Scales and Tales

Firefox, my web browser of choice, just updated and dumped a bunch of new "AI features" that are enabled by default.

If you, like me, hate this nonsense, I found this very helpful guide to removing it. It took about one minute, and seems to be working - I no longer see the 'AI link preview' popup window when I hover over a link, for instance.

Please feel free to pass this on!

I've been caught up in gardening, AKA "dirt fandom," lately, though I can't actually do much yet except prepare things. I've dug a hole where the bean plants will go, sprinkled a few seeds of hardier sorts into the wildflower bed (we're not past the frost date here yet, so most of my seeds must wait a while longer), rearranged some pots, added soil to a couple of low spots, and - I confess - made three separate online plant purchases. Oops? :D I ought to make a list of everything I've ordered, so I don't avoid duplicates.

On the Actual Gardens rather than Garden Prep side of things, I have been enjoying my 15 gloriously purple hyacinths, planted last fall, which have been blooming for a week now and make stepping out of the front door a delightful experience for the nose. Of course, I ordered 25; wonder where I planted the rest of them? XD One's a pot out back, but the rest I haven't spotted yet. This is the downside of ordering a heap of bulbs and then scrambling to get them into some kind of dirt - any kind of dirt - before it gets too cold to dig!

As usually happens, the horrible cold that knocked me over two weeks ago has returned as a sinus infection, so I'm staying home from work and drinking horrible orange-flavoured cough syrup every 4 hours.

There's a cat curled up adorably on my lap with his paws over his nose. ♥

Plan is to watch more of MDZS today! ...Whenever the cat lets me get up. :D And I suppose I have to figure out something for dinner, not to mention lunch tomorrow since I'm determined not to be out sick another day.

Sorry I've been quiet lately - I've been having trouble with my laptop, and it's making things difficult. The touchpad keeps randomly acting up, and it seems to be a software issue (somewhat well-known). It's still in warranty - by mere days! - so hopefully I'll be able to get it fixed and be more active online again.

After only minor* difficulties, I have reached Worldcon. \o/ I have attained a badge, an art show bidder number, and a hotel map, and am currently dining (on Cup Noodles in my hotel room). Whee!

Hoping to meet up with various virtual friend groups at some point, so if you're here, feel free to reply or shoot me a PM.









*Definitions may vary. Suffice to say, I believed there was a shuttle to the hotel, and there was not. So I reached the convention about two hours later than planned, after a train ride and a walk of several blocks (and one small incidence of asking directions).

I've been silent for quite a while, sorry!

Real life things have kept me busy but I'm reading a lot, at least; both fic and novels. Got through Penric's Progress (Bujold), War of the Spider Queen II: Dissolution (Byers), and have almost finished Road of the Patriarch (Salvatore) lately. Have also gone to a small local(ish) convention, had my upstairs floors replaced, made an appointment to get my vehicle looked at (though not till Saturday) and mostly put everything back in the upstairs rooms. Okay, that last one's a lie, because there are still four large boxes, two bookshelves, an armchair, and a microwave sitting here in the living room with me, but still. Progress has been made. :D

On the fanfic front it's been a lot of Forgotten Realms, Weiss Kreuz, and Silmarillion fic, with a dash of Witcher and Original Works. :D This week is probably going to be as busy as the last couple, but I should start planning a recs post of some kind, or else I'll end up having another months-long DW gap without even noticing.

I also need to make some kind of food to eat, because otherwise it's going to become Every Dinner Is Frozen Pizza Week by default. (Which would at least free up some freezer space...)

Let's see, anything else? I'm well, the cats are well, although Youngest Cat shattered a very expensive collectible item yesterday morning and has been served notice that this is unacceptable, and I have Double Chocolate Wafer Bites to eat after lunch tomorrow, so things could be worse. :D

Proof that people in my city have no taste: I went to the grocery store tonight and there wasn't a single bag of cheap macaroni in sight, but there was ginger coconut rice.

Who would rather eat cheap macaroni than coconut ginger rice?

The real reason I was at the grocery store was an urgent desire for cake, but they didn't have any cakes I wanted so I ended up with three ice cream flavours instead. Let's hear it for Browned Butter Bourbon Truffle, Maine Blueberry & Belgian Waffle Cone, and Wildberry Lavender Mascapone!

Two of which I have sampled already. :D

[Background: I have a number of collecting-based hobbies. I currenty have an item from Collectible Hobby A listed for sale, and an item from Collectible Hobby B listed for trade.]

Did I accidentally walk under a cursed collectible ladder or something? Apparently this week was declared Send Krait Dubious Offers Weeks and I missed the warning memo.

I've got one potential buyer who started off begging for time payments, changed her mind when I said I'd like a week to see if anyone could pay in full, and now wants to dicker about Paypal fees (with the classic "but other sellers pay them themselves" guilt-trip approach; yes, because they include it in the item price! I offer multiple payment options, so I only include it if you're paying via Paypal) while begging me to mail the item Monday - even though my ad states that I can only mail on Saturdays, and she hasn't even given me her address yet. All in the most cutesy, exclamation-riddled choppy sentences possible. D:<

And now I check my email to find a potential trader has contacted me, except it's her "friend without a computer" who wants to trade and I should pass all the information through her - notably, without any mention of details such as whether her friend is even in the same state where she is, or how well she knows this person, or any mention of making arrangements to send me a photo to prove her "friend" has this item at all!

< insert grumpyface here >

I've sent both of them what are (hopefully) very polite responses, explaining to the one that the fees are added because I have multiple payment options and that my work schedule is the reason I can only ship Saturdays, and to the other that I'm not comfortable trading sight-unseen through a third party but perhaps she could help her friend set up an email account for photos and we could use the double-Paypal-payment method.

Let's see if I get more whining or weirdness, or radio silence, or actual cooperation.

Wanna place bets, anybody? :/

I started Duolingo!

It seemed like a good way to practise both the languages I know a bit of, and then in a wild fit of optimism I started on Russian as well.

(It's a running joke of mine that I ought to learn Russian because it becomes relevant to my life about every third fandom. Yuri on Ice, CA:TWS, Eroica Yori Ai o Komete...)

In the languages I'm not starting from scratch on, I'm cruising right along!

My main complaint is that between Russian and Japanese I feel like there could be a much better balance with introductions. The Hiragana lessons are dragging on e n d l e s s l y (I already know this! Why didn't the placement test ask this, so I could skip it?!) but Russian so far hasn't shown me how to pronounce or write a single letter. The "Alphabet" section launched straight into Дима, это Тим without bothering to so much as list the alphabet! What is this nonsense.

There needs to be some kind of swap system so I can trade some of these neverending hiragana lessons for a Russian alphabet overview. :D

A while ago, kass gave me five questions to answer, and I'm finally getting around to them! Not necessarily in order.

4. What is your favorite thing about this time of year where you live?

The short answer to this question is - not much!

Any temperature below 60 degrees F is too cold for me, and more than 10 inches of Water From The Sky per year is excessive by my measure. (I'm a desert native, is it obvious?) I hate being cold, and I hate being precipitated upon; fall/winter in my locale is pretty much six months of exactly that. I spend pretty much all of it complaining about my house's lack of insulation and my heating bill, and not wanting to get up in the mornings because it's dark.

The primary upsides are Christmas and cats.

Christmas foods, Christmas presents, and Christmas decorations are things I enjoy, in various degrees. Even Christmas music can be nice. (Horrible pop-music renditions of secular Christmas or "Christmas" songs in shops, however, are a plague.) On the fannish side, there's Yuletide, and my annual tea mailing/card exchange! I really miss the days of LJ's holiday wishlist comm, too; every year I find myself wondering if I could track down whomever created it and take it over, or just start another one. It was such a wonderful part of the season!

Cats are the other upside to the season: when it's cold in the house, the cats get cuddly. :D I've spent the last two nights with them draped over my legs on the sofa, whereas during the warmer months they tend to spend the evenings in their armchair instead of atop me.


(This reminds me: I need to make a cats post!)