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Oct. 27th, 2025 06:59 am
impy: (almost neon bats)
[personal profile] impy
God bless Hoopla, as it keeps me from having to fork out money for yet another streaming service. I've often wondered why Hallmark, of all companies, doesn't lean into cutesy Halloween movies. The closest they really seem to have come was when they went all in on the Good Witch series (movies and show) which, at least movie wise, always felt like someone forgot to add in the conflict portion of the story. I'm not asking for scary Halloween from them because, well, duh, but like gimme the Halloween love stories, dammit. They skimp on those in their rush to slog out more Christmas movies and it's always annoyed and baffled me.

So, imagine my surprise when they advertised getting Kimberly J Brown (and her husband) of Halloweentown fame to be in a Halloween movie. Huzzah! I broke out Hoopla and used my bingepass for HallmarkPlus, ready to fire this sucker up only to have it not work. Literally, in 13 minutes of runtime, I had to restart it 25+ times to get that far, and I suspect I only made it that far because I fastforwarded a bit and then went back to try and loop it back. Mm, no. I eventually watched something else (oddly, it also starred the male lead from Haul Out the Halloween), and it was fine and had some Halloween. I let Hallmark know their movie they'd been advertising for awhile was unwatchable, literally, and went about my week. I checked back in yesterday and huzzah, the movie worked!

image host
Spoilers? )

I hope this did well enough that Hallmark decides to actually go in on doing Halloween movies more than just throwing Halloween in during an Autumn movie they use to fill airtime before they decide fuck it, it's Christmas. Maybe bring KJB back and let her do something. It was fun seeing her go all Shakespeare loving fiend, but I need moooooooooooore.

Oh, if you're someone who suffers serious secondhand embarrassment, there is a rap at the end because WHY THE FUCK NOT.


Now to crawl into a shower and see if the cramps go away.

Nurse at Moorcroft Manor

Oct. 25th, 2025 11:57 am
vintageromancereader: (Default)
[personal profile] vintageromancereader

When Noreen Hayden, R.N., agreed to act as companion to the aging Miss Crowley, she had no hint of the danger to which her journey would inevitably lead.

Miss Crowley's obsession to find her one remaining relative, a great-nephew she had never seen, brought her and her young nurse to Moorcroft, a great rambling manor in the desolate moors of England. There they were met by Dan Austin and his strangely antagonistic wife.

In an atmosphere of pervading hostility, Noreen became acutely aware of an undercurrent of danger. And there was nowhere to turn, except to the stranger who had captured her heart!


Original Publisher: Ace
Original Year of Publication: 1967
Page Count: 155

Pretty much what it says on the tin: Noreen Hayden is a young, single woman who once worked as a nurse before quitting her job to take care of her grandfather. Once said grandfather dies, she's left at loose ends, and a doctor from her previous position offers her the chance to serve as a nurse/companion to an old lady named Martha Crowley. Miss Crowley is old and curmudgeonly, stubborn to a fault, and suffers from what we now recognize as dementia. Miss Crowley has unexpectedly inherited some money from a long-lost sibling, and has a yearning to visit the one living relative that she's aware of, a grand nephew who lives in England. The doctor and supervisor at the old age home where Miss Crowley resides are reluctant to let her go off on her own, but are persuaded to let Noreen take her because of her nursing background. The doctor that set the whole situation up tells Noreen that he was once penpals with a physician who lives in the part of England they're going to, and suggests she look up a Dr Forrest when they arrive, just so they have someone nearby in the worst case scenario.

Noreen is running from an unwanted suitor, and figures anywhere in the world is better than being trapped by him. So she agrees to accompany Miss Crowley, who has insisted on writing to her relation herself to let him know she's coming. When the pair arrive in England, they are met by a coarse man who introduces himself as Dan Austin, the long-lost nephew. Noreen takes an instant dislike to him, even though he is over-solicitous to Miss Crowley. Dan takes her to Moorcroft Manor where he introduces them to his wife, Rita, a domineering woman who clearly was not expecting the old lady to arrive with a young companion. Nevertheless, they put Noreen and Miss Crowley up in some of the finest rooms in the house and pay special, kind, loving attention to the wealthy old woman. It becomes obvious to Noreen that they are buttering her up so that she'll leave the fortune to them.

The Austins don't bother to hide their dislike and distrust of Noreen from her, accusing her of trying to weasel her way into Miss Crowley's graces so that she can have the money. Noreen makes a point to give them a wide berth - she stays around the manor and goes for long walks, enjoying the pretty scenery. She soon picks up a dog that she names Red, which the Austins reluctantly allow her to keep. She also meets a Dr Forrest when he nearly runs over Red; it's not the one she was expecting to meet, but his son, Tim. Noreen thinks he's exceptionally handsome, and the two develop something of a friendship. She tells him about why she's in England, along with her suspicions that the Austins aren't quite who they seem to be.

Rita is more obviously antagonistic than Dan; she cleverly moves about to sow seeds of distrust about Noreen with the locals, including the physician called to see Miss Crowley after one of her spells of confusion. Noreen can't convince that doctor that she is a competent nurse, so she turns to Dr Forrest instead. Rita and Dan have taken Miss Crowley away from Moorcroft Manor and have summarily dismissed Noreen, which causes her great distress. They also take Red the dog away from her, intending to put him down as an unwanted nuisance.

Noreen soon uncovers that the Austins are grifters who bought the manor from Miss Crowley's real grand nephew, and who decide to take advantage of the situation when the confused letter arrives announcing Miss Crowley's intentions to travel. She tries to tell Dr Forrest but he demurs, telling her that she's basically making wild accusations and maybe she's acting a bit too defensively? Frustrated, she returns to the manor to try to find proof, and goes to the law firm handling the nephew's papers. She tries to get them to understand that Miss Crowley is now missing and perhaps in danger, but they don't take her too seriously, either.

Noreen finally convinces Tim Forrest that she's a competent person with good reason to be worried about Miss Crowley, so they set off in search of her, and actually find her wandering around by an abandoned mineshaft, lost in her own confused memories. They manage to rescue her before she falls, and set the authorities after the Austins. The real grand nephew shows up to meet his relative, and of course he is absolute kindness himself. He invites Miss Crowley to stay in England with him as long as she wants. Tim then confesses to Noreen that he's fallen head over heels for her and asks her to marry him, to which she of course agrees.

This is a slim novel that very much shows its age. It was supremely frustrating to read in parts, because Noreen is not the idiot everyone treats her as, and she really is concerned for her patient's wellbeing. Treating her dog so terribly was pretty awful, too. Tim Forrest was indeed her only friend in this endeavor, but even he doesn't believe her until she tells him of her nursing background; only then does he take her concerns seriously - which, ugh, really?? That's how you treat the woman you proclaim to love, by condescending to her? Yuck. I wouldn't have wanted to marry him.

However, it does move along at a pretty fast clip, and keeps the suspense high as Noreen races to save Miss Crowley. The Austins get their comeuppance, too, so in the end justice is served.

⭐⭐ 1/2

Database maintenance

Oct. 25th, 2025 08:42 am
mark: A photo of Mark kneeling on top of the Taal Volcano in the Philippines. It was a long hike. (Default)
[staff profile] mark posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance

Good morning, afternoon, and evening!

We're doing some database and other light server maintenance this weekend (upgrading the version of MySQL we use in particular, but also probably doing some CDN work.)

I expect all of this to be pretty invisible except for some small "couple of minute" blips as we switch between machines, but there's a chance you will notice something untoward. I'll keep an eye on comments as per usual.

Ta for now!

Vexed

Oct. 24th, 2025 10:50 am
impy: (MLP: FiM flames flames)
[personal profile] impy
We established that I was sick last week, ja? Well, for the last... few months or so, maybe more, one of the tires on the car has been slowly losing air. To the point that my brother has promised to do something about it for months now. It's gotten progressively worse, as these things do, and earlier this week Mums called and the three of us discussed what could be done. MULTIPLE TIMES he said that this Friday (so, today) he'd take it and run it to Gerald's to see if they could plug it and if not, he was going to get... something (I dunno what) as a temp fix til we could afford to get new tires. MULTIPLE TIMES. Over the course of two or three conversations, okay? So when Mums called him this morning, imagine my surprise when he's a dramatic bitch over the fact that she didn't take it to Gerald's already (something he suggested as a possibility but also said if it didn't happen, that was FINE) and makes Mums and yours truly feel like shit because he has to work and he can't just go off and do shit because he lives alone now.


Dude, you live alone because you got into a physical fight with your roommate and then continued to think he'd live with you and pay you rent and not skip out on you. Seriously, anyone with a working braincell would've figured out that once you two sent each other to the hospital, the roommate gig was over. It's no one's fault but yours that you were foolish enough to not see him skipping out on the rent. Also also, no one told you to pick one of the most expensive places to rent. (sidenote: when I caught covid, it was right after he asked for help looking for a place to live. I looked at all sorts of places and sent him the best affordable options, and then I got sick as fuck. When I recovered, I found out that he didn't need my help, he'd already found a place, and then when I found out what it was and looked it up, I realized he'd bitten off way more than he'd be able to chew, financially. And given how often he's hit everyone else up for rent money since then, I was right.)


Also also also, he doesn't live alone in anything but a technicality unless he and the gf broke up again. But whatever, because none of this should matter since he's the one who chose FRIDAY as the day HE was going to do all the shit.

The. Fuck!


He tried to play the, "I tried calling but no one answered" card but I was awake until after noon yesterday and he didn't call before then, and had he called or sent me a text, I would've gotten back to him. For what it's worth, apparently he did call yesterday afternoon, but I would think he'd remember that he was essentially calling at the point of the day when no one here is awake?


Anyway. He's a dick and every time I think he's mostly outgrown it, I realized that no, he just saves it for concentrated fuckery that makes me want to fucking throttle him.
luxken27: (SVH - Evil Elizabeth)
[personal profile] luxken27

The End…and the Beginning

Simon Fear thought changing his name would stop the evil. He was wrong - dead wrong.

After generations of unspeakable horror, it is up to Daniel and Nora, brought together by their fateful love, to unite the feuding families. But is their forbidden love strong enough to withstand such awesome evil?

Poor Nora - desperate to tell the truth and bury the family curse...before it buries her.


Well this was a major disappointment! )

So, all in all, we learn that a lot of people needlessly die over the centuries, but we never learn what the evil powers are, or where they originated; we never learn about Angelica’s particular flavor of occult; we never learn how the Goode family seems to resurface after the death of the last known member in Book #2, and we never learn the fates of the other branches of the Fear family tree, which are just hanging around out there. And why did the village of Shadyside decide to pave a road through there? Automobiles were in their infancy!

It was 547 pages of cruel deaths, without a cohesive explanation, only a bunch of handwaving “dark magic.” Bleh. So glad I got this from the library!

wtf

Oct. 21st, 2025 03:59 am
impy: (this face means you idiot)
[personal profile] impy
First, let's go with where I've been. Last week I went to work Tuesday night and work had all the cooler and freezer doors open because they were cleaning/fixing them. (Freezer's only been borked since May and all.) There was an odd smell, which I assume is from that, and it was irritating my throat/nose/etc, so by the end of my shift I felt weird in the sinus area but relatively fine elsewhere. I stop at the store, pick up a couple of things because I fully expected to be back the next day when all the specials would be labeled, and head home. At home, the weirdness is still annoying and more of a localized thing until I take my shower, which I was hoping would wash away whatever funky smell was lingering on my hair.

I go to bed and very quickly realize oh shit, this is not just irritated sinuses. Or maybe it is, but the result is the same- I keep coughing. A LOT. The best way to explain it is when you're at the end of your cold and it's cough day, the day when you're gonna purge all the crap that's been lingering in your lungs for the last 7-10 days (however long the cold has lasted) but everything else in you feels pretty okay. Until you've had a cough try and take out a rib or do muscle damage or feel like a workout.

The day got progressively worse, even though I did manage to actually get some sleep once I propped myself up on a throne of pillows and Squishmallows. I'd basically sleep for an hour, wake up to cough up some blergh, grab some water after, then go back to sleep and repeat. At dinner I still thought I was going to power through, though I was wondering where our masks were and then thought, it's okay, work should have them because pharmacy! Yeah, an hour later I was calling out because I finally realized that no, I would not be able to handle a night of this in a mask. I went back to sleep and managed to actually get a three hour or so stretch before waking up and feeling SO MUCH WORSE. Insert several "oh no, I can't breathe properly despite my nose not being at all stuffed up and this is very much all in my head but not in that way" panic attacks (huzzah!) and a couple of pieces of toast, a banana, and the end of the mac and cheese and eventually I passed out again at like, 10am.

Anyway, I've spent the last however many days having a cold out of sequence. Like right now I seem to be in the gluey snot stage, and Sunday was the throat on fire part 2 (part 1 was a blip on earlier). It's very weird and I don't like it, but I'm hoping we're gonna be done with this soon.



Thing is, because I was sick I missed the No Kings protest. :( I also missed Ari's birthday, though it sounds like I dodged a bullet there because they did that thing where lunch turned to early dinner turned to regular dinner, but did not take into consideration how busy restaurants and the roads would be after the protests. Also, I am not a sushi person so there's that.

But it also meant that on Sunday, while I was passed out trying to feel better, I missed a billion calls from Cass about Jess, who wound up in the hospital the day before and then had to have surgery and had her foot amputated, possibly more later. !!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


in which I grouse about things I know nothing about. )
I dunno, I'm just vexed on her behalf because Jesus Christ, she needs a good kind of break. :/

AWS outage

Oct. 20th, 2025 10:11 am
alierak: (Default)
[personal profile] alierak posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance
DW is seeing some issues due to today's Amazon outage. For right now it looks like the site is loading, but it may be slow. Some of our processes like notifications and journal search don't appear to be running and can't be started due to rate limiting or capacity issues. DW could go down later if Amazon isn't able to improve things soon, but our services should return to normal when Amazon has cleared up the outage.

Edit: all services are running as of 16:12 CDT, but there is definitely still a backlog of notifications to get through.

Edit 2: and at 18:20 CDT everything's been running normally for about the last hour.
luxken27: (SVH - Evil Elizabeth)
[personal profile] luxken27

Buried Evil

What is the secret of Fear Street?

Why has its horror lasted so long?

Ezra Fier wants to find out. He searches for the answer among the rotting bones in the ghostly town of Wickham. But he find only betrayal and death.

Elizabeth and Kate are in love with the same boy. How can they know that they too are caught by the evil that will haunt this family forever?


I've decided to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak, so in addition to this being this week's nostalgia re-readathon, I'm also counting it towards the October 2025 #TBRChallenge, "Here There Be Monsters."

Because after all, aren't the scariest monsters us humans ourselves? )

Simon's story is told in the final book of this trilogy, and I believe the lore around him is resurrected in other Fear Street Saga books (no doubt Stine knows a good cash cow when he sees one). This book surprised me, pleasantly, so I'm looking forward to reading about how and why the Fears find Shadyside and decide that it's the ultimate place to haunt forever.

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