Parallels

Got my parallelsfic match. And yup, it was one of the two I'd predicted I was going to get. It's not that hard to work out what you're likely to get in exchanges that involve this particular algorithm as long as you're in possession of knowledge of the fact that it matches on least requested first. So if fandom X has only one request, and you're the only one offering fandom X, there's an increased likelihood of you getting matched up.

Usually, you can narrow it down to a small pool of potential matches, but in Parallels, you can request or offer fic, art, or vids, so that narrows it down even more--in my case, I only offered art because there wasn't anything that I really wanted to write at the moment, so I could exclude any possible requests that didn't include art.

Anyway, it's an interesting prompt that's going to require careful thought on my part, because it could go any of several ways and I'm going to have to invest time in deciding what's a good thing to do that will intersect between the sorts of things I want to try with my art right now and the sorts of things the requester would like. (Yeah, it's vague and describes what every single person participating in the exchange is going through. That's the trouble with secret exchanges. :)

Birds & bunnies oh my

Funny thing: we have a lot of mockingbirds (state bird of Texas!) around the area. They love, especially in the evenings when Toby and I are out walking, to perch on the highest points of the tallest houses and sing their hearts out. And the name "mockingbird" is not random: they do copy other birdsongs. Not as well as the parrot-type birds do, but well enough.

Anyway, we were walking last night and spotted a mockingbird on the roof of a house, going through a cycle of snippets of several different calls. I made a joke about it sounding like on of those car alarms that cycles through several different alarm sounds. Toby stopped for a moment, listened, and said, "No. It's doing the car alarm. I recognize the pattern."

And looking on YouTube, there's a number of videos of mockingbirds imitating car alarms that people have recorded.

Anyway! A bunny photo and finch photos! and a couple of other birds!

( Cut for photos. )