korafox

Book count

2025-10-18T16:37:33Z

Many books! 50 exactly did I read this year. A list is below. Now I am off to get ready for our first choir concert of the year, and then we will visit the new cat cafe for much fluffy antics. Not a bad birthday.

( Read more... )

comments

Book log!

2024-10-20T21:33:21Z

This year I read 47 books! Huzzah. I spent a chunk of the year reading books of random accumulation that I was pretty sure were going to go for donation, I just figured I should actually give them one read-through before they went. And now all my books fit on my bookshelves.

( Book list under the cut... )

comments

Annual booklog

2023-10-21T17:42:48Z

Hooray, Wednesday was my birthday. Therefore it is time to count the books I read this year. I managed 51--so close to 1/week! Well, there is always next year.

Log beneath the cut (rereads are asterisked):

( Read more... )

comments

Late to the game as always

2023-03-25T22:46:07Z

Masking has been lovely in that the last time I was sick was January 2020...but the streak comes to an end as I am laid up with a sinus infection. (Testing negative so far, anyways, and it does just feel like the standard head cold.) I am not resilient when sick though so I am tucked away on the recliner feeling pitiful for myself.

So I was looking for a thing to watch on Kanopy to keep me company and guess what. They have Farscape! I have never seen it before and no time like the present. After four episodes I am enjoying it so far. Favorite things:

1) Zhaan <3. They are so gorgeous and mysterious and sensible unlike everyone else on the ship. (I haven't actually caught their pronouns--I mean, in a show from 1999 I'm sure eventually someone is going to call them she/her but Zhaan just seems to have an "ahaha, gender? how quaint that you worry about that" sort of vibe.)

2) The little floor robots with the wiggly lamp eyes. So adorable

3) Really all of the puppets, prosthetics, and makeup. A+ work and delightful.

Thing that most annoys me: Crichton continuing to make pop/Earth culture references that he knows no one else is going to understand. Stop being petulant and purposefully making communication difficult, dude. If you're gonna complain that the other members of the ship do fighting first instead of negotiation, it would probably help your case if they had any idea what you're saying half the time.

So yes, PSA, if this is a thing you want to (re)watch, it is on the streaming service Kanopy. I get access through my local public library and you might have a similar situation.

comments

Book log!

2022-10-21T23:28:38Z

For me, another year complete. So here are the books I read this year. It is less than usual (32) and a good amount of re-reads. But in my defense, I spent all summer taking a programming course and then the better part of two months finally finishing the Mars trilogy. So the latter is an accomplishment I've been trying to manage for over a decade.

The list:

( Read more... )

comments

flail

2022-04-28T03:03:04Z

You guys I know I don't post anymore but I am just too flail right now not to.

I'm like a year late to this party but we finished The Magnus Archives last night. X__X

So yes, all my non-work hours since then have been me flinging myself off a cliff into the vast swathes of fandom that I had assiduously avoided so as not to be spoilered. So many feels.

Part of me wishes I could go back in time and run along with everyone else for the live experience, but at the same time I don't think I've ever experienced fandom that way? I always seem to come in after it's over. And I lurk. It's hard to put yourself out there and claim to have something to say with the characters. Goodness knows the last actual fanart I did was...probably a solitary Good Omens doodle at least fifteen years ago?

But that being said, several of these characters have taken up residence in my heart. So, *flail*.

comments

Books, 2021

2021-10-19T02:03:20Z

It is the day! This year I read 48 books, one more than last year. Like last year, there was exactly one re-read, denoted by an asterisk. Damn, but I read a lot of queer romance novels this year. I guess it was just that kind of a year. : /

( Full list below the cut )

comments

korafox @ 2021-03-25T18:03:00

2021-03-25T23:21:12Z

This week my state opened vaccine eligibility to higher education staff and...

...this afternoon I got the first shot of the Pfizer vaccine. \o/

It is probably a damn scientific miracle that this was possible only one year and two weeks after life plunged into lockdown here.

I don't think I have really started to process that I am now on a definite timeline to having an ability to see people again. Husband was able to get his shot a little sooner than me, but we'll both be through the second-shot waiting period by the start of May, I think. My parents and brothers are already fully vaccinated. Littlest brother moved into his first own place at the start of March 2020 and we have yet to be abe to visit him there. I might actually get to bring him a housewarming gift soon.

Everything has been Very Hard lately and I am so grateful for this bit of good.

comments

New year

2021-01-02T21:17:37Z

I Ate'nt Dead? I have been lurking a lot and using my longhand journal instead of posting here. It is hard to accumulate the needed emotional activation energy to get over "but I have nothing interesting to say" and "half the time I stick my foot in my mouth anyways".

But I want to stop sitting in the corner by myself, too. So I will try to post a bit more and hopefully more about things I am actually Doing. So here are a few things I have been doing lately.

Finished a painting yesterday, probably I have a half-dozen or so that I have completed during the pandemic.
Continuing noodling around with a stained-glass-inspired crochet design. It is not there yet but I keep finding additional techniques that might work for it.
After about four attempts across my lifetime, I think I am finally going to get through the entire brick of Les Misérables. I am about 300 pages from the end, certainly farther than any previous attempt. I think now that I am 33 I may be finally old enough for this book. : /
I am making bread right now! I did not jump on the bread-making bandwagon earlier in the pandemic but I...need to use up this yeast. It says best by July 2020 and the end result already looks a bit dubious.

Oh and in September I got hired for a new position at my place of work that is a lot less front-desk-customer-service and a lot more fiddling with data and making sure All The Things Are In Order. I am still not at the top of the learning curve and it is an entirely new position in the organization, too, so there is a lot to figure out still. But at the end of the work day I feel like I have a lot more spoons left, so I am glad to have made the jump even with all the challenges.

comments

Books, 2020

2020-10-19T02:41:41Z

It is time again to tally all the books I read during this trip around the sun. This year's total is 47 books--not a stellar year I guess, but in fairness there is a g*ddamn pandemic going on and that has a tendency to Distract. One re-read denoted by an asterisk.

As always, happy to answer questions about any of the titles.

( Full list below the cut )

comments

Only took me slightly less than two months

2020-05-10T00:43:03Z

I have done it. I've finished reading the giant stack of library books I took home the week before we all went into lockdown.

Now I am not sure what to do with myself. The libraries are all closed, so I can't get any new physical books. So my choices are 1) look into e-book borrowing, 2) read some of the new-to-me random-ass books I acquired at library sales that will have a greater proportion of duds, or 3) re-reads.

Or I could stop faffing about and do some art for the first time in weeks. But that feels insurmountable at the moment. (Am I having a Depression right now? Yes. Yes I am. So it goes.)

In other distracting-me methods, I have started playing through the original Final Fantasy 7 in Japanese. Protip: you can do this on the PS4 by changing the console system language, which you can do freely from the settings menu. This is going better than I expected and I am trying to be diligent about looking up words/phrases I don't know rather than saying "I got 85% of that, let me skip it."

comments

OMG you guys

2020-04-30T16:07:50Z

These are amazing and just what I needed today:

Artist Draws Male Superheroes as Pin-Up Models at BoredPanda (NSFW sexual poses and some butts, but no full nudity)

...am seriously considering making the Bucky one as my desktop image. For mental health purposes. Yes.

comments

How does a garden grow?

2020-04-02T00:45:30Z

I'm seriously trying to get on top of the idea of starting a garden, since I have a nice-sized backyard that gets a lot of sun and it seems like a prudent idea to have my own veggie source going forward this year. The whole thing is super intimidating though--the internet has lots of advice but it is complicated and there are umpteen million choices to make.

Really what I want is someone to just tell me "buy things A, B, C then do things X, Y, Z" and then there are tomatoes. Or bell peppers. Or I don't even know, just the choice of what to grow is daunting. Worrying about soil acidity is a several-years-from-now problem.

Probably the first step is get seeds and maybe some soil because our soil is crap? (Not really; it would be better if it were literal crap, I think. It's shot through with rocks and very thin sandy dirt in the backyard.)

On the plus side, I already have my very own trowel! : D
And a lot of bricks from the stupid landscaping in my front yard that I was going to remove and could turn into edging for garden beds...raised beds? I don't even know.

Advice for a 100% beginner is welcome. I live in Illinois, USA in what the internet tells me is hardiness zone 5b.

comments

Bits by bits

2020-03-22T20:54:23Z

Oh look, the lousy Smarch weather is here. : /

It has been *snowing* all day, and I don't believe we've seen the actual sun in over a week. A bit of brightness outside would certainly help with everything else that's going on, but it seems like it is Not To Be right now. I feel like I should claim some bit of forward-thinking in picking a house where all the hallways go in a loop. The circuit is only 20-25 feet on each side, but it is better than having no way to walk around given the weather.

Another reason I want the sun to come out already is that I finished a watercolor and I would really like to photograph it--the scanner is blasting out all my midtones and the digital scan result is not good. But, the light has not been sufficient. Alas it shall have to wait.

Slowly I am working on the Judgment Noema card. Here is a WIP of what I have so far.
( Image beneath the cut )
The colors are not indicative of reality; they are just there so I can make sure the composition is balanced and things layer properly. I suspect this one is going to have a fairly warm palette actually--reds/oranges and softnesses of reflected colors in crystals. Everything is still rough but I have a lot of details in my head already.

comments

korafox @ 2020-03-04T20:54:00

2020-03-05T03:27:33Z

When I have anxiety dreams, they are inevitably some variation on "A Big Bad Thing is coming and you have to pack everything for the rest of your life into a bag and get out before it arrives!". And I never, ever manage to finish packing and actually leave--there is always One More Thing again and again until I wake up.

I really don't appreciate life reflecting dreams right now because this is exactly how I feel in getting our household prepared for the possibility of quarantine. There keeps being something I forgot to get during the last grocery trip, and it's not like I can just take off from work in the middle of the day to go shopping. And that doesn't even count the unknown unknowns that haven't occurred to me.

Likely I need to chill out because we definitely have enough food, but I still worry that we need more fruit and veg options. But likely I will try to fit in another grocery trip before the weekend regardless. >__<

comments

2.8.20

2020-02-09T00:05:49Z

Today started out fairly productive and now I'm lulling, so here is a post so I can hopefully refocus and get something done with my evening.

I am nearly done with a watercolor, just a few tweaks to adjust value left. But now I need to find a mat/frame for it, and like a total genius I decided to make it a round composition. The internet has yet to show me any options for round frames that are not 1) really cheap crap or 2) really damned expensive, so I may end up compromising and getting a round mat that goes in a square frame instead.

I've chosen Judgment as the next Noema card to work on, and I have a thumbnail design that is a decent starting point. I'm stalling on that because I ought to take a WIP snapshot of it and post this stage of the design with commentary, but my brain is having executive function difficulties with that whole process. *sigh*

A thing I am excited for next week is that I am going to a concert of the St. Olaf Choir! I expect the music will be amazing and it will be great to hear what a real choir can sound like, ha. They are doing a piece by Rosephanye Powell which is not the one we did in the fall, but I am looking forward to hearing more of her music and done justice.

comments

Well that was a week

2020-01-26T19:37:12Z

The giant choral festival of doom happened on Friday--"happened" is probably a fair description of it. A number of things did not go well, but they were all things that were out of my control and ultimately Not My Area Of Responsibility. But we didn't lose any high schoolers and we didn't break anything in the theatre, so...success?

I was so very done by the end of the day and have pretty much spent the weekend trying to beckon some spoons close enough to grab a few. On Saturday I woke up with just about every muscle in my body sore, and no matter how much I've slept I still feel like I need a nap.

To distract/fake out my brain I started playing A Link to the Past on the SNES classic. I think I tried playing this on a handheld port once but I couldn't beat the stupid worm boss that bonks you down into a pit. (Note: I am terrible at Zelda.) This time it took me half an hour or so, but I finally beat the thing! And there is apparently a lot more game after that. : /

Also I have done a bit more work on my current watercolor painting. Progress!/?

Would like to roll to disbelieve that tomorrow is Monday and I have to go back to all the work that has backed up on me though.

comments

Lo for dotted dotted half notes

2020-01-17T03:43:30Z

Choir started up this week again, and we have started to get into two new pieces of music. They happen to both be a capella (I felt badly for our accompianist today) and both in weird frickin' meters that hate us. Huzzah for 6/8 and 7/8? (Arrangements of "Say Something" and "Nearer My God to Thee" respectively.)

The 7/8 piece is actually not as bad for the non-soloists once you get into it because the pattern is very repetitive and continuous. The 6/8 situation on the other hand is like "here have a dotted quarter tied to a quarter then a sixteenth rest and a sixteenth note. Now do something completely different in the next measure probably involving a dotted quarter rest." Le sigh. I am *terrible* at reading rhythm so I think I will just have to learn that one by rote.

comments

The Battle, completed

2020-01-16T04:37:24Z

The Battle is the Ikon of direct conflict; its obstacles are not events, but people opposed in such a way that compromise is not immediately possible. Logically the Battle is often associated with wars and physical violence, but any situation where two or more people are working actively against each other can be represented. The Ikon always represents division, separating the combatants on different sides of an issue that must be fought for.
( Image beneath the cut )19/27!

Sometime last year I decided to do this one because it was cathartic for my feelings about politics. I don't think it's gotten any less relevant unfortunately.

I need to do something that has more organic elements next. This one was all grim and needed very precise anatomy that I am still not sure about the results. The problem is I left off all the Conjunctions for last and those have to have at least two people. Which means more extra-fiddly composition.

comments

Book goal complete

2019-10-28T01:08:53Z

Here is this year's book log, only a little over a week late. This year I was reading all the books assigned by teachers in my department at work. I omitted pure instructional textbooks (so no freshman composition manuals or literature anthologies that were designed for classroom use only).

It took me from mid-October to the end of June to read all of those books, about 50 as I recall. And yes I finally f*cking read Heart of Darkness from cover to cover and it was worse than I remembered from having it assigned in high school. Not just boring but also terribly, terribly racist!

Since then I have been catching up on good old science fiction and fantasy reading. The total count of books for the year was 68, woo.

As always, books marked with an asterisk are re-reads. The full list is beneath the cut:

( Read more... )

comments

Tradition, completed

2019-03-28T01:26:02Z

Tradition represents the force of history and culture in our lives-- the social constructions that shape our families, our governments, and our shared identities. The Ikon represents the support and pressure of our various communities, including both the explicit laws and the unspoken rules we follow. Tradition invokes the expectations of others; we do not exist in a vacuum, and our role within groups is never entirely of our own making.

Image below the cut:( Read more... )

comments

Annual book logging

2018-10-19T15:27:21Z

Yesterday was my birthday, so it is once again time to log my annual reading for posterity! I am happy to have reached a total of 50 books this year, only two of which were re-reads (marked with an asterisk). Next year I have a specific goal, which is to read all the non-textbooks used by faculty in one of my departments. (i.e., I'm not reading ten different freshman composition textbooks, thank you very much.) I hope it will be interesting and get me into some areas I don't usually read about (some non-fiction, huzzah!).

The list of books I read this year, behind the cut. As always, I am happy to take questions or comments about my experience with any of these:
( Read more... )

comments

Book log: year 30

2017-10-22T02:32:29Z

Yes, that's right, I made it out of my twenties. I consider this an actual achievement and not at all a foregone conclusion. I don't at all understand people who are freaked out about hitting 30. I actually feel like a semi-adult by now (only 17 years after leaving home for the first time, hah.)

As always, I tally the books I read in this most recent trip around the sun. This year I read a paltry 20 books. So shamed of myself. *sadface* I also look at several of these and think, "Wait, I read this in the last year? Surely it must have been longer ago than that."

For posterity, the list below the cut:
( Read more... )

comments

I will have a book log tomorrow, but

2017-10-19T04:11:47Z

I need someone to give me a second opinion on this.

Sitting in traffic this evening, I spotted a vanity plate that read "RIKARD".

So, that car is clearly the property of a Star Trek slasher, right?

Right?

comments

A nice moment in the middle of national politics

2017-09-24T14:31:49Z

There is really something wrong with our country when you have to go to ESPN for meaningful, respectful conversation about a political issue.

But I am really, really impressed by the participants of this round table. They are listening to one another, explaining how their viewpoints have changed, and not shying away from saying they were wrong in the past. Beyond that, everyone on the panel is an eloquent and passionate speaker, which in and of itself is a refreshing thing when it comes to politics.

So yeah, a certain someone should probably stop trying to piss off football players. They are smart, politically active, and aren't accountable to an electorate. Shockingly enough, this is good for free speech.

comments