wipweek | Member Posts

Tuesday the 12th we decided to go back to Castlewood Canyon... again. This time we decided to go in at the east entrance to the park, since previously we'd only done trails that start on the west side. There was hope that we could make it to the damn dam this time!

The park looks very different from this side. It's a lot of flat, desert-y grassland, with rocks and scrubby pines. Still very pretty, but very different from the other side of the park, where you get into the forested canyon area fairly immediately.

There's a big stretch of farmland off to the side of the trail, which looks a bit dramatic in comparison to the side of the canyon where the trail is.

Eleven more pictures:

A chickadee in a piñon.

Little Bella Hotdog.

Wasp and some soldier beetles on wildflowers.

Dramatic rocks.

Predatory wasp and her caterpillar victim.

Distant, so not a great picture, but down in one of the fields this deer was boinging along very enthusiastically, haha.

Eventually, the trail takes a turn more toward the canyon itself, and starts to parallel the creek. There was a nice little trail that led down near the water (if you're willing to scramble over some rocks to get across.)

This was good timing, since it let us take a nice break. Bella got to wade a little (if reluctantly) and take a little rest.

I liked this little rock pool, cut off juuuuuust barely from the rest of the creek, unless the levels rise again.

There was a really pretty, peaceful spot to sit on the rocks.

Looking upstream from the spot we were sitting.

In the sand by the creek, another blue butterfly. ("Blue" is the family of butterflies, not just a color descriptor!) I thiiiiiink, looking at pictures of different species, that this one is a "Boisduval's Blue", judging by the spotting pattern, but... they are all very similar to each other.

The butterfly fluttered around for quite a long while... much to Bella's consternation.

She kept spinning around to follow the butterfly. It was very funny to watch. I was delighted to get this picture where you can see her expression and where the butterfly's wings are open, so you can see how blue it is! (Also how small it is.)

The nice spot by the creek was at roughly the halfway point of a loop formed by a pair of trails. However, there's also an additional trail that meets up around the same point and heads toward the dam from that side. It adds about a mile (going there and back) to the total, but we hadn't made it to the dam yet, so that's the way we headed after we had taken our break.

This was a day with lots of pictures, so splitting it into two posts.

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my apartment

celli

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brithistorian

There are a couple of things I saw around the Internet over the last few days that have been really bothering me, but I don't want to go back there and start fights in other people's places, so I'm coming here to rant in my own place. Feel free to reply or not, whether you agree with me or not. I just need to get these things out of my system.

One of my friends on Facebook made a post about how she took a ukulele lessen recently. She was very pleased with her accomplishment — in one hour she had learned 3 chords and learned to play a song. Someone else — I'm assuming one of her friends, apparently a guitar player — made a comment to her post that he thought the three chords she learned would transfer over to the top four strings on the guitar. She correctly told him that they wouldn't — which he may or may not have accepted, and I didn't stick around to find out — but at the same time I was sitting there fuming: Even if they would transfer so the fuck what? The ukulele is a valid music instrument in its own right, not some sort of training wheels to help one later change over to a guitar. Besides diminishing my instrument, I felt like he was diminishing my friend's accomplishment, but I didn't feel like I could say that in a way that wouldn't start a fight, so I'm coming to say it here.
Over on Threads, a group of people who live in Minneapolis were complaining about people who live in the suburbs saying they live in Minneapolis, one of them even going so far as to compare it to stolen valor. I live in one of the first ring suburbs of Minneapolis and when — as I do on occasion — I say I live in Minneapolis, it's not intended as some sort of flex. It all boils down to some variant of "How important is it to me that this person knows the actual physical location of my house?" and "Do I think it's worth the time to explain to this person exactly where the suburb I live in it located?" If I think I'm talking to one of these Minneapolis people who's going to make an issue of it, I'll sometimes say "One of the first-ring suburbs," generally supplemented by the quadrant of the metro area. In general, unless the person is going to come to my actual house (which almost never happens), I feel no need to tell them exactly which suburb I live in and then explain where it is because they don't know.

bookscorpion

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brithistorian

I had a very strange dream last night. It wasn't the content that made it strange — it was a fairly standard thriller/rom-com, featuring Japanese gangsters and a trip to Hawaii. What made it strange (for my dreams at any rate) was that I wasn't in the dream at all. The entire dream was in third person, like I was watching a movie. In fact, this dream started Ralph Macchio and Marisa Tomei!

mistressofmuses

We stopped by a neighborhood park after work one day to let Bella take a short walk.

There were bugs!

Ambush bugs!

A lovely little green praying mantis.

This one was fairly small. Very cute!

And another mantis!

I don't recall ever seeing one quite this color before. I've seen brown ones, and years ago I remember seeing little greyish mantis nymphs down in New Mexico. The ones I've seen in the park here have all been the bright green.

Just three more pictures of the same insects:

More ambush bugs, camping out on a daisy. (And a couple more making more.)

Another picture of the green mantis. I like how you can see how sharp the claws are!

And one more of the neat grey mantis (which my camera did not like focusing on.)

I am always happy to see a fun variety of insects in the neighborhood. :)

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my apartment

autobotscoutriella

The bus routes are working out very well so far! Next week will be the real trial by fire (the university semester's starting Monday, which means traffic goes absolutely haywire for a couple weeks until everybody figures out how to drive/how to drive on campus/where they're going), but it's amazing how much better I feel after just a couple days of getting to read a book on my commute home. I'd really like to make it work, if I can.

Free taco day at work means I didn't have to pack a lunch today, also very nice. I need to figure out something for dinner, though. I forgot to put the chicken in the fridge to thaw, but I have some potatoes and cauliflower I could roast.

Evening projects: I want to do some writing, and get some work done on the Phoenix Wright Kink Meme spreadsheet (I think I might be able to finish Part 34 this weekend if I really get on it). Which set of writing is TBD - I have just enough of broken beaten damned to start poking at it, but I also have the genderbent drawerfic that's been a lot of fun this week. We'll see!

Current Mood: mellow

vriddy

This is mostly silly. A problem with one of the early chapters is that nearly everyone noted it "feels" long even though it's not that much longer than the others. There are a number of issues: the sentences are too long for what should be a quick and fast-paced scene (bandits attack the village!), the descriptions feel quite remote as if the main character was only observing instead of being part of the action. It's vague in too many places instead of zooming on specific, vivid events and characters.

I've been editing this story for a lifetime (untrue) (but apparently still 179h41 over 141 days in the last 18 months, so CLOSE ENOUGH! XD), and because this is an early chapter it's one of those I've reread the most. So to shake things up a bit and try to experience it and its outline differently, I decided to storyboard it. It turned out surprisingly effective! It helped me narrow down on the key moments, and also give more agency to the bandits. Also it was fun.

At first, I drew two sides: one for the bandits, and one for the village, to show the preparations/lack thereof.

Then once the two collide, I started narrowing down on the key battle moments. By the 4th moment, I realised this was already a lot and stopped there. I removed a couple of unnecessary minor plot threads, like worries about a spell failing, and more magic stuff that's interesting but not particularly relevant to the scene or story. And I buffed up the 4 selected moments to make them more vivid.

( You don't need to be good at drawing. Are the bandits bringing torches to burn down the houses, or flower bouquets to secretly woo the villagers? Who knows! 😂 )

I think it was good just to help me think about the scene differently. My usual outlines sure look nothing like this!! I was also hoping to reduce the chapter's word count to make the prose tighter, but it ended up bubbling up because making things more specific required fleshing out background characters and actions. I think I'm okay with it, but I'll have to see how it flows when I do a full reread later, after I'm done and have taken a break from the story.

Current Mood: amused

mistressofmuses

Been a while since a ~pet picture roundup,~ so why not.

Bella wants boba. Bella wants the boba that I have so bad.

Just one more of Bella, because I'm always posting pictures of Bella

Curled up as small as she can.

Berry Mad, mighty hunter!

One more of Berry Mad:

Alex sent me this picture, lol. Toad Butt!

One more of Guava Splash climbing their plant!

(Most of the Guava Splash pictures were in the last post, ha.)

A picture of Greenbean 2, eating her green beans! (Took this one to try and do a good size comparison.)

I had initially said that maybe Greenbean 2 was maybe a male, because the back end didn't look as prominent as the previous female katydid we had last year. However, in the last couple weeks, the ovipositor has gotten a bit more obvious. Greenbean 2 is definitely a female. :)

She has also remained very quiet; she hasn't made a single click. She is very calm in general; not terribly reactive even when we do reach into her cage to give her her beans or change out the climbing branches.

And now there are three katydids! Just a couple days after finding Greenbean 2, Alex found another katydid on the sidewalk outside. This one is clearly a male, but he is very fussy, lol. He seems to think that literally every single sound is another katydid moving in on his territory, so he sets off with a flurry of clicks. (Pouring cereal, clinking dishes, and crinkling packaging are all very exciting sounds for him.) Due to that constant clicking, Alex named him Clickbait.

Then just last night, Alex came in with yet a third katydid. This one is another male, and I named him Three. He's much less aggressive about posturing, haha. He's temporarily in the old spider terrarium until we get another of the mesh cages, but he settled right in to clicking and eating his green beans.

Clickbait and Three are providing excellent clicks in stereo.

More pictures of Greenbean 2, Clickbait, and Three:

One more of Greenbean 2. :)

This one is clickbait!

Clickbait again, with his partially-eaten green beans.

And here's Three. :) (Mediocre picture from after getting him set up last night.)

Jaspurr! With his one little toof that sticks out.

A couple more pictures of Jaspurr playing

Attack!

Slightly more dignified.

And then...

While I was spending time over at my mom and Taylor's house, they also ended up with a brand new pet.

Their neighbors rescued a garter snake from the window well of their church and brought it home. The neighbor said she thinks this might be a female, though it's hard to tell.

We had a garter snake for about twelve years or so, but he died several years back, and they still had the terrarium setup from before... Mom went back and forth on it for a while, but ultimately decided that she would like to have a snake again.

She's so cute!

More of the snake (as yet unnamed, as far as I know):

Exploring!

She does like the water.

So cute.

Still exploring!

Jaspurr finds her very interesting to watch, ha.

So there's the critter collection! :)

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my apartment

vriddy

I knew editing at that pace wouldn't be sustainable, and was firmly in "make the most of it while it lasts" mode but man, I've been struggling with the post-high crash. I know, I know, that "being at your 100%" looks very different on different days, and it felt like I was running at like 140% for a while on top of that but damn. The difference is crushing, and I get frustrated enough to tear up. I'm not sure if it's because the first half of the year was so bumpy and it left me more brittle, or because it's so rare that I get a writing high from editing rather than drafting but gaaah. I just remember my first NaNo, the only one I won back in 2006, and how creativity seemed to just feed off itself... like I was writing so much, all of the time, that when a couple of strange little events happened I ended up writing a couple of short stories about them too, on top of my 1.6k words a day. Glorious times. And during the lockdowns I was writing during my lunch breaks, too. Even if not quite at that level of intensity, I'd love to catch that spirit again, and on days when I can have several intense, focused writing sessions, it feels like getting closer. I probably need better systems. Mornings are fine, I have a good routine in place and that time is mostly under my control, but later in the day I struggle and flail to even catch 15 minutes of focused writing time.

I'm not depressed or anything, and I'm still editing for 15-30 minutes a day, sometimes even one hour! Progress is progress! But it still feels like I slammed into a wall I now have to slowly climb with my bare hands and nails, when I was the Road Runner going Meep Meep! and grinning wildly for a while here. And the wall is wet and slimy and it smells weird too XD

Current Mood: frustrated

vriddy

Community Thursday challenge: every Thursday, try to make an effort to engage with a community on Dreamwidth, whether that's posting, commenting, promoting, etc.

Over the last week...

Commented in finalfantasy, bbtp_challenge.

Signal boosts:

Just wanted to bring up pinchhits again as it's really great when current Pinch Hits are also shared there. I follow a bunch of exchange comms, but there are others I could also write for occasionally. Meanwhile, you can find recent PHs there for a couple of exchanges like raremaleslashex and justmarried!

mistressofmuses

This week, a "Celestial Beast" sticker (a knot of winged snakes) by Abi Stevens Art.

This was a good but busy week. I definitely felt like I fell behind on some things. Spending time with Taylor was good (and the snake-themed sticker wound up being appropriate.) Tuesday's hike was also wonderful, if tiring. Lots of family this week, between hanging out with Taylor and mom for a couple days, then breakfast with my dad mid-week. (Nice to see him again so soon.) Work felt like A Lot, being the final week of the summer season. I got a decent amount of reading in. And just under the wire for the week, a tiny bit of writing. There was a frustrating bout of exhaustion mid-week that left me doing little except sleeping, but I hope that's passed for now.

Goals for the week:

I did finish reading Uprooted
I worked on my writing intro
I got together with Taylor from Sunday night to Tuesday morning
We got some outdoor time with a hike
I went to breakfast with my dad
I did not update my reading page
I did not make my phone calls
I read Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear, which means I have finished all of the Wayward Children novellas that are currently out! (My first goal for this year was 25 books. My second goal when I decided to push beyond that was to keep the Wayward Children books as ever third or so entry on my TBR, but to make it through all of them before the end of the year. So hooray for hitting the second goal with much time to spare!)
I did catch up on Dreamwidth
I started reading Little Eve

Tracked habits:

Work - 5/7
Household Maintenance - 6/7
Physical Activity - 2/7
Wrote 500/1000+ Words - 1/7 - over 1000 words
Wrote on 2nd+ Draft - 0/7
Meta Work - 5/7
Personal Writing - 3/7
Other Creative Things - 1/7
Reading - 7/7 - I finished reading Uprooted, read Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear, and started Little Eve. I read along with Dracula Daily/Re: Dracula, plus a bit of my ebook side read. Taylor and I read a good chunk of Witch King. Alex and I read some of Duma Key.
Attention to Media - 7/7 - Sunday and Monday I listened to a Re: Dracula episode, plus listened to music; Tuesday had something in the background; Wednesday watched Blackwater Lane in the background, which we'd seen before and was meh; Thursday watched a paranormal stream; Friday we watched an episode of Alone, and then the first two episodes of Alien: Earth (which I wish I had been a bit more focused on), and then I caught up on Re: Dracula episodes; Saturday was something in the background again.
Video Games - 3/7 - I played more Final Fantasy XIV with Taylor; on Sunday we did the Tower of Zot dungeon, and got up through visiting Garlemald; Monday we finished the time in Garlemald, dealt with Zenos' current... all that, and then fought Zodiark for our big "nice job breaking it, hero" moment; Tuesday we played through the whole "bunnies on the moon" bits, finishing up part one of Endwalker.
Social Interaction - 7/7

Total words written: 1347 on my writing intro and some WIP summaries

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Location: my apartment

bookscorpion

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mistressofmuses

Continuing the trend of naming amphibians after their transport containers, the tiny chorus froglet has been named "Guava Splash Electrolyte" (Guava Splash was the flavor of knock-off gatorade we had a bottle from, and Electrolyte just seems cute for such a small creature.)

The other amphibians have included "Broccoli Cheddar Bomb," the late fire-bellied toad, who was given to me in a soup container, and of course "Summer 'Berry Mad' Refresher" who came home in a Starbucks Summer Berry Refresher cup (but looked real mad about it.)

Mostly I just keep calling him Tiny Frog, though.

("He" is arbitrary - the sexes look pretty much identical until males develop a vocal sac to start calling.)

Transferred to a better habitat than a knock-off gatorade bottle.

Exploring.

I had to pretty immediately adjust the setup and move the pond, since he promptly wedged himself between the pond and the side of the terrarium. It's now a bit farther from the edge. His favorite spot is still huddling under the lip of the pond in the upper left corner, though.

A very cute picture Alex took last week, climbing the plant.

He's been eating fruit flies dusted with a vitamin powder. They're definitely the right size for such a tiny little frog, but man are they a pain to deal with! It was a relief when he started eating them, though.

He's also gotten a few very small caterpillars from my mom's garden. He is much more enthusiastic about those than the fruit flies! (My mom doesn't use any sorts of pesticides, so I feel safe feeding things from her garden. Things from around the apartment or anything, not so much.)

I am hoping he will thrive, and am relieved that he's eating reliably. I'll be glad if I can get him big enough to do crickets instead of fruit flies, ha.

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my apartment
Current Music: Gravity - Maaya Sakamoto (from Wolf's Rain)

autobotscoutriella

The local bus company changed up their schedule, so I am tentatively back on the bus for a couple weeks and hoping it'll work long-term! It became a problem a couple semesters ago because it just wasn't reliable enough; I had to allow a full hour and a half one-way for a three-mile trip, and the bus still sometimes showed up so early I'd miss it (and there wasn't another one for almost an hour). They're now running several times an hour during peak commute times, so I'm really hoping I can make it work. I miss being able to relax with a book during my commute and generally start the day a little slower.

On the other hand, I do still have to get up a little earlier than I have been to catch it, and boy, that adjustment period is going to suck. It's doable (it's not a 5:45 AM alarm anymore), but I am the opposite of a morning person.

Current Mood: sleepy

vriddy

Bidding on the

sunflower_auction benefitting Ukraine started. It will end on September 15th.

This year, I'm offering written works for Boku no Hero Academia, Wind Breaker and Original Work. You can have a look at my offer post for more information as well as details on how to bid.

mistressofmuses

Still catching up on posts!

A couple of weeks ago ~~jesus how has it been a couple of weeks~~ we decided to try another new-to-us park. This one borders Lair o' the Bear, but is actually a Denver park, rather than a county park. (Denver has a few mountain parks that they own and maintain, even though the mountains are well outside the city.) It's a bit farther up the road, but we drove past it on our detour the day we were coming back from Centennial Cone.

Taking a look at the info page on it, it looked like there was a decent 3-4 mile total out-and-back trail up to a spot called "Panorama Point," so hopefully there'd be a nice view. So we headed up!

...And it was "up." The trail is moderate difficulty, but it does pretty immediately head up, haha.

I've been disappointed this year that we really haven't seen any snakes. We finally saw one on this hike!

A really nice big, healthy looking garter snake! So cute.

The whole area was very pretty, a nice forest trail. The trail mostly paralleled a narrow little creek.

I was very taken by all the moss around the creek.

Fourteen more pictures:

Bella! I thought she looked cute next to the flowers.

The narrow creek. It was wider at some points, narrower or even entirely dry at others.

Detour around some big rocks.

Beebalm!

A little pond skater in a calm part of the creek.

Another shot of the snake. :) With his head in the sunbeam, haha. The snake was quite long, probably 18 inches or so? I was happy to see one that's clearly doing so well!

We also saw a bunch of woodpeckers! A hairy woodpecker.

A second one. There were at least three we saw at the same time.

A dramatic hollow stump. Very picturesque.

Alex was having some neck issues, and Bella was getting a bit warm, so we took a break for a couple minutes.

Bella set herself up on the trail. Toll road: must pet to pass. (Kidding. She was very good about coming off the trail when someone did come pass us. Even a couple of dogs.)

Not a great picture, but laying down on one of the branches, a black squirrel! (You can see his little ear against the tree trunk.) We rarely get black squirrels here (I've seen them elsewhere, but not much here! We get red squirrels, and sometimes grey ones, but black ones are a rarity.)

I liked all the little baby trees growing in this meadow.

A little bird! I think it's a junco, which are a winter-only bird down in the city, but sometimes stick around year-round at higher elevations.

We also saw so many of these little chipmunks. So cute!

Bella was still a little warm (it really wasn't too terribly hot, but it was humid, and it was all uphill). Wanting to let her cool down, we cut through one of the meadows along the trail to get back to the creek, which we could hear, but not see.

Where we found my favorite of the day...

*_* Tiny chorus frog froglet.

And well... I did have an unused habitat, from before we moved Berry Mad into the bigger one... And boreal chorus frogs are one of the native species it is legal to keep...

It's so small.

After this we turned around and headed back, since we were carrying precious (tiny) cargo.

We'll have to go back another day to see if we can make it all the way up to the promised "panorama point."

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my apartment

vriddy

Meme enjoyers who are fic writers!

maevedarcy's got you covered with a "Questionnaire: 15 Questions for Fanfic Writers" in case you're looking for what to do write in a future post, for Fandom 50 or unrelated!

It's fun to read people's answers :)

mistressofmuses

The whole dog show up in Greeley, where Bella ran a FastCAT on Thursday, ran from Thursday through the weekend.

Since she'd had a chance to rest for a couple of days, Alex decided to take her back today.

She did it!

Her first time was really good. Her second one wasn't great, but Alex said she was slowing down at the end of it. It was a hot day again, so not terribly surprising. He said they had some kiddie pools set up on the "go" line for the dogs to cool off in, but even so.

She was certainly completely full of energy again by the time I got home from work, lol.

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: my apartment