lydamorehouse: (nic & coffee)
 Egads, I've been terrible about keeping up here.

To be fair to me, I've been deep in RPG game planning as an antidote for the continual storm of terrible news from the Worst Timeline. As many of you know, I've recently taken the plunge, moving from player to game master. I still play in plenty of games! However, much like my move from reader to writer, I have discovered that if I want a certain type of game, I might just have to run it myself.  This keeps me occupied to the point of distraction, honestly.  I do have to watch my obsessive tendencies, a bit. Given my druthers I'd almost always rather play or plan an RPG than almost anything else.

Otherwise, I had a birthday on Monday.

Shawn typically takes the day off work for my birthday, so we were able to go together to enjoy some daytime shopping, which was nice. Specifically, I wanted to go to Barnes & Noble to windowshop the manga section there and then head off for what is becoming an annual birthday event, shopping for fabric at S. R. Harris.  It doesn't make sense to catalogue the fabrics I got. Just imagine a nice pile of things that appealed to me--bright and cheery solids and interesting and unusual patterns. To be fair, the big excitment of going to S. R. Harris the dizzying array of choices and the fact that they removed biggest barrier to enjoying fabric shopping for me: waiting in line for your fabric to be cut.  You are allowed to cut your own up to four yards. This always makes me feel like a rogue, a ciminal... like I'm getting AWAY with something.

But, since today is "What Are You Reading Wednesday?" I will go ahead and bore you with the details of that shopping trip to B&N.

I only bought a couple of manga from artists that I really want to make sure to support. First, I bought the official fourth volume four of The Summer Hikaru Died.   The way I introduced this series to the readers of my manga review site was, "The Summer Hikaru Died is a poignant, deeply sublimated, barely acknowledged (but definitely queer) love story between a boy and… the monster that returned in the body of his dead friend. A new genre, perhaps? Horror Romance or Romance Horror?" It's not Chuck Tingle and company's "monster f*ckers." This is love mixed with horror--kind of a perfect coming out queer metaphor, perhaps. It's so, so good. If you want to read my spoiler-heavy review of the first volume, you can find it here: https://mangakast.wordpress.com/2024/03/06/hikaru-ga-shinda-natsu-the-summer-hikaru-died-by-mokumoku-rei/

I also picked up I Think Our Son is Gay, volume 5. I described this one to a friend as "I Think Our Son is Gay is, as you might imagine from the title, a manga about a mother coming to terms (sort of side-by-side with the son who is coming out to himself) that her kid is gay. What I love about this manga is that it reads very true to life. There are moments when the son is clearly experiencing his own homophobia and backing away from his own truth and mom is sometimes ahead of him in this area, and visa versa. Though unlike the kid, mom has a part time job in a bakery and has a friendly adult gay man as a colleague who she sometimes works up the nerve to ask questions.  Dad is sort of set up as the antagonist, but he's also literally only around every so often as he has a job that keeps him away from home for months at a time. Dad doesn't mean to not get it, but he's there to represent the usual attitudes towards gay stuff, if you know what I mean?"  Again, if you're interested in my review of the first volume, it's here: https://mangakast.wordpress.com/tag/uchi-no-musuko-wa-tabun-gay/

Otherwise, Shawn got me a couple of blank notebooks (technically "dot-lined") from one of my favorite notebook makers, Congative Surplus. IF I HAD ANY BIRTHDAY MONEY LEFT, I would totally pick-up one or two of their new "Dark Analysis" notebooks that have black paper and these insanely cool covers: https://cognitive-surplus.com/collections/dark-analysis.  Holy crap, these are cool!

Anyway. I also always request that Shawn make my absolutely favorite cake, which is a cranberry upside down cake. The only trauma with this particular recipe is that for some reason Shawn's success rate with it is 50/50. I am happy to reort that this year it was a complete success. In fact, after I finish writing this to you all, I'm going to go have one of the last pieces left for an afternoon snack!

Speaking of 50/50, it seems as though there is a possiblity this weekend's Star Trek game (where I am a player) might be cancelled. The GM, [personal profile] tallgeese is having cataract surgery (I think today!) and so isn't sure if he'll be fully recovered. First of all, I need to say that I hope his surgery goes off without a hitch and that he does feel up to it, and of course I am not so much of a monster that I won't understand if he's not feeling fully recovered. But I will admit that I'll be deeply bummed out if we end up having to cancel again. It's been awhile since we've played. So long, in fact, that I'm not entirely sure we have a December date picked out yet. I should be sure to offer to run my alternate game-- which is basically, "what if all our same characters were somehow all at Starfleet Academy the same year?" I would offer it is as an alternate relaty version of the same group of people (Think Chris Pine vs. Shatner 'verses), so no one has to roll a new character unless they really wanted to. 

Also, I should say that if you are someone who regularly gets postcards from me, I have not stopped doing those... I just got way off schedule due to All The Things. Also, I'll be honest? After the election I considered just sending everyone a black postcard with just "Help!" written on it, and then I said to myself, "Lyda. These postcards were started to cheer people up during the pandemic. No one wants a story where your time/space traveling heroine has been thrown into an abyss, never to return."  But so, when I was at the coffee shop yesterday, I spotted a local artist selling cute little greeting cards of their work and, though it is not a postcard, I will be sending those out this week just to let my postcard recievers know that I am alive and still planning to continue this project.  

I think that's everything? I hope you all are still keeping on keeping on.
lydamorehouse: (Default)
This continues to be a very weird time in which to have a small press book come out, but I was interviewed by Salon Futura about Unjust Cause the other day and it has been posted as an audio file: https://www.salonfutura.net/2020/04/interview-lyda-morehouse-tate-hallaway/

If you are interested in such things, please check it out. And, of course, if you are so moved (and haven't done so already) please buy my book: https://www.wizardstowerbooks.com/shop/unjust-cause/

Or buy one for a friend! Or several friends. Better yet, buy it and Precinct 13 as a set!

/advertisement.

In other news, the sun is shining today. I am hoping to go out for an early morning walk to enjoy all the bright light and bird sounds. Mason has a physics test that he has to get up for in about an hour or so. Shawn is dealing with continued bad news at work, so I'm just as happy to have an excuse to get out of the house. In fact, I may also brave some grocery shopping in a bit because we are running out of the basics: milk, eggs, and flour.

Yesterday, I took some extra yeast over to a friend (for a no-touch drop off) who has run out. I also hived off Vera, fed the new bit, and brought it over in disposable Tupperware in case my friend would like to try her hand at sourdough without the hassle of starting it. It occurs to me that if anyone else local to me would like a cup or two of sourdough starter, mine is very, very robust and healthy. I would happily make deliveries. The more I hive her off, the healthier she remains. Bonus: once you start feeding it, the starter is yours to name as you wish. My friend is going to be thinking up gender-neutral names and has informed me that the starter now uses they/them pronouns. Vera and I are very proud parents (Vera)/grandparents(me) of this To-Be-Named new starter and hope they have a long and productive life.

Another friend of mine, who I talked to on the ACTUAL PHONE the other day, told me that he didn't want to be part of this whole 'meme' of naming sourdough starters. I told him that was fine, but that he should not be mistaken in thinking that naming sourdough is in any way a NEW fad. Tons of my cookbooks from the 1960s suggest that naming sourdough is traditional--or at least was something people were already doing back then. It might be a fad? But it is an OLD fad, not a meme.

What seems to be new-ish is out-clevering one another with pun names. Though, somehow I doubt even that's really all that new.

I found myself a new pen pal on Facebook yesterday, and this is a continued reminder that if you would like mail I am happy to send you some of the really terribly cheesy greeting cards I have picked up over the years at estate sales. I am, what they call in the pen friends fandom, L/L: a "long letter writer." So, drop me a note in my PM or at [email protected].  I am also what is known as: A/A, "answers all," because I have no requirements for pen friends, not even that you write back, necessarily. 

At this point, consider it if only to help save the USPS.  

Interestingly, my Canadian pen friend informs me that we have significantly slowed down in our correspondence. Only a day or so ago, did she receive a letter I sent in early April. We used to be about two weeks delayed (which is only funny because I could drive 8 hours and throw a letter over the Canadian border,) but now we seem closer to a month. She actually figures the delay is on Canada Post's side, because they did some kind of massive layoffs. But that may be happening here, too, if we can't figure out how to keep supporting our postal carriers.

Right.

I should gird my loins and head out to the grocery store. Wish me luck!
lydamorehouse: (Renji 3/4ths profile)
 Yesterday, Shawn and I made a trip to her work to pick up a laptop for use at home. She'd been using an old chromebook which was sort of working, but then suddenly decided that all this video conferencing was for fools. So, off we went to deserted building. 

We decided to drive down Grand Avenue, which is an area that's full of cute little shops and restaurants. We remarked to each other about all the handwritten/computer printed signed announcing various closures, and which places were still open: the fabric store! Hooray!  So, we decided that on the way back we should stop in an support a few of the businesses, particularly the bagel shop and the bakery.  

When I went into the bagel shop, the one other customer there visibly leaped away from me. This was only amusing since we were already easily a dozen feet from each other and he clearly had been at the counter telling the employees what kind of sandwich he wanted. The employees were also within six feet of each other because there really isn't room for them behind the counter to be anything other than elbow to elbow. This same guy also did the fast back-up when I headed to the counter to pay, which again, all I could do was eye roll, because, seriously, there is currently no other way for him or anyone else to pay without touching credit cards and standing a counter length apart. But, I guess some people figure that employees have some kind of immunity? Or maybe they don't actually EXIST other than to serve you and that the only people to be worried about are the other customers?  I wanted to tell him that I see far fewer people in my daily life than these poor employees (who probably have no sick time,) but then I am actually only one step removed from a confirmed case, so, the truth is, yeah, go ahead and keep your distance. It's just that he's being dumb to assume I'm the only worry he has in that place.

Otherwise, I had a nice chat with the people working at Breadsmith about their plans to try to stay open.

In other non-plague news, I got my cover art for Unjust Cause and it's AMAZING.  I can't wait to be able to show it off to you all. 

Oh, and Bleach is getting an animation of its final arc...
lydamorehouse: (Renji 3/4ths profile)
 This morning started out a little rough.

We had a kerfuffle in the car. It shouldn't even be classified in the "fight" or "argument" category, but, of course, with a teenager and two premenopausal women in the car, it FELT like a category 4 hurricane.

What was it about? Nothing. Everything. It was about Inky's death. It was about Mason growing up so fast and me forgetting that he can take care of himself and doesn't need me hovering over him making sure he eats his lunch. It was about every fight we ever had where feelings got hurt.

We worked it all out by the time I got back from Menards. Mason, who has been feeling like our arguments don't have resolutions, asked me to text him what I thought the resolution of this fight was, so I did. That was actually a GREAT idea. We should do this for every kerfuffle. If for no other reason than that it GIVES ME THE LAST WORD, BWAH HAHAHAHAHA!~!  But, seriously, I had forgotten my phone at home so I stopped to get it before heading out for cat food and that gave me a lot of time to not be hormonally charged and could take a reasoned look at what the STUPID actual issue was and sort it out and offer solutions.

We had a nice text change, Mason and I. Normally, I feel like talking things out is best, but the occasional tech support via text is a good idea. 

ANYWAY, what else has been happening?  Let's see. I think I reported that I finished my short story and got it off to my critique group on Thursday night. I've since been asked to consider submitting something to another place, a flash fiction contest, and I should try to do something for that if only because it's 300 words MAX. I SHOULD be able to pull that together by the middle of April.  If not, there's something seriously wrong with me.

I've been able to read novels again, so I'll have things to report tomorrow, if I remember to post.

Oh, I know what else we've been doing! Last night we, after school, we drove out to Famous Footwear and Target to get Mason new shoes and a swimsuit for his trip to Grand Forks, ND. He and his robotics team are going to North Dakota for a tournament. They weren't able to afford any practice tournaments last year, so they're looking forward to this one. Hopefully, this will give them the chance to work out any bugs before the big tournament at the U (or wherever it will be this year.) He leaves on a bus tomorrow afternoon and will be in LATE on Saturday. I'm sure it will be tremendous fun, in the way that those trips away from home always are for Mason. Dude LOVES travel, even if it's only across town to visit a museum.

Speaking of which, I got a couple of new books at Barnes & Noble the other day, both local tourism books. One is a book of walking tours of Minneapolis/St. Paul and the other is easy day trips from here. I'm SO READY for warmer weather so that I can go exploring my own town. Also, my Canadian is coming back for her big Yarn/Knitting conference in April so I'll have chance to show her around again. This time she wants to see museums.  I also really want to get to the cat cafe. I should see if that's still in operation. 

So, that's me.  I hope you all are doing well.
lydamorehouse: (??!!)
 I spent from 7am to almost 10:30 am in my car, driving from shop to shop getting the last bits for Solstice/Christmas. I even stood in line at the post office.  My whole morning was a quintessential holiday moment, and the kind of thing that would have been trimmed to a "shopping montage" for the movie of my life.

It was a helluva morning.  

I've been having a lot more "I hate Christmas" moments this year, and I'm not sure why.  Is it Trump's fault? Probably. I mean, most days I start out feeling good, and then I listen to five minutes of the news and I think: ALL IS LOST.  Is it this weird, freakishly warm December weather we're having? Probably.  I'm sure it's a combination of all these things, plus Shawn suddenly telling me on Sunday that she'd bought me seven presents.  I'd bought her two. So, I suddenly felt REALLY FAR BEHIND.

But, I'm mostly caught up now.  

You?

lydamorehouse: (ichigo freaked)
Yesterday, Shawn took me out on a date.

We do this every so often, and always on a Friday, early afternoon, so that, as a bonus, Shawn gets the rest of the day off from work as a "mental health day." Win/Win, as the kids would say.

I picked Shawn up at the Minnesota Historical Society around 11:00 am and off we went to Saint Paul's West Side neighborhood, to our favorite date spot: Boca Chica Restaurant Mexicano y Catina. We got there just in time for the all-you-can-eat buffet to get started. The food was amazing as always. From there, we stopped off at a thrift store on 7th in downtown (and a bathroom break--and coffee for me--at Claddagh Coffee.)  Shawn managed to find a mixer bowl at the thrift store that we'd been looking for.  (I break things.)  

I got bored at the thrift store faster than usual. It's sort of a stereotype, I suppose, but my wife loves to shop for bargains; me, not so much. I'm usually good for an hour or two, if there are books, however.  Typically, I'm not a big non-fiction fan, but, when I go to thrift stores in particular, I love looking through the non-fiction.  People read and recycle the WEIRDEST stuff. But, for whatever reason, St. Vincent's didn't have many non-fiction books and most of them were ultra-religious. I can still enjoy the ultra-religious stuff, if it's something more than the run of the mill "Chicken Soup for the Christian Soul" type stuff. Alas, all they had fell into this category, what I would call basic Christian self-help.  Booooor-ring.  I dug a little through their stationary section, but also came up short.

Stationary is super hard to come by these days. This might be a surprise to you, but no one handwrites letters any more.  Barnes & Noble often has super-overpriced stationary sets, but there's not the variety that you once used to be able to find, and the sets are rarely more than 10 sheets.  That's, like, two letters for me. So, I'm always on the lookout for stationary at thrift stores.  You'd be surprised at the stuff I've found--though I've had FAR better luck at estate sales.  Even so, last trip to Good Will, I found two full packs of stationary for a dollar a piece.  They were weird (a jungle scene, if I remember right?), but I honestly don't care, so long as I can actually write on the stuff.  I'm actually expecting to get some stationary for my birthday--which is in two weeks!  I'll be fifty!--and if not then, for Soltice/Christmas.

But, St. Vincent's had nada, zilch, nothing.

Boo.  

After that, Shawn and I decided to head home, where I promptly napped.  Mason had had me up late the night before helping him format a newspaper for his English class. They're doing creative book reports and he decided to do Game of Thrones.  So, he wrote a bunch of articles, an advice column, a full page of obituaries, and even put together a crossword puzzle.  It was actually pretty neat, helped along by the fact that there's an HBO show, so he had lots of action pictures to use, like a real newspaper might have.  But, I haven't had to do layout since sometime in the 1990s and so there was a bit of a learning curve. I don't think we got to bed until nearly midnight (on a school night!)  So, I had intended just to "rest my eyes" and the next thing I knew it was 2:30 pm and time to go fetch Mason from school.

The evening was pleasant.  It started to snow on our drive home and so my entire family happily went into hibernation mode: snuggling under blankets, reading books, etc.  We ordered pizza because we TRIED to order pizza on Halloween night and discovered that, apparently that's a thing people do and we couldn't get one to save our souls.  On Halloween, we ended up driving to Cossetta's and picking up pasta, as well as pizza, for take home.  But it wasn't Maverick's, which is our new favorite pizza place since Eden Pizza closed its doors.

Shawn and I decided to make hot buttered rum, which Shawn had a recipe for.  It seemed like a good idea on a snowy night, but, ugh, no... never again. I was totally delicious, don't get me wrong, but there was something about having it right before bedtime that was a total mistake. Despite being highly alcoholic, it totally acted like caffeine for me.  I could NOT get to sleep.  Meanwhile, Shawn slept but seemed to get an insta-hangover and totally disrupted sleep patterns, too. It was weird. We vowed that if we did this again, it would be in the middle of the afternoon, NOT right before bed.

This morning, Shawn is making an apple cake. We have a ton of leftover apples we need to figure out what to do with.  At least neither of us seem to be suffering this morning from the rum.  
lydamorehouse: (crazy eyed Renji)
Mason will be fourteen on Monday. It’s kind of hard to believe that I have a high schooler in the house.

On the other hand, I like teenagers. Maybe I will live to regret the words I just typed, but I will confess that my very least favorite stage in child development is everyone else’s absolute favorite: infancy.

Babies? Not for me. You can keep the “new baby smell” and the diapers and the once every two hours feeding schedule. I like young people when I can have a talk with them. Pretty much the instant they’re able to communicate, I’m there. I quite like the stage where they hand you random things and you suggest, “Oh, you’re giving me an apple?” and they sternly correct you, “No, moose.” Because, you know: toddler brain. But, that delights me. Plus, they just grow more interesting, IMHO, the more they age.

Even though he’s moody af sometimes, I’m happy to have a clever, bright young adult at home.

My folks came up to celebrate early.  We had a good time. Friday night we met them at their hotel and ordered Red's pizza. Mason got to open his present, which was from all of us: a Nintendo Switch.  He was so excited by it (and the new Zelda game) he lost track of time playing it and ended up staying up all night.  This morning, my folks came by ours and we went off to the Good Will Outlet.  That's always an experience. It's the sort of place where you pay by the POUND.  Shawn gets a ton of fabric for her rugs this way, and we usually actually find a few shirts and whatnot for me to wear.  The outlet is a little different from the experience of a regular thrift store because nothing has been processed yet at all--except in the barest minimum of ways: all the clothes are together, all the non-clothes are together. That's it. Sometimes stuff is still in the paper or garbage bags that people donated them in.  We were there when the outlet first opened and there were only the hardcore sifters there.  I watched people just take handfuls of stuff and shove them into their shopping cars--I presume to sort later, though maybe, like us, these were people who wanted fabric of any kind. I'm not sure.  It's quite the experience. I highly recommend it.

Mason and Shawn are both napping now. My folks have left and the temperature is climbing.  I'm thinking about joining everyone in the "cool room."

lydamorehouse: (nic & coffee)
It's kind of grim and rainy out again this morning.  I spent almost two hours at Hy-Vee this morning.  That's the last time I go THIS LONG without doing my basic staples shopping. On the other hand, our pantry is now stocked with All The Things.  Ah, tomato soup again!

Mason is supposed to have a baseball game tonight, but I wonder if it will be cancelled due to weather.  As the person who will have to sit on the cold bleachers, I really, really hope it is.  If not, I'm bringing not only a PARKA, but also a thermos of hot chocolate.  Maybe some blankets, too.

This weekend is the March for Science.  I'm looking forward to it, because I have not been very good in the last few weeks about keeping on top of my congress-critters and local legislators. I think the last thing I did was the town hall, and there's still SO MUCH stuff to fight.  Still, I try to remind myself that this is neither a sprint NOR a marathon; it's a relay race. It's okay to hand the baton to someone else and let them run with it for a while. 

I depressed myself listening to the results from the Ossoff race in Georgia, especially the news of the midnight hour (almost literally) voting machine "glitch."  I can't help but feel that we were robbed of a straight-up win. The truth is, we'll never know, but the doubts will ALWAYS linger, especially since he had a clear lead before for the "corrupted" memory card was found. Shit like that makes me lose faith.  

I mean, yes, there was a groundswell movement. Yes, he nearly did it... but, what's that going to matter, if people start to worry that their votes aren't being legitimately counted? And, Georgia isn't the only place. We never even got a decent recount of Wisconsin, Michigan or Pennsylvania, despite best efforts.

ARGH.

So.... I've been reading a lot of comic books.  I've been working my way through the Hugo nominated graphic novels. So far, I read Ms. Marvel: Super Famous (Vol. 3), Black Panther: Nation Under Our Feet (vol. 1), Vision: A Little Worse Than a Man (vol. 1) and  Vision: Little Better Than a Beast (Vol.2), and Paper Girls (Vol 1.).  I started Montress: Awakening (Vol. 1), which has been interesting so far. The only one I haven't tried to get is Saga (Vol. 6) because I suspect I'd need to read the other 5 volumes to know what's going on. Pretty much everyone says I should be reading Saga, anyway, but I'm not and I'm being obstinate about starting it for some reason, probably the whole "eh, but all the cool kids are doing it, so it can't be that great." After all, I finally got around to trying Bitch Planet, and I could have done without.  Not at ALL what I was hoping for there and absolutely NOT worth the hype.

I have all the Hugo nominee novels at home, but I have not been able to really get into any of them.  As I was telling a friend of mine the other day, I go through these periods where I read a LOT of novels and other times when my brain can only handle shorter, graphic stuff.  I've been in that second phase lately.  Like, I'll sit down with a book in my lap and two seconds later I've set it down and wandered off.  The thing about graphic novels is that in two seconds, I've read half of it, so it's no as much a strain to continue on for however many more seconds it takes to finish the thing.

I also haven't been able to write much.  I'm THIS close to finishing the latest installment in my long-running Byakuya/Renji fan fic, but I just haven't been motivated to keep on with it.

I blame Trump.

May 2025

S M T W T F S
    1 23
4 56 78910
111213 14151617
181920 21 22 2324
25262728293031

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated May. 29th, 2025 06:45 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios
OSZAR »