paraka. Network

This year during Three Weeks for Dreamwidth, I'm writing about reading as a way of becoming an expert in a given subject. Read Part 1: Introduction to Becoming an Expert, Part 2: Architecture, Part 3: Dance, Part 4: Music, Part 5: Painting, Part 6: Poetry, Part 7: Sculpture, Part 8: Conflict Resolution, Part 9: Cooking, Part 10: Coping Skills, Part 11: Gardening, Part 12: Relationship Skills, Part 13: Repairing, Part 14: Survival Skills, Part 15: Archaeology, Part 16: Biology.

Three Weeks for Dreamwidth Part 17: Chemistry

Chemistry is the science of studying matter, particularly how different substances interact with each other. Its subfields include astrochemistry, biochemistry, environmental chemistry, and geochemistry among others. At home, kitchen chemistry is both amusing and useful. Aspects of chemistry include history, famous people, and famous discoveries. Here on Dreamwidth, check out

common_nature,

environment,

naturaldyes,

science, and

scienceworld.

Three Weeks for Dreamwidth April 25-May 15

( Read more... )

Mood busy

Tags:

turps

intoabar is open for sign ups again. I failed my assignment last year, but usually have a lot of fun with the challenge, so am thinking of joining again. Maybe anyway. I have about a week to decide.

We went to see The Sheep Detectives on Saturday, and man, it hit me right in the feels ( cut for spoilers )

Sadly, what doesn't have a feel good ending is the results of the local elections where Reform has done really well, including taking all posts available in my local area. I knew it would happen, and it really was a case of voting for the best of a bad lot. But Reform, and seeing that slime ball Farage gloating about taking Sunderland made me sick.

People on the local FB groups have been constantly complaining about how bad a job Labour has been doing, now lets see Reform do better. Somehow, I suspect they won't.

My nurse appointment went well last week, ( cut for medical talk, maybe verging on tmi )

Class went well on Wednesday, we were talking about the benefits of sleep, another topic I've gone through about three times now. Why it sticks in my mind though is we were talking about using devices like Fitbits to track sleep and everyone who had one checked their app to see their sleep hours the night before. Mine was 9 1/2 hours, and yeah, sleeping is one thing I'm usually okayat. But, even that was long for me.

dine

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Tags:

meme,
music monday

ysabetwordsmith

These are some posts from the later part of last week in case you missed them:
Economics
Birdfeeding
Artificial Intelligence
Poem: "How Great You Really Are"
Space Exploration
Birdfeeding
Books
Climate Change
Books
Philosophical Questions: World
Poem: "Restoring Them to Their Former Glory"
Buffalo
Birdfeeding
Follow Friday 5-8-26: Muse
Wildlife
Birdfeeding
Moment of Silence: Ted Turner
Low Tech
Community Thursdays
Space Exploration
Birdfeeding

Poem: "Walnut Park" has 46 comments. Early Humans has 22 comments. Philosophical Questions: Pregnancy has 80 comments. Safety has 83 comments.

Last week's Poetry Fishbowl went well. I am still writing.

Three Weeks for Dreamwidth is running April 25-May 15. People aim to make a new post each day, or participate in various activities to celebrate the platform.

Three Weeks for Dreamwidth April 25-May 15

Three Weeks for Dreamwidth: Introduction to Becoming an Expert
Three Weeks for Dreamwidth: Architecture
Three Weeks for Dreamwidth: Dance
Three Weeks for Dreamwidth: Music
Three Weeks for Dreamwidth: Painting
Three Weeks for Dreamwidth: Poetry
Three Weeks for Dreamwidth: Sculpture
Three Weeks for Dreamwidth: Conflict Resolution
Three Weeks for Dreamwidth: Cooking
Three Weeks for Dreamwidth: Coping Skills
Three Weeks for Dreamwidth: Gardening
Three Weeks for Dreamwidth: Relationship Skills
Three Weeks for Dreamwidth: Repairing
Three Weeks for Dreamwidth: Survival Skills
Three Weeks for Dreamwidth: Anthropology
Three Weeks for Dreamwidth: Biology

"The Worst Thing in Life" opened and closed within a few days. Quain tries calling his friends to talk about recent accomplishments, but the only person willing to talk with him is someone he hasn't contacted in a couple of years.

"No Faster or Firmer Friendships" has 50 new verses. It belongs to Polychrome Heroics and needs $35 to be complete. Josué reads a funny poem to Maria-Vera.

The weather has been variable here. We got some rain the other day. Seen at the birdfeeders this week: a large mixed flock of sparrows and house finches, a pair of cardinals, a male and a female rose-breasted grosbeak separately, a male Baltimore oriole, a brown thrasher, a blue jay, a gray catbird, and a fox squirrel. Currently blooming: pansies, violas, sweet alyssum, alliums, marigolds, honeysuckle, snapdragons, lantana, million bells, blue lobelia, petunias, portulaca, nemesia, wild chives, wood hyacinths, columbine, peonies, irises, mock orange. Green fruit: mulberries, raspberries.

Mood busy

Tags:

tielan

Firstly, we won our game on Sunday, a 1-0 win. Which was nice. Full game again, although we had a woman from the next grade up who could sub us when necessary, but about half of us just stayed on for the full game in the end.

I am thinking I may need to start working at being a centre half - attacking-AND-defending midfielder. There's only one woman who can presently play CH and Team 1 is using her too (out of 4 players who were solid centre halves for our two teams, we've lost two of them this year, and we had 5 the year before).

I prefer striker, tbh. I'm a pretty good forward, especially on a team where we have a solid half line, and at least one person who's a good "finisher" (ie. scores goals). But there's nobody else who could learn the position, and I may not be particularly stand-out, but I can run back and forth and offer options.

--

A couple of years ago, Mothers' Day stung. I'm still not sure why; I didn't want children and all that. I still don't. But this year, I felt...almost jaunty about the day.

( better connections with the kids in my family? )

A pretty good weekend.

Tags:

ineptshieldmaid posting in

gamechangerhr

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Tags:

conuly

Fic one: Protagonist very recently, like, last week, left home to live with a friend. Protagonist wonders how his newly estranged family found him, then reflects that "the internet still exists". Technically a true statement in 1994, however, it's perhaps a bit more likely that they just used the phone book.

Fic two: Protagonist is touristing in NYC, casually stops in a bodega, buys a flip phone so he can text people. Not in 1992 he didn't - texting via phones was only just invented that year and phones were bricks!

You gotta laugh. Kindly and gently, but still - you gotta laugh!

*****************************

( Read more... )

torachan

1. I was hoping we'd get the call to pick up the new bikes yesterday or today, but so far no news, so I'm guessing it will be tomorrow. I don't have anything tomorrow or Tuesday morning for work that I have to do at a specific time, though, so we could still easily go pick them up then and not have to wait for next weekend.

2. It was nice to have a weekend at home. We almost always go to Disneyland on the weekend, but since we went on Thursday, that meant both weekend days were just spent at home relaxing.

3. I've been playing Under the Island, a cute Zelda-like for the Switch. It's a lot of fun! I actually started playing the demo when we were in Japan, but I didn't play much there and then haven't played at all since we got home, but I picked it up again Friday and finished the demo, then downloaded the full game. Annoyingly the demo save does not port over to the game, so I had to replay the whole first dungeon, but I was much faster about it having just done it right before. I've played a ton yesterday and today and it seems like a fairly short game, so I think I'll probably finish it soon at this rate, but it's a lot of fun.

4. A couple months ago I built the lego Himeji Castle and put it on a shelf out in the garage, but it's not big enough to fill the whole shelf but also too big to share with another big set. I had a set of bonsai plants that I hadn't built yet, so I built those and put them around the castle to make a shelf of all Japanese themed sets. Then I also did the Japanese maple, and then when we got back from Japan I started working on this cherry blossom landscape, which is a new set that we'd gotten not long before we went on vacation. I wasn't originally planning to put it in the same display, but there was no good place in my room so I decided to see how it looks with the others and I love it.

I added some non-lego figures as well (all stuff we got in Japan and have yet to find a spot for and were sitting in the pile of souvenirs in the garage).

5. It's been a full week since Jasper had any pee incidents. He was fine when Alex was over this evening. Fingers crossed that we stay pee free, but if nothing else I'm glad to have had a whole week without frantic cleaning.

6. Since Carla's been having problems with this same toe for years, she had been doing regular foot soaks a while back and had at one point bought a bunch of bags of epsom salts that were on clearance for like $1.50, and then she stopped doing the soaks and the bags are just out in the shed not getting used. But soaking with epsom salts twice a day was specifically recommended as after care for the nail removal so it was great to have those ready to go and not need to go out and buy anything.

7. Haven't seen Ollie up in the laundry area recently but then this morning he was just up there chilling.

Tags:

conuly

Watch on YouTube

I was introduced to this piece - specifically Jupiter, Bringer of Jollity - via Wolf 359, the Christmas episode, aka the one where things go from "comedically dark" to "shit just got real".

jenab

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

hannah

It's fairly amusing to get scam calls to hang up on me - I'll ask for a website or an email, and they cut their losses then and there.

"Do you have a website?"

"No."

"Why?"

It was one of the brighter points of the day. There was a decided lack of stimulation, and it's making the evening drag on somewhat. I'm hoping a light weights routine will help some, once I decide what movie to do it to.

Mood uncomfortable
Music Apartment Story - The National

azhdarchidaen posting in

fandomcalendar

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Tags:

bluedreaming

( word of the year gif )

( about picking the word )

Tags:

word of the year

musesfool

Yesterday, I made both these and these lemon cupcakes. I did both with a whisk and I liked that they didn't require the stand mixer.

The first ones were quite different than a typical lemon cupcake recipe - they had ricotta and honey in them, and I used this fancy lemon honey I had and I think that was a mistake. The cupcakes domed brilliantly, but had a weird aftertaste I did not like and the only thing I can think that could cause it was that honey. I otherwise used sour cream instead of creme fraiche, and olive oil for vegetable oil, but neither of those things should have caused the weird aftertaste. So maybe I'll eventually work my way back to that recipe (chosen because I have ricotta in my fridge that needs using up) and use clover honey and see how they are.

I think the second recipe is going to be my go-to for lemon for now. The batter is a super weird texture - it looked like curdled custard, or maybe bad cafeteria scrambled eggs - but the cupcakes are moist and lemony, though I guess the real test will be how they taste tomorrow, since if I'm taking them to work, I'll bake them on Sunday and bring them to the office on Tuesday, so they have to be good for that long. I made this strawberry cream cheese frosting this afternoon, but it wasn't stiff enough to pipe (not a euphemism) since I only used 2 cups of powdered sugar (and still think it is pretty sweet), so I just dipped the cupcakes into it. (I also did not make strawberry puree, I used 3 tbsps of seedless strawberry jam instead.) The tang of the cream cheese goes well with lemon and also helps cut through the sweetness of the frosting, so it worked pretty well, I thought. Next week, though, I plan to make strawberry Swiss meringue buttercream, which is much less sweet. We'll see how it goes.

I also tried to make homemade bbq sauce but I did not like how it tasted at all, so I didn't use it. Next time maybe I will try something that has no tomato base at all. Regardless, I cooked both racks of ribs and they were delicious and I will be eating ribs all week. I also made my own cole slaw dressing again, and this time I liked it better because I added onion and garlic powder - it is mind-boggling to me that the recipe doesn't include that and the first time around I just let it go but come on. Season your food!

So this weekend was delicious but so fucking messy - I ended up with egg yolk, bbq sauce, frosting, lemonade, and hot pork juice (not a euphemism!!! the ribs cook for 3 hours wrapped in foil and then for the last hour you take the foil off and it is a precarious situation!) on my shirt, but not all at the same time, thankfully.

*

Mood satisfied
Music Inside the NBA

Tags:

adventures in cooking

mrkinch

Yesterday on the Trail would have been great; today was not, fog on the ground and sun alternating all morning. Western Wood-pewee! and the Ash-throated Flycatcher again, so all four expected Flycatchers have arrived. Good Warblers, too, not only the summer residents but a Townsend's, three McGillivray's, and two Northern Yellow Warblers! TIL that the Yellow Warbler and Lazuli Bunting songs have a lot in common, at least to my ear, but merlin kept suggesting Northern Yellow Warbler and eventually I figured out what it was hearing. Sometimes merlin is actually helpful. Surprise of the morning was one Bullock's Oriole song. A single song is not necessarily enough, but it was so clear and distinctive that I did report it. ( The list: )

The downed tree had indeed been cleared away. By the foliage I would have called it a very healthy oak and I don't recall any particular wind (it's down in a protected spot anyway) so I wonder why the trunk snapped like that.

Tags:

umadoshi

This is not a media-intake post, because my list of last week's media is upstairs on my computer and I'm on the sofa finally trying out the very small folding bluetooth keyboard I bought ages ago to maybe make typing on my phone a bit easier.

But hey, I live.

Mood blah

Tags:

weekly proof of life

pensnest

I just found myself writing "an infusion of coffee" and thought, hmm. An infusion of tea, sure, but does that seem like the right word for coffee? What should I be saying instead? I'm not talking about the brewing method, but more of a necessary injection of caffeine, but... infusion?

*

Spent the weekend with my (women's) chorus, working on our October Convention numbers with plenty of time in hand. Since I went to Harmony College very recently, I was pleased with myself for, I think, providing a useful bit of input into what we're doing.

The May Convention (the men's one, which also involves the Mixed choruses) is coming up fast. We have our dress rehearsal this Wednesday, and a final full day together on Sunday. Must make cakes this week. Then it'll be off to Harrogate for a long weekend. We have secured a house-sitter who will make sure the cat is kept, if not exactly gruntled, at least regularly fed.

Also, I had my first appointment with the dressmaker who is going to make something for me to wear at my Bun's wedding, so I have colours in mind that I can take to Harrogate's fabulous hat shop, always supposing I can find it. Yay!

thesleepingbeauty posting in

nexticon

The Matrix Resurrections

( link )

Tags:

kaberett

Reading. I am so close to being Fully Up To Date with She's A Beast!!! I have just hit Feb 2026!!! Maybe my brain will let me read literally anything else???

... having said which, I totally managed to take a break from SAB to inhale Platform Decay (Martha Wells), the new Murderbot. Very little of it has stuck with me and also it was a very pleasant way to switch off brain for a few hours.

And I got close enough to the autoreturn on the library loan of another memoir about embodiment -- Run Toward The Danger, Sarah Polley -- that I am actually trying to blitz through it; so far it is not doing a great deal for me but all this really means is that I am not the target audience for everyone!

Watching. In celebration of David Attenborough's 100^th birthday, we have now watched The Year Earth Changed. I had an lot of feelings.

Playing. ... yeah so I completed The Game About Shelving Books, in that I now have all of the Steam achievements including the speedrun achievement (I never normally get speedrun achievements; I never normally even bother trying to get them), and am now Taking Breaks from other things by loading the game back up and wandering around reorganising subject shelving bays according to what makes me happiest (by and large: pick one of "colour" and "thematic grouping"; I am not here for trying to work out how to impose Dewey). At this point, though, that is feeling like a small soothing achievable task that can be A Smol Treet, rather than having the driving urgency of hyperfocus, so that's an extremely welcome development.

Eating. Strawberriessssssss. So many strawberries. I Am Luxuriating. Also: British asparagus! Fancy goats' cheese! The supermarket, having Taken Away the raspberry and passionfruit cheesecake Apparently Forever, has reintroduced it as a seasonal food!

Exploring. We went for one of our normal walks! Adam spotted a deer! We pursuit predated it for a little off amongst trees we had not previously poked around in, and discovered a series of neat rectangular brick walls, all of uniform roofless height, now full of mature trees that had clearly been there for Some Time! We have no idea, OpenStreetMap has nothing to say on the topic, and there is something that has merrily dug setts or dens into and around the foundations...

Making & mending. Bike... works again? Bike works again. Still need to unfuck the rear brake some more but maybe I will manage to take it to see the nice bike shop halfway down the hill tomorrow morning on my way Elsewhere.

Growing. Potted up the lemongrass! Have not potted up the aubergine. Ancho flowering merrily. Maybe I will make it to the plot this week and get some of the things I'm intending to put in the ground into the ground?

Observing. A deer! (Probably muntjac.) The bat! Several excellent front gardens!

Tags:

vital functions

unavee

I read Heated Rivalry on the train ride back home the other day. It was impossible to not think about the show and compare throughout. I can't tell what my opinion would have been about the book by itself, but I did like the experience of reading the book after watching the show.

I have been reading too much fanfic, though, and everything is already jumbling together in my head.

( general feelings )

( some other notes I jotted down )

Anyway, I'm just going to end up picking and choosing the details and parts of each canon I liked the most for how I think their story goes!

Tags:

Profile

paraka

Paraka Productions

September 2022

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30

Page Summary

Page generated 11/5/26 08:21

Style Credit

Style: Regatta for Summertime by ninetydegrees
Resources: Texture by Design Shard and Icons by Romeo Barreto, John Caserta, Denis Chenu, Pedro Lalli, Marcus Michaels, P.J. Onori, Laurent Patain and Cor Tiemens from The Noun Project

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

paraka

Network

Three Weeks for Dreamwidth: Chemistry

(no subject)

kissing this man has cleared my skin and cured my depression

Monday Update 5-11-26

mother's day and hockey

Fic post: totally mismatched content

Two fics, two days - both set in the early 1990s

Daily Happiness

(no subject)

Sunday night rambling

Arms around the stereo.

Multifandom: AU Roulette

2026: ambiguous

they're in trouble going forward

5/10/2026 Inspiration Trail

Bare-minimum weekly proof of life

whirling like a cyclone in my mind

Blue Hair

vital functions

Heated Rivalry (book)

Profile

September 2022

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags