Graduation!

Went into London on Thursday evening, to stay over in a hotel so we could be dressed and ready for son's Masters Degree graduation at 9.45 on Friday morning. Son and daughter met us at the hotel and we had a nice evening just chatting at the bar.

Even with the hotel we had to get up pretty early in order to get to the Royal Festival Hall via Docklands Light Railway and the Jubilee line.

Son, who has just had an operation on his foot, was in a medical shoe most of the day, but swapped it out for a normal shoe to cross the stage and get his photos taken.

Graduation ceremonies have become a lot less cold and formal since I had mine. There were people in the audience cheering as their graduate crossed the stage, and graduates doing little dances before they got their formal handshake/bow. It was a change I approve of, I think. We ought to be able to enjoy our triumphs, I think, instead of making even our celebrations feel like an ordeal.

There was still an awful lot of clapping to be done!

Nice speeches and a very warm atmosphere. And of course we(me, DH, daughter) were all extremely proud of him.

Then we went to Kintan (Japanese barbeque restaurant on Oxford Square) for lunch - which is a great option for the three meat eaters, and does spicy vegetable noodles and barbeque-your-own halloumi for the vegetarians :)

After which we caught the new Elizabeth line back to the DLR, mainly so we could check out London's newest tube line (very like all the other tube lines except cleaner and roomier.) And thus back to the cars and back home.

Then it was Saturday, and DH got up and got dressed for the Mark Jones Day of Dance and then half way through tying string round his knees he said "You know, I don't actually feel very well."

He was testing negative only the day before, and I was testing negative until yesterday, but he got the red line on Saturday, and I got it today, and to cut a long story short, we are now both grounded with Covid.

Snowflake Challenge #14

Fandom Wrap Challenge

Everyone seems to have jumped on the 'wrap' bandwagon after Spotify has been doing it for all these years. I got 'wraps' from Reddit, Duolingo, Tumblr, and more. We don't have any scientific algorithms here, but we can do what we do best - estimate and make stuff up to fill in the holes!

Presenting the snowflake_challenge's Fandom Wrap! Fill in your top 5 (or less. Or more, we're not picky) in each category. If you'd like to make up your own top 5 category, please do!

What were your top 5 fandoms for 2022 based on the amount of time you interacted with them?

1. I started the year still with General Hux (Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Kylux and Gingerpilot) where I was writing fanfic.
2. then I wandered off to read a lot of stuff in the Murderbot fandom, while mostly lurking
3. and a bit of stuff in The Goblin Emperor, where I also lurked
4. The Untamed came in hard at the end of the year, and I tried a bit of fanfic but have mostly contributed by podficcing 5.

What were your top 5 fandom spaces (Discord, Twitter, etc.) you experienced fandom in terms of time spent?

1. The year started on Tumblr, where I had a nice little community of people who discussed the First Order with me. But they all drifted off to other fandoms.
2. after which I tried to get into Mastodon (where I already had an account from three years ago when my fandom was permaculture.) But kept drifting back to Tumblr for the instant dopamine response and the fact that I didn't have to put much effort in.
3. Briefly tried to get into The Untamed fandom on Twitter, just before Twitter went nuclear
4. Eventually decided that if fandom places were all doomed to collapse, I would come back to DW, which had survived ever since LJ went down and looked like a good candidate for a social-media-of-our-own

What are the top 5 things you did to contribute to fandom in terms of time? Did you write? Comment? Send positive energy into the universe? Create art?

1. I'm in the grip of crippling writers' block and hadn't found another way of contributing until I discovered podficcing. Late in the year I did discover podficcing, and I've been doing that since September
2. I do comment when I have the spoons to do so
3. Occasionally I make icons, but as they are for really obscure fandoms I mostly end up using them myself

What were your top 5 most appreciated fandom contributions? (i.e. in terms of likes, kudos, reblogs, comments, etc.)

1. Definitely the podfic of Last of Our Kind by Shiome. She has been a huge support and cheerleader, and I've had a lot more comments than I ever imagined.

Have a Top 5 List you'd like to share?? By all means!

Media I can remember and enjoyed from 2022 (some of which was watched on Netflix)

1. Wakanda Forever (briefly thought about writing Namor/M'Baku, but see above re writer's block)
2. The Untamed (attempted to write for this too and managed a single short. Then gave up.)
3. Warrior Nun (fun enough)
4. Winx Club (also fun enough)
5. Amazon's Rings of Power - made me wish to start writing Celeborn again, out of spite, but did not actually manage to make me do so.