2026 Disneyland Trip #1 (1/1/26)

Jan. 1st, 2026 10:07 pm
torachan: (Default)
[personal profile] torachan
The forecast was saying the afternoon would be clear, but we were still expecting some rain in the morning, but while there was some on the drive down, it had stopped by the time we got there.

Read more... )

Daily Happiness

Jan. 1st, 2026 08:30 pm
torachan: takatsuki & nitorin from hourou musuko (trans kids)
[personal profile] torachan
1. It was rainy this morning but I managed not to get rained on. When I woke up, I could hear the rain and was not looking forward to going out in it for my morning walk, because then I'd get my shoes wet and have to wear wet shoes later, but I looked at my phone and the weather app said it was supposed to stop raining in five minutes and be dry for at least half an hour and it did and it was! I did get dripped on a bit by trees, but that was fine. And then later in the morning we went to Disneyland and it rained on the drive down, but stopped by the time we got there and was dry all afternoon and evening. We're still supposed to get some more rain here and there over the next few days, but at least it seems to be more sporadic.

2. We had a really nice time today at Disneyland. The rain helped keep people away (especially in the morning), plus although it's still officially the holiday season through the weekend, the crowds are just not as wild as they were in the lead-up to Christmas.

3. The shopping center where the newest Tokyo Central is in Irvine formerly had a Persian market called Super Irvine. I had originally assumed they went out of business or something and that's why the space was for lease, but it seems like the property owner had wanted to completely raze the building and start from scratch, and the Super Irvine just moved to a new location, which just opened a couple months ago. We watched a video walkthrough recently and it looked really neat, so we've been wanting to check it out. There are a bunch of Persian shops in Westwood, which is very close, but nothing this huge (and because it's so large, it has a lot of other international stuff as well as just Persian). Irvine is just a short drive from Disneyland (especially on a day like today with no traffic), so we decided to go down there before going home, and had a lot of fun checking it out.

4. I don't really do resolutions, but there are a couple things I want to do this year. One is to try doing a wider variety of things. I like routine and it's very easy to get stuck in a rut and do something familiar, whether it's going to the same places or eating the same foods, but there are so many other things I want to do also, so I want to try and change that. So we'll probably go to Disneyland less often this year, but we go ridiculously often, so even if we go only 2-3 times a month that's still, objectively speaking, a lot lol. And it was nice today; we hadn't been in two weeks, and it felt fresher and less like just doing the same old thing.

The other thing I want to do this year is get a tattoo. I have wanted to get a tattoo forever. I have always thought they were cool and wanted one, but the problem is I don't have any strong feelings about what I want. Maybe something cat or dragon related. Maybe something rainbow/queer. idk. I have to think about it. But I'll be fifty this year and it seems like a good time. Also I find the whole process really overwhelming, in terms of finding someone and the design phase, etc. Anyone who has tattoos and has advice/suggestions about anything, please feel free to comment!

5. I wish Gemma wasn't always so suspicious of me, but she is very cute when she's suspicious.

2025 Book List

Jan. 1st, 2026 05:17 pm
slashmarks: (Default)
[personal profile] slashmarks
I did fairly minimal reading after January by my standards, at least of books, and wrote a grand total of two reviews. This is mostly because I became obsessed with the Silmarillion back in February and so fanfic took over most of my reading time this year; having plowed through A Lot of what I was interested in, now, I hope I will read more books in 2026!

Here is the list, rereads in italics and books recorded the first time I finished them.

January

1. The March North – Graydon Saunders
2. Briardark – S.A. Harian
3. The Haunting of Hill House – Shirley Jackson
4. A Succession of Bad Days – Graydon Saunders
5. Safely You Deliver – Graydon Saunders
6. The Amazons: Lives & Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World – Adrienne Mayor [nonfiction]
7. Magic and Superstition in Europe: A Concise History From Antiquity to the Present – Michael Bailey [nonfiction]
8. Alchemy of Fire – Gillian Bradshaw
9. Architecture and Material Politics in the Fifteenth-Century Ottoman Empire – Patricia Blessing [nonfiction]
10. Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire – David Cannadine [nonfiction]
11. Under One Banner – Graydon Saunders
12. A Mist of Grit and Splinters – Graydon Saunders
13. Satan the Heretic: The Birth of Demonology in the Medieval West – Alain Boureau, trans. Teresa Lavender Fagan [nonfiction]
14. God's Unruly Friends: Dervish Groups in the Islamic Later Middle Period, 1200-1500 – Ahmet T. Karamustafa [nonfiction]
15. The Bearkeeper's Daughter – Gillian Bradshaw
16. The First Capital of the Ottoman Empire: The Religious, Architectural, and Social History of Bursa - Suna Çağaptay [nonfiction]
17. A Desolation Called Peace – Arkady Martine
18. The Blue Castle – L.M. Montgomery
19. Why Learn History (When It's Already on Your Phone) – Sam Wineburg [nonfiction]

February

20. On Violence – Hannah Arendt [nonfiction]
21. 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed – Eric Cline [nonfiction]
22. Waywarden – S.A. Harian
23. Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920 – Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham [nonfiction]

March

24. Bonds of Blood: Gender, Lifestyle and Sacrifice in Aztec Culture – Caroline Dodds Pennock [nonfiction]
25. Irreverant Persia: Invective, Satirical and Burlesque Poetry From the Origins to the Timurid Period (10th to 15th Centuries) – Riccardo Zipoli [nonfiction]
26. The Silmarillion – J.R.R. Tolkien

April

27. The Fellowship of the Ring – J.R.R. Tolkien
28. The Development of Modern Agriculture: British Farming since 1931 – John Martin [nonfiction]


June

29. Ottoman Plovdiv: Space, Architecture, and Population (14th-17th Centuries) – Grigor Boykov [nonfiction]
30. The Two Towers – J.R.R. Tolkien

July

31. Heir to the Empire – Timothy Zahn
32. Diavola – Jennifer Thorne
33. You Dreamed of Empires - Álvaro Enrigue
34. Sword at Sunset – Rosemary Sutcliff
35. Dark Force Rising – Timothy Zahn
36. Rose/House – Arkady Martine [novella]
37. Christianity in Fifteenth-Century Iraq – Thomas Carlson [nonfiction]
38. The Last Command – Timothy Zahn

August

39. Stone Yard Devotional – Charlotte Wood
40. The Emergence of the English – Susan Oosthuizen [nonfiction]

September

41. The Return of the King – J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Spiritual Wayfarers, Leaders in Piety: Sufis and the Dissemination of Islam in Medieval Palestine – Daphna Ephrat [nonfiction]

November

43. A Palace Near the Wind – Ai Jiang
44. Render unto the Sultan: Power, Authority, and the Greek Orthodox Church in the early Ottoman centuries – Tom Papademetriou [nonfiction]
44. The September House – Carissa Orlando
45. Mathematics: A Very Short Introduction – Timothy Gowers [nonfiction]
46. Sources and Studies on the Ottoman Black Sea, vol. I, The Customs Register of Caffa, 1487-1490 – Halil Inalcik [nonfiction]
47. A Culture of Sufism: Naqshbandis in the Ottoman World, 1450-1700 – Dina Le Gall [nonfiction]
48. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek – Annie Dillard [nonfiction]
49. Roman Girlhood and the Fashioning of Femininity – Lauren Caldwell [nonfiction]
50. The Great Seljuk Empire – A.C.S. Peacock [nonfiction]

December

51. Nomad Military Power in Iran and Adjacent Areas in the Islamic Period – eds. Kurt Franz & Wolfgang Holzwarth [nonfiction anthology]
52. The New Wild: Why Invasive Species Will be Nature’s Salvation – Fred Pearce [nonfiction]
53. Ancillary Justice – Ann Leckie

2025 Media in Review

Jan. 1st, 2026 11:06 am
sanguinity: woodcut by M.C. Escher, "Snakes" (Default)
[personal profile] sanguinity
2025 media in review! I'm not gonna try to do a best-of/highlights summary, but please do ask me about anything that interests you. (There's a Mesoamerican books post still coming, plus another general books post.)

2025 Books )

2025 Movies )

2025 TV )
synecdochic: torso of a man wearing jeans, hands bound with belt (Default)
[personal profile] synecdochic
I just posted a thread to my Bluesky account about why I think it's extremely urgent for people to back up anything they still have on LiveJournal, however they do it. Thread starts here:

https://bsky.app/profile/rahaeli.bsky.social/post/3mbebi2xfxc25

ru-news LJ post I was relying on:

https://ru-news.livejournal.com/80899.html

Please spread this far and wide so as many people see it as possible, because I really don't see English-language LJ continuing in its present form for much longer, and I know some people may still have things they care about there. It doesn't matter how you get it backed up, but it's absolutely crunch time for getting it backed up.

Daily Happiness

Dec. 31st, 2025 07:57 pm
torachan: karkat from homestuck headdesking (karkat headdesk)
[personal profile] torachan
1. It's the start of another four day weekend! Very excited about that. I wish the forecast wasn't rainy for much of it, but hopefully it won't be too bad. It was supposed to rain from this morning, but didn't really end up raining until afternoon. Completely dry when I took my morning walk and drove to work, and only sprinkling slightly when I took my midday walk around eleven. It's been off and on the afternoon and evening, though it did stop long enough for us to take an evening walk (slightly sprinkly through the second half, though).

2. Our neighbor's cat has been missing for several days but she reported him back home today.

3. Look at that fluffy tum! He loves tummy rubs, no trap there!

denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance

Привет and welcome to our new Russian friends from LiveJournal! We are happy to offer you a new home. We will not require identification for you to post or comment. We also do not cooperate with Russian government requests for any information about your account unless they go through a United States court first. (And it hasn't happened in 16 years!)

Importing your journal from ЖЖ may be slow. There are a lot of you, with many posts and comments, and we have to limit how fast we download your information from ЖЖ so they don't block us. Please be patient! We have been watching and fixing errors, and we will go back to doing that after the holiday is over.

I am very sorry that we can't translate the site into Russian or offer support in Russian. We are a much, much smaller company than LiveJournal is, and my high school Russian classes were a very long time ago :) But at least we aren't owned by Sberbank!

С Новым Годом, and welcome home!

EDIT: Большое спасибо всем за помощь друг другу в комментариях! Я ценю каждого, кто предоставляет нашим новым соседям информацию, понятную им без необходимости искать её в Google. :) И спасибо вам за терпение к моему русскому переводу с помощью Google Translate! Прошло уже много-много лет со школьных времен!

Thank you also to everyone who's been giving our new neighbors a warm welcome. I love you all ❤️

Wednesday Reading Meme

Dec. 31st, 2025 10:54 am
sineala: Detail of Harry Wilson Watrous, "Just a Couple of Girls" (Reading)
[personal profile] sineala
What I Just Finished Reading

Eric Poulin, Here Comes the Pizzer: The Found Poetry of Baseball Broadcasts: [personal profile] lysimache got me this for Christmas, so I have now finished twelve books this year and I nearly didn't finish this one. Stupid migraines. Anyway, this is baseball broadcast found poetry. The poetry skills on display here are of varying quality -- like, only a couple of people are actually doing anything unusual with the text -- but I still think it's charming.

What I'm Reading Now

Comics Wednesday! Time to probably destroy the universe. We are instructed to read Ultimate Endgame before Ultimates.

Sorcerer Supreme #1, Ultimate Endgame #1, Ultimates #19 )

What I'm Reading Next

A new year! I have no idea what to read. Once again, I need fewer migraines.

Daily Happiness

Dec. 30th, 2025 07:24 pm
torachan: (Default)
[personal profile] torachan
1. Just one more work day this week!

2. Today was mostly dry with a brief bit of rain late morning, but starting tomorrow we're supposed to have several wet days, possibly a whole week. I'm hoping it will be lighter than last week and mostly overnight. We'll see!

3. We had curry ramen for dinner tonight and it was so good. Carla discovered this one brand last year that has a bunch of different flavors, all of which she likes, but I've only tried the curry and now it's all I'm interested in having lol.

4. I finished this cute winter cats puzzle today.



I'm going to challenge myself with a 1000 piece one next, so we'll see how that goes.

5. Jasper really loves this lumpy basket in the bathroom lately. We got it several months ago to put the hair dryer in and no one cared about it at first, but then after washing the bathmat, I put it on top of the basket and suddenly everyone wanted to be in there (well, mainly Ollie and Jasper). Lately Jasper has been sleeping in there most nights, too.

Consequences

Dec. 30th, 2025 12:57 am
firecat: Ciri from The Witcher, in leather armor, looking over her shoulder (Witcher)
[personal profile] firecat
Turns out that listening to an audiobook of The Witcher in the vicinity of an iThing can cause a mildly irritating problem

Heated Rivalry

Dec. 29th, 2025 11:03 pm
sineala: Detail of The Unicorn in Captivity, from The Hunt of the Unicorn Tapestry (Default)
[personal profile] sineala
So everyone in fandom has become obsessed with the gay hockey show, and [personal profile] lysimache and I watched it a couple days ago. Neither of us care about hockey (I think we are both hoping that fandom decides to care about baseball, though this seems unlikely -- but, hey, it's 42 days until pitchers and catchers report) but we do like gay things a lot.

It was nice? I mean, it's not going to be my new fandom, but I'm not sorry I watched it. I did nearly give up after the first two episodes for narrative reasons that I will explain below.

Spoilers )

It's only six episodes, so... you might as well watch it if you like gay shows, I guess? It's not bad.

I somehow own the first book. I am not sure yet if I will read it.

Daily Happiness

Dec. 29th, 2025 07:51 pm
torachan: a chibi drawing of sawko, kazehaya, and maru from kimi ni todoke (sawako/kazehaya)
[personal profile] torachan
1. Back to work today. A good chunk of the morning was spent catching up on messages from the past four days, and then I helped bagging downstairs for a couple hours (the week between Christmas and New Year is the busiest for us), and had a web meeting this afternoon, but otherwise did not have a ton of stuff to do so that was fine. I volunteered to help bag tomorrow and Wednesday, too. And then it will be another four day weekend!

2. Carla is planning to go to Wisconsin again for a few days at the end of January for her aunt's birthday. Originally it was just going to be Wednesday through Sunday, but one of her cousins texted today to ask how long she was going to be there and said she had hoped they could go into Chicago one day. Since that cousin has to work, and the birthday celebration will be Saturday, the only good day would be Sunday, but there wouldn't be time to do that and get to her flight on time. So we looked into changing the return day and were able to do it with no fee! So now she'll be coming back a few days later but will be able to go spend the day in Chicago with her cousins.

3. Yesterday I spotted Tuxie loafing on the lawn. He seemed very happy the sun was out after so much rain!

Pithy Realization

Dec. 29th, 2025 12:08 pm
jesse_the_k: One section pulled out from peeled orange (shared sweetness)
[personal profile] jesse_the_k

Since we met in 1977, MyGuy has always eaten the spongy white stuff which dwells between an orange and its skin (whether he picks it off the whole peeled orange or nibbles it away from the cut-open peel).

Yesterday I tried it. It's delicious! Michigan State University claims it also has as much vitamin C as the fruit.

What else am I missing?

Daily Happiness

Dec. 28th, 2025 07:36 pm
torachan: (rainbow avatar)
[personal profile] torachan
1. The other day we watched a video about German supermarket food and there were a couple items we wanted to try, so I googled to see if there were any German markets neary and there is a place within walking distance that says it's a European market and cafe, so we decided to take a walk down there this morning. It turns out it is mostly German stuff and although the market part of it is about the size of my bedroom, they did have those items (red cabbage and apple pickle, and a plum jam) as well as a couple others. The cafe part was very busy and had no open tables, and also the menu seemed very heavy and we didn't want a big meal right then, even to share, so we skipped that part, but as we walked a couple blocks down the street we came across a French cafe and poked our heads in there and ended up getting a jamon beaurre (super delicious) and a cherry cheese tart (also super delicious). There was also a little Italian shop next to the German one, though they were closed for some reason even though the hours said it should be open, so I guess that part of the street is a random little collection of European shops lol.

2. Years ago when we used to walk down to the mall and stuff all the time we would pass this Caribbean restaurant that we always said we should check it out and never did. That was like 20+ years ago, and then a few months ago we watched a video where a guy walked the length of Santa Monica and tried out several different eateries on the way and that was one of them! We were glad to see it was still in business and vowed to check it out for real this time. Well, it was on our route today to the German market, so we stopped by to make sure they are still still in business, and then tonight we decided to order from there. Everything was delicious and we will definitely be eating there again.

3. Molly's always being such a cutie.

jesse_the_k: kitty pawing the surface of vinyl record (scratch this!)
[personal profile] jesse_the_k

More soothing video.

Rosie Heydenrych is a UK luthier who makes Turnstone guitars. Follow along as she makes an instrument for Martin Simpson—in prose and/or via YouTube video playlist, autocraptions). How does it sound? Guitar World reviews another Turnstone instrument with words as well as video (17:11" YouTube Link, more autocraptions). Zip to 13:27 to enjoy Clive Carroll making beautiful music on it.

(crossposted to Metafilter)

Daily Happiness

Dec. 27th, 2025 08:04 pm
torachan: scott pilgrim pouting (scott pilgrim - pout)
[personal profile] torachan
1. We had a nice lunch at Knott's today. I'm glad we were able to get over there one more time before the end of the holiday season as they have some really good seasonal offerings on the menu right now.

2. No rain! It's so nice to have a dry day. It was sunny but not hot. Looks like we're supposed to have rain again by the end of next week into the week after, but at least we have a few dry days in between.

3. We went over to Handel's tonight to get some peppermint bark ice cream but they are out. The girl at the counter said they might still get some in, but she wasn't sure. At least it's close enough and on the general path of our neighborhood walks that we can pop in here and there to see if they've got it back. We did get some other flavors to bring home, including gingerbread cookie, which I hope is as good as the peppermint bark.

4. I've had some sweaty nights lately (fun) so decided to wash my whole pillow rather than just the pillowcase, but this new pillow is a pain in the ass to wash. Well, the washing is fine, it's the drying. It's got this fiber fill stuff that just does not want to dry, even after multiple goes in the dryer. Finally I hit on the idea of taking the filling out and spreading it out between these four mesh laundry bags we have and drying it like that, which I think will do the trick. For one thing, the mesh bags will get heat to the filling much easier than the thick pillow exterior, plus dividing it into four bags will help spread the filling out so there's not this inner core that's just not getting dry. Fingers crossed! I do have an old pillow I can use tonight if this doesn't get dry, but I've still got a few hours until bedtime.

5. Chloe's such a sweetie. *_*

Weekly Reading

Dec. 27th, 2025 05:04 pm
torachan: an orange cat poking his head out from blankets (ollie)
[personal profile] torachan
Recently Finished
Either Side of Midnight
Sequel to Trust Me When I Lie. This was good, but I do enjoy the Ernest Cunningham series better.

Murder Under Her Skin
Second in the Pentecost and Parker series. Just okay. I'll read more in this series, but it's not a priority.

Damn Straight
Another second book in a murder mystery series. This one the Lillian Byrd series. Same as above, I liked it well enough that I'll continue the series, but I'm not rushing out to read the next one.

Star Trek: Lower Decks, Vol. 1: Second Contact
There's a new series of Lower Decks comics! In fact, there's enough issues for a second volume, too, though it's not coming out until next year. My issue with these is the same with every comic based on a cartoon, which is that they're never quite as good as the show. They're enjoyable enough, though.

My Home Hero vol. 20-22

2025 Knott's Trip #4 (12/27/25)

Dec. 27th, 2025 04:44 pm
torachan: maru the cat sitting in a bucket (maru)
[personal profile] torachan
It was a busy day at the park, being a holiday weekend plus the first sunny day in a while. The park opens at nine and we got down there around 9:45 and the line for parking was super backed up, but thankfully the ADA lot still had a ton of spaces left, so once we finally got to it, it was easy to get a spot. The lines for the front gates were probably the longest I've seen, but still moved pretty smoothly.

Read more... )

I think this will be our last amusement park visit of the year. We're planning on Disneyland on the 1st, but it's supposed to rain again, so we'll see.

This year my totals are 79 at Disneyland (including 4 at Tokyo Disney), 4 at Knott's, and 2 at Universal Studios. That's a lot! O_o

Daily Happiness

Dec. 26th, 2025 08:31 pm
torachan: karkat from homestuck looking bored (karkat bored)
[personal profile] torachan
1. It rained a little bit off and on today, but mostly off. Aside from taking a few walks in the neighborhood, we just stayed home anyway, so it didn't really matter, but I've had enough rain for now.

2. Carla made a super delicious dinner tonight. A beef roast and cheesy potatoes, steamed broccoli (the least exciting of the bunch but still tasty), and Alex brought some take and bake garlic bread, which I had a little bit of even though I shouldn't. There was also some of the ube Christmas cake for dessert.

3. Gemma's a sassy girl.

torachan: (Default)
[personal profile] torachan
The rain for this week was predicted to be pretty heavy, so we were prepared just in case, but as it actually got closer, it seemed the worst would be on the 24th, and then lighter rain on the 25th. We still planned to take parkas and umbrellas, but that morning it was dry and the forecast said there might be some light rain in the afternoon, but not a steady all-day thing, so when we got to the park we actually ended up leaving the parkas and umbrellas in the car.

Read more... )

September 2011

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