thehallway

A very cool new collaborative mural titled Hizkuntza does a quick dramatic shift from day to night. By day the mural looks to be a simple image of a whale by day, but in the dark it changes. The mural is located in Patxa Plaza in Baiona, a small city on the southwest coast of France that is a popular tourist destination.

This is in no way a surprise to me as I've known I needed them for a while now. Hope springs eternal when they're fairly functional and I'm not in too much pain and I can kid myself that everything will be all right. But today and yesterday my right knee is so bad I can barely walk. I spent twelve hours yesterday from after I came home until I had to get up to go back to school today in bed with a heating pad. I wore the brace today and at least I didn't have to stop every five steps. I hate this. It seems like hardly more than a decade ago when I didn't have to deal with this crap. Getting old sucks.

The challenge for today is: In your own space, post self-recs for at least three fanworks that you created. So here they are. One SG-1 and two Farscape. I wrestled with my choices, wanting at one point to go with the Farscape/X-Files crossover or the Farscape/Firefly crossover I wrote and really love, but finally just went with these. They might be a little dark. :)

And Miles To Go
And So You Go
One Red Thread

I do not understand tumblr. All of a sudden, when I right click on a link it opens in tumblr on the right hand side of the screen, but when I left click to open in a new window the link will not open. It's a small thing in the grand scheme of all the fuckery that abounds in my life, but I find it extremely annoying, cuz it really is all the little things I sweat even though I truly try to believe 'don't sweat the small stuff'.

So today's challenge is this: In your own space, promote three communities, challenges, blogs, pages, Twitters, Tumblrs or platforms and explain why you love them. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so. As a public school educator, a secondary social studies teacher, I've had no choice but to become more political as my career progressed and as certain policies became enacted even in view of the fact that historically speaking and in terms of benefits to students these policies were anathema in the classroom. So my choices today are made in that vein since my fandom choices are eclectic and all over the place. So, in now particular order here are my choices.

historychappy
Because he is the first and maybe the best history ideas and resources guy I know and he makes me a better history teacher.
Scott Dworkin
He wrote Proof of Collusion and if you want to keep a running tag on the unfolding drama in Washington and how it affects us, there is no better twitter feed to follow.
Sarah Kendzior
An authority on the rise of authoritarianism and autocrats, Sarah is bright and articulate about what is going on in the body politic and what that means for us. She also hosts a podcast called Gaslit Nation.
George Takei
Just because he is a national treasure.

So the challenge today was to comment to someone you haven't ever interacted with before or introduce yourself to someone you've interacted with and friend/follow them. Afterwards, leave a comment in this post with the equivalent of "I did it!"

So I did it. :)

Ok. I like reading and writing dark. Most of the time. These are all from the Sherlock fandom and fair warning, they are all sad, sadder, saddest, as they all address some form of character death. But there is beauty here as well. Caveat lector.

Alone on the Water

Software Malfunction

Where I Cannot Find You

if nobody speaks of remarkable things

So here they are, in no particular order, the things that give me joy, calm me down or keep me sane, aka My Happy Place:

--A quiet classroom or house.
--That first perfect cup of morning coffee.
--My baby purring.
--Freshly laundered sheets on my bed.
--High/Afternoon tea with my daughter or friends.
--London, NYC, Chicago, San Diego.

And so it's almost finally here, the last day of the year, when everyone's thoughts turn to the possibilities on the horizon. While hope springs eternal, I can't articulate how happy I am to kick this hellish year to the curb. The only damper being that I don't think we're over the worst of the shitshow that 2018 brought in to such sharp focus. I'll continue to try to hope for the best for us and try to prep for the worst. A delicate balancing act I feel far too old to accomplish.

Better Days

So as the old year winds down in all its horrific glory, I'm contemplating the idea once again of New Year Resolutions. Should I just make a batch and watch them all epically fail in the early days, or should I just think about making weekly resolutions that will fail on a similar but smaller scale? Or should I just import a set of teacher resolutions and call it good?

Decisions, decisions, decisions.

Teacher Resolutions