riseupwithfists

Sunshine is recovering slowly. Her dental surgery was a lot and they only managed half of it. It was pretty bad :(

But yesterday she got her voice back and had a little bath. The day before that I was celebrating her using the litterbox, eating, drinking, and getting in and out of her tree! And she is eating her medicine in her wet food with no complaints (for now). So grateful because it is now her ONLY food option, due to allergies.

The dog is mega jealous of the cat's new wet food 4 life plan. He eats home cooked meals!! Literally his food is just human food with no salt or alliums. But hers is stinkier!!! Unfair!! ;_;

eta: sunny's tractor bandage :P

every little old lady loves a tractor

crantz

I've been watching lots of movies as usual and been adding Murder She Wrote with *three* different friends! I'm going mad with power! Ann and Vali and Elly the Elephant and I even managed to get them to overlap and see each other! Sort of! GREAT TIMES.

Jessica is such a crowd pleaser. I love her meddle face.

Tonight's movie was Tammy and the T-Rex which was a beautiful vision of what you can do if you have an animatronic t-rex, a camera, and a dream.

I get my diploma on Friday! Yay! Anthropology. Yay!

I've been drawing still and still obsessed with City of Heroes, so here's more of the art of my characters. Heavy appearances from Silver Cygnet and Bugpunch.

( Selection of 18 pictures )

torachan

1. Disneyland just announced that you'll get a dining gift card for renewing your annual pass. The amount varies based on pass type, but the highest level, which we have, is $100 each, so that's nice. Our renewal doesn't come up till August, but the promo runs for a year from today.

2. Carla got some strawberries yesterday and when we were talking about eating them this morning, she remembered there was a box of Trader Joe's lemon cake mix in the cupboard, so I made that up before going to work and we'll have a slice of that with the strawberries tonight. It's the perfect combo.

3. I got the car washed today. It was needing a wash before we took it in for service, and usually they wash it before giving it back, but because the new window still needed to set, they couldn't wash it then. The guy said we could bring it back for a free wash after a couple days, but that's not really convenient. I had a chance to get to the Costco car wash today, though, so now it's looking much better. I'll be so glad when they're finished with the construction on the corner, as dust from the construction site gets the cars dirtier so much faster.

4. Molly's favorite spot is to curl up on either side of my pillow, but with a bratty brother right smack in the middle, how could she be expected to relax and enjoy herself? Very rude of him.

torachan

Last time we were here, we didn't explore Toontown at all, due to the rain and prioritizing other things. It's definitely low priority for us, but we had time this visit so we headed over to check it out.

( Part 2! )

torachan

1. Back at work today, boo. But at least it's a four day week now.

2. I took the leftover Chinese chicken salad from Sunday for lunch today and it was so good. I think I'll start making up a big batch for lunches once in a while as it's definitely the kind of salad that can be made up ahead of time and then just add the crunchy wonton strips before you eat it.

3. I usually get the same few poses of Tuxie because he's always in the same spots, but this was a new one. :)

musesfool

Now you know I'm not a big basketball fan but with the Knicks in the finals I will probably be talking about it some, especially since the Mets are so terrible and it looks like the Habs might not be moving on. I don't wanna root for the Canes. I do not like them! But I cannot root for VGK, so it is what it is.

Anyway, this was a fun article about Victor Wembanyama, the Spurs center, and the "Read like Wemby" campaign a library in San Antonio started. (Ignore the snobs in the comments talking about how he should read "real" literature instead of SFF - they are not serious people.) I love when libraries do stuff like this and they are always doing cool stuff like this.

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Current Mood: pleased
Current Music: This Corrosion - Sisters of Mercy

omens

The cat is at the dentist today. Her estimate is sitting at 2600$ before any cosmetic wart removal so she is gonna stay in her loveable swamp hag state :P everyone think good thoughts!

In other news, has anyone else's world been rocked by McCain no longer making frozen juice?? It was the cheapest way to buy juice with the least fucking plastic. ;_; and now, we've discovered that the finish dishwasher tabs are only being made in the pod type now, no little block of compressed powder! The pods fucking suck! I only had to pull a blanket out of the dryer with plastic pod shit dried on it once before I was like, no, these suck, actually, give me the powder back. Or the time they all stuck together into a giant jelly mass in the canister because humidity exists.

(We have the juice now (by which I mean liquid laundry soap - I heard it called laundry juice once in a reel and it became our vernacular), which is beside the point, because the washing machine in this house has a reservoir, which is very convenient.)

Anyway, Kelly found a different brand of powder diswasher tabs and was fighting with the wrapping on them, and then we realised that the wrapping is "dissolveable" .................I will use scissors, thanks. This dissolveable plastic is the worst. Compost bags are another one - we switched to the paper ones and haven't had a single problem with them.

This has been Old Lady Rants at Plastic, ig, and Doesn't Think About the Cat.

I'll think about this cat instead:

When you ask your cat for help to escape death but your death is actually very warm and cozy???? (This is Lightfall by Tim Probert and it is DELIGHTFUL.)

musesfool

New York Knicks are going to the NBA Finals! Go New York Go New York Go! Bing bong!

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

torachan

1. Well, so much for the three week pee-free streak. :-/ I woke up this morning to find Jasper had had an accident at some point in the night (or maybe early morning as it seemed pretty fresh). It was in a fairly easy to clean up spot and was on a small cat blanket that had been peed on a couple times years ago (during nervous vet visits) so that may have triggered it. It's a bummer that it happened at all, but three weeks is a better record than three days, which is what it was down to before, so fingers crossed it doesn't happen again any time soon.

2. We went to see The Mandalorian and Grogu this morning and it was really fun! I honestly don't remember much about where the show ended, but it's not necessary as the movie is pretty stand-alone.

3. We got our bbq tri tip sandwiches from the neighborhood market for lunch and they were so good! We got them a few times last summer, so I knew they would be, but I'd forgotten how good lol. Definitely will be getting those again soon.

4. I have been meaning to order baskets for our new bikes and finally got around to doing that today. If I'd been thinking, I would have just had the bike shop order them when we bought the bikes (they had the front basket in stock but not the back one), but I did not. The bikes do come with a back rack and I've used a bungee cord to strap stuff on there a couple times already, but a basket will definitely make it easier for times when a shoulder bag doesn't really work.

5. I really enjoyed my three day weekend. Wish I wasn't going back to work tomorrow, but so it goes. I did request some time off next month, the weekend of my birthday, but also the weekend before that. We're going to Pride Nite at Disneyland on the 18th, so I put in for the 19th off, which is a Friday, to give myself a three day weekend. Then I noticed that 4th of July falls on a weekend, so our company holiday will be on Friday the 3rd, which means with the time off I've requested I'll have a three day weekend, a four day weekend, and then another three day weekend. That will definitely help get me through the month lol.

6. Gemma loves to use this dresser to jump up on the high shelves in Carla's closet.

torachan

1. I rode my bike to the fancy donut shop this morning and got us some fancy donuts. Carla loves their savory eggs benedict donut and they only make a limited amount each day and are often sold out within an hour of opening. I got there around eight and got the last one for her. For myself, I got a couple things, one of which looked really good but was kind of bland, but the other was a blueberry donut with lots of sauce and whipped cream and that was really good.

2. For lunch we went over to Prime and got some more of their butter chicken pizza. Tomorrow is the last day of the collab! It's been selling so well, though, that hopefully they'll have it back again. We actually ended up getting a whole pizza this time rather than just a couple slices.

3. When I was taking my morning walk, I saw that the neighborhood market had a grill out in the parking lot and I realized they must be starting their summer grill season this weekend! It makes sense for Memorial Day weekend to be the start. We already had lunch plans with the pizza, but we walked over to the store again later just to do some shopping for dinner and asked them if they would be grilling tomorrow (usually it's weekends only but since it's a holiday I figured they might) and they said yes, so we are definitely going to get some BBQ sandwiches for lunch or dinner tomorrow.

4. The other day we saw a short on youtube about making Chinese chicken salad with cucumber and that sounded really good, so we got some cucumbers and other stuff and made that for dinner and it was indeed super delicious. I usually don't have it when eating out anymore because the dressing is not good for my stomach and it always has onions, but while we didn't make our own dressing, so it did still have some garlic in it, we left out the onions and it seems to be sitting all right. There's enough left for me to take for lunch on Tuesday, too.

5. To continue the food theme, when we went out to the store this morning, there was a poster on a traffic pole at the crosswalk advertising a boba tea place nearby. The main thrust of it was advertising an afterschool deal for students (the poster was right next to a middle school) but it also mentioned a new cheesecake flavor they have, ube flan cheesecake. The shop is right near the pizza place, so when we went over to get our pizza, I stopped in there and got some cheesecake to have after dinner. It was really good!

6. Chloe's getting cozy.

musesfool

Frequently when we reschedule something because of a bad weather forecast, the weather turns out to not be that bad after all, but this weekend, it was the smart move. It seems to have finally stopped raining for bit after it rained heavily for most of yesterday and all of today. It's been a real chilly and kind of gray spring, tbh, those few days of high 80s/low 90s notwithstanding.

Anyway, I've taken the chance to try out some recipes - yesterday, I made chicken meatballs with garlic butter orzo, which is good and I have some leftover, but I would say that the meatballs are sort of unnecessary? And the garlic butter needs a little more seasoning imo - some rosemary and oregano and basil would not go amiss - but the orzo in garlic butter is good stuff.

I also made Ina Garten's shortbread, though I kept the teaspoon of almond extract from the pecan shortbread and covered them with chocolate sprinkles - I made the dough yesterday and then baked them off this morning. 20 minutes was probably a minute or 2 too long in the oven, but they still taste good.

I also baked a loaf of bread, on which I might make French bread pizza tomorrow. We'll see. I might also bake some kind of lemon cake, since I have a bunch of lemons, but maybe not. Again, I'll see how I feel. But for dinner tonight, I made these ricotta and breadcrumb balls. Which again, I seasoned to my own taste rather than following the instructions. They're pretty good if you like ricotta.

I think that's one of the most important things you can do when you learn to cook - learn to make things taste the way you like them. I save a ton of recipes and have a bunch of cookbooks, but mainly I need them for measurements and techniques, not flavorings. I mean, don't get me wrong, sometimes they will come up with a combination that would never have occurred to me which is delicious! But a lot of the time, I'm going, I'll swap in X for Y and I will like it better. If there are too many of these in one recipe, then it's not really that recipe (not that I would comment to say so!), but the technique might be useful just the same.

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Current Mood: full
Current Music: who's gonna ride your wild horses? - u2

torachan

1. We had a nice morning at Disneyland. There's new Mandalorian and Grogu menu items, plus Smuggler's Run has been rethemed for the movie, so there was lots of new stuff to check out.

2. Finished up another puzzle today. This is one I bought a while back before I really started doing the 1000 piece ones, but now I'm ready for it and it was a lot of fun!

3. This sweet Jasper has gone three weeks without an accident. We're still on alert, but I really hope this means he's over it.

torachan

They've got a bunch of new stuff to go along with the new Mandalorian and Grogu movie and all that started on Thursday, so that was our main focus for today. I saw some posts yesterday and apparently lines were ridiculous on Thursday, but thankfully while the park was busy (it's Memorial Day weekend, after all), the Star Wars stuff wasn't mobbed.

( Read more... )

torachan

1. It's the start of a three day weekend! I'm very excited about that. No particular plans, but an extra day off work is exciting on its own.

2. The weather is back to high 60s/low 70s after those couple days of heat we had earlier this week. I just checked the forecast and it looks like it'll stay that way for the next week or so at least.

3. I just happened to look at the calendar for next month and saw that my birthday is on a Friday, so I put in for that day and the Monday to give myself a four day weekend.

4. Where could Ollie be!?

torachan

Recently Finished
Kills Well with Others
Sequel to Killers of a Certain Age, about middle aged female assassins. I liked this one, too. Not sure if there will be any more, because it's hard to keep going "okay this time we've really for real retired" with each book lol.

Secrets Typed in Blood
Third in the Pentecost and Parker series of historical murder mysteries. Still enjoying this series (in fact I think I liked this one better than the first two) and have already requested the next one from the library.

Nobody's Baby
Second in the Dorothy Gentleman sci-fi mystery novella series. I liked this one, too, though not as much as the first. And I'm not sure if there were some details in the first book that I missed or if this one just made it more clear. I thought it was sort of a retro sci-fi setting but it seems to be even more than just a retro vibe, but rather the spaceship having left earth sometime in the very early 20th century, based on various references to technology and attitudes on earth before they left. So I'm curious to see if more of that gets explored in future books.

Nodame Cantabile vol. 1-5
This is one of those modern classic manga series that I've heard about for ages but never read. It's set at a music college. I've read another series by the author (Tensai Family Company) ages and ages ago and liked it, so I'd always meant to get around to this someday but just never had. I got the first three volumes free off Amazon Japan a while back and just now got around to reading them, then switch to the English translation for the rest of the series as it's 25 volumes total and I don't love it enough to want to buy the whole thing. The English translation is pretty shoddy quality, both in terms of translation skill and the typesetting. It feels very much like a scanlation rather than a professional job, but I'm getting it for free from the library so I'll stick with it.

torachan

I decided to walk over to Disneyland rather than taking the monorail, since it's actually not that much further to the park than to the monorail stop, and the monorail only goes one direction, which is opposite to where the park is from our hotel. So you walk a little less to get to the monorail but then have to go three stops to get to the park entrance. Carla wanted to preserve her energy for in the park, so she planned to take the monorail over to meet me, but I just walked over and it was quite a nice walk.

( Tokyo Disneyland Part 1! )

omens

The dentist's office called today because they'd accidentally made Liam a hygienist apppointment and not a dentist appointment this morning, lol. We ended up getting there before they could get ahold of us. So now he has a new appointment for June 2 (still way better than Sept 28!).. we went and bought snacks anyway, which we'd planned to do afterward because I needed tomatoes, and all he had to do was wake up early :D it worked out very well for him, if not his teeth :P

Kelly is working from home today and is in the front yard fighting a war against dandelions. We both love dandelions but the difference between our yard and the retirees' yards on either side of us is stark. :/

I started de-chaos-ing the office where my computer lives, but it is a big project. Sorting hobby supplies, figuring out storage, etc. Dreaming up a better desk situation, maybe. It's such a weird little dark room. I want it to be great but it has never quite been comfortable. Other than that, I have my daily Kdrama date at 3pm! We're watching Undercover Miss Hong & at 7 eps in, it is EXCELLENT. It takes place in 1997 and is a lot of fun. Wall to wall great characters & many shenanigans.

A funny bonus picture I forgot to share of Sunny

Her little stick legs under that floof! From after her bloodwork appointment on the 6th. They had to poke both legs! No wonder she went ballistic. She's usually calm as heck but not that time. Or, you know, I guess cause and effect could be reversed lolol. Either way, she walked it off and so did Christina, the technician /o\ sorry, Christina

torachan

1. I started playing Yoshi and the Mysterious Book and it's super cute! It's an entirely exploration focused game, and I do love exploration. I do miss bashing enemies a bit, though, lol.

2. One of my meetings today got cancelled and one for tomorrow got rescheduled to next week, and when I was looking at the calendar I realized that a recurring meeting that's every other Thursday had somehow gotten deleted from my to-do list, so I wasn't expecting it today, but thankfully I realized well ahead of time and didn't miss the meeting.

3. If I fits, I sits!

musesfool

Still with the don't wannas, but for once our All Staff call was mostly interesting (though it never fails to baffle me that people put their requests for different soda in the vending machine in the anonymous complaint form instead of just asking the office manager dude about it - as I said to my boss, no questions about COLAs but always questions about colas, which evoked a real out loud laugh from her so you know, score) and I got the 2 main things I had to do this week done, so tomorrow can just be waiting around for other people to send me their meeting materials (I loathe how they have no consideration for me and my summer Friday sign-off at 2:30 pm, but the C-suite level folks are always like that).

In other news, now I am not seeing Baby Miss L this weekend, because the weather is supposed to be rainy and chilly, so the party was postponed till next weekend. It's fine. I have gotten some lovely videos and pictures of her dancing at a wedding she attended last weekend, and that will suffice for now.

So Tuesday night, I turned off the Knicks game while they were down by double-digits in the 4th quarter and went to bed. Imagine my surprise to learn that they had tied it up and then won in OT! Let's hope they can win in regulation tonight.

And finally, I knew Mike Keenan was a piece of shit, but there's some stuff in this article about the 1994 Rangers (gift link) that I did not know. Interesting read. They won then and haven't since, so I guess it might really have to last a lifetime.

Now I have to figure out what to have for dinner. I guess it could be quesadillas again. Idk.

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Current Mood: ditzy
Current Music: Mets vs Nats on tv

omens

Hellooo, it's been hectic, I guess. Or I just haven't felt like writing. I have been stressed, which makes everything kind of go on hold.

The good stuff:

Been planting some herbs and flowers on the deck, but not too many because we have to refinish the deck (ughghghghhh). And I finally plugged in my click and grow (indoor garden) this morning, so that is fun, too. Kelly is growing grass in the front yard and it is FINALLY sprouting. Our yard looks like shit, lol. We haven't started tackling the garden bed.

Got L a dentist appointment for tomorrow morning! He has cavities that need filling but isn't on our health insurance anymore :( so we wanted to sign him up for the canadian dental insurance thing but he needed to have his own taxes filed & not as our dependent on Kelly's, so we did that and it took forever but we finally got them back and then found out the canadian dental insurance applications open in june ...FOR 2027. They had warned me at the dentist's office that it wasn't immediate coverage but they were like "it's a few weeks, I think" ..LOL. So. Gonna do that in June but in the meantime, he needs 1200$ worth of dentistry. 2026 is the year of dental bills, let's say. Cat, dog, Liam. At least mine has been covered (60%, anyway, for the crown).

Anyway it was funny because I was like welp, make the appointment, we need to get it done asap, and they were like "we can book him in for July" and I was like lolol that's his birthday, maybe the next date?? And the next date was Sept 28th. :P But we were pretty confident a cancellation would come up bc summer etc. Did not expect a call the very next day but we will take it! :D

Oh yeah, also the cat's dentistry got pushed back a week and switched to the vet that did Nico's dentistry. He's willing to roll with how her cleaning looks and do whatever's needed on the fly, whereas the other guy wanted to do a cleaning and then decide what to do and make an appointment to do it after. And I was like, yeah, I think we'll only put her under once, thanks. For longer, yeah, but it seems way less stressful. I hope it is the right choice. I don't think I mentioned it here but we got her pre-dental bloodwork back and we had paid for a special test of her heart function bc we had been told in the past that she has a murmur, so anaesthetic was a very scary option. But!!! Her tiny little chicken heart is functioning perfectly! It was such a relief to get that result back because I was worried if we got the opposite result back it would be like, well... what do we do now? I still have to get a pee sample out of her but she is very stubborn and I am very scatterbrained.

Hmm what else is good... I got an intoabar assignment and it is Steph Brown x William Boimler and at first I was like nooooooooooooooo but idk, they maybe have things to talk about. I'll have to rewatch some Lower Decks (not a hardship). All else fails, I want to get back into watercolour so I might just paint it.

torachan

1. I took today off! And this weekend's going to be a three day weekend, too, so that's nice.

2. The issue with the car did indeed turn out to be the battery. AAA guy came out and used his battery meter on it and said it was at 14% power, which is why it could still open the doors but couldn't do anything else. The battery was from 2019, which is before we bought it, so it was long past needing to be replaced and had apparently been leaking quite a bit of acid. I had been planning to go to Pep Boys or somewhere after he jumped the car but he had the right type of battery with him, so I was able to just have him replace it on the spot, which was very convenient.

3. The reason I'd taken today off is that we had an appointment at CarMax to take a look at an EV, the Kia EV 6, to be exact, and I knew it would be a long process if we decided to buy it, so I didn't want to be worrying about having to get back to work if that was the case. We did not end up buying it, but we did like it a lot, so it's definitely a possibility. We really would like to switch to an EV sometime in the near future.

4. Tuxie!

musesfool

I had a bad case of the don't wannas today, and I don't anticipate it getting better tomorrow or Friday, but we finally start summer Fridays this week and have a 3 day weekend, so hopefully that will help. I could barely stay awake until 5 pm, so after I logged off, I napped hard, and had one of those dreams where I think I've woken up, but no, I'm still asleep and then I think I've woken up from that, but no, I'm still asleep, over and over until I finally do actually wake up and am like, how did I think I was awake in those dreams, it was so clearly not reality? Anyway, it was in the middle of a big thunderstorm and there is nothing better than being cozy in bed during a thunderstorm, so that was all right.

I did want to talk about a couple of books I've read!

What I've just finished
I don't think I ever said anything after finishing The Last Contract of Isako, but I liked it. It's a noir detective story set in a far-future colony that has lost contact with Earth, and the titular Isako is a corporate samurai on her last contract. I really liked her - she was a 50yo woman in a profession best handled by younger people and she knew it. ( spoilers )

I'm seeing Baby Miss L this weekend, so I bought her some books and also read them:

- We Will Rock Our Classmates: A Penelope Rex Book by Ryan Higgins, which was ADORABLE. Baby Miss L liked the first Penelope Rex book, so I think she will like this one, in which Penelope signs up to play guitar in the class talent show, as well.

- Interrupting Chicken by David Ezra Stein, which was super cute. It's bedtime and little red chicken wants a bedtime story but then she keeps interrupting when her papa tries to tell her one.

- The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt (Author) and Oliver Jeffers (Illustrator), which was cute but a little samey for me as an adult - I bet kids love it.

I also reread Parade of Horribles so I think I understand some of it much better but some of it is still a little ...opaque. I'm going do another reread with my notes document open so I can check off stuff that got answered (or not) and add all the new stuff that will now have to be resolved (or not). I will say that while there were some fantastic moments, it's not my favorite book - it's probably in the lower half of my personal rankings, tbh, because I feel like ( spoiler ) I'm also thinking about how supposedly Dinniman said that books 9 and 10 are really one book split into two? And I can think of several ways to manage that, so I'm very interested to see how he does it.

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Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Avs vs VGK on tv

torachan

It was very hot and sunny today, but we didn't realize that when we planned the trip, or I might have cancelled it. But we just stayed a couple hours for dinner and some shopping and it wasn't too bad.

( Read more... )

torachan

1. We went down to Disneyland tonight for dinner. We've had really nice weather lately and so I have not been in the habit of checking the temps, and if I had, I would have suggested holding off until this weekend because it was high 80s and very sunny, but we still had a nice time. There were a couple new menu items (and a bunch more Star Wars ones coming this weekend for the new Mandalorian movie) and they had some Pride merch out already (though hopefully more to come as there were only a handful of things). Overall a nice trip despite the heat.

2. We got the car windowshield finally fixed. They first tried to charge us over $2000 for it, then Carla finally got the manager to agree that it was a defect so they would do it for free, but then they told us the request to process it for free had been denied, but we were able to get it down to under half the price they'd originally quoted us, so at least that was something. Because of all that back and forth, we hadn't actually taken it in to get it replaced until yesterday, and then it wasn't ready for pickup until this morning. But it's back now and the window is fixed, yay!

3. Speaking of cars, though...when we got in the other car to go to the dealership this morning, it wouldn't start. The doors opened and the dashboard flashed, but it wouldn't start, and after looking it up, it seems like it's probably a case of the battery being almost dead. Enough juice to still open the doors, but not enough to start up. So tomorrow we'll call AAA to get it jumped and then go get a new battery. Since we couldn't drive over to the dealership to pick up the other car I ended up riding my new bike and then just putting it in the car to drive home. Thankfully the car that was getting repaired is the one that can fit a bike in it.

4. A couple months ago Disney announced that sometime later this year they would be doing away with the time restriction on park hopping. Pre-covid, if you had an annual pass or a park hopper ticket, you could start at either park and cross over to the other one whenever you wanted to. When they reopened after the covid closure they had introduced the reservation system and as part of that, they limited park hopping to after 1pm. Eventually they pushed that down to 11am, but now they are finally doing away with it altogether and today they announced the starting date will be June 9th. I'm excited about it! It's a pain to not be able to cross over earlier or change your starting park last minute, and it creates long lines at 11am when everyone is park hopping at the same time.

5. Love that Gemma face!

musesfool

what a fucking wild night of sports. the Mets scored TEN RUNS in the TWELFTH INNING and the Nats brought in a position player to pitch, and the umpires had to call the replay officials to find out if that was allowed! Spoiler: It was, because it was after the 10th inning? Or something? If you're within a regular 9-inning game, I think you have to be losing by 8 or winning by 10 before it's allowed, but apparently the rules change in extra innings. who knew? #LFGM

ANYWAY. It was bonkers, and then I turned away just in time to see the Canadiens score the winning goal in OT in Game 7!!! I would have been okay with either team winning, and now I just need them to beat Carolina and whoever comes out of the West to win it all and lift the Cup!

And tomorrow, the Knicks are back in action and will hopefully do well and go to the finals! #go ny go ny go

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Current Mood: shocked

torachan

1. I had a WFH day today so that we could take the car in to hopefully finally get the window fixed. They said it might be ready to pick up this evening, but it's already 5:30pm and they haven't called, so I doubt it's happening.

2. The other day I got an email from our favorite neighborhood pizza place saying they were doing some sort of collab and would be having butter chicken pizza from the 15th through the 25th. I kept checking the website and while other locations listed it as available, the two near us did not, so we walked over the other night in hopes of getting some, but it had all sold out. Toay we went over right when they opened at 11am and were able to get a couple slices each. It's so good! Hopefully we can get it at least once more before it's gone.

3. We got our primary ballots filled out and I took them over to the dropbox today. Really hope we don't end up with two Republicans in the governor's race, but at least it's looking like the second one is polling low enough that even with the five million Dems splitting the vote, we should at least see a Democrat vs Republican race in November. Fingers crossed! (And maybe smomeone can get some legislation in to end the jungle primary system or, even better, to do ranked choice.)

4. Chloe's keeping an eye out.

torachan

( Shinkansen from Osaka to Tokyo! )

musesfool

Usually, I shower at night, but last night, I stayed up too late reading and didn't feel like delaying bedtime so I put the shower off until this morning. While I was in there, I noticed a spider, but it was on the far wall, and I was naked and without my glasses, so I let it live and it disappeared somewhere (the whole room is tiled, floor to ceiling, so I don't know where? but also. I don't want to know where).

This evening, I had to wash my hair, so there I was back in the shower, and I turned off the water and stepped back while I was lathering the shampoo, and there was the spider, dropping down from god knows where right in the middle of my shower!

So I had to get out - with my hair still full of shampoo - grab my glasses and a paper towel, so I could kill it, because come the fuck on, spider, that is not okay! The shower is sacrosanct!

It's a good thing I still have to stay up for an hour to detangle because I would not have been able to go to sleep right away after that, omg.

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Current Mood: shocked
Current Music: if it's a mess you're in, i'm in

musesfool

Yesterday, I made these ricotta cheesecake bars, for which I had to shell 62g of pistachios (oh, the humanity!), and they are okay, but either there is not enough butter or I had too much graham cracker crumb because the crust does not cohere. (I used pre-smashed crumbs because that is what I had and probably used too much. Recipes really should give you some sort of measurement beyond "7 or 8 graham crackers, crushed" for these things.)

I also made KAB pretzel rolls (half the recipe) and as always, they are delicious, even if the whole boiling step is annoying. I definitely recommend them, and if like me, you never remember that they have a small amount of butter (2 tbsp) that needs to be softened ahead of time, you can always just substitute the same amount of olive oil, also like me. *wry*

With the LIRR on strike, I'm not going into the office this week (I had already decided that anyway), so I didn't have to do any other baking, and I just bought some spring mix and grilled chicken strips so that'll be lunch for the week.

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Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: the way you changed my life, no no, they can't take that away from me

torachan

1. I got my new bike set up today and took it out for a ride. It does seem to be really intuitive. I used it without assist for most of the ride, and turned the assist on for a grade that lead into a medium hill, and then later on a straight section that just had a lot of wind blowing at me, and it was very easy to just switch it on and off. Then I decided to try the big hill that I'd had to walk my bike up yesterday, and was able to get up it just fine, though I had to use the boost mode, which is specifically for hills. I went out again later with Carla, and she wasn't able to get up the hill at all, even with boost mode and had to walk the bike up. I'm not sure if it's just not possible at all because she's out of shape and even with the assist it was too much effort, or if there's some things we can tweak to make it work better.

2. It's been two weeks since Jasper had any pee incidents!

3. The granola bar guy at the farmers market had a new flavor, strawberry, and they're really good. I bought two after trying a sample.

4. We had set this blanket up on the sofa so that Chloe could get under it if she wanted to, and Ollie ended up going in there instead! He actually did this a couple times, even though he usually doesn't like to be under a blanket (unlike Chloe, who would like to spend her whole life under a blanket).

coffeeandink

Found via

chestnut_pod.

There are so many posts I want to write, but this one is easy and also about books, so! I think everyone should do it so I can spy on your bookshelves.

Take five books off your bookshelf.

(I pulled everything from my physical TBR bookcase, in hopes that it will encourage me to read it.)

Book #1 -- first sentence: "Anyone can write about a large city--large cities are open to everyone--but small cities can only be portrayed by people who love them."

(Already ambiguities: I skipped the preface because this line is better.)

Book #2 -- last sentence on page fifty: "However, I haven't yet read V.W.'s book."

Book #3 -- second sentence on page one hundred: "What amazing childishness these old people were content to live in!"

(Unexpected challenge: do I pick the second sentence or the second complete sentence?)

Book #4 -- next to the last sentence on page one hundred fifty: "'I know.' Verna dropped the packages. A hard, harsh sob pressed at her throat. 'I hate him.' "

(Yes, I am treating one paragraph of dialog plus action as a single sentence for the purposes of the meme. Fight me!)

Book #5 -- final sentence of the book: "Eunice picked up her bag and guitar and closed the door to the storm."

Make the five sentences into a paragraph:

Anyone can write about a large city--large cities are open to everyone--but small cities can only be portrayed by people who love them. However, I haven't yet read V.W.'s book. What amazing childishness these old people were content to live in! 'I know.' Verna dropped the packages. A hard, harsh sob pressed at her throat. 'I hate him.' Eunice picked up her bag and guitar and closed the door to the storm.

I promise it wouldn't make any more sense if I chose another option for step 5.

Book #1: Friendly City by Sofia Samatar
Book #2: The Diaries of Sylvia Townsend Warner, ed. Claire Harman
Book #3: Ready or Not by Mary Stolz
Book #4: The Room Opposite and Other Stories by F.M. Mayor
Book #5: Mojo Hand: An Orphic Tale by J.J. Phillips

musesfool

While this isn't thematic or plot-related or anything, I did remember one thing I wanted to comment on from PoH because it's probably the most relatable* Carl has ever been to me: ( minor spoiler )

*There's a post on tumblr that I think I've reblogged a couple of times, that notes that characters don't need to be relatable for me to enjoy them, but they do need to be resonant. This was a case where something was both. *g*

In more real world news, last I checked (earlier today), the MTA and the various railroad unions are still far apart on finalizing a new contract, so it's entirely possible there will be a strike starting on Saturday and the LIRR will stop running. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if there were an eleventh hour agreement to prevent that, but I also wouldn't be surprised if there weren't. In the face of this uncertainty, my boss made going into the office on Tuesday optional (and non-tenable if there is a strike, since she lives out on the island), so I have opted to not go in regardless. So all my cupcake baking will have to wait until next time. (I think our June in-office day is also currently non-tenable because it's a day when there will be an afternoon World Cup match and nobody wants to be in Manhattan during that, but especially around Penn Station or the Port Authority, as required by many commutes, but we'll see what happens when we get there.)

In other work news, they are scheduling our annual summer staff picnic someplace up in Dutchess County(?!) and everyone on my team is like, WTF? DNW! about it (it appears I will already be on PTO for it, so at least I'm well out of it). I also had some charter bus horror stories to share, from my own personal experience, so I hope the folks managing that have great intestinal fortitude, because managing transportation for large groups for an outing is the worst, and they're planning to do it from multiple locations. They're also requiring people show up for the busses at like 8:30 am and they won't leave from upstate to come home until 4 pm (the team planning this had to be talked down from making it 5 pm), and it's at least a 90 minute drive (longer to/from Brooklyn or Queens) and then you still have to commute home from the pickup/drop-off location. I think this is an even worse proposition than the Governor's Island location, which required a railroad > subway > ferry trip from me so I noped out of it repeatedly. The one time I went, many years ago now, was when it was from 1 - 4 pm at Riverside Park, which is super accessible by subway and also not a full day affair. It's also why I dislike corporate events on boats (which I have also had experience with) - you're just stuck for the length of the affair with no escape.

Anyway, now that I've fully exposed my asocial personality, I will hit post. *g*

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Current Mood: surprised
Current Music: The Mets are...winning???

miss teen wordpower(s)

cat update

Viewing talk, school talk, art talk

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2026 Disneyland Trip #16 (4/9/26) Tokyo Disneyland (Part 2)

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gimme the ring, kissed and told

ooof

you had them sign an accountability contract

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you're dangerous, you don't know what you want

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2026 Disneyland Trip #23 (5/23/26)

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Weekly Reading

2026 Disneyland Trip #16 (4/9/26) Tokyo Disneyland (Part 1)

LOL

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and he goes down swinging

life update!

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and it's on target every time

2026 Disneyland Trip #22 (5/19/26)

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put it in the books!

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2026 Japan Trip Part 4 (4/8-9)

maybe take me with you, we can hide

the way you hold your knife, the way we danced til three

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3W4DW book meme

and the mets put the hammer down

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January 2011

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