Beware vintage photo supposedly showing Rothschild family posing with 'demon'
Feb. 9th, 2026 03:00 am![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
snopes_feedFor years, the image has spread online satirizing famous families and groups.
snopes_feed
(no subject)
Feb. 8th, 2026 09:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsBy sheer coincidence, I ended up reading Alix Harrow's The Everlasting almost immediately after The Isle in the Silver Sea. Both books are ringing changes on the same big themes -- the narratives of nationalism, fate and tragedy, Spenser and Malory, depressed lady knights and evil girlbosses -- and from what I had previously read of both Harrow and Suri's work I was tbh quite surprised to find myself liking The Everlasting a bit better.
The premise of The Everlasting: it's more or less the second-world equivalent of the 1920s and we have just had a Big War. Our protagonist Owen has a radical pacifist alcoholic father that he doesn't respect, a war medal that he didn't really earn, a academic career that doesn't seem to be going places, and a face that makes it pretty obvious that at least one parent came from The Other Side. However, his messy relationship with the war has not in any way altered his ardent passion for the greatest figure of his country's nationalist mythology, the knight Una Everlasting, who fought at the side of the nation's founding queen a thousand years ago and died tragically to bring the country stability.
Then he finds a book that purports to be the True History of Una Everlasting, and gets summoned to a secret meeting with the country's minister of war, an evil girlboss who immediately sends him back in time to experience and document Una Everlasting's Last Quest first hand. He gets to write the nationalist myth himself! What fun!
Alas, it turns out that the great knight Una Everlasting is violent, brutal, and extremely burned out about all the people she's killed as part of the bloody process of nation-forging: at this point the citizens think of her as a butcher and she's inclined to agree. Nonetheless, fanboy Owen convinces her to take on this one last quest for the sake of her honor & kingdom & legacy &cetera, with the promise of peace at the end of it, knowing full well that the end of the quest will in fact mean her death.
This is the first section of the book and tbh I enjoyed it enormously. Owen is writing the narrative in first person and his voice is used to great effect: he's a twisted-up and self-contradictory character who shows the problems of nationalism much better as a guy who's genuinely trying to convince himself that he believes in it than he would if he started out already enlightened. I love his embarrassing radical pacifist dad and his judgmental thesis advisor, and, as heterosexualities go, I am absolutely not immune to the allure of large violent depressed woman/weaselly little worm man whom she could easily break in two who is obsessed with her but also fundamentally betraying her. If the book had ended at the end of its first section, I think it would have been a phenomenal standalone novella.
However, the book does keep going. I continued to have a good time, more or less, but the more it went on the more I felt that it had sort of overplayed its hand. Alix Harrow is extremely a Power of Fiction author in ways that didn't fully work for me in the other book of hers I read; I do appreciate that this book is the Power of Fiction [derogatory] but I still think that perhaps she is giving fiction a little too much power ... For the length of ninety pages I was willing to role with the importance of The Great Nationalist Myth, but the longer it went on and the deeper and more recursive it got with its timeloops the more I was like 'wait .... we only have one founding myth? changing the myth really directly and immediately impacts the future in predictable and manipulable ways and is in fact the only thing that does so? Hmm. Well."
Also I enjoyed the evil girlboss right up until it was revealed that every evil girlboss in the country's whole thousand-year-old history had been the very self-same evil girlboss and no other woman had ever done anything. You are telling me you have built up a whole thing about this country's founding myth of the Queen And Her Lady Knight from scratch and that didn't change the country's relationship to gender at all? NO other woman was ever inspired to do anything with that? I am not sure that's as feminist as you think it is ...
Anyway, I do think this book and The Island In the Silver Sea form a sort of spiritual duology and I'm glad to have read them back to back: for such similar books they have really interestingly different flaws and virtues.
The premise of The Everlasting: it's more or less the second-world equivalent of the 1920s and we have just had a Big War. Our protagonist Owen has a radical pacifist alcoholic father that he doesn't respect, a war medal that he didn't really earn, a academic career that doesn't seem to be going places, and a face that makes it pretty obvious that at least one parent came from The Other Side. However, his messy relationship with the war has not in any way altered his ardent passion for the greatest figure of his country's nationalist mythology, the knight Una Everlasting, who fought at the side of the nation's founding queen a thousand years ago and died tragically to bring the country stability.
Then he finds a book that purports to be the True History of Una Everlasting, and gets summoned to a secret meeting with the country's minister of war, an evil girlboss who immediately sends him back in time to experience and document Una Everlasting's Last Quest first hand. He gets to write the nationalist myth himself! What fun!
Alas, it turns out that the great knight Una Everlasting is violent, brutal, and extremely burned out about all the people she's killed as part of the bloody process of nation-forging: at this point the citizens think of her as a butcher and she's inclined to agree. Nonetheless, fanboy Owen convinces her to take on this one last quest for the sake of her honor & kingdom & legacy &cetera, with the promise of peace at the end of it, knowing full well that the end of the quest will in fact mean her death.
This is the first section of the book and tbh I enjoyed it enormously. Owen is writing the narrative in first person and his voice is used to great effect: he's a twisted-up and self-contradictory character who shows the problems of nationalism much better as a guy who's genuinely trying to convince himself that he believes in it than he would if he started out already enlightened. I love his embarrassing radical pacifist dad and his judgmental thesis advisor, and, as heterosexualities go, I am absolutely not immune to the allure of large violent depressed woman/weaselly little worm man whom she could easily break in two who is obsessed with her but also fundamentally betraying her. If the book had ended at the end of its first section, I think it would have been a phenomenal standalone novella.
However, the book does keep going. I continued to have a good time, more or less, but the more it went on the more I felt that it had sort of overplayed its hand. Alix Harrow is extremely a Power of Fiction author in ways that didn't fully work for me in the other book of hers I read; I do appreciate that this book is the Power of Fiction [derogatory] but I still think that perhaps she is giving fiction a little too much power ... For the length of ninety pages I was willing to role with the importance of The Great Nationalist Myth, but the longer it went on and the deeper and more recursive it got with its timeloops the more I was like 'wait .... we only have one founding myth? changing the myth really directly and immediately impacts the future in predictable and manipulable ways and is in fact the only thing that does so? Hmm. Well."
Also I enjoyed the evil girlboss right up until it was revealed that every evil girlboss in the country's whole thousand-year-old history had been the very self-same evil girlboss and no other woman had ever done anything. You are telling me you have built up a whole thing about this country's founding myth of the Queen And Her Lady Knight from scratch and that didn't change the country's relationship to gender at all? NO other woman was ever inspired to do anything with that? I am not sure that's as feminist as you think it is ...
Anyway, I do think this book and The Island In the Silver Sea form a sort of spiritual duology and I'm glad to have read them back to back: for such similar books they have really interestingly different flaws and virtues.
Weekly-ish Update, now with more ish (2/8/26)
Feb. 8th, 2026 05:19 pmyaaurensLast weekend got away from me like crazy, much like this weekend threatened to do.
Hamlet was impressive. I can't imagine being able to remember all of those lines, and there were a couple of spots where Suzy didn't remember either, but they covered very well. There were a few line changes that I was thrown by - "I know a hawk from a heron" rather than a handsaw? It made no sense to change it, but they did. I was also sad that they cut the line about telling Claudius to seek Polonius in th'other place himself if his messenger can't find Polonius in heaven.
That whole evening was pretty heckin' fun though; three of us carpooled down, so Robin and I got to talk c-dramas the whole way, then we picked up Alex and met Airawyn at Scum and Villainy for dinner before the show. And then I prevented myself from punching Joss Whedon in the face! Which I'm not like. Proud of? I totally wanted to punch him, but obviously not doing so in public and getting arrested was a win.
The one damper on the evening was that Munchkin (Allesy's kitty) was ill and very sadly, that continued after the evening. He was a good kitty, and had a good, long life. I'm very sad about it, but even more sad for Allesy having to make that decision but he was not going to get better.
I also got asked to go into work early on Saturday after the show, which, ugh, I wanted my whole morning to rest up post show. And then I ended up staying an hour and a half LATE too, and all for no work, just sitting around studying. That's not entirely true, I did sit in on a few interviews and caught a deduction for someone that the TA didn't see. I think it's going to be very helpful that I've just taken the ITC and have had more recent training on stuff even though there are so many things that I'm like "oh shit do I actually know this?"
Also had to work Sunday, after wurch, which sucked, and again, there was nothing to do so we closed early, heh.
The week was.... a week? Mom had a meeting with her teachers that left her very upset, and we're all brainstorming what to do about the situation. She really wants to not be running the business anymore (even though she does very little with it), but no one wants to take over and she doesn't really want to just drop everything entirely. Personally, I would like to not have to deal with the business every again, because I am sick and tired of charter school stupidity, so if we could find someone to take it all over, I would be peaceing the fuck out asap.
Got taken off the schedule for Saturday, and then on Thursday boss asked if I could come in after all. Good thing I did, because I ended up getting two clients, bringing my total for returns up to 5! I'm not entirely sure I did everything right for the one though, because it was a military thing, and there is so much weirdness around how to do military taxes. I didn't do anything WRONG I'm pretty sure, but I probably could have done it more Right. Chatted with our tax expert at the Methodists today and am starting to think that maybe that should be where I put my focus with taxes. There are so many different niches you can go into, and around here, or anywhere with a military presence? Having that expertise would make me highly sought after.
Also had a chat with my former piano student today about possibly becoming a piano technician, which, ha. That has been kicking around in the ol' noggin for years too and I've never done anything about it. But it could potentially be a good outside of tax season gig; just do piano tunings over the summer/fall. I dunno. I know nothing. I'm worse than Jon Snow about what I know.
Got a lot of random little things coming up this week that I really wish I could just smoosh into one day and have done with it, but nooooo gotta carve out lots of little pockets of time that eat up my non-work time and make it hard to get anything else done. Hard to believe Escapade is week after next - I haven't done anything for the art show yet, and I have no idea if I'm going to be able to do any prep for the fan fair or anything else. Or if I'll be awake enough to do it (last year I just decided to rest, and that was an excellent decision). Hopefully I will get to actually have Saturday off this week so I can do some stuff for that.
Lunar New Year is next week too; Z1L's new movie is supposed to come out over the holiday, but I haven't been able to find any local info, and since it's mid-week I probably won't get to see it, nooooo. They gave it a really stupid English name too, despite the original name being perfectly good. Honestly, at this point I'm just hoping I won't be asked to close on the 17th so we can go do holiday food.
Media stuffs: finished The Immortal's Ascension, annoyed that it was a season one with no promise of a season two. Now we're watching The Day of Becoming You, which is a het romance body-swap and so very funny. Zhang Xincheng and Liang Jie both do a wonderful job being each other's characters. Last night was "Saturday Night at the Movies" as dad likes to call it, but rather than a movie we watched the new Agatha Christie's Seven Dials mini series, which was actually quite enjoyable. We also binged the first half of Wonder Man on one of the nights I got back from work late (but also early?) and didn't want to subtitle, and that has also been highly enjoyable so far. I keep thinking about Trevor Slattery and the couple of monologues that have just been transcendent. Like, yeah, if THAT was how he did Lear, then yes, his Lear would have been the talk of Croyden. Anyway, still have three eps of that, which maybe we'll do post Superb Owl (but maybe we'll do Olympics).
I am ANNOYED that I will not get to watch any of the curling that I'm interested in because of THINGS HAPPENING at the SAME TIME. Rude.
Goals for the week: finish P&L for MCC, finish P&L for mom, read something not tax-related.
Good things: physio, snuggly blankets, ginger snaps (again, because they are Still Good)
Hamlet was impressive. I can't imagine being able to remember all of those lines, and there were a couple of spots where Suzy didn't remember either, but they covered very well. There were a few line changes that I was thrown by - "I know a hawk from a heron" rather than a handsaw? It made no sense to change it, but they did. I was also sad that they cut the line about telling Claudius to seek Polonius in th'other place himself if his messenger can't find Polonius in heaven.
That whole evening was pretty heckin' fun though; three of us carpooled down, so Robin and I got to talk c-dramas the whole way, then we picked up Alex and met Airawyn at Scum and Villainy for dinner before the show. And then I prevented myself from punching Joss Whedon in the face! Which I'm not like. Proud of? I totally wanted to punch him, but obviously not doing so in public and getting arrested was a win.
The one damper on the evening was that Munchkin (Allesy's kitty) was ill and very sadly, that continued after the evening. He was a good kitty, and had a good, long life. I'm very sad about it, but even more sad for Allesy having to make that decision but he was not going to get better.
I also got asked to go into work early on Saturday after the show, which, ugh, I wanted my whole morning to rest up post show. And then I ended up staying an hour and a half LATE too, and all for no work, just sitting around studying. That's not entirely true, I did sit in on a few interviews and caught a deduction for someone that the TA didn't see. I think it's going to be very helpful that I've just taken the ITC and have had more recent training on stuff even though there are so many things that I'm like "oh shit do I actually know this?"
Also had to work Sunday, after wurch, which sucked, and again, there was nothing to do so we closed early, heh.
The week was.... a week? Mom had a meeting with her teachers that left her very upset, and we're all brainstorming what to do about the situation. She really wants to not be running the business anymore (even though she does very little with it), but no one wants to take over and she doesn't really want to just drop everything entirely. Personally, I would like to not have to deal with the business every again, because I am sick and tired of charter school stupidity, so if we could find someone to take it all over, I would be peaceing the fuck out asap.
Got taken off the schedule for Saturday, and then on Thursday boss asked if I could come in after all. Good thing I did, because I ended up getting two clients, bringing my total for returns up to 5! I'm not entirely sure I did everything right for the one though, because it was a military thing, and there is so much weirdness around how to do military taxes. I didn't do anything WRONG I'm pretty sure, but I probably could have done it more Right. Chatted with our tax expert at the Methodists today and am starting to think that maybe that should be where I put my focus with taxes. There are so many different niches you can go into, and around here, or anywhere with a military presence? Having that expertise would make me highly sought after.
Also had a chat with my former piano student today about possibly becoming a piano technician, which, ha. That has been kicking around in the ol' noggin for years too and I've never done anything about it. But it could potentially be a good outside of tax season gig; just do piano tunings over the summer/fall. I dunno. I know nothing. I'm worse than Jon Snow about what I know.
Got a lot of random little things coming up this week that I really wish I could just smoosh into one day and have done with it, but nooooo gotta carve out lots of little pockets of time that eat up my non-work time and make it hard to get anything else done. Hard to believe Escapade is week after next - I haven't done anything for the art show yet, and I have no idea if I'm going to be able to do any prep for the fan fair or anything else. Or if I'll be awake enough to do it (last year I just decided to rest, and that was an excellent decision). Hopefully I will get to actually have Saturday off this week so I can do some stuff for that.
Lunar New Year is next week too; Z1L's new movie is supposed to come out over the holiday, but I haven't been able to find any local info, and since it's mid-week I probably won't get to see it, nooooo. They gave it a really stupid English name too, despite the original name being perfectly good. Honestly, at this point I'm just hoping I won't be asked to close on the 17th so we can go do holiday food.
Media stuffs: finished The Immortal's Ascension, annoyed that it was a season one with no promise of a season two. Now we're watching The Day of Becoming You, which is a het romance body-swap and so very funny. Zhang Xincheng and Liang Jie both do a wonderful job being each other's characters. Last night was "Saturday Night at the Movies" as dad likes to call it, but rather than a movie we watched the new Agatha Christie's Seven Dials mini series, which was actually quite enjoyable. We also binged the first half of Wonder Man on one of the nights I got back from work late (but also early?) and didn't want to subtitle, and that has also been highly enjoyable so far. I keep thinking about Trevor Slattery and the couple of monologues that have just been transcendent. Like, yeah, if THAT was how he did Lear, then yes, his Lear would have been the talk of Croyden. Anyway, still have three eps of that, which maybe we'll do post Superb Owl (but maybe we'll do Olympics).
I am ANNOYED that I will not get to watch any of the curling that I'm interested in because of THINGS HAPPENING at the SAME TIME. Rude.
Goals for the week: finish P&L for MCC, finish P&L for mom, read something not tax-related.
Good things: physio, snuggly blankets, ginger snaps (again, because they are Still Good)
no. no, thank you.
Feb. 8th, 2026 09:50 pmwaterswordAnother 4 inches of snow? And high winds? And "arctic chill"? I cannot.
I am trying the applesauce loaf again, this time with some chunks of "Gold Rush" apples in the batter and making sure not to use lumpy brown sugar. Fingers crossed.
Amtrak's 2FA system is garbage and I may have to contend with Julie, my nemesis (Amtrak's phone customer "service" bot) to get to New York to see Dessa in March (and sneak out of a conference early); my splurge on Restaurant Week was kind of a waste of money (pasta oversalted, rosé weirdly bland); I am sick of all my clothes, no doubt because I have been wearing all of them at the same time for the past month, and the idea of acquiring different clothes is the epitome of exchanging money for bads and disservices.
THIS IS THE BAD PLACE.
VID(s): Andor: Ruin My Makeup & Ewoks: Hero
Feb. 8th, 2026 09:36 pmcolls posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
vid_bingoTitle: Ruin My Makeup
Prompt: vidder's choice
Fandom: Andor
Music: Ruin My Makeup by Lola Young
Summary: Vel/Cinta, maybe I'll lie and say that I do not love you
AO3 | DW
Title: Hero
Prompt: 80's music
Fandom: Star Wars, Ewoks
Music: Holding Out for a Hero by Bonnie Tyler
Summary: afestivids treat made for serrico
AO3 | DW
Prompt: vidder's choice
Fandom: Andor
Music: Ruin My Makeup by Lola Young
Summary: Vel/Cinta, maybe I'll lie and say that I do not love you
AO3 | DW
Title: Hero
Prompt: 80's music
Fandom: Star Wars, Ewoks
Music: Holding Out for a Hero by Bonnie Tyler
Summary: a
festivids treat made for serrico AO3 | DW
Daily Happiness
Feb. 8th, 2026 06:29 pmtorachan1. Our hotel tickets are all sorted! We're going to be staying at three different hotels this time as opposed to just one last time, so that will be interesting. Originally I had wanted to just make it two, one in Tokyo and one in Osaka, but the hotel near Universal Studios Japan only has a hotel shuttle earlier in the day and there's only two flights daily from LA to Osaka, both of which arrive later in the evening, after the shuttle stops running. So the options are take a taxi (expensive and not what I want to spend our money on) or the train, which requires multiple transfers and is not ideal after a twelve hour flight. The shuttle does run to the area around Osaka station all night, so since we're only planning to go to Universal Studios two of the four days we'll be in Osaka, we decided to get a hotel in the city for a couple days then switch to one closer to Universal Studios for the time we'll be at the park. For the Tokyo leg of the trip, even though we won't be doing Disneyland every day, we did opt to get a hotel near the parks and just stay there the whole time, even the days we go into the city, because our Disneyland days will be spread out.
2. We got Popeye's for lunch today. We both really like their chicken, but there's none around here. In fact, for some reason we have no fast food chicken options nearby except Chick-fil-A, which we refuse to eat at. But we happened to be near Popeye's, so we took the opportunity.
3. I took a longer than usual walk this morning and stopped at the fancy donut place. They have a couple new Valentine's donuts and I got a strawberry chocolate malasada, which had a chocolate coating and was filled with like strawberry pudding. It was super tasty.
4. Tuxie!
2. We got Popeye's for lunch today. We both really like their chicken, but there's none around here. In fact, for some reason we have no fast food chicken options nearby except Chick-fil-A, which we refuse to eat at. But we happened to be near Popeye's, so we took the opportunity.
3. I took a longer than usual walk this morning and stopped at the fancy donut place. They have a couple new Valentine's donuts and I got a strawberry chocolate malasada, which had a chocolate coating and was filled with like strawberry pudding. It was super tasty.
4. Tuxie!
40 Days of Drabbles > 2026
Feb. 8th, 2026 07:45 pmflareonfury40daysofdrabbles - so I created this community a few months ago in honor of the old request challenge thing I used to do (of various degrees of success). I am tempted to use the community in the style of adventdrabbles, 'cause it seems wasteful not do more with it. So I'll probably post "prompts" daily there for the period of Lent.Lent is starting February 18th, and again I'm not really religious (despite my family wishes), but I figured I could try this challenge again and see if I could exercise my writing abilities a bit more. I'm gonna try and get everything written & posted by Easter, or by end of April at the latest. *fingerscrossed*
You do not have to be a "friend" to request a pairing, but if you are unsure of a fandom/pairing I like - my list is located here (while not complete exactly, it's mostly is) or feel free to check out the tag list on
harpiewriting for ships I've already wrote for. I also technically have a list of Crossover pairings but that hasn't really been edited since 2012 so yeah... Also some of these fandoms are old and I have not recently watched them (or at times finished them). Request as much as you want since there are so many slots open.... I'll try to pick the ones I know for sure I can/will write & add them to the table. Prompts aren't required. (Or preferably use a prompt from one of my tables I need to write for! :P ) Drabbles will at least be 100 words, maybe more depending on the plot bunnies.
I rarely write dark fics, smut, or super angsty stuff, so if you prefer that, I might not be able to do it? If you have any Do Not Wants, let me know otherwise it'll be whatever my brain can think up.
| 001. --- | 002. --- | 003. --- | 004. --- | 005. --- | 006. --- | 007. --- | 008. --- | 009. --- | 010. --- |
| 011. --- | 012. --- | 013. --- | 014. --- | 015. --- | 016. --- | 017. --- | 018. --- | 019. --- | 020. --- |
| 021. --- | 022. --- | 023. --- | 024. --- | 025. --- | 026. --- | 027. --- | 028. --- | 029. --- | 030. --- |
| 031. --- | 032. --- | 033. --- | 034. --- | 035. --- | 036. --- | 037. --- | 038. --- | 039. --- | 040. --- |
PDXWLF - now with photos
Feb. 8th, 2026 05:58 pmolivermossLast night I went to the Electric Blocks and also branched out a bit along the east side. Still need to make a list of what else I want to hit before the festival is over.
I've also taken a bunch of video clips which are hard to post there, but here are people gathering for the illuminated bike ride
After I wound up at Wonderlove and had the first cider I'd had in a while, nice dry one. They've got screens with 3 separate Olympic feeds on it so there was skiing, skating and curling all playing at once.
Anyway, here is Cuddlebug:
( More pics )
I've also taken a bunch of video clips which are hard to post there, but here are people gathering for the illuminated bike ride
After I wound up at Wonderlove and had the first cider I'd had in a while, nice dry one. They've got screens with 3 separate Olympic feeds on it so there was skiing, skating and curling all playing at once.
Anyway, here is Cuddlebug:
( More pics )
Treatless Spreadsheet
Feb. 8th, 2026 08:35 pmcandyheartsexThe treatless spreadsheet is now available! This includes all non-defaulting participants who have fewer than two gifts.
The spreadsheet will be updated at least once a day, including during the anon period, to keep it current and remove names as we all work on our treating!
Any pinch hitters who are not signed up for the exchange can also add requests to the pinch hitter prompt post, and I will add them to the treatless spreadsheet as well.
The spreadsheet will be updated at least once a day, including during the anon period, to keep it current and remove names as we all work on our treating!
Any pinch hitters who are not signed up for the exchange can also add requests to the pinch hitter prompt post, and I will add them to the treatless spreadsheet as well.
Is Netflix raising subscription cost to $49.99 as of March 1?
Feb. 9th, 2026 12:00 amsnopes_feedIt's unclear how the looming merger between Netflix and Warner Bros. would affect costs, though the alleged price hike is pure satire.
Helix Pendants
Feb. 8th, 2026 06:13 pmyourlibrarian posting in everykindofcraft
These pendants were designed for an earring set, but I liked the way the colors looked different depending on how they were turned.
( Read more... )
Daily Check-In
Feb. 8th, 2026 07:21 pmmecurtin posting in fandom_checkinThis is your check-in post for today. The poll will be open from midnight Universal or Zulu Time (8pm Eastern Time) on Sunday, February 8, to midnight on Monday, February 9 (8pm Eastern Time).
Please, talk about how things are going for you in the comments, ask for advice or help if you need it, or just discuss whatever you feel like.
Poll #34197 Daily check-in poll
Open to: Access List, detailed results viewable to: Access List, participants: 22
How are you doing?
I am OK
9 (40.9%)
I am not OK, but don't need help right now
13 (59.1%)
I could use some help
0 (0.0%)
How many other humans live with you?
I am living single
11 (50.0%)
One other person
5 (22.7%)
More than one other person
6 (27.3%)
Please, talk about how things are going for you in the comments, ask for advice or help if you need it, or just discuss whatever you feel like.
2/8/2026 Inspiration Trail
Feb. 8th, 2026 03:36 pmmrkinchDespite good weather and a forty-one species list, the morning never quite made it to wonderful. No mixed flock, no phoebes, and the only raptor was a last-minute Turkey Vulture. The morning started with American Robins flying in from the East to the trees and snags on the ridge crest. They seemed to come in groups of ten, lots of chirping and some singing; I put the number at fifty, but there were probably many more. A couple of hours later, on return, there were only a few. We'll see how many there are down in Wildcat Canyon tomorrow. I also saw a small flock of Cedar Waxwings, also flying west. There have been so few this season. There was a new arrival, though, the first Tree Swallow I've had up there. ( The list: )
There were many frustrations (merlin a major source) but the worst was standing in the trail under a wooded hillside, hearing the sound of many small wings, and not being quick enough to see what flew over before they were behind the ridge. Red-winged Blackbirds, possibly, but I'll never know.
There were many frustrations (merlin a major source) but the worst was standing in the trail under a wooded hillside, hearing the sound of many small wings, and not being quick enough to see what flew over before they were behind the ridge. Red-winged Blackbirds, possibly, but I'll never know.
(no subject)
Feb. 8th, 2026 02:50 pmysobelThe second, longer run of prednisone seems to have restored most if not all of the jaw mobility (yay for being able to eat bagels again) but it also has given me some fairly impressive insomnia.
( details )
The other thing of note this week is finally getting into the dermatologist for the Suspicious Blob on my ear. I forget when I first noticed it, and I'm pretty sure I brought it up to my main doctor several times, but she thought it was just benign. But it's been growing, and then in December it got randomly bleedy, and my audiologist sent a note to my doctor about "a lesion on the ear".
Dermatologist (who is awesome I love her) agreed it looked sus, and chopped it off. (The blob, not the ear.) Top edge of ear is awkward to bandaid, but if you do it right with the right shape bandage you can get an elf ear effect, woo.
Pathology came back as basal cell carcinoma, which I had a spot of on my nose in 2016. BSC is one of the least scary types of cancer: slow moving, easy to treat if you get it early, and nowhere near as scary as melanoma. (And 'treat' is generally just an outpatient surgical procedure, no radiation or chemo.) I'll be having a Mohs surgery in a bit over a month to make sure all the cancer cells got removed, and I'm not really worried.
...except for the bit where I have to get up at at least 6am, eww.
( details )
The other thing of note this week is finally getting into the dermatologist for the Suspicious Blob on my ear. I forget when I first noticed it, and I'm pretty sure I brought it up to my main doctor several times, but she thought it was just benign. But it's been growing, and then in December it got randomly bleedy, and my audiologist sent a note to my doctor about "a lesion on the ear".
Dermatologist (who is awesome I love her) agreed it looked sus, and chopped it off. (The blob, not the ear.) Top edge of ear is awkward to bandaid, but if you do it right with the right shape bandage you can get an elf ear effect, woo.
Pathology came back as basal cell carcinoma, which I had a spot of on my nose in 2016. BSC is one of the least scary types of cancer: slow moving, easy to treat if you get it early, and nowhere near as scary as melanoma. (And 'treat' is generally just an outpatient surgical procedure, no radiation or chemo.) I'll be having a Mohs surgery in a bit over a month to make sure all the cancer cells got removed, and I'm not really worried.
...except for the bit where I have to get up at at least 6am, eww.