caffeine diary

No promises at all, but I'd like to try writing things, maybe? As usual wanting to try to ring in new year doing what I love/want to spend rest of year doing.

Please prompt [pairing,(optionally) setting/genre, kink or trope, (optionally) brief prompt].

E.g., Evil Witch/Princess, fairy tale, non-con

Sister/Brother, steampunk, bondage with unusual materials

Spaceship captain father/daughter, pretending to be married

Theoretically will try to write any gender combo, almost any kinks (anything except sounding and scat), any genre. In actuality who even knows.

Food!

PUMPKIN SPICE EVERYTHING season continues.

My roommate Kimmy discovered awhile ago recipes for no-churn ice cream, using whipping cream & sweetened condensed milk, and I had leftover pumpkin from last week's cookies, so I made pumpkin ice cream.

I had bananas that were just at the falling-out-of-skin stage, so I made two loaves of banana bread. There's still a tiny bit left.

I made not-Key lime pie. There is not even a little bit of that left. Housemate suggested I use pâte sucrée instead of regular pie crust next time. (I'm not a fan of any kind of cookie crumb crust, so I just made a standard crust for the lime pie.) Filling was A++ though.

In the middle of making caramel apple Blondie cheesecake. Blondie smells awesome; it and caramel are cooling. I also made fake Cool Whip, since I totally failed to notice at the store that recipe called for it, and definitely not something I normally have in the house. So that's in the fridge.


Worship: regular weekly email, and was lay reader on Sunday.

+

I am watching Glee, even though I 100% for sure know it starts sucking and *will* break my heart. But meanwhile I'm having feelings.


Also I have a new car. (Old one was totaled in an accident a couple months ago.) She is a white 2012 Nissan Versa, and her name is Vivien.

Finished the Ramona books.

Read the following Ann M. Martin books from the library:
+The Runaway Dolls (with Laura Godwin) -- made me want to reread the Borrowers.
+Coming Apart, Main Street #9. I am enjoying the end of this series less than the beginning. :/
+Everything for a Dog, which I actually liked better than A Dog's Life, although it didn't make me cry.
+Ten Rules for Living with My Sister - so much fun.
+Better to Wish and The Long Way Home, the first two books in the Family Tree series -- I loved these immensely.

Until I can acquire more Ann from the library, rereading Harriet the Spy.

(While reading these books, btw, I am skipping over the animal deaths. Human deaths are fine, but animal deaths I can't.)

And various perfumes, and at work have been listening to music on my mp3 player, a randomish collection of upbeat stuff, to keep me awake.

Plus the usual church stuff. It was my week to set communion.

still reading Wintergirls.

I would really like to have time and energy and motivation to do things again.

I beat Long Live the Queen.

( mild spoilers )

Is it still only Wednesday? And shit I need to go to bed soooon but I am not really tired because I had church this evening and find that energizing.

Only 2 more days of work though.

Reading: Abhorsen, slowly.
Perfuming: Some BPALs.

Politics: a couple of Republican Senators' takes on tax reform.

The sum total of my contributions to the Q+A portions (and thus the formal portions) of SBL/AAR was So Jael the Vampire Slayer is a thing that exists in the world.

Off-record, I managed to say to a speaker I encountered later at a restaurant, "I really appreciated your critique of [scholar's] paper."

And everything else was culture consumed.

ELCA Draft Statement on Gender-Based Violence. It is well-written and I'm pleased with it in various ways, but I'm definitely most personally pleased about the inclusion of non-binary genders (not perfectly and not using the language I would use, but clearly intentionally inclusive.)

books
I read two Jincy Willett novels: Amy Falls Down, which is a sequel to The Writing Class, and Winner of the National Book Award: A Novel of Fame, Honor, and Really Bad Weather, which it turns out I'd read before, although I didn't remember any details.

I liked both of these books, but neither as much as I liked The Writing Class.

Winner of the National Book Award is full of gender-based violence, helpfully tying this post together thematically.

I read Bridget Jones: Mad about the Boy by Helen Fielding. I... well. That is a choice you could make, Helen Fielding!

[spoilers]
( Read more... )

unspoilery: Like the previous two books this is laugh-out-loud funny. Bridget remains adorable and sympathetic. It was enjoyable on all those levels, but not ultimately emotionally satisfying because of reasons under the cut-tag (which, while spoilery, I don't think will spoil one's enjoyment of the book, whose pleasure lies mostly in humor and character voice.)

There are children in the picture, whom I didn't find particularly realistically drawn but who weren't annoying.

It's definitely not porn; it's also definitely more sexually explicit than the previous two books. I once read a review of the film that said something like, "There's a suggestion that Daniel and Bridget indulged in anal sex, something that would never happen in the book." This book doesn't have anal sex, but it would not be out of place.

I miss Shazzer. :(

Content note: there is a fairly substantial plotline involving weight loss/fat/obesity in a way that's different from the previous books and might be more triggery (on the other hand, it's fairly self-contained, and the rest of the book has less yo-yo dieting than the previous books); if it would be helpful to anyone I'd be happy to talk about this in more detail.

There are also other ick things that are common squicks -- there are parts that it would be wise not to read while eating.

It makes me wish that I could write fanfic again because it desperately needs a completely different ending. :(

I started reading cite>Clariel by Garth Nix. This is a major tonal shift from the other books I read this week and I'm finding getting into it slow-going.

games

I played some Puzzle Pirates while on the phone with Elizabeth the other day.

perfume
(Spoilers: I suck at identifying scents.)

I finished the 'weenies:

Pumpkin I
should be: "Pumpkin cream with cardamom, black tea, allspice, and ginger milk."
was: Cake! I probably need to stop acquiring MORE BPAL foodie scents because they all smell indistinguishably of cake to me, but in the meantime, cake!

Pumpkin IV
Should be: "Warm pumpkin with three honeys, oudh, sweet frankincense, and champaca resin."
Was: And yet another cake, with maybe the faaaaintest hint of something darker -- cinnammon? incense? underneath. Yup, definitely need to declare foodie scents from BPAL off-limits. They smell perfectly nice, like a generic sweet baked good, but, e.g., these didn't really smell of pumpkin to me, and I now own enough of them that if I desire this scent I have maybe half a dozen options. Sigh. Really disappointed, because description sounded sooo promising

I got Anne Bonny as a frimp from synecdochic_decants.
Should be: "A blend of Indonesian red patchouli, red sandalwood, and frankincense."
Was: Oooh. After ALL THE CAKE this is kind of a relief. Brine? It does have an aquatic sense to it, but maybe like a seaport, a bit of salt and -- cedar? -- I am definitely getting pirate feels from this. I think I might be sensing the same "trickle of blood" that's in Valentine of Rome.

music

I actually listened to Spotify for awhile this afternoon. All David Haas.