In case you hadn't noticed recently, Fashionable Reader, I've been lax about posting to this blog.

 Maintaining two blogs has gotten a bit overwhelming for me. Something has got to give. Much as I love fashion, it isn't actually my primary working world. Writing is, so that has to take most of my focus.

What's Going On?

In other words, I'm fading this one away.

Instagram

Pinterest

Facebook

I will try to make these brief, but I'm trying to post when I think of it so I don't just keep all the updates in my head.

( reading/watching )

Good stuff:

* 3-day weekends all summer, yay!
* If the zebras stay away today, I get to stop taking the icky meds.
* Other than a couple days of some weakness, mom's doing really, really well after her valve replacement.
* Feeling almost well enough to start writing again. Planning to start tomorrow if the zebras stay away.
* House is almost clean.
* I'm just generally feeling fine and in a good mood. And I originally typed that "good moof" and thought it was really cute and funny, so maybe I'm a little dopey today. Which is also a good thing. So there you have it.

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I desire to get back in the habit of posting regularly here, so I will post every day in September and see if that helps. This blog (if you count its beginning on my 35th birthday, just after 9/11, as a LiveJournal) is the oldest internet "belonging" I have, except for my email address. I don't want to lose it through neglect.

Today, I will report that in August, I paid off 1.20% of our consumer debt, and I expect that to snowball as we pay off the higher-interest stuff. I will report in once a month.

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Today, I will be interviewing for a half-time job: the hourly wage is a fair bit higher than what I'm currently making at my day job, but the hours are 20 a week versus 40. It has benefits, though, and it would free up my time to write, and to take more editing gigs. I enjoy the editing, I'm good at it, and it pays well, so this could be the best of both worlds.

I have to give a presentation as part of the interview, and I'm just printing out handouts for that in case their projector doesn't work. I don't have any fear of public speaking, but I confess I'd rather have an interview without this component, or hey, no interview at all.

Into the breach!

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Part of how I got out of debt last time was to be frank with myself and others about my finances. For the first 10 years we were together, James and I had zero debt, and it took some pushing past shame to admit we'd accumulated $10K+ in consumer debt, but admitting it was the first step to eliminate it. This time, the debt is even higher (but it was important, she says with some shame, to fix our teeth and our car, and and and...) but it's not any different: the key to getting rid of it for me is facing it. Well, facing it and having a plan.

Facing it, having a plan, and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.

Another thing I have to face is that I can't afford to go part-time yet. Not until either James gets the job he applied for or I get more editing work. I'm a little sad about that, but it's okay -- I can do this for a year while we knock out debt, and then I can decide what to do after that happens. When we don't have debt, we have SO MUCH FREEDOM. I just need to keep that in mind.

In completely other news, I don't get a "Least Complicated" earworm often, in day-to-day life, but something about getting to the "Music" box on the DW posting page brings it to mind; it's my most frequent "Music" entry, and it seems to just be a conditioned response to seeing the input box. Weird.

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( Discussion of food as it relates to my health behind the cut, but no weight-loss, because I don't do weight-loss. )

My week has been stressful. They called Thursday and offered me the half-time job. They needed to know that day -- we haven't heard back on the lucrative job James has applied for, so I declined, citing the fact that I'm the only breadwinner and James hasn't heard back about the job he was waiting to hear from (I didn't mention to the HR person that it's a job at my same employer, because it's probably not her fault they're lagging on his job, and I'm not an asshole). She wanted to know when I'd know, and I said, "Well, I was supposed to know two weeks ago, so I mean, soon, I hope, but no guarantees."

She called me back an hour later and offered to give me a week to decide (because they actually don't want the other two people who interviewed, is my surmise), so yeah, rollercoaster day on Thursday.

And then a student's mom called and cussed me out for like half an hour. I don't take that stuff personally, but it does wear on me. My co-workers marvelled over and over about how calm I stayed, and I said (and I meant it), "She was frustrated. That's understandable. And I don't have to attend every fight I'm invited to," which became a theme for the week.

My mom got in a fracas with another member of her senior center, and I shared my week's theme with her. I think she felt a little chastised, but she also seemed to latch onto the theme as a potential sanity saver.

And then today at the donut shop, I accidentally passed up another person who was waiting to pay (because I followed the person who gave me our donuts to the register and didn't notice the other person who was standing away from the registers at the window. She berated me for many minutes about how rude I was, and how I should give a bitch some space, and how in America, we call this White Privilege, and and and... I just apologized, didn't engage beyond that, (felt frankly detached and mildly amused -- not sure what that says about me) and then once she'd left, the cashier apologized to me for the customer.

Me: "Nah, she's not wrong. I didn't see her, but I did cut in front of her."

I mean, I don't like being yelled at, or having people behave in ways that I perceive as rude towards me, but I'm not gonna fault someone for standing up for their space when I've violated it, so long as they're not hitting me or something. Not a fight I need to get into; not a hill I'm gonna die on.

So yeah, stressful week for many reasons, but not something that's gonna ruin my Saturday, which will now be completed by spending many many many hours writing and catching up on webcomics.

And how are YOU, dear ones?

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I want to write this, but I don't want anyone to feel compelled to read it, so here, have some cut tags!

( Work stress )

Just emailed this to a family member and thought I'd put it here for my later reference:

Thanks for the update. Sorry for being brief before. They closed my school to move to online instruction (and UCSD; and most or all the K-12s; I don't know about SDSU yet). We're off for at least two weeks, and they'll let us know for sure on the 23rd if we're going back on the 30th. They're paying us, thank goodness (and thank labor unions), and they've given me remote access so I can work from home, which I'm happy about.

Mom has finally gotten it in her head that this is serious, so she's bowed out of her big weekly bridge game, which is actually illegal here now -- more than 10 elderly people or more than 250 people, period, is outlawed.

Today, I'm taking it easy except for a visit from the kid and some work-from-home stuff that's not difficult. For the next two-plus weeks, I plan to read a lot, write a lot, and play cards with mom, who will develop cabin fever pretty quickly. We stocked up on necessaries last weekend, so we've decided that barring actual urgency (not, like, "I want ice cream" urgency, that is), we're not going to shop at all during my break. This will be harder for mom, as you can imagine.

My baby brother (he will be 48 this week -- a mere embryo! -- is near ground zero in Washington State, but so far, his family is okay. He's worried about his wife's grandparents, who are quite old and quite ill. He (my brother) is in management at the cable company there, and he's just making sure his installers keep their distance, etc.

Love you, and hope to see you soon. Don't touch your face. :-)

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Some of us who are disabled and/or fat are worried we'll be denied access to scarce medical resources during the pandemic. This document describes our legal rights (in the US) and ways to maximize our likelihood of getting care.

#NoBodyIsDisposable Guide to Surviving COVID-19 Triage

Crips and fatties made this.
Please share with everyone who needs it.

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Questions and answers, the former from adrian_turtle, who is awesome, and at least one of the latter stolen from hobbitbabe, who is also awesome.

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I just closed a half-dozen tabs that were old posts from y'all that I keep meaning to respond to. Apologies, but I have limited oomph this week, as a lot of us do.

But hey, surveys are easy.

Quarantine meme (quaranteme? quaranmeme?) picked up from julian who got it from crystalpyramid.


( My answers )

On May 4th and 5th, mom and I planted a bunch of stuff in a square-foot-gardening box, and I'm going to start keeping a plant diary here. I'll put them under boredom cut tags. :-)

( Like this )

1) Because the quarantine is less hard on me than it is on others, I sometimes forget to give myself a break for the ways in which it is hard. Privilege doesn't mean nothing ever hurts. I'm gonna try to be kinder to myself about all this.

2) I'm now getting two weekly farm boxes. I'm not sorry at all.

3) We've killed off 18.5% of our consumer debt since January. We rock.

4) ( Plant diary for May 7 with a pic )

Posted by: icon_uk

An old, old, OLD and very silly post from our earlier incarnation back in Livejournal days!



( May the Fourth Be With You! )

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HEAVY Trigger Warning for Rape

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Posted by: tripodeca113



"After I signed on to do these comics, Toph quickly became my favourite character to write. Mike, Bryan, and their writing team made her so vibrant. I can close my eyes and hear her voice. We didn't include her in The Search for narrative reasons, but I really missed her. I'm glad we got to throw the spotlight on everybody's favourite blind Earthbending master here."

Gene Yang

(24 pages out of 72)
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Posted by: icon_uk

In the comments to these weekly posts (and only these posts), it's your chance to go as off topic as you like. Talk about non-comics stuff, thread derail, and just generally chat among yourselves.

The EU hosted a summit where over 40 countries and global organisations promised a starting figure of over $8 billion to the development of a covid-19 vaccine.

Much of the world is starting to experiment with opening up again in a new sort-of-post-Covid19 world, with places like Germany and Spain relaxing, gradually, some of the lockdown protocols, with strong limitations and provisos.

In New Zealand, consistent reminder that competent politicians exist Jacinda Ardern has suggested that the country may not have open borders for a long time to come.

In the UK, a phone app is being developed for contact tracingM and notification of people you may have been in contact with who develop Covid19, though in true current UK style, it's going against every other countries developed app by not using the personalised data storage method (Where your information never leaves your phone), but a centralised database, which is raising some concerns about the storage and disposal (or not) of this data.

The US government is planning on borrowing around 3 TRILLION dollars in the next quarter to pay for pandemic support initiatives. That's 3,000,000,000,000 (Which I only mention because I've never had a reason to type an actual number that big in a real world context!)

The US is also starting to open up in places, though the wisdom of this is being called into question by... well, pretty much everyone else on the planet, and a goodly number of the local population of course.

The Clone Wars seventh and final season came to an end with a frankly spectacular arc which saw Ahsoka Tano facing off against Darth Maul in the sort of iconic fight scene that, truth be told, the sequel trilogy was mostly completely lacking, at least on an emotional level), and giving us a chance to see the impact of General Order 66 from the point of view of Ahsoka, as well as the actual Clone Troopers who we have got to know and care about over the years of this series. THIS is how you do it!

The long overdue, repeatedly delayed, New Mutants movie was briefly appearing as forthcoming video on demand from Amazon, though without a release date, but it has now disappeared again. This DOES seem to suggest it might go straight to digital with no cinema release.

Also a new image of a new baddies form the movie have been released in the shape of the Smiley-Men.

And I've clearly been watching waaaay too much anime, or at least listening to too many anime soundtracks when a random video from something called Argonavis (A games based anime from what I can see) popped up and I thought "Gosh that sounds like Unison Square Garden" (who did "Orion o Nazoru", the belter of an OP for Tiger and Bunny) only to discover it's not, but it was written and arranged by two of the members.

In terms of podcasts, alongside old favourites like "Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men" (pretty much what it says on the tin and currently looking at Age of Apocalypse), "The NoSleep Podcast" (Horror fiction) and "The Arkham Sessions" (An actual qualified clinical psychologist, Dr Andrea Letamendi, examined, firstly "Batman the Animated Series" and is now looking at the "Doom Patrol" TV series for their depictions of mental conditions), I've just started Mockery Manor, a horror/mystery/drama set at a gloriously awful (and thankfully fictional) British theme park in the late 1980's.

So today's extra curricular activity for the community: What podcasts are you currently listening to that you'd recommend to others?


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Posted by: history79



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Posted by: cyberghostface



"I always remember this quote from Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, where he’s talking about the killers and he says something like, 'We came from the same place, but I walked out the front door and he walked out the back door.' There’s this feeling that they’re the same person, just with different circumstances. I wanted to put that in the Batman-Joker dynamic: They’re almost the same person, but Bruce has all this privilege and Jack has nothing. What does that do to who they become? And then there’s a girl in the middle — the hottest girl to ever walk the halls of high school [laughs] — and what does she want? It came out of trying to figure out all their desires. What does Jack bring to Selina that’s different from what Bruce brings to Selina? Ultimately you don’t know who she’s going to pick. You root for both of them, and there’s a surprise in the end." -- Melissa de la Cruz

"There’s so much of that Instagram culture and social media culture with teens today, so I tried to interject that into the style and look of the characters, specifically with the Joker character. He was the hardest character to visualize and design because he’s not your average villain. He’s almost not a villain at all, in a way. He goes back and forth where you sympathize with him sometimes and sometimes you see him as a villain. So I wanted to give him a look that played off both sides of his personality... In a weird way, the Joker character is the most like me." -- Thomas Pitilli

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Posted by: icon_uk

As John Constantine proves in the new "Apokalips war" animated movie

( Do I LOOK mad? )

Posted by: cyberghostface



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Posted by: cyberghostface

 

NSFW for gore

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Posted by: history79



HEAVY Trigger Warning for Rape

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