Sally's Journal

This morning I was disappointed to learn that the word SHART is not in the Scrabble Dictionary. In case you wondered.

I still managed to win the weekly Scrabble game, so I wasn't that disappointed.

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When I was cleaning out the freezer the other day, I noticed that there was a bag of frozen strawberries in there, dating back to 2022. Also a bag of frozen rhubarb.

So there is now some strawberry-rhubarb cobbler.

I also made a batch of tomato-lentil soup, and more cherry-almond scones, to serve as breakfasts for the week.

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The middle of the day got allocated to a trip to the hardware store in Troy, followed by more boat work. Because I am substitute coaching tomorrow morning, I tried to keep a brisk pace for the ride.

I need to figure out where I can buy some peel ply, that stuff looks super useful for my life. Just saying.

Most of my spray paint work was fine, except for one section where I applied too much at once, and caused drips. But I have time, because we haven't yet ordered the replacement skeg for the boat. It's going to be one of those projects that gets worked on for 5 minutes here, 5 minutes there. Lots and lots of sanding. Good thing I'm good at sanding by now!

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I let the cats have some supervised catio time this afternoon, because the weather was so nice. George, of course, LOVED it, and now that the cats are back inside they've been crying and crying to go out again.

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Time to go eat some of that cobbler, then maybe have a quiet evening. Ha.

It's 3weeks4dreamwidth time! I'm not sure how much I have to contribute (and I already know that I'm never going to succeed at any sort of "post every day" routine), but I'm enjoying seeing other people's posts about it.

This has been an entirely delightful weekend of doing basically nothing; I did a handful of one-off tiny tasks, which is always very satisfying (e.g. Tesco finally brought me the funnel I had ordered, so I decanted shower gel from the big tub I used to capture the contents of the leaking shower gel refill packet a few months back into saved and washed-out shower gel bottles) and the laundry, but that was about it. I do need to get back into doing the washing up more-or-less every day, though; after three days of avoidance I forced myself to do it this afternoon, but only had space for half on the draining board, so it's all to do again tomorrow...

But the weather has been beautiful (I've had all the windows open except when I was out at church) and I have done some pleasant reading, including some fanfic and most of the Tablet backlog, and I've done another grocery shop because I suddenly realised that my entire fruit and veg stock was down to two-thirds of a cabbage and some apples, and I played some more Terra Nil, and I have not touched any of the obligations I might have done, and sometimes that is just what I want from a weekend.

And then tonight it's "Signs and Portents" and shit is about to get real on Babylon 5. Excited to see it!

Are you a tumblr user moving to DW who misses moving images? Are you a seasoned DW user who wants to try their hand in a new medium? Do you have an extensive gif catalog that you'd like to show off? Do you like gifmaking and want to share your knowledge to others? Then this comm might be for you!

voiceinmyear, a comm for podcasts, audio drama, audiobooks and podfics, is joining in the 3W4D fun. We'll have a few posts over the weeks for people to share what they're listening to and what they recc.

We'd love some new members or people to driveby comment and share what they're filling their ears with.

Over on beautifulmechanical , a music sharing and discovery community, we are inviting people to share music and musicians they discovered through dreamwidth.

Everyone is welcome to join and post. We are a community of people who get excited about music and love to share it.

On the off chance someone here likes visual kei, my community vkotd is currently hosting a raffle where the winner will get enough points for 6 months of a paid account :] Please stop by if you're interested.

Early Sunday morning I woke to the sound of rain on the roof. It was a surprise, as I hadn't checked the forecast for a couple of days, and had forgotten that rain was predicted for early this week. But I don't think it was expected before Monday. Here it is, or was, as it is clearing up now, and probably won't be back. Spring is as unreliable as my brain.

Saturday, if I recall correctly, didn't amount to much. I ate a sandwich for dinner, then slept, or did those two things in reverse. Not important, I'm sure. Today, as yesterday, I ate an overly sweet substitute donut for breakfast, then went to have slice of cake only to discover it has been invaded by ants. It was expensive cake, so I picked the ants off and ate it anyway. I don't think any ants remained, as I didn't taste any formic acid (ants are spicy as hell, as I discovered at six, when I let an acquaintance talk me into tasting one.)

Anyway, picking ants off of a piece of cake is the most exciting thing to happen here in a long time, so I guess I should be grateful to the now-dead formicidae? Somehow I'm not, though. I found the bit of rain more enjoyable. I'll save my gratitude for the clouds that brought it.


( Sunday Verse )

So, on the off chance you haven't had your fill of tarot-related prompts, I decided to offer up some myself.

Please feel free to drop by and grab a few cards, I'm always wanting to encourage people to make cool stuff!

I had to look up that whole polar bear in Arlington, Texas thing, because I'd never heard of it before watching the above video. (Spoiler alert: there was no polar bear in Arlington, Texas.)

Speaking as someone who has yet to watch anything Gundam at all outside of maybe meme clips on Youtube or whatever, I am going on record as saying that I do not want or need a live action Netflix Gundam thing starring Sydney Sweeney (or anyone else, for that matter).

Pat: "I genuinely don't believe Americans can make a Gundam movie that isn't just 'Wow! Cool robot!' Like, I don't believe they can do it. It's gonna be fucking 'Wow! Cool Robot!: The Movie.'"

Woolie: "Yeah... I have not heard that Tomino will be there in the room with a gun, right? So, um, if they're willing to, you know, wheel him in there and load a pistol and have him point it at everybody..."

Pat: "If Tomino was in the room with the American staff of Gundam with a gun, he would hold it and put it down on the table and go 'I should not use this gun,' and somebody from the staff would pick it up and go 'Wow! Cool gun!'"

---

Pat: "Was I dead before I was born?"

Woolie: <looks up, thinking, and stares off into space, just as the clip ends>

I have a feeling that might be another one of those bits from the end of one clip that returns later as the start of a new clip.

It's been several days since I finished Cristina Rivera Garcia's No One Will See Me Cry (translated by Andrew Hurley) and I've still sort of singularly failed to formulate an opinion about it; I just keep sort of mentally picking the book up and turning it over and putting it uneasily down again.

In some ways this book reminds me of A Month in the Country, in that both are historical novels that delicately build up a picture of lives destabilized by and lived in the cracks after an epoch-shaking event, while carefully avoiding -- tracing the parameters of, writing around, turning the camera consistently away from -- the event itself. The difference is that A Month in the Country does in fact feel light, delicate, balanced against the heavy thing at its center, while No One Will See Me Cry isn't in any way a light book; aside from the heaviness of its subject matter, feels laden with symbolism at every turn, although the symbolism itself is often specific and startling.

The premise: in 1920s Mexico City, an aging, morphine-addicted photographer who's been hired to take portraits of asylum inmates meets Matilda, a woman he last photographed many years ago, when she was a prostitute. Joaquin engages in a kind of narrative barter with, first the asylum doctor, then with Matilda herself, in an attempt to understand her story and how it intersects with his own to bring them both to this asylum. Both of them, it turns out, formatively knew and formatively loved the same woman, a revolutionary, in the years before the war -- but neither of them was actually involved in the Revolution, neither of them were active agents for or against the transformation of their livetimes; Joaquin describes himself more than once as the only photographer of his generation who didn't take any photographs of the war, and Matilda was, at the time, involved in an emotional affair with a desert landscape.

There are some tropes that one expects, and is braced for, around Women and Lost Women and Madwomen, especially when insanity is used as a thematic metaphor around national trajectory, especially when all that is inextrictable from questions of poverty and indigineity. Rivera Garcia is definitely deploying some of those tropes with purpose and to a point and I absolutely do not know enough to have a full sense of what she's doing with them. This is one of those situations where I wish I was reading a book in context of a class or a club. As it is, what I'm left with is interest, unease, some beautiful and surprising images, and a sense that I ought to read a lot more about the Mexican Revolution.

These are the post-deadline pinch hits:

PH 1 - Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's x2, Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, Metal Fight Beyblade | Beyblade Metal Saga, ベイブレードバースト | Beyblade Burst (Anime), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Anime 1997-2023), ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 | JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken | JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
https://autoao3app.fandom.tools/#/UnsentLetters2026/user/Audrelite

PH 2 - Minecraft: Story Mode (Video Game) x2, The Protomen x2, Bionicle (Generation 1) x2
https://autoao3app.fandom.tools/#/UnsentLetters2026/user/bluerosekatie

PH 6 - Bugsnax (Video Game), Crossover Fandom (Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles / Keroro Gunsou), Hazbin Hotel (Cartoon), Keroro Gunsou (Anime)
https://autoao3app.fandom.tools/#/UnsentLetters2026/user/malachiical

PH 8 - Dune (Movies - Villeneuve), Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson, The Worst Journey in the World - Apsley Cherry-Garrard
https://autoao3app.fandom.tools/#/UnsentLetters2026/user/primeideal

PH 14 - The Goblin Emperor Series - Katherine Addison, Nine Worlds Series - Victoria Goddard, The Locked Tomb Series | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir, Succession (TV 2018), The Chronicles of Chrestomanci - Diana Wynne Jones, The Lost Prince - Frances Hodgson Burnett
https://autoao3app.fandom.tools/#/UnsentLetters2026/user/DontStopHerNow

PH 15 - CLAIMED
PH 16 - CLAIMED

PH 17 - Thoroughbreds (2017), Succession (TV 2018), The Secret History - Donna Tartt,
https://autoao3app.fandom.tools/#/UnsentLetters2026/user/nephilot

PH 18 - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2003), Crossover Fandom, Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Cartoon 2018), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2012), TMNT (2007)
https://autoao3app.fandom.tools/#/UnsentLetters2026/user/smearedyelloweyeshadow


To claim a pinch hit, please comment on this entry (all comments are screened) or e-mail unsentlettersexchange @ gmail with your AO3 name and the pinch hit number or recipient name.

These pinch hits are due May 1st, 11:59PM UTC, five and a half days from now.

Best of luck to pinch hitters and creators with extensions!

 https://operaramblings.blog/2026/04/26/orchestral-music-from-brett-dean/

I'll spend the next 3 weeks posting one meme daily for you to get unstuck! You can do them in any order you want or answer as many of the questions as you want. Adapt it to your journal and watch the meme change and evolve as it gets passed around!

You can find my three weeks for dreamwidth memes at this tag.

Yesterday, I tried to air up my tires, to find that the valve stem on one of them was broken. It took the shop longer than expected to fix it - and I had to fix it, because I had to air up that tire to be able to drive around. I got back home to discover that water is dripping down into my bathroom from the vent on the ceiling.

From past experience, I know that it's probably a bad AC coil. But while it's not exactly a flood, it is a pretty steady drip which requires receptacles beneath it, because it's coming down pretty fast.

I know it's not a super huge deal in the grand scheme of things. But I will probably have to stay in today order to get this addressed. Added is the OCD-related stress from "unknown, possible contaminated water is dripping down into my clean bathroom, with who knows what nicotine sludge from previous occupants/germs/mold." Regardless, there go my plans for today. :(