rachelmanija | Reading

Yesterday: I didn't even bother timing, because my knee was hurting so much I could only do a slower jog than even my distance pace. Maybe a 12 minute mile?

I will say that once I settled into a pace where my knee only spasmed once or twice a block, it did get better after a mile. I've noticed this: if I can keep the knee from hurting every single step, which is too much, it will often get better with running/walking.

Today I was afraid to push it, so I did my 1.3 mile run in 12:25, which is about a 9.5-minute mile, my usual (for my first mile--later it slows down to about 10). But at least my knee didn't do more than twinge a couple of times.

I'll probably be afraid to push it for another day or two, so don't expect an 8-minute mile until then.

I'm starting to think maybe I should just join the gym that's 2-3 blocks away. A stepmill and stationary bike might allow me to get my cardio up without aggravating my knee.

One thing worth mentioning is that my hamstring and glutes are definitely less bad than they have been. Definitely still a thing, but I'm on the right track. If I just didn't have to coddle my knee, I bet I could get a much looser glute, even if not perfect.

Tags:

I read the description of this novel and went “Uh, this is Mattdrai with the names scrubbed off and I think I know which fic it is” and I ordered the novel and yep, it absolutely is. It's So is the Longing and I'm kinda surprised it's still online.

And yeah, I'm old-school enough to feel weird about people doing this to their fanfic and earning money wit it, no matter if it is RPF or FPF.

The way the backgrounds/names and so on were changed just makes the whole thing so hilarious. Connor is Russian. Leon is Swedish but randomly has a Portuguese background. The Tkachuks are Canadian (I LOLed so hard). The Edmonton Oilers are now a team a Florida (OUCH). So fucking absurd.

The fic/book itself is the usual slightly mediocre and slightly out of character A/B/O stuff. It's very dramatic, there is a lot of sex, there are the typical misunderstandings of the fanfic and romance novels genre. I think it might work better in the actual RPF version than it does like this.

Not bad but still a very weird read for me.

Tags:

fandom: books

Jump-start your tabletop fantasy roleplaying campaign with the hundreds of pages of system-neutral tools and tables in this all-new Dungeononomicon Bundle from Raging Swan Press.

Bundle of Holding: Dungeononomicon

Tags:

bundle of holding

It's been months since I last posted, but I thought I'd better let all of you know that I'm still alive and kicking.

My days have been busy. The way my schedule works at Anoka County, I basically work every other day. This feels especially true on a week like this last one, when I worked both Saturday and Sunday. The job continues to be FINE. It's not terribly much more than that? But, it's also decidedly not awful. I like books and libraries? Since all I do is shelve books, I have leaned into that and just spend my shift rather idly straightening shelves, double-checking my work (aka light shelf reading), and browsing. Alas, Northtown is small enough that there's not a lot that catches my attention, but, again, it doesn't suck. I've learned to do a couple of other bits of work, like a thing they call "wanding" (which is basically a fancier way to shelf read) and so it's not ENTIRELY boring.

But, it's pretty boring.

Still, it could be worse and I'm grateful for the work.

I'm also slightly busier in my off time than I usually am because I'm once again rehearsing for a show. Remember that gig I had last November where I read a story that was then set to a kind of musical accompaniment? Well, I'm doing that again, with the same organizer (Cole Sarar) but with a new musician, Caly McMorrow, in the Space Lounge at Convergence! As much as I love my super villian adopts a cat story, I decided to better match Cole's missive style story and will be reading "Sincerely, Yours" a short story of mine that appeared in The Reinvented Heart. If you're going to be at Convergence: the performance will be on Friday, July 4, at 12:30 pm in the Space Lounge. Convergence runs from July 2-5, 2026 and will be at the Hyatt Regency, Minneapolis, MN (1300 Nicollet Mall.) This story routinely makes me cry when I read it out loud, but so far I've been able to recover enough to get through to the end. Practice does seem to be helping.

I've read a couple of things since the last time I've posted on a Wednesday, including a book that should be coming out soon which I was able to get an advanced copy of--Daggerbound by T. Kingfisher, which I whole-heartedly recommend. I have not caught up on all the clockwork/swordheart books and I can tell you that doesn't matter one whit. I mean, maybe it's not the best jumping in point? But, it worked okay for me! Pre-order it now? I would for the pillbug alone! (And yes, I said what I said.) I'm also finally reading Witch Hat Atelier. Don't hate me because it's popular. I can still happily say that I bounced out of Demon Slayer, Fieren, and Solo Leveling. So, I'm still the same complete loser you once knew.

Work has definitely slowed my ability to get much writing done. When I sit down at the end of the day, I really don't want to do anything hard. I really don't know how I managed to write so many books while working full-time. All I can say is that I was younger then. Much younger.

I have been drawn back into some fic writing, but I don't know what that means. I might be gearing up into figuring out how to do this while working a Real Job (tm) or it's just a sign that I was not lying when I said that I will never NOT write.

Gaming persists. I'm trying to find a good date that will work for people to do a one-shot in D&D. And, god help me, I'm still running a Thirsty Sword Lesbians campaign on Tuesday nights, which probably means that one of those Tuesdays is coming up again soon. Tuesdays are a day that I always work, so I have come screeching home, jump out of the car, slam food into my mouth, and basically start running a game. (We game at 7 pm; I arrive home from my commute at 6:30 pm.) Luckily, with TSL I have fully become a GM who is like, "Notes? Who needs notes? I run on VIBES."

There's probably a bunch more I could catch you up on, but this is what I know at the moment. I mostly just wanted to post so that you all knew that both myself (and my computer) are alive and well.

Tags:

What I read

Finished Blight, and hope that this series is planned to continue.

Alexis Hall, Father Material (London Calling, #3) (2026) - thought this was rather a slow starter and seemed a bit repetitive at first but then picked up, but honestly, could it get over Luc being absolutely hopeless?

KJ Charles, How to Fake It in Society (2026): um, I'm not sure I'd quite go so far as to say 'phoning it in', but this seemed to adhere to a rather familiar formula?

John Wyndham, The Chrysalids (1955), a recent Kobo deal, and I rather enjoyed The Midwich Cuckoos, but although I did read this ages ago a bit under-impressed. Though did think that these days it would probably be a massive 3-volume at least saga? points for economy.

Slightly Foxed #90: 'Sailing On'.

On the go

Paul Baker, Camp!: The Story of the Attitude that Conquered the World (2023): had enjoyed his book on Polari but I'm a bit less taken with this - I've just come across a passage where he remarks upon Ru-Paul's Drag Race having a fanbase of butch working-class straight males, and I think, 'hello, come on, what about working men's clubs going back decades?' this is hardly a new thing (but can I lay my hands on my copy of Jacob Bloomfield, Drag: A British History, which I suspect has something to this point, not at the moment).

Up next

Probably the latest Literary Review.

Tags:

In the Damon Runyon collection Guys and Dolls and Other Writings that I started back in January, I've finally read all of Runyon's "Broadway Stories" of dim-witted gangsters, which are usually funny, occasionally maudlin (or sentimental: there is one Christmas episode, as it were, playing off the joke of "wise men" vs. "wise guys"), and then out of left field the last one ("A Light in France", 1944) was set in occupied France and involved setting a Nazi on fire. Have also read one stand-alone short story ("A Call on the President") that for some reason is classified separately under "The Turps" - after its central bickering married couple - rather than with the rest of "Other Fiction," presumably because of its distinct narrative style/voice:

The fellow in the striped pants ses what do you want to see the President of the United States about? I ses look Mister, we came all the way from Brooklyn to see the President of the United States and I have got to be back to work on my job tomorrow and if I stop and tell everybody what I want to see him about I won't have no time left. I ses Mister, what is so tough about seeing the President of the United States? When he was after his job he was glad to see anybody. I ses is he like those politicians in Brooklyn now or what?

(At one point Ethel Turp gets distracted "making snoots" out the window of the Oval Office at someone who had been rude to them and my brain immediately cast Myrna Loy.)

Have also been reading Madly, Deeply, the diaries of Alan Rickman, 1993-2015; now on 1995 and the filming of Sense & Sensibility (and, apparently simultaneously(?), Michael Collins, which I hadn't heard of and caused a little confusion: for a second I was like, huh, I didn't know Sense & Sensibility filmed in Dublin!).

Current Music: Charlie Sheen Reaches Out to the Feds - the Mountain Goats

Tags:

books: 2026-

I served four Masses in 24 hours at the weekend, which may be a personal best (or worst?), and has left me with some residual soreness of the knees, but Confirmation and First Communions both went relatively smoothly, and though it was rather exhausting scheduling, I did prefer it to spreading them out over several evenings.

Sunday was very much a flop day as a result; I woke up (as has sadly become customary) at 04:45, but did go back to sleep, and did not in the event leave my bed until after noon.

And I needed it, because it's been go-go-go since then. I said to Miss H that I was actually relieved earlier to realise that it was only Wednesday, because there is so much to get done this week! Not that that is helping me focus my mind, of course.

And last night was choir, tonight is choir, and all day Saturday is also choir, so I'm looking forward to an evening?? at home??? tomorrow. I have nearly a week of washing up to catch up with^*, so that'll be a fun time for sure. Then into the office on Friday, and the treadmill does not stop!

I have been reading quite a lot though. Some day I will have time to write up my booklog, but that day is not this week.

^* Obviously I should have done it earlier, but when I was inspired to try yesterday in a few free minutes, the hot water wasn't working - a different problem from last time! The plumber texted me back this morning with a description of the basic mistake I had made and how to fix it, so I'm back up and running now... kitchen looks extremely sad though.

Tags:

Managed to cardboard and woodchip one little path.

Which I know doesn't sound very impressive.

But hey! It was 80° by 10am with a dew point of 70. Very humid. Very uncomfortable.

Doing any kind of garden work on days like this involves arriving there at 8am—which I gotta say, I do not like at all. I like to putter in the morning. Drink two cups of coffee. Catch up on emails and texts. Skim the news (uniformly awful). Read my pals' online journals—though it appears I'm one of only a few who writes with any degree of regularity anymore. Long-form writing really only appeals to Boomers and GenXers. I am the priestess of a dead religeon.

###

Work in Progress is progressing—but slowly.

Flavia is an architect, so I'm having to do deep dives into architect jargon.

In the chapter I'm writing now, Flavia does a project with the resident genius, starts sleeping with him, falls in love with him—he does not fall in love with her—reveals her dirty little secret to him (I'm rich!!!), gets used by him for her money, develops a cocaine habit.

None of this stuff happened to me, so writing it is... challenging.

Of course, all fiction writing is autobiographical to some degree—like method acting. The event you're describing in a fictional character's life may not have happened to you, but you draw on your own feelings to evoke the characters' emotional reactions. So, you know. It can get intense.

I have no idea if it's any good or not.

I started it; I'll finish it. That's all I know.

###

Rereading Tracy Dougherty's excellent biography of Larry McMurtry because I have run out of books! (I have also run out of streaming media to watch; absolutely nothing appeals.)

McMurtry is one of my favorite writers, and the fact that his ouevre contains so many out-and-out stinkers and clunkers is actually part of his appeal. The Last Picture Show is a perfect novel! So, how do you explain Cadillac Jack?

McMurtry lived a really extraordinary life. On his own terms (which could best be described as "episodic"). He made his own rules—up to the point where his own body felled him. In 1991, he had a heart attack and then quadruple-bypass surgery, and though he lived another 30 years, in a very real sense, his life ended in 1991.

###

One thing medical gatekeepers don't really tell you is that around 30% of all people who undergo bypass surgery experience significant personality changes.

Larry McMurtry was one of those people.

In his memoir, Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen, McMurtry wrote:

...The violently intrusive nature of that operation – of any operation, really – was bound to dislocate one for a bit, I thought. Car metaphors seem to apply. I had had some serious engine work done and then been jump-started back into drivability. If there was a little sputtering at first, well, that was only to be expected.

In the fourth month matters worsened – the sense of grief for the lost self was profound. I didn’t feel like my old self at all, and had no idea where the old self had gone. But I did know that it, he, me was gone, and that I missed him. I soon came to feel that my self had been left behind, across a border or a canyon. Where exactly was I? The only real sign of the old self was that I could still connect with my grandson, Curtis McMurtry. Otherwise, I felt spectral – the personality that had been mine for fifty-five years was simply no longer there – or if there, it was fragmented, it was dust particles swirling around, only occasionally and briefly cohering. I mourned its loss but soon concluded that gone is gone – I was never really going to recover that sense of wholeness, of the integrity of the self.

That being the case, I began to put a kind of alternative self together, and the alternative self soon acquired a few domestic skills, on the order of loading the dishwasher or taking out the trash. But I still couldn’t read. I was at the time owner of perhaps two hundred thousand books and yet I couldn’t read.

The problem, I eventually realized, was that reading is a form of looking outward, beyond the self, and that, for a long time, I couldn’t do – the protest from inside was too powerful. My inability to externalize seemed to be organ based, as if the organs to which violence had been done were protesting so much that I couldn’t attend to anything else. I soon ceased to suppose that I would ever reassemble the whole of my former self, but I could collect enough chunks and pieces to get me by – as I have.

Such surgery, so noncommonsensical, so contradictory to the normal rules of survival, is truly Faustian. You get to live, perhaps as long as you want to, only not as yourself – never as yourself.

Tags:

...flops like a fish, and, most importantly, smells like a fish--

It's fishy!

Found this in my email this morning:

Hello,

I hope you’re doing well. I’m interested in commissioning a Sculpture to honor my late mother, I’ve long admired your work, and believe your artistic vision would create a meaningful tribute to her memory.

If you’re open to the project, I’d love to discuss the details further and share more about her life and the vision for the piece.

Thank you for considering my request. I look forward to hearing from you.

Best regards,

Bernard.

Yeah, it's a scam.

Used to be, I could search specific phrases from these things to see if there's a new scam going around, but Google is basically useless these days. Maybe I'll try Reddit.

ETA: No luck on Reddit, but Googling the scammer's supposed name, "Bernard Lauwers," told me it's been used in a number of financial services scams, and...

He's the director of the International Monetary Fund.

Tags:

scams

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Tamar Adler’s Feast on Your Life: Kitchen Meditations for Every Day, which is a collection of 365 brief kitchen meditations. Most of them are bitty and ultimately I felt that the book seemed fairly bitty too, but we’ll see how I feel about it in the long run - I’ve had Adler books sneak up on me before.

I also read Caroline Dale Snedeker’s The White Isle, in which a young Roman girl travels to her family’s new home in Britain. First third of the book is road trip (Snedeker does a great landscape description), second third is settling down in Britain (more beautiful landscape), we’re getting near the end and no suitable suitors have appeared… but then Lavinia and her mother travel to Cornwall to visit a friend and they are kidnapped by Durotrigs, only to be rescued by a band of Christians!

Lavinia instantly gives herself up for dead, because as we all know the Christians sacrifice human beings in order to drink their blood. Except apparently? This is not actually true?? Which is convenient, because Govan (the leader of the band that rescued Lavinia and her mother) is just SO handsome.

“I cannot believe you are conversion narrativing at me,” I griped at Snedeker. Then we got to the part where Govan is comforting Lavinia after a death, and I unexpectedly burst into tears. So grudgingly but with feeling, I must say well-played.

What I’m Reading Now

“Then the Prussian general Blucher, a gnarled cavalryman who shared Alexander’s bellicosity, defeated Napoleon and was ready to advance - till he suffered a nervous breakdown and went blind, convinced he was pregnant with an elephant (fathered by a Frenchman). The advance faltered. Had a septuagenarian cavalryman pregnant with an elephant saved Napoleon?”

When I got to this part in The Romanovs, I laughed so hard I cried. Obviously Blucher got it together to help put Napoleon on Elba (and then help defeat Napoleon again after he got off Elba), but WOW.

I have also continued China Mieville’s Three Moments of an Explosion - making better progress once I concluded these stories are too stressful to read at bedtime. I just read the one about the people who live in a settlement where they can see ships passing, and sometimes the ships sink, but the ships never land and sailors never wash ashore after the sinking… also a character dies who MIGHT not be a woman, but Gam never gets a pronoun so it could go either way.

I’m also reading Marie Kondo’s Letter from Japan. More about this later, but for now, it has definitely inspired me in some tidying! (Not a full KonMari, but smaller scale tidying of things that have accreted on flat surfaces.)

What I Plan to Read Next

I’m off to Bloomington this weekend to be a bridesmaid(bachelorette party tomorrow in fact!) so I don’t expect to have much time to read. But I’ve got Rosemary Sutcliff’s Flowers of Adonis along, and I DO intend to snatch some time to visit my four favorite used bookstores in town.

Tags:

I was looking up the procedures for ships arriving at Fremantle Harbour because reasons, and the Internet said, "Here, read this," and showed me the Port Information Guide [138 pages of it] which I went through to find out the bits I needed. Then I saw this:

7.22 RAT GUARDS Every hawser or line used to secure a vessel shall be equipped with a suitable device to prevent the passage of rodents between the vessel and the berth, and such other precautions as the Authority deems necessary shall be taken for this purpose.

Twenty-first century technology governs a very complex procedure moving hundreds of vessels through the port, but humans are STILL trying to outsmart small furry creatures, in this instance by putting metal thingies on ropes that rats supposedly find difficult to climb to prevent boarding. Since this apparently does not have a 100 per cent success rate, who knew, the port also offers a de-ratting service to ships.

I don't get out a lot and for some reason this amused me. I also have two elderly rats who need ramps to get on and off the couch.

Tags:

things I fucked up today so far, a list:

forgot to take my meds before I left the house
forgot to put my gym clothes in my bag
forgot my ipad with my weightlifting app
forgot my headphones
forgot to transfer a giant file overnight
didn't finish my tea before I left the house and the contents of the abandoned cup will be gross when I get back after several hours of 84°F/28°C

I hate being so dependent on the bus system, when the bus system is so crappy. Buses should come every ten minutes!

things I got right:

I have my wristwatch
I have a fresh tube of sunscreen to leave in my gym locker
I had naan and brie for breakfast
I am wearing office clothes
my hair is brushed
I have my thermos of hot tea
I have my office key

I am pretty sure I can skedaddle off campus around 3, which will give me enough time to get snacks for the Board Annual Meeting tonight.

ETA: Okay, I snuck out of the morning event and ran home and took my meds and got all my stuff and the giant file is transferring (fingers crossed the transfer time estimate is a lie and I can drop the thumb drive off with a colleague before I leave), and maybe the day is looking up.

Two things stand between Kim Wooram and victory: rival contestants and institutional misogyny so entrenched women aren't allowed to compete at all. For the first, Wooram has exemplary skills. For the second, a cunning plan.

Project V by Park Seolyeon

Tags:

Just finished: The First Thousand Trees by Premee Mohamed. This was really good, and I felt speaks to a growing need in the post-apoc/dystopia genre for the kind of books that ask "okay, but what do we do now?" It could very well be a story of a city boy who gets repeatedly shown by rural folk how incompetent he is, but it goes deeper, probing the flaws of the kind of society that prides itself in a hardworking, hard-living ethos. What that means for people with chronic illnesses and disabilities, neurodiverse people, and so on.

Did I mention it was set in Alberta? Lool.

And of course it's beautifully written, and other than the fictional fungus, absolutely realist in its depiction of the climate crisis, because Premee is both a fantastic prose stylist and a scientist.

I want to go back and read the first two now, but I know things that you may not know about what she has coming out next, which is even more up my alley.

Currently reading: A Palace Near the Wind by Ai Jiang. I've been meaning to read Ai Jiang for ages and I'm most of the way through this one, which doesn't disappoint. It's about a princess of an oppressed people forced to marry a king in order to stop the palace's incursion into her people's territory. Her mother and sisters have gone to the palace before her, never to be seen again. She has one younger sister left and she is determined to kill the king and end these sacrificial marriages—and the destruction of her lands—once and for all.

Oh did I mention that they're all trees? They're all trees. 14/10 worldbuilding, no notes. The reveal that they're trees comes pretty early and I won't spoil anything else but I was like. Good job. That's weird af. I'm here for it.

Tags:

books

There were thunderstorms going flickaflick kaBOOMba in the Twin Cities much of the night, so I am awake. Now that doesn't mean awake enough to make a proper post on how things are, but here's the basic stuff:

On May 10, I unexpectedly surfed down a collapsing retaining wall which then yeeted me headfirst into the side of the house. I got a concussion and a double-fractured ankle. And now I'm recuperating.

It was a short retaining wall, which is a great piece of luck, because things could have been so much worse. Even at the height of a couple of feet or so, like it was. There were a lot of important bits of good luck. Those stories are for later, though. For now, I'm just waving at everybody here and saying hi, I'm still here! Some of you have heard already, and have been kind and have helped get me to the ER, the ortho team, the imaging people, and all the rest, and there are not enough words to express this gratitude, but THANK YOU SO MUCH.

And now, probably sleep time. Again. It's remarkable how much sleep a person can need when recuperating from fractures or concussions, or both.

(And I hope you are having a much more pleasantly calm spring/summer yourself!)

Tags:

2026/083: A Trade of Blood — Robert Jackson Bennett

We have stolen secrets from the bloods of the titans and taught all of nature to grow and warp and shift at our pleasing. [loc. 545]

Cat-herders! Unexpected siblings! More of Ana's background! Another ill-judged liaison! Blue grass! And a very knotty murder mystery... This was an excellent read, and very much not the culmination of a trilogy: this series could run and run, and I for one will be grateful for each new volume.

Full review nearer publication date, but I note that the 'Shadow of the Leviathan' series is rooted firmly in the mundane world, the place where we're reading. The first novel, The Tainted Cup, explored civil servants and builders, and regulatory frameworks: the second, A Drop of Corruption, tackled autocracy, with a side order of shady banking practises. This time...

Farms are not sites of hallowed tradition. They are, if anything, laboratories for profound biological change. [Author's Note]

Read because: I enjoyed the first two books so much, and leapt at the chance to get an ARC. Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for the full honest review I'll write closer to UK publication date -- 4th August 2026.

Current Mood: impressed

Tags:

books,
read26

Happy birthday,

uhhuhlex!

I have about 15 minutes before I need to go to a school meeting, and I haven't updated in ages so:

Hockey

The inaugural season of Kodiaks 2 finished mid-May: we played 20 games and won 1. It was a bit last minute, but we managed to confirm enough ice time to continue with two teams next season, in time to submit our intention to the league by the 31 May deadline. Trials are next week and the week after, the WNIHL annual meeting is in early July and the next season starts in September. We had end-of-season awards, which I was late to due to having a pre-existing booking for formal hall with uni friends, and as manager I got a lovely personalised mug with a photo of the team from our last game, along with a card that made me all mushy and sentimental.

My summer training is still four times a week: uni x2, Warbirds and Kodiaks. Though summer ice for Kodiaks means we have to get a minimum signup from players and coaches to run, two weeks in advance, so it doesn't always happen.

Since the season end, I've had a couple of games with Warbirds, and a friendly with Huskies against Warwick Panthers. Warbirds won one and drew one, Huskies won. That's a nice feeling.

Media and culture

I finished all available seasons of Ted Lasso and very much enjoyed it, looking forward to the new season dropping later this summer. Tony and I have started watching Spider-Noir (we chose to watch in colour, and I am loving the colours). I've started watching Dollhouse with Owen, which is very very 2009.

A conversation about hockey musicals led to the discovery of "Score! A Hockey Musical" which can be watched on YouTube, but I cannot recommend the experience. The music is catchy but the lyrics are dreadful, not even "so bad it's good", and the musical itself can't decide whether to be serious or slapstick.

I thought idly last week, we haven't been to the ADC in a while (I only managed a couple of the plays on the list I made in March) and discovered an amateur production of Come From Away on last week and this. I took Charles last Saturday afternoon (the Huskies game was in the evening) and am meeting a couple of hockey friends to see it again tonight. It's still a very good musical, this is a very good company, it was nearly sold out when I got tickets and deservedly so. I cried, and will probably cry again tonight.

Tags:

My ankle is killing me. I've had tendinitis in my left ankle since high school. It's mostly controlled with good arch support, but the last several days I've been on my feet, glazing in the studio, and it's taking its toll. I did 60 mugs on Thursday, 52 Friday, and both the waxing and the decorating has to be done standing up. Today was a little easier, I could alternate sitting to apply liquid wax resist with standing to glaze. I also wrapped the ankle with an Ace bandage, which helps a good bit.

But I'm getting some really nice pots done.

Cookie jars;

Some intriguing special orders;

Some big bowls and covered pitchers, both in critically low supply;

And some baking dishes that I'm not desperate for, but probably will need after my Roseburg show.

Tags:

Not a particularly memorable Saturday Market. Weather was sketchy, but I reinforced the center beam of my roof and put up the walls, so when the rain inevitably came around 10:30, all I had to do was hustle the boxes back into the booth--I'd optimistically put them behind the booth under plastic--unrolls the walls and zip the back closed.

First customer was super-early, he was lurking around as I unpacked pots. Finally, at about five past nine, he asked if I was set up. I kinda wasn't, but said sure, why not? Turns out he'd DMed me earlier in the week on Instagram about his girlfriend's Empty Bowls bowl that got broken. Showed me a pic, it was a dolphin pattern that I didn't have in the booth. I offered to make one in the next firing, but the raccoon soup bowl had caught his eye, and so he bought that instead.

After that, it was a long, slow slog until my second sale, sometime after 11 am. A mother and daughter stopped in, and mom asked if I had anything with California Quail on it, she was visiting from there. Only thing I had was a large serving bowl, which she was more than happy to claim. Paid cash too. Daughter asked what Dad would say; she said what did with her garage sale money was her business, just like she wouldn't ask questions if he won the lottery. I didn't understand any of that conversation, just smiled and wrapped up her bowl.

A number of people told me they'd gotten a piece from me a few years back, and decided it was time to track me down to get more. One even talked about wanting her entire kitchen decked out in my work. I suggested she take it one piece at a time, told her about the couple that replaced their entire boring wedding china, one piece a week over about three years. She decided to start with two; we'll see how long it takes before she comes back for another.

Had a young black woman in the booth, accompanying her blond friend, joking and laughing while friend shopped. She had a long, narrow face, square jaw, wire-rim glasses and a mickey-mouse two-lobed hairdo. Between the look and the snark, she reminded me of no one so much as Shuri from the Black Panther movies. Was tempted to tell her, then decided discretion was a better choice.

I've been holding back this red panda tall mug for a while now; I'd promised one to a couple named Ciaran and Dora last year--they were the couple with the custom Red Panda sweaters. Haven't seen them in a while, so finally decided it was time to let go. Joked with neighbor Chere that I expected it to sell immediately. Sure enough, ten minutes later, my next customer took it home.

Morning was pretty slow, just over $300 by lunch time, but the weather cleared up in the afternoon, and sales picked up as well. By the end of the day, my booth was dry again, and I'd made $950.

Tags:

A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

I picked up a pen, I wrote my own deliverance

(no subject)

"Broken Ice" by Marina Vivancos

Bundle of Holding: Dungeononomicon

Oh, Look... a Wednesday

Wednesday's weather has been annoyingly ambivalent

Reading Wednesday

before you was born, dude, when life was great

Larry McMurtry at the Dollar Store

If it looks like a fish

Wednesday Reading Meme

Rats Rule

ugh

Project V by Park Seolyeon

Reading Wednesday

a quick sketch of an update post

2026/083: A Trade of Blood — Robert Jackson Bennett

(no subject)

drive-by update

On my feet

An ordinary day

Profile

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags