muchtooarrogant

I went in to Kaiser for a PT appointment for my plantar fasciitis (suddenly MUCH worse since May), and discovered it was cancelled. But COVID boosters were available, so I got one. They only had the Pfizer version, and I braced myself for 24 hours of mini-COVID. What a surprise--nothing more than a sore arm! That has never happened before, and it was a huge relief. I didn't even have to beg for the booster (thanks, RFK Jr.), but I was prepared to. I'm not old enough to be in an at-risk class, but COVID goes straight to my lungs and tanks them.

Still trying to get the last of the fire/smoke-damaged replacement goods bought (deadline is today), and then I'll dive back in to trying to get stuff put away. We've held off on putting down the new rugs until we were sure the cat's head wound had stopped bleeding, and I have one more bookcase to assemble. HalfshellHusband just needs to decide where he wants it, because it's big and heavy. We still have a total of about THREE pictures up in the entire house. There's just so much to do that it's overwhelming, and I find it hard to make headway on anything. :(

I worked on my Idol entry last weekend, and it was a fun one. Our group is getting smaller and smaller, so please read the entries and vote if you can! We need the outside help.

Finally, my previously promised TV recs. Most are on Britbox/Acorn:
Shetland - We rewatched the series from the beginning, and it is a delight. Hard to lose one of the main characters (and have an interloper seem to become the lead, if bossiness is any indication), but the characters are really enjoyable throughout. 10 seasons, and 11 is currently being filmed.
The Chelsea Detective - This gentle detective series really grew on me. 3 seasons so far, and I hope more are coming.
Grace - British police procedural in Brighton, well-written and engaging.
Life on Mars - John Simm (from Grace) also stars in this show about a London detective who is in an accident and is transported back to 1973. OMG, the crude idiots in the 1970s version of policing! Funny and touching.
Recipes For Love And Murder - a South African "cozy" mystery with a Scottish main character. Charming throughout.
The Devil's Hour - Peter Capaldi is fantastic in this captivating show about time-looping and crossover realities.
Doc - An abrasive doctor suffers a brain injury and the resulting amnesia leaves her with a time gap of the last traumatic 8 years that caused her to become such an unpleasant person.

I've probably forgotten some, but they'll probably come to me eventually.

cosmolinguist

I enjoyed the sunset function last night -- after some faffing I managed to get the right amount of light to start from (fairly bright?) and a sound I like (crickets! I really miss crickets, they sound like summer to me and remind me of being a kid).

I fell asleep before the thing went totally dark, which to be fair could be because of the melatonin I treated myself to last night...but I haven't had great success with them lately.

Maybe it was just how tired I was, after a busy day at work, straight in to counseling, then eating dinner, then off to the local queer club where I'd agreed to turn up early and help set up, and by the time we left, about half past 9, I was so tired that I was yawning uncontrollably on the short ride home (and very glad that D had driven me, so that I didn't have to walk or try to get the bus home.

Today felt similarly intense: work, then an important and positive but also exhausting and anxiety-inducing conversation about U.S. politics, then I made dinner, and by the time I'd eaten my parents were ready to talk. I've missed them like three Sundays in a row so couldn't dodge it too much longer.

And that was a mental and emotional marathon of a conversation too: my grandma's house will be sold in two weeks, the upshot of which is my mom's horrible sister was saying horrible things about my mom at an extended-family event and when my mom asked if I wanted my share of the money from the house sale I said "Absolutely not," and she said "I knew you'd say that, but you're going to have some anyway, and I want you to use some of it to get yourself something nice..." Well okay then, I'll be a tax haven or whatever for my parents this one time.

And they talked about politics at me a bit (which again we don't disagree on but I'm so spoiled by my little bubble where people seek consent and check in during these heavy conversations that this drives me up a wall now).

And then we got on to their computer needing to be replaced because support for Windows 10 is ending and they thought they could just take their PC to Best Buy and get the Quicken transferred to a new laptop... I was trying to disabuse them of this notion gently when their iPad battery died because they believe you must always let it discharge completely and they never use the iPad while it's plugged in.

I'd wanted to go to the gym this evening, and suddenly it was bedtime. And my head was too full of things.

And actually I had to rearrange my bedroom a little for the alarm clock. I don't have a bedside table next to the bed; my room has a lot of fitted closets and drawers so there's only really one place for the bed to go and it means the door -- which is at a weird angle to the rest of the room because of the way the whole upstairs is, and the fact that almost every door up here opens the opposite way to the way that'd make the best use of space -- leaves no room on this side of the bed.

Mostly I've gotten around this by using a floor lamp as a bedside lamp, and shoving a piece of wood between the mattress and the bed frame which I use for bedside stuff: glasses, water, phone. But the piece-of-wood shelf is too low for the alarm clock: not much of the light would actually end up in my line of sight which would defeat the whole purpose of the thing. Also it wasn't easy to get plugged in.

Last night I balanced the clock on some good thick books, and I don't know if the light would have woken me up so I set it to make a normal sound. Then I woke up 45 minutes before my alarm went off this morning and leaned over to look at the clock to see when it would start lighting up, like a little kid. So I don't know any more yet about how or if that will work.

So tonight I've bodged a slightly better solution for clock placement next to my bed (and just as I'm writing this do I realize there's a better way to rearrange the things that need to be plugged in because the lamp has a long cord...always so much to think about!). And I hope the nice cricket sounds and dimming orange light do their magic!

I do wonder how well this supplementary daylight works on someone whose eyes are as bad as mine.

But I really should put my phone down now.

cosmolinguist

I was trying to find out where the Minnesota Vikings are training in England, because my dad wanted to tell me where but forgot the name. I was trying to speed up an excruciatingly low-information conversation with my parents.

I didn't find the name, but I did read this and laugh.

Ranch dressing, barbecue sauce and certain types of cereals were among the pallets of foods shipped early, along with Gatorade for days.

I miss ranch dressing too. Probably some of the cereals. Do they get Peanut Butter Captain Crunch?! Maybe I need to find out where they're training after all... I don't care about football but if they have any leftover ranch...!

clauderainsrm posting in

therealljidol

A few words from

clauderainsrm:

(Note: majorica is still in it. She just took a bye. Because of her fast turn around back into the game, and how tired I was last night I mistakenly thought she'd never left. She DID have a bye to use! My apologies!)

For those remaining though, we have a poll. How many people will be leaving us?

I’ll admit that I was advocating for no one leaving. I’m going to be on vacation this week and didn’t want to watch a poll… but the Wheel said there was an elimination, so… all things must bow to the Wheel!

The poll will be a longer than usual though, because I’m not closing it until I come back. :D

Which means longer to read, comment and vote for your favorites - and more time to get other people to do the same!!

*spins to see how many people will be leaving*

1

So make sure to get out there and support your favorites!

The poll will close Tuesday, October 7th at 8pm.

(I get back Monday and will be tired. So giving myself that wiggle room! Enjoy your time with the poll! And good luck everyone!

Poll #33680 ’WheelofChaos-Week11’

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: Just the Poll Creator, participants: 20

Vote For Your Favorites!

alycewilson's entry
5 (25.0%)

bleodswean's entry
6 (30.0%)

drippedonpaper's Bye Week - Votes Do Not Count
3 (15.0%)

eeyore_grrl's Bye Week - Votes Do Not Count
3 (15.0%)

fausts_dream's entry
4 (20.0%)

flipflop_diva's entry
7 (35.0%)

hafnia's entry
5 (25.0%)

halfshellvenus's entry
9 (45.0%)

inkstainedfingertips's entry
7 (35.0%)

legalpad819's entry
3 (15.0%)

l0lita's entry
7 (35.0%)

muchtooarrogant's entry
6 (30.0%)

roina_arwen's Bye Week - Votes Do Not Count
3 (15.0%)

unicornfartz's entry
7 (35.0%)

clauderainsrm posting in

therealljidol

This was the first week where the contestants not only voted on who to accuse, they also voted on who to give the antidote to!

It's funny, because a lot of the votes I received for both seemed pretty divided between two people (for each), with a stray vote or two for others. It came down to a single vote in each.

Let's see what you came up with -

We've gathered to accuse someone with being one of the blood-thirsty killers, one of those blackhearted fiends that slither through the night!!

But who do the majority believe is one of those dark forces?

The assembled residents of LJ Idol Manor hereby accuse

*drum roll*

drippedonpaper

The silence starts getting uncomfortable. So the group moves on to give someone the antidote.

Again, this came down to a single vote. The antidote goes to

bleodswean !

In previous weeks, the antidote was consumed in private. Now, it will be done in full view of everyone.

She takes a big swig from the vial and almost immediately seems to have a lot more energy and vigor. It's as if she was given a new lease on life.... which, is accurate. :)

Congratulations contestants. You thwarted the Killer(s)! You didn't catch one, but you disrupted the plan!

hafnia

( beneath the jump. )

cosmolinguist

It occurred to me the other day that since the SAD-fighting daylight lamp I have is pretty old now, it still has a big light bulb in it that gets really hot even in the short amounts of time it's supposed to be used. And I'm not as poor as I used to be so I could get a new one.

As always when I need to purchase anything, I asked V for help because they're very good at this. They suggested I might want to try one of those sunrise alarm clocks too. Which I'd never thought about because I'm not really an alarm kind of person a lot of the time, thanks to sleep-maintenance insomnia. But when they sent me a link to what they found and I saw it does a "sunset" thing where you can have gradually-diminishing light and sounds to put on at bedtime, I thought that might be worth a try. I've had increasing trouble settling down to sleep in recent months, and I don't love the workarounds I've resorted to.

Both arrived today, so I write this with orangey light and nature sounds next to me, and the daylight lamp set up by my desk downstairs waiting for me in the morning. We'll see how they work.

halfshellvenus

Tony
Idol Wheel of Chaos | Week 11 | 2000 words
Tiger Team

x-x-x-x-x

Tony the Tiger was losing his zip. After seventy-three years of being the Frosted Flakes mascot, he was having to fight harder and harder to hang onto his legacy.

He'd always evolved with the times, even when the fads made no sense. In 1960, his eyes changed from green to gray. A decade later, they became yellow, and his nose turned blue like one of those creepy monkeys. In 1984, he finally became three-dimensional, and by the '90s he was on steroids.

Now, he was just struggling to hang onto his job.

First, it was the tooth veneers. That was after he'd already chipped a fang on a cereal bowl decades earlier. In 2015, he'd had plastic surgery to remove the double chin that had plagued him all his life. The next insult was fur and whisker dye, and he'd had to get tooth implants in the early 2000s (because he was not about to get dentures). There was an entire team of specialists devoted to making him look good.

But they couldn't fix his memory.

"Kellogg's Frosted Flakes! They're good!"

"Cut!"

It was a TV commercial, like any one of the dozens he'd made over the years. With all of that experience behind him, why did he keep blanking on the tag line?

"Let's go again," the director said.

"Kellogg's Clotted Snakes! They're grrrreat!"

"Cut!"

What's wrong with me? Tony wondered. He used to be able to pop those lines out in his sleep, and now he couldn't get through them to save his life.

"Again!" the director said.

"Balrog's Busted Rakes! They're grrrreat!"

"Cut!" the directory yelled. "For crying out loud–take ten!"

( Read more... )

If you enjoyed this story, please vote for it along with many other fine entries here.

bleodswean

This is very long. 3300 words. It is the story of September. The story of my daughter's cardiac ablation. If there are signs and omens in the universe, then this week's prompt is one of them. For me.

( Read more... )

muchtooarrogant

LJI Week 11: Tiger Team
The following story is a continuation of an entry I wrote during LJ Idol's last mini season, Future's Gambit. I wrote this entry to hopefully stand alone, but also decided to provide the link here in case you're interested.

388873: Your next assignment will be in Austin, TX at the Curtain Theatre on October 25.

Jesse Baker: Interesting, will I be in the audience or somewhere else?

388873: In the audience on the ground level.

JB: And the mission?

388873: The theater is located on private property, and the owner, Richard Garriott, is selling the land. October 25 is the theater's last performance date, Garriott will be there, and a deranged individual will attempt to kill him to prevent the sale.( Read more... )

If you enjoyed this entry, I hope you'll consider voting for it here: The Ballot
There were several other great entries this week, and I encourage you to read and vote for your favorites there as well.

Dan

alycewilson

This is my entry for LJ Idol: Wheel of Fate, Week 11. This week's topic is "Tiger Team."

"What should I put on my section of the shield?" one of the Cub Scouts asked me.

"Something that you think represents you or represents the group," I suggested.

As the den leader for a group of first graders, I loved activities that encouraged creativity. Usually, I tried to help them work towards their own ideas rather than just giving them specific suggestions of what to create.

We were working on the Good Knights elective adventure. For those unfamiliar with Scouting America (formerly Boy Scouts USA), "adventures" are thematic units. Upon completing them, the Cub Scouts receive a metal belt loop they can slide onto their uniform belt. The den had voted on Good Knights as one of two electives required to complete the rank of Tiger, along with several other required adventures.

This was the first year of scouting for my son, KFP, and my first year as den leader. I'd shown up at the information meeting at the beginning of the year, because my brother had had such a great time in Scouts. Recently, he'd given me his old Cub Scout shirt and a bunch of Cub Scout hats and neckerchiefs that his son had outgrown. The main reason we attended the info meeting, though, was because the Cub Scout pack was being run by the mother of KFP's good buddy, whom we'll call Connor.

Not only did we walk away from that meeting with KFP registered as a Cub Scout, but I'd somehow volunteered to be the den leader for his den. Since then, it had been a learning experience for us both.

KFP, of course, had learned the many things that Scouting provides to kids: useful real-life skills, camping and outdoor knowledge, and tips on how to be a good neighbor and friend.

I, on the other hand, had learned that I'd better include a hands-on activity if I really wanted these youngsters to listen to any concept I was trying to teach. Although I had purchased the den leader workbook that was supposed to provide me with instructions on teaching each adventure, I soon learned that some of the activities were too involved or too off-topic to get through in a one-hour weekly meeting. And some activities mostly consisted of me, as the adult, talking to them about something like the meaning of the flag.

I spent hours online, researching suggestions from other den leaders and being active in a Facebook group for Cub Scout leaders. And still, I found that some of my well-planned activities just didn't resonate. Like the time we were supposed to draw on construction paper with chalk, and one of the boys spent most of the meeting creating a big, messy pile of chalk dust.

The rewarding moments, where the kids were engaged and seemed to be picking up new concepts, were at constant war with the frustrating moments, when kids were, for example, shooting rubber bands across the room instead of making the wind-up cars I'd planned. Even with the Scoutmaster regularly praising me for helping my den advance towards earning their rank, I still doubted myself and often got a little nervous before the meetings.

My son's journey was a bit different, as he didn't fret about advancement but mostly cared about the social aspect. While KFP already knew Connor, having met when they were babies at library storytime, he was still getting to know the other Tigers. This included one guy, whom we'll call Cyrus, who had joined the pack halfway through the school year.

The Good Knights adventure taught about the ancient concept of chivalry, and the Scouts were encouraged to compare the concepts of chivalry with the Scout Law: "A Scout is Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, and Reverent." They also learned about heraldry, built a castle out of recycled materials (destined to become a favorite hang-out for our kitty Luke), and now, they were making a shield that represented the den.

I'd drawn an outline of a shield and then divided the shield into portions for them to fill in their own way. On the bottom edge and down the center, I'd affixed some beautiful die-cut appliques created by Cyrus's mom, who had her own die-cut machine. I provided the kids with markers, crayons, colored paper, scissors, and glue. They then were asked to fill in their section. But they were all stumped at how to begin.

To get them past their creative block, I asked them to think not just about how they defined themselves but also how they defined their little group. "There are no right answers," I said. "Do whatever you feel fits."

Much to my surprise, they started a conversation about their memories of the den. For them, it came back to one key moment: a "backyard nature hike" we'd taken the night that Cyrus first joined us.

That hike had been part of a different adventure. We were supposed to go outside and use our senses to take notice of the nature around us. Because we met in the evening, and it was fall, we'd stepped outside into the grassy area near the church, only to be met with inky darkness. At first, the kids joked that it was too dark to see any nature.

I told them to listen to the sounds around them. Once they stopped giggling, they could hear a few lonely crickets chirping in the November chill. We could hear the rustle of leaves underfoot.

Our eyes having adjusted, I told them to look around. We saw the silhouettes of trees, backlit by street lights. And then, in a voice suffused with wonder, Cyrus spoke up: "Look up, everyone! The moon!"

Through tree branches, we could see the crescent moon, hanging like a silver smile, beaming down at us. It seemed closer to Earth than usual: as large as a first grader's imagination.

"Wow" was on all of their lips, as they marveled at the moon that seemed to have been hung for their pleasure. When we talked about the experience after going back inside, the moon was the one thing they all remembered.

And now, all these months later, they agreed that that moment had been special. As they worked on their individual sections of the shield, they all chose to include their version of the moon: a symbol of the first moment they came together as a unit.

We'd had plenty of fun experiences as a group before Cyrus joined the den, but in their intuitive way, they'd gotten to the heart of the activity. The moment that defined them as a group was the first time they'd all shared something meaningful. I realized, then, that this journey we were all taking together meant something to me, as well.

The Pack 63 shield, on fading dark blue card stock, with a shield drawn in black marker. Each of four sections is filled with cut and glued paper and a few marker and crayon line drawings. They all include either a crescent moon or, in one case, a full moon.

A couple hours after posting this, I learned that Dave Biche, the assistant Scoutmaster of KFP's troop, died suddenly over the weekend. We had just spent a happy time with him the week before, building LEGO structures at a meeting. He became the primary instructor of Scout material for KFP once he moved up to regular Scouts, and his good humor and unflagging community spirit set a good example for those he led. He will greatly missed. I'd like to dedicate this post to him.

cosmolinguist

I did a photoshoot for the local LGBT charity a few years ago when they were looking for disabled people to photograph. And the other day, while I was in the car somewhere between Ullapool and Avimore, I got an e-mail with what looks like a similar photoshoot, this time for LGBT+ men (and non-binary people "and their allies"). And it's today and I forgot about it, but Thursday night I did try to look at the form they asked us to fill in. I could do the page of demographics stuff: age, gender, sexuality, disability, etc. But I stopped at the next page which asks

What does being a man (or being seen as a man) mean to you, and how do you express that in your own way?

What changes would you like to see in how society understands masculinity, and how do you think men can better support each other and their communities?

I had no idea what to do with these. I wandered away from the computer and promptly forgot about it until now. The photoshoot is today, it's going on now, so obviously that's not happening. And I never thought it was likely because of that timing; we're all about as exhausted and low on spoons as I thought we'd be. And that's a shame; with a cis man, a trans man, and a non-binary person who had femininity forced upon them and has only recently been able to reject that, I feel like my little family potentially is a great example of different relationships to manhood/masculinity.

Reminded of it now when I opened Firefox to look at something else, I see there's a couple more questions on the page that I didn't even get as far as reading the other day:

What message would you give to someone exploring their gender or identity — at any age — who might be looking for a role model?

What do you see as the biggest challenges or issues facing men in 2025, and what support or resources do you think men — and their loved ones — need to navigate these challenges and thrive?

Interesting questions. On the way home from the gym, D gave our local pal, another D, home and we got talking about driving and the behavior of strangers in their own cars. We talked about how toxic masculinity extends its tentacles even there, with young men on a speed awareness course talking about being overtaken as a personal insult, and me sharing a couple of quotes I've seen from blind people talking about the appeal of self-driving cars for them being about feeling like a man because they can be the family taxi again.

Last night I brushed my teeth, flossed and had another try at trimming my beard. I felt so good, clean and ready for bed.

In one way I'm like man I've added another body-maintenance chore?! but it's totally worth it because the feeling of my neck being smooth because I just shaved it is so so much nicer than it being smooth because hair never grew there in the first place. Somehow this is about being a man (even though facial hair is not necessary or sufficient to be one).

I laid awake a long time after I went to bed, but I spent some of that time smelling the remnant of shaving cream my brain still associates with D, and grinning. As I lay there and thought about it more, about how negatively I'm used to hearing shaving being talked about because almost everyone I know who talks about it is transfem, has skin or other attributes which are particularly sensitive to the physical necessities of shaving, or both. And just the sentence that society expects men not to care/try/whatever when it comes to appearance or grooming (that's why a whole word had to be invented for metrosexuals!) But it only now occurs to me that I was actually much more likely to be scruffy/smelly/whatever as a girl or woman, because I was so uncomfortable in my body, mentally detaching myself from it as much as possible, and extremely put off by all of the options for appearance or grooming that were available to me in that gender role. Now I feel like I'm more successful at being well-groomed just because it's more fun or appealing, more satisfying or soothing. Somehow this is about being a man too.

netgirl_y2k

I have had a circular journey with the movie The Mandalorian and Grogu. At first I thought 'That's not a real movie', then I thought 'Well, maybe the movie is real but that's obviously a joke name the internet has given it,' and then I wondered 'Did Disney forget to swap out the working title?' And now, having seen the trailer I have come all of the way back around to 'This movie isn't real.'

Speaking of movies that aren't real, The Thursday Murder Club is less an actual movie than it is an extremely pricey episode of Midsomer Murders

Telly is real, though.

I frickin' adored Alien: Earth even though, had you been in the room with me while I was watching it, all you would have heard was a near constant litany of 'OH, NO. EW, GROSS. AGHH! THAT'S SO UNPLEASANT. PUT THAT BACK WHERE YOU FOUND IT OR SO HELP ME!

Some things I particularly enjoyed: Boy Kavalier being the sort of SBF/Altman/Musk amalgamation so icky that you want to join the Xenomorph war on he side of the Xenomorphs. Weyland Yutani's continued insistence on sending people so underpaid/underequipped/unqualified that they don't know about shatterproof glass to collect the universe's most dangerous biological specimens. The unsubtle, tonally jarring, but completely epic mic drops at the end of each episode. The adult actors playing children in grown up bodies by moving like they didn't know what a back spasm was. That they didn't try to hide what the Xenomorph looked like as though we didn't all know.

One thing that I did not like: The horrifying eyeball monster/evil sheep combo. Kill it with fire. And rocks. And rocks which are on fire.

'This is not a good television show,' I say to myself at three o'clock in the morning as I hit 'next episode' on The Hunting Wives. I guess I will once again reiterate that 'good' and 'great' are not the same thing.

My two favourite bits of this show were i) the flashback to how the main character met her husband and it's just that he happened to be the first man who ambled into her field of view when she was having a moment of gay panic, ii) when one of the secondary characters keeps saying to the woman she's in love with that they can't be together openly, and, like, obviously not, because she's a horrible murderer who is only pretending to take you back so she can find out if your sheriff husband (also gay) suspects her, but I do not think that is what you meant.

A lot of the Marvel telly stuff of late has had a whiff of 'What's the point?' about it, having obviously been put in motion before Marvel pivoted and now being sent out to die, which is a bummer in the case of the two most recent animated shows which were pretty solid.

Eyes of Wakanda had an awesome art style, expanded the world of Wakanda without getting tangled in the weeds of Boseman's passing, and gave us an Iron Fist that didn't suck.

I don't think anyone had particularly high expectations of a spin-off from a 2021 episode of a show that has since fizzled out, but Marvel Zombies went so much harder than it had to. It was neat to see Kamala, Shang-Chi, Kate and other characters that I don't think are coming back in live action in any meaningful way get room to play.

It did seem to be angling for a second season at the end there, but, like...come on, bro, be realistic.

clauderainsrm posting in

therealljidol

I've been listening to people's comments and I asked the Wheel about an adjustment. There was a BIG item that is on the Wheel that I asked if I could just go ahead and bring it out now. The Wheel said no. Which, is probably smart. Let the Wheel have it's time to bring about the chaos on it's own schedule.

The other idea was approved though.

So the antidote is going to be working a little differently. Rather than it staying in the hands of one person, STARTING NOW, that decision is going to be made by the group.

Now you all have a stake in who lives and who dies. It's not just the actions of the killer(s), you will be able to predict their next move and get ahead of them, or fail to protect the next victim!
This will take place before the entry deadline, at the same time you are submitting accusations! So you could actually stop the next death - if you guess the target right!

Just add it to your accusation email (clauderainsrm@gmail.com). Just make sure to let me know which choice is for which thing. :D

***

Everyone comes out to Idol for something different. I think that's one of the biggest concepts for people to try to get their heads around. A lot of them fail to do it, because it's easier to assume that everyone is here for the same reason you are. Just like it's easier to think that everyone agrees on what is a good entry/who is the best/who "deserves" what.... these competing believes are at the center of Idol. It's part of what makes me love what has been created here over the last nearly two decades.

I've been thinking a lot lately about why this special event is all twists... part of it was the one just before had hardly any - so it seemed like the next natural step. People complained about the lack of twists. Be there are people who don't like that there are so many. :D Again, it's because people are here for different reasons...

But all of you end up accomplishing the same thing - you write absolutely brilliant entries. Some is fiction. Some non-fiction or poetry... over the years pretty much anything you could think of to create in this space has been created!

The twists were put in place early on for a couple big reasons - (1) to keep things interesting, not only for the contestants to keep you invested, but also the audience who wasn't playing. Also for me! (2) to keep things fair. Especially early on in Idol there were people with massive, active friends groups. There were also people who came in knowing no one. What was to keep someone coming in and just dominating the entire time with no hope for anyone else? Twists. It keeps people on their toes and in a lot of cases it doesn't mean that it's the end of the road for anyone with a more supportive base. It just means that the majority of other contestants need to be OK with their winning. :) Which is it's own secret sauce!

This time was different than most in that I didn't try to make things as fair as possible. I put everything on the Wheel to make it as chaotic as possible, as interesting as possible! It's the one time when even I don't know what's going to happen next!!

I came up with a bunch of ideas, and had the Wheel decide which ones were going forward and which were not. There are some on the scrap heap that I loved and some that got through that I didn't. But that's part of why I kept saying from the moment I came up with the idea, to every single step of the way before sign ups and again over the first couple weeks that this was going to be the Idol version of Calvinball!!!

Honestly, we might end up with predictable winners. Or we might not! My only real hope when it comes to that is that people keep using it as an excuse to write some fantastic entries, to create! Because that's the one thing that everyone can agreed on, that when you show up here you are going to be doing a hell of a lot of writing!!! :)

cosmolinguist

While we were in Stornoway, I noticed that my phone wasn't getting text messages when I expected them for 2FA.

Again. This happened a few months ago and the phone company's suggestion was to try my sim card in another phone. Which D (who can see these tiny things) was obliging enough to do by swapping it in to his phone.

And (with a lot of me running up and down stairs between where V was and where he was asking people to text each other and letting them know when the other had so we could check if the text went through) that actually worked!

But then (with a lot of me running up and down stairs asking people to text each other and letting them know...) it turned out that his phone/sim card was now having the same problem! Only worse! I felt so bad for having "infected" him with this, a version so bad it wasn't fixed for a few days when he got a whole new sim card in the mail... Even though I didn't actually do anything and it isn't like Independence Day where you can infect a gadget with techno-gremlins like this.

I didn't want any of this to happen to any of us again, and I figured I could put it off until we were home anyway because it's rare that I actually get SMSes (other than for automated stuff I mostly ignore and the 2FA; I could use other options for that) and besides D needed his little phone-takey-aparty kit with the tiny pokey stick for the sim card which of course he didn't have with him so that settled it.

And I forgot about this entirely (because I never think about SMSes) until this morning. The ongoing dregs of the restructure at work have taken another fabulous colleague from me; she had sent me a message saying goodbye with her personal email and phone number. So without thinking much of it I sent her a text...and then I got a reply text a minute later!

Which is a good thing, because I soon after got a text from the pharmacy saying my meds are ready for collection and I'm about to run out, but then even more importantly I got one from the gender clinic telling me I have finally made it near the top of the waiting list for Voice and Communication Therapy.

Only fifteen months after I was told I'm near the top of the waiting list for voice therapy, only three months after I was assured that I really am near the top of the list, I've been sent a form asking me when I'm free and stuff shout accessing the sessions.

The form also asked me why I want voice therapy, which feels so much less urgent than it was when I was referred for this 3+ years ago. Then, my reason could have been described as "I can carefully sculpt my appearance to avoid most misgenderings, especially online, but I'm sick of being misgendered by everyone who can hear but not see me and I work with a lot of blind people." Two years of planned manitizer has mostly taken care of that problem.

But I am if anything even more interested in voice therapy now because I feel like I've been given by the 2+ years of testosterone a...tool? weapon?...that I don't really know how to operate properly. And, nothing against YouTube videos and the other online DIY resources, but I've never felt good about steering my (post-)transition life by them. To say the least (I still have to write about how the whole top surgery thing is going... I can't just now but let's just say that the two big headings will be Medical Anti-Fatness and Why are Healthcare Professionals Telling Me I Have to Go on Facebook and Reddit).

But anyway, the SMS with the link to the form also included a boilerplate NHS thing:

If we do not hear from you within 7 days, we will assume you do not want to access VCT, and you will be discharged from the VCT service. You can re-refer at a later date by contacting...

I was gone for longer than seven days, imagine that had been in the U.S. where I wouldn't have access to my SMSes, or imagine my phone hadn't fixed itself this time. I had no other indication of this information, no email or attempt at a phone call or anything.

It's maddening when a referral I've been waiting three years for depends on my phone working properly (and a bunch of other aspects of my life working properly!) during any given one-week period.

cosmolinguist

Last night after a long day in the car (Falkirk aside), when we finally got home I was so excited to be out of the car that I popped out like a Jack-in-the-box, grabbed some random stuff to haul inside, and all but stumbled through the door only to be met with a cheerful greeting from

angelofthenorth, the delicious smell of mushroom risotto cooking, and even the Doof playing -- picking up seamlessly from when we'd just had it on in the car.

And then this evening she asked if saag paneer would be okay for supper and that's my *favorite* curry, and I came back from yoga to find her already happily eating it and the other two in the kitchen just dishing up, I could hear them being silly with each other.

It's so cozy and I was so grateful, having spent the whole day so discombobulated and exhausted that I needed a nap before yoga and I didn't get as much work done as I should have. Home cooked food is very recombobulating!

cosmolinguist

Recently D sent me the link to a 2019 Dreamwidth entry of his about an outing to Anderton Boat Lift that stands out in our minds for two reasons: one is that it's the day before we ended up dating and we had no idea but the other is that he mentions that we, he and I, had been on about going to Anderton Boat Lift for ages by that point.

And the other feat of canal engineering we always talked about wanting to visit is the Falkirk Wheel.

But unlike the Anderton Boat Lift which I could rush my work day to finish a bit early and be picked up in time to get there for a late lunch, or the Barton Swing Bridge which is so close we biked to it last summer (or maybe two summers ago), Falkirk is very far away so we'd never found an excuse to be in the vicinity.

Until this Stornoway trip. D has a complicated spreadsheet with all the moving parts for such a trip and realized that if we stayed at the further of their two usual spots after the ferry back to the mainland, it would leave us with little enough driving to do on the second day that we could spend some time in Falkirk.

We saw the Kelpies first, which I'd heard about as motorway landmarks from haggis but never thought about as a destination. We had so much fun there though that we stayed past the time D had expected our visit there to last and got home at 8pm instead of 7pm. The weather was beautiful, there were good dogs everywhere, the visitor centre had a very good video explaining the history of Falkirk and was full of excellent tactile models: the kelpies made of Legos, little models of them to scale with world landmarks like the Statue of Liberty, the Sphinx, the Christ the Redeemer statue in Brazil...

Then it was on to the main event. First we had lunch at the kind of place where we'd have wanted to sit outside even if we weren't always doing that now anyway, we ate in the literal shadow of the wheel. I was sitting across from D who when the wheel was moving was just smiling at it in a way that reminded me of icons of saints gazing upon some heavenly scene, full of proper awe and joy. So I got to see the Falkirk Wheel and I got to see how happy it made him, and I can't decide which I enjoyed more.

We finished eating just in time for D and I to take the next tour, where you get in a boat, go up to the aqueduct and along the canal a little while you listen to a local do their spiel (ours was called Gary! and he complimented my #TeamGary t-shirt which I happened to be wearing that day).

Sadly V wasn't feeling up to it: this was Day 9 of traveling and being so much busier than usual was already catching up with them. But they made the right decision; they know so much about narrowboats and canals anyway and the tour was very audio-based and they'd have struggled to get much out of it. They had a nice time in the sunshine watching ducks and moorhens and more good dogs, and buying the cutest fridge magnet in the gift shop, a little abstract model of the wheel that you can spin like a fidget toy, which is delightful.

For a few years now I've been desperate to show him the Aerial Lift Bridge in Duluth, and this has only deepened my desire to make this happen. It doesn't seem overly likely any time soon, but then the Falkirk Wheel has only existed for 23 years and we must have spent at least half of that talking about wanting to go see it, so I'm okay to wait a while.

clauderainsrm posting in

therealljidol

After a dramatic elimination therealljidol.dreamwidth.org/1202102.html

There is a new twist therealljidol.dreamwidth.org/1202303.html and a new prompt! https://therealljidol.dreamwidth.org/1202480.html

***

How are you going to be celebrating my birthday weekend?

clauderainsrm posting in

therealljidol

The prompt for this week is

Tiger Team

The deadline to link your entry back to this thread is Tuesday, September 30th at 7pm ET.

Have fun!

clauderainsrm posting in

therealljidol

*spins the wheel*

It's another twist!

But which twist shall it be? Only one way to find out!
*spins the wheel again*

~~Bye Necklace~~

Whoever receives the lowest amount of votes without getting eliminated, in Week 11, will receive 2 extra byes - TO GIVE TO OTHER PEOPLE!! It's a great way to make new friends. :)

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Dan

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