transposable_element

Filia: One of my books is missing! Call the authorities!
Me: What authorities?

***

Me: Why are you tying my hair in knots?
Filia: I'm not tying your hair in knots. I'm tying your hair in knots around a kitten. [note: stuffed kitten]
Me: What?
Filia: Mean mommy. Won't even let a kitten dangle in her hair.
Me: Filia, get this kitten out of my hair...
Filia: It wants to bungie jump.
Me: What?
[kitten is detached]
Me: Uh oh, the cord broke.
Filia: Yeah, but I caught it in time.

***

Filia, upon discovering that I had put some of her artworks away in the garage: But those are some of my finest pieces!

***

Filia: I have a severe and deeply ingrained case of insomnia.
Filia's piano teacher: She has quite a way with words!

***

Filia: Moooom? [light turns on in hallway; sound of footsteps]
Maritus [sotto voce] Damn...
Me [pause]: Sweetie, go back to bed.
Filia: What's going on?
Me: Um, nothing sweetie. Don't come in here. Just go back to sleep.
Filia: But what's going on? Why were you making so much noise? You woke me up.
Me: Nothing's wrong, sweetie. We were just... having fun.
Filia: But what were you doing?
Me: Let's discuss it in the morning. I'm sorry we woke you up.
Maritus: Go to bed, Filia. And turn off the light....
Filia: Well...okay. [footsteps, hall light goes off]
Maritus: Whew!

This morning my sister made a post on Facebook. A friend of hers commented "that's almost a haiku," so I removed six words and a punctuation mark to make it into one:

Six at the bus stop
Staring into their phones.
I make it seven.

I like it because it fulfills more of the haiku tradition than just the 5/7/5 syllable pattern: it captures a brief moment, and it has a nice pause/twist/change of mood between the second and third lines.To be really traditional it would have to refer to nature or the seasons, but you can't have everything. I suppose you could take the whole thing as a reference to flock or herd behavior.

It's also self-referential, if you assume that she was posting it right at that moment.

Maritus took this about a week ago when we were returning from
bird-watching. The duck in the foreground is most likely a Northern
Shoveler, but there were also lots of Ruddy Ducks on the lake that day.

( Discussion of suicide clusters )

Filia is learning to play the recorder. She is practicing doggedly, which is good (she has a distressing tendency to give up too quickly when things get difficult). Still, the squeaks and squwaks are getting to me.

Mostly just thinking "aloud." Originally I rot-13ed the rest of this message so as not to inadvertently give anything away to any of my many fans, but then I realized it was kinder to put most of it under a cut. So only the first little spoiler is in rot-13. :-) Decrypt at rot13.com.

V tbg n erdhrfg sbe n svp nobhg V Pncgher gur Pnfgyr, fb vs lbh unira'g ernq vg (be frra gur zbivr) naq jvfu sbe ab fcbvyref, tb ab shegure!

( Read more... )

Welp. This should be interesting....

I did say "any character," but I have to admit this wasn't what I was expecting!

*girds loins*

Second degree burn on my wrist (dominant hand, of course) due to coffee-making accident. Ow!

My practice talk for my thesis presentation was today, and it went well! Last night I was fretting over it, and now I am feeling miles better. Serious relief.

My advisor wants me to delete a few slides and rearrange a few more, but she was very happy with it overall and said the delivery was fine. And once I got going I felt very comfortable: oh yeah, I know this stuff really well, I wrote a whole thesis about it, I could talk about it all day! The "defense" is on November 2, so I have plenty of time to revise my presentation.

*grins*

I rarely (okay, never) post about politics, but I find this so fascinating that I have to mention it.

Currently the U.S. House of Representatives, where there is a clear Republican majority, is having trouble electing a new Speaker. (For those not familiar with our crazy system, the Speaker is essentially the head of the party within the House, sets the legislative agenda, and is next in line for the presidency after the Vice President.) Because of in-fighting within the party, Paul Ryan, who is already horrifyingly right wing, is struggling to obtain the support of the loony fringe of his own party.

It looks almost exactly like what happens in a parliamentary system when no party has a clear majority and the party with the most seats goes courting tiny extremist parties in order to be able to form a government.

I happen to think that the parliamentary system is overall superior to the system that we have in the U.S.; but now we've managed to incorporate one of the most serious drawbacks of the parliamentary system as well!!!!

And, as a friend pointed out, this illustrates that we don't actually have a two-party system in the U.S.; we have a multiparty system in which certain minor parties are semi-permanently attached to one of the two major parties, but not so firmly attached that they can't throw a major monkey wrench into the workings of the government if they care to. And the "Freedom Caucus" is overtly anti-government, so they are overjoyed by the opportunity to bring things to a halt if they can manage it.

Meanwhile, Ryan has a list of demands that must be met if he's to agree to run for Speaker. The whole thing looks more and more like a hostage negotiation.

This evening Maritus and I discussed which words to use to describe our daughter's behavior. I suggested "contrary," he countered with "pedantic and willfully obtuse," and in the end we settled on "smart-alecky."

She takes after her dad.

Well, I finally made a couple of long-overdue medical appointments (primary care physician, endocrinologist) for myself. Yay?

Still todo: schedule dilated eye exam, optometric exam, mammogram. Oy.

First, thank you! I'm looking forward to this so much, and I hope you'll have fun writing.

As for what I like and don't like, mostly the answer is "it depends." There are very few things I would say a flat-out no to: graphic torture; prolonged graphic violence; incest; rape. But even these, if necessary for the story, character, or setting, might be okay. So some of the prompts include exceptions (e.g. to allow canon-typical levels of violence). What I really don't like to see is violence and cruelty normalized or justified. My attitude about explicit sex depends on the fandom, as noted in the prompts. In general, I prefer sex not to be the raison d'être of a story.

Things I especially like:

backstory, for both characters and setting
underdogs
outsider perspectives
characters being in character
appealing but flawed protagonists
a setting that feels rich and real
unexpected or incongruous friendships
romance that goes against gender and/or sex stereotypes
actually, anything that goes against gender and/or sex stereotypes
non-sentimentalized parent-child relationships
people working through difficult problems together
respect for the original source (which can include being critical)
slice of life stories
endings with a sense of forward motion
good grammar and spelling
things I wouldn't think of myself (like what? I don't know!)

Most of all, I hope you write a story that you like and feel excited about.

As for me, I'm a middle-aged woman who likes to read children's fiction; I'm a scientist who likes to read about magic; I'm a physically inactive person who likes to read about adventures and derring-do. My interests are broad and the polite description of my education would be "eclectic." I started off writing Narnia fic, and that's still the setting for the bulk of my fics, but I am trying to branch out! All of my published fics are here. If you want a general idea of the kind of thing I write, I suggest The Little Sea (Narnia), Giddy (Swallows and Amazons) and/or Pensing (Green Sky).

Notes on specific prompts

I have written a lot more on some of the prompts than others. That is not because I am more interested in receiving a story based on those prompts! It's mainly just the difference between a) a standalone novel vs. a series, and b) newly published work vs. a work that's been around a while.

( Green Sky )

( Queen's Thief )

( Melendy Quartet )

( The Lie Tree )

( Cuckoo Song )

I had no idea there were ever beavers here. And now, some people want to
bring them back!

Meme: When you see this, post three lines from three WIPs you have.

Or in my case, post a short excerpt, 'cause I don't know whether "three lines" means "three sentences" or what, and also I want it to make some sort of sense.

Alex’s assistant, who had gone down with the landing party, confirmed what Alex had suspected from the aerial surveys: the plant life had originated on earth. The other biologists agreed. Somebody had seeded this planet with terran plants, microbes, and invertebrates.

“How long ago was it?” Natacha asked.

“I’ll have a better idea once I do a thorough survey of the ribosomal RNA,” Alex said. “But from the phyla we’ve observed, I’d say no earlier than 200 million years ago, no later than 65 million.”

“So, long before there were humans, then.”

Alex smiled. “Yes. Long before.”

“Then who do you suppose did it?”

"You must not fear me. Have I ever treated you cruelly?”

“No, O my mistress.”

Veledis shook her head ruefully. “And if I had, would you have answered yes?”

The ghost of a smile appeared on Ilda’s face. “Probably not, O my mistress.”

Lucy: Hmm...I think I’m going to say this spell to make me beautiful, even if it has disastrous consequences....Okay, I’m going to say it now, I mean it....I’m saying it...

Aslan [roars]

Lucy: Hah! I knew that would do it. Aslan, you’re here somewhere, I know you are. Come out, come out, wherever you are!...Dammit, you’re going to make me go through this whole rigmarole before you appear, aren’t you? Aren’t you?

Aslan: Yup.

Lucy: Who said that?

Aslan: Not me.

Lucy: Just say the goddamned spell and make these whatever-they-are visible again, will you?! Why make me do it when you can just do it with a flick of your goddamned whiskers?!... [sighs] Oh, have it your way. Now, where was I...Ooh, an eavesdropping spell! Cool! I’d better try this one....Aslan? Aren't you going to stop me?...I’m saying it now. I’m really going to say it....okay, here goes...usually at this point you appear and stop me...hey, are you really going to let me do it this time? Man, you are devious...

Filia has been speaking something she calls "B Language" recently. It's pretty simple: you replace the initial consonants of words with a b sound, and insert a b sound before initial vowels. Bo bit boes bomething bike bis.

I tried to explain to her why B language is difficult to understand (more difficult than, for example, Pig Latin).

As a result, we have a new word in our household: bambiguous!

As I have mentioned before, we have a plum tree that gives us upwards of 70 lbs of plums each year in early summer. The last few years I have attempted to can plum halves in syrup. It has not gone well. So this year I tried something new.

( Many details under the cut... )

The good news is that my master's thesis is done, fully and finally. As in signed, delivered, accepted by my committee and the university, "published."

Yay!

The bad news is that I still have to complete one more requirement to receive my MS. The department requires something called a "culminating experience," which is sort-of-but-not-really a thesis defense. Sort of, because it's an oral presentation. Not really, because it's not tied to the acceptance of the thesis (see above).

So basically, I still have to give a talk. I was supposed to do it this summer, and if I had gotten my act together I would have received my degree on August 15. But did I get my act together? Nooooo. This means extra headaches in the form of paperwork, and it will delay conferral of the degree for another semester. I feel like a slacker. But now I'm working on my talk and trying to set a date for it, so it will happen. It just feels like a let-down. I feel like I ought to be more excited about completing my degree. It's hard to be excited about it given that I was supposed to be finished with it nearly a year ago.

The last six months or so have been difficult. I'm pretty certain that the antidepressant that I've been on since 2003 has finally pooped out; in fact, I suspect that this began happening over a year ago. During the time I've been taking it my doctor has gradually raised the dose to the maximum, so there's not really much choice except a) go off antidepressants altogether or b) try a different one. I am nervous about both of these choices, for various reasons. I suppose there's a third choice: c) continue taking this medication, even though I don't think it's doing anything for me. That doesn't seem very smart.

I think part of my inertia is also due to the fact that I've been in school for a long time, and once I finish my degree I'll have to do something else. And what will it be? I hate job hunting (like most people, I suppose). I know I don't have the right temperament for freelance work. So I'm wondering what I'm going to do with this degree now that I've (almost) got it.

Just a little drizzle this morning. Almost more like a heavy mist.

I wonder when I will stop feeling required to report every little rain shower. If we get the promised El Niño storms, maybe sometime before the end of the year, I hope????

ETA: More drizzle! Yay! So exciting!

The squirrels are scampering around in the Chinese Elm that overhangs our property, biting the twigs off the ends of the branches and dropping them to the ground. Why, squirrels, why?

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Recent Entries

Recent Conversations with Filia

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Actual tada!

content warning: U.S. party politics

descriptors

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Dear Yuletide Writer

Beavers in California!

WIP meme via alexseanchai and edenfalling

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