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Round 153, Hour 20

WARNING! This Hour may cause déjà vu symptoms, please say what you've done this Hour and be sure to give the time loop the slip

the time loop the slip

the time loop the slip

the time loop the

Current Mood: busy

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Today is cloudy and mild.

I fed the birds. I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 8/23/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

As it is now dark, I am done for the night.

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round 153 posts

Round 153, hour 19

Quick, catch the hour!

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round 153 posts

Round 153, Hour 19

I'm still working on calligraphy! I'm trying to figure out how to manage ink distribution so my first line doesn't look blobby. This might be what blotting paper was for? I don't have any blotting paper.

Are you writing words?

Colorado's subalpine wetlands may be producing a toxic form of mercury

https://phys.org/news/2025-08-colorado-subalpine-wetlands-toxic-mercury.html

The wetlands found across the Rocky Mountains of Colorado just below tree line are magical places. Dripping with mosses and deep green sedges, these open expanses flanked by evergreens are a breathtaking sight for passing hikers. Moose graze there, and elk gather during their mating season.

https://phys.org/news/2025-08-colorado-subalpine-wetlands-toxic-mercury.html

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admin,
c: ritual

Challenge #062: Ritual

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Roundup: Thunder

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Current Mood: busy

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Email Aliases

arlie mentioned in a post that Protonmail allows you to create email aliases to avoid spam. This also seems extremely useful for cases where someone extorts your email from you before giving you something you need, but you don't really want to hear from them afterwards.

Current Music: Hey Jealousy - Gin Blossoms

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the pitt fic: (there's only one thing i couldn't start)

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round 153 posts

Round 153, hour 18

Sup?

I'm gonna get food first before I even attempt words, and then apply a hot water bottle to this headache. How's folks?

Current Mood: productive

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A bit more about my cartomancy business, since I'm entering the busy season...

[If you don't like business solicitation, feel free to skip this one!]

Background

should

none of that

hate

Business Info

The Urban Village Witch (official business website)

SoulFood CoffeeHouse (the shop where I take drop-ins)

My appointment-booking page

My business email: theurbanvillagewitch [at] proton [dot] me

Services I provide

Life coaching

Spiritual mentorship

Talk/vent sessions

Tarot readings

Lenormand readings (French cartomancy tradition)

Kipperkarten readings (German cartomancy tradition)

Playing-card readings

Pricing

First appointment: PWYW (pay what you want)

Repeat appointments: $2.55 USD/minute for up to an hour

Payment options:

Mode of operations

Most of my appointments are in-person and limited to the Greater Seattle Area, because I don't drive and my transportation options are limited. If you are not in the service area, I will gladly do readings over email. First-time clients will still be PWYW, and readings for repeat clients will have an agreed-upon price beforehand, based on the current pricing structure. You will receive attached photos of the cards that were drawn, as well as an in-depth explanation of the meanings and how I arrived at that conclusion. Feedback and follow-up questions per draw are ALWAYS WELCOME!

Important Disclaimers (please read)

entertainment purposes only

not

not

Still have questions?

Comment on this journal or contact me at the business email listed above!

Thank you!

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memes,
writing

totally procrastinating, so here's a questionnaire

Someone - I forget who, sorry! - linked to this list of 15 questions for fanfic writers, put together by

maevedarcy. I do so love questionnaires and writing memes, even if I'm not that big of a writer (yet!).

( questions and answers under cut to spare your reading pages the length )

Today

I had started to write a long post about recent visit with my mother (TLDR we fought) but I have just been out for a walk with friend Janet and feel happy & cheerful & unwilling to dwell on family stress. Sometimes writing it all out just means I wallow in it all.

So. Good things.

Wonderful walk with Janet. It's a warm day, just being outside & walking with someone else was good. Lots of people out, trailing dogs & toddlers behind them.

Janet has given me a big bag of apples from her garden, and we found some wild plums, and picked a big bag of these tiny little yellow sweet plums. It has been such a good year for fruit.

I'm cooking for myself tonight. Chard & tomatoes with chickpeas. I have some jarred chickpeas which are melt-in-your-mouth delicious, and a harvester loaf from a local family bakery which has been going about 100 years, and does such excellent (yeasted) bread. (I am amused to notice that the bakery website hasn't been updated since about 2018 and still says "coming soon" all over the place.)

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round 153 posts

Round 153, Hour 17

This is a sentence. It is made of words. Words words words words words these are all words that I am typing Post to fic_rush_48

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Novel Translation: The Moon Above These Lands (Shan Chuan Yue)《山川月》

Hi everyone,

I've started translating the historical/court intrigue baihe webnovel The Moon Above These Lands, or Shan Chuan Yue (山川月) by Su Xian_ (苏弦) on jjwxc!

One sentence summary: Although Wen Mingchang (unacknowledged daughter of the Liu family) and Luo Qinghe (the famous general) have an ugly spat at first, they recognize each others' talent and ambition and forge a unique bond -- first in camaraderie, then in love --to lift their country into prosperity.

Links:

translation page
carrd
tweet
original jjwxc
novelupdates

There's more on this novel/translation project on this post in the baihe community. Happy reading!

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In which I rant here rather than start fights else-Internet

There are a couple of things I saw around the Internet over the last few days that have been really bothering me, but I don't want to go back there and start fights in other people's places, so I'm coming here to rant in my own place. Feel free to reply or not, whether you agree with me or not. I just need to get these things out of my system.

One of my friends on Facebook made a post about how she took a ukulele lessen recently. She was very pleased with her accomplishment — in one hour she had learned 3 chords and learned to play a song. Someone else — I'm assuming one of her friends, apparently a guitar player — made a comment to her post that he thought the three chords she learned would transfer over to the top four strings on the guitar. She correctly told him that they wouldn't — which he may or may not have accepted, and I didn't stick around to find out — but at the same time I was sitting there fuming: Even if they would transfer so the fuck what? The ukulele is a valid music instrument in its own right, not some sort of training wheels to help one later change over to a guitar. Besides diminishing my instrument, I felt like he was diminishing my friend's accomplishment, but I didn't feel like I could say that in a way that wouldn't start a fight, so I'm coming to say it here.
Over on Threads, a group of people who live in Minneapolis were complaining about people who live in the suburbs saying they live in Minneapolis, one of them even going so far as to compare it to stolen valor. I live in one of the first ring suburbs of Minneapolis and when — as I do on occasion — I say I live in Minneapolis, it's not intended as some sort of flex. It all boils down to some variant of "How important is it to me that this person knows the actual physical location of my house?" and "Do I think it's worth the time to explain to this person exactly where the suburb I live in it located?" If I think I'm talking to one of these Minneapolis people who's going to make an issue of it, I'll sometimes say "One of the first-ring suburbs," generally supplemented by the quadrant of the metro area. In general, unless the person is going to come to my actual house (which almost never happens), I feel no need to tell them exactly which suburb I live in and then explain where it is because they don't know.

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New Translation: The Moon Above These Lands (Shan Chuan Yue)《山川月》

Heyo fellow baihe peeps,

I've started translating the historical/court intrigue webnovel The Moon Above These Lands, or Shan Chuan Yue (山川月) by Su Xian_ (苏弦) on jjwxc! For me, it's really hard to find a novel that I resonate with so deeply so I am quite excited about this project.

One sentence summary: Although Wen Mingchang (unacknowledged daughter of the Liu family) and Luo Qinghe (the famous general) have an ugly spat at first, they recognize each others' talent and ambition and forge a unique bond -- first in camaraderie, then in love --to lift their country into prosperity.

( Proper summary under cut: )

For those perhaps familiar with or are fans of the Nirvana in Fire (琅琊榜 Langya Bang) series or danmei series The Ballad of Sword and Wine (将进酒 Qiang Jin Jiu), I'd say this will be quite up your alley, except with a lot more focus on female characters in an alternate historical setting where women at least are able to receive an education and become officials at court.

I think the main strength of this novel is its character development arcs, which although slow, honestly builds the characters up in a very strong way. Unironically, after reading this book, the main character Wen Mingchang is tied for my most favorite character in any media, ever, and I can also name plenty of supporting characters and ships I like in this work.

Links galore:

translation page
carrd
tweet
original jjwxc
novelupdates

I will note that this is slow burn and very long. I'm going to take my time and the aim is to finish it before the end of the decade or something (? lol). The plan is to go by volumes and take breaks.

Final bit is that I edited a 手书/hand drawn MAD with a really popular song from bilibili, 戏文说 (The Opera Tune Goes). The characters are from the book and (I think) align with the lyrics, which hopefully gets clearer as the story progresses. And yes, art is an in progress hobby for me so it's actually pretty bad, but it was a fun effort.

Thank you to

aurumcalendula for already mentioning it since I forgot to post about it previously! I'll see everyone around. ^_^

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Small Fandom Big Bang Round 15

The 10,000-word big bang for small fandoms is coming soon!
Author Sign-Ups Open Sept 1 | Artist Sign-Ups Open Nov 1

Opening soon. Any fandom excluding RPF that has less than 2k fics on AO3 qualifies. Artists always needed!
I'm thinking about signing up again. I completed round 13 but didn't participate in round 14.

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Rec: "Hymn" (short film)

未来赞美诗 (Hymn) was released digitally just a couple weeks ago and while it's not entirely unique, it's one of the more interesting pieces of Chinese media I've seen recently. It's a 20-minute film about emotional exploitation and predatory technology told through the story of a mother (played by Cecilia Yip) and her son (played by Steven Zhang / Zhang Xincheng—you may know him as Pei Su in Justice in the Dark). Best to go in without expectations! Do note that this isn't a happy story.

You can watch it (with English subs) in several places:

Weibo (shared by Zhang Xincheng)

Youtube

Daily Motion

( Some personal notes/thoughts about it (contains spoilers) )

Current Mood: drained

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blaugust

miniblog..2 !!!

I'm gonna be real with you chief, I don't have the energy nor the inspiration for a proper blog post today. I overslept... and also it's the week-end... I don't want to use my brain... I'm resting...

I made a list of stuff to do this week on Mastodon and I've actually been crushing it, so that's been nice, at least. I like feeling like I'm Being Productive at least a little. It's good to have objectives and stuff. I'm actually kinda looking forward to seeing how much of my August to-do list I've managed to get done...

Anyway, onto the miniblogging:

I haven't been working on my ficinabox letter at all... aghhh. I promised it'd be ready by tomorrow, too, so I guess I might crank it up today LOL. Well, I did make a list of my favorite Linda³ animals, at least, I just need to format it. Then it's going to be all about going through what I copied over from last year and fixing stuff if needed.

I fixed up the mobile version of my fanlisting, because it wasn't actually super mobile friendly especially now that I was adding more stuff to it. I'm pretty happy with it now though. This is what it looks like:

The one thing I'm still stuck on rn is the placement of the subtitle... I might try to figure out a better way to handle it. Who knows. It's not a huge issue, just kind of a pain when it comes to responsiveness. (As usual!!)

fandomgiftbasket sign-ups are open!!! I had most of mine already ready LOL, but I added some last minute stuff and suddenly realized it couldn't fit in one Dreamwidth comment. That had never happened to me before; kind of exciting in a way. Anyway, you should sign up so I can draw Pokémon for you or something.

My goal today is to have the barebones of a website set up for Noah, who wants a site to host its fanfic and future novel information, that's easy to use and doesn't require it know anything about coding. (Well, I'll be here to offer HTML & CSS support and fixing no matter what, but you know.) I mostly want to figure out a super simple design and then try using Arrow's fic masterlist + easy AO3 template so all that Noah has to do is just download all of its fic as HTML files and plopping them in. I'll probably have to handle the fic masterlist stuff myself but that's okay. We'll see what Noah thinks about it. (I know you're going to read this BTW. Hi Noah.)

Okay, this is already getting too long, this is supposed to be a miniblog!!! That's about all I have to report on today though I think.

Because I suddenly remembered they existed, I checked the Blaugust themes & prompts for this year, and I might try to do some of the latter ones? A lot of them are really focused on being in the Blaugust Community which is fascinating to me. Maybe next year I'll try to get involved beyond just making posts lol. I feel a little bad because the only people who are also doing it that I've been commenting on have been

linky and Scumsuck. Which I guess is better than nothing! My efforts to comment on more posts I see through my Reading page have been paying off though, I think. I'm trying... Being social is difficult!!! I used to live in a cave and not talk to anybody, you know!!!

I'll leave you with a preview of some of the buttons I've been making for the fanlisting. Life is hard when there's almost no canonical material of your OTP even just standing together... Actually, I should make a button of the Café Lysandre scene...