So many words...

Well, we made it through yesterday without incident and the adults are back in charge. Thank whatever powers that be! I know that we've still got a helluva a long way to go to fix the mess of the past four years, but we've made a start.

I've got this strange feeling in my heart/gut that hasn't been there in quite a while. Is it, could it be... hope?

*keeps fingers crossed*

TTFN

Sunday: I stretched my lower back too much doing yoga. Not quite sure how I did it, probably doing bridge pose, but I was fine before yoga (which I started doing at home in mid-December) and sore later in the day, so... *sigh* I've iced it periodically, and it occasionally feels better, then I'll do something and *boom* the pain's back again.

Also Sunday, or maybe Saturday night?, the lid of my laptop was making weird clicky noises when I shut it. I checked it out and the right hinge looked weird on the back, but it all seemed fine, so continued business as normal.

Monday: Was my brother's birthday. He was here for Christmas with his youngest daughter (16), and we had a good visit, so just texted him b'day wishes. I've been staying pretty close to home since his visit (not that I haven't been before, but maybe with a bit more awareness the past couple of weeks) since he traveled from UT, where he was working, to FL and then here.

Also Monday, my youngest son came over to ask for some parental advice about his new job, which we gave, and then I showed him the laptop. Turns out that hinge is broken, so I shouldn't shut the lid. Fortunately, the laptop still works, but looks like I better be checking for a new one. *sigh* Of course, I don't like the new ones that are out there. I know. First world problems.

Tuesday: One of my quilt guilds started meeting again, but I decided to stay home due to the previously mentioned visit by my bro.

Also Tuesday, started following the results of the GA Senate run-off. It was looking good for the Dems when I went to bed, so yay!

Wednesday: Woke up to a Warnoff victory. YAY! And still looking good for Ossoff. DOUBLE YAY! No more Moscow Mitch as Senate Majority Leader! *fist pump* Now maybe the government can actually do something!

And then came Wednesday afternoon. ( Cut for ranting and swearing )

Thursday: Woke up to find out that Pence was still looking for his spine, and that Pelosi & Schumer were giving him WAY too much time to locate it. At least they were working on Articles of Impeachment while they waited? *sigh*

Also found out that our State Legislature, Republican dominated of course, was planning to curtail our Governor's emergency powers. The same powers that the Republican Legislature gave to a Republican Governor not all that long ago. But, because they don't like the way our current guy is handling the COVID response - which is actually pretty damn well - they want to limit his ability to call an emergency to 30 days before consulting with the legislature. Spoiler alert: Our legislature only meets for a a couple of months at the beginning of the year. So, yeah... Narrator: They passed the bill. *sigh*

Friday: Kept abreast of the whole insurrection thing via ONTD and Twitter, as I've been doing all along, and... Damn. Things could have been SO MUCH WORSE than they were. Can not fucking believe Pence and the cabinet don't have the intestinal fortitude to go for the 25th. Can not fucking believe how many hangers on are jumping ship thinking that's going to help their future careers. Especially Chao and the other cabinet member whose name escapes me at the moment. (ETA: Oh, yeah, how could I forget Betsy DeVos, champion of education only for the rich and powerful. *eyeroll*) Rather high-tail it out of there than risk putting their names to a 25th decree. Fuckers.

Also spent time taking down Christmas decorations starting Thursday. Because of the back situation, wasn't able to spend much more than an hour at a time doing so, but it was a start.

Today: Still keeping abreast of the insurrection situation, and could probably rant more, but you probably already get where I'm at on it. :) I will say I'm glad to see arrests and firings are happening. And go, Twitter for finally(!) permanently suspending the asshole-in-chief's account. And Twitter users for ID'ing so many of the assholes from Wednesday. (There was one gal I especially loved. A young LGBT woman whose mom discouraged her from going to BLM protests because they might become violent, who 'this you'd her mom with a bloody face at the riot. Karma, baby!)

Spent pretty much all day getting the rest of the decorations put away. Wanted to get it done before my husband decided to 'help' by taking all the ornaments off the tree willy-nilly so he could put it away like he did last year. Didn't quite make it, but he didn't do that. Instead, without asking if I'd like him to, he decided to move the tree out into the room further so 'it would be easier for me to walk around'. With breakable ornaments still on it. Because having the tree fall over, or ornaments fall off and break, would be easier than maneuvering around it the way I'd been doing all morning. *sigh* And then his fragile male ego was pissed when I said I appreciated the thought but I was fine. MEN! You can't live with 'em, and you just can't shoot 'em. ;)

And now my back's screaming at me, so I'm going to relax for the rest of the evening. Might escape into Lucifer fic, either reading or writing. Might start watching Bridgerton. Might just play games. And, oh, the good news is that none of us have had COVID symptoms from my brother's visit. So, yay! for that.

Happy New Year. New year, same shit. You gotta laugh or else you'll cry. :)

So... The other day TropeRoulette had the prompt: Write a Firefly circus AU in the form of a Haiku, and I know I said I don't care to write either AU's or 'in the form of's, but... Here's a piece of silliness that I doubt I'll post anywhere else. :D

Traveling Show

Wash juggles goslings.

Others shoot, ride, and wrestle.

The circus is here.



That is all. TTFN!

So, I've taken the plunge and posted my first "Lucifer" fic. *bites nails* I've linked it below if anyone wants to take a gander.

And? It's not the one I was thinking about writing. That one is barely started. Nope, this one was inspired by something I saw on Twitter. But, you say, I didn't think you were on Twitter? I'm not. But I do keep an eye on a few accounts for news, fandom, and fun; and a while back I stumbled upon TropeRoulette, so I added it to my "keep an eye on" rotation.

To be clear, there's a lot of prompts on there that I have no interest in due to lack of knowledge of the various fandoms, or no desire to write "in the style of ...", or to write crossovers or AU's, or... But, when I saw the prompt "Write a Lucifer fic with an apology and self doubt", well, the muse said "HELLO!". And when the muse speaks, you have to listen, right? :D

I admit my first thought was to make it Lucifer-centric, but then I thought that would be too cliché, so I went with Linda as my main character instead. :) It took a few days to get it written to my satisfaction, and I was just about to post it when I rewatched the episodes it's centered around, plus a couple afterwards. That's when I discovered I'd made a major error and referenced things that hadn't happened yet! Oops! (It's so much easier to keep track of continuity when there are only 14 episodes and a movie. Ah, well.) Anyway, I went back and fixed my mistakes and let the fic simmer for a few more days, going back over it to change word and stylistic choices, and finally said, "Enough! Post it, already!" So, I've let it out into the world. Here's hoping it can fly on its own. *g*

In other fandom-type news, I'm almost finished with the final "Poldark" novel, and I will have things to say about that when I'm done.

For now, though, I'll go back to biting my nails while I wait to see what people think of my new fic. *g* TTFN!

A New Reality

Fuck, yeah! But also ugh.

( Politics ahead. Scroll on by if not interested. )

Anyway... *long sigh of relief* Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Oh, my. Has it been that long since I posted? Oops. :)

Guess it's probably because not much has been going on, though I did go on a quilt retreat a few weeks ago. Just nine of us went this year - usually we have about 22, but COVID put a damper on that. The nine of us had a good time, though, and did our best to stay socially distant and in a bubble. Must have worked because none of us have gotten sick. So, yay for that! I did manage to make a dress for my great-niece and a matching one for her doll. Also assembled a couple of small quilt tops that will be given away to nursing homes. It was actually the first time I'd touched my sewing machine for a couple of months - too busy spending time on the computer and not able to find the motivation to sew instead. That's one of the good things about retreats - minimal distractions and friends to motivate you. Now that I'm home again, it's back to looking for that motivation. :(

I'm still making my way through the Poldark novels. I'm about halfway through #10, The Loving Cup, so only two more to go! I'd forgotten the 10 year time jump between The Angry Tide and Stranger from the Sea, though I did remember the later ones were more about the next generation. Still, because of that time jump... I'm actually contemplating writing fic in this 'verse. I want to know more about what happened after Drake and Morwenna got married, damn it! The author gives a few clues, and the ONE fic I found was good, but it's incomplete. So... yeah. We'll see. Wanna finish the books first.

Still posting my Firefly fics on AO3. Posted "Medically Impossible" today, so "Family" is next. Which means I've got some work to do going through and editing it. Nothing major, but even so... Takes time. Also still working on my old UFO and the new one I started, plus another new one. If "working on" means taking a break from actual writing to think about how to get to the next point. :D

So, that's my life right now. Staying healthy, as opposed to our idiot-in-chief (and I fully anticipate our backup idiot to also become sick based on the way he looked last night and his inability to follow CDC guidelines). Got my absentee ballot in the mail today. November 3 cannot come soon enough! And then to make it through the *crossed fingers* transition. But enough about that...

Hope everyone else is staying healthy, too! TTFN!

So, as I've said, I've been rereading the Poldark novels. Finished "Warleggan" aka "The Last Gamble" last night, and I'm not going to talk about it other than to say my opinions about the characters remain the same.

But... When I picked up "The Black Moon" this morning, I noticed that the author had included a note about taking a long time between the two to write it. Now, I probably knew this back in the day, but had totally forgotten, so I checked publication dates, and OMG! He took EIGHTEEN years off between them! And then took seventeen years to write the next seven books before taking another TWELVE years to write the last one!*

In other words, there's always hope for me getting back to all those WIP's on my laptop. :D

Which, I actually already know since I'm working on one that was less than 300 words when I left it, and is now over 16K and nowhere near done. (I always have been a bit wordy. LOL) Still, it's nice to know that even the pros need time to get back to the worlds they create. (And, yes, I know all about GRR Martin, but let's not go there, 'k? ^_^)

In other news, I've been slowly posting my old fic on AO3, and last night I posted "Full Circle". It's slowly getting hits, and so far no bad comments (or good ones, but that's ok), so whew to that. I tagged the hell out of it, but you just never know how things will be received. It's been fun going back through my old fic, especially when I find one I totally forgot about writing! Lord knows how long it's going to take me to get everything up on AO3, though. There's just so much of it! Remember I said I was wordy? :D

And on that note... TTFN!

*As an aside, I wish I'd known about that last one back when it first came out. Maybe it would've been a closer match, sizewise, to my other copies. Ah, well, at least I know about it now.

So, this weekend would've been SDCC, except - like most things - it was canceled due to COVID19. :( Not like I would've gone anyway, because getting tickets has been next to impossible for years now - and we won't talk about all the other expenses involved. Still, it's always been fun to watch the panel videos after the fact, and it looked like there wouldn't be any this year. :(

Then the organizers had the bright idea to have virtual panels! Whoo hoo! Now, to be honest, I didn't plan on watching any of them... until they announced one with Nathan. Well, I ask you, how could I resist? :)

It's hosted by Alexi Hawley, who I thought had worked on "Firefly", but maybe not? *shrugs* Doesn't matter, because Gina & Alan are there, as is Joss for a bit. And Seamus, Jon, and Molly from "Castle", and one of the gals from "The Rookie". I enjoyed it immensely, and have embedded it behind the cut. Just beware of Nathan's lip ferret/porn 'stache. Really not a good luck, my captain. :D

( Lip ferrets and beautiful women ahead )

Now to decide if I'm going to try giving "The Rookie" another try. So many episodes on my DVR...

Followup to my last post...

So, our primary election was held about a week and a half ago, and results were announced this past Tuesday. How did it go?

Overall, not too bad. I was hearing on election day that voters in the city of Lexington were having to stand in line for several hours, but there were no delays anywhere else in the state, including here in Louisville. I don't know what the issue was in Lexington. They had established their polling location as the local college football stadium, which should have been large enough, but maybe they didn't have enough polling stations? Here in Louisville our one location had something like 300 stations. The picture in this tweet is of our polling location - no idea why they're using it for this particular article. (As an aside, turns out ALL counties, not just Jefferson/Louisville, had ONE polling location. Though a couple of the larger counties area-wise did have two. That's why there was such a huge reduction in locations.) So, for most of the day, things went well here in town.

Unfortunately, about an hour before the polls closed at 6 PM, traffic into our location got heavy (as it always does in that area), and some voters were stuck in their cars trying to get into the parking lot when they closed the doors at 6:03. You may have seen video clips of ~100 people banging on the doors chanting "Let us in!". So, yeah, not a good look or end of an overall good day. However, both Senate candidates called for an injunction to reopen the doors, which did happen - so all of those voters DID get to vote. Just makes for a good video clip. *sigh* Should they have waited to close the doors? Absolutely. Should they have anticipated this issue? Absolutely. Should those voters have taken advantage of their other opportunities to vote instead of waiting until the last minute? Maybe. Which leads to another issue...

The Kentucky Secretary of State has a website where voters can check the status of their absentee ballot. It gets information from the local County Clerks which it uses to keep the site updated. Well, a lot of people were getting the message that there was no information available for their ballot. So, in these times of major distrust of election security, many of them actually went to the poll to vote. Which they were allowed to do, they just had to state they were declaring their absentee ballot null - or words to that effect. Full disclosure, mine was one of the ballots that wasn't showing up on the website, but I chose to assume it just hadn't been updated into the system. Naive? Maybe, but it showed up there when I checked yesterday, so I'm confident it was counted.

And that's another issue that came up. In Fayette County/Lexington, about 6000 absentee ballots were rejected for various reasons, including mismatched signatures. The local Senate candidate did explore options about having them counted, but, unfortunately, there aren't good laws to that effect here in the state. And, honestly? It wouldn't have mattered anyway. He lost by ~15K votes. So, even assuming all those ballots would have gone his way, he still would have lost. Of course, there are naysayers out there who are saying he should have done more, but there's only so much he could do, so not sure what more they expect him to do. *shrugs*

As for turnout? It was record, or nearly so - I forget which. Approximately 430K Republican voters turned in ballots one way or another, and approximately 545K Democrats did. If the numbers stay that way for the general election in November, we just may DITCH MITCH!

Keeping my fingers crossed. :D

Time for another book review. This time for The Ghost Machine, the third Firefly novel by James Lovegrove.

What can I say that isn't damning with faint praise? Probably nothing, since this was a very disappointing read. The plot was good, but I didn't care for some of the execution. The characterizations were good, except for Badger, and I think that's what put me off from close to the beginning.

I mean, I get it. Accents are hard. But... "...sumfink to do wiv 'ow I aven't 'eard" "over 'arf a day" "whevver fings" all in the space of one paragraph. And constantly saying fink/fing instead of think/thing? It just makes Badger a caricature of himself! I didn't remember the author being this bad with him in previous writing, so I went back to the first book, and sure enough, he was fine there. He was even fine when he first showed up in this book. So, what the hell?!

Also, it's mentioned that Inara has left the ship for Sihnon and House Madrassa. I'll have to check, but I'm pretty sure that's not where she went? If not, that's another canon error on the author's part. *sigh* I have more to say behind a cut, but overall, I guess I'd give this book a C, just an average story taking place after the first two books and before the movie.

There's another book coming in the fall, by a different author. It'll be interesting to see how that one reads.

( So, what else is there to say? SPOILERS AHEAD )

For now, I'm off to reread the "Poldark" novels, because apparently the popularity of the remake inspired the author to write another book that was published last year. I bought it, but it's been eons since I read the rest of them, so I need to refresh my memory before I read this one. Fortunately, I own all of them. :D

And can I just say that Robin Ellis is, and always will be, my Ross Poldark. Not this new guy who thinks men in the 1780/90's ran around with their long hair blowing in the breeze. *eyeroll* I know it's not the actor's fault, but still. Ugh. I haven't watched the new version, and don't plan to, but it was interesting to see that Robin had a part in it - playing someone Ross doesn't particularly care for! LOL! Nice homage, I guess? :)