missizzy

I went on a comic book store run today, my first in a long time. I think it's only the second time I've even been in DC since Trump put the city under occupation. I went a little earlier in the day, before it got too hot out, had lunch while sitting in Dupont Circle, having gotten a print copy of Mighty Nein: Stories Untold, although I've been listening to the audiobook already. The remains of a huge recently destroyed tree still sit in the park-and there are notes pinned to the trunk of people saying their farewell to the tree in question, which is the best thing I've seen with my own eyes in a while. But I also saw the three members of the National Guard standing around, not really doing anything, but probably making most of the people there feel a little less safe.
Then I came home to do an extra stream and my two final attempts at recording my latest song. Neither of them worked out, and I've now gone with the recording I got last weekend.

Title: Off the Grid Help
Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Characters: Sam, Bucky, the Fizsimmonses, the Richardses, David Lieberman, Mystique
Warning: Technical issues
Disclaimer: They all belong to Marvel
Note: Just an idea for a would-be movie scene I've had in my head ever since Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D concluded.

( They managed to keep the jet cloaked all the way down, but the landing wasn't nearly smooth enough to not sent gusts of air out all across the cottage's front yard. )

When I got home today, literally the first thing I did after taking off my work clothes was go to my Twitch settings to opt out of being used for AI training. Though if I'm reading the disclaimer right, this will prevent Amazon from using my streams to program their non-Twitch LLMs but there's no refusing to let Twitch use them for their own AI purposes. Apparently they made clear today they will ignore all our objections and assume we can't leave them because all the alternatives are doing this too. Unfortunately they're probably right. The only hope is that the bubble bursts hard enough to make this not worth it for them anymore.
And hells, I think I am going to monetize next year. Even if I never become eligible for affiliate, I can at least force them to giving other streamers something for the bits.

Yesterday was the last day for the last person who's worked at the library longer than me. The last one who had, in fact, been there for 9/11 when the library got soaked by the fire fighters fighting the fire (though at least it wasn't close enough to where the plane hit for the fire itself to reach it), and she was heavily credited for managing the temporary relocation to Crystal City. I'm a little scared of trying to manage without her on Monday.
That was the biggest thing to happen to me this week-until the evening, when my mother took another fall, and then we discovered she couldn't get back up even with my aid; she can't get back up without it, but normally if I do a little lifting and she grabs a chair we can manage it. We had to call 911, and when the EMT saw the state of her foot she urged us to go to the hospital until we did. They didn't find much there, and we were home about an hour later, but now we're still not sure what happened, if she had another TIA or not, or even what happens the next time she falls down; she's now talking about being extremely careful not to, but we're not even sure her doing so last night could be helped.

Much of my first trip to San Diego on my own will be marked down to learning. It started with my going to the wrong airport (it was a good thing I'd been so determined to get there three hours early!), and ended with my first plane back being delayed until I would officially miss my connection, just after learning there actually were direct flights between San Diego and Dulles-which at least meant I had an easy switch to the one my sister would have almost certainly put us on had she been making the arrangements. I also understand why congoers don't like staying in Mission Valley. It's not even the most inconvenient place to get to the con from, thanks to the shuttle, but there's nothing there; I had to make my drugstore runs when I was downtown. There were a few more things that tripped me up as well, not all of which were even my fault.
Still, it was ultimately a good experience at the con itself. I got into the Dispatch panel on Friday, but the two panels I think I liked most were the pair I attended on Sunday, the one where Billy West talked about his book and his life and being autistic, which I hadn't known about, and one where the set decorators from three time-traveling shows talked about having to decorate sets from so many time periods. I finally got a copy of Der Katzenprince, and my other purchases included a BG3 mystery box, although most of the merch in it proved pretty generic.
On Saturday I explored the city's Old Town and went to Mission Beach and stood with my lower legs in the waves, although between those two locations I got horribly sunburnt. And I started a Hellgrove fic I managed to finish in the airport this morning, and hopefully I'll get it typed up tomorrow.

The air in the area has now dropped back down to code yellow, though there was a moment or so, when I made a quick run to the Giant a couple of hours ago, I could've sworn I still smelt smoke. I've largely spent the weekend in, doing my streaming and writing my contribution for Top Gale Week, and since it's one that fits today's prompt, I've managed to finish and post it today.

Title: It's in the Air
Fandom: Baldur's Gate 3
Characters: Gale/Lae'zel
Warning: Sex, with inappropriate use of telekinesis
Disclaimer: They both belong to Larian
Note: Written for Top Gale week, for the prompt Pleasure Dom.

( The immortal god-king of the githzerai might have agreed to meet with the githyanki, but in the end, he refused to allow someone who wasn't even a gith to actually sit in on the negotiations. )

This week is not going well. The weekend involved almost nobody watching either of my streams, than Photo refusing to save the trimmed version of Saturday's, which currently sits unuploaded as I try to decide what to do. Yesterday at work I had a meltdown over having to prepare a personal development plan, completely with required career goals, and of course I am not allowed to say my one career goal has always been to survive, and with protections for the disabled now being removed that's certainly going to remain the case now. And now I have access denied to one of the WIPs on my computer I was foolish enough to save to .ODT while I was trying to switch my word processing to Trio Office, and right now I don't even know how widespread that problem is.
It's a work I've been struggling to figure out the plot to, and I'm sorely tempted to just abandon it. Especially since I've getting swayed more towards abandoning my remaining HP WIPs too, or at least the ones it would take me much longer to finish. I might put off final decisions there until after San Diego, though. This isn't feeling like a good week to make them.
I've been able to look at the SDCC schedule, at least. I'm tempted to offer to go to the Doctor Who panel for my sister, who would certainly be reporting on it if she could afford to travel to San Diego right now. But trying to write an article for her Tellyvisions blog there would be a pain in the neck when I currently don't have a laptop.

After days of observing everyone in Europe struggling to cope with the heat dome via posts in multiple discords, and seeing it hit the northern part of the country earlier this week, we're getting it in DC just in time for the 4th of July weekend. It actually didn't hit the triple digits Fahrenheit today, but it will tomorrow. And it was certainly hot enough, when my D&D group had to cancel what would've been our first session playing Daggerheart because the DM needs to deal with his broken air conditioning! We cancel more often than not recently, though we did manage our session zero last week, even amid the noise of two World Cup games going on, and then another pair starting as we were wrapping up!
It won't be as bad, of course, for those of us whose air conditioning is working, and who can stay in it, and we're far down south enough people tend to have it. And since federal workers, at least, have Friday off as our legal holiday, we only have to get through tomorrow, and then Friday morning I'll have to go to the dry cleaners, but I wasn't planning on leaving the house after that anyway. Not when it's probably only MAGA tourists coming into DC this year, and locals often don't go into the district during the fourth anyway.
Though I actually have three times during my life. Once I went with my boyfriend's family, once my parents and I were invited to a James Joyce reading on the day at the house of someone I think was rich and important, and once I went with my sister and her friends. That last one was actually the first, happening when I was 15/16, and the one I've been flashing back the most to in recent days, because I have memories, late that afternoon, of swimming in some body of water in the general area around the Mall and the Monument. It might not have been the Reflecting Pool. Certainly it seems strange that nobody would've stopped me, even though this was over two decades ago, and I remember not being the only one. I also remember the water not being clean, though it certainly wasn't choked with algae either, and I'm pretty sure there was nothing truly harmful.

For the second year in a row, I spent all of yesterday waiting for the news that Trump had unholidayed Juneteenth and was going to force us to come in on it, but again it didn't happen. Maybe if he's forgetting about it his staff is deciding not to remind him. They probably want the day off, too.
So my first weekday afternoon stream happens today, but I also finished this yesterday morning. I've now contemplated making it the penultimate part of this fic, but I kind of feel like I've built up too much towards the World Cup part to not do that. It'll end there, though.

Title: All The Extras
Part: 9: A Little Longer Down Under
(Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8)
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: Harry/Ginny, Ron/Hermione, Molly Weasley
Warning: Nongraphic sex
Disclaimer: Just don't give her any more money, okay?
Note: I'm not even keeping track of all the canon universe's details anymore. Nobody's gonna care anyway, right?

( But it really had been a good thing they'd met that morning, because her mother didn't leave any of them alone for the rest of the day. )

Today in the DC area it is a day for staying at home for more than one reason, including it being terribly hot and muggy out. Though I did have to run down to the Giant for ketchup, rosemary, and drano, since we neglected to order those yesterday. I suppose my iPhone shuffle was only trying to help by playing two holiday songs. Though one of them was "Silent Mind," and any time of the year is a good time to listen to Laura Bailey singing, so....
I think I am accepting that, at some point, I'm going to give in and shell out for YouTube premium. I'd do it faster if it would very much be rewarding bad behavior to do so. The increase in commercials has been bad enough, and now I am getting really, really sick of the health insurance companies' nonstop propaganda trying to claim they're the good guys. Do they really think we haven't all long known better? I suppose I should be glad I haven't seen any pro-ICE commercials on that one. Yet.
As of right now, I am still scheduled to have Friday off. There's plenty of time this week for Trump to cancel that, though. Nonetheless I'm already mentally making plans for the day. Including possibly streaming the original Baldur's Gate game, which I've been thinking about looking at for a while. Which I might also end up doing on July 3rd instead, since I can rely on spend all of that day at home.