scrubjayspeaks

Lake Lewisia #1398

Wed, 20 May 2026 23:57:05 GMT

When a magical crystal eventually wore out and no amount of moonlight or ocean water could recharge it, recycling it offered a better solution than consigning it to be a mere rock for the rest of its days. Though most services deactivated them before processing, some creative studios with a high tolerance for minor explosions and unplanned magical interactions ground them to fine shards as-is, leaving traces of power in the dust. The result was stained glass panels and dishes that sparked and glowed with the last whispers of remembered magic, now turned to nothing more demanding than a pleasing sight.

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LL#1398

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Lake Lewisia #1397

Mon, 18 May 2026 23:41:45 GMT

The community college’s agricultural science department is looking for a few good, and late, gardeners to assist in testing their new growing hutches. These hutches are small fast-time capsules that can be used as greenhouses that accelerate time for the plants inside, potentially allowing for rapid repopulation of endangered plant species if successful. So whether you lost track of your first and last frost dates, forgot to order seed packets in time, or just didn’t make it out into the garden by the best planting date for your target crops, get a second chance at the season and help support scientific development in the process.

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LL#1397

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Done This Week

Sun, 17 May 2026 17:08:41 GMT

And now we’re going to throw a veterinary situation into the mix! Because why not? We had a scheduled appointment for the dog (routine, she’s fine) that then turned into a double appointment because one of the ducks, Parfait, is sick. That turned into a second appointment as well for further injections.

Still not clear what’s wrong--we’ve eliminated some possibilities, but we’re still in the wide chasm between “could be a minor infection” and “could be ovarian cancer.” Her appetite still hasn’t come back, but she’s also not getting any worse and her energy is a bit better.

And now another duck, Eclair, has a slight limp. No visible injuries, so she might have just strained something or slept on it wrong. They’re all eight years old, very much senior animals, so this is probably going to become the new normal for however long it lasts.

A person I don’t technically work for visited and wanted a demonstration of the robot I don’t have functional yet (because his location’s team didn’t build it right), on a press no one has time to run. This was kind of a tedious waste of my time, but that’s nothing new.

But! BUT~~~ I think I finally got the modifications where I need them to be. I got a 90% success on the last attempt on Friday. (During which I was a) running the machine, b) troubleshooting the robotics, and c) scuttling off to mill down the parts I’m modifying. Efficient? No. Effective? Eh.)

Given the everything, I surrendered to the need to cut things. Dialed back everything I could afford to. The flare is subsiding, but the fatigue remains.

Lewisia: 3 new pieces written

Day job: 34.75 hours, with a day off for the first set of vet appointments

Gardening: planted the new corn and winter squash patch, garden club post, succulent club meeting

Reading: The King’s Men by Nora Sakavic (finally worked up the courage to dive back in, we finally got to the smooching bits, also I did not see any of that ending coming, holy shit)

Watching: Stranger Things season 3 episode 2

Listening: assorted singles from The Narcissist Cookbook--“Lorelai: A Ghost Story” (actually an audio short story), “Shut Up And Drive” (oh, it’s a fandom theme song!), “Y’All Ship Me With A Gremlin Boy,” and “Good Love”

Clock Mouse: none minutes and none words ;_;

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Lake Lewisia #1396

Fri, 15 May 2026 22:21:04 GMT

Not usually one for displays of emotion, Evgeniya nevertheless returned from her working vacation pink-cheeked from more than just snow exposure. Her friends, when they visited the shop, were shown a tiny pearl of ice, secreted away in the walk-in freezer, that beat like a heart and pulled the warm breath right out of their mouths. It had come from the mountains, Evgeniya explained only vaguely and with eyes already half focused on future culinary experiments, and it would allow her to freeze words, whole sentences, into something you could taste.

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LL#1396

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Lake Lewisia #1395

Wed, 13 May 2026 18:05:57 GMT

They called it princess hair when she was growing up, the thick ropes of gold that spilled over her shoulders, and told her it would save her one day, from towers or from mad kings or from spinsterhood. With clippers, she buzzed it off the first chance she stole, and she burned what she cut just to make sure no one with a spinning wheel got any clever ideas. Some blessings aren't worth having; some tools aren't worth learning to wield.

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LL#1395

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Lake Lewisia #1394

Tue, 12 May 2026 00:18:08 GMT

Summer Reading approaches, and this year we’ve had a surprising (perhaps even troubling) number of questions regarding the tracking of clay and stone tablets of mysterious origins. While we have not yet worked out the exchange rate of slabs to pages for tracking purposes, we will reaffirm that this program is entirely on the honor system, and we will trust your judgment on how many tablets form a cohesive “book” unit for your personal records. It also seems like a good time to remind everyone that this program is just for reading, and we do not endorse or facilitate following any potentially dangerous instructions contained within your reading material, such as ancient rites to summon forgotten gods or recipes involving home deep-frying.

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LL#1394

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Done This Week

Mon, 11 May 2026 00:53:43 GMT

Work was particularly A Lot. I ended up having to go in after hours to do repairs to a tool. This is because I somehow have ended up being the on-call person for the tool room despite notably not working in the tool room. That’s in addition to staying late repeatedly for assorted reasons. I was also covering for one of the mechanical engineers on vacation, despite, again, not being on the mechanical engineer team and not being warned in advance that I would need to pick up his projects. And I still had to do the robot work for the automation team I’m also not on.

After a week of work stress, lost sleep, and feeling guilty for not being able to help out at home like I normally would, I finally ended up triggering a lupus flare. Major body pain and fatigue and swelling.

So I had to start dropping things. Too much pain to work out. Too tired to write, even if there had been waking hours to do it. Basically everything that was even remotely optional. And I still got less sleep than I needed.

Feel like I need to apologize for being a downer. The garden club post is up now. Peace offering?

Lewisia: 3 new pieces written, May posts queued

Day job: 48.75 hours, holy fuck...

Cooking: falafel and tahini sauce to make wraps

Cleaning: fixed the damaged sprinkler head

Gardening: planted three salvias, planted pumpkin patch

Reading: Escape from Incel Island by Margaret Killjoy (pfft, funny and silly and weird)

Watching: the 1996 Kenneth Branagh production of Hamlet, which I felt an unexpected compulsion to watch again for the first time since I saw it in high school, Stranger Things season 3 episode 1 (finally into never-watched-yet territory)

Listening: ABBA Gold Greatest Hits (I was planning to spread this almost 4-hour album out across a few weeks, but I had a very weird and unpleasant day at work in which I just locked in and repaired machines while listening to the whole thing in one shot, a strange experience)

Clock Mouse: 29 minutes of planning work, plus 474 words written, probably will be taking some time off

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Pandemic Garden Club

Sun, 10 May 2026 16:27:42 GMT

Welcome to the May edition of Pandemic Garden Club! Growing good things in strange times!

Anyone is welcome to comment with what they're growing right now, things they would like to try, problems they're encountering, and questions they have. Share resources, answer questions, shout encouragement.

Warning: the last photo in here is a snake. It is not venomous. No one, including the snake, was harmed during the encounter. Proceed as you will.

As for myself...

( Read more... )

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Lake Lewisia #1393

Sat, 09 May 2026 00:42:59 GMT

From dreams spoken into being on couches in parents' basements, to opening acts for other nearly-made-it bands at basement gigs, their music was underground in every way. It only made sense to record their first music video, shaky and lo-fi as it was, in one of the local caves to continue the theme. Little did they know at the time that it was also their biggest concert yet, as crowds of creatures, eyes glowing just beyond the reach of the lighting rigs, listened in rapt attention.

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LL#1393

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Lake Lewisia #1392

Thu, 07 May 2026 00:08:33 GMT

When she slipped out of the house that had to stop being her home, unsure where to go or how to get there, the latest bruise was turning greenish on her cheek, and the tandem bicycle at the end of the driveway was yellow. “There’s plenty of room for your bag in the back,” the strange middle-aged woman at the front said, jerking her thumb toward the dollhouse-like shack somehow balanced precariously on the end of the bike. There wasn’t time to answer all her questions, but no respectable serial killer would go about on a yellow tandem bike, so when the stranger said, “You’ll have to help pedal, but that’s good for the heart in more than one way,” she accepted a helmet and the notion that escape takes many forms.

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LL#1392

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Lake Lewisia #1391

Tue, 05 May 2026 00:13:43 GMT

As we head into convention season and the subject of costumes and consent comes up again, we would like to remind everyone that large groups of costumed people usually contain at least one genuine article. We have found this holds true for witches on Halloween, werewolves at furry conventions, and superheroes at comics shows, among many other possibilities. While respecting others’ boundaries and bodily autonomy should be motivation enough, the possibility that the tail you are tugging comes attached to real fangs and claws may help encourage good behavior.

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LL#1391

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Done This Week

Sun, 03 May 2026 19:16:20 GMT

The two front tires on my car have consistently had very slow leaks for a very long time now. One of them had started getting a bit faster, though, and I was sick of needing to wonder if I would find it flat on any given morning. So I lost an afternoon to waiting around while they put two new ones on. Woo, spending money and time, yay…

Also lost another afternoon to waiting approximately three thousand years to donate blood, despite having an appointment. *sigh* So possibly my feelings of not being able to fit everything into the day or the week are reasonable.

All the same, I’m starting to hit the stage of light anxiety attacks every morning and afternoon, as I try to figure out how I’m going to do what I need to. Mostly, the answer so far has been “get to bed later,” which is not doing me any favors in the mental health department.

Ironically, many of the things I’m trying to jigsaw together are things that are supposed to be good for me. I work out daily. I have a trivia app that’s supposed to be chill and informative and better than doomscrolling. I have cut back on my social media time and watching Youtube mindlessly in favor of reading books or watching specific shows for controlled amounts of time. I appear to be doing everything right, yet I feel worse and worse.

So that’s a thing that’s happening!

Lewisia: 3 new pieces written

Day job: 42.5 hours

Crafting: finished another cotton crochet washcloth

Gardening: planted what turned out to be hyssop

Reading: We Won't All Survive by Kate Alice Marshall (so it looks like I have a new favorite author now, because this and These Fleeting Shadows were very much exactly my jam, creepy and mysterious and adventurous with a dose of “if we get out of this alive, let’s hold hands later” romance-ish)

Listening: 100 Cowboys by Carter Vail (yep, excellent, as expected)

Playing: new town-thing in Pokopia, and now there’s cooking???

Clock Mouse: 95 minutes of planning work, plus 2018 words written

Other: blood donation

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Lake Lewisia #1390

Sat, 02 May 2026 01:00:34 GMT

She watched the waves pound against the shoreline, seeming to smash themselves to pieces yet ebbing away again as a single continent-spanning body. For her, there was no magic in the tides, calculable as they were, inexorable as they remained, and that was a comfort. No one had ever truly succeeded in stopping them, all human efforts merely diversions and deals made with devils who came calling over the seawalls eventually, and she had decided to take that as inspiration.

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LL#1390

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Lake Lewisia #1389

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 00:38:51 GMT

Publishing the secret histories of the world meant the need for a particularly robust fact-checking department to sort out what was little-known from what was entirely fabricated. He was just glad he wasn't on the team that handled speculative history, whose manuscript drafts dropped in from time anomalies in the break room kitchen. He had never felt equipped to deal with the ethical quandaries of changing future events just to minimize one's proofreading mistakes.

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LL#1389

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Lake Lewisia #1388

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 00:46:13 GMT

Pulled by harnessed flocks of sea birds, a cloud caravan has drifted into the skies above Lewisia and stopped for trade and socializing. The aerial village is too small to be part of the sister city system, but we consider them kin all the same and encourage anyone who has not seen one of their previous rare visits to take the time to say hello. A landing platform is being constructed (we knew we should have held onto the old one, but stratospheric structures are so difficult to maintain) to ease accessibility for any Lewisians feeling uncertain about hitching a ride in a pelican shuttle.

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LL#1388

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Done This Week

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 19:18:20 GMT

Well, this has been a needlessly eventful week. On Monday, Pepper encountered a skunk in the backyard, which had snuck in while mum was cleaning the duck’s coop. She only got lightly sprayed, so while she is still a stink beast, it’s not unlivable to have her in the house. *sigh* We’ve barricaded the spots where it was slipping under the fence. There isn’t anything especially enticing in the yard, so hopefully that will be enough to encourage it to explore elsewhere.

Meanwhile, I now have a new ISP. We had been on AT&T, who has our landline. They are doing mandatory upgrades and demanded more money and a change in hardware. Considering their service had been laughably awful and we’ve been relying on a hotspot loan system at the local library, we told them to go fuck themselves. (Which took several rounds, because the first person we talked to absolutely refused to believe that we had internet service through them, despite it being right there on the monthly billing statement.)

That hotspot system is through T-Mobile, and we had been pretty happy with it, considering it was free to us. That’s also who has our cell service. So we ended up switching to them. The internet is now MUCH faster and a fair bit cheaper than what we had before and MUCH cheaper than what AT&T was demanding. So!

Lewisia: 3 new pieces written

Day job: 43.75 hours

Cooking: the tumblr Assyrian baked rice (I really appreciated the food science explanation about scented rices and the cooking process, I have never gotten long-grain rice to turn out right before), mushroom pâté (definitely not just a highly seasoned pile of mushroom mud, no sir), almond croissant bread from KAF (holy shit, fantastic)

Crafting: took measurements and calculated material needs for building a replacement set of steps for the back porch, as the current ones are succumbing to time and weather

Gardening: dug four holes to plant the various salvias and other wildflower shrubs that have been languishing in pots for...way too long, wheeled out more loads of compost to the pumpkin patch area

Reading: Wolf Worm by T. Kingfisher (...Ursula, what the fuck...really good and really gross), Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (another entry in the list of classic novels that become suddenly accessible to me when in audio form, I should see if I can stand Jane Austen this way)

Watching: finished Stranger Things season 2

Listening: HADES by Melanie Martinez (new album, she has yet to disappoint me)

Playing: oh, okay, so I’m like...nowhere at all into Pokopia’s storyline, got it, will pace myself accordingly

Clock Mouse: 104 minutes of planning work, plus 1605 words written

Other: set up new internet gateway

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Lake Lewisia #1387

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:13:49 GMT

The little basilisk hissed, its beak gaping wide below huge, frightened eyes, and lashed its tail against the leaves and grass in an attempted mimicry of a rattlesnake. Newly hatched along with the spring tadpoles and toadlets, it had not yet developed poisonous breath, or stone gaze, or even a proper cockscomb. The hikers, who gently nudged it off the trail with a walking stick, would have nothing worse than a couple of slightly singed spots in their leg hair, where shorts had not protected them from the outraged glare of the tiny terror-to-be.

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LL#1387

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Lake Lewisia #1386

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:11:05 GMT

For a while, as he signed an apartment lease that didn’t seem to have any sneaky clauses and visited a food pantry that didn’t seem to be trying to convert him to anything, his fear got worse instead of better. Where was the next conman, seeing an easy mark, or the next bully, seeing a helpless victim? It took a long time for him to accept that walking into the bakery looking scared and overwhelmed would get him offered a cup of tea on the house, all his fears just old wounds in this place, willingly tended by others.

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LL#1386

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Lake Lewisia #1385

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 00:39:31 GMT

There are still open spots on our Earth Day seed bombing teams, with sign-up sheets posted at the Buried Gardens. Volunteers with the Gardens have already created a hoard of soil bombs using seeds collected here in Lewisia, like false teapot root, pendulum tree, and nanny nasturtium, which will be distributed to the teams for surreptitious deployment in areas beyond our town. In many areas where natural sources of weirdness have dried up, these plants have dwindled, but we hope to help reestablish strong populations that can support other weird species in the future.

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LL#1385

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Done This Week

Sun, 19 Apr 2026 19:05:45 GMT

My big excitement for the week was a salvage job at work. The HR department was replacing some bulletin boards and discarded the old ones against my workbench for mysterious reasons, expecting us to just scrap them. The old ones were all metal and in good condition, apart from some easily buffed out marks left by long-term stickers. Unfortunately, they were much too long for the space in the office where I’ve been wanting to put a whiteboard.

But I realized I had a) free time on a Friday and b) access to assorted power tools. So with a band saw, I trimmed it to a more suitable size, and with tin snips, the sheet metal folder, and the pneumatic polisher, I gave it a finished edge that matches the rest of the design.

It looks exceedingly professional; I’m very proud of myself. It’s just right for the spot, and I’ve moved my stickers-turned-magnets onto it. I have some more stickers to convert, now that I’ll have a place to put them. I do plan to use it for organizational purposes as well, though rotating art sticker gallery is nothing to sneeze at.

Lewisia: 3 new pieces written

Day job: 35 hours, with a day off for mum’s birthday

Crafting: created magnet board from work scrap and wall mounted it

Gardening: more seeds planted, succulent club meeting, spread loads of compost in planting beds

Reading: FEY: A Guide to Butch of The Fae Variety edited by Annalise Jensen (a cute little field guide type book of queer fairies that I picked up as part of a Kickstarter by the same group)

Watching: picked up my rewatch/watch of Stranger Things again, starting with season 2 episodes 6-8

Listening: DANTS by Louie Zong (a cute collection of boppy dance tracks)

Playing: got a bit farther in Pokopia, having a little trouble telling the scope/pace of the game--am I still in the tutorial stages? Should I be pacing myself???

Clock Mouse: 109 minutes of planning work, plus 1878 words written

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Lake Lewisia #1384

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 01:00:42 GMT

"This is a good luck rock," the toddler informed the stranger solemnly, heedless of the amused smiles of the adults overhead, and graciously placed a small, roundish pebble in the palm of a much larger hand. Much to the stranger's surprise, after forgetting the pebble in her pocket, it did prove to be good luck, coinciding with several fortunate turns until she didn't like to do anything important without it tucked away somewhere on her person. Unbeknownst to the many recipients of the child's proffered trinkets, he was a young incarnation of a minor luck god, and even the most humble of objects became blessed tokens in his plump and generous hands.

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LL#1384

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Lake Lewisia #1383

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:41:30 GMT

Contrary to common misconceptions, lighting a candle was not a matter of introducing fire to the wick’s fuel using a match--that was just the lure. The match was proof the location was a suitable habitat for fire, which was shy and uncertain about emerging from its safe and waxy home. It was best not to let it get too comfortable, though, as domestic fire, like a goldfish, would grow to fill its enclosure, even if its enclosure was an entire house suddenly consumed by flame.

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LL#1383

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Lake Lewisia #1382

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 00:12:33 GMT

Our local public-access channel LLTV has several open time slots, following the recent death of debatably beloved veteran broadcaster and local crank Milton Jorgensen, and is accepting applications for new programming. If you have a program of local or educational interest, you can submit forms and pilot episodes for review at the office on Watchtower Hill. If accepted, you will join such popular programs as What’s My Tail Doing?: Health Education for the Shapeshifter Community, Potions with Pammy, and Rainbow Chasers: Hyperlocal Weather Forecasts.

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LL#1382

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Done This Week

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 14:48:39 GMT

Well, I broke down and bought a Switch 2.

I hadn’t wanted to, frankly. One, I object to the way they’ve turned even physical cartridges into something that requires an internet connection and is therefore essentially leasing a game, rather than owning it. Two, game prices have gotten frankly absurd, and they should be punished for their hubris. And three, my main devotion to Nintendo is Pokémon, and Scarlet/Violet were undertested, unplayable messes. More importantly, they feel nothing whatsoever like a Pokémon game, because apparently, everything must be sacrificed on the altar of the Open World Design.

H O W E V E R

The reviews of Pokopia have been so good. It has been described as Pokémon meets Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley, which is basically the single overlapping circle Venn diagram of all my interests. It’s crafting and gardening and Pokémon.

What did it, though, was that I had a truly laughable quantity of rewards points on my credit card. By trading them in for credit to my account, I paid for the game system entirely with what amounts to Monopoly money.

Listen, I’m not proud.

Do I seem to have the free time to play video games right now? Mostly no. Maybe this will be motivation enough to trim back on time watching videos or doomscrolling. Gotta go water grass patches for pokémon, dang it.

In non-video game news, we did a bunch of cleanup of junk around the outside of the house. There was a free event at the local dump, which is always nice. And I finally gave up on convincing my mum that yes, really, the e-waste recycling place I go to for work is open to the public, and I just took the stuff we’ve been stockpiling myself. *sigh* Nobody believes me when I say things.

Lewisia: 3 new pieces written

Day job: 42.5 hours, which fails to capture the number of times I didn’t get my lunch break on time

Cooking: experimenting with pasta-and-beans dishes for the work week

Cleaning: took two bags plus more to the e-waste disposal site, took one truck load to the dump

Gardening: planted additional seeds (damn you, seeds that require overnight soaking!), garden club post

Reading: Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon (despite seeing this recommended on a list of horror books involving fungus, I completely forgot fungus would be a thing and was delightfully surprised when it officially appeared, also, not to bury the lede, but fuuuuuuuuck that was good and upsetting and gooooood)

Watching: finished The X-Files season one

Listening: notes from inside by Adeem the Artist (ooooof, this one is heavy)

Playing: just started Pokopia

Aftermarket Parts: got in yet another fight with the pharmacy over filling my T prescription, resolved yet still infuriating

Clock Mouse: 105 minutes of planning work, plus 1924 words written

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Pandemic Garden Club

Sat, 11 Apr 2026 19:03:37 GMT

Welcome to the April edition of Pandemic Garden Club! Growing good things in strange times!

Anyone is welcome to comment with what they're growing right now, things they would like to try, problems they're encountering, and questions they have. Share resources, answer questions, shout encouragement.

As for myself...

( Read more... )

comments