I have the distinct impression that Adrian Tchaikovsky doesn't like Donald Trump.

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We had Myrna and James over for US Thanksgiving (Saturday) here! I wound up with some extra days so I took Thursday and Friday off. It's a good thing, too, because I got my covid/flu shot on Thursday and as is typical with me, twelve to fourteen hours later I was feelin' it. I didn't get past that until Friday night. By Saturday the turkey was in the oven and the sweet potato casserole was warming and the pies had been cooked Friday night. It was a nice evening and we all ate a lot. Sunday Shain wasn't feeling great and is still head-colded up today. I spent the day getting Anime Hell started and am halfway done at this point. Which is good, because there's this week, and then there's next week, and then I get on a plane for Atlanta.

Weekend prior there was a collectible vintage toy show at the RAID gallery on Queen at Roncey, that's Royal Academy of Illustration and Design, one of the schools cranking out talented artists here in Toronto, they have a little cafe and event space in the front of the building and the back is studio spaces. Anyway we got there right as everyone was packing up. The website was pretty vague about times, but I figured they'd be going until at least 4? No sir. Apparently the event started at 10am, which is, like, you want people to be somewhere on a Sunday morning at 10am? I'm not going to be anywhere on Sunday at 10am, sorry. I feel bad for the vendors, they had to be there at 8 or 9, if they came from out of the city that means they're rolling out of bed at 6 or 7am on a weekend. Maybe this is natural behavior? Maybe every Ontario native was raised to get up at the crack of dawn to go out ice fishing or snowmobiling or hunting or whatever?

I dunno, maybe this is a me thing, maybe being a night owl and a late riser puts me working at a tangent to the rest of the city, this city might just have a early to rise vibe that I'll never be in sync with. I will say there's not much to do here after 10pm that doesn't involve drinking beer.

Anyway, we did not buy any overpriced vintage collectibles - the one guy still boothing was mostly selling Funko Pops, so there's that bit of data - but we went next door to West End Comics and pulled some comics out of the $2 bin. See, when you stay open past 4, you make money.

I know Friday the 21st was the library sale we biked across town to; nothing really worth the trip, but it was an interesting experiment to see if I could get from home to Yonge & Bloor via bike in an evening and make it back in time to go to work. Saturday we went out to the outlet mall and I got some new shoes that seem to be working out OK. I still need a new winter coat.

It's December 2, we had some snow last night, it's supposed to be below freezing and occasionally snowing a bit for the next week or so. I'm hoping for a few more mild days before the January freeze sets in. We'll see, I guess.

Which I nearly forgot about, but here we are!

You can buy points here, and then spend them on a paid account.

And then you can post a poll!

are you seriously telling me that chronic nosebleeds are potentially (yet another) symptom of (the same underlying connective tissue problems that ultimately cause) hypermobility?

Well, fuck.

(Oh, and myopia's on that list too, but I somehow find myself less flabbergasted by this one.)

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I guess winter's finally here.

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Well, she tried, anyway.

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I put my chicken in the oven and fried up the chicken skins and - listen, I gotta say, of all the food items I've tried because I read about them, fried chicken skins are fucking amazing. I don't mind saying that they are, hands down, the most brilliant thing Jews have contributed to the world, and I do hope my various Jewish friends take that in the spirit it's intended, because omg. I don't care if I find out later that you guys invented the wheel, this is better. I am very thankful.

Anyway, we've got chicken, creamed spinach, possibly creamed corn, maybe beets of some sort, maybe couscous, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes (with marshmallows, contributed by a guest), stuffing, cornbread, cranberry sauce, and pies. I'm debating making some soup as well, buuuuuuut I think we may have enough food and not enough bowls. Oh, and there's green beans. Oh, and brussels sprouts and a salad.

(Maybe I should've made baked beans? I wonder if I have time to make baked beans. Oh, but the chicken is in the oven. Hm. Can you make not-baked baked beans? Is that a thing?)

Title:  Unassailable
Author: jane_x80 
Bingo Square: Regency
Fandom(s): Módào Zǔshī 魔道祖师 / The Untamed 陈情令
Pairing(s): Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji/Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian
Wordcount: 4,677
Warning(s): None

Summary: The ton in London is abuzz with the newcomers, two Chinese lords who seem to be wealthy, single, and incredibly handsome. One, Lord Lan, is the strong silent type while the other, Lord Wei, is charming and pleasant. Nobody knows very much about them but they seem to be perfect gentlemen until one is insulted by one of the minor lords.
OR
The one where Lan Zhan gets to beat up a Regency-era lord in a swordfight.

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Title:  A Cup of Love
Author: jane_x80 
Bingo Square: Wild Card - Bakery/Coffee Shop AU
Fandom(s): Módào Zǔshī 魔道祖师 / The Untamed 陈情令
Pairing(s): Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji/Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian
Wordcount: 9,639
Warning(s): None

Summary: Post-grad Lan Wangji does not have time for gossip, coffee shops or friends. But after an unavoidable meeting, he cannot get his mind off the barista known as the Yiling Laozu who has captured his attention. He even becomes a regular at the Laozu's cafe.
OR
Wei Wuxian wins Lan Wangji over with baked goods and latte art and doesn't even tell him his name.

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Title: I Hurt Myself Today 
Author: jane_x80 
Bingo Square: Sports
Fandom(s): NCIS
Pairing(s): Anthony DiNozzo & Jethro Gibbs
Wordcount: 5,090
Warning(s): None

Summary: A few years after the events of Everyone I Know Goes Away In The End, Tony DiNozzo is a player in the NFL and is injured. Gibbs gets a call from the hospital and he goes to help the kid out. Tony did save his life, after all.
NOTE: This is an AU of pre-canon after Tony saves Gibbs from being killed in the apartment fire in Baltimore, Gibbs gets to help Tony out when he's injured.

Everybody knows a hot dog is not a sandwich... it's a taco.

(Taken from the comments here.)

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Just picture it: Tres leches... confetti cake.

(It turns out I'm not the only person with this idea, which just shows how brilliant it is!)

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Let's say, hypothetically I wanted to move a whole bunch of feeds I listen to en masse off of Spotify and onto something else, is there any way to do that other than manually looking at each feed, in alphabetical order, and searching it up elsewhere?

well, let's see. Today before work I got on the bike and rode to the Farm Boy on Bathurst just to get out of the house and get a little exercise. The plan was to get out before the sun went down but the sun is going down at 5pm these days, so nah. I didn't find anything I needed but it was good to get things moving.

Last Sunday we went out to the Freelton antique mall and gave it a good going over. There's a Godaikin Laserion there for $350 which is about $300 more than I'm willing to drop on a robot from a show I don't actually like all that much. Before that we went to the ReStore to see what they had in the way of repurposed pieces of plexiglas I can use to top the animation table I bought the previous weekend at a thrift store.

See, weekend before last was a zine show, Zine Dump, at the Cecil Community Centre in Chinatown on Spadina. So we met Donald and David over there and did a little zine shopping and some chit chatting with tablers about Grafficker Alley. We got a lot of contact info and we'll be sending these folks information when Grafficker Alley tables go on sale for next year's show. Which we should have a date nailed down for soon, it'll be around the same time in September.

Zine Dump was aimed at the more sociopolitical zine publishers and the vibe was different from a TCAF or even one of Broken Pencil's shows. Sunday was the first real snow of the year and I was suspecting that it would impact the turnout, but that room was full. Toronto really wants its zine shows. Of course the location is great, it's really easy to get to, close to everything downtown, pretty much ideal for a show. Of course the Cecil Center hall isn't a quarter of the size of the SAIB where we hold Grafficker Alley, but a space that size downtown is going to cost more than zine money.

After we zine'd we hit a couple of thrift stores on the east side of town, and that's where I found the animation table, a folding easel type table with a big circle in the middle and a fluorescent light on the back. The glass circle and peg board were gone, which is why the thing was only seven bucks, but I don't need the peg board, I am not going to be animating anything. If I can find a 24" by 29" sheet of plexi, it'll be terrific for my next illustration project, and will really save my back from bending over my light table inking, which is how I've been doing it for a while.

I finished the latest Lo-Fi Landfill show and it's up at the Mister Kitty dot Net website for everyone to listen to for free, that's one thing I did. https://misterkitty.net/extras/podcast/index

And of course I've been writing Stupid Comics over there every week.

Other than the AN Halloween Festival at the JCCC we didn't really do anything for Halloween, didn't even get to a haunt or anything. The overnight schedule means weeknights are out, I'm not out of the house before 5pm on Saturdays, and anyway that's when all the shopping and life type stuff has to get done. Like this last Saturday, we went out to the Vaughan Mills outlet mall and gawked at all the shops and shoppers and I bought some on-sale shoes and a shirt from Uniqlo with Peko-chan on it. The Saturday before that we did some thrifting, I mean other than the Sunday thrifting, and we wandered around the Dixie mall's basement flea market. I have been fully intending to go out into the hinterlands and get out in the trees for some actual woods walking, but the time change ganked an hour of daylight out from us and I do not have the gear for after-dark below-freezing woods walking, sorry.

This Sunday the RAID gallery on Queen West at Roncesvalles is having a vintage collectibles show, and even though right now the vintage collectibles cash isn't there for us, we might go down and give it a look anyway. Some city exercise, that's what's good.

People at /r/englishlearning need to stop saying "Song lyrics/poems don't have to be grammatical! Don't try to learn English through songs/poems! People just do whatever, ungrammatically, to fit the rhythm/mood/rhyme scheme!"

This may be true, I guess, but funnily enough it's never true when people say it. At least half the time, the quoted text isn't even archaic or nonstandard!

That said, I do like reading (most of the) comments in that subreddit. There's always something! ( Cut for appropriateness )

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