meganbmoore | Reading

1. The other day I noticed a new Vietnamese coffee shop had opened nearby and this morning I rode my bike over there to try it out. They are famous for their banana coffee, which was sort of a frappuccino style drink, so I got that. It was super delicious, but they had only drinks, no food, and I wanted some sort of pastry or something. There's a bakery a couple doors down that is suuuuuuper trendy and has a line down the block all the time so although I would love to try them, I didn't want to wait in a line so long my drink would be gone by the time I got my food.

So I decided to leave my bike parked there and walk a few blocks down to Randy's Donuts, which is a famous LA donut shop that started opening new locations in recent years after having just been a single location for ages. I've never actually been to the one in Santa Monica. As I was walking, I saw there was a Dunkin Donuts across the street just one block down and was briefly tempted to just go there, but I knew Randy's would be better so I continued on and I'm so glad I did because they had a Pride donut and also a mango tajin one and both were so good. Their donuts are big and I really only should have gotten one, but I wanted both lol. The mango one had mango tajin frosting and a delicious mango filling. The Pride one was just a frosted glazed donut with rainbow stripes, but even for a basic donut it was really tasty. I was very full afterwards but it was such good breakfast.

2. It was still hot today so we went to Disneyland for dinner instead of going earlier in the day. Sadly it was warmer than I would prefer even at 6pm when we got there, and super muggy. But we did have a delicious dinner.

3. Tuxie's fur has been growing back on his forehead. I don't think you can really even see where the wound was anymore. So handsome!

musesfool

The New York Knicks are your 2026 NBA Champs!!! Jalen Brunson scored half the points the Knicks had! MVP!

*

Current Mood: ecstatic
Current Music: Knicks post-game show

torachan

Sunday we had non-Disney plans, so no need to get started super early in the morning, but of course I did wake up early. The laundry had piled up again, so I walked over to the other hotel to get a load started and then walked to the station to get McDonald's. Unfortunately, I'd misremembered the opening time and thought they opened at seven, but it's not until eight. All that was open was a Starbucks, another little sandwich/coffee shop whose name I don't remember and the New Days convenience store. I got pastries and coffee for myself and onigiri for Carla and took everything back to the hotel to eat.

( Togoshi Ginza, Gotanda, and Shibuya )

case posting in

fandomsecrets

⌈ Secret Post #7099 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

( More! )

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 31 secrets from Secret Submission Post #1014.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

musesfool

So yesterday, I logged off a call with my boss and the CEO, and my internet went down again, just like it had on Wednesday, at almost exactly the same time (1:30 pm EDT). After some back and forth with Spectrum where they insisted it was a me problem and scheduled a tech visit, I got a message that there was an outage in my area but it would be fixed by 4:30 pm.

Unfortunately, instead of being done with work at 2:30 pm like a usual summer Friday, I had a board call from 3 pm - 4:30 pm (despite all of my written and verbal instructions to Assistant J, many meetings were scheduled on times and days I told him not to schedule things, like the Tuesday after a Monday holiday, or 3 pm on a summer Friday, but I hope this experience of having to work 2 extra hours on a summer Friday stays with him so he never does it again), so I had to be on by phone, because no one from IT ever answered my question about why I couldn't use my phone as a hotspot, the way I used to be able to. Until I was logged in on my phone - then Teams started blowing up with instructions and I was like, sorry, on a board call, can't talk right now. But it should work going forward if necessary. I was looking in the wrong spot (I mean, I was looking under "hotspot" instead of "wifi" so was I really wrong? I don't think so. and yet!), which they kindly told me.

I could have tried to switch in the middle of the call, but figured better to stay on and get all my notes than disconnect and not be able to reconnect. And then at about 4:35, the internet came back! And I still had to wait almost 2 more hours for one of my co-workers to finish editing her slides so I could PDF them and send to the chair for review. And then the slides were too large, even as a reduced-size PDF, to email with all the other materials, so I had to split it into 2 emails. I told my boss they need to slim that deck down, but one of the VPs is insisting on having his slides in there twice since he gave the same presentation at 2 meetings, instead of just saying, "please refer to slides A-K for this presentation." I am desperately hoping the chair dings him for that, but he probably won't. (If it were up to me, I'd have just deleted them but when I asked my boss told me the VP specifically stated he wanted them in there twice. It's just the pre-reads deck that probably nobody reads, so it probably won't matter to anyone else, but I think it is a bad way to manage your meeting materials.)

Anyway! In other news, I mentioned friend L is moving back to ATL next month, so she's coming to hang out here next weekend, so I need to get some of my clutter tucked away before that happens. I ordered some Rubbermaid bins to pile stuff in, which won't look great but will at least free up the chair from all my mixing bowls and cupcake pans. (I know, I know, but sometimes it's just easier to always have stuff out then to put it away and need to pull it out again three days later.)

I'm thinking about what to cook and I might do the white lasagna I like so much - I could send half of it home with her and still have enough leftover for dinner for a couple of days - plus the SK strawberry summer cake. And maybe breakfast tacos on Sunday? And some coffee granita? Idk, I'm still thinking.

*

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: The (Shipped) Gold Standard - Fall Out Boy

case posting in

fandomsecrets

[ SECRET SUBMISSIONS POST #1015 ]

The first secret from this batch will be posted on Jun 20th.

RULES:
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2. 750x750 px or smaller.
3. Link directly to the image.

More details on how to send a secret in!

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umadoshi

Before even more time passes, I want to tell you all that last weekend it was our Jinksy!bear (and Claudia!kitten)'s thirteenth birthday. I'm managing not to let my brain actually crunch the numbers to figure out exactly when in the coming year he'll (please, God) cross the line of "has now lived half of his life without her".

He's unmistakably showing his age, although he doesn't yet seem old. I can never shake the fact that when I was a kid, thirteen would have seemed OLD for a cat; it always seemed to be such a marvel when a cat lived well into their teens. (One of my childhood cats, Jenny, lived until after

scruloose and I moved home from Toronto! She made it to nineteen, which is still a fairly impressive age now.)

I will forever wish we'd had the chance to see what kind of little old lady cat Claud would have been, and forever be grateful for how long we've had Jinksy. He continues to be just ridiculously sweet. We are so lucky to have him and the blues.

Today wasn't

scruloose's first market visit of the year, but it was mine. They went to pick up a meat order at one of the year-around main ones last week, and that errand meant that we didn't go to the little in-walking-distance market when it had its first day of the season last Saturday. But today we made it out, and since there wasn't much of a crowd--presumably due to the steady, if not heavy, rain passing through this morning--there were still plenty of strawberries available when we got there. (I wasn't surprised that things were quiet with the weather, and obviously financial pressures are hitting so many people brutally hard, but it was still quieter than I expected, esp. given that it was the first of the strawberries.)

First market haul of the year: strawberries (two quarts), salad greens, a sweet potato, eggs, a small dense sourdough loaf, kimchi, and kimbap (the sort that look exactly like onigiri--triangular and fully wrapped in nori, rather than rolled).

sasha_feather

Hi friends!

I am doing OK but also could use more help. Here are my goals.

1. Before winter rolls around, I'd like to get a roommate / housemate, or more than one. I'm okay going slow with this search but last winter was lonely.

I live in the country just outside of Rochester, Minnesota. I am caretaker for my parents' hobby farm. If you or anyone you know is interested, this could be a great opportunity for someone who needs affordable, safe housing. Need someone kind and trustworthy. I've posted about this before and can give more details privately.

2. Keep saying no when my parents ask me for things. I can also try to arrange more help for them but for now I need to... just stop helping them, I think. A therapist might be able to help me with this, leading to--

3. Get help finding a therapist who takes my insurance. Have asked multiple people but so far no dice.

I am grateful for:

1. Nice weather and a safe and comfortable place to enjoy it.

2. Social calls with friends.

3. Kind neighbors.

4. My animals.

jazzfish

Subjects removed, deposit received. It is still possible for something to go sideways but it's now much harder. I'll be out of there by 10 July.

Incidentally, this is how I know there's something wrong with my brain: I feel no excitement or joy at this, just a sense of relief followed by "okay, now on to planning the next things." I am told that normal brains get pleasure and dopamine from accomplishments, which makes succeeding at things and completing tasks "worthwhile" and consistently repeatable. Yeah, not so much over here.

Interview with NG went quite well I thought, but the position is even worse than anticipated. I'd be the first writer in the department, tasked with rewriting / standardising all their procedures, in Microsoft Word. Not to mention that a 45-minute (one-way) commute on top of 10.5-hour days is unlikely to be a good fit for me. I will of course take it if offered, and use the opportunity to swap my twenty-year-old gas guzzler for an electric (the apartment complex I'm looking at has chargers available for $100/mo, which would be substantially less than the gas cost, plus this way I wouldn't have to deal with the hassle of importing a vehicle). And we'd see how long I last before cracking entirely. The over/under is a year; I'd take the over but without much optimism.

feurioo posting in

tv_talk

Assortment of black and white speech bubbles

Welcome to the weekly roundup post! What are you watching this week? What are you excited about?

skygiants

A few weeks ago I was grimly gearing up to do the Hugos homework when suddenly I realized that Hugo voting privileges do not actually pass over year to year, only nominating privileges. I'm free! Flinging the nominations list joyously to the wind in favor of catching up on overdue library books and the massive stacks of books in my own home! However before this happy revelation I did read The Raven Scholar which had vaguely been on my list anyway, largely on a series of planes.

I was under a profound misapprehension about the plot of The Raven Scholar. I spent the first several chapters, in which a young woman whose father has been executed for treason gets brought before the reigning Emperor on the occasion of her majority, peacefully thinking to myself "and I suppose from here she's going to end up going to some sort of raven school." Not the case! Very different things happen to that young woman! In case you are confused like me, The Raven Scholar is ostensibly about adults in their late twenties and thirties, although I have to say I found them extremely YAish adults -- kind of a reverse Six of Crows problem, these people extremely felt like teenagers to me -- and the actual heroine is Neema, who has already graduated from raven school and is now a full-fledged raven postgrad.

Neema's plot begins with her at the bottom of the raven postgrad pecking order due to classism and being a poor scholarship student; then she accepts a government order that everyone thinks is a bit evil and gets a big promotion out of it, so by the time the plot proper begins she's the most important raven postgrad in the Empire and also the most disliked. She has a mean girl nemesis, and a sexy chaotic ex-boyfriend from the fox monastery who hasn't spoken to her in the years since she accepted the evil order despite the fact that she's pretty convinced that he himself does government assassinations --

-- there are six important animal schools, by the way, or rather animal monasteries, and they're all associated with Characteristics. Perfect for sorting! The shadow of Harry Potter does inescapably hang over this a bit; we've got our Scholarly Ravens, our Hardworking Oxen, our Brave Bears, our Extremely Classist Evil Tigers, and then we've added to this Loyal Hounds, Artistic Monkeys, Sexy Chaotic Foxes and Weird Magical Dragons, so don't worry! there are eight kinds of people instead of the reductive four! I was also unfortunately reminded of when I had to take management training classes at work and we were taught with great seriousness how to identify our coworkers as lions, peacocks, turtles, and doves --

Anyway! Neema is having problems with her social life, is what I mean to say, and she's in charge of organizing prom, by which I mean the big festival during which representatives from each of the different types of monasteries compete in combat! and absurd little Taskmaster competitions!! to see who will next be awarded the throne now that the current Emperor has ruled the legal amount of years he's supposed to after winning the last competition and is ready to retire!!!

AND THEN ... in the MIDDLE of all of this ... someone is MURDERED.

After my initial confusion, I found the first 2/3 of the book really enjoyable to read on a plane. I think it was very clever of Antonia Hodgson to go "what do people like? well, murder mysteries. And what also do people like? When people have to compete in absurd little Taskmaster competitions." I'm people! I also like murder mysteries and absurd little competitions. ( some broad strokes plot spoilers from here )

So although I had a good time for much of this book I ended up pretty disinclined to read the next one, but I can certainly see why people liked it and it probably wouldn't have come bottom of my Hugo list, if I was voting. Which, thankfully, I'm not, so I don't have to rank anything!

china_shop

1. Got in my car on Thursday (to take a friend to lunch), and it wouldn't start. *headdesks forever* So I emailed the mechanics, they came and took it away on Friday, disconnected the stereo (it was shorting out the battery), and brought the car back, all for free. I'm assuming my troubles are now over. *knocks on every wooden surface within reach*

(I feel a bit foolish about all this. I bought a new battery a month ago because of repeated issues, and I have a trickle charger. So ot1h, I kind of did the best I could. But otoh, the stereo was making occasional weird thumping noises to the point where I had "call the mechanic" on my to-do list for weeks. I just never actually did because talking to mechanics is awkward. Doh! Anyway.)

2. Blocco 181 is a beautifully filmed Italian show about drug dealers and gangs, with three central characters who quickly get into an m/m/f relationship. The sex is Sense8 levels of explicit, and the ship is so good -- very little of the angst is about its configuration; it's all divided loyalties and "Two households [...] from ancient grudge break to new mutiny," etc. Loving it. Carefully not checking AO3 for fic, because I don't want to be spoiled for season 2.

3. Our @*%$&#$% government is trying to pass some UK-style "definition of a man and a woman" nonsense, so I went to a trans rights rally today. ( My sign. )

4. Duolingo is still eating me alive, ahhhhhhhh. (It's trying to teach me characters for real now; so satisfying.)

How are you? *waves*

torachan

1. It's been hot this week, but the evenings have been fairly cool and overcast, which is nice! (I'll be glad when the temps go back down a little next week, though.)

2. Last Friday I met a new guy at work who is taking over my supervisor's duties as my supervisor is transitioning to be more like the company vice president and will have less time for other stuff (though apparently he's still going to be my direct supervisor) and the new guy was wearing a Dodgers Pride shirt. Then today I noticed another new person, who works in my office but a different division, has an inclusive Pride flag on her desk.

3. It's the weekend! And the next three weeks are short work weeks.

4. Curling up on Carla's chair while it's pushed under the desk is just about Gemma's favorite place in the whole house. It's so secret!

sunnymodffa posting in

fail_fandomanon

This makes mascots sound like the furry version of gay for pay.

... Sound like?

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torachan

Recently Finished
Everyone In the Group Chat Dies
Picked this up at the library on a whim after seeing it on the new release shelf. Told in split timelines between the present and events that happened a year ago. In the present, the MC gets a text from someone who should be dead, and as she tries to figure out what's going on, other people in the group chat get picked off one by one. The past timeline follows the events that lead up to the death of the person supposedly sending the texts in the present. Pretty standard thriller. I liked it all right, but don't feel the need to rush out and read more by the author.

Curse of the Poppy
Fifth in the Penny Green mystery series.

The Man Everybody Was Afraid Of
Fourth in the Dave Brandstetter mystery series. This was probably my least favorite so far, not for any particular reason, just felt a little boring until it got near the end.

Murder and the Missing Treasure
New Cleopatra Fox release! I'm always excited to see a new book in the series.

The Harlem Hellfighters
Graphic novel about Black soldiers in World War I. There's a mix of real and fictional characters, but overall apparently follows historical accounts fairly faithfully. Interesting reading, though I wasn't a fan of the art style.

Nodame Cantabile vol. 11-12

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Fun fact, the Strid is only three and a half miles from Appletreewick [pronounced Aptrick].

Is it possible that the Pletreew is silent because the Strid sucked it under, never to be heard again?

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Personal Issues, Off Topic Conversation, Religion, & Everything Else post (PP #32)
Fic and WIP Post
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case posting in

fandomsecrets

⌈ Secret Post #7098 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

( More! )

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #1013.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.