Network

Current Mood: busy
Current Location: the living room of the Devil Girl House
Current Music: LCD Sound System, "Dance Yourself Clean"

Entry tags:

Nun travels by foot, bus, and train.

Bus: downtown to get on...

Train: ...the 2 line to Redmond! I got on the very first train from Seattle to Redmond. That turned out to have been no mean feat because Sound Transit keep making people get off at ID/Chinatown and delaying that first train; I thought I was going to be hours after the first train, but neau. ID station was packed, and I was lucky to have gotten on a couple of stops to the north.

Judkins Park, the last station eastbound before the bridge? Packed, because Seattleites love trains. As the train rolled on I-90 over the only train tracks on a floating bridge in the world, there was a fireboat on Lake Washington spraying in celebration. Aw, yeah. And I sure hope lots of teens use the Mercer Island station to... get off Mercer Island.

Observations:

the Seattle stations look cooler than the Bellevue stations because of course they do.
Since it had been over a decade since I'd been to Bellevue, I'd forgotten how uppy and downy and marshy Bellevue is. So there are elevated stations, tunnels, curves, low speeds, and closely-spaced stations from South Bellevue to Overlake. Downtown Bellevue & Wilburton are right across I-405 from each other.
Wilburton is two blocks from Uwajimaya Bellevue, hell yeah.
Microsoft has a spiffy-looking covered pedestrian bridge over SR 520 next to "Redmond Technology" station. That's right, there's a light rail station that pretty much serves nothing but Microsoft.
For you concert-goers, there's a station right at Marymoor Park, which was a damn fine idea.
Good grief, there's been a lot of construction in Redmond and Bellevue since I moved away. It's still going on.
My excuse for going to Redmond? Coffee and a sandwich at Victor's.
I have once more at least passed through every station in Seattle's light rail network.
Did you ever notice how the synthesized announcements on the 1 line intoned "the 1 line" like "the one line that we have"? Well, no more! We have two! And they're connected! So there!

Next stop: Capitol Hill, for the No Kings march. (I almost typed "no kinks". Screw that.) Ran into MOOers! Arrived just in time to march from Cal Anderson Park to the Seattle Center.

On foot I saw: awesome signs, many hand-made. A group in orange jumpsuits with the cabinet's names on their backs. Hong Kong & Ukrainian flags. Trans & Queer Pride flags. Two Statue of Liberty costumes. Inflatable amphibians. Did not hang out for speechifying afterwards because I can still feel my feet throb, but I still walked the walk. On the bus home, I saw a succinctly winning sign: in big, purple letters, "NO."

And tonight? The Seattle Fetish Ball. And 0900 tomorrow? Brunch with my fellow trans volunqueers from Lambert House. And Monday? Pre-surgery doctor's appointments. I seem to have lost my damn marbles.

Unbound Desires: A Night of Heated Rivalry

Here's the thing I've been helping to organize! Just picked up my posters for distro today.

A blurb:

Come celebrate the Rachel Reid book that started the whole phenomenon. Attend Victoria Festival of Authors' spring fundraiser at the Sports View Lounge above Oak Bay Rec on May 8th (7-9 pm). There will be burlesque, drag, and 🌶🌶🌶🌶 readings from real-life Victoria residents who have broken barriers around gender and sexuality in Canadian sports. Even better than the cottage!

Ticket link is here.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Thanks to

contrarywise for the title!

Current Music: The Last Dinner Party, "I Hold Your Anger"

It's not what I was made to do, but believe me, I still care

I aten't dead! I have been flat for the last two days and would have continued the practice except for No Kings, but since it turned out the nearest rally was a grand total of ten minutes from my house I walked them to practice my democratically rightful freedom of assembly in the brightly freezing afternoon and was rewarded with the unexpected company of a long-time and little-seen friend who is not on DW and some excellent signs and costumes, of which I confess myself the most impressed by the inflatable riding frog. It was one of a small party on the lesser island of the rotary which included an impressively starred-and-striped Uncle Sam and an otherwise normally dressed protester wearing an American flag top hat. I suspect these rallies of being the one context nowadays in which I do not side-eye the deployment of traditional patriotic imagery. The larger island hosted a solo and determined Make Orwell Fiction Again. I had a chance to compliment the sign against The Lyin King whose black-on-red silhouetting had gone particularly doom metal in the execution, like a kind of psychedelic death's-head poppy. A woman whose jacket was embroidered with dragons and her pants with forests carried signs for herself and her artistically antifascist high-schooler. We had no signs of our own—I said that I was queer and here and that was about what I was up for—but were welcomed onto the curb to wave at the traffic, standing next to No War in Iran. The drive-by honking was heartening and considerable. I felt prudent to have brought earplugs. The crowd meanwhile went wild for the SUV from Cambridge Immigration Law. Making eye contact with passengers and drivers who waved back or thumbs-upped felt as useful as the presence or the noise, especially when it was someone with a headscarf or visibly non-white. The Amazon driver absolutely leaned on the horn as they went through. We were a comparatively small group, but I was not physically capable of getting myself to Boston Common and glad to have been able to demonstrate at all. I want it to mean something beyond the carnival of free expression, although the free expression should not be taken for granted: just around this time of last year was the abduction of Rümeysa Öztürk. I am going to eat some chopped liver on a challah roll and return to irregularly scheduled flatness.

Current Mood: accomplished

Entry tags:

Morning Mishap (part 1 of 1, complete)

Morning Mishap
By Dialecticdreamer/Sarah Williams
Part 1 of 1, complete
Word count (story only): 11106
[Morning of Sunday, 5 November of 2017]

:: On Sunday, Jules is running errands. He stops for brunch at Jaliya’s Kitchen, and runs into a problem that he could never have anticipated. Part of the “Lodestar” arc, set in the Polychrome Heroics universe. ::

Dull gray clouds hung perilously low over Jules’ head as he stepped off the bus at the stop nearest Jaliya’s Eatery. He preferred her original name for it, Jaliya’s Kitchen, but the quonset hut had the new phrase painted on it by the time it was assembled, even before the furniture and appliances were installed. Jules was trying to adapt, but it was slow going.

Midmorning on a Sunday was fairly quiet, with only around fifty people in the dining space, and perhaps a dozen staff. Jaliya spotted him as she brought out a tray full of cabbage rolls, then beckoned him over. Jules loped close to the serving line, then jogged to stand near the staff exit. “Is Blainn making deliveries for you? He was up and gone before Dad was even up. I’m a little worried that he’s overdoing it.”
( Read more... )

An interesting confluence

Tomorrow will be No Kings in DC on the peak weekend for cherry blossom gazing. Probably going to be a lovely mob scene.
The icon is a rhododendron, not a cherry tree.

I feel that this article was written for me

From personal experience, it was possible to read "Dykes to Watch Out for" and eat at Bloodroot (or use their cookbook) without being a lesbian, but the general memories struck me. I think I'd eat any of his versions of the fake recipes (wouldn't bother to make them, but would eat).
https://aftermath.site/dykes-to-watch-out-for-alison-bechdel-food/

Crossposts: https://lb-lee.insanejournal.com/25563.html

Entry tags:

politics

Meagan Morris

Someone I knew from my North Texas days, Meagan Morris, is one of the folks arrested in the Prairieland debacle, which I only just learned about. She is facing minimum ten years in prison (as a trans woman, in Texas) for... I can’t even figure out what exactly she’s supposed to have done!

I’ve been on an antifa watchlist since before COVID because I went to a protest wielding a sign covered in penises and got quoted by USA Today. I guess I’m a terrorist now.

I’ll be at the protest tomorrow. Fuck this bullshit.

EDIT: okay, as far as I can tell, Meagan was convicted for going to an anti-ICE protest (“riot”), helping others there (“providing material support to terrorists,” now that Trump has declared antifascists terrorists), and using fireworks there (“use and carry an explosive” and “conspiracy to use and carry an explosive”).

She is facing 10-60 years in prison as a trans woman for being an antifascist and having fireworks. That’s terrorism now. That’s hitting people I KNOW. (Or knew.) This is where I used to LIVE.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Location: the living room of the Devil Girl House
Current Music: The Funky Lowlives, "Saturn Return"

Entry tags:

house,
taxes

life's little annoyances

Annoyance #1: I apparently can't run my induction stove and my microwave at the same time without tripping the 20A circuit breaker that they share. What's weird is, I didn't even notice until it came time to nuke my lunch.

Annoyance #2: The manual that came for my stove is for a different model. I did eventually figure out how to set the clock after I reset the breaker. Yes, the clocks on my microwave, stove, and wall opposite them all tell the correct time because I'm so anal-retentive I can turn coal into diamonds with my butt.

Annoyance #3: This one was kind of a doozy. So, you may recall that my Mom's house finally sold late last summer, and we divvied up the cash. What you pay taxes on is sale price minus fair market value at the time of Mom's death – which is pretty much up to the ever-scrupulous Good Sister to decide – and some kinds of expenses incurred getting the house ready for sale.

Well, I never reported that income, or in this case, small loss. You see, I never got a 1099-S from the title company the way Good Sister did. Neither did Evil Sister, so I'm pretty sure I didn't throw it out by mistake. See "anal-retentive" above.

At GS's urging, I called up the title company in my hometown. They have a 1099-S for Evil Sister on file, but not mine. So now I have an electronic copy of ES's 1099-S so I can file an amended return. Mayyybe I could get an additional refund out of this, but the main point of filing more stuff is to keep the IRS off my back.

Speculation: since my 1099-S appears not to exist, the IRS doesn't know about all of this either, which was why they sent my refund so quickly. I'm sorely tempted to blow this off, but GS is firmly against that. Given that she's a CPA, she's probably right.

Entry tags:

Flip by Ngozi Ukazu

Two teens are forced to consider each other's point of view.

Flip by Ngozi Ukazu

Carry On Only

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5795

Maybe I am done being a fan of the Olympics

https://apnews.com/article/ioc-olympic-transgender-female-eligibility-520cd9cee152a312767a667acf77dbc8

Not just trans women, but intersex and other people with unusual genetics combinations like Caster Semenya.

Current Mood: accomplished

Entry tags:

Suburban Wildlife (part 1 of 1, complete)

Suburban Wildlife
By Dialecticdreamer/Sarah Williams
Part 1 of 1, complete
Word count (story only): 1241
[November 2017]

:: Albert is exploring his backyard when he spots what seem to be a mother bird and babies in a tree. A little closer, he spots the cat features and immediately goes to find his grownup. Part of the Mercedes story arch, in the Polychrome Heroics universe. It takes place the same day as “Workday Weirdness” in the afternoon. Prompted by

mama_kestrel and sponsored by her, with my deepest thanks. ::

The back yard was bigger than some pocket parks. The boy rode his tricycle along a long loop that ran from the long edge of the back patio, all the way out to meet the flowerbed in front of the cinder block fence, then looped back in an irregular waving route that bordered the side yard. Edible plants filled the spaces between the walkway and the wall on that side, with fruit trees espaliered along nearly every inch of the wall.

Along the familiar, repeating curves, the boy sped up, even when his knee whacked into the handlebar on one side or the other. Near the shady end of the patio, he stopped, watching a mama bird teaching the babies how to… He frowned, then shook his head. Instead of going closer, he deliberately rode the tricycle into the lush grass in the middle of the loop and, after much huffing and straining, got the tricycle back onto the pathway. He turned right, backtracking the rest of the way to the patio.
( Read more... )

Current Mood: grateful
Current Location: Schildhaven in Den Haag

Entry tags:

thanks

Thankful Thursday

Today I am thankful for...

A safe trip home (Saturday afternoon through Sunday morning).
Finding out from my urologist yesterday that my bladder appears to be fully operational. NO thanks for my pelvic floor needing more exercise. I hate exercise.
x2x (1) and ssh (1), letting you share your keyboard and mouse seamlessly between two linux boxes.
Enough space in the kitchen area for two recycling bins.
A plethora of chargers with known locations, that I can lay hands on if I need one. (I also have a plethora of corresponding cables, but I don't know where all of them are.)

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Five Stories About Surviving and Adapting on Mars

Strategies range from paraterraforming to radical cybernetic transformation...

Five Stories About Surviving and Adapting on Mars

Entry tags:

The Silicon Man by Charles Platt

An all-too diligent FBI agent must be silenced... but there's no reason he cannot serve SCIENCE! as well.

The Silicon Man by Charles Platt

same

Today's entry could be the same as the first paragraph of this entry from a year ago.
https://lauradi7dw.dreamwidth.org/941126.html

Job Talk

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5794

Don't worry she's fine

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5794

Entry tags:

reading meme

(no subject)

What I’ve Read

The Historian By Elizabeth Kostova – This Dracula novel has a fantastic trick which is telling an epistolary story that nails the fun of reading a story thru someone else’s voice and then returning to the main character’s narrative to go “Oh, my god, they had no idea of the danger they were in!” And that trick is a trick I enjoy a great deal! I don’t know that I enjoy 700 pages of it! Overall, while the narrative is the journey we take with the characters, this journey felt extended beyond the needs of the story or my personal pleasure, and ended in a kind of disappointing splat. I can see why it made a splash – It’s not badly written, and the layered epistolary vibe is pretty great for the first half of the book! But that’s not how you kill Dracula, Frank.

My Real Children by Jo Walton – Ok, I just read this in a fever dream on a plane but I really liked it. The story is a well-told life of a woman named Patricia- specifically, two different lives that branch off from each other in 1949, when she makes a single important personal choice. But, as an elderly woman with dementia, in a nursing home, she remembers both lives and both worlds and both sets of children that she has, different as they are from each other. In one, she lives a life of joy and love in a private oasis from a world gradually falling into violence and instability. In the other, she’s snatching tiny moments of personal peace inside a miserable life, but the world is gradually getting brighter, kinder, and more peaceful. It’s a carefully composed book and I enjoyed both stories really well! I will probably have to re-read it to talk about cogently for book club. Jo Walton has always done a great of seeding her world building naturally throughout the stories she writes, so I think this story will reward re-reading.

The Scales and the Sword by foolish_mortal (Restricted link - https://archiveofourown.org/works/773326) – The Hitcher (1986) fic – So, getting into Talamasca fic led to me finding this extremely homoerotic and murdery film, and then the fic about it has been very interesting. The movie is basically “nice heterosexual boy with a car is stalked by hot murderous stranger with a fixation on him.” It’s great, if you like murderous strangers with a fascination that leads them to toy with their food. The film shows the nice boys slow slide into feral violence, which seems to the murderous stranger’s aim – making this nice boy more like himself. The movie would be much more dull if it were more straight. This story is an AU where our nice boy is… less heterosexual, and the murderous stranger is introduced to him under different circumstances. They dance around each other for a loooong time in a flirtation that gradually becomes more explicitly sexual as the story goes on. Think Hannibal.

What I’m Reading
Hemlock and Silver by T Kingfisher – Kingfisher loves an older lady with an area of expertise, and in Anja’s case, that’s poison! It’s Kingfisher, I know it will be good.

What I’ll Read Next
The Fabric of Civilization – audiobook, the library will pull it back soon.

Current Music: Talking Heads, "Creatures of Love"

Am I one of those human beings?

The train bears

selkie southward again: we have affirmed that the important part is not the leaving, but the coming back. This visit was somewhat more flying than usual and complicated by just about everyone on both sides having run out of running on fumes some time last year if not the previous decade, but we had celebration and I was finally able to give her the shells and stones I had collected for her five months ago on Cape Cod, reminders of northern Atlantic.

spatch and I have decided never again to pay attention to his phone when driving into Brookline. Making our way home from South Station, I was so pleased to see that the superstructure of the Northern Avenue Bridge has not yet been demolished and still stands as an installation of rust-flaked trusses, permanently perpendicular to its successor's flat concrete. What I would have called the new North Washington Street Bridge has been designated the Bill Russell Bridge since I first glimpsed it in miniature of the Zakim, a parabolic stickleback of white fish bones. We parked in the lot of Bill & Bob's for the first roast beef sandwiches of the season, so early the picnic tables had not been set up, and were introduced by WERS to the total delight of They Might Be Giants' "Wu-Tang" (2026) as we wound past the un-iced Mystic. Two days after a snow that stuck to all the branches, it is short-sleeved catkin spring, drive-with-the-windows-down weather. We watched the Charles and the Fort Point Channel scatter the same reflective blue as the sky.

Current Mood: pleased
Current Location: the living room of the Devil Girl House

Entry tags:

Nun is cooking in the future!

I pulled the trigger on an induction stove – yeah, after the price went up – and let me tell you, it's super zippy! I can boil water for a good sized cup of tea in thirty-five (35) seconds. I haven't yet used the oven; I hope it doesn't run cool, as the old one seemed to, because I like being able to use the temperatures that I read in recipes.

And why would I do a thing like this?

Sticking it to the fossil fuel fuckos.
Less planet destruction.
Safer! The Wendling in particular Does Not Like having to deal with the open flames of a gas stove.
Safer in the long term: better indoor air quality.

It cost well under half of my tax refund. That's what I'm telling myself. I think this will be my home improvement for the year.

What about my gas tankless water heater? I surely burnt a lot more gas with that than my stove every month. Wayell, I'm not in a hurry to do that, but it's worth looking into.

What am I going to do with my (resistive) electric kettle? Well, it has non-boiling settings, so it's good for oolong or green tea, I guess.

Edited to add: No more singeing spaghetti while waiting for it to soften!