Apr. 22nd, 2025 10:02 pm

Purrcy, bees

mecurtin: face of tuxedo tabby cat Purrcy looking smugly happy (purrcy face)
[personal profile] mecurtin
#Purrcy was both happy and regal, sitting in my seat on the sofa with the sun coming the skylight on it. See how he smiles at me in Cat!
#cats #CatsOfBluesky

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby is lightly curled on a brocade cushion, looking at the camera with ears alert, whiskers spread wide and white, eyes light green and pupils just slits. He is clearly very happy, as sunlight shines on the cushion and most of him.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby is lightly curled on a brocade cushion, looking at the camera with ears alert, whiskers spread wide and white, eyes light green and pupils just slits. He is clearly very happy, as sunlight shines on the cushion and most of him.




I sat out on the porch to eat breakfast today, and the local hive of feral honeybees was awake, buzzing about looking for nectar. The crabapple flowers are opening, so they seem to have their timing just right. The carpenter bees were also out, inspecting the eaves. It was really good to have that 1/2 hour, even though it was so late in the morning (I had errands to run before my stomach was ready for breakfast) that I didn't see or hear any migrants.
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Apr. 22nd, 2025 09:08 am

Foxfire, Esq. by Noa (October)

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[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Retired superhero turned lawyer, Naomi "Foxfire" Ziegler pursues a wrongful death case involving a fire, a young superhero and a host of shifty housing corporations.

Foxfire, Esq. by Noa (October)
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Apr. 21st, 2025 02:16 pm

Bundle of Holding: Coyote & Crow

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[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


This all-new Coyote & Crow Bundle presents Coyote & Crow, the alternate-history RPG set in the Free Lands of an uncolonized North America.

Bundle of Holding: Coyote & Crow
Apr. 21st, 2025 09:10 am

Clarke Award Finalists 1994

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[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
1994: At least four MPs die from unrelated causes, Tony Blair uses his new position as leader of the Labour Party to make bold economic statements unbounded by reality, and in a bold rebuke of a half million years of effort to isolate Britain from the continent, the Chunnel opens.


Poll #33014 Clarke Award Finalists 1994
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 60


Which 1994 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?

View Answers

Vurt by Jeff Noon
10 (16.7%)

A Million Open Doors by John Barnes
17 (28.3%)

Ammonite by Nicola Griffith
29 (48.3%)

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
49 (81.7%)

The Broken God by David Zindell
6 (10.0%)

The Iron Dragon's Daughter by Michael Swanwick
29 (48.3%)



Bold for have read, italic for intend to read,, underline for never heard of it.

Which 1994 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
Vurt by Jeff Noon
A Million Open Doors by John Barnes
Ammonite by Nicola Griffith
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
The Broken God by David Zindell
The Iron Dragon's Daughter by Michael Swanwick
Apr. 20th, 2025 09:39 pm

Two Purrcys; housework

mecurtin: tabby cat pokes his cute face out of a box (purrcy)
[personal profile] mecurtin
In general Purrcy is *not* allowed on the kitchen counters. But he seemed extremely interested in the back corner here, so I let him jump up and poke around as part of his Rodent Control Officer duties. No results at this time, but Constant Vigilance! is his watchword.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby looks back at the camera over his shoulder from where he stands in the corner between a tile wall and an uneven stone one. Plastic containers can be seen next to him. He looks quite concerned, but his eyes are a beautiful gray-green.



Purrcy jumped up on the kitchen Chair O Love and he was feeling *feisty*! He discovered a gap between the blanket & the chair, explored it, and saw that it was Good.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby crouches on a gray-green blanket-covered chair in a kitchen, looking a little wild.

A gray-green blanket is draped across a chair. The white-furred nose of a tabby cat peaks out the bottom, whiskers spread but eyes invisible.

A close-up of Purrcy the tuxedo tabby's face as he peers out from under a gray-green blanket on a worn brown vinyl chair. Only his eyes, little pink nose, and wide-spread whiskers can be seen.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby peeks out from where he crouches in a nook made by a gray-green blanket draped over a worn brown vinyl chair. His eyes look very large and solemn, his paws very small.



People on Bluesky were discussing a tweet by a TERF called June Slater, who posted:
These trans women. Do they ever do things like women actually do, run a home, cook, put the washer on, get the kids to school, visit relatives in care homes, budget the bills, clean the house, chauffeur kids about? You know the reality of being a woman!
One of the boggling aspects of this "thinking", to me, is the way she doesn't seem to be able to conceive of MEN cooking or taking care of children or living spaces.

Katherine Dickinson said
there’s a weird expectation of childishness in men among these women to the point it’s like these women aren’t attracted to functioning adults and it’s like two steps from Why Don’t You Take A Seat With Chris Hansen territory

And I remember things I'd read about the history of housekeeping and service work that I wrote up here, and wondered:
Compared to the US & the Continent, Brits tended to be resistant to labo(u)r-saving home tech & reliant on servants for the middle-to-upper classes right up to WW2. After the War, *huge* shock of not having servants like before, & I think maybe upper-middle/upper-class men just ...use their wives?

bcuz before the War they were certainly childishly dependent, by US standards. e.g. Gentleman's service flats, in UK, were bachelor apts with cleaning, cooking, and personal valet services provided. No equiv in US AFAIK
I looked at some stats about household work, but there's basically nothing about how the lives of upper-middle-class or richer people live in different countries.

Ach, I shall quit this now and finish my Andor re-watch, so Dirk and I can watch the new eps when they drop on Tuesday.
Apr. 19th, 2025 09:30 pm

Movie rec

gwyn: (teevee jim ward morris)
[personal profile] gwyn
Hey, if you are going to theatres to see movies these days, I can highly recommend Sinners, with Michael B. Jordan, Wunmi Mosaku, and Hailee Steinfeld. It's about twin brothers (played by Jordan) who return to their town in Mississippi in 1932 to open a juke joint, and run up against vampires. I'm not much of a vampire person at all, but I think this would probably satisfy both the vampire loving crowd as well as the crowd like me, because the whole first hour is mostly a slow build of who the twins are and who the people in their lives are, and what's happened to them to make them what they are (not the least of which is of course generational trauma from racism), and also background for the character who becomes central to both their story and to the vampires' story.

The music is fucking off the charts amazing (Ludwig Göransson does the soundtrack and a lot of the music stuff) and worth it alone. There are two music sequences that left me kind of gobsmacked. I've never seen anything like it.

There's definitely gore and jump scares, but overall I didn't find it too horror-y, more like a modern monster movie in terms of the violence and such. It was definitely R-rated, with some very sexual scenes. Anyways, if you were considering it, I loved it. (It was directed by Ryan Coogler of Black Panther fame.)
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Apr. 20th, 2025 02:24 am

Doctor Who: Lux

beccaelizabeth: my Watcher tattoo in blue, plus Be in red Buffy style font (Default)
[personal profile] beccaelizabeth
That was quite good :-)
I recommend watching it without spoilers. I think it would have been better if I had not forgotten what time it was and looked on tumblr before viewing. I think the first watch version where it is all Surprise Twists would be even better than the version Oh It's That Bit Cool.
It seemed clever and fun and Doctor Who.

I do not have very detailed thoughts on it this week. I woke up in the middle of my sleep because the food delivery slots were odd this week. I am thinking mostly that more sleep might be quite nice.
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Apr. 19th, 2025 07:08 pm

april babble

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[personal profile] donutsweeper
Ugh this month. I am on take 3 of my h/c assignment. Here's hoping this one actually works. After finishing that blanket and oven mitt I decided to try to use a recently adopted skein into shawl/scarf/wrap thing and only after completing a shawl I realized I hated the shape (it was one of those 'start with tiny triangle and increase in the first and last stitch of every row' things and the resulting shape was weird and extreme) so I puttered about with a few different patterns before finally finding one that worked (technically a pattern called the 'Gratitude Wrap'). I'll probably never wear it, but whatever. Lookie:

Light blue wrap
(Terrible picture, but I actually blocked this and it made such a difference, growing from 52"x13.5" to 62x 15.5

I then decided to make a string/market bag thing and have just frogged my 4th attempt. No idea why none are working but boy they are not. Time to put that project on the back burner for a while.

I don't *think* tumblr will go down any time soon, but the most recent round of 'the sky is falling' posts there got me to start weeding through my favorited posts (aka stuff to look at later posts) and, while I've still tons to go through, I've added a few dozen more links to various of my Resource Posts (here's the link to the Masterpost. And yes, at some point I will figure out how to either organize the stupidly long history (etc) and randomness posts or split them into two posts each or just a new third one? Or something, I don't know). Ugh. Both posts are such a mess. But, to be fair, when I first collected the links for posting them (SEVEN years ago, wow) there was just under 800 or so links in total between the 10 posts. Now there's over 2k and 11 posts, so it's not surprising organization has fallen by the wayside a little.

And, last but not least, several weeks worth of [community profile] recthething recs (MDZS/Untamed fics and tumblr art for a bunch of different fandoms):

Last(?) Loop by PyrrhaIphis (10k)
Summary Snippet: Have you ever wondered what a time loop story looks like to the people who aren't doing the looping? This is that fic! Wei Wuxian is living his life over and over again, and this time he thinks he's finally figured out how to get it right so no one he cares about will die. But we're only getting to see the effects of what he's doing through the eyes of others. (really neat take on a time travel fix-it)

Documented Fact by Scrippio (7k)
Summary: In which Zizhen transfers schools and can't quite believe his new professors are rivals the way everyone else says. Or: 5 times no one listened to Zizhen and 1 confirmation (adorable modern-with-cultivation Cultivation University Zizhen POV fic)

The Devil Went Down to Gusu by Nomme_dePlume (21k)
Summary Snippet: Wei Wuxian laughed. “Ah, Lan Zhan, I like you! Let’s be friends! And as a sign of friendship, I’ll tell you a little secret.” He leaned forward, and as he did, his sweet, amused smile curled into something nasty, and his eyes glowed a red so bright, the clearing looked bathed in blood. “I’m as much of a devil as I need to be to cleanse this world of the unrighteous.” He winked again. “Tell your friends about me.” (really great canon divergent AU where WWX has been a story told by the cultivation sects for years and finally makes an appearance)

tumblr art:
Babylon 5
- Vir is best boy. (delightful animation of one of Vir's most iconic scenes)

M*A*S*H*:
- P*E*A*N*U*T*S (various characters drawn in 'Peanuts' style. Adorable!)

MDZS/The Untamed
- they're just so happy (really cute yunmeng trio)
- YLLZ sunshot campaign ver. (spooky wwx at his yiling laozhu best)
- "He has been proper and righteous his whole life, untouched by the corruption of the secular world. The only mistake he has ever made in his life is you!" (powerful art of what the whipping scene might have looked like)

The Muppets
- an album cover for Rowlf (mockup of what a record by rowlf might look like, loved it)

Sylvester - Georgette Heyer
- embroidered hot water bottle cover (excellently done!)

I suspect I'm going to run out of stuff to rec soon, which is a shame since I've been reccing every week there for close to 4 years but I guess it was bound to happen eventually.
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[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Just four works new to me this week: two fantasy novels, two tabletop roleplaying game supplements. One novel is part of a series. Again, not seeing nearly as many series works as I'd expect.

Books Received, April 12 — April 18


Poll #32997 Books Received, April 12 — April 18
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 36


Which of these look interesting?

View Answers

The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow (October 2025)
17 (47.2%)

Blood for the Undying Throne by Sung-Il Kim (October 2025)
10 (27.8%)

Keepers of the Elven Rings by Gabriele Quaglia & Francesco Nepitello (April 2025)
4 (11.1%)

Realms of the Three Rings by Gabriele Quaglia & Francesco Nepitello (April 2025)
3 (8.3%)

Some other option (see comments)
0 (0.0%)

Cats!
27 (75.0%)

Apr. 18th, 2025 11:06 pm

I care but am not always there

beccaelizabeth: my Watcher tattoo in blue, plus Be in red Buffy style font (Default)
[personal profile] beccaelizabeth
I have been reading the news
but
I keep on finding myself kind of staring into space
(white ceiling, occasional glow stars)
computer screen gone dark from timing out
and very much not, in fact, reading the news.

which makes it difficult to read the news.
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[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Bata's unique abilities make her powerful, valuable, but as she is only ten, not in any way autonomous. The adults around her are keen to take advantage.

Where the Dead Brides Gather by Nuzo Onoh
mecurtin: WW2 We Can Do It! poster, showing white woman in red-and-white-spotted bandana, rolling up sleeve of blue work shirt and flexing arm, saying We Can Do It! (resistance)
[personal profile] mecurtin
For some weeks now I've been attending Invisible's "What's The Plan?" Weekly discussion/organizing meetings with co-founders Ezra & Leah.

I've been taking notes on the meetings, I'm going to start writing them up to share. I'm not going to claim to meet journalistic standards, but I'll do my best to cover the ground & pull out the good quotes. You can watch the video here.

I've been taking notes on the meetings, I'm going to start writing them up to share. I'm not going to claim to meet journalistic standards, but I'll do my best to cover the ground & pull out the good quotes. You can watch the video here.

Please give me feedback on format, style, level of detail. I'm posting here first because I trust you guys most, I may post elsewhere or turn it into a bluesky thread, dunno.
cut for length, US politics )
Apr. 17th, 2025 10:20 pm

For Book Club

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[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
Aside from The Cold Solution, which stories could be said to be replies to The Cold Equations?
Apr. 18th, 2025 01:28 am

WotR: The Knight Commander

beccaelizabeth: my Watcher tattoo in blue, plus Be in red Buffy style font (Default)
[personal profile] beccaelizabeth
I forgot shopping doesn't happen on Easter Sunday, and indeed forgot it was Easter this Sunday, so I had to grab the last delivery timeslot available on Saturday night, because fridge empty so waiting until Tuesday for the next workable one is... not ideal.

So now I'm feeling persistently like I've Forgotten Something, which is not in fact fun.

But! Reminds me of Wrath of the Righteous.

... spoilers for the whole thing go under the cut: Read more... )

You get all these choices for background at the start, you can change everything about the Knight Commander, you get so many options for answering the Who Are You questions... and yet by the end I feel like I know which ones are honest.

KC knows what you choose, first time you see the opening scene.

... and all the options for Remind Me Who You Are just get darkly funnier...
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Apr. 17th, 2025 02:54 pm

WotR again again again

beccaelizabeth: my Watcher tattoo in blue, plus Be in red Buffy style font (Default)
[personal profile] beccaelizabeth
Started playing Wrath of the Righteous on Core with a tiefling witch. Read more... )
I am once again doing the thing where I play a really long time in a row and do not do much else at all at all. Not ideal.

Also, I tried making one (1) different choice in the Shield Maze and it turns out it has Consequences, in an ongoing way, so now I feel... not great. About that.
But I did it for roleplay reasons and achievements reasons both, so I'm not redoing two days of play to go back and do different.
Wenduag Read more... )

I like this game until it gets just the teensiest bit too hard and then I do not. I could drop the difficulty. I could drop it all the eay to story if I wanted. But I already won it at a custom difficulty only a tiny bit below this one, so here I am, being stubborn and replaying lost bits a lot.

Still, it's something to do, and I have a narratively satisfying plan, so now I've just got to see how it works out. Should be fun. If I win it.
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Can a handful of intelligence agents working for the last remnant of the Holy Human Empire defeat a whole solar system of doctrinaire libertarians? Yes, obviously. But can they do it before the true enemy arrives?

The End of the Empire by Alexis A. Gilliland
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[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Revived Sigil Stone OSR Bundle with two tabletop fantasy roleplaying games from Sigil Stone Publishing – Five Torches Deep and Vagabonds of Dyfed.

Bundle of Holding: Sigil Stone OSR (from 2022)
Apr. 16th, 2025 11:21 am

The Dean Drive never dies

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[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
It just changes its name. The current version seems to be called asymmetrical electrostatic propulsion.

runpunkrun: dana scully reading jose chung's 'from outer space,' text: read (reading)
[personal profile] runpunkrun
I Just Got a Kitten. What Do I Do?: How to Buy, Train, Understand, and Enjoy Your Kitten, by Mordecai Siegal:

Why do all these books with titles like What The Heck Do I Do With This Kitten??? insist on starting with a lengthy explanation of what cats are, how they work, and where to find them? I already have a kitten or I wouldn't have picked up this book which seemed to understand that I Just Got A Kitten.

It's a good resource if you're going to get a kitten and want advice on how to pick one and what to do once you've brought the guy home, but if you already have a kitten in hand, the last two chapters are the most relevant.

Fun Fact: The kitten on the cover of this book looks almost exactly like my kitten, though this kitten is fuzzier, and mine started out that small but has since tripled in size.
Apr. 16th, 2025 09:14 am

The Briefcase by Hiromi Kawakami

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An elderly teacher and his middle-aged former student's lives are transformed by their chance encounter in a bar.

The Briefcase by Hiromi Kawakami
Apr. 16th, 2025 12:39 am

Purrcy

mecurtin: tabby cat pokes his cute face out of a box (purrcy)
[personal profile] mecurtin
It was evening, and time for ... *Shenanigans!* #Purrcy had to zoom about as I went GRAR! and then there was the Tossing of Crinkly Toys. As you can see from his eyes he was very wild and fierce, not to be tamed by external forces.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby crouches behind a wine box where it sits between a wooden and a tile floor. His pupils are blown wide, his whiskers splayed out and forward: the hunter lurks!

I'm at that point in Pesach where I'm hungry all the time because nothing feels like food. Hm. Dirk is having tortilla chips, I think I'll follow his lead ..
Apr. 15th, 2025 07:55 pm

2025 Aurora Award Ballot

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[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


The Aurora Awards are Canada’s annual English-language Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards. The 2025 Aurora Award Ballot has been released. Congratulations to the finalists!

The finalists are
Read more... )
Apr. 15th, 2025 04:14 pm

Bundle of Holding: M.T. Black Games

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Tabletop fantasy roleplaying sourcebooks and adventures by designer M.T. Black for Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition and compatible systems.

Bundle of Holding: M.T. Black Games
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[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Futuristic caveman Flint stands in the way of Andromeda's plot to steal the Milky Way's energy!

Cluster (Cluster, volume 1) by Piers Anthony
Apr. 15th, 2025 12:12 am

Purrcy: birds!

mecurtin: Pileated Woodpecker from Audubon's Birds of America (birds)
[personal profile] mecurtin
I was up too late, and Purrcy definitely felt it was time for me to get to bed. He was waiting right there! Pre-cuddly for your convenience!

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby sits in loaf position facing the camera not quite directly, pupils wide, ears alert. He's sitting on a red blanket on the bed, a blue blanket can be seen behind him. What a cute guy.




This was actually from a few days ago. Last night I made every effort to go to sleep early, because both Mr Dr Science & I had to get up early (for us) to call the Well Manager people & see if they could come repair our system. Or at least I was doing that, Dirk was going down to see if he could get water out of the tank to flush the toilets.

Huzzah! We were in luck! They were able to come over and do all repairs by 10:20. What a relief! There is NOTHING that I miss about modern life more than running water, NOTHING. My back has been hurting to the point of crippling me today because I moved too many gallon jugs yesterday, even one at a time.

Today's weather was really nice after a run of cold and wet, and a band of storm across the southern US that kept migrants back. So a bit after noon I saw Purrcy was looking out the window and I saw a Tufted Titmouse really rollicking it up in the bird bath:

grainy picture of a Tufted Titmouse bathing exuberantly in a red granite bird bath

and then a bit later my first warbler of the year, a Yellow-Rumped of course, a male in full breeding plumage, getting the grime of travel off his feathers. That was really cool. I also saw that the Carolina Chickadees are definitely going in & out the bird house I cleaned out. Seeing the Yellow-Rump, I went & sat on the front porch with my binocs, and in an hour I also saw a Palm Warbler, Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker, Brown Creeper (early for here!), and heard a Pine Warbler, as well as most of the Usual Suspects -- at mid-day, which is usually nap-time for birds. It was extremely restful and happy-making on a day with too many non-happy-making events.
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Apr. 14th, 2025 02:23 pm

Bundle of Holding: Defiant

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[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Be the master of your Domain with this new Defiant Bundle featuring Defiant, the Game Machinery tabletop roleplaying game of supernatural aristocrats ruling modern-day Holdings.

Bundle of Holding: Defiant
Apr. 14th, 2025 09:34 am

Clarke Award Finalists 1993

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[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
1993: Durham Coalfield closes, ending seven centuries of mining coal there, the Chunnel is traversed by its first high speed train, and the Labour Party begins the arduous task of becoming the Conservative Party.

Poll #32979 Clarke Award Finalists 1993
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 63


Which 1993 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?

View Answers

Body of Glass (variant of He, She and It) by Marge Piercy
7 (11.1%)

Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
35 (55.6%)

Correspondence by Sue Thomas
0 (0.0%)

Destroying Angel by Richard Paul Russo
2 (3.2%)

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
47 (74.6%)

Hearts, Hands and Voices by Ian McDonald
4 (6.3%)

Lost Futures by Lisa Tuttle
2 (3.2%)

Stations of the Tide by Michael Swanwick
25 (39.7%)



Bold for have read, italic for intend to read, underline for never heard of it.

Which 1993 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
Body of Glass (variant of He, She and It) by Marge Piercy
Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

Correspondence by Sue Thomas
Destroying Angel by Richard Paul Russo
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
Hearts, Hands and Voices by Ian McDonald
Lost Futures by Lisa Tuttle
Stations of the Tide by Michael Swanwick
Apr. 13th, 2025 11:36 pm

Purrcy & the "joys" of home ownership

mecurtin: tabby cat pokes his cute face out of a box (purrcy)
[personal profile] mecurtin
With well-trained staff one can lounge comfortably and have exciting playtime brought to *you*!

Purrcy wanted a little light frolicking, but not enough to actually get up and move.

Purrcy the tuxedo tabby lies on his side on his carpeted cat rest, reaching up with his paws to bat at the leather strings flying about from a wand toy. An open woods stretching down to a road is visible out the window behind him.

Well, we had a bunch of things planned for today. At least Mr Dr & I got our sheets changed! [gold star!] Then we discovered that ... there was no water ... [investigation montage] it turns out the pump that moves the water from the well management tank (which holds the water as it's slowly pumped up from our feeble well) to the house has died. On Sunday, of course.

Eventually I got hold of someone from the company who can fix it, but too late in the day for them to come today, so I have to wake up early in the morning to call them or meet them or something. And I had all these plans about what I was going to do or write today, but they've been totally destroyed.

My brain is just ... wet noodles. I'm going to lock this down, go to sleep, hope tomorrow works out better.
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