Middle-aged spread

In the course of tidying up I pulled down the box with my favourite pair of boots; the ones I haven't worn for a few years for various reasons. Those reasons include being somewhat thicker of calf than when I first bought them. I thought I'd try them on to see if there was any prospect of getting the zip done up all the way if I lost a bit of weight, which is something I really need to tackle for medical reasons.

Damn things won't even fit on my feet now. This isn't from being overweight. This is just a change in the shape, as far as I can tell. Being realistic, there's not much chance of me wearing these boots again.

I mourn for these boots. These boots were that rarity, high heels I could wear in reasonable comfort. I only wore them three or four times a year (mostly at cons, where I was sure of being indoors on flat surfaces all day), but I liked having at least the theoretical option of wearing shiny black high-heeled boots. I suspect the best option for disposal will be donation to the Redemption jumble sale, where they are likely to find a good home with someone else who likes shiny black high-heeled boots you can actually walk in.

ETA: in the comments, miladyinsanity points at Duo Boots, a shoe and boot maker which makes ladies' boots in a wide range of calf sizes as well as foot sizes. I work in that area of the city centre, and I've probably walked past their bricks-n-mortar shop on my way to work without realising what they were. I shall be calling in there after payday... Yo, siri_eerin, want to go shoe-shopping next time you're in town?

oh look, syndicated feeds

I occasionally look at romance review blog Reviews by Jesse Wave, but don't read it regularly because that small white serif font on a black background really hurts my eyes. This isn't a problem on LJ-hosted blogs, because if I read it through my friends page, the template is set to what *I* find comfortable to look at, rather than the other journal's own colour scheme. It finally occurred to me this morning that I now have a Paid account, and one of the few extras for Paid accounts I always found tempting was the ability to create syndicated feeds so that non-LJ blogs can be read through a friends page.

When I checked, someone had already syndicated JesseWave, and the LJ feed is here:
http://syndicated.livejournal.com/reviewsbyjesse/

But since I was in the mood, I went ahead and syndicated another romance blog which I'd read more often were I not a lazy git who rarely moves beyond a dozen or so blogs outside LJ.
http://syndicated.livejournal.com/jenre_wellread/

I really, really don't need more blogs on my default view, so I shall be creating a Friend Group specifically for some of the review blogs that I like to read at the weekends when I have time and mental energy. There are a few more feeds I should hunt down...

romance review sites

Since I appear to be cat-vacuuming this afternoon rather than spending it writing or doing my US tax return, I might as well spend it doing something that really is vaguely useful to the writing career. Such as contacting some reviews sites with a view to offering them review copies. Since I haven't spent a lot of time online over the last few months, I'm not up on who's doing what with regard to m/m romance these days. Anyone want to pimp some review sites?