The Musings of the Midnight Fox

And what I have been researching.

So I made the foolish mistake of looking at the Reylo¹ Fanfiction on various sites. There's a twitter account called Reylo Prompts which is exactly what it says - pictures or moodboards or snippets of poetry or just ideas that could be the basis of a story.

What it also is, and what it does not admit to, is being a hive, a warren, a TOTAL BLOODY INFESTATION OF PLOT BUNNIES!

Ahem.

I got bitten by the idea that Rey is the spoiled granddaughter of Mafia Don Palpatine, and Kylo Ren is a trusted Capo tasked with looking after her when there's a contract out on her. I was going for 10K. I think it'll hit around 25K.

So the things I have googled so far that amuse me greatly? And also enquired of patient friends such as moxie_man?

• Whether there's a slang expression for French Canadian Lumberjacks around the North-Eastern states.


• Have the eastern US Catholic Churches stopped using stoups?


• Is there a Star Wars Stratego game? There is! Several, in fact.


• Italian for Judas, Death Star, faggot² and how to refer to your period


• Timber rattlesnakes, their habits during winter, their general colouring, and how fast the bite will kill you.


• Is hunting legal in National Parks? No, except for a couple of places in Alaska


• Low-impact septic systems and how long between maintenance


• Symptoms of COVID-19 in the elderly, and how fast they can go from healthy to intubation.


• The plotline to the Bodyguard movie.


• Expensive good-quality Italian wines


• Innumerable Star Wars minor characters, locations and references. I have seen the last 3 movies once each only, so it's a good thing this is a full-on AU.

And all this just for Star Wars Fanfic.

1. Reylo = Rey/Kylo Ren (Ben Solo). Yes I've got a thing for dark broody antihero types. So bite me.
2. Apologies for the epithet. It's what the Don has been calling Kylo, making assumptions about him.

Now I have a gmail account of the same name as this. To be honest, I'm "reynardo" or a variation of it all over the internet - except in a few places, where I try to keep things a bit separate.

But the problem with the name "Reynardo" on Gmail is that other people keep thinking it's their account. Or they have a variation (such as "Reynardo1415") and only put the letters in. So I've had Itunes registrations, confirmations of conference bookings, even notices to pick up a credit card, all not for me.

There does seem to be one person, though, who keeps signing up for dating services under that email address. I've had to advise a whole heap of places that no, I shan't be confirming my registration for the Big Busted Babes of Boston Baseball this week, or ever! When they signed up for Instagram, I attempted to contact them to let them know they were using the wrong email address, but not a hope.

Today, though, it got personal. Whoever it is, their computer is infected with a virus or malware. Whoever it is, their computer (in the Philippines) is sending out SPAM emails for "Let Google Pay You" scam to 1001 addresses.

And of course, their emails have my email address as the sender.

Now, any tech support person seeing that email would immediately be able to check the header, see that it's from another site altogether, and contact the originating computer's ISP to have their connection turned off until they clean their bloody machine.

But a non-techie is going to see the "From: reynardo@gmail.com" and think they've found the twit.

I'm only getting the auto-bounces so far. I'm expecting the written "stop or I'll tell on you" emails any moment now.

Great.

Today's not been good. This will be the (im)perfect icing on the cake.

that a dear friend bought for me in Germany, on the basis that it was a tektite. It's certainly heavy enough to be one, and being the geeks that we are, we tested it with a magnet. It's not magnetic, so we doubt that there's much iron in it. But it's the right size, and the right shape, and although it doesn't have the glassy surface that many of them have, it's similar to a lot of others.

And there's an information sheet that came with it, in German. Now I don't speak German, and neither does my friend (I still wonder how he managed to make his way through Germany for a month!) but I could muddle out enough German to work out that Metalle, Titan Mangan, Silber und Palladium were part of the makeup. No wonder it wasn't magnetic.

Then later, when I was showing my mother, I started to wonder - those are really odd metals for a meteorite. I'd expect Chromium or Nickel if I wasn't getting Iron, and definitely not Silver. And there were references to Energie Steine and Mannliche Steine, which had me suspicious. So I decided to try to translate from the German.

( To see what Google Translate made of the document, please read from here. But not while drinking... )

If you're curious, click on this picture to see the original sheet.

I've checked what a Boji stone should look like, and my stone is much more like a tektite than one of these, so it still might be legit. Or it could be a dodgy Boji.

You can stop laughing now. But we haven't.

What *was* supposed to happen was Continuum, a SFF convention that I was *really* looking forward to.

What actually happened was the gradual onset of some sort of flu-ey tired headachy bug with no energy, some nausea, and an extreme disinclination to leave the house.

So I decided not to be that-person-who-BROUGHT-Con-Crud-to-the-con (Yes, da_norvegicus, I'm looking at you) and have spent a fairly quiet weekend at home, using up scads of Internet allowance. (I've just found a Youtube channel with ALL the Time Team episodes on it - as in going back to when Tony Robinson had hair!) I think I'll work on the new Well of Lost Soles and watch cheesy videos instead. ( For an explanation of the Well, click here. )



And this is roughly what it should look like when it's finished! Wish me luck!