i am not dead; i did not die

I did, however, discover that the Blogger interface has no clearly visible Find & Replace function. Almost as bad?

I also had to fistfight Blogger’s comments service so it would let me reply to the nice comments people had left under my last post. That mofo didn’t go down easy, believe me, but I hit like a girl.

Also I had to switch out of Chrome, because it just randomly stopped working a couple of hours ago — and every time it quit on me, my menubar went from black to white. Weirdness.

Anyway! I’m reading four books, fixing up a new Links page for my website (because the hot popup I copypasta’d and spent an hour editing doesn’t work in mobile browsers, sadness, sorrow, regret), and working through the worst flare of PCOS symptoms I’ve had in two years. And assiduously avoiding Tumblr!

Tomorrow evening I will post the book survey I was working on. Until then you can content your bad  bibliophilic self with this repost of old content, which took me ages to arrange because all the electronic devices in my household are working against me tonight. I’m going to the doctor tomorrow afternoon, and after that I’ll probably visit my horrible granny for awhile (so she can tell me I’m fat and remind me repeatedly that I’m the only non-married adult member of the family now) (THAT’S A FEATURE NOT A BUG GRANDMA) — but after that, it’ll just be us and the books.

Sounds like a party to me!

the shades of night were falling fast

Aha! I bet you thought I died! No, I didn't die. I had a long internet hiatus because my brother shot himself (he's okay now) and then my mother got ill, and I was Otherwise Occupied (you can see more of this intense soap-opera action in my #me Tumblr tag archive, if you're so inclined). Now I am living in the Era of Unreliable Internet Connections Under the Best Circumstances, and the Farmer's Almanac has predicted a bad winter for the Ohio Valley. I'm going to try to post more regularly again -- in fact, I have two actual, formal posts lined up, one about Tolkien and one about... something else... and I intend to make a capsule book review post tomorrow or the next day -- but my better nature may be thwarted by technical difficulties. Still I shall persevere! Excelsior, I say! Excelsior!

Anyway. I've just fixed up the layout a little (new header!), as well as changing my profile photo and et cetera.
I guess I get combative when I'm bored, Jesus :[

To tide you over (in anticipation of what?), I went out and took photos of the icky-fruited something-tree in my front yard, before the weather took all the leaves. No filters, because that didn't work so well last time. Also I would like to apologize for the shot of my unpainted fingernails; I really drop the ladyball when it comes to manicures. They're very uncomfortable and expensive, I don't care. (Content includes a bonus fishpond photo.)

Until next time, all you lovely people who continue to visit my blog even though it is very boring!

they don’t make it easy, do they?

I’ve just haphazardly changed the layout, because I noticed the old one was mostly non-functional — it blacked out comment replies, for example, because what a good idea. I plan to fix up something a little fancier later, after I’ve done A Little Research. Anyway, shit should mostly work now.

(The answer to that question is "no they don’t." I had to visit three different unrelated and unconnected pages to make the changes I just made. It reminded me of LiveJournal, for Christ’s sake.)

(I’ll be all right, though, don’t worry about me.)

angels & insects

Oh man, I really miss Doghouse Riley. He was my favorite. I catch myself clicking over to his blog every time A Thing happens, and then horrors, horrors. Like, what would he have said about God’s Not Dead, which will be coming to Netflix on August 5 (not that I’ve been checking)? Something awesome, probably. Something much awesomer than I could ever think up. I tried to read his archives but they were too terrible to look at — especially the parts where he talked about his Poor Wife. Big words are no substitute for intelligence. God is very definitely dead.

Anyway. I have a new cat! Her name is Angel. She came from a local shelter, and was previously an outdoor city stray. She spends 98.7% of her life sleeping, and distributes the waking portion among activities like eating, pooping, trying to climb out of my bedroom window, etc. It’s like I’m looking at myself, here, only much more beautiful and with denser fur:

As a bonus, here’s my mother’s cat demonstrating some important new discoveries he’s made in the field of cat sentience, using nothing but my eyebrow-plucking mirror and his own scientific determination:

I missed most of the spring blossoming action this year, but managed to get a decent-ish picture of the weird little ornamental fruit tree in the front yard. The fruits themselves are the size, shape and color of cranberries, but when you open one up it looks like a tiny apple and tastes like all the bitter regrets you turn over and over in your mind when you’re trying to fall asleep at night:

Lastly, here is a photograph of a strange-looking insect that I found on the hose post:

Yes, I live in a gigantic rain barrel. Thank you for asking.

I’ll try to think up something to write about that isn’t too boring later this week. Maybe I’ll review one of my dodgy ancient history books, or post a recipe or something. Something.

(The Blogger interface is really a piece of shit. I’d just like to add that. For posterity.)
(I also already published this once, by accident, but without the photos and with more typos. Sorry!)
(Mostly for myself.)

half full

When I said "once a week," clearly what I meant was "never." If you had any sympathy for real human emotion you’d understand that.

My avatar looks like a cropped still from a very boring porno :[

More later; also, cat photos.