As a chronic overthinker, honestly this could be a shift in a helpful direction 😂

No cheating, reskeet with the most recent photo of your pet. Most animals when its 18*F out: "Nope." Appa: living his best life.

Indie Game Awards Disqualifies Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Due To Gen AI Usage insider-gaming.com/indie-game-a...

A thread of how to say “nobody asked you” from around the world, starting with this one… A Lithuanian way of telling someone to mind their own business is ne tavo kiaulės, ne tavo pupos. It means “not your pigs, not your beans.”

*walking in a winter wonderland* ME: where's bluebird? BIRD: gone ME: w... who are you? *bird looks around shiftily* BIRD: I'm new bird

He's not sleeping. He's just resting his eyes.

I get to celebrate Caturday this week, as we had one of the neighborhood wanderers stop by to scope out the small rodent situation in our upper yard. The dog was...not pleased, so I went out to shoo the kitty away, only to have him/her rub against my legs and flop down for scritches. #caturday

Traditional Halloween Eldritch Horror game was delayed a week because of kid activities, but snacks and tea have been served, and it's time to watch the world fall into chaos. But the board game version, so it's fun Lovecraftian chaos.

959 semi-coherent words for my NaNo day by 7AM, brought to you by my brain refusing to sleep from 2-5AM. Im sure those will be fine when I go back to look at them. In the meantime, I am taking a nap.

A plus of living in an old New England town is that the mill buildings house all sorts of fun businesses and workspaces. Like the women's club/co-work/makerspace I got around to joining so that I can write without laundry threatening from the next room. 10/10 Autumn sky through old window views.

My wind ensemble does a costumed fall concert every year, which I love because I *usually* go with slightly obscure nerdy costumes, and they're more likely to recognize them in that crowd. I don't think that will be an issue this year. This year we're gonna be ✨️Golden✨️ 💃🎶

Dear house sparrows currently fighting over the nest box in our yard. Maybe late October in New England is not the most reasonable time/place for this? Best of luck to ya, though.

A little behind schedule this year, but we finally started day 1 of our annual Over the Garden Wall watch yesterday. It's the kid's second time watching it, and it's so fun to see him recognize things he didn't notice the first time or to get excited about scenes/quotes he knows are coming.

I fear I reveal my roots by saying taylor ham, egg, and cheese on a plain bagel; salt, pepper, no ketchup This whole post is gold if you are in the subcategory of humans who have strong feelings about bagels.

In today's episode of "The local thrift store needs to get someone with basic book awareness (or Google search skills) on their shelving team" : Found a copy of @pdjeliclark.bsky.social's The Dead Cat Tail Assassins next to the picture books on the kid shelves. (1/2)

We are thrilled to announce that our NEW Large Language Model will be released on 11.18.25.

Garden green beans are still going strong, but kiddo is pretty tired of them Today's strategy: turn "green bean/ground beef tart" (GBx2 plus onion, cheese, herbs on puff pastry on sheet pan) into a "pizza pocket" (same things but folded up in pizza dough, then dip in marinara) Bets on how it goes?

9 y.o. got a birthday gift from a friend. The parents apologized, but I don't know any better forms of harmless, mildly annoying entertainment that will only survive a week anyway He hasn't gotten the "prank" part, but there's been a lot of joyful running around yelling "Here comes Mr. Fartyman!" 💨

Starting to shell some of the scarlet runner beans as the pods dry out, and I can't get over how pretty they are. 🌱

I was concerned about letting the elderberries we didn't have time to pick go to waste. But there's been a whole little mini-flock of half a dozen bluebirds hanging out in the yard gobbling up the leftover ripe ones. Even had some cedar waxwings stop by for a snack earlier in the week. 🐦

Kiddo got a new board game for his birthday. So it will be race cars 24/7 in our house for a while.

Dental office swapped out a functional medical history form for some AI one that has you write in contact and insurance info multiple times and includes an incoherent alphabetical list of conditions, treatments, and... organs? To check yes or no on with no explanation. Favorite? Kidney y/n

Better be the best salsa ever, because now the oven is giving us error codes and I don't know what trying to roast a bunch of tomatoes did to cause that trouble Probably a bunch of steam at a reasonably high temperature. But still. Anyway, that's another 5+ pounds of garden tomatoes dealt with.

Sometimes the Garden Guardian keeps an eye on the neighborhood from the porch while I harvest things. Other times he follows me around demanding the Bean Tax. Could anyone refuse such a floof when he asks so nicely for just a few cronchy beans?

So. Gardensky (is that what we call that social corner?). What does someone do with...just far too many elderberries. Already made some jam. Still have these and more to be picked. Plus two other plants that aren't ripe yet. We do not currently have winemaking supplies, unfortunately. 🌱

Busy couple of days in the garden. Guess it's time to make more salsa. 🌱

What I wanted to do this morning: read for a bit to decompress from back-to-school and back-to-coaching chaos. Instead, I'll be redoing my tryout skill eval data analysis because Excel turned on co-pilot without me realizing it until it started "guessing" what should go in blank cells I'd sorted

The tomatoes have been quite productive this summer. So I was confused by the one plant where they started to ripen but never turned red. Turns out one plant out of the bunch (all grown from last year's red tomatoes) has yellow tomatoes. Picked 5lbs yesterday. Today we make roasted tomato salsa.

Labor Day weekend pizza in the brick oven. At least if Appa doesn't steal all the fuel first. 🍕 🐕

Looks like the seeds in the sunflowers have developed enough for the goldfinches to stop by for lunch. (Phone camera photos continue to be less than ideal, but it's what we have)

8 y.o.'s playlist for the morning consists of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader audio drama followed by the K-Pop Demon Hunters soundtrack. Quite a tonal clash on its own, right? At some point, he put it on shuffle. So, he's now happily listening to the book out of order interspersed with Huntr/x 🙃

I can't get over the number of happy little bees enjoying the sunflower pollen the past few days. This is the first year we've intentionally grown sunflowers (had some volunteers near the bird feeders last year), and they are quite fun.

Home again (and feeling far more human after a shower) just in time to join Appa on the porch for neighborhood watch as a storm rolls in. ⛈️ 🐕 🏡

I'm not sure I'll ever be more relieved to see this beautiful sign than I am right now. Oh boy, what a debacle of a travel day 🤦‍♀️

It's been real, World Con! Time to head back to New England, process the many interesting conversations I've had over the past few days, catch up on sleep, and get back to real-life responsibilities (assuming my flight leaves on time and I don't get stuck in Chicago...). See you in 2027!

How long can we keep crocheting before con-brain has us skipping multiple stitches per row? 🤔

It's a good thing I had to be up far too early this morning to navigate city bus routes to the convention center anyway, or I imagine the alarm going off in the empty building across the street from 5:30-6 would have been....even less appreciated.

I found coffee, so I guess I'm even more officially in Seattle now. Also found a quiet corner to do some edits in while the social battery recharges a bit.

Here we go!

Made it to Pike Place Market this morning. As a New Englander, I felt obligated to get the crumpet shop's "Vermont" crumpet, and it was an excellent choice.

WorldCon Travels Leg 3: Plane from Chicago to Seattle. Quick "nap" (if you can call sitting there with eyes closed that) and tacos!

WorldCon Travel, Leg 2 - Plane from Boston to Chicago. The gate exists. Breakfast has been acquired. Inner North Jerseyan made an appearance to be offended, but fixed it. Side note: What NJ authority gave the Boston airport permission to sell Taylor ham egg and cheese?

This is the first year we've grown scarlet runner beans and yardlong beans in the garden. We will definitely be doing the runner beans again, if only for the butterflies and hummingbirds that they bring. The yardlong beans are fun, but we need more recipes for them to earn a repeat spot.

Time for the big day of planes, trains, and automobiles. Leg 1: Bus. Safe travels to everyone on their way to WorldCon today! Also, to the people out running at 4:30 AM while I was on my way to the bus station ... why?

Disclaimer xkcd.com/3126/

Good news for anyone wanting to relive the 90s. For just $20, you can get an inflatable chair (ahem..."beanless bag chair") from your local Aldi. The real question. Are they actually big enough to recline in like the box shows? (press x to doubt)

For all my Birdsky people over here who are also interested in audio data tech nerd things. This was incredibly fascinating: youtu.be/hCQCP-5g5bo?... Now to set up a 24/7 bird recording station for the yard 🤔

The 🌱 Season of Beans 🫘 is upon us! Last year, we picked our first green beans the first wk in Aug and ended up with 97lb for the year. This year, we picked the first ones July 6, and I picked 1.25lb today alone. I have a feeling we'll be breaking that 100lb mark this year.

Garden-guardian is on duty. He has successfully barked at several people who dared to go out for a quiet Saturday stroll before it gets too hot. Gotta protect those green beans, after all.

Goals for Week of 7/21 Writing- Finish editing current draft section Other- Get final arrangement of hexagon-cardigan pieces figured out. Start doing the seams so that I can finish the sleeves (they'll be continued in navy blue) and add rows to the bottom (in black) to get it to the final length