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conuly) wrote2026-02-01 05:54 am
conuly) wrote2026-01-31 03:51 am![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
scalziwhatever_feed) wrote2026-01-27 09:00 pm
I ordered some Valentine’s themed goods from Michael’s recently, including these heart print champagne flutes. I ordered these because they’re actually made of glass and all other V-Day themed “glasses” I found were actually acrylic, and also way too expensive for plastic fucking cups. How are you going to charge almost ten dollars per “glass” when they’re plastic? Yet these actual glasses were four dollars. Wild.
Anyways, lucky me, two of them arrived shattered:
(Ignore the multiple packs of Liquid Death in the background, I was trying to fit the cans in the fridge. And YES I like Liquid Death, I don’t care if it’s kind of cringe marketing.)
If you follow my dad on Bluesky or Instagram, you might have seen not too long ago he posted that three of the four (much nicer) champagne glasses he ordered arrived completely broken:
Thankfully, he was able to get a refund, but it was genuinely a hassle. My refund for my two much cheaper glasses was a lot easier, and now a whopping seven dollars is back in my bank account.
Look, this post isn’t about getting refunds or being disappointed by broken glasses, it’s about the fact that somebody needs to start a delivery company that specializes in fragile packages and doesn’t just fastball your package at your front door. You can put “fragile” stickers on a package all you want and that mail carrier is still going to treat it like how airline workers treat your three hundred dollar suitcase. Aka NOT GOOD.
I’m serious, if there were a delivery company that guaranteed careful handling and extra care to get your goods to you in one piece, I’d be thrilled. I’m gonna start needing white glove delivery on every single package at this rate because I’m tired of hearing my package sound like a maraca when I bring it inside.
So, there you have it. My minor annoyance of the day. I shall live.
-AMS
scalziwhatever_feed) wrote2026-01-27 05:10 pm
We’re all just trying to be good people, and sometimes in that journey we make mistakes. Perhaps the same goes for ghosts, as author A. C. Wise suggests in the Big Idea for her newest novel, Ballad of the Bone Road. Fae queens, paranormal detectives, and famous Hollywood ghosts, oh my!
A. C. WISE:
The big idea behind The Ballad of the Bone Road started out as several small ideas. The names Brix and Bellefeather made their way into my head and struck me as the perfect names for a pair of supernatural investigators. Around the same time, the line “When I was twelve years old, I met the Devil in an oak tree,” popped into my head. Finally, misheard song lyrics put the image in my mind of two young lovers in a hotel room summoning a ghost and becoming a throuple.
Those three bits of inspiration may not have happened in that exact order, but they happened close enough to each other that it seemed reasonable to me that they would all be part of the same story. The big idea then became a question – how do these pieces fit together? How do I get all these people in the same place and how best to complicate their lives?
While the original line about meeting the Devil in an oak tree didn’t survive fully intact, I realized it was a fundamental part of Bellefeather’s backstory and why she makes the choices she does throughout the novel. Brix, then, would obviously meet the lovers and get caught up in their haunting, which turns out to be far more complicated than any of them could have anticipated.
My previous two novels, Wendy, Darling and Hooked, are a duology of sorts, inspired by Peter Pan. I wanted Ballad of the Bone Road to be something different, but there are certain themes that carry across all three works, namely characters making bad choices in response to trauma. At their core, the characters in all three novels (with the possible exception of James aka Captain Hook) are mostly trying to be good people and do the right thing, but they make a fair number of missteps along the way. They hurt those around them by holding on too tight or by pushing them away; they let fear drive them until it forces their hands and they discover they know how to be brave.
Ballad of the Bone Road is inspired, to a certain degree, by the glamor of the silver screen, an art deco aesthetic, and stories of the fae that depict them as inhumanly lovely and dangerous in equal measures. There are also ghosts, of course there are ghosts, but what happens when a haunting is accidental and more melancholy than malicious? Instead of driving out their ghosts, what if those experiencing the haunting were doing everything they could to hold on?
Even if the initial ideas may have been small and disparate ones, they all came together in the end, and I’m pleased with the questions the book poses and the ways the characters respond to the situations they find themselves facing. They are flawed and imperfect and human – even when they’re not exactly human – and most of them are just trying to do the best they can.
Ballad of the Bone Road: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Forbidden Planet|Waterstones
Author socials: Website
textsfromsuperheroes_feed) wrote2026-01-26 09:00 pmredbird) wrote2026-01-26 05:33 pmscalziwhatever_feed) wrote2026-01-26 09:49 pmSo often I write about extravagant, expensive dinners and specialty dining events, but today I’m here to tell you of an absolutely banging bargain lunch.
I love Indian food, but it’s scarce to come by in my area. The closest establishment to me is Amar India Restaurant, and it’s actually its north location in Vandalia rather than its original location in Centerville, which is considerably further south from me.
Amar India North has a lunch menu that starts out at a mere ten dollars, and only goes up to about fifteen dollars if you get one of the more expensive dishes like the lamb curry. There’s also chicken curry, chicken tikka masala, I think a fish curry, and the one I always get, saag paneer.
Once you pick your main, it comes with rice, naan, their vegetable of the day, and a small dessert. This is what the saag paneer platter looks like:
Two pieces of plain naan, rice, a big ol’ portion of saag paneer, pointed gourd as the vegetable of the day, and two jalebi for the dessert. I have had this platter three times and each time the vegetable has been different, but never the dessert, which is a shame because I’d love to try some of their other desserts, especially the kulfi and Gulab jamun.
It may not look like much saag paneer but I can assure you it’s a generous portion size for the price. I’m pretty sure the saag paneer platter in particular is thirteen dollars, plus I always get a mango lassi, which is $4.50, so in total I’m spending less than twenty dollars for a very filling and very delicious lunch! I truly think this is such a good deal and you get to support a local business.
I know the Centerville location used to have a lunch buffet. I don’t know if they still do but I’d like to make it down there sometime soon to see for myself. There’s also a Beavercreek location under the name Jeet India Restaurant, so I’ll have to check that out next time I’m in the area.
I just had this meal on Friday but now I’m already craving it again after telling y’all about it. Especially the mango lassi, I really could drink a gallon of that stuff.
Oh, and while you’re at Amar North, they just opened an Indian grocery store right next to the restaurant called Anand Indian Grocery. I popped in there on my latest visit to the restaurant and they have a huge selection of items, including specialty produce and cooking ingredients like ghee and tons of spices, plus the biggest bags of rice you’ve ever seen.
They also have tons of fun and unique snacks and sweets, and even ice cream flavors I’ve never heard of.
If you’re in the Dayton area, I highly recommend making it out to Amar North for their lunch special sometime this week. It’s between the hours of 11am and 2pm. I think I’ll go again tomorrow for a nice solo lunch.
Do you recommend any lunch specials in the Dayton area? Are you also a big saag paneer fan? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!
-AMS
scalziwhatever_feed) wrote2026-01-26 09:47 pm
I was away this weekend visiting a friend and seeing a concert, and my return home was delayed a day because of the weekend snowstorm. Heading back, I managed to avoid the crash on the I-70 that closed all the eastbound lanes of the interstate, but as you see, that luck came at a price: Immediately upon returning home my boots de-soled. The travel gods, apparently, needed a sacrifice.
These boots, as it happens, are nearly twenty years old, so the sacrifice was reasonable. It wasn’t like I had just gotten these shoes. In fact, the fact they were twenty years old was probably why they became a sacrifice; after two decades, the glue had clearly desiccated into nothingness. I can’t complain. I got good value out of these boots. The travel gods may take them to Shoehalla with my blessing.
In other news, I need new boots; there’s a ton of snow on the ground and my Sketchers are not gonna handle that. A-shoppin’ I will go.
— JS
woksoflife_feed) wrote2026-01-26 07:53 pm
This Chinese cauliflower stir-fry with beef is a delicious one-pan meal that’s quick and easy to make. It also highlights the use of cauliflower in Chinese cooking, which is rarely seen in the U.S. and underrated! My theory behind this is that cauliflower is not served in most Chinese restaurants probably because it is expensive […]marthawells) wrote2026-01-26 12:32 pmtechknitting_feed) wrote2026-01-25 09:57 pmconuly) wrote2026-01-25 08:08 pmconuly) wrote2026-01-30 10:01 amscalziwhatever_feed) wrote2026-01-25 03:02 amI’m away and mostly offline this weekend but I’m seeing the news. Minnesota, you deserve so much better than what this government is doing to you.
— JS
textsfromsuperheroes_feed) wrote2026-01-24 09:00 pmredbird) wrote2026-01-24 08:40 pmscalziwhatever_feed) wrote2026-01-24 04:15 amToday there was an ache in my knee even though I had not particularly exerted myself, and I wondered what that was about when it hit me: There was a storm coming. I am now one of those people who can tell when a storm is coming by aches and pains.
Excuse me, I’m going to go lay down in my grave now.
— JS
conuly) wrote2026-01-29 11:08 pm