flexagon | Network

As of Saturday morning, there was a blizzard warning scheduled from Sunday 6 AM to Monday 6 PM, with 12-18" expected.

By Sunday morning, the blizzard warning had been postponed to 1 PM, total accumulation still 12-18".

By 1 PM, there were a few flakes of snow in the air, but nothing "blizzardy".

Around 5 PM, I went out to clear the walk, and I wasn't sure whether to use a shovel or a push-broom. I chose the push-broom, but by the time I was done with the front and back walks, it was becoming clear that I should have used a shovel.

Around 11 PM, I went out to clear the walk. There were about 7" on the ground, but light and fluffy. I cleared the front steps, the walk to the sidewalk, and the sidewalk in front of our property; didn't get to the back sidewalk or the walk between the houses. This was enough to take the dogs out for their bedtime walk. It's still snowing steadily, so by morning it will probably be impossible to tell where I shoveled.

UPDATE, 8:30 AM: Just shoveled another 8-9" from the front steps, walk, and sidewalk. Haven't gotten to the back sidewalk or the walk between the houses. It's still reasonably light and fluffy, but sticking to the shovel; need to apply some baking spray. And it's still coming down steadily.

jazzyjj posting in

awesomeers

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished!

Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

conuly

I didn’t guess that I’d be stuck with the roads closed until at least noon tomorrow.

Well, I’m getting paid every hour I’m here, at least.

sovay

I spent much of yesterday running pre-blizzard errands, but the local state of the parking spots is the truest gauge of the meteorology about to go down.

I have not yet managed to get hold of her memoir, but I deeply appreciate being notified of the existence of E. M. Barraud, who identified herself with chalk-cut hill figures, candidly described her relationship status as "technically single, but 'married' in a permanent homosexual relationship with another woman," published under her assigned initials and was known in Little Eversden where she worked for the Women's Land Army as John. She gave her wartime responses for Mass-Observation as both a man and a woman: "People are people, not specifics of a gender." I had never even encountered her poetry.

Current Music: Pram, "The Owl Service"

oursin

This week's bread was a Standen loaf, strong brown/buckwheat flour, maple syrup, malt extract - but due to electric scale going weird and giving strange readings, the proportions got very odd and it turned out larger and a lot denser than usual, if still edible.

Friday night supper: Gujerati khichchari, with pinenuts.

Saturday breakfast rolls: adaptable soft roll recipe, 4:1 strong white/buckwheat flour, a touch of maple syrup, dried cranberries, turned out rather well.

Today's lunch: Scottish salmon tail fillets baked in foil with butter and lime slices; served with La Ratte potatoes boiled with salt and dill and tossed in butter, buttered spinach and baked San Marzano tomatoes.

badly_knitted posting in

get_knitted

Hello to all members, passers-by, curious onlookers, and shy lurkers, and welcome to our regular daily check-in post. Just leave a comment below to let us know how your current projects are progressing, or even if they're not.

Checking in is NOT compulsory, check in as often or as seldom as you want, this community isn't about pressure it's about encouragement, motivation, and support. Crafting is meant to be fun, and what's more fun than sharing achievements and seeing the wonderful things everyone else is creating?

There may also occasionally be questions, but again you don't have to answer them, they're just a way of getting to know each other a bit better.

This Week's Question: What is your favourite thing to make?

If anyone has any questions of their own about the community, or suggestions for tags, questions to be asked on the check-in posts, or if anyone is interested in playing check-in host for a week here on the community, which would entail putting up the daily check-in posts and responding to comments, go to the Questions & Suggestions post and leave a comment.

I now declare this Check-In OPEN!

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my desk

starandrea

Maybe I could make a handwritten Chinese zine that I record myself reading aloud to a bunch of seeds.

This is gonna be my day. Or I'll take a nap. Still hard to say which way it will go.

Also I can't believe I haven't posted any pictures of Daphne in a year. I just spent an hour looking at photos, so I can't make up for it now short of sharing my entire library. But here's a particularly funny sequence from last spring, when her friends came to the back door looking for her.

( Daphne and friends )

Right now everything is covered in snow and ice, except the back patio, so that's nice. I still go out and sit in my rocking chair and look out over where the gardens will be in the spring, and admire the sparkly beauty of a frozen river.

Luckily the dogs love the frozen river, so now the play groups look more like this.

( Daphne and snow )

umadoshi

Reading: Last week I finished Stephanie Burgis' Wooing the Witch Queen (fun!) and read Heated Rivalry. I opted to just skip straight to the actual HR novel rather than first reading the Scott/Kip novel, which worked out fine, since I also had that context from the show. I enjoyed it a fair bit, but now I'm in the awkward position of wanting to see the next chunk for Shane and Ilya but no more urgently than after I finished watching season 1 of the show. The choices now are a) read the entire series (presumably doubling back to actually read book 1), b) skip ahead and read The Long Game, or c) hold off entirely and wait for season 2 of the show.

I also read a few more volumes each of Hikaru no Go and The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, but I'm still in rereading territory with both. (I think I've already read up to vol. 12 of Kurosagi, but for Hikaru, I think the odds are against me really realizing when I've hit new territory until I go to enter a volume in Goodreads and find it's not already on my Read list there.)

Watching:

scruloose and I are caught up on both The Pitt and Frieren, and we finished Midnight Mass last weekend (a very solid, intense ending).

With my crunch time at work starting, it's not an ideal time for us to start a show that's a significant time commitment or that's going to leave me desperate to see a next episode when work is eating most or all of my evenings. It's possible this will result in me just showing

scruloose Heated Rivalry, since it's apparently our key cultural export of the decade and all. *g* Only six episodes and I don't have to worry about being impatient to see what happens next or about being spoiled.

(I still don't feel actively fannish about HR at all, but am enjoying being adjacent to it and seeing all the fannish excitement and meta and such. I have saved many fic recs to my read-later list on A03, but have yet to actually read a single one [and may never, given how slowly I go through fic--there's still a steady stream of Guardian fic I haven't read that also goes on that list].)

Weathering/Working: We have what sounds like a significant nor'easter blizzard arriving at some point tomorrow, with heavy wet snow. Will this be where our luck fails for the season and we lose power for the first time? (I'm completely astonished that it hasn't happened yet. Probably it's not really because the generator and backup power are warding that off, like carrying an umbrella around...)

And of course the spring crunch is set to start tomorrow in the late afternoon, right around when the storm is likely to be in full swing. Will the weather have much impact? (Mainly, I guess, in terms of Those Who Speak all being able to make it there safely; I kinda hope that there's some kind of backup power in their actual building, but I don't know for sure one way or the other.)

oglaf_comic_feed

https://www.oglaf.com/zzz/

james_davis_nicoll

Orson finds Trump's approach to Greenland unacceptable and would like the President to keep focus on core American missions, like trade wars and ethnically cleansing Minnesota.

andrewducker

Spent the afternoon at Hugh and Meredith's, where Hugh showed Sophia how his 3d printer works (and how he makes 3d dungeons out of foam). Very cool stuff, and they both enjoyed their souvenirs.
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

conuly

So, you got my opinion on Heated Rivalry, but I gotta say, I will never not read fanfics structured like ongoing internet sagas.

Also, gotta love the one dude, BostonSportsBro69, who posts in both /r/relationship_advice and /r/hockey going around in /r/hockey saying "Uh, no, it's just normal sportsbro rival stuff, you're all reading way too much into this" ~~when~~ because he absolutely knows better. (I don't think he's supposed to be one of Ilya's teammates, just a fan.)

***************

( Links )

mific posting in

drawesome

Title: Hold Me on AO3
Artist:

mific
Rating: Gen
Fandom: Heated Rivalry
Characters/Pairings: Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov
Notes: Made in Procreate for the ICE OUT donation challenge, and for challenge #75 - Romance

james_davis_nicoll

Can America's well-financed, highly-experienced, heavily-armed war machine hope to prevail against a numerically insignificant, poorly-armed, American teen movement?

Dance the Eagle to Sleep by Marge Piercy

nanila

Last weekend, we stayed in a Landmark Trust property a mere half-hour journey to Bletchley Park. We were surprised by nice weather on the Saturday, so we made the trip. Below is an assortment of photos from the selection of buildings we managed to visit over the course of five hours. I don’t think we saw more than a third of it, so we’ll definitely take advantage of the year-long entry that the steep admission price gets you to see the rest.

The dingy basement has had a lick of paint and yet somehow doggedly retains its character.

Listening stations.

Keiki does some Morse code-breaking.

Humuhumu does some Enigma encoding.

A surprisingly dry and sunny day after all the rain we’ve been having.

Daffodils were not quite ready.

The Mansion seemed like it was a bit of all right.

Not so sure the Intelligence Factory needs this.

Humuhumu and I spent quite a while on this interactive exhibit, plotting the locations of various maritime assets and enemies.

Many of the personal testimonials in the exhibition mention how boring and repetitive some of the intelligence work was.

You can see why they resorted to putting frogs in the pneumatic tube system to liven up the day.

The Park is beautifully maintained and the interactive exhibits are well designed and engaging - I’d say from the age of about 10 on up - so well worth a visit. I restrained myself to one book in the gift shop (The Walls Have Ears by Helen Fry) but could easily have brought home a stack.