Another teleporting spider. And flump.

[byslantedlight]

Oooh - and why is there a yellow box around my posting window? What does that mean? I don't think I remember seeing it before... or did I just always take the yellow box for granted? Surely not...

Just back from lunch and noticed that there was a spider playing on her web by the window, and was thinking about how they're everywhere just now (stretched across the porch in front of the front door last night, dangling from a thread in front of the lift here at work as I was about to step out onto my floor this morning, all over the rubbish and recycling wheelie bins, wandering around the tomato plants etc etc) and just generally gazing at her as she went about her web-like business when... she was suddenly gone. As in - she didn't go up the web, she didn't go down the web, she didn't float forwards or backwards on the thread, just... suddenly there was no spider there. While I was watching it. So I've either just encountered a jump in the Matrix, am having the DTs in reverse, or... we're back to the whole teleporting spider thing again. I know, once just happens, twice is an accident... it's not meaningful until I've seen three teleporting spiders, but... Eep!

Otherwise... today is flumpy! It's all grey and wet, but instead of enjoying it and feeling all cosy-inside, I'm just feeling... flumpy. And my flist is sooooo quiet! Everything's quiet and standing still and quiet... shhhh... Is anyone out there? Doing fabulous things? Reading fabulous fic, maybe? Watching fabulous telly? Anyone...?

Oh, but happy Equinox - apparently today is the first official day of Autumn...

And ohmigod, weirdness! I just copied this to paste here: Today, the Sun crosses the celestial equator heading south at 03:09 and then glanced at my computer clock and... it's 13.09! Eeeeep! Okay, actually NASA probably meant 24-hour clock time, and even if they didn't there's still two hours to go, but... heart-jump! Well, it's better than flump, anyway... *g*

Comments

[solosundance.livejournal.com]

There are a lot of spiders aren't there? Teleporting all over the garden. Pretty, patterny brown ones. Just so long as they stay out there flapping about on their webs and don't teleport in here. Because that would make me cross.

:)

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Yes! Pretty patterny brown ones! I cleared one away last night that was building a very nice web all across the front door again, and you know what - she just came back and did it all over again overnight, so that I nearly walked into it this morning as well. Luckily they're pretty patterny brown ones with big bellies, so that you can see them...

[heliophile-oxon.livejournal.com]

Noooooooooooooooo I don't want it to be autumn!!!!! ::sobs::

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Oh but it has to be autumn so that we can have pretty leaves and frosty mornings and cosy soups and Halloween and Bonfire Night and Christmas and Spring and then Summer again! Chin up, chuck!

[siskiou.livejournal.com]

The moon was beautiful here last night, with lovely clouds being blown past it, and I tried to take a picture.
Didn't come out, of course, since we don't have a tripod, and the camera is just the little one I bought in Glasgow.

Not doing anything special, apart from work, work, work. And stupid staff meetings that get announced the day before they happen and require reading several chapters of a book: yet another "new and improved" classroom management scheme. We seem to try a new one every school year, and they all talk about how important consistency is! :D.

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Stupid work, work, work, with stupid new and improved management every single sodding year. They do that with schools over here too - and talk about how important consistency is... Stoopid managers...

[constant-muse.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad you posted about the equinox - I would miss it if you didn't. The moonlit nights have been wonderful recently. Bring on autumn!

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

I like Autumn too, and oh, moonlight... Though my landlady's decided that we must keep the porch light on overnight now, to deter burglars (Ha - it just gives them light to see by...) so I can see sod all out my window now - might as well be living in town... *grumps*

But yeay posting about the equinox - I would normally have posted on the 21st actually, when it all kicks off, I only remembered cos I'd gone looking for pretty pics over at NASA...

Spiders and a question

[beauregard.livejournal.com]

I live on fifteenth floor of an apartment and every fall my window is covered with huge spiders just hanging there waiting. I always wondered why they appeared so late in the year when it is already practically cold. Well this summer the building underwent maintenance and all the grout was removed, replaced and repainted and my visitors have not appeared..I actually find I miss them, though when they are moving towards something squirming in the web and start to nosh I look away. Squeamish..who me.

As for my question is about the newsletter. I save all the stories that are posted and so frequently when I click on something I am taken to someones LJ page with the request that I log in....I have no password to those sites and so wonder how to access those particular stories. My LJ is totally private...I use it as a personal journal so I cannot/will not open a link to mine in order to access someone elses. Is it necessary to have a link, or how do you get the log on information for those particular sites where people expect you to come for their stories.
Karen-Leigh

PS - I loved the Book Me site, I have read only five on your list.

Re: Spiders and a question

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

Hello - I've not seen you around for ages! Hope your world is happy... *g*

Oh how fun about your spiders - and very Halloween, too... Interesting about the grouting though - I wonder if that was where they were able to lay eggs each year, and build their little colony... Mind you, we seem to have far fewer spiders this year, my post above notwithstanding. My landlady put conkers in the corners of the rooms to keep them out, but I don't really think that's why! (There were fewer before she did that, too... *g*)

As for the newsletter, I don't organise or run it or anything, so I can only give you a general livejournal sort of answer... To access "locked" posts on livejournal, you need to be "friended" to them. I see what you mean about not friending people so that they can't see your private posts, but there is a way around that... *g*

What I do, when I make personal posts, is to set their security to "Private" - that way, no one except me will ever see them, whether they're my friends or not. You should be able to set a default security level for all your posts to "private" (somewhere under your Lj Settings page), and then unless you change it when you're making a specific post no one will ever see them - but you'll be able to read the posts of people who've friended you (which they'll usually do if you friend them first *g*).

Locked journals are a shame, I think - when they're Pros-y posts I mean, not when someone's using lj for personal things to start with! - but I must admit that I had to lock mine a while ago when it was linked to on a website of an actual friend of MS's (eep!) He meant well (it was because I'd transcribed a radio interview MS did about Feng Shui) but I didn't think most of his readers would appreciate the rest of my lj! Anyway, I'm gradually unlocking everything, but there are still lots of locked Pros-y posts here, I'm afraid. And lots of people seem to lock their ljs as a matter of course, these days, which seems strange to me...

So basically... if you set your own lj posts to "private" security and then either just friend, or ask the people if you can friend them so that you can read their story, then I think most people will be friendly enough to let you in!

Stories posted to the communities are usually unlocked though - at least to Safehouse, and Discoveredinalj, and CI5hq. I think people at Teaandswissroll tend to lock things up more...

If there are particular stories you're looking for, I could check to see if there's an open post to them in one of the other comms, or somewhere if you like?

The Book Me post was fab - lots of really good recs! I've just been loving the Temeraire books because of the Book Me post, and I probably wouldn't have read them otherwise! I can recommend them, if they're not ones that you've read... *g* (Or my review/recommendation is here *g*)

Just in case

[beauregard.livejournal.com]

Not sure answering lj-notify will go through...here is my reply:
Thanks for the info, not sure that I will follow the directions, I feel safe with my LJ just as it is so I guess I shall do without and hope they are posted separately or archived.
The specific stories that prompted my question were ILWP stories:
After Mayli
One Under
Halloween Drabble
Contradiction
Mind the Gap
A Stirring of Moths


Thousands of books in my library I am trying to read my way through them again. I joined a book club in my apartment building. Not interested in new fiction. I go on binges for things...for example last month I stopped reading my vampire fic because I read my way through most of them and started my A Rice's but by the time I finished The Body Thief I was out of patience and didn't want to go on. I chose one of my fluffy mysteries and read my way through the 8 I had by 1 author and checked the last for pub date and realized it was years ago so I went to Abebooks.com to check for more in the series and lo and behold..bought them. I had 6 or 7 series by authors and I read them and bought new ones for each. When all the mystery books were read, I stood in the library and wondered...what am I in the mood for now. I moved on to The Dresden series by Jim Butcher and his wizard stories and ended up buying his last 2 novels and made a note for when the next new one was coming out. Then I started reading Lewis Grizzard's books (17 of his collected columns and novels) with titles like They Tore My Heart Out and Stomped that Sucker Flat and Elvis is Dead and I Don't Feel So Good Myself. Then I read Great Encyclopedia of Faeries (which went with all of Laurell K. Hamilton's Meredith Gentry-Sidhe princess books. From there I jumped back to columnist collections of Florence King (Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady)and Molly Ivins (You Got to Dance with Them What Brung You) wallowing in US politics. Then I took a breather and read my favourite zine of all time (I've reread it twice a year for ten years) The Gift of An Enemy by Sylvia in X-Files.

Joined this book club and worried. I was relieved when they didn't choose a single book for us all to read. They gave us a category. Ghosts, hauntings or paranormal..who knew how few of those I had. I read many of them but generally horror books are not keepers.

I got lucky. Tanya Huff a Toronto writer I met in the 70's who was published in the 90's was the author of the Blood Ties books from which they made a one season TV series. There were 5 Blood books and then she spun them off into a 2nd series with 2 of the characters from the 1st. The second series only had three books and the second one had ghosts so I did my book report (at least that is what it felt like) on it but I read the three books in order before the meeting. This time they chose a mystery theme and I chose Georgette Heyer's Envious Casca with an X-mas theme. My reading is such a grasshopper thing and I am so locked into what I am in the mood for at any particular time and I just don't buy contemporary fiction anymore (unless it is a book by an author whose books I already own, or it is related to a tv show I am enamored of (like Kathy Reich's Bones books or Never Let Her Go the Anne Rule book made into a tv movie with Mark Hamon of NCIS and Paul Michael Glaser of Starsky & Hutch...I was 2 for 2 on that one). Connection...it is all about connections. While I was browsing the mystery section of my favourite second hand store to see if I could find a specific author's latest, I saw a title that involved a book store...anything with Book in the title gets my attention and eeeek I had picked myself up another author to collect. She had 12 books in her series. Talk about bucks flying south like Canada Geese.

Tonight is my diet group meeting, I am reading Life is a Bitch and Then You Diet. Which is soooooo true and funny. It is wonderful to see my underlinings from fifteen years ago and what answers I gave to the questions and to see how my mindset has changed over the years.

Jeez, once I get started on books and reading..my mind runs away with itself.

Karen-Leigh