 02:24:53 GMT

In the interest of having small things I can finish at (hopefully!) reasonable speed while I work on longer and long-delayed projects, it's time once again for a mini-ficlet prompt meme! I'm using my Ladies Bingo card, so this is for stories about female characters and their relationships with each other.

Here is a link to my Ladies Bingo card.

I am preemptively vetoing several prompts this time around, because reasons. (...Okay, I just want to fill in as many squares as possible without completing a single bingo. I have a Thing about patterns, shut up.)

You CANNOT ask for: Supernatural Happenings; Pets; Vengeance; Worst Case Scenario; Farce

You CAN ask for: ~~Wibbly-Wobbly-Timey-Wimey: Time Travel~~; ~~A Member of the Underclass (Urchins / Beggar / Outcast)~~; ~~Hurt / Comfort~~; ~~Underage~~; Last Times / Farewells; ~~Illness~~

If you would like to claim any of the open squares, please choose a prompt from the available list, and add two or three female characters plus a scenario. I will then write you a ficlet of at least 500 words.

-----

Obligatory small print:

1. I reserve the right to veto any fandoms I don't know well enough to write, and ask you to please try again.

2. Crossover prompts are fine. On the off chance that anyone wants to read a snippet from any of my original worlds and stories, ofic prompts are also fine.

3. I am cool with both gen and shippy prompts. Just be aware that I'm not great at romance, so if you request shipfic, it will come out fairly low-key and may end up as ambiguous gen anyway. (Porn is unlikely, though you can always ask.)

-----

Fills:

1. The Common Woman's Gold: Chronicles of Narnia. Prompt: Aravis & Lasaraleen: A Member of the Underclass! (undercover in the marketplace? sneaking out to have adventures?). For musesfool, 1,110 words.

2. Whilst You and I Keep Ourselves Warm: Chronicles of Narnia. Prompt: Hurt/comfort, anyone in Narnia (including OCs), cold/hypothermia/frostbite, please! For violsva, 1,636 words.

3. Narutostuck: The Deepest Secret Nobody Knows: Homestuck/Naruto. Prompt: Underage: Narutostuck. Jade and Aradia and Feferi all had excellent reasons to despair. Fortunately, each of them hid their doubts from the other two... until they didn't. For mme_hardy, 750 words.

4. A Long Road from Home: Darkangel Trilogy. Prompt: Illness -- Actually, I'd love to see a branch of that story where Ryllan, Roshka's daughter, goes to Aeriel for help. For rosaxx50, 1,680 words.

5. Go Forth To Meet the Future: Chronicles of Narnia. Prompt: Wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey with Polly and Jill? Somehow, they meet out of time, or they do some dimension hopping, or both... For marmota_b, 1,900 words.

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wherein Liz writes things

Sat, 17 Oct 2020 03:12:38 GMT

During the brief parts of Thursday I was awake for, I spent some time poking at "The Guardian in Spite of Herself" chapter 18, which was... interesting, I guess? Turns out the bit I was stressed over last year wound up being nothing, but during the hiatus I have completely forgotten all my minor OCs who make up the trade caravan so my new text is full of stuff like [name] and [some person] and [somebody else], which I will fix up later, after I roll some dice to figure out who died. (Possibly literally roll dice. That's how I did chuunin exam matchups way back in "Apartment Manager," with a few tweaks for narrative/political viability, so I know it's a workable method.)

Anyway, the next few paragraphs are mostly going to be a bunch of triage and corpse disposal, because I'm writing about broken social systems as much as I'm writing action/adventure, and messy aftermaths are an important part of that.

...

Tonight I wrote a little original fiction snippet for fan_flashworks which I'll make a proper link post to tomorrow.

For now, I am off to bed.

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wherein Liz considers file organization methods

Sat, 10 Oct 2020 03:27:31 GMT

Apropos of a meme that's going around, I am always surprised by people talking about their WIP folder.

Because that is not how I organize my files. Like, AT ALL.

I organize my writing by fandom, with one folder for each major fandom plus one master-level folder that acts as a catch-all for minor fandoms (some of which have their own sub-folders while others just get naked files within that catch-all folder), and then keep another folder for ficathons, prompt-fests, exchanges, etc. So if you want me to list all the stories I consider WIPs, it would require me to comb through... oh, at least a dozen folders, probably more. Scores if you add in all the unfinished original fiction snippets I have floating around.

I dunno, that's just how my mind works. To me, it's OBVIOUS that you sort stories by "world" and mark "this is unfinished" only in the file name, if at all. I add "(rough)" to a lot of files while they're in the WIP stage and whack that off once I finish -- or I make a separate file and call it "(final)" if it's long enough that I'm doing deep edits and/or have had it beta-read at some point, in which case there will usually be a third version with "(beta)" or "(for beta)" tacked onto the file name.

But apparently a lot of people keep a WIP folder! And I mean, I guess I can see how it would be useful if you're poking around wondering what to work on? But I keep having this knee-jerk reaction of "but why can't you just keep that part in your head?" and also "ew, gross, you're letting all the different worlds touch!" like they're bean casserole and cranberry sauce on a Thanksgiving plate and must be kept separate on pain of extremely unpleasant flavor combinations.

Which is also kind of funny since I have files that are just gigantic smears of blended worlds -- namely, every file that's a running tally of Three Sentence Ficathon fills, or a running tally of mini-ficlet prompt meme fills -- but eh.

Possibly it's related to only discovering fanfiction after years of writing unfinished original fiction? So I was used to organizing by world -- which is, of course, a lot more relevant for original fiction, where I also have lots and lots of background worldbuilding files and suchlike.

Or possibly it's just how my brain works. Brains are idiosyncratic and weird.

...

This has been your random thought of the day. :)

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wherein Liz is very tired (how surprising)

Sun, 04 Oct 2020 22:38:21 GMT

I don't know why I've been so exhausted today -- I got nine and a bit hours of sleep, and the same the previous night, and I haven't been doing anything particularly strenuous though I did get in my daily walk so it's not lack of exercise making me tired (counter-intuitively, that is a thing that can happen). Maybe it's weird dreams? I always tend to have vivid story-like dreams, but these last two nights they've also been vaguely unsettling in a stress-dream pattern. That puzzles me because I am actually not under gobs of stress right now -- I'm in a small lull -- but maybe it's delayed processing?

Or maybe it's just red wine. I dunno. Brains and bodies are weird.

Anyway, so far today I have done some writing, done my 5 minutes of gardening, and run a bunch of newly purchase clothes through the laundry. (I bought four pairs of pants from the local consignment shop, and six t-shirts from Michaels because it struck me that A) solid-color cotton t-shirts are WAY cheaper than buying "nice" shirts at an actual clothing store and B) this way I could finally get the purple shirts that have apparently been unfashionable for the past several years. Purple is a good color on me, okay? And while I've been able to find a few purple long-sleeved shirts, the best I've been able to do for short-sleeved shirts is magenta. Which is also a good color on me, don't get me wrong, but it's not the same thing at all.) I have also made a few minor edits to my remix, and written a bit more on the Yukiko & Kakashi prompt fic from back in... uh... early July. *headdesk*

I currently need to do the following tasks:

1. put away laundry (both from today and from last Sunday)
2. apply patches to a pair of pants
3. cook some dinner
4. change linens
5. take out trash and recycling
6. more writing?
7. answer comments?
8. tax education?

...

I'm going to get started on the food. I can knock off some of the other tasks while things are in the oven.

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ETA 9pm:

Thus far I've cooked two things -- one (beef and onion and chard) because I needed to use the ingredients before they went funny, and another (Laddie's hotdish) that I'm actually going to eat tonight -- taken out the trash and recycling, had an unplanned phone call with my mom, put away part of the laundry, changed my linens, and set up the ironing board and iron so I can apply the patches after I eat.

I also ordered some new patches from Amazon because Michaels was sold out (that's why I was there in the first place; the shirts were an on-the-spot inspiration) because I am now out of non-black patches and I suspect I'll need to do some more patch jobs on various khakis within the next month or so.

Now I'm going to eat dinner and maybe tackle some comment replies.

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I would like to sleep for a week now, please and thank you

Sat, 03 Oct 2020 00:07:37 GMT

So. September. Was a month.

*wilts*

I mean, I don't even think that, objectively speaking, there was all that much more than any other month this year? It was just a lot more personally stressful, because of reasons.

On the church front, there has been a Thing (or several Things of intermingled flavors) rolling on like a boulder of doom since late August, so that has been eating a lot of my time and thoughts and emotional spoons, because aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh, basically. I think we are finally getting back onto a more even keel? But our general plan for the shape of the year has been about 80% upended and we're focusing on other things instead... except for one or two specific things that were always going to be a pain and are still going to be a pain but now we have a lot of other deeply complicated and resource-intensive stuff on top of that instead of lighter issues like how to fix various bits of the physical structure of the sanctuary. *headdesk* So that ate a lot of my energy.

I was also working to get my federally required CE done for my tax prep job by the end of September, which is not especially difficult but is a little time-consuming, and then I straight-up forgot I had an online class session on the 15th and got kicked out of that class for non-attendance and had to sign up a second time for a different session (22nd and 29th rather than 15th and 22nd). Which I blame mostly on general stress, and which meant my CE turned into a time crunch thing at the very end of the month instead of being done a week ahead of deadline, argh.

I was having issues with my remix, mostly because I had a bit of creative burnout after my mad scramble through NFE and kept looking at my remixee's oeuvre and drawing a massive blank about anything I could work with. I hoped writing some tiny comfort ficlets would unstick my brain, but nope. So that was a problem.

Also, during all this I finished the rough draft of my WIP Big Bang fic, closed the file intending to let it sit for a few days so I could edit with fresh eyes, and then completely forgot about it until late on September 30th, at which point I tried to edit a little but gave up and just threw it onto the Dreamwidth community a smidge after midnight, which is why the last third is so raw. *headdesks again* I really will edit it properly sometime this month and then post the tidied version on AO3, but that will... that will need to wait a week or so, because, as previously mentioned, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh.

I didn't nominate anything for Yuletide. Hopefully other people have nominated fandoms and characters I can work with. *crosses fingers*

Also we're trying to kick into the new rental season at the downtown office, which means I have been going through our website's back end to add prices and lease start dates to every single unit. This has to be done by hand, for various technical reasons, and it is maddening. I was also going to spend today writing better ad copy, but Mom Boss has been checking on downtown's video tours and is annoyed that the number of videos does not match the number of apartments with staged photos. This is EXACTLY WHY I wanted to have custody of my own iPhone and gimbal back in August, so I could make videos by myself without needing Mr. Geniality to come down from the main office, to say nothing of waiting for Lawyer Man to pry himself out of whatever he does all day long. But nope. And we didn't even get any new videos today, because Lawyer Man went home early and either took the iPhone and gimbal with him or locked them in his office, to which Mr. Geniality and I don't have keys. ARGH!

...

So yeah. September was a thing.

I am glad it's over.

And now I'm going to do some more tax prep CE, because I started this course and I'm damn well going to finish it.

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update after a short absence

Sat, 26 Sep 2020 02:31:42 GMT

Been a few days, whoops. Life kind of happened at me a lot.

Anyway, I've been busy at work with... um... there's too much. Lots of stuff, let's leave it at that. And it will continue being lots of stuff, but I feel like Mr. Geniality and I are settling into a new rhythm as he's back from vacation and I'm up at the South Hill office for 3-3.5 hours Wednesday through Saturday so we overlap in person more often. That is definitely helpful.

Church continues to be stressful as we're still dealing with the fallout of various things I will be keeping my mouth shut about because confidentiality.

I'm trying to finish my continuing education for my tax prep job -- or rather, to hit my federally mandated 18 hours -- by the end of September. I have a couple classes that will continue after that date, but Not the IRS wants all employees to hit that target by October 1. I have one self-study thing to complete plus a WebEx class that ends on the 29th, which should put me at 19 hours and I can finish up the other courses whenever.

sholio is hosting a comfort prompt fest, which you should check out. I've written two fills because sometimes writing tiny finger exercises about nice things is exactly what hits the spot, you know?

Um. There's a moderate drought currently hitting Ithaca and surrounding areas, and the City has issued a voluntary water restriction advisory thing. I really need to get around to fixing my leaky toilet, which I have been putting off for several weeks now. *sigh*

Oh, speaking of putting things off! I basically stopped using one of my credit cards in March once I settled in to using my new, better credit card, but I completely forgot to cancel it until I received a bill last week that contained the annual fee. (Like I said, I switched to a new, better card. This one is my first ever credit card, and has the not-great features that tend to accompany baby's first credit card.) So tonight I screwed up my willpower, called customer service, and asked to A) cancel the card and B) have the fee waived because I have not been using the card for six months. It was much less painful than I was afraid of.

And now I'm going to do a bit more tax CE before I hit the sack, because I have a blood donation scheduled for stupid early tomorrow morning and I'd like to be at least moderately awake for that. *wry*

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ha, take that!

Sun, 13 Sep 2020 02:44:31 GMT

I have triumphed over the pinch hit! \o/

Also, wow, that ended up significantly longer (and darker) than I was expecting at the start. But there is a time and a place to fight a story and wrench it onto a different path, and a time and a place to follow it down the rabbit hole and see where it wants to go. This was the latter.

Now I am going to drink some alcohol and listen to an on-demand webinar about Covid-19 and taxes, because continuing education waits for no woman. *sigh*

...

...

In rental company news, today I spent a significant portion of my afternoon editing and uploading four floor plans, which sounds like I spent my afternoon doing nothing. What it actually means is I spent my afternoon clearing useless clutter out of architectural blueprints, and filling in all the walls to make solid black lines, and then adding some useful information and a compass and stuff, and moving it all around to look aesthetically pleasing, and adding a frame to focus visual attention, and then trimming and resizing the file until everything was nicely centered. IN MS PAINT. Because I still don't have a decent graphics program.

So yeah, I spent my afternoon editing and uploading four floor plans.

What did you do today?

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wherein Liz's brain is uncooperative

Sat, 12 Sep 2020 00:28:12 GMT

This pinch hit is at 900 words and I just--

*shakes fist at my own brain*

Make the words happen! There is a plan, it's a simple plan, we agreed on the plan. All you have to do is write [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] so for fuck's sake, stop being such a nuisance and do the freaking work!

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