thevagabondexpress

2 pounds of parsnips
1 largeish red cabbage
3 small bags of spinach
3 pounds of potatoes
4 pounds of carrots (swapped for more potatoes, because I am still inundated with Previous Carrots)
1 medium-large rutabaga (which, unlike last year, is actually a rutabaga, not a Macomber turnip, yay! (I like Macombers too; I just like rutabagas more, so if I have to choose only one, it’s an easy decision))
3 0.75-oz packages of basil (swapped for another rutabaga)

First thoughts: parsnip slices sauted in butter/Earth Balance, with nutmeg or possibly a spice mix. Various cabbage and carrot slaws, possibly with daikon, since I still have at least three big red ones. Roasted rutabagas. Colcannon with potatoes and spinach.

umadoshi

Work/life overall: Usually before a seasonal crunch starts at Dayjob I think to post something to the effect of "I'm about to be swamped, so while I'll probably/hopefully manage to keep up with reading posts, commenting will probably be mostly nonexistent, etc. etc.", and sometimes I feel a bit silly about it because I'm not as active a commenter as I'd like anyway and sometimes the crunch isn't that bad, and probably most people reading this already know that anyway...but I have some newer mutuals here now and I didn't think to post it, and friends, this crunch is CRUNCHY. Ohboy.

Media intake: LOL. (Okay, I did actually read a couple volumes of manga last night, and I did show ep. 1 of Heated Rivalry to

scruloose last weekend. But I think that's it.)

Weather: We did get lots of snow early in the week, but somehow yet again didn't lose power. No complaints!

Cats: Last week both of the blues had birthdays! Yona turned four on Tuesday and Sinha turned five yesterday. (It would be very convenient to have a pic of the two of them together that'd make a good icon, but the odds of that ever happening are not remotely good. Have an icon of baby!Yona.)

Current Mood: exhausted

potentiality_26

Written in February: 14,832 words. All fanfiction, though I did make some informal notes for a TTRPG idea.

Posted: 4 short fics. Red and Cold (Creaturebeth, 200 words), Sweetest Child (Brudick, 1,622 words), Safe at Home (Astraelle, 200 words), and Spark (Vijinx and Vanco, 1,958 words).

Worked on a lot of WIPs, for Arcane, Astrid, Batman, Frankenstein, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Phantom of the Opera, Sense and Sensibility, Shetland, Smallville, Star Wars, and Yellowjackets.

As always, I love answering questions about what I'm working on!

esmegrey

My site already has a new review, as tends to happen in March. Last review of February barely gets a chance...but I digress. I start the monthg with another trip to other worlds, in the very low budget indie flick, Ionopsis.

Something this low budget ain't gonna be for everyone, it's not gonna rival anything from Hollywood, but I love it's quaint, can do charm, and love seeing people putting in the effort, even if they don't have the resources to do it right.

💎E💎

magid

It was time for another blood donation, and I finally found time to do that today after work.

I got lucky: the intake person managed a finger stick that didn’t hurt (this is usually the worst part of donation, so it’s noticeable*, and the phlebotomist was also excellent. (Also, very attractive.) We were chatting for the 5 min or so it took to drain enough blood, and it turned out that his sister graduated from $MyEmployer, 19 years ago. Which surprised me enough that I used my outside-my-head voice to say that either his sister is much older, or he looks seriously younger than he is. Turns out he’s 20, and all his siblings (and half-siblings) are seriously older than him: his father is in his 70s, and could be his grandfather. Whoa. He mentioned that he would’ve liked the chance to be a kid with siblings closer in age to hang out together, but did have the advantage of many more adults invested in him (in a way that made me think of Clara Barton.**)

On the way out, I recognized the other phlebotomist who’s my birthday twin, and he said that {other woman in a donor chair} was also our birthday twin, so we had a birthday triplets moment :-)
(And I got to tell her that we also share our birthday with The Count, from Sesame Street.)

* apparently Children’s Hospital and possibly also the Red Cross have ditched the finger stick (to determine hemoglobin levels; too much or too little (much more likely) disqualifies the donor for the day) in favor of something non-invasive. I’d really like MGH to get with the program.

** also apparently, I keep thinking Clara Barton thoughts around when donating blood. I suppose it makes some sense.

lirazel

I do a lot of work where my hands are occupied but my mind is not (hello, rehousing!!!) and may main exercise is walking so I listen to a lot of podcasts, and I am always looking for more.

My favorite ongoing podcasts are In Bed With the Right, Know Your Enemy, If Books Could Kill, Maintenance Phase, Panic World, and A Bit Fruity. These are the shows I listen to every episode of and (most of them) support on Patreon so I get extra episodes. Oh, and On the Nose from Jewish Currents.

There are a number I also like but don't listen to every episode of, just dipping in and out as they interest me. These include Behind the Bastards, Hoax!, HyperFixed, Search Engine, Straight White American Jesus, Culture Study, Decoder Ring, American Hysteria, Strongwilled, 5-4, and The Dream.

Then there are my classic favorites that I haven't listened to in a while but loved madly: You Must Remember This, You're Wrong About, and You Are Good.

One limited run I listened to lately was What Happened in Nashville, about the unregulated fertility treatment industry through the lens of a big scandal that happened in my hometown and found it interesting.

Things I like in a podcast:

+ Culture and/or history and/or current events through a leftist/feminist lens. It's really important to me that these are serious thinkers or deeply insightful people, even if what they're talking about is lighter fare
+ People who take culture and internet culture seriously but want to deeply critique it
+ Stuff about religion--not in the sense of being religious but in the sense of talking about how religion works in the world
+ Stuff that is well-researched
+ Stuff about moral panics
+ I tend to be drawn to podcasts that are created by people who are first and foremost either writers/journalists or scholars (with the exception of A Bit Fruity, all my favorite current podcasts are created by people in those categories)
+ Anything Michael Hobbes is involved with lol
+ Oh and my guilty pleasure is anything about cults (other people listen to true crime stuff, I listen to cult stuff)

Things I don't like in a podcast:
+ Humor podcasts (a lot of these people are very funny, but none of these podcasts are comedy podcasts)
+ Generic culture/pop culture stuff (by which I mean the sort of overviews of just what's going on in the world of pop culture)
+ Fiction (I'm sorry, but Welcome to Night Vale is the only one that ever truly worked for me)
+ Pure news podcasts
+ Interview podcasts that focus on celebs
+ Honestly anything about celebrities, I just don't care
+ Self-help stuff

esmegrey

Just posted the latest in depth review to my site, for a silly little vampire movie from the late 90s called Die Hard Dracula.

💎E💎

unspeakablehorror

I definitely only expect to get along with a limited number of people since that's just the nature of people, that we don't all get along with each other, and also I am not optimized for getting along with others anyway.

Still, I think I'm rather friendly considering I could get most if not all my socialization needs met as a forest hermit. I don't need to socialize for the most part, and I find it rather difficult, but I nevertheless still enjoy talking to people and find it very worthwhile.

lirazel

Fic: take whatever you need to take and leave the rest
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Pitt (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Melissa “Mel” King & Frank Langdon, Becca King & Melissa “Mel” King, Becca King & Frank Langdon
Characters: Frank Langdon, Melissa “Mel” King, Becca King, Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, Baran Al-Hashimi
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, well just slightly, set during season 2, branches off after episode 5, who is mel going to trust to treat her sister?, do you really need to ask?, frank needs someone to trust him, mel needs someone to reassure her, good thing they’re in the same space again
Summary:

“I’ll look her over,” Robby says.

“Um, thank you,” Mel says. “But, um, can Dr. Langdon do it?”

Frank isn’t sure which is more gratifying: Mel’s request or the expression on Robby’s face.

“Oh, we want Ms. King to have the very best care,” Robby says, voice a bit tight behind the jocularity. “She’s family, after all. I think I can spare a few minutes to make sure she’s okay.”

Fuck him. Frank’s hand flexes just as Mel’s jaw tightens. Becca’s eyes are darting around anxiously and she’s flapping both of her hands now.

“I appreciate that,” Mel says. “But I’d like Dr. Langdon to be the one to treat her.”

Her voice is steely in a way that Frank hasn’t heard from her before, her eyes fierce as she holds Robby’s gaze. A little shudder passes through Frank and he sucks in a deep breath even as he fights to keep his face neutral.

lirazel

So yeah, I finished Stone Butch Blues last week and I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I had braced myself for endless suffering, and there was so much suffering, but I am still so glad I read it.

There was almost nothing in it I related to (except being very pro-union lol) and much that I found perplexing (mostly the sex stuff--no shock there--and some of the ideas about gender that are quite dated but important), but I also learned a ton. I struggled with the first few chapters because I found the prose too...simple? That's not the right word. It just wasn't stylistically what I enjoy. Too many short sentences in a row. But I came to appreciate it as a way of evoking the voice of a working-class, (formally) uneducated woman who is struggling to find her place in the world.

The episodic nature of the book creates its own rhythm; it's essentially a book about a woman finding community and/or stability, then losing it (often in incredibly violent circumstances), sinking into depression, then fighting for it again, repeat repeat repeat. Jess and her friends are living their lives in a constant state of danger, and they know it. Most of the violence comes from the state (the police are the truest villains in the book) or through the powers of capital. It's a communist book, though it's not as overtly communist as I kind of expected being familiar with Leslie's politics and life. I thought it did a great job of handling the political stuff. I was particularly moved by the queerplatonic relationship between Jess and her neighbor, who is a transwoman, and I think it's significant that after a book about Jess trying to find a sexual/romantic partnership that works for her, the (hopeful) ending is found in this friendship and work in labor organizing. Community is complicated and messy but absolutely vital and the lines between romantic/sexual relationships, friendships, solidarity partnerships, etc. are blurred in ways that I think is really realistic.

I appreciated talking about this book in community with a bunch of queer women/nonbinary folks, and I was fascinated by the very different ways that we read Jess's gender identity in particular. Jess didn't fit into the categories offered by the time in which she was living (late 50s through late 70s), but even though we have a lot more categories and labels now, I don't think she really fits into any of them either, which I really appreciated.

Shoutout to the two scenes that made me cry:

the fire where Jess loses everything and the scene where she goes to the institution to visit the older butch who had inspired her as a kid. That last one TORE ME UP

.

So yes, I have now read an important queer novel, and I'm glad I did.

magid

I’ve had a couple of (regular corpus maintenance, not fixing) appointments at Mount Auburn Hospital recently, and I decided to walk rather than bus. The first time, I figured I’d get to check out the progress at 221 Mt Auburn St, but no dice: the street is not only blocked to vehicular traffic for a couple of blocks (non-trivial; it’s a somewhat major street), but also pedestrians. I feel so badly for the folks who used to live there.

( backstory )

Demo photos by week available at:
https://www.cambridgema.gov/Departments/capitalbuildingprojects/projectsinitiatives/221mtauburnstreet

magid

Yesterday morning, $Municipality announced snow emergency parking would be starting at 8a (the snow didn’t start until after dark), while $Employer announced later Sunday that today would be a snow day, with regular operation starting tomorrow morning at 7a. Alas for me, that I can work remotely, so I didn’t get any benefit (other than the lack of commute).

The wind today was impressive, snow whipping around so strongly that walls were coated in white, not just roofs. It’s slowed now to just snow, having already dropped what I think is over a foot of snow (the drifts make it difficult to be certain; a recently posted news article lists amounts ranging from under half a foot out on the Cape, to almost three feet in Dartmouth). It looks beautiful from the comfort of home; I’m very glad not to be out, though.

My porch is filled with snow; I haven’t been able to open the doors to the porch since MLK weekend.

eta, 7:50p: The city isn’t lifting the snow parking ban until 5p tomorrow, and my functional boss has said that tomorrow’s work sessions will be online tomorrow, just like today, so I can work from home again tomorrow if I wan/if Outside looks less navigable than I’d like.

unspeakablehorror

I haven't been on an airplane in a long time but I used to travel on them a fair amount when I was younger and I never understood being bored on airplanes. Tired, sure; all that time sitting in a metal tin can filled with pressurized recycled air, makes sense it would tend to make people tired, but I would just fall asleep if I got tired so...boredom problem solved.

So surely boredom can't actually be the primary complaint about plane flights? It must be something else. Perhaps pain or discomfort? Or anxiety? Maybe the small size of the seats and inadequate legroom? Maybe having the type of acrophobia that makes one afraid of flying? I actually do have acrophobia, but it seems to primarily be set off in an open air context--I'd only worry about my plane crashing if it was experiencing severe turbulence or if I had reason to believe it was already in danger of crashing. Which is maybe another reason I would never get bored on flights. I love looking out the window. Plane rides have the ultimate view.

But even if I couldn't look out the window, I could still read or take something else to occupy me. And failing any of that, I could daydream.

So am I just the weirdo for thinking plane flights are fun and other people really do find them boring, or is the dislike of plane flights (and maybe the boredom too) actually caused by discomfort or anxiety as I theorize above?

magid

Every year $Employer has run a voluntary exercise program in the late winter, where people form teams to cheer each other on to make weekly goals (minutes of movement, not intensity, so open to a fairly wide range of folks). After last year’s program, there was an announcement that it had been cancelled, presumably as part of the cost-saving measures put in place to mitigate the deficit by the sudden change in tax rate on money from endowments. I was a little sad, but as a wholly non-essential program, it made sense.

This fall, there was an announcement that it would be happening again this year, as part of a different department’s programming, and as an 8- rather than 12-week program.

It’s still motivation to get moving during a time of year it’s easy to cocoon, so I signed up. In the old program, there were weekly goals of however many minutes. In the current one, there’s also a weekly goal, but when I looked at it, I was overwhelmed: the 8th week had over 8000 ‘wellable’ points, with a maximum of 1500/day (for scale: 1 mile walked = 100 points). What?! I started freaking out just a bit, trying to figure out how in the last week I’d manage that many points. Then I was chatting with the leader of the tunnel walk I went on Thursday, and she said that she thought it was cumulative, not weekly, goals. Which made a lot more sense, when I thought about it.

So I’m trying to work in more exercise, but not go so overboard that I injure myself or something.

umadoshi

Reading: Last week I finished Stephanie Burgis' Wooing the Witch Queen (fun!) and read Heated Rivalry. I opted to just skip straight to the actual HR novel rather than first reading the Scott/Kip novel, which worked out fine, since I also had that context from the show. I enjoyed it a fair bit, but now I'm in the awkward position of wanting to see the next chunk for Shane and Ilya but no more urgently than after I finished watching season 1 of the show. The choices now are a) read the entire series (presumably doubling back to actually read book 1), b) skip ahead and read The Long Game, or c) hold off entirely and wait for season 2 of the show.

I also read a few more volumes each of Hikaru no Go and The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, but I'm still in rereading territory with both. (I think I've already read up to vol. 12 of Kurosagi, but for Hikaru, I think the odds are against me really realizing when I've hit new territory until I go to enter a volume in Goodreads and find it's not already on my Read list there.)

Watching:

scruloose and I are caught up on both The Pitt and Frieren, and we finished Midnight Mass last weekend (a very solid, intense ending).

With my crunch time at work starting, it's not an ideal time for us to start a show that's a significant time commitment or that's going to leave me desperate to see a next episode when work is eating most or all of my evenings. It's possible this will result in me just showing

scruloose Heated Rivalry, since it's apparently our key cultural export of the decade and all. *g* Only six episodes and I don't have to worry about being impatient to see what happens next or about being spoiled.

(I still don't feel actively fannish about HR at all, but am enjoying being adjacent to it and seeing all the fannish excitement and meta and such. I have saved many fic recs to my read-later list on A03, but have yet to actually read a single one [and may never, given how slowly I go through fic--there's still a steady stream of Guardian fic I haven't read that also goes on that list].)

Weathering/Working: We have what sounds like a significant nor'easter blizzard arriving at some point tomorrow, with heavy wet snow. Will this be where our luck fails for the season and we lose power for the first time? (I'm completely astonished that it hasn't happened yet. Probably it's not really because the generator and backup power are warding that off, like carrying an umbrella around...)

And of course the spring crunch is set to start tomorrow in the late afternoon, right around when the storm is likely to be in full swing. Will the weather have much impact? (Mainly, I guess, in terms of Those Who Speak all being able to make it there safely; I kinda hope that there's some kind of backup power in their actual building, but I don't know for sure one way or the other.)

magid

soup: turkey stock (made around Thanksgiving, frozen since then) with onions, carrots*, parsley, and matza balls
turkey breast (also frozen since Thanksgiving) topped with smoky tomato* jam, baked over onion, sweet potato*, and slices of Georgia peaches (frozen since the summer)
mashed potatoes* with spinach*, pureed basil*, pureed garlic scapes*, and scallions
sort-of red flannel hash, with onions, pieces of what I guessed is corned beef in the mix of deli ends picked up from the Butcherie, thinly sliced cabbage*, potatoes*, and beets*
the rest of the peach slices baked with a bit of matza meal, Earth Balance, and a a little hot* honey*

* locally sourced

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thevagabondexpress

Reading

Winter share, 10 of 11

Weekly proof of life, seasonal-crunch edition

Writing Roundup: February 2026

Space, The Scifinal Frontier.

Blood donation

your periodic podcast rec request post

Drac Pack

A Friendly Forest Hermit

fic: take whatever you need to take and leave the rest

no subject

221 Mt Auburn St

Blizzard!

Do People Really Find Plane Flights Boring?

GetFit

Weekly proof of life: recent media | Spring Crunch Eve

Today in food play

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January 2026

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