arkessian

The first thing about ornaments is that there is no disadvent in ornaments. Ornaments may be created but not destroyed. Man hands on ornaments to man; they deepen like a continental shelf. (Put up as little as you can, and don't buy any ornaments yourself.)

The second first thing is that you can't imagine how many my mom had, as of last year. However many boxes you're picturing it was more than that. Years upon decades of gifts from relatives (sometimes in threes, one to my mom and one to each of my sister and me), Girl Scout craft projects, other craft projects just because my mom likes craft projects. My mom's share of all of *her* mom's ornaments, who collected Santa Claus-themed stuff and sometimes had a whole separate little tree just of Santa Claus ornaments in addition to her main tree.

In theory, I thought it was great that she was ready to downsize. In practice what she meant was that she wanted to see my sister and I divide them up, except for her favorites, perhaps the right amount for a small coffee-table tree.

I had been dodging taking more of my ornaments for years, doing things like dutifully sorting out a box of them and then leaving it behind in the garage. But it was a category of my parents' Stuff that my mom was actually ready to do something about. So... Ornaments.

psocoptera

I have so much to say about ornaments that I made two false starts back in January and then gave up. (They were the third long story of the three long stories, which nobody but me remembers but is still an open to-do list item.) I still want to try to say things, but maybe broken into enough small pieces to not be a tl;dr-sized wall of text.

ffutures

Found an affordable and OK-looking hotel in Santander, where there will be a minute or so of totality, and booked a room arriving on Monday 10th August and leaving on the 13th, the day after the eclipse.

Now trying to find a good flight, but as usual completely confused by the booking sites. Basically I want to leave the UK in the morning and arrive in Spain in daylight to make getting to the hotel easier. Coming back I'm not so bothered about timing. Which site would people recommend for booking the flight?

leecetheartist

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troisoiseaux

Read A Truce That Is Not Peace by Miriam Toews, a slim, unconventional memoir. Framed as her repeated failure to respond to the prompt why do you write? to the satisfaction of a literary conference in Mexico City (she was eventually uninvited), it reads like a commonplace book: a mix of anecdotes, and copies of letters Toews exchanged with her sister over the years (the answer to why do you write? being, originally, because she asked me to), and musings on how to go about creating a "wind museum", and random quotes and poetry and the names/details of historical figures who died by suicide. It helped to know a bit about Toews' background - mostly that she was raised Mennonite and that both her father and sister died by suicide - because eventually both of those things are clearly stated, but I did get a sense that she presumed someone picking up Toews' personal non-fiction on why she writes has already read at least some of her novels, many of which have drawn-from-life elements.

In other writing about writing, I received This Year: 365 Songs Annotated: A Book of Days by John Darnielle as an early birthday/Christmas gift - an illustrated, annotated collection of the Mountain Goats' lyrics - and, of course, immediately just skimmed it for my favorite songs, which quickly turned into reading random chunks because each "annotation" is a short paragraph, max - sometimes about the context for writing the song, or commentary on the characters/story, or what inspired it, or how people respond to it, or some observation/quote/etc. that is not obviously related to the song in any way - so once you've opened it to a specific page it's easy to just keep going for a while, and anyway, now I have to figure out to actually read this book. Just read it cover to cover? Listen to each song in the order they appear, and read the accompanying passage? (Which is a cool idea, but would take forever. Theoretically, I could do one song per day, devotional-style, but I know my attention span well enough to know that's not happening.)

redbird

No, I did not spend all the money in my wallet on chocolate*, but I treated us to a box of chocolates from Serenade, the chocolatier in Brookline with a wide selection of vegan chocolates.

I took the bus to Brookline Village, walked a little extra because I was wrong about which bus stop to use, walked into the shop, and asked for a one-pound box.

I bought two vegan caramels, which Adrian had asked for; I'd have gotten more, but I wasn't sure what she or Cattitude think of sea salt caramel. Just for myself, I got six dairy truffles, three lemon and three lime. The rest was a few (vegan) chocolate creams, and a lot of chocolate-dipped fruit and nuts, including several of their excellent chocolate covered plums, a candy I haven't seen anywhere else.

I came home via Trader Joe's, where I bought fruit, a bell pepper, hummus, pre-cooked chicken sausages, a carton of chocolate ice cream, and a box of frozen vanilla and chocolate macarons.

Even counting the chocolate part of the groceries, I would have had money left from the $79 that happens to be how much cash is in my wallet right now. That's a pretty arbitrary metric, since I don't always have the same amount of cash (I do make a point of having some, because cash still comes in handy sometimes).

*see yesterday's post

brithistorian

Last night I discovered that Kiiras had released a Christmas song, called "Kiirasmas." I don't think I'd objectively say it's a good song, but it's still fun to listen to.
Watch on YouTube
A few years ago, I did a K-pop Christmas song Advent calendar. This morning, as I added "Kiirasmas" to my K-pop Christmas playlist, I realized that if I wanted to post the whole playlist one song a day, I'd have had to start back on October 15! ^^
After having to spend 40 minutes listening to the store playing Christmas music while I waited for the pharmacy to fill a prescription. I'd like to say: No matter how Christmas-adjacent some of its lyrics may be, "My Favorite Things" is not a Christmas song. I'm willing to get seriously injured on this hill. However, if it means that I'll hear "The Christmas Song" less often, I'm willing to act like it's a Christmas song.

ysabetwordsmith

Italy makes a surprising discovery ahead of the Winter Olympics: dinosaur tracks

On Tuesday, Italian officials announced the discovery of thousands of dinosaur tracks on "nearly vertical dolomite walls" in Stelvio National Park, a protected area in the central Alps of northern Italy.
[---8<---]
"The tracks, preserved in excellent condition despite the altitude, show traces of toes and claws imprinted on the walls when they were tidal flats at the end of the Triassic," the Natural History Museum says. That period spanned 252 to 201 million years ago.

Della Ferrara notified authorities of his findings, setting paleontological research into motion. Preliminary analyses suggest most of the tracks came from "herbivorous prosauropod dinosaurs" — the long-necked creatures that predate enormous sauropods like the ones depicted in the "Jurassic Park" franchise.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Actor Gil Gerard has passed away. He was best known for playing Captain William “Buck” Rogers. He will be missed.

Carry on the work:

How to Become an Actor (with Pictures)

How to Start a Career in Acting (with Pictures)

How to Audition for a TV Show: The Ultimate Guide

Acting in Science Fiction

Current Mood: busy

ysabetwordsmith

Today is cloudy, chilly, windy, and wet. It's drizzling now. At least all the snow and ice melted off though.

I fed the birds. Unsurprisingly I haven't seen any.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 12/18/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 12/18/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

It's been raining off and on all day. It was raining so briskly in the afternoon that not all the outside tasks got done. Fortunately it's just drizzling now so I finished up what I could. I haven't seen any wildlife all day, which is sensible of them.

The sky has been so cloudy all day that it was perennially twilight. At sunset, the sun hit a band of less clouds, so now 3/4 of the sky is bizarre shades of orange-purple. The road is wet and catching the last light of day like a ribbon of gold.

I am done for the night.

Current Mood: busy

chickenfeet

https://operaramblings.blog/2025/12/18/where-her-music-blooms/

muccamukk

Fandom and Art Stuff

elasticella: sapphic stocking stuffers.
Lots of great prompts! Open for fills until 31 December, or they're all full, whichever happens last.

Street Art Utopia: The Giant Kitten.
By Oriol Arumi at Torrefarrera Street Art Festival in Torrefarrera, Cataluna, Spain

Rolling Stone: Taylor Swift’s Last Album Sparked Bizarre Accusations of Nazism. It Was a Coordinated Attack.
I read this, and was like "hmmmmmmm." Because it seemed plausible that there were bots or whatever, but also a lot of people I'd seen critiquing the album were definitely humans that I knew. But also human conversation can be driven by bots without the humans realising it. And also, I don't care enough about TS to look into the whole mess. Then I saw the following.

MedusoneDeluxe: Rolling Stone embarrasses itself to defend Taylor Swift. Again. (Video: 41 Minutes).
I love it when people actually read the research. So probably not a significant number of bots, but also the science is so sloppy it's impossible to tell.

Trans Rights Are Human Rights
The Walrus: Kids Deserve a New Gender Paradigm by Kai Cheng Thom.
Lovely, thoughtful look at how we see gender, and maybe kids have this more figured out than a lot of adults to. Older piece, but I enjoyed reading it again.

The Guardian: The WI and Girlguiding have been pressured to exclude trans women – yet the law is clear as mud by Jess O'Thompson.
The Guardian published something non-terrible about trans people in the U.K.! Do the Dance of Joy!

CTV News: Skate Canada to stop hosting events in Alberta due to sports gender law.
Solidarity! From a national sporting organisation! A MIRACLE!

Canadian Politics Stuff
The Tyee: Human Rights Tribunal on RCMP Methods Delays Decision Nearly a Year.
This is some fucking bullshit. The elders are dying of old age before they're seeing any kind of justice. I am enjoying how Amanda Follett Hosgood is so out of fucks to give on the publication ban that she's basically putting up a bright red arrow pointing to A.B.'s name, even if she can't actually say it. Which is John Furlong, incidentally. And seriously, fuck that guy.

The Globe and Mail: Leilani Muir made history suing Alberta over forced sterilization.
This is an older obit, but I dug it up for a school project, and thought it was worth sharing. Not enough people know about Canada's eugenics policies.

Times Colonist: Residential school survivor says he will protest OneBC at other campuses.
We shouldn't need our elders to be superheroes, but nonetheless many of them are.

Times Colonist: Water-contaminated fuel caused crash of Port Hardy-bound plane: TSB.
This is neither here nor there, really, but I find Transportation Safety Board investigations really interesting. Even if they take a really long time (i.e. I found this while looking for information about a more recent crash, but will probably have to wait a couple years to find out what happened to that guy).

Slightly Dated U.S.A. Politics Stuff
Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American: December 6, 2025.
Beautifully ties in the events of Pearl Harbor with the politics of today.

Rebecca Solnit: Solidarity Stitches Us Together: Today, World AIDS Day, Is Also the 70th Anniversary of Rosa Parks's Historic Protest.

The fabric of this country is forever being torn apart by hate and exclusion; it is forever being stitched into, as the site says, new patterns, new connections, new relationships. Solidarity is always about connection across difference, about the way you stand with someone you have something crucial in common with but who may be different in other ways. It is a quilter's art of bringing the fragments together into a whole. It is e pluribus unum.

umadoshi

"Yona of the Dawn Gets Sequel Anime". [Anime News Network]

I'm delighted both that this is happening and that it was announced so promptly on the heels of the manga ending. (;_;) As we learned from the second Fruits Basket anime arriving thirteen years after that manga ended, anything is possible, but it's sure nicer to have this sort of thing happen with a speed that makes more sense.

ANN says "sequel anime", which I'd imagine means it'll pick up where the first one left off, but how OAVs factor into that, I'm not even going to try to guess.

Current Mood: excited
Current Music: Sting - A Winter's Night Live From Durham Cathedral2009

psocoptera

Gave away an old Razor scooter via the local buy-nothing group.

madbaker

I've been fighting a cold (and losing). Not major, but a dry cough and now some congestion. Last night I took cough syrup, and when I woke myself up with a bout of coughing, the wife persuaded me to take an additional half dose since it had clearly worn off. This meant that I was slow getting up - which I knew was likely to be the case, but was probably a good tradeoff for not sitting up in bed coughing for a few hours.

Anyway, I moved slowly enough that I actually missed the backup bus that gets me into the office slightly early instead of significantly early. (shrug) Then I discovered that the wife had borrowed my transit card and not put it back. One upside to missing that bus: I had plenty of time to walk the block back to the house and get the card.

In other news, a couple years ago I bought a single malt advent calendar. It was great fun and I even bought a bottle of one afterwards. I didn't repeat last year but I did this year, and apparently that was a mistake -- I am still enjoying the 1 oz bottles, but I have fallen a week behind with the cold and general malaise and I may not go back to it until January. This goes in the file of "do not repeat unless/until you are genuinely excited about it".

Current Mood: lethargic

vivdunstan

Thought about reusing some old LPC MUD code - dated 1992! - in a puzzle in my latest interactive fiction game that I'm writing. Then looked at the LPC code and thought "Way too complicated for what I need here!" So I'm going simpler. But it is nice to revisit.

I was a wizard in the St Andrews University MUD back then, as was Martin. I also played through to wizard level on a Glasgow MUD at the same time. Many happy memories.

daily_otter_feed

Posted by Daily Otter

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2025/12/18/sometimes-all-you-need-is-a-good-cuddle

Via uso_otter

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2025/12/18/sometimes-all-you-need-is-a-good-cuddle

antisoppist

Everyone sat down, except the Junior Side infants, already packed into choir stalls and sanctuary, who now stood ready to open the proceedings with Good King Wenceslaus.

This successfully delivered, the infants stampeded quietly up to the surrounding galleries to listen to the rest of the carols, and II.B. took their place. At one moment there was a marked difference of opinion concerning the order in which their carols were to be sung, but this was overcome by the less numerous supporters of We Three Kings of Orient Are singing more loudly and determinedly than the confused majority who favoured The Cherry-Tree Carol. II.A.'s performance was enlivened by no such excitements: and III.B. unexpectedly distinguished themselves by singing one unfamiliar carol, one which began Go in Adoration, go to Bethlehem.

III.A., Lower IV.B., Lower IV.A., Upper IV.B.—there was still ages before their own turn came, thought Esther, calming a little: until, with a tremor of alarm, she realized that no other form, so far, had done it the way Upper IV.A. were going to. No one else had had an orchestra, Miss Ussher had accompanied them on the organ: no one else had announced the titles of their carols: above all, no one else had had soloists.... How awful, thought Esther, if it were only Upper IV.A. who had such things: and she wondered anxiously if, when Tim realized this, she'd decide to alter everything, even though it was the last possible moment. Even if it made a bit of a muddle, it'd be better than being so different....

dine

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skygiants

Everything I've previously read by M.T. Anderson emotionally devastated me, so I despite the fact that Nicked was billed as a comedy I went in bravely prepared to be emotionally devastated once again.

This did not happen .... although M.T. Anderson cannot stop himself from wielding a sharp knife on occasion, it it turns out the book is indeed mostly a comedy .....

Nicked is based on a Real Historical Medieval Heist: the city of Bari is plague-ridden, and due to various political pressures the City's powers have decided that the way to resolve this is to steal the bones of St. Nicholas from their home in Myra and bring them to Bari to heal the sick, revive the tourism trade, and generally boost the city's fortunes. The central figures on this quest are Nicephorus, a very nice young monk who had the dubious fortune of receiving a dream about St. Nicholas that might possibly serve as some sort of justification for this endeavor, and Tyun, a professional relic hunter (or con artist? Who Could Say) who is not at really very nice at all but is Very Charismatic And Sexy, which is A Problem for Nicephorus.

The two books that Nicked kept reminding me of, as I read it, were Pratchett's Small Gods and Tolmie's All the Horses of Iceland. Both of those books are slightly better books than this, but as both of them are indeed exceptionally good books I don't think it takes too much away from Nicked to say that it's not quite on their level: it's still really very fun! And, unlike in those other somewhat better books, the unlikely companions do indeed get to make out!

I did end it, unsurprisingly, desperately wanting to know more about the sources on which it was based to know what we do know about this Real Historical Medieval Heist, but it turns out they are mostly not translated into English. Foiled again!

I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up

The Ornaments, part I

The Ornaments, part 0

Preparing for the August Eclipse

Diamine Inkvent Calender December 17th and 18th

Recent reading

chocolate

Christmas music

Dinosaurs

Moment of Silence: Gil Gerard

Birdfeeding

Songs by Saariaho and Livingston

Links Links Links

The hoped-for silver lining of the Yona manga ending!

Disadvent 18

(no subject)

Coding 1992 style

Sometimes All You Need Is a Good Cuddle

Advent calendar 17

and so the conversation turned, until the sun went down

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