jackwabbit |

alierak posting in

DW is seeing some issues due to today's Amazon outage. For right now it looks like the site is loading, but it may be slow. Some of our processes like notifications and journal search don't appear to be running and can't be started due to rate limiting or capacity issues. DW could go down later if Amazon isn't able to improve things soon, but our services should return to normal when Amazon has cleared up the outage.

Edit: all services are running as of 16:12 CDT, but there is definitely still a backlog of notifications to get through.

Edit 2: and at 18:20 CDT everything's been running normally for about the last hour.

sorcyress

Today I went to the Renaissance faire!

Yes, this means MD faire, _obviously_. I should maybe try out King Richard's again sometime, since I'm running on decade+ old memories, but honestly, nothing I've heard about it since has implied that I actually should try it out. So if I want to go to a rennfaire it means I pack a bag and get on the train and head down to Maryland!

I went with my mom, and my partner Tuesday, and also Tuesday's mom and sibling and sibling's-partner. We saw some shows! We ate some food off of sticks! I bought some pretty shiny things! It was a good time!

I have forgotten that I pretty deeply hate attending jousts, which is a shame. I enjoy the part where there are impressive feats of horsemanship. I really _really_ do not like the part where we are baying for the death of the competitors. Stage combat is neat and fun to watch from a technical and talent perspective! It feels...it feels pretty uncomfortable to be in the stands surrounded by people who do not seem to be appreciating this aspect of it and instead just want violence.

Also very loud and overstimulating. I would enjoy more being much further onto the edges of the crowd.

I was very happy to get a new coin necklace, and was excited by more designs than would fit on one coin, which feels hopeful for the future. I own five of them now! And also one of the new designs this year was _spider_ which feels amazing prescient for a year in which I'm increasingly using these as The One Official Jewelry I Wear Like From A Spellcraft And Ritual Perspective. Good to have a spider included!

I also bought matching fidget rings for me and Tuesday, because they're quite lovely. And two pairs of hairsticks! One set from Kathleen (although she herself wasn't present) at least in part as a reminder to go buy a bunch more from her through the internet. The other set is really nice maile flowers that I quite liked and obtained from a place near the jousting field. It's possible I shouldn't be left unsupervised for too long at faire, or I will find nice things to use to put up my hair :3

And the weather was perfect to wander around! Sitting was good, standing was good, there was nice breeze so I wasn't ever overdressed but I also wasn't chilly -I brought my gloves and didn't need them, and decided at the last minute to leave the midlevel cloak in the car (I wore the lightlevel and didn't even consider the heavy one)

We watched the Skum perform Othello, which was especially interesting because I don't actually know that one --got a much better idea now though! And later we watched Hilby the Skinny German Juggle Boy, who Tuesday and I saw when we came to faire together two years ago. He remains _extremely_ funny. I also saw a few swords get swallowed, and quite enjoyed some Piper Jones from afar.

And I stopped and had a nice conversation with Miss Nancy, and we saw Pepto in passing (with an amazing viking ship wagon for her kids), and I chatted a bit with the Beef Jerky Guy.

So it was overall very good! I am pleased to be home now though, which is to say, at Cameron and Jake's place in Bal'mer. Tonight I need to finish some sub plan stuff, so that tomorrow I get to stress-free ride a train back home. (I do like riding a train, except when they have two hour delays that start late enough that mom already kicked her friends out and started driving to the station to pick me up. Looking at you, way down.)

I hope your life is also good.

~Sor
MOOP!

sorcyress

Had a _really_ lovely weekend with SamSam's family. Highlights:

*Nine of us biked to the beach together, me taking the tail with my giant ass-cargo bike. The roads were mostly dirt, sand, and gravel, it was a terrible choice, I had a wonderful time. Seeing the ocean was real good and I liked also watching the hermit crabs run around in the tide pool --there were so many!

*Later four of us biked to the cranberry bog to pick berries. This would've worked better had we not gradually realized that every batch of berries was comorbid with a small little section of poison ivy. We rinsed our hands and managed to all avoid getting rashes, but then we had to decide what to do with the berries we had already gathered. Sam was first to get rid of theirs, and tossed them into the pond. YES GOOD SUCH GREAT NOISES, the rest of us immediately followed.

*Ben and I managed to drag four total beginners through ringing Erin on bodies. Ringing on bodies is _the best_ and I had forgotten how much easier it is to do with dancers, and that's so good. I took some notes about how to do it, so hopefully that will go better in the future. I still have not yet internalized what direction to set up/start plain hunt though (we walked the wrong way to begin and had to switch the orientation of the set)

*Elanor and different-Ben wrote a little fifteen minute play for us all to perform. I believe there was only one person who was consistently in the audience, the rest of us all kept running up and down to/from the stage for our parts. There was one table-read and zero rehearsals. My script got caught in the curtain while it was opening so I had to awkwardly lean behind me to look at my scene-partner's. It was very stupid and delightful! It felt _excessively_ Melendy (honestly, a lot of the weekend did, and now I'm craving rereading a bunch of those).

*After, Steve taught us a game at a pool table that involved trying to roll the cue ball (by hand) to hit the single other ball before that other one stopped moving. Once you got them to hit, it was the next person's turn to grab the cue ball from wherever it was, and send it off. We played largely non-competitive and got eight of us going in a little cycle for a while. Extremely satisfying game!

*I played Crokinole yesterday morning with Sam. I'm _rubbish_ at it, but it's a very tactilely satisfying game so now I want to play more. I wonder if I can become a secret crokinole sharp using common household items?

*Thom and Liz bundled me and Laurel off after dinner on Saturday to Plan Their Wedding Dance. It was very cute to be in that space with people I love and doing something I have a lot of expertise in *and* bouncing that expertise off someone else with a lot of expertise. I think it'll be a nice little dance! There's gonna be a small group of Scottish dances for people who know what they're doing first, and it was _extremely_ funny for Thom to name dances, me or Laurel to go "wait how's that one go?" and Liz to immediately start singing the tune, which is not...*not* how they go, but is absolutely not what either of the callers were requesting.

There's probably more, but that's the big things I can remember this morning. Now it's time to head to work and do some of the grading I completely neglected.

~Sor
MOOP!

inkvoices posting in

be_compromised

Welcome to this year's Halloween Trick or Treat Prompt Challenge! PLEASE READ HOW TO PLAY BEFORE LOOKING BEHIND THE CUT OR SCROLLING DOWN

How To Play:

Behind the cut is a list of 10 'Trick' prompts and 10 'Treat' prompts. These are mostly simple one or two word prompts. Tricks are darker (eg Blood, Graveyard) and Treats are lighter (eg Apples, Warm Scarf). You can interpret them however you like.

There are lots of ways to select prompts! You can:
- Choose a Trick or Treat, and pick a number from 1 to 10, BEFORE you look at the prompts and then ta-da, that’s your surprise prompt.
- Look at the prompts and then choose one that you'd like to create for or feel inspired by.
- Choose multiple prompts before or after you look at them.
- Or any other way you can think of playing that ends up with you having at least one prompt from the list below. (Ask a friend to pick for you. Roll a dice. Have fun with it!)
- Inspired by a comm discord chat, if you’d like a challenge, you could also ‘reverse’ the prompts and write darker fills for Treats and fluff for Tricks.

Once you have your prompt(s), your challenge is to create a fill. This can be fanfic, art, moodboards, fanvids, podfic... absolutely anything you like.

Then post your fill, in a comment to this post or wherever you like posting. Please comment to this post with: a title, author name, rating, any warnings or 'choose not to warn', and a LINK to your fill or your complete fill. (Similar to promptathon, this is so people know what they're clicking on and so we can create a masterlist at the end!)

You can post your fills any time from now until 18:00 GMT Friday 31 October. (The aim is to post the masterlist on Halloween or that weekend.) If you've not filled your prompt by then, Halloween has gone, whoosh, don't worry about it because Secret Santa is around the corner...

If you post any fills, links to fills, or generally any halloween recs you think would relevant to our interests on tumblr, please use the 'clintasha' tag and/or tag

be_compromised so we can reblog on the comm tumblr, where we have been busy queuing autumn and halloween themed fun for you for the next few weeks - along with any whumptober and other event things we spot!

Rules:

- The rules of the Comm apply. As a reminder, this includes providing a rating and either 'no warnings apply' / 'choose not to warn' / provide warnings (ie as on AO3) so no one gets an unwanted scare.

- We're a community for fans of Clint Barton aka Hawkeye and Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow, individually as well as paired together as friends, partners, lovers, spouses, or any combination. For this challenge we welcome all things Marvel, including other characters and pairings (and threesomes or moresomes), although we'd ask for Clint or Natasha to feature in there somewhere.

- You can choose and fill as many tricks and treats as you like, or just stick with one. Multiple people can choose the same prompt/s. You can pick a Trick AND a Treat and combine them in one prompt if you like, or write one for each. You can combine multiple prompts. You can write just one prompt, or you can complete one and then come back for more. Whatever you choose!

- There's no minimum word count or the art equivalent for creations. For example, fics can be flash fics or three sentences. There's also no maximum - if you feel inspired to write a longer fic or rec multiple things, please feel free. However, this is a no pressure, short challenge!

- You don't need to be a member of the community to take part. You don't need a dreamwidth account to take part, but if you comment anonymously to this post please do include some kind of online handle so we can credit you for your fill.

- There is a comment thread at the top of this post for any questions, comments, and any halloween type recs that you would like to share. You can also @ a mod on the comm discord.

- Have fun!

( Halloween Trick or Treat Prompts Behind The Cut )

inkvoices posting in

be_compromised

UPDATE 19 October: Secret Santa Assignments have now gone out! If you haven't received yours, please check your spam/junk mail for an email from AO3 and/or 'My Assignments' on your AO3 account. As all participants this year are on the comm discord, that's where we'll tag you in updates and reminders, and we'll send a private message with any queries that need to keep you anon. As always, if you have any issues please @ or PM a mod. Pinch Hit sign ups will remain open throughout the event. Happy Writing!

Hello to everyone who's signed up to Secret Santa this year! (Also a shout out to the people who have volunteered so far to pinch hit if needed, thank you <3 )

The next step is to make your choices, which we'll use to help match people up.

Below is an anonymised list of what the 18 people (!!!) who have signed up have said that they would like to receive as a gift in this year’s Secret Santa exchange (taken from the Details/Description section of the AO3 sign ups). Each bold number section (ie ONE) is one person/request, containing a number of prompts and possibly a 'yes please' and 'no thank you' note.

Your mission is to select the top four people/requests that you would like to write for. You do not have to write for everything in a request, but you should pick four that contain ideas that interest you.

Everyone taking part in this exchange is asked to please reply to this post by 16:00 GMT Sunday 19 October with the following in a comment:

1) Your AO3 user name/handle
2) Your FIRST, SECOND, THIRD, and FOURTH choices for which requests (from the list of eighteen below) that you'd ideally like to write for.

For example:
inkvoices
First: THREE
Second: SIX
Third: NINE
Fourth: TWELVE

All comments to this post will be screened to keep your replies anonymous. You don't need a DW account to comment. If you have any questions please reply to the questions/comments thread at the top of this post where we will unscreen comments in order to reply, or @ a mod on the comm discord.

A few things to note:
- You're not guaranteed your choices, but we'll use your choices to match people up as much as possible!
- You have until 16:00 GMT Sunday 19th October to comment with your choices, otherwise we'll do our best to match you up based on the information you've provided on AO3.
- If everyone comments with their choices before the deadline then we’ll try to send assignments out earlier if offline life permits!
- Your assignment will be sent to you via AO3, using the email address you have on AO3. Please check your spam folder and your AO3 account to make sure you receive an assignment.

And onwards to the requests…
( Secret Santa 2025 Choices behind the cut )

sorcyress

I am at Pinew-wait no I'm not. But I am on Long Pond! Which is pretty fucking good! I like being in the woods even when they are not quite perfectly ~my~ woods. Also, let's be real, of the crowd of people here, half of them are the camp folks I would most want to be hanging with, and the other half are people who are beloved by the first half. It's good!

Getting here was AN ADVENTURE. It was also slightly more of an adventure than it should've been, because I foolishly trusted SamSam to give me accurate directions to camp. To be fair, they were accurate, they just included a part that they hadn't actually traveled on before and it was...uh...I was not excited to have been the guinea pig for that. It was a "no trespassing" private little back trail that was not wide, mostly rocks, and the parts that weren't rocks was sand. About 80% of it might've been fun if I was riding it on my regular bike without a load.

I was riding my xtracycle, fully packed and loaded. I wasn't, like, at weight capacity or anything, but I did fill the volume pretty well. It's a nice bike but also _no_ it is _absolutely not_ a mountain bike. Yikes.

But the rest of the trip! The paved roads were wonderful! The hills were...okay, the hills were not wonderful *but* except for the being illegally in the woods, I did ace the ride. No walking up anything, no feet on the ground while in motion.

It's certainly the heaviest trip I've done in a long time. Probably since the time I went bike-camping with jere7my? Which I think was in the year I got my new bike which was probably......2012? I should probably go on loaded-bike trips more often, but like, that's part of the point of having a cargo bike! Especially having a cargo bike and the mbta!

Got here near the end of folks eating dinner and joined in and have spent the rest of the evening talking and laughing and drawing in my sketchbook while other people knit (sooooo much knitting happening!). It's very pleasant! I am having a pleasing adventure.

(We'll figure out the getting home bonus challenges when it's actually Monday and I can see how bad the nor'easter actually is) .

So that's my weekend set. Hope y'all are having nice plans as well.

~Sor
MOOP!

sorcyress

Work was a lot because work was always a lot. Bonus lots for today: did some graphic design on the performance task so people are able to hand it out tomorrow. Sent the big NEML email to all the coworkers and began gathering data there. Ran a circle for the department meeting, because when my boss does it, she skips over a bunch because she doesn't take it seriously.

So between all that, and normal work stuff, I was slammed right up until the bell rang, and then we had an hour of department meeting (solidly okay) and an hour of Geometry team meeting (quite good, very productive) and then Clayton and I (plus bonus Rachel) had like half an hour of talking about grand ideas for making the curriculum better and then I threw everyone out of my room because it was 4:30 and aaah.

But I managed to keep going, and then I prepped my lessons for tomorrow and ran several billion copies (more NEML stuff) and left the building by about 6:15 or so. Was home at 7:30ish, checked in with Ezri, sent a plan to Tuesday, and flopped into the bed to play a bit of Necrodance just to do _something_ mindless with my day.

(being Mindful all the time forever sucks. I am trying to do more of it because a lot of my mindless is the kind where I can't transition out of it again, and despite what the hypnokink people would have you think, it's not as sexy when you're a mindless phone-games machine. But being real aware and Mindful of what I am doing and trying to make conscious choices about it is differently hard.)

Then, pleasant shock (see above paragraph), I actually transitioned out of Necrodance around the time I told Tues I would, and did some brainwork and then turned the phone off for a POWER HOUR. Dishes, dinner, wash hair were the three goals. They were all completed? This is wild and I don't know how to cope.

The next plan is to again check in with Tuesday --I like having partners who I can mutually do things with, even when we are far apart-- and then Iunno. Rest? Sounds fake.

~Sor
MOOP!

sorcyress

Today was...sorta good?

Work was pretty okay. It's become evident that, of the eight prep periods I am supposed to get each week, I'm realistically gonna get like...three. Not counting my brain crashing and needing a break. So. That's a lot.

Things are generally pretty good even with that! Like, I really like all the things I'm doing at work. It's just another example of the thing I figured out a year or two ago: teaching is a job where you can't become faster as you get better. Like, nearly everything that involves being a good/better teacher is something that involves more time. Deeper connections with students. More thoughtful grading. That kind of thing. I can get faster at grading, but I can't really get faster at guiding a student through socratic questioning until they can reach an understanding themself.

So yeah, work is gonna be a ton this year, and I'm just...gonna cope, I guess? It is what it's.

And then I had therapy, and therapy was kinda good? Before therapy was crap, before therapy I just went into total slug mode on my phone playing stupid phone games. Far too much of that. I was filling Jenn in on all the things I managed yesterday, and at one point she was being mildly astonished at HOW MUCH I'd gotten done. Well yeah, sez I. I didn't play phonegames yesterday, and it's incredible how many more hours are in the day when you don't spend them on phonegames.

After therapy, I did a little more scraps of prep for tomorrow (including the extremely essential "go run your copies _now_" because let's be real, if I try to save that for the morning, I will find eighty people scrobbling around the school to try and find the single working copier in the building. It's like a fun new scavenger hunt every week!

But I did also spend some time fucking around with my phone UX. Actually poked at the widgets menu and found a few things I will probably like. Resorted and gathered my apps --I am not quite able to bear just deleting the phone games, even if that seems like it might need to be the answer for some of them. But putting them in a different folder, in a different place, seeing if that helps...yeah.

And I poked at Habitica briefly, and realized it might be the thing I am looking for in terms of "ugh, need a todo app". We'll try it again for a bit, see what happens. Worst case scenario, nothing useful, and that's just baseline.

On the way home, I found my buddy Thrantar walking to Bluesy, and we walked a block or two together. That would've been it, except just when we were about to split and go our separate ways, we instead found a folk music jam that's apparently been happening on the regular just out on the bike path. I am very fond of this, I am very fond of my weird little town. We stood a good long while and listened to music and chatted about life --I am happy both for the getting to listen to music and for the broader getting to reconnect with someone from my past. It's real good!

(and I briefly chatted with one of the people who seems to be organizing it and when she said a wistful "oh I wish we could have dancing sometimes too" went "UM I KNOW A GUY (it's me, I'm the guy)" and that would be really keen if it worked out in the long run. I would enjoy having occasional ceilidh calling on my way home from work!)

Home again eventually. Played video games and chatted with friends and ate good dinner and played a lot more video games. This is...this is only semi-useful, but honestly, any video game that takes the laptop is probably better for my brainpan than the ones that use the phone. It's almost a win?

Now I am up too late again, and I need to get up early, or at least, get up very much on time and get straight to work so I can finish some of the prep stuff. This is a conceivable plan, I suppose.

Tomorrow's big goal might be to wash my hair? Also maybe have an internet date with Tuesday. Both of those would be really good things to get done.

I love you, and hope y'all are well.

~Sor
MOOP!

wabbit

(the jack is silent)

2013 Reading Challenge

wabbit
read 12 books toward a goal

of 12 books.

September 2025

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

Style Credit

Style: Frosty Night for Bannering by branchandroot
Resources: OpenClipart

Friends

AWS outage

(no subject)

Ashanty notes!

Halloween 2025 Prompt Challenge

Secret Santa 2025 Choices Post

(no subject)

A mind is an excellent thing to waste

Put the phone down, kiddo

wabbit

(the jack is silent)

September 2025

Style Credit