artistalley is a community for convention artists to share event news, ideas, feedback & critiques, manufacturers, etc

allbingo will be running a Flower Fest Bingo throughout the month of April. There are more pre-made cards or you can create your own based on the available prompts.

vforvictoryexchange, a multi-fandom exchange about V-shaped polyamory, is open for sign-ups until April 10th, 10PM EDT.

fandom5k, a multi-fandom gift exchange for fic with a 5,000-word minimum and comics with a 5-page minimum, has opened sign-ups until April 11th, 10:59PM EDT.

bitesizedfandomsex, a multifandom exchange for fandoms you can pick up in eight hours or less, has opened sign-ups until April 11th, 11:59PM EDT.

everythingisfemslashex, a femslash exchange (genderbent characters/ships - both cis and transgender - are welcome too), is accepting nominations until April 12th, 8PM GMT+1 (link will go to the schedule/rules post and has tagset page as well).

seasonsofdrabbles is open for sign-ups until April 12th, 11:59PM EDT. Nominations are still open and will be until sign-ups close as well.

holmestice, a Sherlock Holmes fandom(s) fanworks exchange that runs twice a year, has opened sign-ups for the Summer 2026 round until April 13th.

allbutromance, a multifandom gift exchange focused on all kinds of platonic relationships, is accepting nominations until April 16th, 8PM CEST/UTC+1.

likealighthouse is running april iconathon—an icon prompt fest, where people can leave prompts and others can fill them with icons. The event will run until May 6th.

fancake's theme of the month is: arranged marriage. Click on the banner below to learn more! :)

I didn't quite believe the weather forecast, but yup, it's actually snowing this morning.


$(*$(!@*#&$(*@!#&$(*#&$

“Tradition is not the worship of ashes. It is the preservation of fire.” – Gustav Mahler


“If you want people to really laugh, make it about something they’re really anxious about.” – Norman Lear


“You can’t outwork your body. At a certain point, you have to be honest about your limits. I’ve reached mine.” – Kate Rouch

It’s Friday! *Kermit arms* And it's been ages since I remembered to make a Good News Friday post.

I did a little searching on the New York Times travel section for articles about Greece. I also read some other articles, and discovered that in Italy you can stay in religious guesthouses for as little as 50 euros a night. And even better, one of the requirements is that they ask you to be quiet! I don’t mind a spartan room, in fact I sometimes find it charming. And I don’t mind that some of them have curfews, I'm usually in bed by midnight, and I’d rather not be woken up by drunks coming home late at night. This just opened up a whole new option for me as far as traveling to Europe. More grown up than a youth hostel, but around the same price! I’m going to spend some time this weekend thinking about maybe booking a trip to Rome, or Florence, or Venice and staying at a monastery or nunnery. * bounces *

At the grocery store today a little old man complimented my Artly Fartsy T-shirt and asked me where I bought it?

The SUN is out!

Linkies!

From Messy Nessy Chic’s 13 Things I found on the Internet today comes this fascinating post about Why So Many Control Rooms Were Seafoam Green (one of my favorite colors!)
[Faber Birren] painted his bedroom walls red vermillion to test if it would make him go mad.

Which links to an article about Faber Birren, which is also worth a read. He’s a fascinating character!

Lacking any guidance from previous researchers, we set out to answer the age old question “Where have all the bloody teaspoons gone?”

My nerves are shottttttttttt, ha. Last night I noticed a drip from my freezer, but it seemed fine. A few hours later I went to grab an ice cream sandwich, and it was MUSH. And so was everything else in my freezer. I tested a cup of water from my pitcher in the fridge, which seemed cool enough, but that was not the case this morning. So I had to take the afternoon off, throw out three bags of food, including yesterday's delivery, and put in an ASAP ticket for a new fridge. It is possible that it's something fixable, but honestly--it's from February 1986. It's older than my brother. It has celebrated its 40th birthday. It's time.

But the stress means I haven't eaten a lot today, plus the fact that the food I wanted to eat has been thrown out, and my desk partner called out sick again. So I am solo on desk until 9 and I am super overstimulated and half a beat from bursting into tears. yay.

I had already hit a wall Tuesday afternoon after surprise being on the desk solo for 3 hours during a rainy spring break morning, and would have taken yesterday off if I hadn't had a program. So I was already on edge. I stopped at Walgreens before work to get birthday cards for my dad, coffee to drink at work in the morning, and a frozen dinner, but because I am solo, I don't have a break, so I keep having to sneak back there--to heat it up, now it's cooling down, and then eventually I'll sneak back to eat it.

Last weekend was c2e2, which was fun but a lot. I haven't had the energy or motivation to put together a cosplay for the first time in ten years, but I got great comments on the Rozanov jersey and Read Romance Fight Patriarchy shirts I wore, so that was nice. I also knew walking was going to be a challenge--I've still only walked to work maybe five times in the last 14 months, and the last time I walked at lunch, I went less than a mile and still came back fatigued and sore. But I think I did well--I took Tylenol before going both days, and after we got back on day 2. Instead of walking each aisle and crisscrossing back and forth several times, usually around 6 miles, I only did the aisles once on Friday, 3 miles, and only hit a few specific booths on Saturday. So while I was tired on Sunday, it wasn't egregious.

Not as much cosplay or cosplay that I recognized this year, but I did enjoy seeing a resurgence of Squirrel Girls, and several varieties of Peggy/Captain Carter. I was really surprised to only see a handful of K-Pop Demon Hunters, and there wasn't really a standout fandom of the year. There were several of us in Heated Rivalry related shirts, but no one tried a cosplay. I think Ilya's red flowered shirt would be a fun one, ha.

I did stress buy a fair amount of HR merch, but half of what was there was very anime style. I like my big, hot, muscular hockey players, and don't really want them looking like tiny twinks, so that limited things. But I got some art, a shirt and sweatshirt, some charms to hang on my fandom tree, a coaster, and stickers, plus some non-fandom tea, Robin Buckley perfume, and a Sexy Girls Read notebook, so a pretty great haul overall.

Last week I had a check in with my doctor, where I was going to talk to her about how my meds feel off and my Vyvanse isn't helping like it used to (I think the dose is too high, actually), and we had to reschedule because she was sick. Sad frowny faces. My mood has been low, my energy lower, and it's been a rough few months. The time change did help, at least.

So does DnD! Last week was absolutely AMAZING. We learned a ton of lore about the world and my character--like her mom is at least 2000 years old and her brother was the knight of the main angel in the creation story of our world. And we rescued my best friend!! Which was the mission, but there's still a few days left until the adventure is over. Which could be a few months of playing, ha. I think I will be continuing on after my arc is done--the GM really likes having a character who dives into things and asks blunt questions and doesn't overthink everything, and likes BE specifically. But we also have 9 players now, so I know that that's a lot for them to handle! But it's still so much fun for me, and if it's fun for them then why not, I think.

I'm glad it's been going so well and is so much fun, because it's also the only creativity I currently seem capable of, ha. I really want to write, but the rare times I have the energy/motivation/dopamine to sit at the computer, my mind goes blank. I think I really need a full mental and physical reset, and I'm not sure how or when that will be possible. I hope I can figure it out soon.

And that I have a working fridge sooner rather than later.

It’s been another busy week. Life under our AI overlords moves so much faster than before. Is it Friday yet?

Today I had a couple of meetings, one of which was talking about how to address our horrendous backlog of 1,700 issues in GitHub. One of the team had mentioned wanting to look a little closer at the numbers, and something in my brain kicked off an idea. I went in and looked at how many issues we had open from each year and made a little table. I had to google how to query a range of dates (thank dog for StackOverflow!). I discovered that we had two issues that are eight years old! (those got closed today). And the other thing I thought to throw into my table was when each version of our product was released, at least as far back as the three years I’ve been here.

TL;DR, we can close at least half of our issue backlog as being opened against versions of the code that we don’t support anymore (versions 2.x). We released version 3.0 in 2024, and we released version 3.7 a week or so ago. Technically anything that’s not from 2025 or 2026 is probably against an unsupported version of the code, but we’re starting with the oldest and working our way forward.

I spent time this week closing issues against our Helm charts (which moved to another repository and the Community is owning them now) and against a deprecated client that reached end of life (EOL) last month and has been ripped out of the code. I’ve also been going back and looking at anything tagged as docs to see if I can merge/close or otherwise resolve them. So lots of cleanup work this week and today.

Today I also:
- Submitted Tom's resume for an open position.
- Made my hotel reservation for the weekend in Athens between our Lisbon offsite and our Athens offsite.

***

We tried to put out a patch release at the end of the day yesterday, but had trouble for some reason. Three of us got to work troubleshooting. I’ve had plenty of problems with our automated workflows failing, but even so, it took the three of us about an hour to debug things before we could get the release process to start. I wrote up quick patch release notes (there was only one change) and got those published, then logged off. The release process takes a while to build and publish all the downloads. But when I logged on this morning, apparently the build process failed.

The engineer tried again today, and failed again. The automation knew that it had already created an 3.6.9 release yesterday, so it created a 3.9.10 release today. When he was grumbling about it on Slack, I quipped, “Well, on the bright side we can just declare 3.6.9 "The April Fool's release". ”

He replied, “I love your positivity, Julie!”

And another engineer commented, “haha, Julie that's genius!”

I do manage the occasional good one-liner at work.

***

Too tired to cook tonight, so I order a pizza. All the snow piles are gone (I’ll have to check on Snow Mountain over in the Hannaford parking lot while I’m out running around tomorrow). And I spotted the resident bunny on my way to the car. =)

One day, back when I was in college, I bounced through the door of my dorm, walked through the common room where several of my dorm mates were watching TV. The mood was gloomy, and I quipped, “Who died?” as I crossed through the common room and let myself into my room. Where I turned on the radio and heard that the Space Shuttle Challenger had blown up.

I felt like a complete ass. Still do, decades later.

Today just as I was getting ready to log off for the evening, I took one last check at Slack, and someone had posted that NASA’s Artemis mission to the moon was taking off soon. They posted the link, so I clicked on that and watched the NASA live feed for about 45 minutes while they counted down and ran checks. The NASA talking heads did a great job of providing live commentary and explaining what was going on. Apparently there’s a lot more space junk out there, which makes their take-off windows much smaller than they used to be. (Thanks Elon Musk). I was sort of half-listening while I was planning my day for tomorrow. But when they started the ten minute countdown, I was focused on the life feed.

When the rocket started taking off, I found myself whispering, “Please be OK” over and over and I got more and more anxious as they got closer to the booster separating. Just watching the rocket go from vertical to horizontal brought it all back. That sickening feeling watching the single contrail bloom into a horrible little firework that meant the mission had failed and seven astronauts had died. I didn’t even realize I had PTSD from that, but apparently I do. I was one big ball of anxiety until the second separation and when the module crossed over into outer space. And the comms switched to whatever they use when they're that far from home.

Godspeed to the crew, and I look forward to welcoming them back to Earth in ten days.

I snagged this one from senmut. :)

50 This or Thats

1. Bagels or donuts? Bagels though I love donuts too
2. Bar soap or body wash? Body wash
3. Being afraid or being embarrassed? Neither? I guess embarrassed though I do get second hand embarrassment easily and I hate it
4. Big bash or intimate gathering? Intimate gathering
5. Board games or video games? Board games
( #6-50 )

Blank version if you want to do it too!
<b>50 This or Thats</b> 1. Bagels or donuts? 2. Bar soap or body wash? 3. Being afraid or being embarrassed? 4. Big bash or intimate gathering? 5. Board games or video games? 6. Bridgerton or The Crown? 7. Cardio or weights? 8. Carpet or hardwood? 9. Clue/Cluedo or Monopoly? 10. Cook or do the dishes? 11. Damp socks or a pebble in your shoe? 12. Dragons or unicorns? - 13. Family vacation or solo trip? 14. Fork or spoon? 15. General admission or assigned seats? 16. Give or receive? 17. Hot cocoa or hot cider? 18. Iced tea or hot tea? 19. Italian food or Mexican food? 20. Long car ride or short plane trip? 21. Mountains or beach? 22. Movie candy or popcorn? 23. Musical theater or concert? 24. Nightlight or no light? 25. Ninja attack or pirate attack? 26. Outer space or bottom of the ocean? 27. Painful truth or comforting lie? 28. Pancakes or waffles? 29. Passion or friendship? 30. Phone call or text? 31. Pizza or tacos? 32. Play or concert? 33. Playlists or podcasts? 34. Puzzles or coloring books? 35. Rain or snow? 36. Ramen or pho? 37. River or lake? 38. Roller coaster or Ferris wheel? 39. Roller skates or ice skates? 40. Salt or pepper? 41. Singing in the shower or singing in the car? 42. Skinny fries or thick cut? 43. Sneezing or coughing? 44. Snowboarding or skateboarding? 45. Snowmen or sandcastles? 46. Spicy or mild? 47. Street food or fine dining? 48. Subtitles or dubbed? 49. Wine or beer? 50. Zoo or aquarium?

I snagged this one from queenslayerbee:

GIVE A CHARACTER
and I’ll break their ass down:

How I feel about this character
All the people I ship romantically with this character
My non-romantic OTP for this character
My unpopular opinion about this character
One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

Every now and then I get sucked into some website that sells rich people shit. It's always expensive and frequently fugly. And I always wonder what people are willing to pay so much money to look so bad.

Would you pay $255 for this ugly hat?

(click to embiggen)

If it looks that bad on the model, no way it would be flattering on my body.

I woke up to the sound of rain this morning. It’s SO hard to get up when it’s a perfect day to just stay in bed.

***

This whole month has been a blur, and being off Facebook has made it hard to keep track of when things are happening. I didn’t even realize Saint Patrick’s Day had happened until a couple of days afterwards. And while I would have liked to have gone to the No Thrones, No Crowns, No Kings protest last weekend, it still snuck up on me, even though I’d had it on my calendar. I was tired, and temps didn’t get out of the 30s, so I’m not exactly sad that I missed freezing my buns off and had a nap instead.

***

I discovered through Pinterest that ashtrays are a thing again. Urban Outfitters has more than twenty designs for sale. I’m not sure this is progress. I don’t care if it’s tobacco or marijuana, pulling smoke into your lungs isn’t good for your body.

(Click to embiggen)
***

Just because I know that guy_tod has a thing for Madame X, Messy Nessy Chic posted recently about other portraits of Madame X.

***

I gave up Facebook for Lent. Which ends this Saturday. While I’m pretty sure I’m not going to re-install Facebook on my phone, I’m still undecided about how much time I’ll allow myself to fart around on the site on my laptop. We’ll see. At the moment, now that we’re back on Daylight Savings Time, I have a bit more energy at the end of the day, and I’d like to try to Get Some Shit Done.

It was a very lazy weekend, as I was still trying to catch up on hydration and sleep from last weekend at Military Through the Ages down in Jamestown. Naps happened, as well as a call to the 'rents. I needed to let my parents know that with a two week business trip on the horizon at the end of April, I wasn't going to have the energy to make a visit during April. We've put that off for now. No idea when I'm going to visit, but it will happen at some point this year.

I’ve not only drunk a lot of fluids last week, but I ate my way through almost an entire jar of bread and butter pickles. I figured I was caught up on rehydration when they stopped tasting so damned delicious and just started tasting like tasty pickles again. =P

I've recently finished re-reading Killers of a Certain Age, and the sequel Kills Well With Others. Checking for other books by the same author (Deanna Raybourn) I saw that she also wrote the Veronica Speedwell books. I’ve had a copy of A Curious Beginning on my To Be Read pile since a friend strongly recommended the series to me. So I read that this weekend. Unfortunately, I can’t stand the main character. In fact, the only character that I really liked in the whole book was the corpse, and they made their exit around page 57 which meant getting through the rest of the book was a slog. I kept hoping things would improve, but alas. I will not be reading any more of that particular series. But she does have another mystery series, I might give that one a try and see if I like that heroine better.

Another book that I read over the weekend was recommended by a former coworker, it’s The Blazekeeper of Bowmore House, and it’s a reimagining of the Cinderella story. I feel like there are bits and pieces of the Live Action Disney movie (Cinders meets Prince Charming in the woods and he doesn’t tell her he’s the prince) as well as bits and pieces of Ever After (there’s a sort of mustache twirling villain who wants to marry Cinders) as well as a lot of the author’s own imagination. I enjoyed it, but maybe that’s because instead of mice, her best friend is an ancient Tom cat named Henry. But probably I liked it because our Cinderella is more spunky than the usual droopy Disney Princess who doesn’t have a whole lot of agency other than being treated badly and then falling in love.

When I first started my "deep dive" into all things Star Wars, "Rebels" was big white space on my radar. At the first glance, none of the main characters was familiar, and while I liked what I had seen from "Clone Wars" at that point, I was quite unsure if another animated series would live up to my (limited at that time) expectations XD Suffice to say that it did, mostly by delivering one of my all-time favorite tropes, "found family", pretty much from the get-go. Over the course of the four seasons, we not only get to know the entire team a lot better, we also see the growing rebellion against the Empire coming to life, and meet familiar faces, such as Mon Mothma, Princess Leia, Bail Organa, or, in one of the best episodes of the entire series, Obi-Wan Kenobi. This set was made for the inaugural Round 1 of free20in20. Enjoy!

( Rebellions are based on hope... )


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latam is a community for people to come together to talk about Latin American music, films, food, culture, fandom, etc. The official languages of the community are Spanish, Portuguese and English.

vforvictoryexchange, a multi-fandom exchange about V-shaped polyamory ships, is open for nominations until March 27th, 10PM Eastern.

bitesizedfandomsex, an exchange for fandoms whose canons can be read, watched, played, or otherwise experienced in 8 or fewer hours, is accepting nominations until March 28th, 11:59PM Eastern.

narniaexchange, a community/exchange based on the Chronicles of Narnia books/movies is running a adult oriented prompt fest on AO3. Prompting is open and will close on March 30th.

fangfrenzyficexchange, a vampire themed (canon and AUs of non-vampire fandoms) fic exchange, is open for sign-ups until March 31st, 10AM Eastern.

Sunset Archive, a site using AO3's code dedicated to F/F, NB/F and NB/NB fanworks, is running its inaugural prompt meme. Prompting will close on March 31st but fills are open indefinitely.

fandom5k, a multi-fandom gift exchange for fic with a 5,000-word minimum and comics with a 5-page minimum, is accepting nominations until April 1st. It will then close temporarily and reopen when sign-ups do.

seasons_of_fandom, a multifandom community where you join a team and participate in challenges to earn your team points, is starting a new round on April 4th! Find out more info and sign up HERE. (And let them know I sent you if you do!)

seasonalremix, a quarterly, trope-based multifandom event focused on remixing an already existing work, has opened sign-ups for its Spring 2026 Round until April 11th, 11:59PM GMT.

The only problem with yesterday's power outage napping was that was a couple of hours that I wasn't working on getting rehyrated from last weekend. I've been drinking like a drinking thing, and while my pee is an appropriately light shade, my joints still feel like they want to be better lubricated. It's been a while since I've done a blazing hot two day event. Apparently faire hangover gets worse when you're older?

Hail Hydrate!