schneefink, posts by tag: life and stuff - LiveJournal

Random RL stuff:
- My phone, that I bought only half a year ago, is broken (not my fault.) Still covered under warranty, but still, ugh.
- We now have shelves in our kitchen! For cookbooks, and because we don't have enough yet there's also space for plants and fandom stuff. I'd take a picture, but see above re: phone being broken (and I'm too lazy to search for my old camera.)
- I wanted to go see Eddie Izzard in Bratislava on Saturday, but missed the bus. I was so mad at myself that I went running and completely overdid it, my knee still hurts.
- Last week we found out that our third roommate is moving out, so we're looking for a new one again. *sigh*
- So, so many terrible things in politics. So many. I know that world-wide there are much larger and more serious issues, but that our foreign minister and minister of the interior are huge dicks and the chancellor is ceding way too much ground to the conservatives is just the shitty cherry on top.

By now I have a few thousand words of unsorted thoughts on the last ~25 Critical Role episodes and I'm too lazy to clean them up and post them yet, but I feel the need to express my feelings about episode 83 RIGHT NOW.( Collapse )

Crossposted from Dreamwidth. comments there.

I got a job! Today was a follow-up to an interview I had in December, and half an hour afterwards a friend of mine who works at that company called to let me know. It's not the most exciting job (mostly software testing) and it's only for half a year, but the pay is okay, it's nearby, I already know the people are nice, and it's a good start. Mostly I'm relieved the search is over. I start in two weeks :) I'm curious how it'll be – I haven't had a full-time job in a long time and never for longer than a month – but I'm optimistic. I'll have less time for anything else, which will definitely be an adjustment.

Also today, the dice I finally ordered last week arrived. For over a year I always borrowed some, but now I have my own and they are very pretty. I even have a perfect small leather bag I can put them in (one I made myself in a museum when I was a kid.) I can't wait to play with them! Last D&D session we mostly spent researching, but next time I might get to animate skeletons for the first time. My cat, who btw is now four times MC's size, will be very happy.

Crossposted from Dreamwidth. comments there.

I'm sick, and it sucks. I especially hate the timing because during my skiing vacation I felt full of energy and I was hoping that it would carry over to when I'm back, instead this. I should be fine in a few days, at least.

To distract myself I'm half watching, half listening to more Critical Role. ( Collapse )

In hockey news, Sid got his 1000th point and then a beautiful OT goal on a fantastic pass by Geno, these two together are just so great. But Olli is out six weeks and Jeff Schultz may also be injured >.< On top of all the other injuries, joy. The trade deadline is soon and it will be very stressful, fuck. Hopefully before that the Pens win the outdoor game against Philly.

Crossposted from Dreamwidth. comments there.

I got home from a vacation at my grandparents' on Friday. The weather was warmer than I'd hoped, but LB and I had four great skiing days :) The snow was great, the visibility was mostly fine, there was little wind and it wasn't too cold, and there were few people on the slopes. Skiing is awesome. I have very pretty pictures, but I'm too lazy to upload them right now, maybe later.
I also got rejections from jobs I applied for and had a braindead day yesterday. Today probably would have been the same, except DD&I met with Lisa&Nati and Mark&Alina to play Cards Against Humanity; L&N didn't have the cards so we just hung out with food, also nice. Dates with bacon, lightly fried, are delicious.
I still feel good about the coming week because skiing was great & I had the energy for it, including getting up earlier than usual and plus socializing and doing some editing work for my friends' company in the afternoon/evenings, so the energy is there and I just need to use it.


I started watching Critical Role. Why oh why did I think it was a good idea to start watching a canon with 80+ episodes of on average ~4 hours each. I mean I know why, it's because I kept seeing recs about how great it is and I was looking for something new to watch/listen to and I'd recently (over a year ago now, wow) started playing D&D myself, but I didn't plan on getting into a canon so large. Not that finding new fandoms ever goes as planned.

I tried watching/listening to the first episode twice, but got distracted, so following recommendations I found I started with episode 24, the Briarwood arc. Ep24 has a great cliffhanger, and after the first big fight I was hooked. The stakes were high, there was a lot of tension but also hilarious weird stuff, there were many feelings and also character development. I just finished episode 35 and I enjoyed it a lot so far.

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The format – live-streamed D&D – does have some disadvantages, like occasional pacing issues, but the extra tension that comes from important dice rolls can be pretty intense. Watching CR live must be something. Ugggh catching up will take so long. I wish I was better at staying away from spoilers, I already know of many important developments in the most recent episodes. It's a long time until then though.

Crossposted from Dreamwidth. comments there.

On Saturday I finally watched Moana (Vaiana here, apparently because of copyright issues?) The rest of the day was a completely surreal mix of listening to the Moana soundtrack on repeat, and following the awful news from the US on Twitter. For a few hours in the evening I was at a summer choir camp reunion party, it was like a strange bubble. Then I came home and continued following the news, and also watched the first half of the NHL All-Star Game. Weird mix of fun and ineffective distraction, strange contrast.
The political news is infuriating and terrifying and exhausting and I don't even want to imagine being someone more directly affected by it. Thoughts and prayers.

Speaking of prayers, today in the morning I went to church, for the first time in a while and for the first time in the parish nearby. I just really wanted to hear in person someone tell a community to do the right thing. And it worked, kind of. The priest didn't talk about anything political in detail, but there were strong themes of how following Christ means helping others and helping the weak, even when it's hard work and doesn't offer an immediate reward. (That so many US Republicans call themselves Christians is unbelievable.)
Afterwards I went to the after-mass coffee&cake get-together and talked to a few people, it was nice. (On one of the tables, next to some flyers, lay "Fifty Shades of Grey" o.o) I'm not very, almost not at all religious right now, but I made an appointment with the priest to talk about some of the issues that I have and I look forward to what comes of it.

I really need to write at least one job application today. But, even though I know it's silly, it feels so, idk, strange to apply for trivial jobs while so many important and terrible things are happening. And it's very easy to get distracted.

First though, more nice procrastination: Moana! I loved it, it's a great film and I'm very happy that I saw it in the cinema. It's pretty, the music is fantastic, the story is nice. ( Collapse )

Crossposted from Dreamwidth. comments there.

A bit late, but: In my fandom_stocking I got great recipe and story and vid recs, and great stories :)
In the Hour of the Ox by naye, a Nirvana in Fire canon-divergence hopefully-fix-it with Lin Chen and Jingyan and absent MCS being very much themselves (with all that entails *facepalm*); and
Tubbs, In Repose by nenya_kanadka, a fun and adorable Steerswoman/Neko Atsume crossover.

Yesterday I played Cards Against Humanity with friends and we had a fantastic time. I'm also a bit proud of myself: in the past often most of the time I've been invited by my friends to do stuff, and for a while now I've wanted to initiate doing stuff together more often from my side, so the friendship is more equal in practice too. I organized the game on Thursday and it turned out great, and the people I introduced to each other got on as well as I hoped they would. I hope I'll be able to do it more often :)

Every once in a while, when people in my dw circle post about what they've read in a week, I'm amazed at how many books they read. Those are weird moments, because I'm a fast reader and I read a lot. And then I think back to how many novel-length fics I read each week and it makes sense again.

I had a therapy session on Monday that felt fairly brutal, but I've been more active in my job search this week than in many previous weeks so she probably knows what she's doing.

After the HTML+CSS basic course last weekend, this weekend I'm being introduced to JavaScript. I'm looking forward to it, even though I'm sorry to miss the Woman's March in Vienna, and I know I'll be exhausted on Monday. D&D on Saturday is not ideal, but I'll make it somehow. At least today is my dad's birthday party and there will be cake. And maybe I'll finally get around to trying out the smoothie machine my roommate Nadine got for New Year's.

Crossposted from Dreamwidth. comments there.

I've been having a few bad days for no reason, and some of the usual support methods (I went climbing, I met with friends, I baked, I went to the zoo) didn't help either. (I made it to the top of the climbing wall twice! On the easiest route, but still. Now I know I can do it, and fortunately next time we're bouldering again.) So it's probably a good time for #8 of the Snowflake challenge: Make a list of at least three things that you like about yourself..

- I have an active&creative imagination. I'm good at creating worlds and characters, I'm good at entering different worlds and expanding on them, I'm not bad at creating stories, I can come up with weird stuff on the fly, and I enjoy it.
- I'm smart. Not exceptionally so or anything, but smart enough that I always approach problems with the attitude that I can understand them if I try, and solve them if I try hard.
- I try to think critically about important issues, and even more importantly, I'm willing to change my mind when confronted with better arguments.
- I like how I feel music, the way I can feel it when I sing or dance.
- I can be good company. I can be entertaining and funny.
- I think I give good hugs.

Crossposted from Dreamwidth. comments there.

Happy 2017!
I celebrated New Year's Eve with Lio&Maria and Lisa&Nati, and Maria tried out about ten or so different cocktails, yum. Three other people showed up for a while and drew Lio into a discussion on politics, and I hated that on the last day of 2016 while I wanted to play a game and enjoy myself I couldn't help but hear someone argue on the other side of the room that Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were equally bad options. Bleh. Fortunately they left before midnight. We sang a bit (including to Level Up and This Year), and after midnight we played four rounds of cards and I won all of them :) I came home so late that I narrowly missed OT of the Pens-Habs game, but the Pens won so that was good too.

I wrote two stories for Yuletide this year:
See Your Silhouette for lilacsigil
Fandom: Gladiator – Dami Im
1.3k, background White Warrior/Princess
Summary: She hadn't seen the Princess in fifty years.
My assignment. It was pretty frustrating because the prompts were good and I had ideas, but it was hard to put them together into a story, and at some point I planned something much longer and more complex before I condensed it to its current length. It probably made the story better, but there were a few elements I'm sorry I lost.

Step Forward for alessandriana
Fandom: Nirvana in Fire
1.6k, gen, canon-divergent AU
Summary: Jingyan had known this day would come, but for years xiao-Shu had done him the favor of allowing him not to think about it.
The first time I actually finished a Yuletide treat! Jingyu dies from natural cases and so there is no conspiracy. I'd started sketching this AU before I even saw alessandriana's letter, and when I saw that she prompted it it gave me the push I needed to finish. I really like this AU, and there's a possibility that I'm not done with it yet because I keep thinking of more things that would be interesting to explore in it.

There are many Yuletide stories I still want to read (thanks to everyone who recced stories), but I decided to put those aside for now and try to write something for fandom_stocking.
I also still need to do my 2016 year review, aaand I decided to try and do at least half of the snowflake_challenge this year, so at least 7 days.

Day 1: In your own space, post a rec for at least three fanworks that you have created. It can be your favorite fanworks that you've created, or fanworks you feel no one ever saw, or fanworks you say would define you as a creator. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Huh. I think I'll cheat a bit and refer to "Step Forward" above, because I really like the concept of this AU and I feel like I wrote a good look into it.

Dark Blue Skies, a Steerswoman fic: "In the third year of Willam's apprenticeship with Corvus, Abremio came to Wulfshaven." It's one of my longer works and I'm quite proud of how it turned out.

Assuming Shape, a Young Avengers fic, Teddy Altman's mom's backstory. (I can't remember if her name is from canon somewhere or if I took it from another fic.) I wrote it because I wanted to make her more real (which makes canon even sadder) and I feel like I succeeded.

Crossposted from Dreamwidth. comments there.

I had a week where I felt like a turtle in a shell all the time, I just wanted to stay at home and do nothing. Ugh. Happens. There were a few things I didn't do, but fortunately nothing immediately time-critical, and fortunately I had events with friends planned over the weekend, that helped. Not sure yet if I'll have to default on my Yuletide story.

The weekend: D&D on Friday, Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday, Disney movies on Sunday :)

Latest D&D things:( Collapse )

Saturday: Lio and Maria's friend Kelly is from the US, but has spent most of the last few years in Europe. She wanted an authentic American Thanksgiving dinner, so on Saturday we first had pumpkin-carrot-turkey soup and then stuffed turkey with cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, mashed potatoes with gravy, brussel sprouts with chestnuts, corn fritters, sweet potato casserole, ginger-glazed carrots, and a salad with apple and cucumber and fennel and pomegranate. It was amazing. It took me an hour to finish my very full plate and then I felt accomplished *g* Now I understand better why Thanksgiving is such a big deal in the US, if the food is always like that. I made the sweet potato casserole and it was actually quite easy and turned out well, I might have to do it again. I forgot to write down the amount I needed before going shopping so now we have quite a few more sweet potatoes at home.

On Sunday LB organized a Disney movie night, we saw "The Emperor's New Groove" and "Mulan." I hadn't seen either in years, it was fun. Before the movies we cooked pumpkin curry, pumpkin goat cheese and fig tart, and cheese baguettes. LB invited around ten of his friends, we had a good time and we already made plans for more movie nights. We definitely have to see "Nightmare Before Christmas" before, well, Christmas.

New week, I'm still very tired but I feel a bit better so fingers crossed I'll actually be able to accomplish things. Climbing today, and tomorrow is an event I'm invited to at the company where I'm currently in the middle of the application process, I'm almost optimistic.

Crossposted from Dreamwidth. comments there.

I don't really know how I feel yet, it changes so quickly. Sometimes I feel like crying, especially when I read reactions to the result, I can't do that for very long. Sometimes I just want to ignore it for a while and distract myself, and then I feel guilty because I'm lucky enough to be able to do that with where and what I am and so many people are not. I had quick bursts of "I have to get my shit together and get my life to a point where before the next Austrian parliamentary election (currently scheduled September 2018) I can do my part to make sure our right-wing party doesn't win", I hope those last long enough. (If they reschedule the election to next year that's too soon, I won't be ready to do anything.) I've been writing fic, because if I post something maybe some people will like it and it will briefly cheer them up and that's all I have to offer at the moment. I don't know what to say.

Speaking of: You can prompt me with anything and I'll attempt to write you something. Fandoms I know preferred, it probably won't be long but I'll do my best.

Crossposted from Dreamwidth. comments there.