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River's an active dreamer and often startles herself awake with growling or hissing, but this is the first time I've seen her bush out her tail in her sleep. (My reaching for the phone woke her.) No idea if it was a scary dream or an exciting one; awake, she puffs up for both.

A dilute tortoiseshell cat curled up in a sleepy ball on a pillow. Her tail is partially floofed.

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It's River's gotcha day! Eight years since I met her at the shelter, where the staff kept letting her out to run around because she was hanging off the cage door yelling her head off. Now she just catapults herself up doorframes and the various climbing towers, when she's not stealing my chair.

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The bubble 'n squeak turned out looking like a dog's breakfast, but it's not how it looks that counts, now is it? (It's delicious.) And the honey-bacon-cheddar cornbread worked out just fine too. 🍜

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Decades of World of Darkness... mostly Werewolf (Bastet and Corax in particular). But if I'm picking just one of the systems as a favorite, it is hands down Changeling the Lost. It just really captures *Fae*. In the "It will twist your identity and drive you mad" sort of way.

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A carved bog oak throne and my favorite tree at Brigit's Garden.

A tree of many scattered branches in the middle of a greenery-covered meadow.

A throne carved out of bog oak - fallen oak that soaked for many years in a peat bog, becoming extremely dark and hard - resting on a dais of arranged stones against a backdrop of grassy meadow and trees.

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The Gap of Dunloe, with stunning cloudshadows.

A low, rolling landscape of grass and rock, beneath a cloudy sky with a hazy of rainbow hue to it. Cloudshadows cut great swathes across the ground, with sun between.

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Inis Tuaisceart, the Sleeping Giant, most northerly of the Blasket Islands.

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A Dingle sea portal, hollowed out by the constant waves.

A distant view down a grassy hillside of a rocky outcrop just at the edge of a whorled whitewater sea. Part of the stone has worn away into a hole with a narrow bridge of rock connecting it back, the water visible through it.

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Inch Strand, with a cloud-shrouded view of the Blasket islands. The wind was so strong while we were there that it picked up streamers of sand and snaked them down the beach.

Horizon view of a broad, sleek sand beach beyond a grassy verge. Whitecapped ocean beneath a rolling clouded sky separates the sand from a distant view of hazy islands, the Blaskets.

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A recently-cut peat bog, with oblong chunks of compacted peat tumbled like the stones of a brick road after an earthquake.

A bog chopped into tumbled, brick-shaped chunks of compacted peat.

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Torc waterfall. Everything was mist-hazed and damp and green.

View directly up a small, rocky-bedded whitewater stream pouring down between thick brush, to bend just at the point of perspective and head off to the right.

A steep waterfall pouring down a rocky hillside, surrounded by brush, vanishing out of view to the right. A rough stone staircase leads upward to the left. Everything is hazy from the falls spume.

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Kenmare stone circle. What I remember most of this one is that the entire area was swarming with stunning little blue dragonflies. My camera was not up to the task of capturing them.

A lush, grassy meadow, with weathered chunks of grey stone protruding in a circle around a larger, slightly flatter stone in the center.

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Looking—very, very carefully—over the edge of the cliff on which Dun Aengus is perched.

A precipitous drop down a cliffside made of many layered, lichened flat slabs of stone, to a distant, cerulean-blue sea frothed with spume.

Caligan Blue @caliganblue.com · 20/09/2026

Random travel memories. What surprised me most about Poulnabrone was how small it actually is. I'd only seen pictures without scale and envisioned something like Stonehenge, but it's only around the height of a tall person.

Poulnabrone, an Irish stone dolmen structure in the Burren. One very large flat slab of stone rests on narrow walls constructed of other upright slabs, surrounded by a landscape like a puzzle of flat rocks filled in with grassy grout.

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And part troix: Barley chicken vegetable soup. Mirepoix, extra carrots, garlic, tomatoes, yellow squash, turnips, corn, basil, pearled barley, chicken, Florida seasoned pepper, oregano, cracked rosemary, bay, chicken powder. I should use barley more, I love the texture.

Close view of a pot full of chicken vegetable soup, with loads of visible chunks of carrot, turnip, yellow squash, barley, chicken, fresh basil, all in a light broth. A ladle lifts a big scoop of the chunks into view.

Caligan Blue @caliganblue.com · 20/09/2026

Weekend cooking part deux: Hungarian mushroom soup. One of my all-time favorites. Aside from needing a touch of salt (I suspect the recipe expects salted chicken broth), I don't mess with this one at all. www.allrecipes.com/recipe/17897...

Close view of a Dutch oven full of creamy mushroom soup, with visible slices of sauteed mushroom, bits of onion, flecks of dill, and chopped parsley. Some of the mushroom chunks are lifted into view on a soup spoon.

Caligan Blue @caliganblue.com · 19/09/2026

I'll try almost anything once. And y'know what? I'd eat it again. Although next time I'll try with bread-and-butter pickles. Dill were a nice offset to the sweetened peanut butter, but I think sweet pickles would work nicely with the non-sweetened PB I usually get.

A peanut butter and dill pickle sandwich; slices of dill pickle layered on peanut butter on a split slice of toasted multigrain bread.

Caligan Blue @caliganblue.com · 19/09/2026

Part 1 of the great weekend cooking extravaganza. (We'll see how much of it I actually get through.) Broccoli-cheddar soup. To-recipe, with Tipperary Irish cheddar. www.recipetineats.com/broccoli-and...

Dutch oven full of a thick, creamy soup dotted with chunks of potato and broccoli, with a ladle full lifted a bit above the surface to show off the bits.

Sleeping wrapped around the Kibble button so every few minutes she can see if my No has miraculously turned into a Yes.

A fuzzy black and white cat lies on a dashboard of FluentPet talking buttons, with her chin and forepaw bracketing her favorite food button.

Dinner. Homemade pozole rojo garnished with sour cream, scallions, peanuts, and a spoonful of chili crisp.

A bowl full of rich red-brown soup, dotted and shimmering with chili crisp. A spoon lifts up some of the contents to view: shredded pork, hominy, sliced scallions, peanuts, and sour cream.

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There are lots of brands of the stuff, but this is the one that I will just open and stop to smell for a while. Absolutely addictive.

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Caligan Blue @caliganblue.com · 15/09/2026

Holy cow, the *color* on this. Photo does not do it justice, this is the most gloriously dark ruby watermelon I've gotten in years. Evidentiary point in favor of "big yellow spot" criteria. Flavor's not quite as stunning but also best in recent memory. Yay!

"Seedless" spherical watermelon split in half on a cutting board to display the gorgeous ruby-red interior, marked with pretty swirls of even darker red and flecks of small dark and light seeds.

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This fuzzy goof. I don't think she's ever going to fully get over the trauma from her bout of FIP. She will randomly decide me putting on outdoor clothes means VET, and I turn around to find her burying herself under the bed pillows in a panic, or squashed in her Secret Spot (and hissing at me).

A dilute tortoiseshell cat sits regally upright on a desk, looking casually unconcerned with the world.

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Caligan Blue @caliganblue.com · 14/09/2026

Grocery prep! I cannot wait until this weather finally breaks so I can go back to making things that need the oven. Meanwhile, lots of short-cooking-time soups, sandwiches, and simple (cheap) stuff. Alas, probably won't get to the last one, halloumi is *expensive*. Foodie opinions! What's missing?

Current

- Hungarian mushroom soup - butter, 2c onions, 1lb mushrooms, soy sauce, 1c milk, sour cream, parsley, lemon juice

- Elotes - brined and air-fried - mayo & sour cream, tajin, chili powder, cotija or parm

- Cold sesame noodles - peanut butter, crushed peanuts, garnishes - scallions, water chestnuts, bamboo shoots

- Bubble n Squeak - potato, cabbage, bacon, eggs, parsley, brown sauce, butter

- Cornbread - 1/2c butter, 1c sour cream; Irish cheddar, honey, canned green chiles, bacon bits

- Tuna melt - sandwich bread, tuna, cheese, celery/crunchy veg, red onion/scallion/shallot, dijon/brown mustard, fresh herbs of choice, mayo, cheese

- Broccoli and potato soup - onion, garlic, 2c milk, 800g potatoes, 5c broccoli, 1c+ grated cheese, butter

- French toast - bread, egg, light cream, jam, butter, milk

- Corn and couscous with halloumi - couscous, walnuts, corn, parsley, basil, halloumi, scallions, mint, lemon, white wine vinegar

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Caligan Blue @caliganblue.com · 14/09/2026

Here we go cleaning the fountain pens, the fountain pens, the fountain pens.... I only have these two basic cartridge-fed ones, they have still not won me over from my beloved Hybrid Technica .03s, but... gonna give it another go. But put them away messy (bad!), so alcohol soak it is.

Two basic Pilot fountain pens in their opened cases, disassembled, with the nibs taken apart and resting in an alcohol bath. They sit next to boxes of four flavors of cartridge ink (green, purple, red, black).

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Caligan Blue @caliganblue.com · 13/09/2026

Dishes: done. Catbox: cleaned. Clutter: decluttered. Chore progress: made. Now, some quiet thinking time, because I've been spending too much time at the screen. Topics: Lateral Thinking - chapter about decision-making, pertinent to a story-in-progress, and my old Discrete Math college textbook.

Two books side by side, a trade paperback copy of Edward de Bono's Lateral Thinking: Creativity Step by Step, and Susanna S. Epp's Discrete Mathematics with Applications: Second edition.

Caligan Blue @caliganblue.com · 13/09/2026

More Crystalis! Poison-filled jungle, giant angry bug, and a village full of human-doubting... whatever-they-ares. (Yeah, guys, you aren't wrong, humans are Problematic.) I've had to fall back on walkthroughs multiple times—so much of this is "guess where to go or what you haven't done yet."

Screenshot of the poison forest in NES Crystalis - a low-resolution image of a foggy T-intersection path with a giant rolly bug (definitely not Large Francis, much too angry).

End of the NES Crystalis poison forest boss fight, an even more giant rolly bug with many eyes(?), exploding after the protagonist successfully followed its extremely simple but slow and unforgiving battle pattern to shoot it with the Sword of Fire until dead.

Screenshot of the Village of Oak, populated by some kind of non-human forest creature (but all the houses are identical to human houses in other villages). Remark to the protagonist: "We shun most humans but I think you are different from most."

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Caligan Blue @caliganblue.com · 10/09/2026

It is hard to get work done with this twerp going "Squeak pay attention to me squeak" three feet away, while rolling around begging for scritches. Cat. I need to work. Yes, it is unfair, I should be allowed to just pet you as long as you want. But that is the way of the world.

A black and white cat lies on her side on the end of a bed (with Deadpool sheets), looking at the camera. She has one paw curled up cutely and is begging for attention.

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Caligan Blue @caliganblue.com · 08/09/2026

The first twenty-five years made a mark. Ironically, the place I've been living the *rest* of the couple remaining decades is in the top three "least like." Guess I'll always talk like one of those weirdo beach people.

A heat map of dialect results. It's a big ol' red blotch all down the west coast, and a whole lot of blue in most of the rest.

"You talk most like someone from California - about 55% of your answers match a typical resident."

Caligan Blue @caliganblue.com · 07/09/2026

My little pile of con swag. Whattaweekend. Mostly good! One very very very not-good restaurant experience which was *so bad* that it is going to be A Story To Tell for a very long time. (Will 🧵that shortly, because wow.) Unpackings. Coffee-ings.

Con swag! A shiny black-edged circle of ceramic with a blue-scaled dragon's head in stained-glass style art. A tiny difficult-to-photograph baby dragon 3D-printed in iridescent blue-purple. A hemispherical eyeball with brown iris. A 3D-printed iridescent shark's tooth. A #savestargate card. A keychain with a bronze Western dragon and a 2026 dangly. A sticker with the words No Shadow and a humanoid ferret in monk's robes.

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Caligan Blue @caliganblue.com · 02/09/2026

Aaaaand for the first time in years, everything* is alphabetical by author. Found a few things I thought I'd lost! And only one level had to be stacked double-depth. Series are still out of order, but one step at a time. *Not the hardbounds or irregular-sizeds yet, just all the mass markets.

Floor to near-ceiling set of bookshelves, about twelve feet wide, six ranks of shelving, full top to bottom with books. Nonfiction on top, gaming and hardbound bottom, irregular sizes and spinoffs second up, everything else mass market. If zoomed in, one could see that they're in alphabetical order by author.

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Caligan Blue @caliganblue.com · 02/09/2026

At the moment? Like there are books stacked on every available surface *except* half the shelves. 😆 Probably going to end up just reshelving them all half-assedly and call it an iterative process. I got the nonfiction moved to the top as planned, at least.

View of half-emptied bookshelves and many many precarious stacks of paperbacks waiting to be alphabetized.

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Caligan Blue @caliganblue.com · 01/09/2026

"Meridion sat down at the Time Editor and began to work." - Rhapsody, by Elizabeth Haydon So many of these are in "I really need to refresh my memory" stack, and this series is no exception. I mostly remember the journey through the Axis Mundi, and how distinct the worldbuilding is. Good books!

Cover of a mass market copy of Elizabeth Haydon's book Rhapsody. Three figures stand in successive positions in front a misty barren landscape and some kind of strange, ranked series of what might be futuristic ruins exposed as buried under a mountain.

Furthest back left, a dark-cloaked and masked figure stands holding what appears to be a gun.

In the middle ground, a bulky ork-like figure with many weapon hilts over his shoulders and a metal helm and yellow tabard over armor.

And in the near foreground, a young woman in fitted pants, blousy shirt, and a cloak over one shoulder, bearing a sword in one hand, a flutelike instrument in the other, and a bow slung over her back.

All three gaze off toward the left.

Caligan Blue @caliganblue.com · 30/08/2026

And having just finished @chuckwendig.bsky.social's The Calamities.... People with bloodlines unclean Who buy souls for their masters obscene Are called by the Tower To free demons' power-- (Chuck, oh my god, why *terrine*?) Top marks, good read. Mind your feet; there's squick. 💙📚

Cover of Chuck Wendig's book The Calamities. Illustration shows a man in an expensive-looking black suit and shiny black shoes seated on a black shiny couch. His face, which appears washed in red, is mostly obscured by the title. Behind him is a painting of a mostly naked form spreadeagled and suspended, legs framing the man's head and a spray of lines resembling a halo.

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Caligan Blue @caliganblue.com · 26/08/2026

"In the hall of light, they reminded her of her destiny." - Daggerspell, by Katharine Kerr Long time since I picked these up for a re-read. I remember being particularly captivated by the handling of magic, and the immortal character, Nevyn, who twines through the whole series.

A mass market paperback copy of Katharine Kerr's Daggerspell. Illustration is of a white, decorated stone bridge arching over a stone-studded waterfall. Several people on horseback ride across it, with a forest backdrop of very large trees.

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Caligan Blue @caliganblue.com · 25/08/2026

"It was a Saturday night, the night Tony's parents always went out." - My Friend the Vampire, by Angela Sommer-Bodenburg The power of friendship to overcome even undeath. Also just fun and silly. This came from my elementary school library, hence the editorial addition to the cover. 😆

A battered mass market copy of My Friend the Vampire, by Angela Sommer-Bodenburg. Illustration is a cartoony child vampire with bloodshot eyes, raising his cloaked arms menacingly under the glow of a crescent moon.

Someone has written 'sucks' in ballpoint pen across the moon.

Caligan Blue @caliganblue.com · 25/08/2026

Cats, like projects, expand to fit all available space.

Top-down view of a dilute tortoiseshell cat lying on her side on a loveseat, forepaws reaching out for the throw pillows, tail stretched along another pillow.

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Caligan Blue @caliganblue.com · 24/08/2026

"Size and attire alone would have made the giant otter worthy of notice, even if he hadn't tripped over Meriweather's feet." - Spellsinger, by Alan Dean Foster (I cheated a little, skipped the prologue.) This whole series is fabulous and I need to get ahold of the missing ones and reread it all.

Scruffy mass market copy of Alan Dean Foster's book Spellsinger. Pull quote: "His magic strove to save a planet he did not yet know—from Zaryt's Teeth to the Helldrink and every danger beyond.

Illustration is of a man in a cloak standing in a boat, a staff clutched in front of him in both hands and a stringed instrument slung over his back. At one leg stands a thigh-height humanoid tortoise holding a book and wearing spectacles, one section of his plastron pulled out like a drawer with a paper poking out of it. Behind the man are a human-sized otter wearing a peaked yellow Robin Hood hat, and a curly-red-haired woman. All are looking more or less toward the viewer. Far above and behind them are towering peaks and what looks like a giant bat flying among them wearing a ball cap.

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Caligan Blue @caliganblue.com · 23/08/2026

"Sally Montgomery leaned down and kissed her daughter, then tucked the pink crocheted blanket that her mother had made in honor of Julie's birth—and which Sally hated—around the baby's shoulders." - The God Project, by John Saul

Paperback copy of John Saul's The God Project. Illustration is of the top of a baby's wooden crib against a black background, lit from within by an orange-gold glow.

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Caligan Blue @caliganblue.com · 22/08/2026

"When I entered my dorm room for the first time, I was startled to hear someone cry out, 'Oh, no! Oh, my god! It's blood! *My* blood!'" - The Companion, by Scott Siegel The Dark Forces books were, I think, my introduction to horror. I haunted the shelf at the used bookstore, waiting for new ones.

Cover of a paperback copy of The Companion, by Scott Siegel. At the top is the series mark, a spread-winged demon holding a sign reading Dark Forces. Illustration is of a terrified-looking young man in a red pullover sweater, facing front against a green glow, with clawed green hands reaching up from the lower edge toward his chest as if from behind and below him.

Caligan Blue @caliganblue.com · 21/08/2026

And the third and final book in the current order, a new acquisition rather than a replacement: Michael Peak's Cat House. It's in fantastic condition! It's just not the right book. (The seller has yet to respond to my ???? message.)

Plastic-wrapped hardcover copy of Mary Stewart's The Last Enchantment. Illustration is of a gleaming, decorated golden harp standing in a pool of red-pink light.

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Caligan Blue @caliganblue.com · 21/08/2026

In today's round of "replacing books that have gone walkabout" - the SciFi book club version of Support Your Local Wizard, by Diane Duane. Omnibus of the first three in the series. I love the cover art. It is so delightfully 80s.

Hardcover copy of the old, Sci-Fi Book Club version of Support Your Local Wizard, an omnibus copy of the first three books of the Young Wizards series by Diane Duane: So You Want to Be a Wizard, Deep Wizardry, and High Wizardry.

Illustration shows two teenagers in a bedroom, standing in front of a dormer window. One stands upright, drawing shining blue angular lines in the air while a book, papers, and pen outlined in white glow float nearby. One lies on the floor reading from a huge book. In the blacked-out window are a huge pair of glowing red menacing eyes. There's a visible section of a poster illustrating types of whales on the wall.

Caligan Blue @caliganblue.com · 21/08/2026

First lines of old favorites: "A gentle breeze rustled the leaves of the tree, but the young girl seated beneath it did not seem to notice." - Arrows of the Queen, by Mercedes Lackey The first Lackey book I read - a book-obsessed but repressed girl escapes her family with a magic horse.

Front cover of a trade paperback copy of Arrows of the Queen, by Mercedes Lackey. Shows a short-haired young woman in rough brown clothes. She's mounted on the back of a stallion so white it's silvery-blue in the shadows, caparisoned in fancy blue tack, against a backdrop of evergreens and mountains.