The Cantina Staring Back At You From The Abyss

The Second Moon

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Squee! I just found out my favorite author Jenny Ninmo has a series that is set in the same world as my favorite series, The Charlie Bone series!:yessmiley I need them!

Oh forgot to say that today I'm going to one of the two dog adoption events. I can't wait.
 
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Friendly Frog

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Did those bananas just go... bananas?

Good luck, second moon! May you get the doggie that suits you. :)
 

JJ Litke

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I take seriously my solemn duty as a mod to keep a carefully curated selection of awesome banana gifs at the ready.

QFT

I am having a banana for breakfast right now, though surely not due to subconscious influence of any kind. That’d just be silly.
 

E.F.B.

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I'm certainly not tempted to go eat a banana right now. Nope.


*stomach growls*

*ahem*


I *finally* have a name for my antagonist. Only took 6 hours of smashing letters and words together to find a suitable one. Good grief. Maybe now I can at least get some story progress going again.

ION: We'll try to get our Christmas tree today. We'd wanted to go to the little local tree farm to cut our own, but it's raining and just way too mucky and cold to try to sit on the ground cutting a tree and then dragging it back to the car. So, pre-cut tree it is.
 

Religion0

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*launches from the floor**bounces of the ceiling**spears into the depths of the smibble pile never to be seen again* Cantinanites, I just found this guy on YouTube and him and his amazing music is everything I wish I could be, lovely beard and all.

Watch Jackson Galaxy for practical tips on persuading a cat to alter behavior - aka training. A lot of bad situations get worse, and many people and cats suffer the consequences, when you insist cats are incapable of being trained out of bad habits or they don't pay attention and hate you anyway or so forth...
Jackson Galaxy is super cool, a great guy.

Dogs can be trained because they like to see you happy, cats can be trained as long as there is something that makes them happy.
With all my recent crying lately, I've noticed that Minty will start doing things that I usually laugh at whenever I'm really sad.

o_O You don’t train dogs by beating them or dominating them into submission. But if someone were awful enough to resort to such methods, I’d bet they’d work about as well on cats as they would on dogs.
Okay, so we can skip this, because I can see it's a bit of a closed subject and it's just awful for all our soft, animal-loving hearts, but... a lot of animals can actually be "trained" by being beaten into submission. The term "broken in" is still often applied to horses specifically because they were often just that, broken. Any actual trainer worth their salt would spit on such methods, either because of the cruelty or for the pragmatic reason that the results are worse. Xenophon, a Greek cavalry captain of some 2500 years ago who wrote the book on horsemanship (still used by the Spanish Riding School), was of the opinion that the only way to get a horse you could trust to ride into battle with you was to train it kindly so it'd be loyal, and that a broken horse could and would decide that it was more scared of war than it was of you. (Sidenote: in the movie Spirit, they show a sanitized method of breaking a horse and something vaguely like the results)
But if all you want is machine obedience, then breaking gets some appealing results if you don't mind turning your soul to tar. *spits in disgust**wipes spit off keyboard* Breaking wouldn't work as reliably on cats, though, because they're much more likely to just skedaddle because their social instincts are so different.

Re Windows 10: I have it on my laptop and personally like it better than Windows 8. I do seem to adapt to new tech fairly easily, though, and figure out how to force it to bend to my will :p so YMMV.
Windows 8 was awful. Having access to Windows 7 at my work I don't actually think that's as much better than 10 as many people want to claim, I'm not entirely sure how it's better at all. Maybe the visual design is better?

Totally unrelated question: Has anyone noticed whether or not their local theaters are moving Frozen II out this weekend?
It's not even out in my corner of the world, won't be until the 25th. I'm expecting to be going to the movies twice around New Year's, having also invited my stepmum to the new Star Wars as her Christmas present (it's becoming a tradition that I give her Star Wars...)

I'm so happy and excited. The two places that I was looking to get a dog from are having event. One on Friday and the other place on Saturday. I can't wait! Particularly for the one on Saturday! :snoopy::snoopy::snoopy:
Ooh! Good luck! I hope to read some good news from you on that front soon!

All I really have to say today is that naming fantasy characters is hard sometimes and villain's name is being elusive. I did manage to name a previously unnamed henchperson, though.
I love that term, henchperson. I need more henchpeople in my work. They should come naturally as I seem to default to evil cults.
 

LadyV

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Good afternoon, Cantina!

It must be a banana kinda day, because I had a banana fosters waffle for breakfast, and yes, it was delicious.
 

Brightdreamer

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Man, this place today is crazy... it's like... I dunno, some sort of peelable fruit... um... oranges! Yeah, it's totally oranges here!

Friday, tail end of lunch break. Too many totes, not enough people.

Sigh... I could be streaming The Expanse...

--

Later the same Friday, and the weather's gone very wet.

I should be out in my workshed, but a relative's coming over "some time" and I haven't been told when, so I can't change into workshed scunge clothes until I know that. Which is really irking me, as I need, desperately need, to get some stuff done out there.

And I can't stream another ep of The Expanse until I know the answer to the relative question, as well.

And now they're playing phone tag or something. And nobody will answer my question of when...

I really, really want to get ornament work done and watch my danged show, not necessarily in that order... gaah! Why must family be so... family?

I may duck out to my shed anyway quickly. Can at least seal something. Or wrap something. Sealing and wrapping should involve minimal glitter. In theory.

--

Aaand the relative thing was a miscommunication... dang it, lost prime afternoon work time for nothing.

I've been promised time this weekend to work on ornaments.

Wonder how long that'll last...

Mergh.

Anyway, dinner is done, dishes washed, and relatives more or less dispersed. About time to finally get to that binge I've been looking forward to all frellin' day...
 
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The Second Moon

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I GOT A DOG!!! We filled out a pending application to pick her up in a few days but then when we went to the car, I was like...I need her. So we got her that same day.

Her name is Sofi and she is a black and white (with a little bit of brown on her face) chihuahua*. I love her. She checks all the boxes. She doesn't bark, not much of a licker, a lap dog.

She's perfect.

*Edit: Actually I think she might be a Chihuahua X Jack Russell mix. I'm not sure though.
 
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greendragon

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WOohooo!!!! Congrats on your new furbaby, SecondMoon!!!


I have begun the line-by-line-grammar edits (my LEAST favorite part of the entire writing process, and that includes writing blurbs and marketing) on Age of Druids. I've done 30 out of 160 pages so far. I tend to do it in 10 page chunks, using ProWritingAid as a guide. I still ignore 65% of PWA's suggestions, but it does help me highlight areas that may need to be examined and reworded, overused words, and the occasional spelling/grammar error. Since I write a decently clean first draft, and have been training myself to do better (i.e., I've learned how to minimize passive voice in the first draft pretty well), this isn't quite as painful a process as it first was, but it's still soooo tedious. I hope to be done in a week or so. Then I have to do the same with Saoirse's Folly aka Troubles from the Abyss, my novella.

Then, and only then, can I start on my Shiny New Project... and I've got two other projects after that. Nonfiction. One book on Taxes for Authors/artists (I'm a CPA), and one on how I write my books. I have blog posts already for a lot of this, so compiling them and polishing them might actually result in a decent guide. And I do the taxes lecture every year at Dragoncon so that will definitely be popular.

Then... the big project begins. I need to go through every single one of my Druid's Brooch books, starting with book one (Age of Druids above is #9 and the last) and do a full re-edit/re-write. I also have to create new book art, format for both ebook and print for KDP and IngramSparks, and record as audiobook. Now, I can do these one at a time - the first one is due back from the publisher in October 2020. At that point, I hope to take them back and self-publish. Each one will come back as their 5-year term comes up over the course of the next 5 years. They were published 2-3 each year. I think I have to do all the covers before the first, though, to ensure they are comprehensive and related. I mentioned earlier the different directions I am thinking of. I guess I just have to start trying before I can make a decision, but the ideas keep flying around in my mind.

Sometimes having so many muses is ANNOYING. Writing muse, art muse, beading muse... When they combine and start working in tandem, it gets... difficult.
 

Bufty

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Wow- Greendragon, that's some work schedule you have there. :flag::Hug2:
 

Brightdreamer

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The Second Moon - Best of luck with the new friend! (My mother grew up with a "purebred" ten-pound Chihuahua, Zorro - one of those dogs she still misses, whom I've heard about all my life. She's pretty sure there was Boston terrier in there; no way was he pure Chihuahua...)

greendragon - Can I borrow a cup of productivity sometime?

Saturday morning, and need to get the room tidying done, then get out to my shed. I can't watch any more Expanse until I get some work shed time in, much as I want to camp out all day with Prime and finish off the season. I'm three episodes in, and very much enjoying it, already planning to rewatch the season ASAP (with the Prime X-Ray feature on; sounds like there's some great bonus material there.) Then maybe the whole series again from the top...
 

E.F.B.

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It's not even out in my corner of the world, won't be until the 25th.
*googles cost of flight to Denmark* *chokes on water* Sweet mercy...

I GOT A DOG!!!
CONGRATS!

Sometimes having so many muses is ANNOYING. Writing muse, art muse, beading muse... When they combine and start working in tandem, it gets... difficult.
I feel this in my soul.



Well, Cantina. The Christmas tree was not obtained yesterday because it poured the rain all day long and even getting a pre-cut tree would have required dragging it into the house in the rain (not to mention driving home in the rain with the trunk of the car partially open, which probably wouldn't have gone well) so that's been rescheduled for Sunday on the way home from church when it's not supposed to be raining anymore. Will attempt words today even though I'm not feeling super focused.
 

Shadowflame

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Waves at everyone!

It's been a good week.

Work was a mix of crazy busy and slow as molasses. But everything is done up until Friday afternoon. We had our holiday dinner last night. Fun, I guess if you like sitting around talking to people you don't know much about yet. *shrug* I'm not much of a talker, btw.
Husband is now officially finished with his training. He has grad classes starting Mon. Then he'll be assigned his truck. THEN they have to give him a load this direction to deliver before he gets to come home for a week!
Thursday I have to take off work and take FIL around to the SS office, the bank, the courthouse, and where ever else we need to go to get some paperwork straight. We are trying to get his disability and there's some hiccups.
My new boots came in early. For my b-day I wanted some calf-high boots but I have thonky calves (seriously the are 14 inches round). No cutsie lady boots would fit. So hubby suggested some work boots. I ordered a pair of Carolina Lineman's 16 inch boots. They fit! And I can lace them up! YAY! These should last me, well, forever I guess!

Hugs to everyone!
 

Brightdreamer

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*waves to people*

Saturday, after lunch, about to do some quick exercise. Then I'll get dinner started and head out to the shed again for a while. Cautiously optimistic that I can be gluing for the second phase by tonight or tomorrow, and break out the Apoxie once that's set up (tomorrow afternoon/evening)...

One more Expanse ep down. It just feels so much bigger than the previous seasons - the anamorphic lens on the colony world shots just lends the show this nice cinematic feel, as does the slightly more orchestral soundtrack. And the actors are stepping up their game with some of this new material, plus the writers are brilliantly integrating new material with stuff from the books and novellas. (I really, really hope they get a full nine-season run, as I'd love to see how they handle some of the later developments.)

Yes, I'm gushing. Yes, the show deserves it.

Yes, I'll shut up, now.

Okay, lardass, get moving. Twenty-odd minutes of stretching and crud, then you can get dinner started.

--

Post-exercise, pre-dinner, and I'm moving my gluing estimate to tomorrow; a few are fighting me, and I'm not yet confident enough in my frontrunners to say for sure which of the extras will be entirely unnecessary. Though one is still fighting me tooth and nail and will only be finished for the principle of the thing at this point. (You shall not defeat me, ornament. I don't even need you anymore so it's totally pointless, but you shall not defeat me.)

Not enough time to watch anything before I have to add veggies to the pressure cooker, and after that there won't be enough time to watch anything before dinner, but after dinner I'm getting back to Episode 5 (and I promised to stop gushing but OMGsogoodwatchgowatchnownownow....)
 
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Yzjdriel

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2019 has certainly been a thing.

This year, I (in no particular order):

- worked for nearly 375 hours without pay (more on that later)
- finished half my undergraduate thesis
- did so well on said thesis our team won awards
- aced a course on Abstract Algebra
- got B- or better in 7 other classes
- applied to graduate (1 more term left and I have my BSME! Woo!)
- met a wonderful new human that we shall call J. (for those that remember the old story, S. is currently dating another young lady)
- saw Handel's Messiah with the Fort Street Presbyterian Choir in downtown Detroit (it was phenomenal as always)
- started my third radio show (if my degree doesn't work out I might just go into broadcasting full-time, I love this)
- wrote 45k words for the book, then cut 30k of them and shuffled the remaining 15k around to prepare for next year
- sent my resume all over the place in the hopes of finding a full-time job
- filed Canadian taxes for the first time (not as stressful as I thought it would be - Canadian tax code is far less complicated than the US's if you're self-employed)
- read 245(!) books, though most were admittedly skimmed re-reads
- received a grant to print the beta-tester assets for a new card game from my university's Entrepreneur Society (woo!)
- found out why I wasn't paid for my work and got that fixed (that's ~$5k I get paid now)
- played Vivaldi's Recorder Concerto (got paid for that too)
- welcomed a new baby cousin (Alex goes in for surgery on Boxing Day to separate fused expansion plates in his skull - hope that goes okay!)


*reads last few pages*

Yay, pupper!
Yay, progress and productivity!
I prefer bananas to be in bread form.
*swan-dives into the smibble pile after religion0*
 

Brightdreamer

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Yzdreil - Sounds like a decent year in summary, especially the part about getting the pay you deserve.

Dinner done, dishes washed, holiday cards made out but not stamped (they may need an extra stamp, dang it, and I'm not sure where the envelope scale ended up), more ornament work done (until I messed one up, dang it - a sure sign it's time to come in.) And I did end up covering one base with glitter completely. It deserved it, the annoying twerp... So hopefully tomorrow I get Phase II underway for most of them. Really gonna be cutting it fine, but the next part should go easier. (Ha... like that's ever happened in the history of ever... just hoping I don't get them too heavy this year. But then they complain if they're too small... gah.)

Merghness... time for an Expanse ep or two to wind down the day. (I've pretty much chucked even spitballing for December; ornaments get creative priority right now, and I just don't have the extra juice in the tank. Plus I'm a lazy undisciplined moron.)
 

tiddlywinks

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*waves from airport, where it is currently sunny and warm. A lot warmer than where she's headed home to...*

A successful second week at work spent meeting the senior leadership (and the CEO laughing and pointing out when I said that on Friday that uh "you ARE one of the senior leadership"...derp). Pretty much expecting that I'll get the full marketing shebang dumped on me this next week, though, as my boss is itching to take care of all the sales things he needs to do since he's still running without a leader on that side. So, honeymoon period of 'learning' is officially over! But that's okay. I'm eager to really get up and running.

This weekend was glorious. Got to spend the whole weekend with Kitkit down here in SoCal, and yesterday was spent wine tasting. I, uh, may or may not be going home with several bottles to replenish my diminished California wine stock. :greenie

Today, we ended things with a trip to the beach, which was very windy, but much fun. It was just great to connect. Now I kinda need a nap, but no rest for the weary. Bumming around at the airport until my flight leaves later, and then connecting through Denver to hopefully arrive a little before midnight tonight back home.

I need to finish my Christmas shopping this week. *sigh*

*sprinkles positive glittery vibes throughout Cantina*
 

E.F.B.

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Sounds like quite a year, Yzdreil. Best wishes as you head towards graduation, and best wishes to your new baby cousin!

Now that I think about it, I've had quite a year, too. It started kind of rough, what with a root canal and other unexpected dental work and uncle being in and out of hospitals and nursing homes, but it's ending pretty well with all of the above being resolved, having a short story out in the world, having my best year yet on Etsy, and making major progress on my portal fantasy WIP, including but not limited too, finally figuring out how the climax and ending.



Christmas tree has been attained! We still weren't able to cut our own because mud, but Home Depot still had a decent selection and we got a nice, fluffy one. Da lab mix pup was pretty excited about it, sniffed it top to bottom, and even went in the basement with me to get the tree stand (she's never been brave enough to go in the basement before and says it's still very strange), then ran in circles, barking at the tree stand as I carried it into the house. Tree stand sitting on the ground holding the tree = okay. Tree stand being carried by human = totally unnatural, and definitely barkable. She also stuck her nose in my armpit when I got on the floor to help get the tree straight in the stand, and then rolled in the pine needles on the carpet as clearly that's what I was doing and she needed to do it, too. Da beagle napped on the recliner through all of this, and says to tell you all that his lab mix sister is weird.

We shall at least get the lights on the tree tonight. I'm kinda not seeing writing happening at this point except maybe the starts of a book review.
 

Brightdreamer

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Pleasant weather would be pleasant. Heck, even snowy weather would be something. This grayish rainyish blah weather is blah.

Sunday afternoon, and more ornament progress, plus a minorish setback, in that how I was planning to attach the auxiliary stuff will not work as I intended, but I think I have a workaround. Will have to attempt implementation after dinner, though...

And exercise was interrupted by family deciding that my dinner plan wasn't acceptable, so I had to go out to the store. (You want to know what I really want for Xmas, family? How about someone else stepping up to make dinner once in a frellin' while? Gah...)

Expanse continues to be expansively awesome, incidentally. Almost wish I could see it on a big screen: it's that cinematic.

--

Dinner done. Dishes done (last that I saw, at least.) And my workaround seems to be working, more or less, though it involves staring through a tiny drill hole feeding a wire through a sphere by flashlight... don't ask. In any event, this is precisely why I really wish I'd managed to make up a proof-of-concept test run. But I did not. But at least I got more ornaments almost up to Phase II. Hope to break open the Apoxie by Tuesday. Then I have to get my rear out there every day after work and hope I'm done by Xmas...

Anyway, two more episodes in Expanse S4 to go. I could binge them tonight and be done, or try to pace myself... ah, who am I kidding? Gotta at least make the attempt to binge. Sooner watched, sooner rewatched...
 
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The Second Moon

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Hey everyone. for the first time in a long time I barely thought about my characters (because of the holidays and my new dog Sofi). But I guess I need that break because my writing was going very slow.

Anyways who wants an update on Sofi? I'm gonna give it to you anyways.

She is very very good on a leash, very snugly, very calm. I haven't heard her bark once. She also does this cute thing where she raises her front paw-- while standing on the other legs--and curls it. What does that mean? Well, I just looked it up and turns out it means she is experiencing indecision or it is a hunting pose if she has hunting dog in her.

Sorry about gushing about my dog. I'm just very very pleased with, and am loving, her.

EDIT: Sofi may be a rat-chi (a Chihuahua X Rat terrier mix). I'm not 100% sure though. Just a guess.
 
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Religion0

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*googles cost of flight to Denmark* *chokes on water* Sweet mercy...
Yeah, I'd be willing to let you sleep on my couch to save that expense, but Copenhagen just isn't worth the price of admission.

Eugh, my hands are cold. It's cold. It's colder than it actually is. How the heck does winter do that?

Congratulations on the doggo, Second Moon! She sounds super sweet.
 

Brightdreamer

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The Second Moon - Glad Project Dog seems to be going okay!

*waves to other people*

Monday morning, and about to head out to the workshed for a while. Then I might have to shop again, but it'll be okay because it'll be a drying break anyway.

The sibling was supposed to take Dad to a blood draw for the heart doctor this morning, but the heart doctor hadn't called it in to the lab. Fortunately, she didn't get one of her fluster panic fits, and was able to call and ask for the doctor's number. (While she was up there, she also decided to ask in person if there was any word on insurance covering the echocardiogram they wanted.) So that was good. Having things to do tends to help her be less fit-prone; really wish she could find a job that would take a chance on her, because I think it would help everyone.

Eh, well...

Guess I'll trudge shedward. More glitter to apply, more wire to feed and glue, a few drill holes to redrill (do not ask...) - lots to do.