Omorka's Lair

My favorite Filipino-Viet fruit stand at the farmer's market had some large yellow fruit they called Manzanilla lemons. They don't really taste like lemons, or at least, not just like lemons; they taste like citrus - with notes of lemon, orange, tangerine, and grapefruit, and they're shaped like uglifruit, which I suspect means that they're hybrids, probably mostly citron and pomelo with a little bit of mandarin mixed in.

So of course I bought two and ran them through the mandoline; they've been simmered with a cinnamon stick and are going through an overnight soak, and tomorrow they'll be boiled into marmalade.

So, I don't know if this has gotten any traction outside of the Houston area, but basically there's been a major pollution event going on all week, originally in the form of a giant plume of toxic smoke and now mostly as a water contaminant spill. On Monday the smoke plume was blowing directly over my workplace (thankfully at a sufficiently high altitude that it was't mixing with the surface air) and blotting out the sun for part of the day.

It also happens to be oakbloom here, so all our high-allergy kids and asthmatic kids have been having terrible weeks and it's not possible to determine what's tree jizz and what's fine particulates. I've been having an awful joint week, myself, but again, not clear if that's related or not (February and March are generally bad joint months for me anyway, for reasons that remain obscure).

Both local and state officials have been making rumbling noises about punitive fines and other consequences, but Texas does not have a great record on holding polluters to account and Harris County isn't necessarily a whole lot better. (It's a little better. Not a whole lot.)

On the bright side, Bugcatch is out of the hospital (again).

Achievement unlocked: Muscadine grapevines planted in their very own large pots in the backyard. If they survive but do not thrive, I will look into putting something closer to a planter back there. The wild mustang grapes are eagerly climbing over the back fence again already, so I have pretty good evidence the back yard is grape-growing territory.

Also put a pair of tomato plants in the patio planter, next to the volunteer; purchased new basil, replacement thyme, and a sage plant and potted them on the porch; dome some minor soil remediation on the potted kumquat tree.

Still need to do: bribe someone else to dig two 3' holes for me and plant the grapefruit and blood orange trees in the front yard, mulch all the fruit trees.

My reward for getting the muscadines done is banana pudding. Of course, I had to make the banana pudding, but as desserts go that's an easy one.

This next week is Spring Break for my district, and for once I didn't have to bring home tests of projects to grade! I did bring home a stack of small stuff (mostly understanding checks & memory drills), and I do need to write a test over break, but all my major grades and quiz grades are in except for a handful of makeups and retakes.

Now I need to hit the farmer's market tomorrow morning and at least two grocery stores in the next couple of days, because my larder is bare and has been for the better part of two weeks.

I don't wanna go back to Tumblr. I really, really don't. I don't like it, and I don't feel like I have an audience there.

But it seems like all my fandoms that have any action only have it there.

Dang.

So right now Bugcatch is in the hospital. He managed to have a partial-blockage heart attack back on Sunday and just graduated out of the cardiac ward into a regular hospital room today. They're hoping to release him tomorrow; the Spouse and I went up to see him and JKC (his wife) on Monday after school (and to bring JKC something real to eat instead of hospital cafeteria food or snacks from the coffee bar), and if he doesn't get out tomorrow we'll probably offer to do so again tomorrow, because JKC does not deserve to have to eat that all week.

---

On October 8, Silverdragonknight (whose LJ did not carry over to DW and I don't want to link to LJ from here; hereafter SDK) messaged me at around 10 PM to complain about not having been able to make it to Pagan Pride Day and his general stress level. He mentioned that he was having tension in his chest that was exacerbating his allergies and making it difficult to breathe. I told him to get off the damned phone and go to urgent care. Instead, he asked me to call him; I did, and he said it wasn't a heart attack, that he'd just had a checkup with his cardiologist and things were okay. I told him then it was pneumonia and he still needed to go to urgent care, or failing that, the hospital. About an hour later, he texted me saying that he'd given in and was going to the ER.

On the morning of October 9, he messaged me just before I got to work, saying that the bloodwork they'd done overnight showed evidence that it was a heart attack after all. I texted back that I was sending energy, and asking which hospital and what visitor's hours were. I blazed through the day with my mind half in the classroom and half with him.

At the end of the day, I got out my phone to see if he'd managed to text back. There was one from his phone, but it wasn't him - it was his wife. He'd had another heart attack in ICU, and they hadn't been able to save him; he'd died at around noon. Her text had arrived just after my lunch break was over, so it had been sitting in my pocket through three hours of classes.

I don't want to sound like SDK was family to me, exactly. He was a friend, a close one. Moreover, he's one of the first people to not only call me priestess but treat me as one. And despite being a loudmouth in every possible sense, he had a heart of gold and a spine of steel; I never once asked him for help when he didn't deliver in spades.

I miss him terribly. His daughter (who is now 21) misses him even more.

---

Heart disease can go four times to hell.

Lots of people have said more moving, more personal, and more insightful things than I could regarding Peter Tork's death on Friday. I mean, "Fuck cancer" comes to mind, considering recent more local events, but that hardly seems sufficient.

I was at work when I found out, so I couldn't have a proper cry. The Monkees were not my first fandom, but they were the first fandom that I interacted with other people in a fannish way with - squeeing and talking about fandom crushes. I was 13; it was during the MTV revival of the series. In a lot of ways, that was my introduction to the modern idea of fandom, even though it was eight years pre-Internet-As-We-Know-It. And while I am a Dolenz fangirl from crown to heel, Tork was in a lot of ways the musical vanguard of the group. He embodied the experimental spirit of the late '60s while still valuing the folk and blues traditions from his own past. The band would not have sounded the same without him, and would have been much the poorer for it.

Io Evohe Peter! Io Evoke Tork!

It's the DW version of the Ao3 Stats Meme again!

Top 5 Stories By Hits:
Not For Sale (Firefly, Mal/Simon, Porn Battle IX): 7416
Programs and Users Have a Common Descent (Tron x Eureka, gen, Sci-Fi Fantasy Big Bang 2011): 3919
Bar the Door (Firefly, Jayne/Simon): 2618
Visions of Futures Passed (Star Trek (2009 movie), Bones/Spock Prime, Porn Battle IX): 2478
Spun Right Round (Eureka x Buckaroo Banzai, gen, Sci-Fi Fantasy Big Bang 2009): 2283

The next story is another Mal/Simon fic; nothing else has over 2000.

Top 5 Stories By Kudos:
Not For Sale (Firefly, Mal/Simon, Porn Battle IX): 306
Endless Beat (Singin' In The Rain, Cosmo/Don/Kathy, Springkink 2010): 176
Grist For the Rumor Mill (Singin' In The Rain, Cosmo/Don): 171
Visions of Futures Passed (Star Trek (2009 movie), Bones/Spock Prime, Porn Battle IX): 142
Good Vibes (Ghostbusters (1984 movie), Egon/Ray, SmallFandomFest Round 5): 127

Two repeats - not surprising, given that higher views mean more potential for kudos. Shoutout to the SitR fandom; there aren't a lot of fics, even fewer that aren't AU, and they are appreciative of the ones they get.

Top 5 Stories By Bookmarks:
Not For Sale (Firefly, Mal/Simon, Porn Battle IX): 31
Endless Beat (Singin' In The Rain, Cosmo/Don/Kathy, Springkink 2010): 27
Falling Into Grace (Transformers, pre-Optimus Prime/Starscream, Springkink 2010): 20
Visions of Futures Passed (Star Trek (2009 movie), Bones/Spock Prime, Porn Battle IX): 15 (tie)
Leaking the Secrets (Ghostbusters (1984 movie), Egon/Peter, Rounds of Kink Round 12): 15 (tie)

Oh, hey, my lone Transformers fic, good to see you here. Otherwise, three repeats and another GB entry.

What almost all of these have in common is that they're old - all but one of these are from 2008-2010, and the exception is 2011. So they've had more time to build up hit counts and everything else that comes with them. Several of these are from larger fandoms (Firefly & Trek, in particular) than I normally write for. I'm a little surprised that the entries for what is still by a nontrivial margin my largest writing fandom are both GB rather than RGB, but I suppose any RGB fics with an M or higher rating are potential childhood-ruiners.

I haven't uploaded anything yet this year. I should try and fix that.

I am vaguely contemplating attempting Yuletide this year, after skipping it two years in a row.

Mostly this is because I think Atop the 4th Wall, by itself, is eligible if it isn't crossed over with Channel Awesome more generally.

I don't know when I think I will have the time to write. I'm head writer for Mythos Houston's Owlcon game again this year, and I know how much time and energy that sucks up. Then again, not having to wait on other people is likely to make that less stressful even if it's the same amount of writing time overall, and a chunk of that will fall after the Yuletide deadline anyway.

On the gripping hand, I don't know how many people in my social circle will have major medical crises between now and then, either.

Help, they cancelled the first day of school due to the hurricane and I can't handle this.