Archive | September 2016

Weekend, with firewood and Fairy Doors

Sep7

Of everything I am enjoying about my new job, long holiday weekends with no guilt may be at the top of the list.

For all that it was a holiday, I had a very productive weekend! Saturday saw a trip to the outlet mall – yay super-cheap sales – with T. and my Mom. (My mother lives 2 hours away; the outlet mall is halfway for both of us. Super-convenient!)

On the way home, we followed a big plywood sign: “Giant Yard Sale This Way!”

And it was pretty giant, I have to admit. Three tents, six non-tented tables, a display case – it was more like an antique store in someone’s yard.

We got a 1″ drill bit, a hatchet, and a bunch of Tupperware. 🙂

Then we found … an antique store in someone’s barn. And there I got… dun dun dunn… An Eastman (Kodak) photo cutter, cast iron, heavy as sin and still sharp. It’s LOVELY.

(also, 2 corner clamps for frame making for a whopping $2, win).

The rest of the weekend was pretty tame compared to that. We stacked wood, threw wood, stacked wood. We froze some tomatoes and baked some bread. We put up a fairy door and pickled some roasted red peppers. And then we stacked some wood.

I left the weekend happily achy and feeling virtuously productive. I’d call that a win.

My new paper cutter on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/BJ_Pt5PBvjJ/

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Conlang all year round – Juneme in August

Sep6

I’m going through 365 Conlang thingies beyond #Lexember (which is missing October…) one month a day (or so) up to September.(?) I’m skipping DismayCourse, shhh.

So I’m in Juneme again… Document or add to your phonetic inventory a phoneme a day, or add a rule to your phonotactics a day, or a Sandhi rule a day

Calenyen Phonatactics:

There will never be two vowel sounds in a row.

When borrowing words from other languages, the Calenyena almost always put another consonant between two vowels: Reiassan becomes reisassan. (ray-uh-san, rey-suh-san). Generally, when doing so, they will repeat a previous or following consonant; Calenyen loves repetition.

Old Tongue Phoneme:

Eron, (e) as in shed

This sound is a minor glyph, one that is often written down on the text line. Its original meaning is remaining, left-behind, and it is often used to indicate those fae that did not leave for Ellehem in the great departure.

Morphambruary 1
Febmanteau 1
Polysemarch 1
DisMayCourse
Juneme 1
Julectury
Augovernust 1
Morphambruary 2
Febmanteau 2
Polysemarch/Juneme2
✒️
Augovernust 2

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Lolipop, a ficlet of Addergoole

Sep5

For B, because I wanted something fun to write.

Set after Ty has left school.

“I think you’re going to like this club.”

“How have you been in this town for a week, and you already know more clubs than I do?” Ty glared at Anise in only-half-feigned sulking.

She, in turn, grinned back at him. “I’m the smooth line, remember? I can always make doors open to me.”

(read on: http://www.addergoole.com/TOS/archives/1394)

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The Hellmouth Job, Chapters 15 & 16 (A Leverage/Buffy Fanfic)

Sep2

Part I
Part Ia
Part II
Part III
Chapters 7 & 8
Chapter 9 & 10
Chapters 11 & 12
Chapters 13 & 14

Fifteen: Next Chapter

The hotel suite was one of the nicest in Sunnydale. It still felt crowded and uncomfortable. And it was made all the more uncomfortable by the way Tara was pacing.

“First, you can’t stay in a hotel, not here. You need a place that belongs to you. A threshold. A home.”

“A home? Hells no. we’re just here for a little operation — tell her, Nate! Tell her!” Hardison had been hanging garlic from the curtain rods since Eliot and Parker started on their way back.

“We could afford a house,” Nate answered slowly. “Or we could steal on. Tara, why is it we need a house?”

“Vampires. They can’t come over the threshold of a home. Hotels, motels, those don’t count as homes, though I did see a hobo once make his cardboard fort so nice it held off vampires.”

Nate studied her skeptically. “We’re buying a house because vampires can’t…”

“Can’t enter a home without an invitation, yes.” Tara raised one elegant eyebrow at him. “Sophie called me in because I’m your expert. Do you want me expertise?”

“She’s right, Nate.” Eliot had flopped into a chair and hadn’t moved or spoken since they returned. He hardly moved now. “Vampires have a very strict set of rules, and they can’t break them. Problem is, they can do just about anything else.”

“I think you should call off this whole operation.” Tara twisted to look at Sophie. “That girl… if she doesn’t want us here, we’re not going to get much done here. She made your earpiece, Eliot, Parker, and she could hear them.”

“I’ve been looking for the hack,” Hardison complained, “and I can’t find anything.”

“Didn’t you hear me?” Tara leaned forward. “She didn’t hack the comms — she heard them. She kills vampires, she can hear better than anyone has a right to… Eliot, would you say she was preternaturally strong?”

Eliot glowered. “She was strong,” he grumbled. “Even a vampire, it’s not easy to shove something through them — Parker could do it, but she’s Parker. I could do it, people like me could do it fine. That girl made it look easy.”

”Vampires,” Hardison complained. “Man, no. We fight con men. Cheats and big businesses. LIars and cover-uppers. This is… no. This is not what we do, man.”

Tara sat down next to Hardison, knees nearly touching him, leaning forward in earnest. “You help people who are up against forces larger than themselves. You help people ‘suffering under enormous weight’. You provide Leverage against things too big to move. Tell me, Hardison, one girl in all the world chosen to fight vampires until they kill her…. how does that not sound like an enormous weight?”

“That girl?” Eliot frowned. “She’s not old enough for black ops.”

“She’s not,” Tara agreed, “but you saw her. Did she look like she knew what she was doing?”

“She looked tired.” Elliot leaned forward, a frown growing. “She looked like she was bored. I’ve seen people get that look, usually just before they crack. She’s been killing for too long. She doesn’t count the deaths anymore.”

“She’s holding a weight,” Parker agreed. “So are her friends. And they didn’t buy our story at all. So… what do we do?”

Nate looked at his team. “We can pull out. Vampires—” he shook his head. “We haven’t gone up against vampires before. I didn’t know such a thing existed until today.” He looked over at Tara. “You seem to know something about them. You can serve as our expert in the field?”

That elicited a small smile from Tara. “You could definitely say that.”

“All right. So… I’m staying. What the rest of you do is up to you, but Hardison, if you’re staying, you might want to look into buying us a house. Sophie, Tara, she hasn’t met you yet, even if she’s heard you on the earpieces. I think we need to approach our friend a little differently. Eliot, Parker, we stick to the original plan.”

“And what will you be doing?” Sophie raised her eyebrows pointedly.

Nate stood up and stretched before reaching for his cane and a garish purple fedora. “Reconnaissance.”

Sixteen: Next Chapter

“And then she just bent over and staked the guy. While she was around his neck. How do I do that? Giles, show me how to do that.”

Giles coughed. “More importantly at the moment, how did she do it? And, while we are asking questions, why did she do it?”

“Well, I mean, vampire. She’d just seen me stake one, and I tossed her the stick. What else was she going to do?”

“That’s exactly it. Most people would run away, or cower, wouldn’t they?”

“Well, yeah, lots of people cower, but that’s not any fun.”

“So they can handle themselves. I think we may have to accept that they might also be ‘handling’ our missing students.”

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Meta-Conversation Part Five: Biology and History

Sep2

You, the readers, asked Jaco of Lady Taisiya’s Fourth Husband some questions, and he’s already discussed some… and then some more…and then he got upset… but you guys calmed him down. Now, it’s time for him to wrap up and go home to his lady:

Jaco takes his time looking at the final questions.

“The Treaty,” he says slowly, “they control everything. Everyone here — all the groups — signed the treaty. It was, um, a couple generations after landfall, and everything was getting, I dunno, all violent. Three times as many men as women, things get a little tense.” He jingles his chains demonstratively. “Hard to stab someone like this, though. So, chains.

“It’s not just chains. I think they’d dictate the number of eggs we could hatch if they thought we could get away with it, but the planet’s still too knew, and rich women are still going to end up with more eggs than poor women, no matter how many laws you try to put in place. I mean, regulate stuff too much, and then you end up with people incubating egglings in barns and caves, and trust me, that just turns into a mess.”

He looks back at the map for a moment. “We’ve been here ten generations. Where we came from… I don’t know. Some of the old books, they say something about The Company, or The Boyden Company. But none of them say where we were before. Maybe it’s because, well, they mixed us up to survive here, like something in a cake batter?” He shrugs eloquently and goes back to the cards.

“Okay, this one’s good. Who lays the egglings?” He shudders, just for show. “The ladies. I can’t imagine trying to… well, I can’t. And they carry the eggs for about a month and a half before they lay them.

“We’re all the same species, I guess, as far as I know. The raiders are, at least. I’ve seen some people that look really different, visitors, but I don’t know if they just look different, or if they’re some other things.” He snorts out something like a laugh. “Heck, they could even be real aliens. I wouldn’t know the difference.”

He spends some time looking at another question. “We can dream all we want. The thing is, what our brains do and what our bodies do, well—” he holds up his wrists with their chains. “When we’re kids, sometimes if a boy shows a lot of promise, they’ll encourage him — his fathers, his mother — to train for the military or the academy. You focus, you spend all your life on that, then, until you come of age and you see if that’s a route you can take — or if you’re going to end up in chains anyway.

“But the rest, it depends a lot on the wife. Some women don’t let their husbands out of the house at all. Most women, really. Some just let them go into town for errands, that sort of things. And there’s a couple out there who let their husbands — especially their first and second husbands — even pick up a career outside the house, if there’s someone at home to pick up the housework and the child-care.” He smiles crookedly. “Or maybe that’s just lies women tell men they’re thinking of marrying, to make them come more easily to the alter.”

He stands up and bows politely to the whole group. “Thank you. I don’t get out much, after all.”

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Whatif…a very AU story Continued, Continued

Sep2

Goes with this: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1166887.html
and then this: http://inventrix.dreamwidth.org/29367.html
And then this: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1167521.html
and then this: http://inventrix.dreamwidth.org/29645.html

He was handsome. That wasn’t the first thing she noticed; the first thing (after how worn he looked) was ahh. He wasn’t all of what was missing, but he was definitely some of it.

(If only she had any idea who he was).

Then he grabbed her hand and started running. Cynara’s first feeling was one of immense satisfaction: this was right. It was perfect.

Then someone shouted behind them, and she realized they were actually running from something immediate.

They needed a way out. They needed a safe place to talk where nobody would bother them. She needed to know why he was exactly what she’d been looking for and yet not quite right.

“Left!” She yanked them into an alley. She hadn’t known it was there a moment ago, but somehow she knew it was perfect, and… yes. They reached its end and found themselves facing a small back road — with left, right, or an open door as options.

Right seemed the best, so she yanked them that way. He was stronger than her, a lot stronger — and how did she know that? — so she had to trust that he’d come along.

She trusted, and ran. Down another series of crooked streets, through a building — nobody noticed — and then they were at a worn-down little park, where a stone maintenance building waited, its lock long since broken.

“Here.” Inside it was picked clean, nothing but a few unredeemable bottles left. She sank down on the floor and looked at the boy.

“Hi,” she offered, suddenly shy. What if he thought she was crazy? What if she was crazy? “I don’t know you, but I’ve been looking for you.”

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Whatif…a very AU story Continued

Sep1

Goes with this: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1166887.html

and then this: http://inventrix.dreamwidth.org/29367.html

Cynara had been on the move for a week. She’d woken up every morning and tried to figure out where she should go, and for some reason, answers had kept coming to her.

She’d found unattended food and a surprise stop at a sidewalk sale (the clerk was in the alley, making out with her boyfriend), toiletries and even and unlocked motel room. She’d found bus after bus that had a spot open for cheap or a soft spot for the sad look, and money seemed to appear when she really needed some.

She’d also nearly been found by police three times, police who were clearly looking for her. She had run away, she supposed, but neither her foster parents nor her father should’ve expected her to stay put for too long.

She hopped off the latest bus and looked around. The feeling in her gut, the empty hole, tugged, and she looked around.

There. He looked tired and resigned. He looked lost.

She had no idea who he was, but she needed to talk to him.

She crossed against traffic in a bee-line straight for him, not caring how it must look.

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In Which I’ve Discovered Bullet Journals

Sep1

If you look at my twitter feed lately, you may have noticed that I’ve developed a bit of obsession.

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsBullet Journals!

(my Pinterest board will tell a similar story, but we’ve already discussed how many of you don’t like Pinterest…)

I’m not all that good at remembering to do things; I’m not all that good at maintaining habits once I start them. That whole, “do a thing for xx days and then you’ll keep doing it? Doesn’t happen for me; I stop on the xx+1 day and just… stay stopped.

It’s a little too soon to tell for sure, and there’s always, of course, the question of how much I’m going to get wrapped up in the pretty bits – banners! Color coding! Icons!

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsBut at the moment, it seems to be helping me hold to things I want to remember to do everyday, so I’ll count it as at least a short-term win. Dishes every night! Walkies every night! Edally is almost back on schedule!

Bonus? I made a “weight loss” page in my bullet journal (It’s up there in the September Set-up, with the bubbles) … and then I started doing Weight Watchers again. Maybe this’ll be the thing that actually makes me stick to it this time!

Current mood: optimistic, with pretty banners. 🙂

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