Nenya Kanadka

I'm really behind on both comments and my reading page/friends' list at the moment; also private messages--if I haven't replied to you, it's not that I don't want to talk, I'm just temporarily maxed out.

❤❤❤

(New icon! I did like the first episode of the new Disco season a lot. :D)

(Also got awesome presents in fandom_stocking and will do a post at some point! Squee.)

Mucca, holding the cat, and turning to me: I have a serious question.
Me: Okay...
She: WHO'S A KITTY??

I'm afraid Kaylee-cat has just lost the title of Most Cutest after only two weeks. It reverts back to Mucca. ❤ Kitty still holds world record for Best Cat Ever, though.

Kitty is doing MUCH better (further updates, as well as pictures, forthcoming from somebody or other here). Does not like the taste of antibiotics, but they've had a magical effect and she's bouncing around with a far more normal-looking properly healing spay site. Didn't need to take a taxing trip to the vet (so far! fingers crossed!) after all. Out of her cone collar all day today for the first full day, without worrying at that bit of her tummy, so we've left her free tonight as well.

She is the loveliest, snuggliest, silliest little critter. Hilariously enthusiastic about catnip mice. Bemused and determined when faced with the mystery of a paper grocery bag with a catnip mouse inside it??? *pounce pounce etc* Just a delight to have around.

We've named her Kaylee after another small, cheerful, enthusiastic, curious, calm in a crisis favourite of ours. So far no signs of spaceship engineering, but she's kinda into the parks radios, so give it time.

Or, things people often get wrong when writing people like Nenya. ;-)

1) Red hair: Your red-haired character does NOT need to have ginger parents!

( Red hair is a recessive trait... )

But on television, soooooooo many families are wall-to-wall redheads if there's a ginger in the mix at all. This is pretty uncommon in real life! It throws me out of so many stories. It's much more likely for a couple of redheads to pop up in the middle of some browns and blondes.

So, Blossom family on Riverdale, I'm looking at you. (Though in that specific case, I have to laugh, because they're practically lampshading it at this point. Not only are a pair of fraternal twins and both parents redheads (the dad at least is less fire-engine red), about half the members of their board of directors are also redheads! It's a purely symbolic casting/hair dye choice by now--which, fair enough.)



2) Deaf people & lip reading: Your deaf character WILL NOT be able to understand people 24/7 based ONLY on lip reading.

They just won't.

Lip-reading (aka speachreading) is the skill of understanding speech from watching the movements of a speaker's mouth and face while they're talking. It is an extremely important part of the adaptive skillset of most deaf and hard-of-hearing people. Especially in combination with a clear voice, it adds tremendously to the amount of information a person can understand.

However! Only about a third of English language is visible on the lips at all. ( Did you say 'shoes', 'chews', or 'Jews'? )

A quick reference here has some of these thoughts in bullet-point form--might make a good bookmark or info sheet.

It's a good thing if you have your deaf character's friends and family face them when they speak! That's excellent. (Please do that in real life too!) But it can't be the only thing. And it's simply not plausible that they won't have developed other adaptive behaviours to understand the world around them.

So right now there's a...white swan? chillaxing in our bay. O.o

It's a very nice swan, from what I can see through binoculars. (I missed the attempt to view it with a telescope.) But I did not know that swans were even ocean-going creatures. ???

(Also, is it "creature" or "being" in that last sentence? I think "being" is usually reserved for sapient lifeforms, right? But who knows, maybe this is a star-swan from Alpha Centauri. At this point, I have no idea.)

Swan! :D

I clocked in tonight at either 50,847 or 51,047 or 50,890 words, depending which word count tool you use (first one's the NaNoWriMo website). It's not one novel, but four (FOUR!) short stories. Two of them were existing works in progress which I finished off, one a brand-new from-scratch origfic, and one a fic I put up mid-month under my sekrit sock. The other stuff will need a bit of revision, but I have SO MUCH more to work from now than I did at the beginning of the month.

Holy shit. I...did it? I always thought NaNo was much too lofty of a goal for me, but now I see how it works. Or how I can make it work for me. I might do it again. But probably not for a while (e.g. next year) or at a greatly reduced wordcount rate (750words.com may see more activity from me) because I would like to have a life and spend time with my wife and not stress so much and so on.

I knocked up a silly cover to put on the NaNo website. It has nothing to do with the contents of any of the short stories, except that some of them contain what you might call depiction-not-endorsement:



In vaguely related news, Mucca and I bought one of those hollow books (where you store your keys/flash drive/secret plans for the death star inside a book that's been hollowed out) at a craft fair. We found the entire display--which contained everything from a Star Trek TNG novel to a flight manual from about 1971 to Defense Against The Dark Arts Vol I to cookbooks to the What Katy Did omnibus--far too hilarious. I won't say which one I got in case I ever need to hide anything from any of you by means of my bookshelf. ;)

Now off to go watch some episodes of Frankie & Grace to celebrate my NaNo win while we still have our Netflix trial screw around online for a few hours. Whoot!

(Feelings about current Doctor Who and about Jessica Jones: I have them! Many of them! I am, however, not awake enough to blog them. Feel free to discuss anything you like in comments, though! (kore, this means you.))

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This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth where there are comments.

So, inspired by seascribe's tales of her birthday shenanigans, I went ice skating this evening. I also tripped and fell and skinned the living fuck out of three places on my arm.

No, no--I mean to say, the fall down go boom part happened BEFORE the ice skating.

I'd spent the afternoon looking for a winter coat (no luck so far, though I may have a candidate to order online), and came home for a few minutes to grab a sweater before dashing out for the bus down to the rec centre. About four minutes before the bus was to arrive, I suddenly remembered that I'd meant to borrow Mucca's scarf, since I wasn't sure how cold it was going to be at the rink. I debated internally whether or not to run back inside and look for the scarf, and finally decided to chance it.

Bad idea! Running down the sidewalk in the dark was probably my first mistake. I tripped over a crack in the concrete, or possibly a twig, or even my own toes (tbh this last is most likely), and down I went. I had enough time to roll so I didn't end up with a face full of pain, but I lightly strained my left ankle and seriously scraped my right elbow, wrist/palm, and the knuckle of my index finger. After lying on the ground whimpering/growling "fuck" for a few minutes, I staggered to my feet and limped back to the bus stop. By the light of the streetlamp I could see that I was in fact bleeding, but all body parts were attached and I wasn't actually hurting very much. The bus came; I got on it, figuring the rec centre would probably have a first aid kit and someone who knew how to use it.

Which they did! The swimming pool is apparently set up for kids bashing into things occasionally, so a very young lifeguard sprayed saline solution on me and taped me up. They wanted to know if I still wanted to go ice skating, which I totally did.

Ended up having about half an hour or 40 minutes to skate, which to be honest is about as long as I want if I'm by myself with nobody to talk to. (Gone are the days when I could build snow-forts beside the backyard pond and LARP my pre-teen origfic.) I ended up trading in the first pair of skates they rented me because they were way too bulky--they were figure skates but they fit like hockey skates. Despite being taught to skate by teenaged male hockey players, I'm a figure skate girl, so I tried on a more traditional white-leather-boot pair. Which I had to adjust a couple of times (rental skates are a total crapshoot and usually end up somewhere between "awkward," "uncomfortable," and "foot torture") but I didn't care because WHEEE it was so much fun gliding down the ice WHOOOO EEEEE! :D

There seemed to be about 2/3 adults to 1/3 kids this time. It's varied in the past and if there are a LOT of kids I worry about running into them, because they kind of zip all over. But I was going pretty slowly this time (it's been a while, and the skates weren't amazing), just kind of gliding and smiling for the most part, so I was able to swoosh out of the way if necessary. There was this one little kid, couldn't have been more than four years old, who was amazingly nimble on their feet. Honestly, my first thought was that they were probably better at skating than walking. Canada! \o/

Definitely ended up using muscles I haven't in a while, mostly lower back and whatever muscle it is in the thighs right above the knee. And my arm still hurts--ow, the wrist scrape is right where my arm contacts the edge of laptop while typing--and my left ankle wants a rest. But I had a good time. I'm totally going back--hopefully artemis_rain or another local friend will be able to come on another night. I think there's an open skate on Saturday, which I now realize is Halloween so IDK. But there's usually skating times a couple nights a week, and the Tuesday ones like this are $5 for both ice time and skate rental, which is pretty great. (Mucca does not skate, even when falling onto a recently-dislocated shoulder is not an issue, because she grew up by an ocean rather than a backyard pond. Last time I went skating was with either my ex or my brother's ex, so like three to five years ago. I'm glad to have the excuse to do it now. Was thinking maybe I could take my swimsuit next time and have a soak in the hot tub afterward, but maybe that's not a good idea while I have two big honking half-healed wounds on my arm. :P)

WHEEEEE. :D :D :D

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This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth where there are comments.

I think I've realised what annoys me about phrases like "grow your business." When you say "grow tomatoes" or "grow watermelon", it implies (at least to me) a process that goes through stages and reaches a conclusion. You get some tomatoes, yay! Now, you may repeat the process. You may grow more tomatoes. You might even describe your entire years-long tomato producing operation as "growing tomatoes."

But "growing your business" seems to just imply that it's getting larger. Embiggen your business. There's no business tree that produces little business fruits that are ever finished or mature. I mean, people do sell their businesses. But "Grow your business with our easy 5-step plan!" doesn't seem to me to mean "so when it's a certain size you can sell it."

The usage is more like "the kid grew taller" or "her pile of Hugos keeps growing", where you aren't growing the thing, the thing is growing itself.

Probably there is an official grammar term for this difference, and almost assuredly it wouldn't bother me quite as much if I didn't associate it with smarmy insincerity. But apparently greasiness + kludgy grammar = my hard limit.

This post brought to you by bus stop ads. We are going to visit Mucca's parents (I don't know why my phone thinks that should be "Mucca's clone"? I haven't taught it THAT much sci-fi yet!) for the weekend. Hopefully will also get to pet our adorable kitty who has moved away. ;__; I've not been to the small town we'll be in before, so that's another adventure. :) Should be fun.

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This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth where there are comments.

I feel weirdly like I have nothing to do and too many things to do at the same time, so perhaps making a list will help.

No particular order, varying wildly in levels of urgency, importance, and time commitment.

Things to get done:

- Figure out school for the fall: what courses to take, and sign up for them. Decide if the "Theory of Colour" course is a good one to take right now (alongside probably Intermediate Accounting II: Liabilities and All That Jazz?) or if I just want to do one course at a time atm. Or if I'm feeling Industrious (ahaha no) and want to do two BComm courses.

- Investigate deaf/HOH-friendly first aid courses. It's a good time, while I'm off the lights and in town where they, you know, give the courses.

- Investigate possible sign language course? Last time, Mucca took one and I didn't since I had to work, leading to the non-deaf person in the household knowing more sign than the deaf one. :P

- Paint my nails (probably rainbow colours again, that's fun)

- Finish reading Ancillary Mercy. I like it so far (especially Zeiat!) but have only settled down to read for small snatches.

- Set up for multiplayer Mass Effect games with justice_turtle. :D :D Going to take a stab at that tonight. I think it's ME3 or something which I've not played? Anyway, exciting. :D


Things checked off to-do list:

- Get a pillow I can sleep on. I think I have one! Squishable, but not too flat. Will sleep on it tonight and see.

- Buy boots! I have wide feet and nothing ever damn well fits, at least not in interesting colours or designs. But I found some ankle boots that fit pretty well, good stompy soles but not super heavy like Docs. And they're a deeply satisfying shade of red. :D My entire wardrobe is basically shades of blue with a bit of green & purple thrown in, but for some reason red boots were important.

- Get Dark Matter sci-fi show to watch. Also Magic Mike XXL and Paddington (2014).

- Grocery shop. Make chicken tikka masala. It was pretty good; should get the proper spices to make it from scratch without the pre-mixed curry paste, but it wasn't half bad as it was. Plus, I remembered the recipe without the Jamie Oliver cookbook. A first. :D


Tired, want to go home, etc, but probably doing a bit better than Mucca.

Dinner with my brother & his fiancé on Thanksgiving Monday. He's just across the street so that should be fun. :-) No word yet on whether other brother is coming as well or if he's doing something with girlfriend's family.

Will make post about Charming Potato Magic Mike XXL and The Martian, both of which we saw this week.

This is the helicopter which evacuated Mucca on Thursday and took me along for the ride:


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And this is what it looks like with humans next to it for scale:


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It is fucking big, you guys, is my point. From inside it I was estimating space, and it's seriously the size of a Victoria city bus. One page I googled said it could hold 30 troops seated or 45 standing, when used as a military transport. This one was stripped down to just a few seats inside, and packed with search & rescue gear. 5 crew, I believe, a pilot, copilot, and 3 paramedics. All very competent and reassuring, and dealt really well with having a severely hard-of-hearing spouse of the evacuee on board.

It was literally so big it could not land on our lightstation's helipad; it would have warped the wooden supports for the pad and, like, crushed it. O.O

In order to get through the fog (which had earlier that day stymied delivery of groceries via smaller helicopter) they literally opened the side door and looked out while flying. While attached by very strong lines to the inside of the helicopter, BUT STILL.

By contrast this is the chopper we usually fly in:


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And for scale:


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I'm still quite croggled and impressed.

We are home! I have something of a backlog of comments to answer, which hopefully will happen sooner rather than later.

The rest of the Scotland trip was good, and Oxford was a lot of fun. We took a train down the coast (beautiful) and hit the London train stations at rush hour (yaaaaaay...) but eventually found our Air BnB in Oxford. Kind of did our own Tolkien-influenced tour of Oxford, including seeing where the Tolkiens had lived, and bits of Merton and Exeter colleges.

And the Beren & Luthien grave, which...I don't think of myself as one for pilgrimages, but that felt meaningful in some way. Freighted with all the affection of all the other people who have visited it over the years, for one thing, and the love of all my LOTR friends back home who weren't there. Plus the thought that on some level, JRRT was just this guy, you know, with a family who missed him when he passed away. His son is buried just across the lawn; and what about the people who aren't famous who were laid to rest right next to them? So it was a very meditative morning. rohan_lady took wonderful pictures, as she usually does.

An interesting note--people had been leaving coins all along the top of the headstone. I counted Czech, Polish, Hungarian, and Turkish coins, along with a number of UK pence and Euro change. I don't know exactly why people were doing it, except that it's a quick way to show where you're from, and won't melt in the rain (like some of the cards people left). We scrounged in our bags and came up with a Canadian quarter, which I presume someone from the local Tolkien society now has custody of.

Anyway. Oxford is a lovely city. Went to the Bodleian library as well, including a museum display of some of the books they have. Queen Elizabeth I's calligraphy as an 11-year-old, wtf holy shit. A book with an engraved ivory cover. An early version of the Principia Mathematica. Etc etc. Really really cool.

Eventually it came time to fly home, so we got up at 5 am, took a bus to Heathrow, and flew about ten hours to Vancouver. Watched Mad Max: Fury Road (now I know what people are talking about with that fandom) and a couple of other things on the excellent in-flight entertainment system. In Vancouver, were delayed slightly because the propeller on the plane headed for Victoria had developed an oil leak. Eventually made it to Victoria, slept for about 15 hours, gained our bearings over the next few days.

Now home. Brain still in UK I think. May paint my nails rainbow colours, since I have acquired many of the nail polish colours that I had been borrowing from valtyr's set. Oh, and I bought a smartphone (my first!) which is really only of use as a wee tablet out here (no cell service except in town), but is gorgeous and spiffy and named Paddington.

Good to be home.