lirazel | Reading

ysobel posting in

Dear Miss Manners: I prepared some hand-dipped chocolate goodies and delivered them to a couple of ladies in my neighborhood. A few days later, one of the ladies called me to tell me she was diabetic and couldn’t eat them.

I was sad that “the thought that counts” must not come into play anymore. I felt her phone call was rude and unnecessary.

Am I being petty, or was she being rude? It will make me think twice next time I try to be thoughtful. This friend certainly won’t see goodies from me again.

Then you will not want to hear that this lady spent the intervening time fuming over the thoughtlessness displayed in putting her health at risk — as if, instead of trying to brighten her day, you had attempted to force-feed her.

Miss Manners recommends saying, “I’m sorry to hear that. Thanks for letting me know” — and then tossing the conversation in the memory dustbin and, as was your plan, not repeating the gesture. This is also an approximation of what Miss Manners would have counseled the lady with diabetes, had she been asked.

used_songs

#2
Journaling: The romance of summer! What do you love? Write about anything you feel sentimental about or that gets your heart pumping.

I love that still, quiet moment after you turn off the car or the TV or whatever and you just sit for a moment. It's like a peaceful reset or transition from driving home or finishing dinner (which is when we mostly watch TV). I always like to just sit in that moment.

I love Glassworks: I. Opening by Philip Glass. It gives me that same feeling of peace that those moments of quiet do, an opportunity to center myself.

I love our backyard, even now that we are surrounded by houses. I love the trees, the deck, the garden, the birds, all of the bugs (except the mosquitos), the lizards, the sunflowers that sprang up of their own volition, the pergola ... just all of it. I love having an outdoor space.

#3
Journaling prompt: What are your favorite summer-associated foods?

Raspas. When I was a kid we would always get raspas and I loved them. They are a bit too sweet for me now, but I love the idea of them and the memory.

Mangonadas. Seriously. They are the best, especially when it's hot out.Those are some of my favorite flavors.Chamoy is delicious!

Watermelon. Once when I was small, my parents borrowed our grandparents' camper and we went to a park in Arkansas. My dad bought a watermelon and he tethered it in a net in the river which was ice cold. That night we cut it up and ate it. The platonic ideal of watermelon! I think about it a lot.You can put one in an ice chest in icy water and it comes close.

adore

The day was bright, as though it was making an effort to be cheerful. When Sanne stepped out, she felt an unreasonable pressure to match its mood. She stepped in the centres of the cobblestones in the sidewalk, avoiding the edges and cracks, a spell she had been doing since she was a child. Sometimes it was a spell for calmness and focus. And sometimes it was a spell for avoiding fissures in time.

Now it was a spell for putting one foot in front of the other, because she hadn’t wanted to leave the house today. She'd wanted to stay in bed all day, which wasn’t good for magical hygiene, stagnating in your own energy.

There was a flower growing out of a crack in the sidewalk. Sanne paused and went around it because it seemed to rude to step over it. She rummaged in her bag, took out a vial, uncorked it, and brushed a tiny bit of pollen into it. She stoppered the vial and continued.

She’d embarked on this walk to make herself feel better, but she had a new destination now. She walked until the Materialry. The Keeper of Materials smiled at her as she came in, which made the walk worth it.
( Read more... )

Current Mood: accomplished

pauraque

sunshine_revival's next challenge is:

Snack Shack
Journaling prompt: What are your favorite summer-associated foods?
Creative prompt: Draw art of or make graphics of summer foods, or post your favorite summer recipes.

When I was growing up, the most coveted summer treat was universally acknowledged to be the It's-It. This is an ice cream sandwich made with soft oatmeal cookies, coated in a thin layer of chocolate. It was invented in San Francisco in 1928 and for decades it was sold only at the local amusement park Playland at the Beach. The Playland era was before my time, though; now It's-Its are sold prepackaged in stores and from roving food trucks all over the Bay Area.

I didn't realize until I moved away that It's-Its are made by a local company and nobody outside California had heard of them. I also didn't realize what a weird name they have until I tried to explain to other people what they were. "Itsits? What does that even mean?" I guess it made sense in the context of the 1920s when everyone was talking about "it girls" and having "it." (The movie It starring Clara Bow sounds like a horror title now, but it didn't in 1927!)

As a kid I never questioned it. The origin of the name did not matter. All that mattered was sitting on a sunny park bench after waiting patiently in line at the food truck, and finally biting into your precious It's-It, which instantly started melting, and trying to contain the ice cream in the flimsy crinkly plastic but always failing, having it drip all over your hands as it squeezed out from between the cookies with the chocolate coating cracking into melty bits. Pure summer childhood bliss.

You can actually order It's-Its online if you're in the US, and I've read that in recent years they've been selling them at brick and mortar stores outside California, though I haven't run into any in the wild. I've been told that they're pretty good even if the mere sight of them does not overwhelm you with nostalgia.

scripsi

Journaling prompt: What are your favorite summer-associated foods?

Creative prompt: Draw art of or make graphics of summer foods, or post your favorite summer recipes. Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

My favourite sumer food probably sounds very boring, but if one takes care to use the best quality possible, it’s delicious. Boiled white fish with new potatoes, clarified butter and chopped hard-boiled eggs. When I was a child the fish we used was northern pike, which my father or grandfather had just caught, but nowadays we usually buy fresh cod. The new potatoes come from the garden. The clarified butter must be real butter, and organic eggs taste the best. One can mix the butter and the eggs, but we prefer to keep them separate, so each can take after taste.

Also, for me this tastes best eaten outside the summer house, on dishes called “Grön berså” (green bower) by the Swedish designer Stig Lindberg in 1960.

osprey_archer

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

I mentioned last week how much I was enjoying Hilary McKay’s The Time of Green Magic, and I continued to enjoy it all the way through. Just the kind of children’s fantasy I like: an old house all covered in ivy, magic that is strange and lovely and just a bit scary (as unknown and unknowable things should be), and just enough real world issues (in this case, the children in a blended family learning to get along) to give the story some emotional ballast without making the magic a mere metaphor for anything.

I also finished Marilyn Kluger’s The Wild Flavor, part food memoir and part foraging manual for wild foods in the Midwest and Northeast. Morels! Persimmons! Hickory nuts! And more! An inspiring read for anyone with foraging aspirations, and an appetizing read for anyone who likes reading about food.

What I’m Reading Now

I’ve begun Lord Peter, a collection of all of Dorothy Sayers’ Peter Wimsey short stories. The second story begins with Peter Wimsey admiring a comely French girl who turns out ( spoilers, if anyone cares about spoilers for a hundred year old short story? )

What I Plan to Read Next

I’ve got the Max in the Land of Lies! How will our twelve-year-old spy handle himself in Nazi Germany?? Tune in to find out!

summerofhorrorexchange posting in

yuletide

Summer of Horror could use your help! We have one pinch hit left, due July 11 at 11:59 PM EDT or negotiable. Minimums are 500 words or a piece of original art (no manips), either digital or on unlined paper. For claiming and more details, go here.

PH 3 - FIC, ART - Psychonauts (Video Games), Higurashi no Naku Koro ni | Higurashi When They Cry, Umineko no Naku Koro ni | When the Seagulls Cry, Mortal Kombat (Video Games 1992-2020)

Thank you!

classicfilmex

From the rules:

Original characters: Original characters are not eligible for nomination in this exchange. If you wish to explore a character's backstory (their romantic or sexual history for example), nominate them using the SOLO: name (fandom) format, and include an explanation in your prompts when you sign up.

If you nominated OCs, please edit those nominations accordingly, and we'll get them approved right away! Thanks a lot.

hunningham

Using focusmate is good for me, not just at the getting started but having 50min sessions with a begin and an end means that I have little breaks, I stretch and I drink water. Also I work better, and I'm less likely to disappear down that rabbit hole and emerge later into daylight, blinking and going "what do you mean 100 years have passed?"

Nice things on focusmate

Seeing the same people pop up again & again and realising that they have added me as a favourite.
Someone told me that my room looked like a prose. English was not their first language, and I was delighted with the compliment. Someone else asked me if my room was a fake background. I said 'no, real' and they looked very suspicious.
Yesterday I spent half-an-hour watching a guy mediate on screen. He draped a towel over his head.

bluedreaming

text: sunshine revival july 2025, image: fluffy white clouds in a summer blue sky and the hint of power lines like white foss

sunshine_revival

I have been working on the challenges, all signs to the contrary, so I figured I’d better just get this post up even if it’s on my phone (always a fun experiment when there’s more formatting than usual).

I’m not really a journalling person, so it seems like I’ll be going with the creative prompts.

As always, this is also a hello post 👋

( Friending Meme )

( Challenge #1 )

( Challenge #2 )

austenmod posting in

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colorcoded posting in

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matsushima posting in

agonyaunt

I’ve been working at a university library for a little over a year now and have had a hard time making friends. Shortly after I started, I befriended a coworker, “Morgan,” who is also relatively new, and it has been nice getting to know them and commiserating about how hard it is to make friends in a new city and workplace.

Over the course of our friendship, Morgan has opened up more and more about the interpersonal problems they’ve had with our colleagues. They describe scenarios where collaborative projects get stalled because other stakeholders stop communicating with them, coworkers they were getting lunch with on a weekly basis suddenly stop responding to chats, and other frustrations with navigating bureaucracy that interferes with their work. It’s hard to tell if Morgan is becoming increasingly disgruntled or if they are now very comfortable with telling me their unfiltered feelings.

I’ve also had to navigate some fairly horrendous problems as a new employee, so it’s been nice to have a coworker who understands and sympathizes with our (somewhat) dysfunctional workplace culture. Morgan has made it very clear to me that they are only here for the time being and have already decided that this is not the city they would like to stay in long-term. Personally, I want to retire here and have worked very hard to improve my situation. It feels very different for me today than it did a year ago, which is why it’s become increasingly difficult to navigate Morgan’s constant negativity.

Morgan can be a lot of fun to talk to, but they’re in an increasingly bad mental space at work. They frequently come to my office to gripe for an hour or two in spite of how busy I am; I’m always actively working and trying to concentrate when they pop into my office. To my fault, they ask if it’s a good time to chat and I always say yes because they’ve been so hurt by our coworkers pulling away and I’m afraid of upsetting them. On top of this, they’ve become increasingly argumentative with me when they’re looking to talk. Again, I would say this is my fault because they are looking to vent and I’m always trying to provide solutions, so I think it’s taken as invalidating Morgan’s feelings.

Morgan is in such a bad mental space at work that seemingly any type of feedback or dialogue that they disagree with comes off as an attack. One of the issues they’ve had with multiple colleagues is that they invalidate Morgan’s feelings. Morgan has described situations where they complained about something to a colleague and rather than agreeing with and consoling Morgan, they essentially said to look on the bright side. For example, Morgan was upset about a change made to their office and the coworker responded with, “At least you have your own office.” Morgan has many examples of conversations like this and cites it as a workplace culture issue. In addition, Morgan holds on to comments like this (that took place months and months ago) and often refers back to them as examples of how bad things are. At this point, I am very afraid of upsetting Morgan because I like them, and their hyper-sensitivity is a bit triggering in light of all the reparative work I’ve done for my position and unit.

One more detail about Morgan that I think plays a factor is their odor. Morgan has a strong mildewy smell wherever they go. The odor fills a room and I can often tell if they’ve recently been in a space because of the smell. I believe Morgan maintains good hygiene practices, but that they are unaware of the fact that a lot of their clothing has developed a pungent mildew odor. Depending on how strongly they smell, it can be very difficult to spend extended periods of time with them. I’ve avoided spending time with them outside of work, like inviting them to my home, because the smell is so off-putting and am wondering if it has contributed to their interactions with coworkers.

How do I take a step back with Morgan without further inciting them?

( Alison's answer )

- how do I step back from a friendship with an intensely negative and argumentative coworker?

Current Mood: seen

minoanmiss posting in

agonyaunt

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/07/my-colleagues-are-upset-that-were-not-speaking-truth-to-power-on-social-media.html#c

( Read more... )

Current Mood: curious

satsuma

I recently attended a class on Ferns at a local botanical garden. The class was a mix of botanical info, caring for ferns in a garden context, understanding how they function ecologically in the wild, and recognizing any ferns you might come across locally--I was mostly interested in the last two points so that's what these notes reflect.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: studious

brithistorian

Yesterday I finished reading Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. I enjoyed it, but was frustrated with the ending — it seemed like it didn't end so much as just stopped.[^1] Today, I learned from cmcmck's comment on my July book record that this is actually the first book of a trilogy. This makes me feel better about the ending — I'll give an author more leeway on an ending when I know that a book is part of a series. But even if Mantel does give us a satisfying ending at the end of volume 3, that's still not going chance the fact that, as much as I enjoyed the book, it feels like slice-of-life Thomas Cromwell fanfiction. (Of course, because it was professionally published and won awards, the literary establishment would quarrel with that characterization.)

[^1] Well, it didn't just stop — it reached a stopping place where one of the subplots had just resolved — but it didn't reach an actual conclusion.

brithistorian

Yesterday when I was in the grocery store, the music system started playing Elton John and Kiki Dee's "Don't Go Breaking My Heart", and my mind started rewriting the lyrics, turning into part of a M/M mafia musical rom-com. Specifically, it's the song in Act 2 where the two main characters realize they have feelings for each other. Below are the new lyrics I wrote for the first verse, where person A is the small business owner (I'm thinking baker) who's in debt to the mafia[^1] boss and person B is the thug sent out by the mafia boss to collect on a loan.

A: Don't go breaking my arm. B: I'm s'posed to shatter your knee. A: Tell Vinny I'll get him his money. B: He's not so patient like me.

[^1] I just looked it up (because of course I did), when using mafia in a generic sense you don't capitalize it, and when referring to a specific organization (e.g. the Sicilian Mafia), you do.

rachelmanija

Ellie is a Lipan Apache teenager in a world where magic, vampires, ghosts, and so forth are known to be real. She’s inherited the family gift for raising ghosts, though she only raises animals; human ghosts always come back wrong, and she’s happy with the companionship of her beloved ghost dog Kirby, not to mention her pet ghost trilobite. But when her cousin, who supposedly died in a car crash, returns in a dream to tell her he was murdered, she finds that knowing who killed him isn’t as helpful as one might imagine…

Ellie’s cousin Trevor told her the name of his killer, Abe Allerton from Willowbee, but he didn’t know why or how he was killed. Ellie enlists her best friend, Jay, a cheerleader with just enough fairy blood to give him pointy ears and the ability to make small lights. More importantly, he’s good at research. They learn that Willowbee is in Texas, near the town where Trevor lived with his wife, Lenore, and their baby. Jay brings in help: his older sister’s fiancé, Al, who’s a vampire.
All of them, plus Ellie’s parents and a ghost mammoth belonging to her grandmother, play a part in the effort to solve the mystery of Trevor’s death and bring his murderer to justice. And so, in a sense, will a major character who’s long dead (and not a ghost) but who’s a big presence in Ellie’s life: Six-Grand, her great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother, the last person to have a gift as powerful as Ellie’s… and who vanished forever into the underworld.

I enjoyed this quite a bit. I mean, come on. GHOST TRILOBITE. GHOST MAMMOTH. It’s funny, it’s sweet, it’s heartfelt, it has lovely chapter heading illustrations, and it’s got some gorgeous imagery - I particularly loved a scene where the world transforms into an oceanic underworld, and Ellie sees a pod of whales swimming in the sky of a suburban neighborhood.

It's marketed as young adult and Ellie is seventeen, but the book feels younger (and so does Ellie.) I'd have no qualms handing it to an advanced nine-year-old reader, but it also appeals to adult me who misses the time when "urban fantasy" meant "our world, but with ghosts, elves, and so forth."

yourlibrarian posting in

tv_talk

Laptop-TV combo with DVDs on top and smartphone on the desk

In which shows does “place” play an important role in the success of the show to you? This could be a geographical location or some other significant space.

sasheneskywalker posting in

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lirazel

Scribblings

July 2025

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Page Summary

ysobel in agonyaunt - (no subject)
used_songs - Sunshine Revival: Challenges 2 and 3
adore - You See
pauraque - Sunshine Revival Challenge #3
scripsi - Sunshine Challenge #3
osprey_archer - Wednesday Reading Meme
summerofhorrorexchange in yuletide - Post-deadline pinch hit for Summer of Horror
classicfilmex - rules reminder
hunningham - Focusmate
bluedreaming - sunshine challenge 2025
austenmod in fandomcalendar - Jane Austen Exchange - Nominations Open
colorcoded in fandomcalendar - Incest Bingo Round 4
matsushima in agonyaunt - how do I step back from a friendship with an intensely negative and argumentative coworker?
minoanmiss in agonyaunt - Ask a Manager: my colleagues are upset that we’re not “speaking truth to power” on social media
satsuma - Notes on Native Ferns
brithistorian - Book reaction: Wolf Hall (Hilary Mantel)
brithistorian - Musical fanfic
rachelmanija - Elatsoe, by Darcie Little Badger
yourlibrarian in tv_talk - TV Tuesday: Location, location, location
sasheneskywalker in fandomcalendar - Multifandom: Enemies to Lovers Exchange 2025

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entirely ruined her disposition with books

Reading

(no subject)

Sunshine Revival: Challenges 2 and 3

You See

Sunshine Revival Challenge #3

Sunshine Challenge #3

Wednesday Reading Meme

Post-deadline pinch hit for Summer of Horror

rules reminder

Focusmate

sunshine challenge 2025

Jane Austen Exchange - Nominations Open

Incest Bingo Round 4

how do I step back from a friendship with an intensely negative and argumentative coworker?

Ask a Manager: my colleagues are upset that we’re not “speaking truth to power” on social media

Notes on Native Ferns

Book reaction: Wolf Hall (Hilary Mantel)

Musical fanfic

Elatsoe, by Darcie Little Badger

TV Tuesday: Location, location, location

Multifandom: Enemies to Lovers Exchange 2025

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July 2025

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