corbden | Reading

I bought something for my second bike trailer build on Saturday.

The trailer’s basically been done for weeks already. I’m adding details and accessories now, like, I want to sew a cover, and I want to add reflectors. So I took it for another little shakedown ride, this time to a hardware store I found out had DOT-grade adhesive reflectors in stock for… more money than I’d like, but not unreasonable money.

Here’s what I’ve done with those stickers so far. I think it’s pretty good. The rear view is my biggest concern, given that my bike is well-lit, and this… frankly ugly flash photo… makes the reflectors pop well, showing how they’d reflect headlights. It’ll help:

A flash photograph of the back of the cargo wagon, which makes all the reflective patches light up to and past the point of whiting out in the camera. There are two rectangular reflectors on each side of the back, one about twice as high up on the frame as the other, and a horizontal bar across most of the width just above the lower pair. All the reflectors are red except for a 5cm section in the middle of the bar, which is white.

But it occurred to me as I was doing all this that…

This is the first time I’ve bought something for this project.

The trailer frame was salvaged from a semi-wrecked kiddo hauler abandoned outdoors for over a year. The platform is made from a cargo pallet someone illegally dumped and I salvaged; the metal clamps holding it in place I shaped out of old building strapping. I literally found the warning flag pole on the street, and it inserts into a metal tube salvaged from a housemate’s broken laundry rack. I made a flag for it from scrap fabric. The cage is made from Buy Nothing-listed DIY cube shelving, the kind that never really works right, but there’s nothing wrong with the wire squares that a whole bunch of zip ties can’t fix. Other parts are 3D-printed, designed by me, printed by me, at home.

Everything else was just ordinary supplies I already had.

But when it came to the reflectors… I looked around a little, but then… I just went and bought something. And I have kind of mixed feelings about that!

I mean, it’s fine. Really. At some point, I’m going to want to replace these tyres, too, and that’s a purchase – they were also in the outdoors for at least a year and as a result are semi-rotted. They’re only still usable because I used a lot of silicone glue to make a reinforcement coat on the walls. (Hey, it’s not stupid if it works, and it works.) So sooner or later, money was going to be spent.

But even so, just buying something – even if it’s something you legitimately can’t make at home, like DOT-spec reflective material – feels like cheating. I kinda don’t like it.

Part of it is that I started making these cargo carriers around the time Anna got laid off, and even after she finally got a new job earlier this year, I kept the same approach. Sure, it helped that I already had basically everything I needed by that time, but also, we’re trying to make up for a lot of lost money and time, so I kept doing things the same way.

Until today, when I didn’t. I did it the normal way instead. It’s a very normal thing. You need an item, a part, whatever – you can just buy it.

And… maybe… maybe it’s just how extremely abnormal everything else is right now, in this endless emergency… but…

I just don’t know how I feel about that.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

sistawendy

The preface: during my quinceañera Friday night, a woman unknown to me (!) gave me a long-stemmed red rose, bought from Muhammad*. I got it home, and yesterday morning I realized that I hadn't put it in my one, tall, plain glass vase. As I got the vase out from its spot on the counter, I dropped it, and it shattered into an annoyingly high number of pieces.

Fast forward to last night. T wanted to go to the open house at Equinox Studios, the place down in Georgetown with tons of artists & craftspeople. The open house in December is, of course, extra crowded and bAnAnAs. I ran into multiple goths known to me, including Diminutive** and Cyra Hobson, who's quite a sculptor and has her studio at Equinox. It was inevitable, then that I found the perfect vase from Jeanne Ferraro: opaque, cobalt-blue glass.

Lots of people including Ferraro remembered me because I was wearing The Coat. Some dude said he'd seen me walking around our neighborhood. We live less than two blocks apart, and I'd never met him. Who know a coat could be magic?

I completed my set of herbivorous dinosaur fridge magnets. I mean, Parasaurolophus. How could I not?

Things I covet but couldn't buy for various reasons:

The Matisse dining set by John Kirschbaum. I've never seen anything like it, and yes, he knows how to make a comfy chair. If you meet the guy, be patient: he talks unusually slowly.
A photo of one of the Iron Monkeys' pieces. I'd like a print to hide a dent in the wall that I put there while moving furniture.
Jewelry by, oddly enough, Black Dog Forge. They used to be in Belltown, and that's all I can find about them in a quick search. I've seen at least one amazing bed frame that they made.

I've long since realized that I kind of hate my nightstand lamp. There were nice ones there – in colors I didn't like. Le sigh.

Spending the time with T was fun, too. She's almost as good an enabler as the lady who introduced us,

cupcake_goth. She's also a good transit communist like I am; we had excellent Metro mojo last night.

I did not partake of ravey goodness last night because it was after 2300 when I got home, and my dogs were if not barking definitely grumpy. But I'd call the trip a success.

*He's this old South Asian dude who's been walking around selling flowers on Capitol Hill for decades.
**Her name is the diminutive form of mine. She's a full head shorter than I am. I'm never not amused by this.

Current Mood: happy
Current Location: the living room of the Devil Girl House
Current Music: my son jumpenflappen?

summersgate

Yesterday's quick painting. I had to do something by the the end of the day if I was going to keep up art-a-day so this was it. A Cute Puppy.

I spent most of the day yesterday weaving this little piece of cloth. I wanted to try out joining methods for the pin loom blanket I'm going to make for Rowan. When I was done it seemed the perfect size for Little Me.

Passing time till I hear from Jules. I'm going to help him today paint some more in the middle bedroom next door. We did the walls last time but he's decided he wants to do the ceiling and inside the closet too. I helped do the trim last time but afterwards I was shocked at what a bad job I had done. I don't have the control that I used to have with my right shoulder anymore. Especially when I need to do things up high.

siderea

Canonical link: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1891517.html

This is part of Understanding Health Insurance

Introduction
A Health Plan is a Contract
The Three-Stage Model ⇐ You are here

The Three-Stage Model

When you have health insurance, you have a contract (health plan) with the insurance company that says that for the duration (the plan year) of the contract, you will pay them the agreed upon monthly fee every month (the premium), in exchange for them paying for your health care... some.

How much is "some"? Well, that depends.

To understand what it depends on, you have to understand the three-stage model that health plans are organized around.

This three-stage model is never described as such. It is implicit in the standard terms (jargon) of the health insurance industry, and it is never made explicit. There is no industry term (jargon) for the model itself. There are no terms (jargon) for the three stages. But health insurance becomes vastly easier to understand if you think about it in terms of the three-stage model that is hiding in just about every health plan's terms (agreements).

( Read more: 12,170 (sic!) riveting words about health insurance in the US] )

This post brought to you by the 221 readers who funded my writing it – thank you all so much! You can see who they are at my Patreon page. If you're not one of them, and would be willing to chip in so I can write more things like this, please do so there.

Please leave comments on the Comment Catcher comment, instead of the main body of the post – unless you are commenting to get a copy of the post sent to you in email through the notification system, then go ahead and comment on it directly. Thanks!

goodbyebird

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Rec-cember Day 14

Bound
Devil Never Saw the Likes of Us by

scioscribe (2,958 words). Never was I ever not a Tilly fangirl, and Bound is just one of those movies I love to bits. This fic absolutely nails them.
It started right on their doorstep. Violet got out of bed Saturday morning and tugged a silk bathrobe up over her shoulders.

It was new. Almost everything she had with her had been bought since they’d left the city, but this was so new she’d had to snap the tags off it before she pulled it on. It had this swirly peacock pattern on it, like streaks of paint, and paint felt sort of like their lucky charm.

She wasn’t much of a cook, but she could add water to a mix like anybody else, and she decided to make blueberry muffins. She liked the little pastel-and-foil cups you put them in to bake: everything had its own little splotch of color. The old apartment had been nothing but black and white and steel, lifeless and cold. This place—their place—was different.

She was just sliding the tray in the oven when she heard the knock.

Current Music: Los Campesinos! - The Holly & The Ivy

sistawendy

I put on the big blue dress from Gallery Serpentine that I got for my tenth rebirthday and hit the Wildrose last night. It was a small but merry gathering including Tacoma Girl, A from the Merc, and A's sweetie J, not to be confused with J-the-dancing-fiend whom I usually see at the Merc with A.

The Wildrose is a pretty good place to be a dirty old woman. Ahem.

People bought me drinks and I drank them, but adequate hydration and sleeping past 1100 this morning allowed me to, like, not suffer today. Tacoma Girl took me to Lost Lake, which is still a fantastic place to get fish & chips & relative sobriety. Luckily, we were in & out well before the rush that happens when the bars stop serving, i.e. 0100.

Current Mood: pleased
Current Location: the living room of the Devil Girl House
Current Music: The Mountain Goats, "This Year"

jesse_the_k

I've observed hockey RPF fandom from an immeasurable distance, and I still got a kick out of this post:

https://marina.dreamwidth.org/1576715.html

marina was in hockey fandom, spent her childhood in Ukraine, knows much about filing serial numbers, and has definite opinions about vodka.

I'm reading reading reading.

Hi!

goodbyebird

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Rec-cember Day 13

Star Trek (2009 movie)
Lunch and Other Obscenities by

Rheanna (9,717 words). Just a delightful exploration of different cultures colliding.
When Starfleet Academy's Housing and Accommodation Officer—whose name, according to the sign next to her door, was Diane Maza—arrived at her office the next morning, Nyota was already there, waiting.

"My roommate's a sex-crazed exhibitionist with a food phobia," Nyota told her. "You have got to reassign me."

Maza didn't react. She regarded Nyota for a moment with a coolly appraising gaze that seemed designed to silently communicate that she hadn't just seen everything, she'd seen everything plus some other shit as well, and therefore any attempt to shock a reaction out of her was doomed at the outset.

summersgate

When I got back from shopping I found that my own personal sloth puppet had arrived in the mail. The other, first one is going to Dave's little nephew next week. Andy and Rainy weren't sure about it. Rainy is still shy and distrustful of it. She very much keeps her eye on it, comes close and touches noses with it and then runs away. Andy touched it with his mouth like he wanted to grab at it, then dipped down like he wanted to play with it, but then he just ended up barking a lot at it. She (it's a she) needs a name. I haven't been this pleased with anything in a long time. She's sitting on my lap right now. A little photo session with her:

Helios lens. I only have one christmas decoration. This tree. Which I love because it's so easy to get out and put away. On the right is a stack of placemats and cloth napkins (I liked the look of them in the picture), with my binoculars that I use to spy on the neighbor's horses and to check to see if the mail has arrived.

I wondered what they would do if I posed both puppets on Andy. Andy's a good boy and decided to "stay" for me. Rainy doesn't want to get too near. I think it's amazing that they recognize it as a possible real animal because it has a face even though it doesn't smell like an animal at all.

Me with Little Me.

summersgate

I finally used up the last of my ball of sari silk thread. I was able to make 13 bookmarks in all with it. I had a pajama day yesterday. Only went outside in my bathrobe and long coat a couple times to take care of the chickens. Maybe I needed a full day at home alone. The one thing I did that was social was call Kenyon and get caught up with what's he's been doing.

Today it's OA and then I want to go shopping at walmart - get more clear plastic to put up around the chicken coop run. The run is where I feed them and I'm finding that the snow is blowing in a lot. I think we are going to have a bad winter with lots of snow this year. That's my prediction.

xkcd_feed

https://xkcd.com/3180/

The experimental math department's budget is under scrutiny for how much they've been spending on trains leaving Chicago at 9:00pm traveling at 45 mph.

https://xkcd.com/3180/

goodbyebird

Well, that was a DUMB amount of scrolling. Remind me to keep up to date on fanart recs, BlueSky is not all too helpful. But I did get to make a variety of happy faces as i re-discovered some fanarts I'd forgotten about. We really are spoiled with IWTV. And to look forwards to: I pre-ordered the BLOOD & BROCADE fanart zine. Wanting to experience the first hand in physical format, I'll have to wait until February. And after that? Well, the rumor is s3 will premiere in April. At least, going by a verbal slip and a couple of deleted cast posts. Not too long now!

Anyways, have a bunch of fanart recs featuring pretty vampires.

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Rec-cember Day 12

( Be all the beautiful things you are, and be them without apology. For all eternity. )

Current Music: King princess - Girl Violence

summersgate

Can't See Yet.

elainegrey

This week in review

Monday night delivered cookies to Dad, bringing Carrie Dog with us, and we had a nice short visit. He has too many things beeping that he cannot hear, and will not replace filters in his fridge, and Christine is concerned about all the cables squeezed in between fridge and wall. Do not unplug your hearing aid charger to see if it stops the beeping you cannot hear, Dad.

Again noting to self, promise me you will regularly wear any hearing aid you need.

The car with new tires and repairs was rear-ended on Tuesday when we were taking cookies to my sister. We are both fine and healthy. Good thing we didn't bring Carrie, Christine noted, as the waiting by the road stretched on and on. Sister came, and we sat in her car during much of the waiting and had a good visit. Most humorous was the Highway Patrol listening to us respond to "what happened", then, "Let me interrupt, you were rear ended, right". Me: "Oh, you wanted the short story."

Our insurance company encouraged us to file directly with the at fault party's insurance. Nope. I believe Christine underscored that it would be more efficient for them if we did that, but not us. We take the car to dealership today. I suppose it's a gamble because the repairs may be more expensive there and that could tip to totaling it? But they will have parts.

Once a long time ago, Christine's first motorcycle was knocked over in San Francisco, breaking the mirror and scratching the paint. Her insurance was going after the at fault party with a vengeance, so the vintage paint repair and original mirror replacement cost totaled the bike-- and she ended up with a much fancier, powerful bike afterwards. (Can't remember what replaced the Honda.) I assume you only get a win like that once.

Wednesday i had my hair done, advised that it was time to reverse all the accumulated highlights and add back my natural color. Because i like the pink she has been using, i think she added way more pink than she had been, but that makes up for the "cool medium brown." Apparently my hair now has more dimensionality. I could not really explain why i get it done, but the pink is fun. I do wait about four months between visits.

Bruno has come out on his own in the morning and sometimes later in the day, racing out of the room and in the evening making like a bolt for under the couch. He knows in the morning that he's got the place to himself. I think he races just in case Marlowe is waiting to ambush him around the corner. We've had some success sedating her with the gabapentin but i can't bear to keep her that way. She is a feisty miss. I'll leave her food alone today, work a half day with Bruno, then this afternoon Bruno will sleep. Tomorrow i'll sedate Marlowe so it will be easier to have Bruno out during the day sharing space.

siderea

So, I, uh, got my RSI/ergonomics debugged!* I then promptly lost two days to bad sleep due to another new mechanical failure of the balky meat mecha and also a medical appointment in re two previous malfunctions. But I seem back in business now. The new keyboard is great.

Patrons, I've got three Siderea Posts out so far this month and it's only the 12th. I have two more Posts I am hoping to get out in the next three days. Also about health insurance. We'll see if it actually happens, but it's not impossible. I have written a lot of words. (I really like my new keyboard.)

Anyways, if you weren't planning on sponsoring five posts (or – who knows? – even more) this month, adjust your pledge limits accordingly.

* It was my bra strap. It was doing something funky to how my shoulder blade moved or something. It is both surprising to me that so little pressure made so much ergonomic difference, and not surprising because previously an even lighter pressure on my kneecap from wearing long underwear made my knee malfunction spectacularly. Apparently this is how my body mechanics just are.

siderea

Canonical link: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1890494.html

0.

Hey Americans (and other people stuck in the American healthcare system)! Shopping for a health plan on your state marketplace? Boy, do I have some information for you that you should have and probably don't. There's been an important legal change affecting your choices that has gotten almost no press.

Effective with plan year 2026 all bronze level and catastrophic plans are statutorily now HDHPs and thus HSA compatible. You may get and self-fund an HSA if you have any bronze or catastrophic plan, as well as any plan of any level designated a HDHP.

2025 Dec 9: IRS.gov: "Treasury, IRS provide guidance on new tax benefits for health savings account participants under the One, Big, Beautiful Bill"

Bronze and Catastrophic Plans Treated as HDHPs: As of Jan. 1, 2026, bronze and catastrophic plans available through an Exchange are considered HSA-compatible, regardless of whether the plans satisfy the general definition of an HDHP. This expands the ability of people enrolled in these plans to contribute to HSAs, which they generally have not been able to do in the past. Notice 2026-05 clarifies that bronze and catastrophic plans do not have to be purchased through an Exchange to qualify for the new relief.

If you are shopping plans right now (or thought you were done), you should probably be aware of this. Especially if you are planning on getting a bronze plan, a catastrophic plan, or any plan with the acronym "HSA" in the name or otherwise designated "HSA compatible".

The Trump administration doing this is tacit admission that all bronze plans have become such bad deals that they're the economic equivalent of what used to be considered a HDHP back when that concept was invented, and so should come with legal permission to protect yourself from them with an HSA.

Effective immediately, you should consider a bronze plan half an insurance plan.

( Read more [3,340 words] )

This post brought to you by the 221 readers who funded my writing it – thank you all so much! You can see who they are at my Patreon page. If you're not one of them, and would be willing to chip in so I can write more things like this, please do so there.

Please leave comments on the Comment Catcher comment, instead of the main body of the post – unless you are commenting to get a copy of the post sent to you in email through the notification system, then go ahead and comment on it directly. Thanks!

sistawendy

As of yesterday, I've been living for fifteen years as a woman. In other words, yesterday was my fifteenth rebirthday. I didn't go out yet, but my son took me out for tacos and a beer around the corner. Happy rebirthday to me. It's a little trippy to think that what turned into my grand coming out was a whopping fifteen years ago. Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.

My actual quinceañera, as I'm calling it, will be tomorrow evening at the Wildrose. There will be the big blue dress from Gallery Serpentine. Tacoma Girl and Ms. Washington State Leather said they'd come. I hope for an interesting evening. (Sadly, Funny Lady is out of town.)

Current Mood: Hurrah!
Current Location: the living room of the Devil Girl House
Current Music: Underworld, "8 Ball"

goodbyebird

The fixation is hyper y'all. Headvids. Brain zoomies. Giddiness at good characterizations (and, for this particular fandom, the characters being ~an appropriate amount of Bastard~ 🤌).

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Rec-cember Day 11

vein by vein by

morian (2,415 words). Not Lestat being jealous of the sun XD (don't let my comment trick you into thinking it's crack fic, excellent voices in this)
Before he died and was reborn as a creature, not a man, Louis preferred the night. In this city that stretches and groans and howls to life at dusk, he had no reason to favour the sun. His business was the night. People like him, that is to say pimps and grifters, came to bed long after dawn and slept past noon.

It wasn't until he lost the sun that he learned it was something that could be missed.

Though even winters in New Orleans are mild and summer nights leave shirt collars clinging to sweat-slick necks like desperate hands, there is a special kind of warmth in sunlight on the skin. It reeks of childhood and the garden and the roof, of sunrise with his brother.

“I don’t miss the sun,” he will say to a jaded reporter on the balcony of his Dubai altar a hundred years from now. “The reminders it carries.” And it will be true then. But here is a man who ran through the street and nearly burned to death on the first morning he carried the dark gift. And here is a man who grieves his brother, not just one life lost but a thousand possibilities with it.

More fic, vid, and icon recs below :DD

( Btw I'm going to need a vampire to greet Daniel with 'so you're the divorce papers I've heard so much about' in s3, thanks. )

Current Location: on the bus home from work, I read porn on the busssss

summersgate

Yesterday's art a day: Snow Doodle.

I'm into weaving with a new pin loom I got that makes 2" by 12" strips. Bookmarks I guess. I have some really unique yarn that is made from silk sari cloth - that's the colorful yarn in the pic. But you can't use it as a weft (the yarn that you pass through the warp - it's too "sticky" and uneven) so I need a more normal yarn for that - the gray yarn in the pic. I also ordered 3 more new little pin looms. A 4 x 4, 2 x 4, and 2 x 2. So my reveries are into thinking about ideas of how I can combine those 3 shapes in designs for blankets or cloth.

There were sirens of fire trucks earlier and just now I saw an ambulance go by. Somebody's not having a good day. The snow is falling in small flakes, drifting, not gusting. But you can see slight air currents because it doesn't fall straight down - the flakes individual pathways are criss crossing as they all move in a general easterly direction. There is something wonderful about having a window where you can just watch the snow fall.