Did you get an allowance as a kid, and if so, how much was it?
Nope. I could earn money for doing chores, but it was never a guaranteed tranche of money. And by chores I mean things like washing and hoovering the car, or heavy yard work, not cleaning my room or doing the laundry or dishes. Those were just expected.
How old were you when you had your first job, and what was it?
I was fifteen. I tutored a classmate in pre-calculus at community college where I took summer classes. She paid me $10 per session and would take us both for coffee afterward in her fabulous beat up orange Corvette. We were both so happy when we got our final grades and she went from getting a D to a B+. I often wonder what happened to her.
Which do you do better: save money or spend money?
Oh, spend it, for sure. If I'd been better at saving, I'd be in a much better financial position. But would I have had as much fun? I think not.
Are people more likely to borrow money from you, or are you more likely to borrow from them?
The former. I don't like borrowing money.
What's the most expensive thing you've ever bought?
The crossword puzzle clue read "Get lost!" with the quotation marks around it, and the first three letters of the answer were GOF. I was hoping the fourth letter would be U and so on, but there weren't enough spaces for the expected conclusion of YOURSELF. It was when the cross word revealed that the fourth letter was in fact L that I realized the entire answer was GOFLYAKITE, which fit, but who says that any more?
Chewy has a "Chewy Claus" thing around this time of year where you can help your pet(s) write a letter to Santa. How good they've been, whether they prefer treats or toys, and a free-answer "what would you ask for if you could have anything".
Last year I did it and at the end of December got a "sorry the sleigh missed you, here's a coupon code if you want to buy anything". And supposedly they donate food to pets in need for every letter submitted, so why not.
This year, I did it ... and today a box came addressed to Phoebe and Loki. (!!)
There was a dog toy that was a "lunch box" with a rope handle, and a green apple plushy and a juice-box plushy with Velcro to attach to the front of the lunchbox. Al three items contain squeakers. (So far, they are still intact, though the white parts of the juice box are rather, erm, dingy. That tends to happen with her toys, but it's impressive for 8 hours.)
There was a cat toy that was sushi themed (including a green wasabi packet) and has catnip in. Loki is mostly nocturnal these days but I put them in a cat bed that sits on my bed and when I came back in later, one was on the floor... so either he loves it or hates it, lol. Also a food purée treat thing similar to churu, though he's iffy about food.
There was an ornament, metal I think, with a sleigh and presents and "Chewy Claus 2025", which is now on my desk tree.
And there was a card with the cutest illustration of Chewy Claus helpers, and a handwritten note wishing them holiday cheer.
I'm a little astonished because I honestly hadn't expected to get anything, but it was a cute surprise!
Edit: Loki definitely likes. I may regret having them on the bed at the same time I am... lol
I was going to write a real post today but I ran out of time and it’s late so instead I’m going to just share the substack letter I just mailed out in case you don’t subscribe but want to know why I’ve disappeared for a few days: Hello, love! I know I just sentContinue reading "Where am I?"
I've been teased with snow before, and I'm hoping I won't get teased again tomorrow. It'll be somewhat inconvenient on Sunday, but I've been inconvenienced in such ways before. I can handle it. I know workarounds.
Earlier today, buying fresh eggs, I told someone I'd be using them for cake. "Tis the season," she said. "Cake's always in season," I told her, and got an earnest laugh.
This has been a super-stressful week. We had a somewhat lighter than usual round of medical appointments this week, but it was more than made up for by home repair appointments.
We had the garage door installation scheduled for Tuesday, which ended up not being completed that day, so the technician would have to come back Wednesday. Then Tuesday night I discovered that the basement drain was backing up whenever we used the washing machine, dishwasher, or kitchen sink, so I called the plumbing company for that, but they weren't able to send a plumber out until Friday afternoon.
Then Wednesday night, right after the garage door technician left, L. discovered that the washing machine was leaking (totally not related to the basement drain backing up). I tried to fix it, but ended up making it worse. So I had A. call an appliance repair service, who said they could send someone over Thursday morning.
Thursday morning the appliance repair technician came and fixed the dishwasher. Then I had to take A. to get allergy shots, then we went to Ricky's house, where I shoveled the 7-8 inches of snow we'd gotten over the previous two days. (He doesn't drive, but I had to shovel a path from the street to his door so Meals on Wheels could deliver and also to shovel his back stairs to he could let his dogs out.) I'm still sore from this.
Today I had a National Heritage Responders meeting (which went very well), then I had to wait for the plumber to arrive and fix the basement drain. We had originally had a noon to 3PM window for him to show up, which got pushed back to a 2:30PM to 4:30PM window and he ended up showing up at about 3:45PM.
All the house things have been successfully fixed, and we're planning to enjoy this weekend's cold weather from inside the house as much as possible. (It's -2°F out right now, and supposed to go down from here, then only to get as high as 0°F tomorrow, and not to get into actual positive temperatures until Sunday.) But anyway, that's why I've got a massive mental backlog of posts I want to make, and why I've got a folder in my email of comments from you that I want to respond to, and so forth. I hope you're all doing well.
SamSam is in town, and I elected to play hooky from work (more accurately, use one of my increased number of personal days THANK YOU UNION I LOVE YOU) so that we could hang out today and also because my work-brain is _fried_ and so it's a very very nice concept to just...not be there for a day. Here's some of the things we did:
*We went to Amanda's house quite early to watch the biathalon, since Amanda and Sam are in the same biathalon group chat. I find this extremely pleasantly baffling, but it was very very good to hang out on the couch with some friends and enjoy them being very excited about a thing. Occasionally they would give me context, or I would ask a question, but mostly I just got to watch people be excited about something, which I find splendid. We also watched the kittens be doofuses and just generally chatted, which was splendid!
*Home for a bit of lunch, and then we grabbed our ice skates and headed off to the rink near the school, which has open skate for a couple hours on Friday afternoons. We skated for a little over an hour and it was pretty grand! Sam likes ice skating _immensely_, which makes it a delightful sort of thing to do together, even if I'm not particularly good at it. (I don't really regret that I've fallen out of Tech Squares, but I do miss that particular part of Easthill. I want more dancing on skates!)
*After skating, we walked on to Make&Mend, which I only really went to the first time like six weeks ago. I think going at least every month or two is probably a really good idea for me, in terms of getting to see interesting crafty things and also to support something that I want my neighborhood to be.
*We walked home, which was...not as pleasant as it could be, since cold and windy, but we did swing by Saus in Bow-Street-Market on the way. So cold and windy but also french fries!
*Once home, we collapsed for a while and had good nap. Woke up enough so that they could read me some book and I could eventually make dinner, and this is all a really nice precursor to another couple days of hanging out together.
Currently I am writing words and they are brushing my hair out and we're listening to music and that's all reeeeeeally good. I am happy for this!
As I don't have the bandwidth for a lot of reccing tonight, here are two quick recs of short Murderbot friendship gen from the last couple of days that I enjoyed. Both of these are more bookverse than show-based.
Ransom by BoldlyNo (400 wds, Gurathin-centric) Augment-based ransomware! What a terrible/brilliant idea. This is short but complete-feeling and satisfyingly whumpy.
The Truth, Bitter as It Is by HonorH (900 wds, Gurathin & Murderbot) An even worse truth comes out about Ganaka Pit. I went into this fic worried that it would be terribly depressing, but it's not; it is much sweeter and kinder than it has to be.
About a decade ago there was some noise made about trying to figure out what day on the calendar Ferris Bueller’s Day Off took place. The day that was decided on by the nerds who think too much about this sort of thing was June 5, 1985. This was decided largely by the fact that the Cubs game Ferris, Cameron and Sloane were seen attending happened on that day, and apparently you can’t argue with the baseball schedule.
I can argue with the baseball schedule, and I will tell you that June 5, 1985 is not Ferris Bueller’s day off. For one thing, anyone who knows Midwest school schedules knows that by June 5th, all the kids are out of school. For another thing, asserting that the Cubs game, which our trio only attend, is definitive, when the Von Steuben Day parade, which Ferris actually inserts himself into, is disregarded, is nonsensical cherry picking of the highest order. The Von Steuben Day parade was as real as the Cubs game, and took place on September 28, 1985. If any real world day has to be picked, I would pick that one.
Except that one won’t work either. September 28, 1985 was a Saturday, for one, and it’s too early in the school year for Ferris’ hijinks, for another. We know Ferris has skipped school nine times by the time The Day Off rolls around, and missing nine days when school has been in for barely a month is a lot, even for Ferris. Ferris is a free spirit, not a chronic truant.
If one must pick a specific day — a questionable assertion, as I will relate momentarily — it would most likely be a day in late April, when Baseball is in season, the kids are not quite yet attuned to things like prom and graduation (and for the seniors, college), spring has sprung in the Chicagoland area, and Ferris would decide that that the day is too great to spend all cooped up in class.
But ultimately, trying to pin The Day Off to an actual calendar day is folly — and not only folly but absolutely antithetical to the point of The Day Off. The point of The Day Off is freedom and possibility, not to pin it down with facts and schedules. Facts and schedules are for classes! The Day Off doesn’t ask for any of that. It only asks: What will you do, if you can do whatever you want?
What Ferris wants is to have a day in Chicago with his best friend Cameron and girlfriend Sloane. Inconveniently that is a school day, and while Ferris has bucked the system before (nine times!), as he says to the camera — Ferris breaks the fourth wall more and better than anyone before or since, yes, even better than Deadpool, I said what I said — if he does it again after this, he’ll have to barf up a lung to make it stick. That being the case, The Day Off needs to be a day more than just hanging with friends. It has to be an event. Making it so will, among other things, require the “borrowing” of an expensive car, the chutzpah to brazen one’s way into a place that will serve you pancreas, the cunning to evade parents and school principals and, significantly, the ability to make your depressive best friend confront his own fears.
Oh, and, singing “Twist and Shout” in a parade. As you do.
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off came out the summer before I was a senior in high school, which meant when I watched it I was very much oh, here’s a role model. Not for the skipping of school precisely; I went to a boarding school and lived in a dorm, skipping days was a rather more complicated affair than it would have been in a public school. But the anarchic style, the not taking school more seriously than it should be taken, the willingness to risk a little trouble for a little freedom — well, that appealed to me a lot.
Before you ask, no, I did not, become a True Acolyte of Ferris. I lived in the real world and wanted to get into college, and while at the time I could not personally articulate the fact that inherent in Ferris’ ability to flout the system was a frankly immense amount of privilege, I understood it well enough. Ferris gets his day off because he’s screenwriter/director John Hughes’ special boy. The rest of us don’t have that luck. Nevertheless, if one could not be Ferris all the time, would it still be wrong to have a Ferris moment or two, when the opportunity presented itself? I thought not. I had my small share of Ferris moments and didn’t regret them.
(I even got called “Ferris” once or twice! Not in high school, but in college, at The University of Chicago, where somewhat exceptionally among my peers at that famously intensive school, I didn’t grind or panic about my grades, I would actually leave campus to see concerts and plays and to visit a girl at Northwestern, and I got a job straight out of college reviewing movies for a newspaper, in the middle of a recession. I apparently made it all look easy, thus, “Ferris.” Spoiler: It wasn’t all easy, not by a long shot, the girl at Northwestern wanted to be just friends, and I got that job because I was willing to be paid less on a weekly basis than the newspaper paid its interns. I only achieved Ferris-osity if one didn’t look too closely.)
There has been the observation among Gen-Xers that you know you’re old when you stop identifying less with Ferris and more with Principal Rooney (this is also true when applied to the students of The Breakfast Club and Vice-Principal Vernon). I’ve never gotten to that point, but it’s surely true that Ferris becomes less of a character goal and more of a character study as one gets older. Ferris himself understands that he is living in a moment that’s not going to last: As he says in the movie, he and Cameron will soon graduate, they’ll go to separate colleges and that’s going to be that for them. Ferris’ trickster status is predicated in his being in a place and time where his (let’s face it mild) acts of transgression have little consequence. The penalties for him here are of the “I hope you know this will go down on your permanent record” sort, and even those are thwarted by Cameron letting him off the hook for property damage and a soror ex machina moment. Ferris knows it, which I think is why he takes advantage of it. After graduation, things get harder for everyone, even for privileged white boys from the north suburbs.
This might mean that Ferris eventually becomes one of those people who realizes he’s peaked in high school, and what an incredibly depressing realization that might be from him (Cameron, on the other hand, will not peak in high school; once he’s out of his dad’s house he’s going to thrive. Sloane is going to be just fine, too).
I do wonder, from time to time, what has become of Ferris. Many years ago I wrote about what I think happened to Holden Caufield of Catcher in the Rye; I said I expected he went into advertising, was good at selling things to “the youth” and became a mostly functional alcoholic. My expectations for Ferris are similar, although more charitable: He goes to Northwestern, is popular but not nearly at the same level (Northwestern has a lot of Ferris types at it), gets a job in marketing, does very well at it, marries someone who is not Sloane, moves back to his hometown when they have kids and when they get old enough to go to his high school, he bores them with his stories about his time there. The kids, it turns out, didn’t ditch. Ferris has grandkids now. He keeps in touch with Cameron and Sloane through Facebook. They’re fine. He’s fine. It’s all fine.
If it sounds like I’ve given Ferris an ordinary life, well, that’s kind of the point. Early on, I said the point of The Day Off was, what will you do, if you can do whatever you want? It turns out, for all his cleverness and antics and quoting of John Lennon, what Ferris wanted was actually pretty ordinary: To have a great day with his friends, while he still could have a great day with his friends. And, well: Who wouldn’t? Just because what he wants is ordinary doesn’t mean it isn’t good, or that it wasn’t a shining moment that all three of them will be glad all their lives that they got to have. Our lives are made of moments like these, where one day you get to do what you want with the people who matter to you, and you look around and you say to yourself, yes, this.
Most us don’t then mount a parade float and lipsync to a Beatles cover, true, and if we did we would probably get arrested. But this is why Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is a fable, and why the actual date of The Day Off doesn’t matter. What matters, and why I come back to this movie, is the joy of a perfect day, with the people that will make it perfect. My Day Off isn’t this day off. But I’ve had one or two of them, and, hopefully, so have you.
Romance author Fern Michaels died recently, and I enjoyed reading this old article from early in her career (NYT archive article from 1978, not sure if it's paywalled). I didn't know that Fern Michaels started off as a writing duo of two different women! Apparently the one who eventually became "the" Fern Michaels took over the pen name later, but at the point this article was written, they only had three books out. The article is not at all disrespectful, and I was interested in the details of how the two women chose to position themselves in the market, which reminded me of our brainstorming process for Zoe a bit:
“There used to be a market for the little 60,000‐word romance with no plot,” Mrs. Anderson said, “but our publisher has become very demanding.”
Fern Michaels's books usually end up containing about 250,000 words.
Mrs. Anderson credits the success of the books to the authors’ attitude about women. As she put it:
“We don't have women love men who brutalize, beat and brand them. Our women don't put up with that.”
Anyway, I enjoyed this look at the state of the genre circa 1978, as well as the very early days of an author (or authors) who became a powerhouse in the 1980s-2000s romance scene.
Mood Theme in a Year is a community that takes a laid-back approach to creating a custom mood theme. If you've always wanted to create your own mood theme (those little images that pop up when you select something from the drop-down "Mood" menu when posting), this is a great place to do it! Take your time creating graphics for anywhere between 15 and 132 moods, either following the community's suggested schedule or going at your own pace. (Though you need to make a minimum of 18 graphics to earn any paid time.)
The "official" schedule starts again from the beginning on January 1st, but you can jump in at any time during the year; feel free to challenge yourself as well with Bingo cards or the Mood Theme in a Month calendars! Learn more in the community pinned post or profile.
There are some sentences, some scenes, some words, that move me on every reread. They won't make sense out of context, that being the world of that novel you are reading.
In Fledgling by Lee and Miller, it's "the pilot who raised you."
In another Liaden book (Mouse and Dragon?) it's the response the Tree gives when Daav shouts at it.
In Georgette Heyer's A Civil Contract it's "Eagles."
Mary Renault's The Last of the Wine has many examples. Here's one: "The work was, as we say, sincere..." followed by "and I understood, when I saw the name." You know, I got goosebumps when I typed this.
The "sincere" comment harks back to an earlier scene, and as soon as I read it I knew what name he'd see. Renault is pure gold.
Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #987. Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ]. Current Secret Submissions Post:here. Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
The Ukrainian fantasy novel Vita Nostra has been on my to-read list for a while ever since shati described it as 'kind of like the Wayside School books' in a conversation about dark academia, a description which I trusted implicitly because shati always describes things in helpful and universally accepted terms.
Anyway, so Vita Nostra is more or less a horror novel .... or at least it's about the thing which is scariest to me, existential transformation of the self without consent and without control.
At the start of the book, teenage Sasha is on a nice beach vacation with her mom when she finds herself being followed everywhere by a strange, ominous man. He has a dictate for her: every morning, she has to skinny-dip at 4 AM and swim out to a certain point in the ocean, then back, Or Else. Or Else? Well, the first time she oversleeps, her mom's vacation boyfriend has a mild heart attack and ends up in the ER. The next time ... well, who knows, the next time, so Sasha keeps on swimming. And then the vacation ends! And the horrible and inexplicable interval is, thankfully, over!
Except of course it isn't over; the ominous man returns, with more instructions, which eventually derail Sasha off of her planned normal pathway of high school --> university --> career. Instead, despite the confused protests of her mother, she glumly follows the instructions of her evil angel and treks off to the remote town of Torpa to attend the Institute of Special Technologies.
Nobody is at the Institute of Special Technologies by choice. Nobody is there to have a good time. Everyone has been coerced there by an ominous advisor; as entrance precondition, everyone has been given a set of miserable tasks to perform, Or Else. Also, it's hard not to notice that all the older students look strange and haunted and shamble disconcertingly through the dorms in a way that seems like a sort of existential dispute with the concept of space, though if you ask them about it they're just like 'lol you'll understand eventually,' which is not reassuring. And then there are the actual assignments -- the assignments that seem designed to train you to think in a way the human brain was not designed to think -- and which Sasha is actually really good at! the best in her class! fortunately or unfortunately .... but fortunately in at least this respect: everyone wants to pass, because if you fail at the midterm, if you fail at the finals, there's always the Or Else waiting.
AND ALSO all the roommates are assigned and it's hell.
Weird, fascinating book! I found it very tense and propulsive despite the fact that for chapters at a time all that happens is Sasha doing horrible homework exercises and turning her brain inside out. I feel like a lot of magic school books are, essentially, power fantasies. What if you learned magic? What if you were so good at it? Sasha is learning some kind of magic, and Sasha is so good at it, but the overwhelming emotion of this book is powerlessness, lack of agency, arbitrary tasks and incomprehensible experiences papered over with a parody of Normal College Life. On the one hand Sasha is desperate to hold onto her humanity and to remain a person that her mother will recognize when she comes home; on the other hand, the veneer of Normal College Life layered on top of the Institute's existential weirdness seems more and more pointless and frustrating the further on it goes and the stranger Sasha herself becomes. I think the moment it really clicked for me is midway through Sasha's second year, when ( spoilers )
Belatedly watching episode 1 of The War Between the Land and the Sea. And just had a St Andrews University passing reference, though it’s a little bit confused. Should be normally 4 years not 3. That will only make sense to folks who watch it, and preferably also studied a Scottish undergraduate degree. I was offered direct entry to second year CS at my course choice meeting at the start of first term. So could easily have taken just a 3 year BSc(Hons) rather than the usual Scottish 4. But I decided to stick with the full 4 years. A uni friend jumped straight into second year CS, but it is an unusual thing to do at St Andrews.
The latest on that inherited IRA is that I got two email messages from Fidelity today, one saying that I needed to do something [unspecified] to transfer the money from BNY, and one saying specifically that BNY had told Fidelity that they, BNY, needed to talk to me.
So, I called BNY, and after various annoyances with their phone tree, talked to someone. He told me that they had no record yet of receiving the form I sent by next-day mail, but that if the form had arrived late Wednesday they might not be scanned until late today or even Monday. Also that once the form is scanned into the BNY system, it may take a few days before they actually transfer the money into my name, which would be necessary in order to move it to Fidelity.
So, I can (and probably will) call Monday to check that the form was in fact been received, but he thinks I should call later in the week, maybe Wednesday, maybe as late as Friday, and ask for my brand-new account number. Once I have that number, I have to fill out appropriate paperwork with Fidelity. *sigh*
I am both annoyed that even paying for next-day delivery, this is taking several days, and thinking that if I hadn’t paid for faster delivery I would be a few days further behind.
The man also said that once the funds are transferred, they will send me an acknowledgement by mail, including the new account number. However, waiting for that to arrive (rather than getting the information by phone) does not seem prudent, given the IRS deadline for the 2025 required minimum distribution.
I took a small break from recs in order to reread the entire Murderbot Diaries series, so I could go into my ARC of Platform Decay PRIMED and EDUCATED. But yesterday was Thursday, and there's a new issue of Intergalactic Mixtape, and I'm claiming those recs for this project.
Answering an anonymous poll on the intfiction forum. The answers in this question don't range far enough back 😜 I first played - and became interested in - interactive fiction back in December 1980, 45 years ago this month. Colossal Cave Adventure on an Apple II borrowed over Christmas.
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