Unfortunately, I am not always so fortunate.

You can't get everything perfect.

Wind - Wild (because we apes are hard to tame 😜)

Good morning, StoriesSpace! How's things? Kind of a grey day here but I am stuck in the office with no outside view anyhow so who cares what it is like outside.

Coffee is a fine Blue Mountain, teas are English Breakfast and Lemon. Iced tea is replenished and soda stocks checked.

Have a nice one!

Quote by verbal
Bummed about the Artemis mission being scrubbed. My thoughts on Mr. Mush aside, I was very psyched to see us go to the moon. I hope they are able to lift off soon.

Artemis has nothing to do with Musk. The SLS, the booster for Artemis, is a purely NASA launch vehicle and has a lot of space shuttle DNA in it (e.g. the solid rocket motors are ones actually used on shuttle flights). Though I suspect that given the glacial pace that development of the SLS has taken, Musk might still beat them.

Coffee is brewing and there's some Irish Breakfast and Earl Grey in the teapots. Iced tea is refreshed as are stock of lemon and sugar for those what like to flavour their tea.

Keep jotting down notes for a sequel to The Chronicle of Tana but haven't got things fleshed out yet. It'll be a "next generation" story set two or even three decades down the line with Tana's daughter (mild spoiler for where Tana is at in life as of the end of the Chronicles) as the main protagonist.

Another classic from that era. This song made it onto my mental soundtrack for The Healer's Secret, playing as Tana watches her father's army and sword crumble to dust. Again, this is one where I lean into the Tarja version, though current lead singer Floor Jansen sings it beautifully as well.

Been listening to and reviewing the early Nightwish albums (links can be found in Inspirations). This song, from their second album Oceanborn, one of their finest from that era or ever. Vocalist is original lead singer Tarja Turunen, who is my preferred voice for this song.

Coffee is on and teapots are filled to the tippy-top with Earl Grey and Irish Breakfast. Iced tea is fresh in the fridge, too.

Good day. Weather is a bit meh today, but weekend is looking nice, if a bit steamy.

Been listening to and reviewing the early albums of Finnish symphonic metal band Nightwish. I got into them in 2019-20 and have never really gone back to listen to their early work. The band released its first album in 1997. Writing these reviews has been kind of a fun break from fiction.

https://floorworld.floorjansen.com/c/nightwish/ape-fires-up-his-time-machine-and

https://floorworld.floorjansen.com/c/nightwish/ape-was-not-born-on-the-ocean

Coffee is brewed for the coffee crowd. Teas are English Breakfast and Peach (yes, my tea shop of choice has that). Iced tea is also peach.

Mulling over returning to Tana's world. New lead character and different location (though there would be a visit to Olsham). Not sure, yet, if that's where I will go, though.

And in a rather surprising development, the owner of a web forum in France approached me for permission to translate The Chronicles of Tana the Healer for his site. We are both members on the support site for Xenforo, forum software that I use to run the site Wondercafe2, and I put links to my fiction in my sig there from time to time. He read and like the chronicles. Permission has been granted and chapter 1 is done and up. I knew I had something good with Tana but this was unexpected. C'est fantastique!

Update: The French gentleman repurposed his site and domain and no longer has the French copies of my stories online since they don't fit his current site.

Quote by gillianleeza
Tomorrow I am picking up a half bushel of peaches at the farmer's market.

Yum! My favorite stone fruit and one of my favorite fruits period.

Good evening! Nice day here finally. Back to late day showers again tomorrow but only a 30% probability so may not happen.

Quote by AnnaMayZing

Welcome to Jukka Koskinen, the now official bass player with Nightwish. Marko was a hard act to follow.

He took Marko's place whilst they toured, but now he is an official band member.

Here he is, at the Pinkpop festival in the Netherlands, June 2022.

I watched their shows at Hellfest and Deichbrand on livestream (saw Pinkpop, too, but not live) and Jukka was fantastic. Really working well with the rest of the band now. He did sing backup as well as playing bass in Wintersun so him joining Troy on male vocals is not impossible.

Clarification of rules helps game.

Lark - Dark (light just burnt out)

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand, good morning!!!

Got a nice Ethiopian dark roast in the coffee pot, English breakfast and Lemon in the teapots, fresh iced tea and lemonade in the fridge.

Nice weather here after a couple dicey days. At least the yard and plants got a good watering.

I am completely at sea as to what to write next. I have a vague idea for a space opera-ish sf story but still not sure where to go with it. And I'm toying with a couple short pieces for (redacted) but they are unlikely to go anywhere. Really, it's not writer's block, it's an imagination block. Ideas just aren't taking root and growing the way they should.

Tetley Orange Peko

Enough words to express ourselves.

Welp, this should be interesting. A guy on one of the other sites I am on (the support site for the software I use to run Wondercafe2) wants to translate The Chronicles of Tana the Healer into French and post the French versions on his site. I gave permission. What is there to lose? He'll link to the originals on here for people who want the English and I get more readership en francais. And it will be kind of cool to have my writing in another language.

Grabs a lion and a polar bear in honour of absent (from here at least) friends.

Not listening per se, but this song by Within Temptation is earworming me something fierce.

Luck - Lack (something is missing here)

Elizabeth will get it right.

Quote by gillianleeza
I won't go into our crawl space for that reason.

The first place I actually owned (vs. rentals), a tiny early twentieth-century townhouse, had a crawlspace under the original part but had a small basement under the kitchen (a later addition/renovation) that was a utility room for the furnace and water heater. It was like the room where some redneck serial killer keeps his victims in a B-movie thriller. Even accessed by a semi-hidden trap door in the dining nook of the kitchen. Creepy as hell but somehow I have never got around to using it in a story.

Rain here, too, for the past 36 hours or so. Supposed to end this evening and be sunny starting tomorrow.

Coffee is in the pot, teapots have Red Rose and Earl Grey, iced tea is in the fridge.

Scarfing a couple cookies and pouring myself a tea. Later, alligators!

Link - Lick (a lollipop)

Rank - Rink (He shoots! He scores!)

Disastrous plans led to devastation.

I have been married 29 years as of tomorrow. So that.

Quote by Mendalla

History, actually. I am reading The Perdiccas Years by Tristan Hughes, which deals with the aftermath of the death of Alexander the Great. It's a period that even my classics degree kind of glossed over. Alexander dies (mumble mumble) presto, Hellenistic kingdoms! But there's actually tons of great stories in the period from 323BCE (his death) and 275BCE when the familiar Hellenistic kingdoms were finally established. This only deals with first 3 years post-Alexander, when the focus was his general Perdiccas trying to hold the empire together. I hope he plans to do this as a series eventually.

And how did I find it? Hughes hosts the History Hit podcast The Ancients and he, not surprisingly, did an episode on the last days of Alexander and the first days after his death in conjunction with the book's launch.

Finished this and it really is an excellent piece of history writing. Keeps the academic discussion and debate to the end notes and focusses on telling the story of our current understanding of how events unfolded after Alexander's death. Worth a read if you're into ancient history.

Currently, I am reading a classic webcomic series called Questionable Content. Does a great job of being all about sex and relationships while keeping things to a PG-13 (soft R at worst) level. No onscreen sex, minimal nudity, some profanity. And the dialogue is hilarious. Not necessarily "realistic" but hilarious. My full review is in the "what are you reading" thread on Wondercafe2.ca:

https://www.wondercafe2.ca/threads/what-are-you-reading.583/post-436309

Not sure if I will make it all way through QC or not. It's long (started in 2003 and still producing new strips).

Bunk - Bank (Yay, money!)

Sale can mean lower price.