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So, there are things and then there are Things. The big thing is that over the past few years I've been having intermittent pain in my right leg and hip. It started when I was rounding a corner at the Oakland Marathon 5K back in 2023. The only way I can describe it is that I stepped wrong; suddenly my hip got real twitchy and I was thinking, "Well fuck, what is this?"

Cue me not really thinking about it that much until I started having moment's where the muscles in my right leg would go slack for no good reason. i could still move my leg and what not but it just felt like the muscles went dead and then would come back online with everything feeling super tired and the like. But I kept on with doing what I was doing: walking, biking. Also sitting because I work from home. I sit a lot. Probably an unhealthy amount.

Anyway, fast forward to last year: my legs hadn't been great which meant I hadn't really been training like I usually do. On a good day, I can knock out 3 miles (my house to downtown Oakland and back) and not even think about it but it was becoming harder to do. I walked the Oakland Marathon 5K, San Francisco Marathon 5K and Berkeley Half 5K. The Berkley Half was where I finally realized that something might really not be okay. The last part of the course takes us into the campus, past Sather Gate and then an incline up towards the Campanile. I absolutely detest that section but I know it's there and normally I bitch in my head about it but I do it. Last year I had to stop. Really stop. My hip was barking and so was my leg. Not good.

I finished but I was also meeting a friend who was doing the 10K so I had to walk down from the Crescent to Civic Center Park where all the festivities were. Not a problem but I could feel my leg twitching and my brain was trying to suss out what I was feeling. While waiting for my friend, i had a chance to talk to one of the PT folks who was there doing post race assessments (mostly to drum up business), but she did give me some good advice - i.e. it might be this thing but go talk to your primary doctor, which I did; she thought it might be sciatica. I had some preliminary imaging done; right hip, knee and my lumbar spine. And got a referral to PT at Berkeley Community PT.

So, the upshot is this: my lumbar spine is compressed like whoa and things aren't real happy which translates to the issues with my hip and leg. I have some degenerative things happening but that's mostly due to age. I've been in PT for just over a month which means I have homework.I also now have a referral to orthopedics at UCSF. They'll probably do more imaging and make a recommendation for next steps.

Right now, as much as all of this is a pain in the ass, I am thankful I have full insurance to cover it. Shirley is also feeling the aches and pains of her job but trying to get her to go get some body work done beyond seeing our chiropractor is a lot. I make vague noises like, "Hey, you know, the acupuncturist has some time."

The biggest thing in all of this is having to acknowledge that I am getting older (we both turned 60 last year) and my body is changing into a newer configuration. None of what is happening is insurmountable but how I engage with sport and exercise are changing. Right now, I'm not doing a lot beyond PT because I don't want to aggravate anything. My Garmin sits there and accuses me of not getting enough steps in.Lol. I do have new trekking poles and I use those for walking for the extra support but I also have a touch of plantar fasciatis right now so I'm not doing a lot of that.

It rains, it pours. I remain salty about it.

bookscorpion

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Current Mood: calm

mekare

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mekare

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pattrose

If you only had one year left of life, what would you do?

I would sleep less and spend time with my family and friends. And I would write like a crazy person. No, I would write like a normal person. I would write 5 letters to each of my kids and grandkids. Something that will make them smile. In a year you could do a lot. This is sure a morbid question.

pattrose

12. Do you have any siblings?

Yes I have six brothers and one sister. Big Catholic family. Here is a list.

Joseph 80
Anthony 78
Daniel 76
Patt 74
Christopher 72
Mary 70
Paul 65. Twin 1
Peter 65 Twin 2

How about all of you?

hannah

In looking through the stuff on my floor today, in trying to figure out what I don't particularly want anymore, I made one of the bigger decisions in that vein in a while: I tossed out old novel drafts.

I don't need them anymore, and while I want them, I don't want them enough to keep them around. I've got the full drafts on my hard drive. I figured I didn't need the notes I took anymore, so the pages they're on might as well get set aside for recycling. It's a decision I've wanted to make I haven't bothered to make until today. Speaking of, there's four bags of books set aside for another Strand run - mostly from high-end salvaging through the neighborhood, a couple I bought ages ago that I have to say goodbye to. If I'd wanted to give them to someone, I'd have done so by now; keeping them is more a reminder of the idea of giving them to someone, the idea of that someone, than any specific plans I haven't acted on yet. It's something I need to accept over and over again, and each time it's the same stages and steps of the process of doing so. Investing in another external hard drive so I can divest myself of DVD box sets is aspirational in comparison.

I've got a box set aside for papers. If it fits in there, I can keep them. That's the goal. The best way to achieve that goal is to find the papers I've got that could conceivably be put in there. First, though, the Strand run tomorrow, and a library run for some of the DVD box sets to find their way to another good home.

Current Mood: indescribable
Current Music: The Easy Way - Dar Williams

kitewithfish

What I’ve Read
The Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein – I think I get why people love this book so much. Rowan the steerswoman feels like a very centered and clear kind of person. Her calling has a purity to it – to find and share knowledge – and that seems like the kind of philosophical and moral outlook that could be catnip to the right reader. And here I am! Just, the final chapters of this book are just a conversation where she tells someone the truth, and it changes the world. Moral dilemmas, sneakiness, and a rising suspicion that we are living not in a fantasy world, but a science fiction one where some people are keeping secrets.
Her books are a bit hard to get a hold of but you can buy them via the links on her website, here https://www.rosemarykirstein.com/

Fanfic round up - Cover of Knight by ErinPtah is just part of an ongoing story of the Disney/Marvel Moon Knight tv show spinning off to cover how our superhero community would handle someone who has multiple personalities. This is part of a long and ongoing series of fics that cover Marc Spector figuring himself and his alters out. It's fun and charming and I think I will read more.

What I’m Reading Now
City by Clifford Simak – This is a book that came up in last year’s Arisia’s discussion about old classics. The short stories in this ‘fixup’ novel are linked together by interstitial reflections from an academic dog, who is reflecting on the stories as the surviving literature of a post-human earth where dogs are served by self-building robots, but no one can confirm that humans ever existed except as a literary trope. The stories are weirdly prophetic and some are didactic, but, they are making interesting points about the knock-on effects of future technology in small bites, which charmed me. The first story posits a world where the trend towards suburban living, already changing cities in Simak's lifetime, pushed to the point where everyone in the US lives on 20 acre private wilderness retreats and commutes to work by private plane.
(I have a habit of starting a book on vacation, loving it, and then immediately forgetting I started it when I get home. Trying to break that cycle.)

Latchkey by goldkirk – Tim Drake is semi adopted by the Bats pre-death of Jason Todd, and it’s episodic and charming and indulgent.

What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfish – The library had this, and so far, I am enjoying the oddness of the thing greatly. It is however a little too spooky for bedtime reading. It was on my To Read list for last week, tho, so we are trending in the correct direction.

What I’ll Read Next
Monks Hood – Ellis Peters
Master of Poisons – Andrea Hairston
Frankenstein
The Brightness Between Us -Eliot Screfer
The Husky and His White Cat Shizun – Rou Bao Bu Chi Rou (I picked this up after seeing that it was beloved by a fic author whose work I recently enjoyed but I have no idea what I am looking at here)
The Craft of Lace Knitting by Barbara Walker
Silver in the Wood and Drowned Country by Emily Tesh
Viriconium by John M Harrison

I also bought some books!
The Incandescent by Emily Tesh
Apparently Sir Cameron Needs to Die by Greer Stothers (who I follow on Tumblr)

The Glass Pearls
To Ride a Rising Storm
Elisha Barber

Necromancy book club picked The Scholomance Series to read - Naomi Novik

Other things!
I have decided to try Sock Madness year 20 with a friend. It's a speed knitting competition - you get free patterns for socks, and you must knit two socks according to spec. It's a good balance of technical challenge and friendly competition - I'm nowhere fast enough to get in the running for the actual prize, but merely participating gets you access to all the patterns for free after the actual race is over. It's been a good stretch of my skills in the past - I had viewed it as leveling up! And maybe I don't actually use the socks that much, but I can give them out to people who are sock worthy.
https://www.ravelry.com/groups/sock-madness-forever

I watched If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, which is a anxiety-inducing character study of a woman who is figuring out, under fairly harrowing conditions, that she is really fucking things up in her life. It's like watching a coyote decide to chew its leg off to get out of a trap, only the trap is a child with complex medical needs and also your own personality flaws. Really good - Rose Byrne deserves the Oscar but I know she won't get it.

mrs_sweetpeach

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Current Mood: nauseated
Current Location: My home office
Crossposts: https://mrs-sweetpeach.insanejournal.com/804377.html

trillingstar

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thisbluespirit

Still catching up on crossposting some

rainbowfic:

Name: Sweet Interlude
Story: Starfall
Colors: Vert #11 (Marriage)
Supplies and Styles: Silhouette
Word Count: 2343
Rating: PG
Warnings: None?
Notes: Portcallan, 1313; Leion Valerno/Viyony Eseray. (A rather slight linking piece).
Summary: Leion and Viyony attend a wedding.

severina

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verushka70

For a while, my fic Ground Rules was the only English language fic on AO3 for Heat, Michael Mann's excellent 1995 action film about the relationship between a career heister, Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro), and the LAPD detective pursuing him, Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino). Love that movie - it's got a great ensemble cast, it moves so you never notice the run time (kind of like Scorsese's films), and the pairing is to die for.

At the time I wrote that fic, I was shocked to find that there was no other fic for Neil/Vincent - they had so much obvious heat and chemistry together! Over the years, it's gotten many comments from like-minded people who saw what I saw and came looking for Heat slash fic. Those comments always delighted me.

But last night, someone left a comment on that fic, saying that someone else recced my fic in their comment to the "absolutely incredible "chris fleming explains heat" YouTube video (and it is incredible, and hilarious!).

After I watched the vid (and had to keep rewinding bits where I'd laughed too loud to hear what he said), I managed to find the comment on the vid that recced my fic. Both comments kinda made my day, ngl!

Here's a screen shot of the fic rec comment on the video.

autobotscoutriella

We had lovely warm (unseasonable) weather yesterday, and now it's back down to freezing temperatures again. :( I know it's supposed to be cold here this time of year, but that brief glimpse of spring was so nice. I am not built for winters. Bring back the nice warm weather and the birds and the green!

At least the sun is shining, and we're out of the darkest weeks of the year. My goal for tonight is to do the dishes, and cook something. Could be scones, could be chicken, whatever. I've got both. But something needs to go in my oven.

Current Mood: cold

pattrose

11. Would you consider yourself superstitious?

Sometimes. I believe in karma, fate and kismet. If you do something crappy, you might as well prepare yourself for fate stepping in. It will come back to you. It’s just a little warning. 😁
And I also believe that if you try out for a better job, you can’t mention to anyone. If you do you just jinxed yourself. So, as you can tell I am superstitious.

How about you?

pattrose

When you were younger, what did you want to be when you grew up and why?

I wanted to work for the Peace Corps. That’s all I could think about in High School. I didn’t realize it was like camping, which I don’t do. I realized I don’t like roughing it in the wild. Hubby and I got married very young and started our family. So, instead of PC, I got a job at obgyn office and loved it. I was disappointed in myself for a few years. But I learned to live with my decision. 😁

Every year hubby would ask me if I wanted to go camping. I gave him a look that said ‘I’ll kill you first’. The look always made him laugh. I would even laugh afterwards. When we were in our 50s, we rented a very nice travel trailer. It was okay but still don’t want to camp.

mific

So many WIPs - I never used to read the damn things, but HR has corrupted me! The advantage of having several WIPs on the go is that something updates every day, often more than one. The main downside is remembering which plot or AU storyline the WIP is about. I often reread the last chapter, esp. if it's a few days since the fic updated.

I know where to draw the line by magneticwave (wrote the great AU where Shane's a surgeon). It's a new WIP (10,000 word 1st chapter) and is really excellent, with a mature 26 y.o. Shane with a trick knee who's in the Metros with 22 y.o. hotshot Ilya. Lots of hockey detail, great writing & characterisations, a closeted oblivious Shane, and Ilya on the prowl.

My two other main fave WIPs are Basingstoke's Lovers, or English is a damn funny language which continues to be brilliant, and Glittercity's Never Been Bitten, the vampire AU with interesting power dynamics (rich obsessive club owner vampire Shane who's nervous of the ingenuity and aggression of humans and Ilya, the chaotic bartender who's trying to seduce him.)

I've also been charging through all CorvidCordelia's works.

I read Half Agony, Half Hope a while back - it's a longfic based on the premise that Ilya gets traded to Montreal about 3 years after Shane breaks it off after the tuna melts hookup, so they're now on the same team. A great mix of angst, drama, lust, and of course, the requisite happy ending!

Careful Fear and Dead Devotion is another longfic, a complete AU in which Shane and Ilya are young actors looking for a break who are cast as Finn and Dane in the TV series "Ember and Ice". It uses the Quinn audio-erotic story as the plot of the drama they're starring in, so if the mention of Ember and Ice as a "fandom" put you off, don't be - no knowledge is needed of E&I and the inherent ludicrousness of that work doesn't intrude. Scott and Kip are the showrunners! It's kind of analogous to Hudson and Connor in HR, without being in any way RPF. It's a great story, and I loved it.

And Walking Through Windows a fork in the road AU where Ilya fucks up the Tampa All Stars reconciliation (after Shane accepts he's gay), and they then only see each other on the ice when their teams play, for ten years. Which is inherently very sad, but the story starts then, when they're both recently retired and Ilya learns that Shane's about to marry a man. You can imagine what happens, and I was unsure if I'd like it as I dislike partner betrayal, but CorvidCordelia is a bloody good writer and absolutely sold it to me, with a wonderful story that I couldn't put down (gave myself eyestrain again, damn it!)

verushka70

I posted this pic (or a gif just like it) on Tumblr, but thought I'd also post it here. And between then and now, I think I figured something out about myself, which should've been obvious (duh).* Minor spoilers for Heated Rivalry S1E03!

Here's Scott Hunter's thousand yard stare of despair, after he's lost Kip:

[Image]

I love the angst of this character and the Scott/Kip relationship (and the way that François Arnaud plays Scott). There's no right/wrong/good/bad person, no hero/villain here. They both do what is right for them as individuals - it just doesn't jive together within their relationship because they are at such different stages of 'out'.

That conflict between their different stages - and Scott's understandable terror at being outed - drives the angst between them. And it is simply delicious like the finest wine. ( *the roots of my love of angst )

autobotscoutriella

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Current Mood: chipper

verushka70

Posted this on Tumblr but posting here because no one has answered. Here's hoping the DW crowd might have ideas. I posted:

Sooo... The murder banter between Scott and Kip was kind of perplexing (I personally found it funny, but that's because - like Scott - I read a lot of murder books, so I know Scott was factually correct about everything he said)

I can't decide if
( my three guesses on what that was about, one a bit of a joke )
Genuinely curious about this, though. The murder banter is not in the Game Changer novel, so... what was the motivation for that?

Wish I could ask Jacob Tierney directly, somehow. If anyone has, in any interview(s), I'd love links if you got 'em!

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2026 not quite 365 days questions meme febr.

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Wednesday Reading Meme for Feb 11 2026

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Starfall Stories 52

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A comment on a YT vid recced my Heat (1995) slashfic (Fannish Fifty #15)

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2026 Not quite 365 questions meme February.

2026 60 question meme.

Some gripping HR fics I've read lately, and WIP madness

Scott Hunter's thousand yard stare of despair (Fannish Fifty #14)

Plausible Deniability

the serial/spree killer "banter" in Heated Rivalry S1E03 (Fannish Fifty #13)

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