Oo, take care of yourself, Sara. I've been getting some wicked ones myself of late.

And if you find others that work and are SFW, feel free to add them in a reply.

Okay, I have tested a few of these on here and they seem to work. The list is taken from the other site so, needless to say, has been edited. In fact, I am not sure if the NSFW ones do work here. The one I tried did not.

When using these, leave off the square brackets and remove any spaces.

smile [ : ) ] →

big grin [ : D ] →

cool [ 8 - ) ] →

wink [ : wink : ] →

silly [ : p ] →

lol [ : lol : ] →

wave [ : wave : ] →

loon [ : loon : ] →

kiss [ : kiss : ] →

redface [ : oops : ] →

worship [ : worship : ]→

sad [ : ( ] →

cry [ : ' ( ]→

confused [ : ? ] →

surprised [ : o ] →

horror [ D : < ] →

mad [ : x ] →

blink [ : blink : ] →

banghead [ : banghead : ] →

dunno [ : dunno : ] →

innocent [ : whistling : ] →

rolleyes [ : roll : ] →

neutral [ : | ] →

sleep [ : sleep : ] →

evil [ : evil : ] →

yes [ : yes : ] →

heart [ < 3 ] →

brokenheart [ : broken : ] →

present [ : present : ] →

wine [ : wine : ] →

drinkies [ : drinkies : ] →

coffee [ : coffee : ] →

cake [ : cake : ] →

ok [ : ok : ] →

Pulling out the iced tea. Just cut the grass and pruned a couple trees. Still have our major fall pruning job to look forward to (probably save that until Canadian Thanksgiving in October).

I am ... pooped.

Okay, who invited the lizards?

Coffee is on, tea kettle is boiling, and there's a nice bowl of ... um ... lizard chow (meaning bugs, I think) out for the ... um ... guests.

Quote by WriterGirl

 I swear they are gonna take over the world!!! Everywhere!!! 

I'll take a rocket and a planet. * starts playing with them pretending the rocket is flying to the planet *

Yeah, I can still be a space-obsessed kid at times.

So if we don't hear from you in a week, we can just assume you were swallowed by a sandworm?

I have a draft of my new story finished to the extent that I reached the end of what I had planned. It is likely going to need a lot of work before it can go anywhere. Thought it might be a bit long but it is shorter than I expected (though I need to add some bits that got missed on the first run).

The singer for both of these posts is Beatrice Florea and her channel is called Shut Up and Kiss Me. These have to be some of the best covers of Nightwish songs I have come across.

Just finished Hammers on Bone by Cassandra Khaw. A grim, hard-hitting and hard-boiled cosmic horror novella.

Oo, tiny lizards. Lizards are one of my favorite things about travelling South. Ontario literally has, I think, one very rare native lizard so seeing skinks and anoles and iguanas and such on my travels is a real treat.

Had a nice bike ride this morning. Weather looks good for tomorrow so may get another in this weekend.

Putting on a fresh pot of coffee and getting a pot of tea going.

Quote by Survivor

Happy National Dance Day

Quote by Courgette

Recently I discovered some books on Mythology on my boss's bookshelf. The Greek Myths looked interesting and they are.

Tom Hardy? Still a bit older than Craig was when he picked up the key to the Aston, though. Craig was 38 when he took on the role and Hardy is 45. And, interestingly, Henry Cavill turns 38 next year. Or might they want to go even younger. A wet behind the ears Bond.

Quote by verbal

No Talia Friday. I'm gonna teach the cats to hang glide off the back balcony. They need some excitement in their lives.

Jeff: Oh, no reason, just practicing its landing maneuvers.

Talia: Jeff, we need to talk.

And Kimmi, sorry to hear about your mother. Dad never got aggressive with his dementia. Just kind of withered away.

Summer's back, but apparently not for long. 30C and a bit muggy today, but supposed to cool off over the weekend and coming week.

Canadian election is next Tuesday and it's looking a horse race. I've voted already (mail-in ballot, no f-ing way I am going to a polling station right now). Could be an exciting one, with our two largest parties neck and neck in the polls.

Oh God, now I see what Larry means. On desktop, we are getting the other toolbar at the top. That needs to be fixed pronto. I'll PM Molly and Maggie so they can chase after the devs.

EDIT: Seems to have been fixed as I was posting that.

Morning coffee and tea are up. How's things? Another weekend looms.

 I have a couple small incidents like that but that was right after the upgrade on the other site so I kind of figured it was a transient thing since I was still going back and forth at the time. Have not seen it since leaving the other site.

Quote by verbal

Timothy Elephant.

🤣

Quote by Ping

But dude, dude… Do hyper-boiled sea monkeys have nipples?

Good morning. Another day, another dollar. Of course, at that rate I'll be able to afford lunch the middle of the next week. 🤣

Coffee is on, kettle is boiling. The weather folks up here are threatening us with an early, severe winter so I'll lay in a good stock of hot chocolate and mini-marshmallows to go with it.

Still nice now, though. Not even too hot anymore.

Go for it!

Tim Horton's has their smile cookies event on right now. It's a charity thing they do. I haven't had one this year but apparently they have gone downhill (as has Tim Horton's in general, sadly).

But here, we have Sara's cookies, which are guaranteed to put a smile on your face, even when they don't have smiles on theirs.😊 And they will always be perfect cookies.👌

Quote by verbal

Coffee and ten thousand cookies please. 

Quote by Mendalla

So we have threads on why people read and how people find stuff to read, but what do you read?

Fiction or non (or a mix)?

Particular genres?

Any specific themes or subjects that engage you?

And do your preferences in reading show through in your writing?

And anything else you would like to say about your preferences in reading material.

I do read both fiction and non-fiction.

For fiction, I lean to fantasy, horror, and sf, but have also been known to enjoy spy thrillers (went through a spy-fi phase in my teens) and some contemporary fiction (e.g. huge fan of the late Canadian author Robertson Davies, though he did hew strongly into magic realism in his later work).

For non-fiction, I tend to science (physics, astronomy, and paleontology in particular), philosophy, and religion. As a former classics student, I used to read a lot of ancient history and archaeology at one time but haven't read much of that recently. Again, with odd forays into other stuff that catches my interest.

For themes, I like anything that gets me thinking about the world, how it works, how we exist in it. And magic. I love imagining weird and wild things beyond what I know is possible. In my fantasy, I love a feeling that magic is happening, which leans me more to someone like Neil Gaiman than, say, George RR Martin. There's a really magical feel in Gaiman's work that kind of gets lost in deep, detailed world-building like Martin's.

Of course, if you have surveyed my writing on here, you'll know that my taste in reading is very much influential on what I write.

Quote by Ping

I've been listening to Anette Olzon's new solo album Strong of late. Some good symphonic metal from the lead singer of The Dark Element (and former lead of Nightwish).

Good morning!! Time to get the coffee going and kettle boiling. Tea of the day is Cream of Earl Grey (Earl Grey with vanilla and cream flavours) but there's always a selection of bags and loose leaf for you to choose from.

Meditating on my new story. It's a fantasy adventure and the protagonists are a male and a female and are both straight but so far, I have not really injected a romantic or sexual element and I am not sure I want to. At the same time, it might create some additional character development opportunities. May shake itself out as I write but it is kind of bugging me.