LJ Idol Presents:

Don't want him kicking you .. :)

From:

murielle

Nooo! Or telling me to get out of his yard. ;-)

From:

reidharriscooper

I gave myself a mental health day and watched men hit each other, stick skewers in each other and other fun stuff while bouncing around with people as we sweated on each other in a free and breezy and sexy fun afternoon.

And now I am back to normal life. Nurse on their way over, doctor's appoinment later.
Weekend will probably be quiet. Just the caretaking when needed and playing video games, catching up with shows and movies.

The bouncing and mosh pitting and etc. wiped me out actually. But i can still beat your neighbors up if you want Gary. Just pay for my transportation and any legal fees.

Hope everyone is having fun.

From:

murielle

It is so important to do that for yourself. I didn't. I think I would have faired much better if I had found a way to unwind.

Hope your weekend is without incident.

From:

banana_galaxy

I went to a friend's apartment to watch all the illegal Oakland fireworks last night. It was a nice change from that I usually do, which is listen to my neighbors behave like your new neighbors, Gary. My neighbors, of course, were still setting off fireworks when I came home, but fortunately I didn't have to use the intersection where they had a truck in the middle they were setting them off from.

I got my entry in yesterday! I haven't had much time to read too many of the other entries yet, but I only work half days on Fridays so hopefully I'll have some time to get through a few more today, when I'm not working on my memoir, picking my kid up, or building LEGO on a livestream.

From:

murielle

The Stampede started today, so there will be fireworks. When I lived on the top floor I could see them from time to time, and I could hear them, but I'm deaf and not on the top floor anymore, so I don't hear too much of anything. Although, there is a pesky neighbor who has a penchant for slamming their car, patio, or some kind of door in the wee hours. I hear that okay.

Happy weekend, glad to see you again. :-)

From:

The Stampede..? Are you in Calgary? That's where I'm from!

From:

murielle

Yes! Awesome! Hi neighbor! :-)

From:

tigrkittn

I like watching "official" fireworks, but not the crowds they attract, and husby doesn't like any of the noisy flash-boom thingies, so we were home hoping our neighbors would run out of ammo by bedtime. I'm working today, and tomorrow is busy so I think Sunday will be a bit of an Idol-reading binge day.

From:

murielle

The thing with fireworks is I get bored fast. There are only so many "wows" and "ahhs" in me.

I got a lot read done last night, and one this morning, and if there are more posted throughout the day I may get a few more read, but then it will have to be Sunday.

Edited Date: 2024-07-05 05:21 pm (UTC)

From:

I relate so hard to this, Murielle!

From:

murielle

:-)

From:

roina_arwen

We had to cook inside instead of outside due to weather, but we had a good fourth. We went to the next town over and parked in a HS parking lot to watch the fireworks, which were great! We also watched a few movies (including “Independence Day”) these last two days.

Working from home today. Huzzah!

From:

murielle

Independence Day is one of my favorite movies. I think I'll look for it online and watch it. I haven't for a while. Thank you! :-)

From:

roina_arwen

It’s a good movie! We often watch “1776,” but didn’t this year.

From:

halfshellvenus

Ha! We watched Independence Day yesterday, too!

I haven't seen all of it since it was first in theaters, but my memory of it was a little different from the reality. AKA, it's a little too long at 2 1/2 hours, the "technical" aspects near the end require WAY too much suspension of disbelief, and the movie needs at least 100% more Will Smith.

But we enjoyed it, all the same. Explosions!

From:

roina_arwen

It definitely needs more Will Smith, he’s awesome!

From:

I hope he acts again. I know after "the slap"...but I loved his movies. My favorite of all is "Seven Pounds"

From:

unmowngrass

Change of subject, but what season are we on, please? Does this season even have a name, other than 'the one that started in 2024'?

From:

it was a last minute decision to have one, so it's literally just called "LJ Idol Mini". I considered calling it "Exhibit C" :D But there is a lot more involved (from my end) for me to call it an official 'Exhibit"... this is definitely more of a mini season format. There are 10 official full seasons and pretty sure this is the 5th mini season. Plus 4 special events - 2 Idol Jr (for kids), 1 Idol Jr format for adults and our Survivor mini season. (just noticed that 3 Strikes was on listed on the sidebars for the winner. I need to correct that)

From:

murielle

What about Last Minute Mini? ;-)

From:

unmowngrass

I guess I've been out of the loop, I hadn't noticed that an 'Exhibit' is different from a mini-season, is different from a special event...

From:

Honestly, with the exception of where there are blatantly different rules, (Friends and Rivals/3 Strikes) most people don't notice. The other changes exist in my approach to the game. :)

From:

unmowngrass

Fair

From:

halfshellvenus

I'll have to go update the labels on my entries. I thought this was another LJ Idol Survivor, for some reason.

I see I already have another LJ Idol Mini entry from a prior mini-season where I think I got out one entry and then had to bail. Probably related to the house fire. I can't believe it's been 2 1/2 years now, and we're still not back in our house!

From:

"another LJ Idol Mini season" - that was probably Idol Minor. Which was the name of the version of the Idol Jr season I did for adults.

That's absolutely insane to think about that you are not back in your house yet!!!

From:

I did a "Fanfic Survivor" that predated Idol. But only one since then.

I'd LOVE to do something like that again, but probably away from Idol since I think that a lot of the issues came from some people treating it like Idol whereas others were treating it like they were playing Survivor.

Edited Date: 2024-07-05 09:03 pm (UTC)

From:

roina_arwen

For some reason I have entries titled “Season 11…”

I assume “Friends & Rivals” was the Survivor mini season?

From:

Just checked over at LJ - for some reason I didn't update the sidebar over here!! There absolutely was a Season 11. 2019, which means it was the "height of COVID" season. Dadi won. If I had looked at the names instead of just the numbers I would have noticed her name missing! :D

From:

Nope. Friends and Rivals was the one with the wrestling mask icons. Two separate groups that competed against each other. Joey Michaels, writing under the name prog_schlock won that one.

From:

roina_arwen

Ah! Gotcha - thanks for the answers!

From:

My mother is visiting from Canada so we got to subject her to her first 4th of July. We took her down to the lake where people compete to have the best fireworks show from all directions. She got so disoriented that at one point she thought she was on fire. (:

From:

murielle

Aww. That's sad. But how wonderful to have your mom with you. And she's visiting from Canada. (Waves!)

From:

Oh no worries, we were all laughing about it! Glad that it was just a short walk from our house so we were able to leave as soon as we were all sufficiently overstimulated. America's 4th of July is something else in comparison to our Canada Day..!

From:

murielle

It sure is! For me, back in the day, it was a day off. LOL!

From:

unmowngrass

Back to the subject at hand, yesterday I laughed at British memes 'revoking' the USA independence, and I went to vote. The UK has a new government, now, so I believe, although I haven't seen anything official, and also not nearly as much on facebook as I was expecting. But enough to point me in the general direction. We now need photo ID to vote. But also, our voter number gets written on the back of the voting slip. So voting can be tracked. Not in the moment, for sure, and we still have the little privacy booths in which to do the actual voting. But I'm not surprised if every candidate got the slips voting for them and then some intern in the party spent weeks or months finding the names and addresses again. My Mum was once written to by a candidate, "thank you for voting for this party in the past, I hope we can count on your vote again...", and this seems to me to be the only way they can do it. I asked them about writing the number on the back of the slip, some time ago, they say it's to prevent ballot stuffing. But the ballot box is right there in front of the adjudicator (if that's what they're called). You fold your paper in the little booth, but it's still really clear that you only have one paper when you come to put it in. They don't need to write your voter number on it so your vote can be tracked. It bothers me.

I am not sure if this bothers me more or less than the fact that the party that got in this time got 2 million less votes than both of the last 2 elections, but they were just distributed differently, so we got more from that party in via first past the post. There is call to redevelop the voting system "so every vote counts", and I totally get that. But we had a vote on this 10-12 years ago, and the result was to stay the same. But that was very badly handled on the publicity side, tbh. The main legitimate argument though, is that it's important to have a local candidate representing a specific area, in order to bring any issues from that specific area to wider parliamentary attention, and I get that too. There has been an ongoing environmental health problem in our constituency over the past few years, so for our MP to be able to say "I need the Minister for Health to come to my constituency and look into this" has been quite powerful and has probably made more progress with it than would have happened otherwise. So I do get that. But all votes not counting equally bothers me as well.

...sorry, I seem to have changed the subject again!

From:

Not at the prospect camp today for the scrimmages. That position was filled by an internal candidate. (Her Dad wanted to go with her, so they are spending the day together and going to lunch)

From:

mollywheezy

We had my mom and a couple of friends over for hot dogs and hamburgers. MY husband is such an overachieving griller that we will be eating hot dogs and hamburgers all weekend. ;) We don't do fireworks, and thankfully I didn't hear any from our neighbors after about 9 PM, so we have good neighbors. I will hopefully be submitting my entry today and then spend the weekend finishing reading The Heaven and Earth Grocery store for my book club which is on Monday. Since I'm facilitating the discussion, I really need to read the book . . .

From:

roina_arwen

Do they have Divinity and Angel Food cake at the Heaven and Earth grocery store?

From:

Lol. Good reply :)

From:

mollywheezy

Nope, nothing so fun. ;)

From: