iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Got to experience the delight(?) of my Diet Coke flash-freezing when I opened it in the car this morning. Very weird, because it's summertime and the bottle had been sitting in my car for about 10 minutes after taking it out of the store fridge. I didn't know this could happen at normal temps!

A 20 ounce bottle of partially frozen Diet Coke in the cup holder of a car. Next to it is another unopened (and presumed unfrozen) bottle of Diet Coke

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

Norwescon is over, alas, and my copy of A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking is back in its place of honor among the cookbooks, now signed by the author T. Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon). She was an absolute delight to meet and to listen to, and I'm so glad I got the chance to do so!

A dark brown bookshelf with several cookbooks either upright or stacked on the shelves. The book A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking is also on the bookshelf next to the cookbooks, turned so that the front cover is fully visible to a viewer.

Title page of A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking, autographed by the author. The inscription says "For Jessica" and is signed "T. Kingfisher"

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

whoops, the listing pic didn't come through. Here it is.

A woman posing for a photo,wearing a crocheted shawl that looks just like a feathered wing. Her left arm is extended, showing the three rows of feathers. She's turned away from the viewer but looking back over her left shoulder. A brown horse with a bridle stands in front of her, its nose nearly touching her chest. The woman has a somewhat melancholy expression, or perhaps she's just giving the animal handler a look of "how much longer do I have to put up with this horse attempting to sniff my boobs "

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 18/07/2025

So I'm supposed to be getting ready for a trip, but instead I just spent the entire evening reading Royal Gambit by @danielomalley.bsky.social.

A hardcover copy of Royal Gambit, the latest release in the Rook series by Daniel O'Malley.

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 11/07/2025

Welp. You were right, it was straightforward and easy to do... right up until I managed to snap in half not one but BOTH custom bolts from the two battery terminals.🤦‍♀️ On the bright side, the other car was ready to pick up, so we're not stranded, just inconvenienced 🙃

A broken square-headed bolt from a car battery terminal, including the nut and square washer. Below it is half of a similar square-headed bolt. Not shown: the other half of the second bolt, which is still in its battery terminal in the car.

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

Ruler for scale since I don't have a banana.

A HALO Bolt 58830 sitting on a card table with the front facing the viewer. An orange 12-inch ruler lies on the table in front of the Bolt, showing that the Bolt is just over 7 inches wide. The car battery port and two 5V/2.4A USB ports are visible on the front, as is the plugged-charging cable with indicator lights showing that the Bolt is currently being recharged.

A HALO Bolt on a card table, rotated sideways so that the front faces to the viewer's left and the side with the 115V/65W outlet (similar to a standard AC wall outlet) is visible. An orange ruler lies on the table showing that the Bolt is about 3¾ inches wide on the short end.
The opposite end on the Bolt, hidden from the viewer, has a floodlight that's 1¾ inches wide and ¾ inch tall.

The drawstring carry bag for the HALO Bolt 58830 and most of the accessories that come with it: a set of red and black car battery clamps, a car charger so you can recharge the Bolt while you're driving, and a USB-A to micro USB cable. (I should throw in some additional ones for USB-A to USB-A and USB-A to USB-C as well, now that I think about it)
The drawstring bag has instructions printed on it for using the jumper cable port and the AC outlet.

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 01/06/2025

just take the CR-V, they* said you can totally fit 20 bins & lids, a teen appetite's worth of food, and the teen himself, they said . . . wow, good thing you have a backup camera, the teen said. * me, delusionally

Rear view of a Honda CR-V with its tailgate up, packed absolutely full of 20 black and yellow 27-gallon storage bins and more than $200 worth of bulk groceries. (look, we make maybe one trip a month, it's Costco, I have two growing boys, don't judge me.) The teen is sitting in the front passenger seat, only a sliver of the back of his head visible over the cargo.

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

Last weekend was the Puget Sound Local Yarn Store Tour (@lystour.com) and I, um, might have a yarn problem. 😄 This was my haul from just 5(!!) shops. 🧶😳 (see alt text for locations) In my weak defense, most of it is for planned crochet projects... but there were a couple impulse buys along the way.

Lots and lots of skeins of yarn arranged into five groups on a white sheet. Each group is the yarns purchased from a particular store.
Upper left: The New Knittery, Renton, WA
Upper right: Needles and Hooks, Lake Forest Park, WA
Lower left: The Knitters Studio, Bellevue, WA
Lower center: The Nifty Knitter, Issaquah, WA
Lower right: Strikke Yarn & Supply, Bothell, WA
(I might have picked out more from Strikke, but it was my last stop and I'd already gotten through my queue shopping list. Next time!)

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

So here's a thing that I'm sure I'm not the first person to think of If Trump did in fact win the 2020 election, doesn't that make his '24 win unconstitutional? The constitution only says "elected to the office of the President" - it doesn't say anything about if they actually serve out that term.

A screencap of the 22nd amendment to the U.S. constitution, whose very first phrase says, "No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice"

It specifically says "elected." It specifically does not say "elected but did not serve that term."

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

First post on @pinksky.app Baymax modeling a bucket hat I made a few weeks ago #pinkskyPost

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 18/01/2025

1000 characters is not enough for this visual debacle.

This would be a normal oversized kitchen— 5-burner gas cooktop on the left, upholstered banquette-style bench in the far back, farmhouse sink on the right of the picture next to an under-counter dishwasher—except for the kitschy artwork that has exploded over the walls like Red Robin and Cracker Barrel had a baby. But the thing that really dominates the room and draws the eye is the long dining table running the length of the room with 12 mismatched chairs along the sides but neither head nor foot. How can a rectangular table not have a head or foot, you ask? Okay fine, it has a head: a GIGANTIC DRAGON HEAD like a fucking Viking longboat poised for battle in the middle of a Boca Raton waterfront mansion. And yes of course it has a corresponding dragon tail at the far end.

Then we glance up. Topping off the room (literally) is a ceiling painting that no doubt the owners saw as a competitor to the Sistine chapel itself. Above the head end of the longboat table we have three lightly-clad angelic beings, including a classic head-thrown-back-clothing-barely-covering-décolletage woman and a naked cherubic baby whose strategically positioned legs are all that prevents the diners below from getting a little too much sausage with their breakfast eggs. In the center of this masterpiece we see a fourth angelic being whose spear? trumpet? something is blasting some kind of death beam toward birdlike creatures in the sky above the longboatable tail. From this angle it’s hard to see exactly what is going on, but it’s safe to say that those birds will not be stealing your table scraps.

Compared to all this, the floor decor is almost understated. On the near side of the kitchen we have pumpkin vines; on the far side are grapevines. They look like they’re meant to appear tiled, except that the rest of the floor is standard school-cafeteria linoleum.

In an appeal to normalcy, a wire basket of apples and oranges sits on the counter on the left of the picture. Probably fake though.

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 07/01/2025

Perhaps it would be more effective to change your chat settings to prevent people you don't know from messaging you?

The Bluesky chat settings page, with "Allow new messages from" set to "Users I follow"

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 05/01/2025

🤔 what... what does this mean for me? I am feeling a little trepidatious.

This, according to Merriam-Webster's prediction GIF, is my word for 2025. It's written in black text in a typewriter-style typeface on a baby blue background.
The word is "spaghetti."
I am not quite sure what to make of this.

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 22/12/2024

Ooooh, I should unblock one of those content scraper bots that I keep picking up 😄

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

Left (blue): the crochet🧶 hat my grandma made for me 40 yrs ago, stretched out by decades of wear Right (pink): the practice hat I made trying to replicate her lost pattern Center (green): the hat I just finished for my brother, who never got a grandma hat because she passed away when he was young

A picture of three crochet hats with narrow vertical stripes, turned-uo brims, and pompoms on top. They are all the same pattern, just different colorways.
Left to right: light blue and dark blue stripes; light green and dark green stripes; pink and white stripes.

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

I made some pies yesterday: French apple and triple berry. They were a hit. My SIL redid my attempt at a lattice top, thanks SIL 😊 Family loved the cranberry sauce too even though I thought it was too runny. So I didn't get to try @pocketvenus.bsky.social's suggestion but will remember next time!

Overhead view of two homemade pies sitting on a kitchen counter. The pie on the left is a streusel-topped French apple pie, and the pie on the right is a triple berry pie with a lattice top crust.

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

Outage map from Puget Sound Energy (and this isn't even the whole map) As of 8:20 a.m. pacific time, there were 1,173 active outages across PSE's entire service area impacting 285,187 customers.

The power outage map from the website of Puget Sound Energy, the company that supplies electricity and natural gas to most of western King County, WA. The map is zoomed in to show just the Eastside and South Sound region (Bothell to Maple Valley). Red regions indicating outages are splattered across the map like someone spilled cherry Kool-Aid on it. More than 20 small black circles with white numbers inside are dotted across the map showing the the aggregated number of outages reported in different areas. I'm not going to list all the circled numbers individually because it's too depressing. It's a lot. A LOT.

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

BTW here's another cool way to use Starter Packs: go to the main page of the pack and click the Posts tab. You'll see recent posts from all the accounts on the list, similar to a custom feed.

Screen shot of the main page of the Western Washington News and Information starter pack, with a big red arrow pointing to the Posts tab to the left of the People tab. Posts is selected and the top of a recent post from the NWS Seattle weather alert bot is visible.

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

So I only just recently noticed that new accounts have this little yellow sun next to their handle when you view their profile. If you click it, it tells you when they joined.

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

Related: if you (like me) tend to forget which blocklists you’re subscribed to and you want to occasionally review them, you can find them under Settings -> Moderation -> Moderation lists

A screenshot of the Moderations section of a Bluesky user’s Settings. Directly under the Moderation header is a list of moderation tools. The second item in the list, “Moderation lists,” is highlighted.

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

Post a picture you took (no description) to bring some zen to the timeline

Steam rises straight up from Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park, WY. The spring stretches past the left and right edges of the photo. In the midground, the deeper part of the spring is a vibrant turquoise blue. Closer to the viewer, the shallower spring waters are orange swirled with brown.
In the background a tree-covered hill rises; this is actually part of the wall of Yellowstone's caldera. In the far distance, a mass of clouds sits low on the horizon of a bright blue sky.

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

Well this is weird... my handle was fine yesterday as far as I know, and I haven't changed anything in my prefs. Anyone else getting the Invalid Handle warning on their profiles?

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 11/11/2024

Tip for newbies! The Discover feed is influenced by your own follows & likes, kind of like the For You page on other sites. You can fine-tune it: Click the 3 dots in the lower right corner of a post. The pop-up menu has 2 options unique to this feed, "Show more like this" and "Show less like this"

Screen capture of the pop-up menu available for posts in Bluesky Social's Discover feed. The menu items "Show more like this" and "Show less like this" are highlighted. These options are unique to the Discover feed.

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 01/11/2024

This was a nice Halloween treat yesterday

A ballot tracker text message from King County Elections dated Thursday, October 31 at 9:15 a.m.

The message says "BALLOT ALERT Your signature has been verified and your ballot will be counted. Thanks for voting! Find results at https://kce.wiki/results."

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 24/10/2024

new book day new book day new book daaaaaay 📚🔵🦘

Two softcover books are propped up side by side on a blanket. The book on the left is True Blue Kangaroo by Curtis C. Chen. The book on the right is On Vicious Worlds by Bethany Jacobs.

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 16/10/2024

This is what "we only need chips and juice" looks like when your Costco shopping partner is a teenage boy.

A Costco shopping cart that is very full, although not to the point of overflowing, because ONE of us was able to exercise some restraint.

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 17/09/2024

Wheee, I am among the One Percent! 🎉 Do I get extra cookies?

Bluesky graphic celebrating 10 million users, customized for @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social. I am user #40,607 and a certified Bluesky Elder. Neener neener neener.

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 30/06/2024

Even after 20+ years on Seattle, apparently I still talk like my hometown. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

A map showing how my personal dialect compares to American English speakers elsewhere in the United States. The area color-coded for "most similar" is practically the entirety of Montana.

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 29/06/2024

I got one productive thing done today: finished the hat I was crocheting for my son. It's a little big so I'm blocking it with hot water (it's a wool blend), but maybe we just hope that he'll grow into it eventually. I might put a tack stitch in the cuff to keep it out of his eyes for now. 🧶

A child wearing a reddish crocheted hat with a faux fur pom-pom on top. The yarn is a subtle gradient from light red on one side to almost a tan on the other side.
A large sunglasses emoji covers the child's face.

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 29/06/2024

Found in the piles of books: a throwback to 1995, when it was just ADD without the H.

The book "Out of the Fog: Treatment Options and Coping Strategies for Adult Attention Deficit Disorder" by Kevin R. Murphy and Suzanne LeVert, copyright 1995. The cover features an unsmiling bald person's head with railroad tracks wrapped around it, partly obscuring the person's eyes.

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 28/06/2024

We're swapping out a bookcase in the home office this weekend for a sturdier one that, unfortunately, is eight inches narrower and has two fewer shelves. So it seemed a good time for a culling, and might as well go through those four partially-filled boxes that we never got around to unpacking 😲

The living room is full, FULL of stacks of decades-old college textbooks, technical volumes and other tomes. Seriously, we're looking at at least a couple hundred of them. No doubt there are some treasures in here worth keeping - biographies, recent books, puzzle collections, etc - but it's going to take at least a day to go through this lot to find them. And then a couple more hours to box them up to get rid of them. (What does one do with outdated books anyway?)

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 26/06/2024

They've done it for top-level posts! Click on the "Everybody can reply" widget when composing a post and it will give you options. Still missing for composing replies though.

A screencap of the view when writing a post, with "Everybody can reply" circled at the bottom

A view of the widget where you can select who is allowed to reply to your top-level post

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 17/06/2024

The hat appears to have been made as a rectangle, them seamed into a tube and gathered at the top. I just noticed she's also got an interesting thing going on at the top where it appears that she stops the darker row early and crochets a light row directly into the row two rows down.

Detail of the top of a blue striped crocheted hat.

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 17/06/2024

#Crochet sky: any idea what this stitch is? This is a reversible hat my grandmother made ages ago, and I'm thinking of trying to reproduce it. From what I can tell, it's the same stitch in alternating colors worked BLO, and maybe around rather than through the top loops? (cont)

Closeup of an unknown crochet stitch worked in medium blue and light blue rows. The stitch appears to have three horizontal loops and the part that normally goes through the top loops of the previous row appears to go around instead of through.

A winter hat lying on a brown leather couch. The hat has vertical ribbed stripes in medium and light blue. The upturned brim has the colors opposite of the main hat body. The hat is gathered at the top and is crowned with a light blue yarn pompom.

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 14/06/2024

Second attempt, correct crochet hook size, still a little bigger than expected but definitely wearable. The pattern calls for one more band of the pattern (which would be light gray) but I think that might actually cover my eyes again, so I'm considering just stopping here. 🧶

A woman wearing a crocheted cap with wide horizontal dark and light gray stripes and a slight upturn at the brim. Unlike a previous version of the hat, this one seems to be sized correctly, not enormously too big.

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 09/06/2024

L O L 🤣🤣🤣 yeah, gonna frog this one back to the point before I started stitching with the too-big hook and try again 😂

Aa adult woman wearing a crocheted hat. The hat has horizontal stripes of light and dark gray. It's also way too big, reaching down to the wearer's shoulders.

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 07/06/2024

My younger son's elementary school is flying the #Pride flag this month. ❤🧡💛💚💙💜🤍🤎🖤

A flagpole in front of a school with three flags streaming in the breeze. The top one is a U.S. flag. Below it is the Washington state flag, and under that one is the Pride flag. It's a beautiful day, in more ways than one.

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 31/05/2024

Are you familiar with Curtis C. Chen's Kangaroo series? He just released author's editions of the first two and is now writing the third. It's a very funny mystery/adventure in space with a person who has an unusual power.

Two books: Waypoint Kangaroo and Kangaroo Too, both written by Curtis C. Chen.

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 31/05/2024

39 and up Bluesky - drop a pic with your age 51 here

A white woman with brown hair and glasses sitting on a couch

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 26/05/2024

When your kid wants a sliced apple with peanut butter and craisins and you feel like going over the top

A Cosmic Crisp apple that has been sliced horizontally into 8 slices and then reassembled. Each slice has been spread with a thin layer of creamy peanut butter atop and underneath. Hidden to the viewer, there are craisins (dried cranberries) tucked between the layers. Astonishingly, the reassembled tower stands on its own. It looks like a vertically stretched apple with gaps, and the end result is about twice as tall as the original unsliced apple was.

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 17/05/2024

vinegar trick: Fill pan with water about ½ inch above white marks. Add several glugs of white vinegar. Bring to a full boil for 1-2 minutes. Let cool, pour out vinegar mixture, then wash again with dish soap and water. White marks gone!

Overhead view of nonstick pan sitting on an induction cooktop. The pan appears very very clean - practically as nice as the day we took it out of the box.

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 05/05/2024

Cake I made for the boys yesterday

A round cake on a green glass cake plate. The cake is frosted with pink strawberry frosting and topped with a forest of freeze-dried strawberries standing on end.

The cake from the previous picture. It has been sliced so you can see the chocolate cake inside. A slice of cake lies on a smaller plate next to the cake.

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 20/04/2024

Spotted today, April 19, at the Grocery Outlet near me house. I can't decide whether they're really behind or really ahead of the Christmas season 🙃

Many boxes of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer breakfast cereal on a grocery store shelf. A yellow price sticker says the boxes are 99 cents each at this store, compared to other stores that sell it for $4.99.

What you can't tell from the picture alone is that it was taken in mid-April 2024 on a gorgeous sunny day, with nary a snowflake or Christmas light to be seen.

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Jessica @jessbepuzzled.bsky.social · 15/04/2024

This is from last week's eclipse, when we were in Disneyland for spring break. Crescents of sunlight filtered through the shadows of tree leaves. We got up to about 50% coverage. (taken in California Adventure near the Monsters Inc. ride)

Photo of partial eclipse shadows on a sidewalk taken in Anaheim, CA during the April 8 2024 solar eclipse. Overlapping crescents of sunlight are seen filtering through the shadows of tree leaves.

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