Murderbot TV plot bunny
Jul. 29th, 2025 04:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
muccamukk(Up for adoption, if anyone wants it.)
We were just rewatching the last two episodes, and ( Spoilers for 1x09 )
We were just rewatching the last two episodes, and ( Spoilers for 1x09 )
muccamukkTrivial life stuff follow-up
Jul. 28th, 2025 07:47 pmsholioI FOUND OUT WHAT HAS BEEN EATING MY GARDEN
I became even more convinced it was a moose after discovering this morning that some of the remaining pea vines were decimated in the night, evidently from the tops. So I was out there this evening picking the rest of the broccoli (so far untouched) ...
And all of a sudden, with no warning, a GROUNDHOG exploded out of the broccoli plants at my feet. (Definitely a groundhog/woodchuck. Not a marmot, not a ground squirrel. A groundhog. We do have them in Alaska, and this isn't even the first one I've seen here, but it's certainly the first one I've caught in the act of SHAMELESS GARDEN BANDITRY.)
They're reddish colored and large, about the size of a big cat. I screamed, because I was not expecting LARGE MOVING THING IN THE BROCCOLI. I'd had no idea it was there. It spend past my feet and under one of the cars and vanished.
So the culprit has been identified, and it's definitely coming back every day now. They can dig and they can also climb (jerks), so building a groundhog-proof fence would be a heck of a job. I asked Orion for ideas. He asked me if I mind if he pepper-sprays my garden, because he has some expiring bear spray and he wants to find out what using it is like just in case he ever has to use it for real. I'm like, sure, why not. I gave him some guidelines (don't spray anything I plan to eat, lower leaves only, etc) and went into the house to be out of the literal line of fire.
Shortly I heard coughing and sneezing and he came into the house eventually to report that bear spray is highly volatile and prone to floating on the wind. Good to know. A few minutes later, *I* was coughing and sneezing too, because it turns out it also sticks around on clothing and skin. (I didn't get it nearly as bad as he did, just a coughing fit and some running sinuses, but COME ON.)
He has now thoroughly showered.
And that's the story of how we bear-sprayed ourselves while trying to bear-spray the garden.
(He reports that bear spray tastes like very spicy food. Apparently the active ingredient is capsaicin, so it's not toxic. I didn't get enough of it to actually taste it.)
I guess we're about to find out if groundhogs enjoy spicy food.
I became even more convinced it was a moose after discovering this morning that some of the remaining pea vines were decimated in the night, evidently from the tops. So I was out there this evening picking the rest of the broccoli (so far untouched) ...
And all of a sudden, with no warning, a GROUNDHOG exploded out of the broccoli plants at my feet. (Definitely a groundhog/woodchuck. Not a marmot, not a ground squirrel. A groundhog. We do have them in Alaska, and this isn't even the first one I've seen here, but it's certainly the first one I've caught in the act of SHAMELESS GARDEN BANDITRY.)
They're reddish colored and large, about the size of a big cat. I screamed, because I was not expecting LARGE MOVING THING IN THE BROCCOLI. I'd had no idea it was there. It spend past my feet and under one of the cars and vanished.
So the culprit has been identified, and it's definitely coming back every day now. They can dig and they can also climb (jerks), so building a groundhog-proof fence would be a heck of a job. I asked Orion for ideas. He asked me if I mind if he pepper-sprays my garden, because he has some expiring bear spray and he wants to find out what using it is like just in case he ever has to use it for real. I'm like, sure, why not. I gave him some guidelines (don't spray anything I plan to eat, lower leaves only, etc) and went into the house to be out of the literal line of fire.
Shortly I heard coughing and sneezing and he came into the house eventually to report that bear spray is highly volatile and prone to floating on the wind. Good to know. A few minutes later, *I* was coughing and sneezing too, because it turns out it also sticks around on clothing and skin. (I didn't get it nearly as bad as he did, just a coughing fit and some running sinuses, but COME ON.)
He has now thoroughly showered.
And that's the story of how we bear-sprayed ourselves while trying to bear-spray the garden.
(He reports that bear spray tastes like very spicy food. Apparently the active ingredient is capsaicin, so it's not toxic. I didn't get enough of it to actually taste it.)
I guess we're about to find out if groundhogs enjoy spicy food.
Trivial life stuff (and fandom)
Jul. 27th, 2025 10:38 pmsholio1. SOMETHING IS EATING MY GARDEN. I don't know what; my guess is either a) moose (we know there's a cow-calf pair hanging around; we've caught them occasionally on the driveway game camera), or b) a porcupine. Which would never have been on my radar as something that would eat a garden if I hadn't seen it in the backyard a week or two ago, absolutely going to town munching on raspberry bushes and fireweed. I feel like the way that the garden is getting decimated is consistent with something low to the ground that's pulling down pea vines and similar, and also doesn't eat too much in one go. But after we put up loose wire fencing around one of the beds, it apparently got into it anyway and ate a bunch of my lettuce and some of the remaining pea vines. Porcupines can both climb and dig, so it's possible a motivated one could get over loose fencing pretty easily - but the damage pattern this time could also have been something leaning over and eating from the top. I CAN'T TELL, but it is really annoying because it's taken out nearly all my peas and a bunch of the salad stuff. I picked some broccoli tonight even though I didn't need to use it yet, because my broccoli heads are just about fully crowned and I'm going to be incredibly annoyed if I wake up tomorrow to find that they've been devastated as well.
2. I got to pet puppies today! One of the people in my TTRPG game group has a dog (a Great Dane) that had puppies, ELEVEN of them - the 101 Dalmation jokes write themselves - and invited us over after gaming to pet them if we wanted to. They're about 3 weeks old, eyes open and toddling, but still potato shaped and incredibly soft and pleasant to hold. Puppies. <3 (I miss having a dog, although I don't want a Great Dane for a number of reasons. Handling someone else's puppies is delightful, though.)
3. Summer of Horror authors revealed, including my very unsurprising offering. I continue to be delighted with my deliciously spooky/romantic gift!
4. The Biggles prompt fest is also going delightfully.
2. I got to pet puppies today! One of the people in my TTRPG game group has a dog (a Great Dane) that had puppies, ELEVEN of them - the 101 Dalmation jokes write themselves - and invited us over after gaming to pet them if we wanted to. They're about 3 weeks old, eyes open and toddling, but still potato shaped and incredibly soft and pleasant to hold. Puppies. <3 (I miss having a dog, although I don't want a Great Dane for a number of reasons. Handling someone else's puppies is delightful, though.)
3. Summer of Horror authors revealed, including my very unsurprising offering. I continue to be delighted with my deliciously spooky/romantic gift!
4. The Biggles prompt fest is also going delightfully.
A few Murderbot things
Jul. 26th, 2025 01:48 pmsholioI really enjoyed this David Dastmalchian interview and also this adorable associated piece of fanart from the part of the interview in which he basically starts channeling Gurathin.
And some of my stuff on Tumblr:
Something I noticed rewatching the first episode
Random thought on bookverse!Gurathin
Oh, and I posted another fic a few days ago, Old Familiar Sting, which is pretty much all about characters working through the aftermath of Corporation Rim medical trauma.
And some of my stuff on Tumblr:
Something I noticed rewatching the first episode
Random thought on bookverse!Gurathin
Oh, and I posted another fic a few days ago, Old Familiar Sting, which is pretty much all about characters working through the aftermath of Corporation Rim medical trauma.
Biggles prompt fest
Jul. 25th, 2025 02:42 pmsholioI thought it might be fun to run a Biggles July prompting free-for-all over at ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
bigglesevents. Because we haven't had a prompt fest in a while! (Of course I'm posting this at a time when most of the Biggles fandom is asleep.)
bigglesevents. Because we haven't had a prompt fest in a while! (Of course I'm posting this at a time when most of the Biggles fandom is asleep.)Does anyone have ideas how to navigate the US's **ing medical system?
Jul. 23rd, 2025 09:40 pmstarwatcherI internet-know a guy who's really struggling; he's fighting cancer, his wife is on dialysis for kidney failure, and his mother-in-law is dying, but the hospital she's in wants to send her away. Todd writes:
I don't know what to do. It seems that Valerie's Mom is beginning the dying process but the hospital is trying to force her out and into a nursing home which isn't covered. She doesn't have the funds, but nor can she qualify for Medicaid.
We have funeral costs that we have set aside-we tried to be frugal and she even chose to do cremation to save costs but there are still a couple of thousand left.
We planned for that. But the hospice process I don't understand. That is hundreds a day I guess upfront, we are trying to figure that out now. If we do in-home Valerie and I will have to be responsible for something she we aren't trained for and with her on dialysis, that is scary. The hospital doesn't seem to care. I don't know what to do. I am sad, and scared, and need advice. Any help is much, much appreciated but I really need to know who to talk to. And please share this, if you can. I will be doing an update later on detailing everything we have been through, and it is just so much..so much.
I didn't think a hospital would do this when she is in this much distress.
Todd has a GoFundMe; I don't know if it's possible to contact someone through that.
If you have any suggestions, and can't contact Todd through the GoFundMe, leave your suggestions in a comment, and I'll send it to him via email.
Murphy's law strikes again.
Jul. 23rd, 2025 07:00 pmstarwatcherYou all know Murphy's law, right? (Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.) It's so apt that many corollaries have been written for it. Like: "Anything that goes wrong will go wrong at the most inconvenient time and in the most difficult manner." Or: "Any job you plan will take twice as long as you expect. Even if you plan for a longer than expected time, the job will take twice as long as that."
(Google Murphy's Law corollaries; there are lists of dozen. Here's a fairly comprehensive example.)
I ran afoul of the last one I listed. Went out to check the water level in the pond, discovered that the pump that feeds the birdbath wasn't running. <sigh> The pump is encased in a homemade filter (one of these days I'll make a long, explanatory post about it), but some mud oozes through and clogs it up once in a while. I suspect the mud is about 50% duck poop (the neighbor has free-range ducks and geese) which is [a] more liquid, so [b] easier to ooze through the filter, and [c] much yuckier.
If I just change the filters, it takes about 10 minutes -- cut the twine that holds two round filters in the top of a bucket, put two new filters in, tie them in place. But last time, I tried to devise a filter around the output hose; it doesn't fit tight in the exit hole, and the pump draws water through there as well as the filters. It was obvious that the hose filter wasn't working as I'd hoped, so I tried to modify it by sewing the slits tight at the sides of the hose. (I had thought the suction of the pump would draw the slits inward, but no, they seemed to have separated instead.) Sounds easy enough -- but I was working in a restricted area (at the end of the hose, so I couldn't lift it up to a higher working area), in 95o temps (35 for those who use Celsius), with flies swarming my legs and arms. GAH!!! So, the 10-minute job took 80 minutes.
But I'm cautiously hopeful that I've make the filters more efficient. We'll see...
Summer of Horror and other fun things
Jul. 20th, 2025 10:13 pmsholiosummerofhorrorexchange revealed today! I got an astonishing 15K(!!!) Biggles fic (!!!) which I won't be able to properly start reading until tomorrow, but I cannot WAIT, it looks amazing and I'm dying to read it!Obligatory reminder that I have a fic in the exchange as well. Deeply mysterious, hid my tracks amazingly as usual. And there is a lovely selection of other horror fic as well!
Earlier today, before all of that, I posted yet another Murderbot TV-verse fic, System // Handshake (2500 wds, gen, post-canon). Summary is spoilery for the finale; it's loosely springboarded off another fic I'd read earlier.
There's also this seriously adorable short interview with the whole Murderbot cast (link goes to Tumblr) in which they talk about playing the Bitter/Sweet game from the show on the set. HOW ARE THEY SO CUTE, I DIEEEEEE
And, longer and more serious, but I really enjoyed watching this David Dastmalchian interview; he talks about the show, as well as some of his other projects (Dune; comic book writing) and is so adorably excited about the show and invested in it.
Temperature Flash fic reveals
Jul. 17th, 2025 10:44 pmsholioTerrible Temperature Flash authors were revealed this evening, and I wrote two not at all predictable fics:
A Touch of Warmth (Biggles books, Biggles/EvS, 1000 words)
This was entirely for the mental image of Erich wrapping his coat around a chilled Biggles. ♥
Taking the Heat (Babylon 5, Vir & Londo gen, 2500 wds)
Londo gets heatstroke on Centauri Prime. This was a treat for the h/c of it all.
A Touch of Warmth (Biggles books, Biggles/EvS, 1000 words)
This was entirely for the mental image of Erich wrapping his coat around a chilled Biggles. ♥
Taking the Heat (Babylon 5, Vir & Londo gen, 2500 wds)
Londo gets heatstroke on Centauri Prime. This was a treat for the h/c of it all.
Murderbot ficlet involving spies and forced drugging
Jul. 15th, 2025 10:26 pmsholioI'm not sure if this is complete enough for AO3, but I got a delicious hurt/comforty prompt on Tumblr, and ended up writing 1800 words for it. (Prompt and fic under the cut.)
Update: Now posted on AO3 as Soft Reboot.
( 1800 words of forced drugging )
Update: Now posted on AO3 as Soft Reboot.
( 1800 words of forced drugging )