butterflydreaming

I think some actual dill has finally germinated while I wasn't looking; the seedlings are very hard to tell apart from poppies during the early stage! Two of the over-wintered California poppies are now in golden bloom, and there is a bud just coming out on the miniature rose, which has died back entirely to a vigorous new shoot -- apparently a rose's way of reinvigorating itself, as it has done this more than once before.

I pulled out the dying towel-tomato, which actually seemed to have quite a robust stem after all -- however, it is too late now! One of the second batch is not looking too healthy either, and the chillies are almost all still sitting there with just their single pair of seed-leaves, with only a couple showing signs of putting out a tiny pair of true leaves. But this does tend to happen...

Made some hot-cross buns for Easter, but unfortunately, due to the extreme rush of getting them through the oven after 36 hours' "slow sourdough fermentation", I forgot to put the crosses on this year! At least that means it is reasonable to freeze them and continue eating them after Easter :-P

And I have begun (and in fact now almost finished; I was hoping I might get through it in a single day, but that was several days ago and clearly over-optimistic!) a 'Three Musketeers' fan-fiction. ( A possibly inevitable admission )

igenlode

I happened to notice another odd inconsistency between the final pages of the English and French versions of "The Three Musketeers". The French version states that à la suite d'un voyage qu'il fit en Touraine, [Athos] quitta aussi la service sous prétexte qu'il venait de recueillir un petit héritage en Rousillon, but my English translation renders this as "after a journey to Rousillon, [Athos] also left the service, under pretext of having succeeded to a small patrimony in the Blaisois". Which is basically the opposite -- and Rousillon is situated nowhere near the Touraine region, so where was Athos going at the time?

( Contradictory texts )

I had always assumed the 'pretext' was the claim of an inheritance and that he was actually returning to take up his true identity in his ancestral estates, but from what is said in "Twenty Years After" (je lui ai substitué la terre de Bragelonne, que je tiens d’héritage, laquelle lui donne le titre de vicomte et dix mille livres de rente), Athos genuinely did inherit this land -- presumably at this date -- and the title belonging to it. Even though he still uses his former title of La Fère, he apparently never returned there.

But while looking (in vain) for clarification on this point I happened to stumble across somebody else's fanfiction page. This turned out to be about a convoluted and ambitious -- although it failed to enthuse me -- epic that I had already seen on AO3, but I was tickled to discover that the authors shared my views on Oliver Reed (although not on Van Heflin, whom I remember finding a conscious disappointment). And not only that, but had actually *heard* of (and loved) the Russian version :-)

( Read more... )

kalloway

I finished Transient Gundam (who is quite beautiful, but ugh, I did not do well with the clear-blue plastic; it scarred in weird unexpected ways) and want help picking my next build.

...while I also go through All My Paint because I might get to an actual hobby store next weekend where I can theoretically buy more paint/replace any bad paint. It's so much easier to buy paint in person than try to figure out color swatches on a monitor. ^^;;

I still have some other stuff to sort through, and I think a few other repair projects lingering, I am slowly but surely getting the desk and surrounding area sorted out for the first time in far too many years.

To have clean desks...

Poll #32996 Quick Gunpla Poll

This poll is closed.
This poll is anonymous.
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 11

Oh no, I bought too much gunpla! Which kit should I build next?

View Answers

HG Destiny Gundam* (Gundam SEED Destiny)
0 (0.0%)

SDW Heroes Qiongqi Strike Freedom Gundam (SD)
0 (0.0%)

HG Sandrock (Gundam Wing, HGAC)
6 (54.5%)

HG McGillis's Schwalbe Graze (Iron-Blooded Orphans)
3 (27.3%)

HG Gundam Flauros (Ryusei-Go, IBO)
1 (9.1%)

HG ZAKU I (UC)
1 (9.1%)

HG G-Bouncer (AGE)
0 (0.0%)

MG ZAKU II F2** (UC)
0 (0.0%)

HG Denial Gundam (Build Fighters Try)
0 (0.0%)

HG GN Archer (Gundam 00)
3 (27.3%)

*non-custom
**this may be partly built or questionable; I have a couple of UC MGs I got very cheap because someone had started and not finished at least one of them
***I forgot to note that GN Archer is also not the custom-colors I have planned for one to make it into Abulhool

I am totally going to end up getting an airbrush if it ever warms up and stays warmed up.

igenlode

One of my original three towel-tomatoes appears to be rotting through from the base upwards; a week or so ago I found that it had flopped, but since the foliage was fine I thought this might be physical damage from where the wind or something else (like me) had knocked it flat. So I earthed it back up in the hopes that it would develop stablising roots sideways from the stem, or else would heal the damage. But it now seems to have dwindled again at the new ground level. Earthed it up further, since the foliage still looks bushy and healthy, but I don't hold out any great hopes for it. It is a pity, since this was one of the most advanced of the tomato seedlings -- but this is why we have spares. After all, I only need six of my eight to survive.

Potted up my five limanthes, which have been rather neglected, between three pots -- which is far too many of those, of course.

We have some rather reluctant germination from my resowing of rocket. No sign of any life in the white California poppy seed, although ironically, California poppies are germinating everywhere else! The original tray now has well-developed buds on it and should be flowering soon. The chives also have flower buds on... as does the sage, probably as a sign that it is dying :-p

kalloway

(three days of unposted updates again, whoops)

Have had a lot of mail coming in. ^^;; A couple of things were KS/pre-orders that just happened to roll in at the same time as 'must buy all the model kits', but now my living room looks like shipping and receiving. ^^;;

(I am watching a lot of small stores get royally fucked by the tariffs, especially nerd stores and other hobby-related ventures. Just, this sucks not only as a customer but just a person who is genuinely glad that being a nerd selling stuff to other nerds exists as a career choice and would like that to continue.)

Maybe over the weekend I can catch up on some hobby posts? At the rate the weather is going (wtf is the weather doing?), cemetery zine is definitely going to be a #0 with previous years ramblings and photos. On the one hand, alas, but on the other this is fine and maybe a good starting point.

Gundam G Generation Eternal finally released! I smashed through what I could and will attempt to figure out how to pace myself shortly. There are some pretty firm resource walls and no real reason to blast through things other than being ready for the upcoming Astray event.

( writing meme )

igenlode

Source dump of quotes relating to Stiles musical (in case Wikipedia simply wipes article)
( Do not read (unless you want to be bored out of your mind!) )

igenlode

I was amused (and full of admiration) to find this; a fully-rhymed -- and apparently sung by the translator in person -- English translation of the 'Soviet Musketeers theme song'.

Watch on YouTube

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Kljt9opsd7s&si=x_r5se2d7tROCcHc

It's time, my fine young gentlemen
in cloaks of royal blue,
To relish fights and binges, and night-time rendezvous!
Don't stay your blade to tempt your fate --
my friends, let's take our hats off
And thank our lucky stars: merci beaucoup!

It's not literally accurate. There is at least one other version in circulation that goes, for example, "Be happy, happy, happy -- sing glory to the Lord/With a woman of rare beauty and a skilful lucky sword. And swaying, swaying, swaying with the feathers on the hat/ We'll whisper to Good Fortune: 'A nice chit-chat!'" Which is a much closer translation -- at least up until you get to the forced final words for the rhymes -- but not nearly so convincing as a rendition of the actual spirit of the song.

And also, the sung performance is really pretty good :-)

Edit: YouTube has just linked me to a French version :-D
https://youtu.be/vPFDmxyrq-8?si=zgB-u4gBBZInwSuc
I love the translation of "рыцарь" as "preux", as in the nickname of Roland le preux...

Paris veut de l'argent, mais c'est la vie!
Surtout, il veut des preux de fière allure.
Mais qu'est-ce qu'un preux sans une belle amie?
Et qu'est-ce qu'un preux sans la vie d'aventure?

Edit 2: YouTube also decided I might be interested in a completely unrelated song by the group Король и Шут ('The King and the Jester'), and actually, as it turned out, I was ;-)
https://youtu.be/LVJ6KkECgo8?si=4_obCqPo9qGEZGBU
And the lyrics are so very much more straightforward on this one, i.e. less allusive and poetical, that I can basically back-translate what I'm hearing just by looking at the English version!
https://lyricstranslate.com/ru/pesnya-mushketerov-musketeers-song.html

- А где Гасконец?
- Вот он я!

igenlode

Finally getting round to reviewing this one, which has been sitting on my bedside table waiting to be reviewed 'properly' since I finished it in June last year! I have to say I'm not sure what the significance of the title "A Fire of Driftwood" is, since it doesn't appear to refer to any of the stories in the collection -- presumably it is intended to evoke the idea of random items gathered together under the same cover?

I read this book shortly after Georgette Heyer's "Pistols for Two" and couldn't help comparing the two, in terms of both being books of short stories by authors much better known for their best-selling full-length novels. I feel that Broster definitely wins out in terms of this comparison; possibly it helps that most of the stories in this volume are not in the same genre as her better-known work, but even those which share the same themes and settings as the novels are much more successful as miniatures in their own right than I found Heyer's short stories to be. ( Read more... )

igenlode

This afternoon on the radio I heard one of the more breathtaking stupid pieces of scientific claptrap that I've come across, from a museum curator none the less, who was (by his voice) a young man bemoaning the arrant sexism of the scientists who defined the 'type specimen' for the majority of birds as being represented by the male of the species. Apparently it had not occurred to him -- as it immediately occurred to the (female non-scientist) presenter -- that if you tried to represent the appearance of bird species using female rather than male specimens then you would simply end up with a vast number of bespeckled 'little brown jobs'; not at all helpful in terms of distinguishing features!

Sometimes ideology can really get in the way...

igenlode

I acquired a new 'large water-carrier' to replace the broken one, from the usual source (other people's recycling put out for collection). ( Read more... )

Finished watching (for the first time, without subtitles) the rest of the second episode of "Twenty Years Later", after watching the beginning of this episode for the second time.

Mordaunt *bombs* Athos's *house*? (with a barrel of gunpowder delivered as wine) :-O
I do not remember that...

I strongly suspect that the scene between Porthos, d'Artagnan and Jussac (see, I guessed they were going to bring him back :-p) is not going to be found anywhere in the book, which is unfortunate, since the repartee there was one of the bits I found very hard to follow. Part of the problem is that Boyarsky's voice has become hoarse over the course of twenty years -- twenty years' heavy smoking and drinking, by the sounds of it! -- and the character tends to get worked up and speak quickly and violently, all of which make comprehension a lot harder, just as I always struggled with the gruff 'character' voices in "Sous le signe des Mousquetaires" (Rochefort, Treville). ( Read more... )

coffeedaiv

Not specifically about home ownership, really. But kind of?

So. Spring is starting to happen. I decided I don't need to sleep on / under flannel sheets. I specifically left my lighter cotton sheet sets behind, so I ordered new sets. They were reportedly delivered last night. I just got out to the mail room, and, behold, no package for me. i double check the delivery notification email. I see the picture. I go back to the mail room, and, no, still no package.

BUT! PLOT TWIST! Paul, the building manager tells me that we had a break in last night, and he caught the guy, and the guy is TRAPPED ON THE ROOF DECK. Like, Present Tense, RIght NOW, Trapped on the Roof Deck.

So, if I am missing a package, that's probably what happened to it.

...
I have so many questions. I have ... I mean. SO many questions. I moved ... four blocks? How is this part of the neighborhood so much sketchier than 419? If this is the guy who stole the packages last night, why is he on the roof deck Now? Did he come back? Should i buy a gun to protect myself and my stuff*? How do I report the theft to FedEx? I mean, They did their job. The package was here. Not their fault** that that someone else got in afterwards and my package stopped being here.

I am guessing / assuming that the building manager is going to be looking at the video footage to determine how the thief got in (both times? I am still a little unclear on the exact timeline of events that, lets not forget, has a package thief on the roof deck NOW.

So, yah. Updates as they happen, and I process ... all this.

Also? I lost my drivers license. I went online and ordered a replacement last night. I put on my kilt, this morning. And Found It. Not sure if it fell out of my wallet, or if i just didn't put it back after the last time I took it out. so, I guess i have a spare?

yay?

*NO.

Look, this is a strictly self assessment, what is right for me and my life and my choices. My feeling about gun ownership as a political issue are much more nuanced. For me, in this situation? I have standards of what i would consider acceptable gun ownership for me. That includes rather a lot of training, a gun safe, and a fuckload of research. And even then, it would require me to believe I am both capable and willing to kill someone else to protect my stuff. Nothing i own is worth more than someone else's life. Not to say I will not engage in violence, as needed, to protect what (and who) i love, should the situation require it. That said, having a gun means I would feel less safe. I know ME, and I know if i am armed, I will be inclined to USE it. I figured that out when I was doing bike messenger work; I knew that if I carried a billy club, I would use it. And that only makes things worse. A gun, for ME, in THIS HOME, only makes things worse. A selection of well placed objects that can be used to protect myself come the fae apocalypse? Oh yah. You can steal my stuff. But if you come for my song? There will be violence.

**Unless it was? I mean, if I was package thief, I might well follow a FedEx truck, and when the driver goes into a secure building, I would wait on the outside, come in as they go out. FedEx driver doesn't know that I don't live there, and probably isn't paying a lot of attention to people coming in as they leave. And then I get access to a place that just got packages. A lot of effort and risk for what is probably not a lot reward; but still, relatively easy.

igenlode

I'm still struggling with "Twenty Years After": the film managed to cover a vast chunk of the book in a few scenes, although the adaptation must have been made slightly more tricky by the fact that they had decided to omit both Planchet and Grimaud from the first film and therefore could not use them here, at a point where in the book their roles are actually rather significant! Sadly this means we also miss out on Rochefort escaping and being rescued by Planchet after being wrongfully imprisoned by the Queen -- quite a turn-around for the characters, and a point at which we get to appreciate the reality of the throwaway comment at the end of "The Three Musketeers" about Rochefort and d'Artagnan eventually becoming genuine friends. ( Read more... )

What I did, however, manage to find was the lyrics to the two songs which occur in these first couple of episodes, which enables me finally to understand the context to the intriguing lines of the chorus that I did succeed in catching by ear alone :-)
https://textys.ru/lyrics/12/Mushketery/tekst-pesni-Nasha-chest
(Always tricky, because my keyboard won't let me *type* Cyrillic -- hence the need for a 'real' dictionary! -- but only cut and paste it, which makes searching online very awkward indeed.)

The song about honour (Наша честь) was so catchy that I thought it must be a repeat from the first film, and spent some time going through the various war and friendship songs there trying to identify it in the hopes of locating the lyrics in the subtitled copy! But it isn't; it seems to be a genuine original for this film, and I managed to track it down online.
The translation here is pretty awful so far as I can tell, but it's enough to prompt me through the important bits of vocabulary so that I can more or less parse it on sight myself without the use of the dictionary.( Read more... )
And the other chorus that struck me was the oddly optimistic one that plays as d'Artagnan is saddling up and preparing to ride out in search of his long-lost friends: "И кончится все хорошо". It turns out to be about a guardian angel, and very poetical -- it's not surprising I couldn't make out the context.
"И кони ржут, и кровь рекою льется" -- the horses, of course, are not laughing but neighing, and the blood flows in rivers... but in the end all will be well. The angel does not sleep, and all this will pass -- and in the end all will be well.

( Your top genres were: 24% 'Russian pop', 23% 'Russian chanson', 5% 'classical music', 5% 'New Age music' and 5% 'Russian rock' )

igenlode

Finished (rather belatedly) running my accounts for this financial year. Assuming an entirely spurious degree of accuracy, I can observe that my largest single expenditure (almost £3,000) was on utility bills, of which the largest was council tax (£1,162) and the next largest the electricity bill (a consequence of going with an expensive 'green' provider), although my water bill is going up by fifty percent as of next month...

I spent almost £700 on paying the greengrocer's bill versus £160 at the supermarket and £280 at various street markets.

Total annual expenditure on food: £1,150, of which £760 on fruit & veg, £110 on meat, £40 on dairy products and £230 on assorted groceries.

( Read more... )

Total annual expenditure: £10,165.50, which is a lot less than last year because last year I had to have the windows replaced, and will be a lot less than next year because this month I have had the roof done again :-(
(And not all that very much different from what I paid in 2021...)

kalloway

I bought a couple of things from a small gunpla shop and the order confirmation included a link to their discord server. I've been in gunpla/gundam discords before and ran screaming, but I joined anyway and so far it is very chill, they love Providence and Daggers, and I horrified them with my backlog.

Sentai Filmworks Spring Anime Sale, til the 20th iirc. I think I'm good for the moment and need to work on my backlog more. (I mean, I am, but-)

Apparently Hakuouki SSL is getting an English release, which is exciting. I don't think it has an exact date, though, so I'm just going to have to keep it in the back of my mind for later in the year.

I actually wrote and posted a drabble. It's not much, but it's something. Worked a bit on zine stuff. Maybe I can do a bit more later.

Also worked on cleaning in the dining room. I think getting rid of a few more plants will help out A Lot. I'm also going to take a bucket of sand and a bunch of incense out to the garage to burn while working out there. If it ever warms up, I mean, which it hasn't.

igenlode

Split up the four nasturtiums, and the coriander, of which of course we now have far too much (four pots of multiple seedlings; you get a pair of seedlings from the two halves of each viable seed, but even so there was clearly a high viability rate!)

Pricked out the 'old' chillies (sown at the start of March), although they have almost no root on them even now; they were growing in clumps and did need splitting up. But all the chilli seedlings are really still barely developed, despite all the warm weather, with just a couple just starting to put out true leaves.

I took off several inches of thick moss from one corner of the original tray of California poppies and inserted some of the various self-sown seedling California poppies from other pots in there. My long-established pots all seem to end up developing a covering of moss, which does help to stop them drying out but eventually makes it very hard to water the pot effectively in the first place! I end up stripping it off and storing it indoors to dry out, with the vague thought that in a dry powdered form it may serve as an analogue for peat (I stick it in the bottom of pots before filling them up with compost, in the hope of helping retain water down there without allowing the moss access to reanimate on the surface...)

Also transplanted the possible-corn-camomile from the sage pot into the so-called wildflower seed pot :-p

igenlode

So that's the end of the animated version... unexpected, but I think it works. And I appreciate the careful non-spoiler nature of the episode title -- even though theoretically we know that d'Artagnan is going to come out of this alive, because he is the Main Protagonist, and probably the others too, because nobody ever actually dies in a show like this one. ( Read more... )

igenlode

( Rudbeckia and mesembryanthemum )

( Coreopsis, spring onion, wildflower packet, pink Swan River )

More to my surprise, the second batch of rocket appears to have almost completely failed, with only one unenthusiastic-looking seedling, although the lettuce planted at the same time is flourishing. Put in some more of the saved rocket seed, which normally germinates with abandon.

Ironically enough I think I have a self-sown corn-camomile germinated in the sage pot, although no sage as such! And another one that got transplanted alongside the sweet peas some weeks ago, although that is now looking so feathery that I wonder if it might not actually be love-in-the-mist or something similar instead.

( Sweet peas and dwarf pea plants )

( Basil )

I also pricked out/potted up the flourishing flax, or at least separated it into one larger pot and one slightly larger (but now with fewer plants in it than the original!) pot...

igenlode

Episode 51 of Sous le Signe des Mousquetaires: Aramis' secret is revealed when she is wounded in the shoulder and d'Artagnan tries to tend the injury -- I was confounded at the time as to how she had previously managed to go through at least two episodes in the first series with an almost identical wound without anybody noticing anything, but on looking back I see that she actually threw a pail of water in d'Artagnan's face under similar circumstances (which I had entirely forgotten) and insisted on bandaging it up single-handed ;-p

D'Artagnan goggles at her and exclaims redundantly that she is a woman, to which Aramis retorts, with some point, that this is scarcely the most important issue right now when the two of them are under attack. ( Read more... )

kalloway

This is like a week in the making because I fell hard into 'but nobody cares, Kalloway' brainweasels. *sigh*

I have mostly gotten the bathroom back together, though I expect I will be finding drywall dust for~~ever~~ awhile despite my best efforts. I started cleaning in the dining room and spelunked all the way to the one nesting table I have, which is the middle of a trio of which my parents have the largest and smallest. No, I have no idea how this happened. Once we figure out something to replace it, I'll return it.

In an attempt to close some tabs on my phone, I made a ~~short~~ list of a bunch of the tabs that have something I want to buy and am working on just... buying what I reasonably can. ~~Which is not all of it, of course.~~ Quite a bit is stuff like $2 games on itch and whatnot. I also really want all of Kim Hu's Jeweled Saint Prints, which frequently go on sale, but that will require purchasing frames and figuring out where to hang them and I want to at least know where they're going before I order them. I pre-ordered a Code Geass Lancelot kit, which is apparently getting a reprint soon. For some reason, I thought I had one. I have a Vincent, though, and that seems to be it. I still need to make an order from a (new/used) bookstore that has a strong Fediverse presence. They have a few Sharon Shinn books I need, and some Arthuriana.

I have a bunch of packages package-racing from around the world. We'll see how that goes. *sigh*

Profile

butterflydreaming

Poems and Cardcaptor Sakura Fanfic

April 2023

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
						1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30

Page Summary

Style Credit

Style: Adjustable Stripes for Bannering by branchandroot

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Apr. 23rd, 2025 04:06 pm

Lines Drawn in Starlight

Rough Shapes at Dusk

Reading

Flowers and fic

Rival versions

A Quick Poll Appears

Plant log

Package-Racing and other delights...

Stiles Musical source dump

The Musketeers' Song (Soviet Songs in English)

"A Fire of Driftwood", D.K. Broster

Sexual equality in birds

New material acquired

Ongoing Saga of Home Ownership

Song texts

Expenditure analysis

Saturday Night's Alright For Writing

Potting on

Au Revoir, D'Artagnan (Episode 52)

Things that didn't germinate

Aramis' vengeance ("Duel sur la Falaise")

Various and Sundry

Profile

April 2023

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags