after time adrift, among open stars

It's so hard to post from my phone, but I've been lurking and reading stuff, just...not posting. But I deleted the tumblr app off my phone and blocked twitter, to try and get myself to spend time on more stuff that I actually want to be doing. And I've been wanting to use my laptop more anyways, rather than using my phone for everything, because I find it much easier and happier and just...better.

Anyways. It's been a lot. I hope everyone is safe and doing as well as they can be.

( What I've been up to: )

Hello friends! I keep intending to spend more time here and accidentally spending more time on twitter instead, which is frustrating on so many levels. I've been lurking a bit, but there's also just been a Whole Lot of life events. So I thought I'd do a quick listing of everything that's been happening, partly for myself and partly if anyone else wants to know where the heck I've been.

( Read more... )

So hi! I know the beginning of the year's been crappy and ridiculous the world over, but I hope things are starting to ease up for people <3

I haven’t read anything from the His Dark Materials universe in quite a while, but yesterday something clicked and it was all I wanted to read about. I don’t have my copies of the trilogy with me, so I checked out what the library had, and they had the short books Lyra’s Oxford and Once Upon a Time in the North. I’d heard about Lyra’s Oxford in the past, which contains things like maps and flyers from Lyra’s world, as well as a short story. I hadn’t heard of Once Upon a Time in the North before, which is a short story about Lee Scoresby, the aeronaut, and how he first met Iorek Byrnison.

I picked up Lyra’s Oxford first, which contains the short story “Lyra and the Birds.” This is set two years after The Amber Spyglass, so Lyra is fifteen and back in her own world. She’s a student at one of the Oxford colleges (not Jordan, a college called St. Sophia’s), but still spends time at Jordan and keeps up her relationships and some responsibilities there.

One day, while she and Pantalaimon are hanging around Jordan, a flock of birds appears in their midst - all attacking another bird, which is actually a witch’s dæmon. They save the dæmon from the birds, and end up on a bit of an adventure to fulfill what the dæmon’s witch has told him to do.

There are a surprising number of turns for such a short story! Some of it is a fun little jaunt back into Lyra’s world that answers questions like “can you tell a dæmon without their person apart from an animal” (yes, apparently, very easily), and some of it is much darker and reminds you of just how awful some of the things Lyra’s gone through are. But she’s still Lyra, clever and sneaky, and Pantalaimon is still the familiar voice of reason (or, at least, he’s still attempting to be!). Other characters aren’t extremely well fleshed out, but that doesn’t feel like very much of a problem, because this is very much meant to be about Lyra and her place in her world.

Lyra is, of course, very much a Chosen One kind of character, and this is firmly within that scope. That’s no longer the kind of story I generally seek out for new books or stories, but for an addition to an old favorite that’s never made any attempts to appear as anything but, I’m not bothered.

I always loved the idea of the witches in this universe, and of course everyone loves the dæmons. Overall, I’m really glad I picked up this little book! It was a very quick read - less than an hour all told for me, split up a bit because I read it before bed and then on a subway. It was great to be back in such a fun world for a bit. The postcards and flyers interspersed with the story made me smile, and the story itself was a reminder of how much I love this universe.

I did not sleep well. I don’t really have any reason why, but I looked at the clock at 4:08 and had already been up for a while and never got to sleep again (alarms go off at 5:25).

Back to work today after the Thanksgiving break. I’m really not looking forward to it. We’ll see.

Here's my space_swap letter! Thank you so, so much for creating for me! Whatever you make, I'm sure I will absolutely love it, and I can't wait to see it.

Likes, DNWs, and prompts below the cut!

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I've really been enjoying knitting! My grandma taught me some basics when I was much younger, but I never got into it. But theherocomplex and thievesguilding knit and crochet respectively while we play D&D, and it got me interested again. So I bought some yarn and needles and set off!

The only problem is that I keep having the same problem as when writing - I'll start something, and I'll really enjoy it even, but I get distracted Super Easily and start making something else. As such, I've got three projects going right now:

• A simple cabled scarf for my girlfriend's mom, in variegated red/brown/purple yarn. Unfortunately the yarn and the cable pattern don't play super well together, and my edges are super sloppy, so I don't really like this one and am grumpy about it and rarely work on it.


• A hooded unicorn scarf for my girlfriend's about-to-be-ten-years-old cousin, in super bulky yarn. I love the idea, but I have learned that I don't like big needles or big yarn.


• A stuffed whale for myself that I am completely in love with, pattern, execution, and eventual stuffie. A big learning curve re: double-pointed needles, which I don't like as much as regular needles, but I'm getting much better. His name is Pierre, because he's made out of self-striping yarn in various shades of blue that reminded me of the Run Weaver song Pierre, that has the line "in those eyes of sky and ocean blue."

Anywho. Knitting is fun, I continue to be distractible, and it's time to go knit some unicorn ears.

Today I:

• played through In Your Heart Shall Burn with Ranae
• worked on the unicorn hooded scarf I'm knitting for my girlfriend's cousin
• started Starship Iris over for the fifth time
• watched the emoji episode of Doctor Who
• wrote for approximately two minutes

And most importantly:

• messaged one of my D&D groups to explain that I need a bit of a break from playing to sort out my brain.

A good day, I think.

Why are bus schedules so incomprehensible?! Why is there no list of all the stops? Why is there an EIGHTEEN-MINUTE GAP between the listed stops?? I am taking the bus because I am not currently able to drive for various cognitive reasons, I don't need additional cognitive stress trying to interpret the bus schedule!!

I just want to be able to get to more places than the library and CVS on my own.

We got home on Sunday, worked from home Monday, and went back to work Tuesday. It's been an alright week, I've mostly just been having trouble focusing at work, which is pretty par for the course anyways.

Today I've been having a weird amount of trouble being aware of where my body is in space. That isn't too unusual either, and any one or few of the things that have happened today wouldn't be all that weird on their own or with a few others, but it's just been A Lot today.

I'm glad it's almost the weekend.

A very merry Christmas to everyone celebrating, and happy Tuesday if you'd rather not!

I've had a wonderful day with my girlfriend and her family - lots of laughter and gifts, and soon to be lots of food when the rest of the family comes over. What are you all doing to celebrate?

I gave my girlfriend a Mollymauk-themed lowball glass I found on Etsy and a GBBO cookbook, and she loved both. My brother sent me Uncharted 4: The Lost Legacy and Dragon Age: Knight Errant, and I got a mildly ridiculous amount of gifts from my girlfriend's parents (including pajamas with books on them!), so I'm feeling extremely happy and loved today. Did anyone else get anything exciting or give something exciting?

Happy celebrating!