evocates | Reading

So the day started out fine, I rolled out of bed, I got showered and stretched and started putting my face on, and that's about when everything went to shit.

We took Mikey to the vet. Or rather I called, made an appointment for 8.30 since that was the one morning appointment they had open, the boy was on his way home so I stuffed Mikey into the carrier so he could just grab him and go. Mikey flipped out and started clawing at the carrier so rather than have him break a claw or worse on the thing, I pulled on a bra and boots and took an antihistamine (yes I with the six cats have cat allergies and vet visits are nightmares) and went with him to make sure he didn't hurt himself in the car.

We were there for about an hour while they X-rayed him and did a blood panel all to reveal that nothing is detectably or severely wrong to cause the vomiting, plus confirming to the vet that he's an active kitty still eating and eliminating as usual. So on the plus side he's a relatively healthy kitty except for the vomiting. On the minus side, vomiting. Still. And now I'm late to work.

So we pile him back into the house, I go finish getting ready and throw on some clothes and drink some lemonade because I haven't had breakfast yet, we get on to the short drive to work and promptly get stuck in standstill traffic for thirty minutes while fire trucks scream down the shoulder next to us because I don't even know what the fuck happened there. We shot past work instead and stopped at a grocery store to get me breakfast and sushi for lunch.

The chocolate chip muffins I thought I got were not in fact chocolate chip muffins, they were fucking cranberry muffins. Which might actually taste fine but that was not what I fucking wanted. And work was of course busy busy busy with no opportunity to sit down, rest and process until after all the time sensitive shit was done. I skipped capoeira and went home and napped after calling Mom to whine at her, and I meant to nap for forty five minutes but instead ended up sleeping for over two hours and in short: fuck this day.

AND I have a dental cleaning tomorrow. Pre-emptively fuck tomorrow too.

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/1892/

https://xkcd.com/1892/

yuletide_admin_feed

Posted by morbane

https://yuletide-admin.livejournal.com/216361.html

We have been working on the tag set for 102.5 hours, and the number of individual fandom nominations has gone down from 5058 to 1660. There are 2054 approved fandoms now in the tag set.

Thank you for your answers to the previous queries! We have some more, and some lingering:

Дуэлянт | The Duelist (2016) - We can't find Pyotr Yakovlev's brother. Could the nominator please confirm he appears in the film?

Extraction (2013) - We can't find a Victor. Could the nominator please confirm he appears in the film?

灵契 | Ling Qi | Spiritpact - This has been nominated with overlapping characters, using Japanese and Chinese names respectively: You Keika, Tanmoku Ki, Tanmoku Rakugetsu, and You Nei; and Yang Jinghua, Duanmu Xi, Duanmu Siming, and Qin Siyao. Could each nominator please confirm which media they mean, and can we please combine these character names using one of the versions?

No Game No Life - Kamiya Yuu - we're a little confused by the character 『　』| Kuuhaku | Blank. Could the nominator please give their reasoning for nominating this character separately?

A Place to Call Home (TV) - We can't find the character Tom. Could the nominator please give us a pointer?

Plantagenets Series - Sharon Kay Penman - For Geoffrey Plantagenet, could the nominator please confirm they mean Geoffrey V Count of Anjou, or some other character?

Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo - It's not clear to us that Nikolai Lantsov belongs here. Could the nominator please give us their reasoning?

Smosh - the characters nominated are Keith Leak Jr., Noah Grossman, Olivia Sui, and Shayne Topp. Could the nominator please clarify if this is a nomination for RPF, or for fictionalized characters that share the names of the real people?

Sylvester or the Wicked Uncle - Georgette Heyer For Lady Marlow, could the nominator please confirm whether they mean Lady Verena Marlow or Lady Constance Marlow?

These Old Shades - Georgette Heyer - As far as we can tell, Dominic Alastair does not appear in this book. (He is also nominated in The Devil's Cub.) Could the nominator please give their reasoning for nominating him here?

Trial and Error (TV 2017) - We can't find the character Anne Cox. Could the nominator please confirm and give us pointers to when she appeared?

All Media Types fandoms
We need clarification from the person (or people) who nominated the following fandoms. Please specify a single version of the canon and provide a link to your nominations page so we can confirm the nomination. If these aren't answered, the fandoms will be rejected:

Gone With the Wind - All Media Types, characters: Belle Watling, Careen O'Hara, Mammy, Melanie Hamilton (Gone with the Wind - All Media Types)

The Martian - All Media Types, characters: Beth Johanssen, Chris Beck, Mark Watney (The Martian - All Media Types)

A Room With a View - All Media Types, characters: Charlotte Bartlett, Eleanor Lavish

The Witches of Eastwick - All Media Types, characters: Alexandra Medford, Darryl Van Horne, Jane Spofford, Sukie Ridgemont [if we don't hear back from the nominator on this one, we may go with the 1987 film]

Ensemble characters
We will accept labels like “the Council” or “the hunters” for characters in cases where the ensemble does not have different distinct characters in it. For the following fandoms, please either confirm that there are no distinct characters in the group, or pick a single character out of the group you’ve nominated.

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016) - The Rowdy 3

The Scarlet Pimpernel - Baroness Orczy - The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel

Velvet Goldmine - Flaming Creatures

Ineligible RPF fandoms
The follow RPF fandoms are too large and will not be approved. Nominators, please suggest an alternative category; if we do not hear from you, we may either fold the characters into another nominated category, or reject the fandoms & characters.

Formula 1 RPF - characters: Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna

Pop Music RPF - characters: Beyoncé Knowles, Jay-Z, Justin Timberlake

https://yuletide-admin.livejournal.com/216361.html

kittydesade

I woke up and I actually slept so long and hard (with the help of NyQuil admittedly, I am starting to wonder if I need to wash the damn sheets because something something I'm not sure, we did just wash them last week ish) that I was able to get up, get showered, get stretched, and do capoeira exercises! For the first time since before DragonCon! AMAZE.

Of course that means I got another up close and personal feel of how weak and not so much out of shape as a bit out of shape and a lot still in recovery I am, yay. Fucking con crud. Fucking lungs. Fucking body.

I did finish the first two character interviews for Turing Shrugged though. So that's not nothing. It also has some summary copy for Kindle, and now Starlight does too. I finished a scene in Starlight, worked on some of Long Road. Things happened. Progress was made.

Paid off the lesser of two credit cards. Again. Which actually is not a bad thing to be doing, paying off a credit card repeatedly. It's just the greater of the two credit cards that bugs me, although I'm still nowhere near to being up at the average of individual credit card debt in this country. Which is kind of scary. And that's just the credit card debt, thanks be to the Goddess and my family I don't have student loan debt anymore. But eeegh credit card debt, over time, paying down. Not picking up any more absurd hobbies like makeup and spending a shitload on establishing them. Or hoarding things to draw with/knit/paint for the next ever. Ahem, Me Of Last Year.

(My yarn stash is truly terrifying. And I don't knit nearly fast enough.)

At some point this week goddammit I will get packages out. There's a couple of them that have been sitting here for ages. And I have been both hyper and hungry all day, no idea what the actual fuck is up with that. And my brain is leaping around all over the goddamn place, I was in the middle of a character interview and I had a Khan Academy window open to copy over physics equations and I ended up doing neither of those things in favor of doing a quiz on the parts of the cell. What the hell brain. We got sleep last night, we didn't slam back a giant pack of pixy sticks.

kittydesade

There's something particularly offensive about when you actually go to fucking bed on time or even a bit early, and then stay up thrashing for two hours and wake up again two hours after that and. Yeah. Guess what I spent all last night doing. I'm honestly amazed I'm as functional as I am right now.

Work is getting done, though. Slowly.

I managed to sit my ass through the rest of The Defenders yesterday (it was not as bad as I thought!) and then managed to be so enthusiastic about it that I got

lireavue to watch it and now I get to have hilarious fun listening to her exhort Matt and Jessica and yell at Danny Rand. It's so distinctive, Danny Rand's role is, that she started yelling at him and I was all "Oh you're at the point where he storms into the room and is all I AM THE IMMORTAL IRON FIST YOU WILL CEASE YOUR EVILDOING AT ONCE" That's not even a spoiler really, that's his role in the entire goddamn show. To storm around saying he's the Immortal Iron Fist and people will cease to be awful. Oh honey. That's so not how it works. You're adorable. Here's a pair of safety scissors and some construction paper. Don't eat the paste.

I think Monday's language exercises will always be entering information into Duolingo's tiny cards for Hindi and Arabic. I tried using Memrise but mastering a whole other keyboard on top of a bunch of other vocab words is a step too far, and it was so difficult I just stopped doing the lessons entirely. So flash cards are better. Hopefully if I do a little of this every night before bed etc I'll get better at it. I can do the grammar, but the vocab is kicking my ass. But it's nice to be picking up these languages again.

But. Blergh. I underestimated the amount of time it would take to get that and the bread done. STILL. It's been the most productive day and evening I've had in a couple weeks, partly because allowing myself to do shit but also just.... I'm not sure why else, actually, considering I got fuck all for sleep. So I guess I'll take it, and try and finish what I don't get done tonight, tomorrow. As per usual but this time with some hope that it'll happen.

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/1891/

And I can't believe some places still use fax machines. The electrical signals waste so much time going AROUND the Earth when neutrino beams can go straight through!

https://xkcd.com/1891/

yuletide_admin_feed

Posted by morbane

https://yuletide-admin.livejournal.com/216126.html

We have been working on the tag set for 36 hours, and the number of individual fandom nominations has gone down from 5058 to 3086. There are 1076 approved fandoms now in the tag set*.

Please help us with the following issues and queries!

Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan - Both Elan Morin Tedroni and Ishamael | Moridin are nominated; other Forsaken are nominated with their original names. Please either explain why you think they should be separated out, or confirm we can approve both tags as Elan Morin Tedroni.

Expert Judgment on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion... - Sandia Labs - As far as we can tell, Color Changing Cat is not actually from this canon, but a different exercise in considering the problems of long-term nuclear waste storage - see http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2014/05/14/_99_percent_invisible_by_roman_mars_designing_warning_symbols_for_the_nation.html. Could you please let us know if we’ve missed the cats, or if there’s another reason you believe they should be included.

Ensemble characters
We will accept labels like “the Council” or “the hunters” for characters in cases where the ensemble does not have different distinct characters in it. For the following fandoms, please either confirm that there are no distinct characters in the group, or pick a single character out of the group you’ve nominated.

Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat: Veretian Council

The Darkness (Comics): Darklings (The Darkness)

終末のイゼッタ | Shuumatsu no Izetta | Izetta: The Last Witch (Anime): The Royal Guard

All Media Types fandoms
We need clarification from the person (or people) who nominated the following fandoms. Please specify a single version of the canon and provide a link to your nominations page so we can confirm the nomination. If these aren't answered, the fandoms will be rejected:

Captain Scarlet - All Media Types, characters: Adam Svenson | Captain Blue, Charles Gray | Colonel White, Conrad Turner | Captain Black, Paul Metcalfe | Captain Scarlet

Gone With the Wind - All Media Types, characters: Belle Watling, Careen O'Hara, Mammy, Melanie Hamilton (Gone with the Wind - All Media Types)

Goosebumps - All Media Types, characters: Cooper Holmes (The Barking Ghost), Drew Brockman (Attack of the Jack-O-Lanterns), Ginger Wald (The Beast From the East), Michael Webster (The Cuckoo Clock of Doom)

The Martian - All Media Types, characters: Beth Johanssen, Chris Beck, Mark Watney (The Martian - All Media Types)

Midsomer Murders - All Media Types, characters: Jamie Winter, Kam Karimore

A Room With a View - All Media Types, characters: Charlotte Bartlett, Eleanor Lavish

The Witches of Eastwick - All Media Types, characters: Alexandra Medford, Darryl Van Horne, Jane Spofford, Sukie Ridgemont

If you are commenting about your own nomination to say what you would like done with characters or fandoms, please link your nominations page! It is the page you get by clicking ‘My Nominations’ from the tag set.

If you notice any problems with your approved nominations - mis-spellings, etc - feel free to comment on this post.

*(NB: that’s not because we rejected ~900, but because 5058 and 3086 are totals of how often the fandom slot was filled out by nominators - whether or not they nominated the same fandom. When we approve a fandom that was nominated by two people, the total number of fandom nominations goes down by 2, and the approved fandom total goes up by 1.)

https://yuletide-admin.livejournal.com/216126.html

post_secret_feed

Posted by Frank

https://postsecret.com/2017/09/16/sunday-secrets-184/

http://postsecret.com/?p=14443

On 9/11/17, 3:59 AM, “Frank Warren” <frank@postsecret.com>
Dear Frank,
Yesterday I went to Barnes and Noble to get a book on infertility (my husband and I have been trying to conceive for almost a year and have reached the point of needing medical appointments). I picked up a PostSecret book while there and clinging to that book is the only thing that kept me from crying while I had to look through the pregnancy and baby type books to find a book to help my hurting heart. I didn’t find what I was looking for but I bought the postsecret book and wanted you to know that it brought me comfort.

https://postsecret.com/2017/09/16/sunday-secrets-184/

http://postsecret.com/?p=14443

post_secret_feed

Posted by Frank

https://postsecret.com/2017/09/16/classic-secrets-190/

http://postsecret.com/?p=14468

Information on Upcoming PostSecret Exhibition at the Museum of Man
(Volunteer or Leave Your Email for Updates)

RSVP and Details for PostSecret Live! in Oslo at Urban Peace Week
(Free and Open to All, September 21st)

https://postsecret.com/2017/09/16/classic-secrets-190/

http://postsecret.com/?p=14468

yuletide_admin_feed

Posted by morbane

https://yuletide-admin.livejournal.com/215863.html

Final number of nominations: 5058

That means that at least 1686 people nominated.

We now move into the sorting phase. Over the next days you will see the fandoms and characters you nominated being approved or rejected. You will also see us make posts here, asking for clarification.

Whenever we have enough questions for a new clarification post, we will move unanswered questions into the new post.. This is to help us keep track of which things are outstanding and prevent us from missing comments on older posts. You can help by keeping an eye on the community and helping to answer questions. The first question post will be up soon.

The evidence post is now closed, and we'll be using the evidence to review fandoms. Thank you to everyone who took the time to submit evidence.

If you are looking at your nominations page and you see that a character has been rejected, it may be that it has been approved under a different name (for example, with a fandom-specific disambiguation). Please wait until the tagset is public before raising the issue.

Lastly, please don't hammer AO3 trying to check if your fandoms have been reviewed. Doing this will only slow things down. We're not saying don’t check, but don’t sit there pressing F5. The tagset will be visible after sorting; at that point you can help us find what problems remain.

https://yuletide-admin.livejournal.com/215863.html

kittydesade

Still bone-deep tired and constantly feeling on the verge of at least physical collapse. Mentally I'm all right but I need more than one night of decent sleep. Last night was interrupted once by falling asleep on a battery, a cable, and a corner of my Kindle (my fault) and the boy being woken up constantly by cats (no one's fault but he definitely doesn't sleep through them as hard as I do).

I did, however, somewhere in the last several days think of measuring the summaries of other science fiction/urban fantasy/fantasy books as far as their Amazon entries go, and rather than the Amazon upper limit of 4000 characters they're all between 800 and 1200 characters. So that's fine and I don't have to worry about that. I'm not sure what else I can do as far as advertising other than keep talking about it and posting things on Patreon, which I'm going to try and write up some tonight. Character interviews, um. I had a whole thing somewhere. I will try to write them up tonight and then I don't have to think about it in the future, hah.

(That doesn't mean do it now in the last 20 minutes of work, self. Don't be an idiot.)

I did manage to get together some vague Twitter flags for the damn thing though. And for a miracle I wrote down the damn settings on the layers of text graphic I did. I wrote it on my grocery list so we'll see if I remember where I put the fucker when I get home, but hey.

So many things I want to do and my brain wants to do none of them. Mostly my brain wants to sleep. I do have half an idea what I need to be doing as far as writing goes, which is mostly Long Road, Roc, and finish Starlight. And then I can work on the fun stuff or at least switch to doing Long Road and writing something but aargh my brain doesn't want to produce finished product, just random ideas. So sleepy.

yuletide_admin_feed

Posted by morbane

https://yuletide-admin.livejournal.com/215593.html

The nominations period is now shorter than 24 hours.

Here is the countdown!

Here are the instructions!

Here we go!

Because there is a time delay in the IFTTT service that crossposts from LJ/DW to Twitter/Tumblr, we will not post a further warning here. We don't want participants who get their notifications that way to see 'two hours left' when in fact nominations ended two hours prior. If you still plan to nominate, please check the countdown and get your nominations in soon!

https://yuletide-admin.livejournal.com/215593.html

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/1890/

I always figured you should never bring a gun to a gun fight because then you'll be part of a gun fight.

https://xkcd.com/1890/

kittydesade

Well. I'm not quite as tired as I expected, physically anyway. I am on the edge of being fed up with everything, but that's a day in the current regime anyway. On the other hand work was at first relatively easy stuff like making sample cards for our yarn line, and then a lot of running around collecting stuff, shipping stuff, and other problem solving along those lines. For a break after that I finished my assigned chapter of the genocide translation, so, um. Well now I'm tired and in a mood.

Probably a mood to get pasta at Trader Joe's and cookies and just eat them all tonight, heh. Or potatoes. Suddenly I really want a shitload of potatoes. Mashed. With butter and salt. Basically, There Will Be Carbs.

I also haven't done nearly as much writing or drawing practice as I wanted to today, which sometimes happens and that's fine, I'll get it done tonight. And cutting and cooking chicken. And some exercise. And reading my book I was in the middle of enjoying.

But right now I'm just in a surly, sad, giving-up-on-the-world-because-humanity-sucks mood. Which I suppose reading about genocide will do to you.

kittydesade

Apparently having noticed that I do in fact remember what sleep is, my body has decided that I need all of it. I got a good eight hours (normally I need six in warmer months, seven in winterish) last night, plus a nap, and now my eyes are doing the thing again and I get the feeling I'm going to be doing an eight-nine hour night again tonight. Oy.

I mean to go to bed early tonight but I got distracted, of all damn things, doing a translation of a French document on the Armenian genocide so not only there went my early bedtime but also my peace of mind before I sleep, yay.

I did get another scene in Starlight done though. There might have been more but we got distracted at work trying to install a printer onto my computer so orders stop getting lost by having to print remotely on a printer up in a corner of the store. It's not ideal. (Okay they also somewhat got lost because I left for DragonCon and that can tend to mean shit goes sideways but argh.) Um. No, but, scene in Starlight. Some stuff worked out in my head as far as the Rochester sisters go. It was a productive day.

But I meant to go to bed early and it's now fifteen minutes past my bedtime and I'm not only physically tired, I'm tired of humans as well. Which I guess translating descriptions of genocide will do that to you.

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/1889/

We understand your privacy concerns; be assured that our phones will never store or transmit images of your face.

https://xkcd.com/1889/

yuletide_admin_feed

Posted by morbane

https://yuletide-admin.livejournal.com/215542.html

All you need to know about 2017 nominations is at this post!

Click here for a countdown to when nominations end.

If you have a question for us, please ask it there, or here, or at http://yuletide-admin.dreamwidth.org, or by email to yuletideadmin@gmail.com! If you have already asked us a question, please feel free to remind us by commenting again or linking to it.

https://yuletide-admin.livejournal.com/215542.html

kittydesade

I did not get to sleep in a warm bed for 10-12 hours. Instead I got high winds, terrifyingly bendy trees, and things banging on my windows at all hours of the mornings, and also power line? transformer? something of the loud bang bright light power blips for five minutes line of things. Till FOUR IN THE MORNING.

I did not get a lot of sleep last night. Oddly, I feel more alert and aware than I have in the last several days, which I guess means I'm much less sick even though also much more tired.

I don't even know what I'm going to get done today, but I'm going to try to get something done. I guess I can start listing things that I've done here so I can remind myself that ... something. I really need to unhitch my self-worth from my productivity somehow, too. That's a major problem.

Done This Day, Despite Trials
Day job: Checked in supplier order
Day job: Finished off other lingering supplier order
Day job: Got the shipping done
Sorted out some promo for Turing Shrugged
Finished a goddamn short story for Turing Shrugged promo/character development

kittydesade

I exist. I'm just not very happy about it.

So I thought I was going to be better by Monday and it turns out that "better" actually means I am going to be upright for most of the workday doing things at my desk and not have energy for much else when I get home. Which is annoying as much as anything because I was going to start gearing back up for writing this coming weekend, and getting back into training shape, and that's not going to happen if I'm falling asleep all over the place.

During one of my copious naps over the weekend, well, I woke up to the boy asking me if I'd seen Bat Cat lately. We couldn't find him. He'd gotten out somehow, I have no idea how because I spent most of the day sleeping. But on the plus side he's also the most still feral, and true 'nuff, in the morning around breakfast time I staggered in my pj's out onto the back porch and called him and he came trotting up like the asshole he is, like nothing was wrong.

Meanwhile Mikey is being an expensive cat again, having acquired an infection from nobody has any idea where that went untreated for longer than it should have because he had no damn symptoms apart from vomiting which at first we assumed was Mikey Stop Eating The Plants. Which has happened before. Energy was fine, appetite was fine, drinking was fine, the litterbox was fine, but no. Apparently infection. So now we have antibiotics and a follow-up to deal with.

(And at all of this I'm having one of the more mildly annoying weeks/weekends, not even getting into the friends who went through the hurricane.)

Mostly the universe just needs to start handing out breaks and I don't suspect it will anytime soon but argh. And I just want to sleep in a warm bed for about 10-12 hours.