Cat•a•mountain Books

Books are portable magic

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Friday Five (florida man makes announcement edition)

Friday Five (florida man makes announcement edition)

Welcome to the third Friday of November! Busy and stressful week at work. Trying to rewrite a novel and keep up my word count for NaNoWriMo the rest of the time. And then there was a pair of family emergencies. Let’s move on to this week’s Friday Five, shall we? This week I bring you: one story/quiz that needed its own category, the top five stories of the week you, five stories of interest to…

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Friday Five (give me a break edition)

Friday Five (give me a break edition)

Welcome to the second Friday of November! We may have averted an existential crisis. Since the news at least in the U.S. has been wall-to-wall election, I tried to find other things for the Stories of the Week. Let me know how I did. Let’s move on to this week’s Friday Five, shall we? This week I bring you: one story that just needed its own category, the top five stories of the week you may not…

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Friday Five (why are these close edition)

Friday Five (why are these close edition)

Welcome to the first Friday of November! Do you have any of Halloween candy left? After most of October being significantly and record-shatteringly warm than usual, much of this week has been colder than usual for this time of year. Let’s move on to this week’s Friday Five, shall we? This week I bring you: the top five stories of the week you may not have seen because of everything else, five…

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Friday Five (in the sweet by and by edition)

Friday Five (in the sweet by and by edition)

Welcome to the fifth Friday of October! Halloween is only a few days away! It’s been rainy and cool all week. We had a windstorm in the wee small hours of Thursday and the power went out just a few minutes before the time my alarm usually goes off. I guess autumn finally is here! I’ve spent a log of time this week watching videos of various people interviewing Leslie Jordan. I’ve started a blog…

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Friday Five (your rights may not edition)

Friday Five (your rights may not edition)

Welcome to the third Friday of October! Spooky season is is full swing! Though that last couple of week’s it’s been smoky season. And the temps all this month have been more likt a typical August than October. We’ve also had almost no rain. Air quality ahs been so bad I’ve have scratchy throat and itchy eyes and occasianally a wheeze n my lungs. And I do my best to stay inside–I swapped out all…

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Friday Five (paying attention edition)

Friday Five (paying attention edition)

Welcome to the second Friday of October! Spooky season is is full swing! It’s one thing to have spent the last several decades reading about the causes and consequences of climate change. But still having summer temperatures and wild fire alerts in mid-October just feels wrong. Let’s move on to the Friday Five in which I bring you: the top five stories of the week you may not have seen because of…

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Friday Five (don't actually believe edition)

Friday Five (don’t actually believe edition)

And now we’re in the first Friday of October! Spooky season is is full swing! We had a few more days of unusually warm weather, then a couple of days of cool and damp weather, and now we are getting warmer than usual again! Let’s move on to the Friday Five in which I bring you: a story about bad headline writing and topic framing, the top five stories of the week, and five stories about traitors…

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Friday Five (september ends edition)

Friday Five (september ends edition)

Welcome to the final Friday of September. September, the most blesséd month, when superior babies are born. The air quality remained moderately bad until we finally got some light rain this week. There are some days in the 10-day that leave me thinking we should wait another week before putting away the two roll-out a/c units. Let’s move on to the Friday Five in which I bring you: a story that…

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Quick birthday thought from an old gay guy

Quick birthday thought from an old gay guy

“I’m not old, I’m FUCKING retro!” I try to post at least a little something every year on my birthday. Since I have been so bad at posting much of anything here this year it felt extra important that I do. My husband managed to turn the entire weekend into a birthday celebration. He had me open presents while we were online with our gaming group on Saturday. That’s also when they sang to me and…

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In which we wind up eating dinner much later than we meant to...

In which we wind up eating dinner much later than we meant to…

Two bits of background: First, today is a day we spend the afternoon logged into a friend’s Discord server playing our current RPG campaign. (It’s a Fate-based Star Wars game at the moment, in which I play a Gamorrean named Xagg whose high concept is, “Just tell me who to clobber.”) While I was shopping this morning I found a small roast in the Manager’s Special part of the meat department, 50%…

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Friday Alternative: No fascists edition

Friday Alternative: No fascists edition

This week has been insane at work with several late nights fixing problems, so there was no time to assemble a proper Friday Five. Look for a links filled post sometime this weekend. Here are some images that cover one of the recent recurring issues in the news.

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Friday Five (voting matters edition)

Friday Five (voting matters edition)

Welcome to the third Friday of September. September, the most blesséd month, when superior babies are born. Not long after last week’s Friday Five posted, the air quality in my region starting going bad. There are wildfires around, some just on the other end of the county I live in, and all that smoke and particulate matter made breathing a bit unpleasant for a few days. So I wasn’t surprised…

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Friday Five (good news first edition)

Friday Five (good news first edition)

Welcome to the second Friday of September. September, the most blesséd month, when superior babies are born. It has been a weird week. The large volcano that can be seen from when the weather is particularly clear has started venting. If it goes we’re all going to die. That isn’t really an exaggeration. And the night before last we had a small earthquake from one of the many, many, many fault…

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Friday Five (incompetently concealing treason edition)

Friday Five (incompetently concealing treason edition)

Welcome to the first Friday of September. September, the most blesséd month, when superior babies are born. It’s been a week. Again. It’s time for the Friday Five in which I bring you: two bonus categories, the top five stories of the week, five stories of interest to queers are our allies, five stories about election stuff, plus an obituary. This Week in Justice: Ex-NYPD officer who assaulted…

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Friday Five (what century are we in edition)

Friday Five (what century are we in edition)

Welcome to the fourth Friday of August. It’s been a week. It’s time for the Friday Five in which I bring you: two bonus categories, the top five stories of the week and five stories of interest to queers are our allies (plus a couple of things I wrote). This Week in We’ve Been Telling You: Daylight Savings Time Turns Us Into Terrible People by Making Us Exhausted, Study Finds This Week in the…

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There are things worse than gatekeeping...

There are things worse than gatekeeping…

I have been very bad at writing any reviews of any of the genre series, movies, or books I’ve read in the last year. For instance, the last review I posted was for episode 4 of season 2 of Star Trek: Picard back at the end of March. Since then I’ve seen the rest of that series, watched the entirety of season one of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and the entirety of Obi Wan Kenobi, and season one…

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Chuck is the artist, Chas is the writer

Chuck is the artist, Chas is the writer

Many years ago the famous author Terry Pratchett was going to do a reading in the city where I lived at the time, Seattle, Washington. You had to reserve seats for the reading, though the tickets were free. My husband and another couple among our friends wanted to attent, so we reserved seats and planned to attend together. Specifically, the other couple was going to show up at our place in a…

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