semperfiona: (meteors)
It's been a hectic few weeks here in the Rivendell household.

Chris had been having a pain in his right side for apparently years now, but nothing was diagnosed. Three-four weeks ago, it got suddenly much worse, and he went to urgent care, where they did an ultrasound and told him it's probably his gallbladder and he should see a gastroenterologist. The first one he could find who could see him was the surgeon who did Tammie's recent colonoscopy, in Ste Genevieve. He went to see the surgeon, who had another ultrasound done because the first one was "not good quality", and told him he had gallstones and should make an appointment to have the gall bladder removed. But that their hospital didn't have equipment capable of handling a person of his size (he has been calling himself a frost giant lately), so gave him a referral to a surgeon at Missouri Baptist.

It took a few days of calling but he finally got in touch with the MoBap surgeon, who *also* told him their equipment wasn't big enough, and he should go to the ER at BarnesJewish. Thursday last, we did that. Spent all of Thursday night in the ER--where they did yet another ultrasound--finally admitted to the hospital Friday morning early. They still weren't sure they were actually going to remove his gallbladder; apparently he was borderline on the criteria they use to decide whether it's an emergency or should be done as scheduled semi-elective surgery. He kept insisting that he couldn't live with the pain for another six weeks--which seemed likely to be the timeframe for the elective surgery--and eventually they set him up for surgery Saturday morning.

Surgery was successful, I have seen a picture of what he's calling GallStoneHenge (six large and a heap of small gallstones), and he was released Sunday afternoon. Recovery is going well, he felt better the day after surgery than the day before, and keeps improving. Yay!

Meanwhile, Tammie is traveling for work. This is the third week in a row that she's been gone. She's home on the weekend, but of course we have to spend most of it getting her stuff ready to leave again (All The Laundry). So I was the one who spent Thursday and Friday at the hospital with Chris until she got home Friday evening and was able to join us.

Meanwhile meanwhile, Rosa was attending a convention that same weekend, and had a costume not-quite-finished that she wanted to wear. So I got to work on sewing the costume while sitting in a hospital visitors chair. But it got done!

In among all that, I finished my owl post gifts. Woohoo!
semperfiona: (Default)
I've been working on my next podfic, and it's frustrating. About every three-to-five minutes of the recording (and it's over 2 hours long), there is a few seconds of very intrusive buzzing that causes my words to be lost. I will have to rerecord and edit back in about thirty sentences.

Does anyone have an idea how to prevent this? We had been thinking it was interference, perhaps from my phone receiving messages. But it's so very consistent on timing that that seems less likely.
semperfiona: (Default)
I have found a new use for my otherwise-abandoned LJ (well, I still read and occasionally comment). It would appear that LJ still allows hotlinking of images! I have replaced some bad cover art links with LJ photos, and maybe that will work for folks?

Can you see the art on this: the colour of snow [podfic]?

Oh, yeah, bee-tee-dubs, I made another thing. I found the fic based on smirkingcat's requests for her owlpost gift, and I loved it so much that even though I made her something else, I made this too just because. So, smirkingcat, you might like this.
semperfiona: A pile of conversation hearts (love hearts)
That AI-written Harry Potter story you've seen around the internet? I podficced it.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/13105242

Voiceless

Nov. 7th, 2017 10:54 am
semperfiona: (Default)
Started getting sick on Friday, and spent the weekend completely unable to speak above a raspy whisper. Today I have about a third of my normal range. Head voice absent, throat voice iffy, and chest voice mostly fine. Conveniently (Not!), it's solo auditions tonight at Charis. I had psyched myself up to audition, but without a voice I've been unable to practice all weekend, and when I tried this morning, the result was dismal. I might make a passable attempt at the first snippet, which is mostly in the lower parts of my range, but the second? Hopeless. I'm not getting above an A (the one in the middle of the treble clef), and the song wants the E at the top, which is normally an easy stretch for my alto voice (I can get to F, or F-sharp on a really good day) but not today. Unless a miracle occurs. *crosses fingers*

At least I had enough voice last night to record the second podfic I am doing for [fest redacted], if only barely. Had to edit out a lot of coughing, though.
semperfiona: (Default)
Radio silence for quite a while, and only books postings for a while longer yet. I had so intended to be more consistent with posting. Hah.

Well. In the last several months, I have
  • Read a few books. Not many; for whatever reason reading just hasn't been a thing I wanted to do. But.
    1. Fluke, Christopher Moore (audio)
    2. The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination, John Joseph Adams, ed (anthology, audio)
    3. Six Wakes, Mur Lafferty
    4. Full Fathom Five, Max Gladstone
    5. The Brightest Fell, Seanan McGuire (audio)
    6. Medea, Kerri Greenwood

  • Made a thing: The Evil Devil Child and the Perfect Gift, recorded for HP Podfic Fest 2017

  • Signed up for HD Owl Post 2017.

  • Had my picture taken for The Awakenings Project, a photo essay/book about women's empowerment. Part of the process is choosing a word to embody/invoke. I chose DAUNTLESS.
    Here are my photos: Profile and Full face

  • Sang at St Louis Pride with my CHARIS sisters, and rejoined for the fall 2017-spring 2018 season.

  • Replaced my venerable MacBookPro Zoe (built late 2008) with a slightly newer one. The other morning, Tammie said to me, "Zoe's under the sofa!" I pulled her out and turned on the screen to find that it had been crushed. Before I actually made it to the mac store to get an estimate for screen replacement, Rosa pointed out that the whole case was crushed and the DVD drive now looked like this: )| Obviously, replacing the screen wasn't going to cut it, so we decided to use my (conveniently-timed, as it turned out) annual bonus to buy a newer, non-crushed MacBook built mid-2012. Chris performed surgery to transplant the hard drive from Zoe's old body into her new one, and she lives again. Faster and shinier, but also smaller. Old case was a 15" screen, new one is 13".

  • Played a lot of Pokemon GO.

  • Attended Beer Choir three times. Which is more or less exactly what it sounds like: a bunch of people get together and drink beer and sing (songs about beer, mostly). It's a lot of fun.


  • That'll do to be going on with, anyway.

Squee!

Jun. 27th, 2016 02:11 pm
semperfiona: (deserve)
My latest podfic has posted at hp-podfic-fest!
semperfiona: (apple)
So my current podfic project has reached a point where I wanted to copy the file to my phone to listen to it in the car. I created an mp3 and copied it to iTunes, then dragged it to my phone. I got a gray file listing with a broken circle next to it--unplayable. I deleted it and re-dragged it, several times over, re-synced my phone several times, no luck whatsoever.

Did some googling, found a number of people with similar problems but no good solutions.
Finally, after half an hour of frustration...I closed iTunes, disconnected my phone, and then reconnected it, thus restarting iTunes. This time when I tried to copy my file it went with no problems at all.
semperfiona: (maple)
I've been doing pretty well this last week. It surprises me somewhat, but other than the first couple of days even the emotional volatility has settled down and I'm mostly content.

***

I went to Dance Journey last night with Tammie and Jasmine and had the most energy-perceptive experience I think I've ever had. Jasmine was substitute teaching and she had us concentrate on our Center and our Circumference, feeling the core and the edges of ourselves, reaching out beyond our skin to the rest of the room and even outside. I really felt my center as a ball of blue-white lightning, and when reaching out to the circumference could also feel the brushing touches of the auras of the other people in the room and the grass and breeze outside. Tammie and I both agreed on the aura-colors of everyone else, which surprised me a lot. It was very freeing for me to be "big" in the world, to be expansive and take up energy-space.

I think this is a thing I need to practice more: feeling my surroundings and connections to the others nearby and being as big as I want to be, without losing my core. In contrast, Tammie felt almost the opposite: she spends too much time being sensitive to the others around her and needs to build energy walls and shields around her core.

***

Emma told Chris last night that she and Joe are moving back to Chicago; he's got a job offer with the company his father works for. Chris is disappointed and we will miss her, but it sounds like a far better situation for a baby to come into: the new job will pay $18-19/hr which is almost certainly a huge increase on what he makes at Sonic. And it definitely means they aren't expecting any of us to step in for child care or day-to-day support, which was one of my big fears about the situation. On the other hand, it means Emma's mom gets more involved in her daily life again, which may lead to re-estrangement between Chris and Emma.

***

My longest podfic to date was published on Sunday! Nearly four hours, recorded and edited in several sessions through July and August, and I'm really pleased with it. http://hd-fan-fair.livejournal.com/106541.html

Author's original Summary: Auror Potter and Unspeakable Malfoy team up to investigate a series of missing persons, and it soon becomes apparent that Dementors are involved. Despite their initial misgivings, Harry and Draco find that they need each other's help, in more ways than one.

Rated: G (yes, really!)

I'm looking for The Next Thing to record. I'd kind of like it to be smutty smexy femslash, if someone has a recommendation. I'm open to any fandom that I have any knowledge of (or can get a base level of knowledge quickly), and I tend to prefer approx 10K in length. That comes out to about an hour at my reading rate, which I can usually do in one sitting, and then go back and edit in another. Not to say that I wouldn't do another long one, or a super short one for that matter.

Squee!

Jul. 6th, 2015 10:39 am
semperfiona: (ampersand)
My first fest, and I'm the very first post!

http://hp-podfic-fest.livejournal.com/72247.html
semperfiona: (ampersand)
Sexy Drarry podfic, read by yours truly. May or may not satisfy one of my bingo squares, I'm not sure. I started the project before getting the card.



http://archiveofourown.org/works/3708577
semperfiona: (tao)
Semperfiona's Podfic Bingo!
Yuletide Poetry Splice Fics Together Read A Friend’s Fic Random Fic
Non-English Language Read Slowly (for you) Unfamiliar Fandom Gen Read Sexy
Character Voices 2nd POV FREE SPACE Action/Adventure Try an Accent
Rare Pairing Read While Laughing Incorporate Verbal Effects Incorporate Sound Effects Read with a Smile
Kinky 1st POV Try something new (for you) Het Incorporate Music
semperfiona: (ampersand)
I made some more podfic! I did three stories for Awesome Ladies Anthology V: a story about Pepper Potts, one about Droushnakovi, and one about Susan Sto Helit and Ophelia. That was totally fun; now to listen to the OTHER 140 stories.

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