Reading

Current Mood: gently tipsy
Current Location: minneapolis, mn

Entry tags:

a bit more trip reporting, plus a current life update

Hello!

So since I last posted, I reached the gathering site in Alberta (a very swanky "cabin" in the Canadian Rockies, and I will not be any more specific than that, thank you very much). The get-together was WONDERFUL, which is unsurprising, but alas all good things must end so the vast majority of people left Sunday morning (July 20) in order to fly home (or in one case catch a bus to Banff). I drove northeast to Drumheller, leaving around 11ish, and that was the only day where I had to stop on the side of the road to pee in a ditch because Google Maps decided to route me via county roads through the middle of nowhere so I had no chance to find a gas station.

The Royal Tyrell Museum was EXCELLENT and I highly recommend a visit to anyone who has the chance. If you have the time, arrive in the morning to take a badlands hiking tour (this obviously did not work with my schedule), but the museum itself is still damn cool. I then spent the night in a "hotel" that was 7 rooms above an Indian restaurant. The room was fine! It was just kind of a surprise. But on the bright side, I bought a double order of garlic naan for an evening snack and proceeded to munch on that as car snacks for the next two days.

I also bought a t-shirt, a pair of socks, and a travel mug (no handle, has a tea-and-dinosaurs pun) from the museum gift shop. No regrets!

Monday the 21st I drove back south into the US and then took the Going-To-The-Sun Road from east to west through Glacier National Park. (I had previously acquired an America The Beautiful pass which gets you into ALL national parks, plus any sites managed by the Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation, Fish and Wildlife Service, USDA Forest Service, and US Army Corps of Engineers that charge an entrance fee.) Glacier is fucking BEAUTIFUL. Due to time constraints (and also weather; it was gray and drizzly during most of my visit) I didn't do any proper hiking, but I did get to walk upstream along Siyeh Creek for a little way.

I spent Monday night at a motel in Kalispell, west of Glacier, where I was able to wash a load of laundry. And I will post about the rest of my trip another day.

-----

In non-trip news, I am currently staying at Vicky's house while she is off on her own two-week road trip. She is circling through Chicago, Pittsburgh, NJ, DC, South Carolina, Tennessee, and then Chicago again on her way home to Minnesota. Meanwhile I am dogsitting Alfie, bringing in her mail, and generally making her house look lived-in rather than vacant.

What I get out of this is A) some distance from our parents, which is nice (I love them but it's still fundamentally awkward to live in their basement as a middle-aged adult); B) BETTER INTERNET (my parents' wifi works fine for anything word-based but is frankly tragic about images, gifs, and videos); and C) the company of one of the world's most adorable dogs. <3

In job search news, I have applied to two Not The IRS offices in the Twin Cities area (annoyingly you can't apply for a region -- you have to apply to each office individually). I have also updated my resume and tomorrow I am going to poke at LinkedIn until I can figure out how best to upload it and start refining my job search terms.

Also I may have fallen down a rabbit hole reading Ask A Manager columns, but shhh, we'll keep that as our little secret. ;)

Current Mood: hungry
Current Music: have some more chicken, have some more pie

['cause] it's boiled [and] fried so

I have found THE WAY to make crispy firm tofu that I will now do forever more (or until I get bored and wander off to my next food obsession): brining it. It takes no longer than pressing it, is less messy, and the results are unbelievably crispy, even still a little crunchy after overnight refrigeration of the leftovers and then microwaving it, neither process designed to encourage that. And far more successful than any baking or cornstarch-dredging that I've tried before; will never go back. Noting here for my memories:

- Bring 4 cups water with 1/4 cup of salt (or, ratiowise, 1T salt for every 1 cup water needed to cover your tofu) to a boil, then turn off the heat
- Plop your cut-up tofu into the brine - the video did sliced planks, I did cubes so I didn't have two separate cutting steps, it came out fine
- Let it sit for 10-15 minutes
- Pan-fry the tofu in a little oil, flipping around the 3-4 minute mark; repeat until tofu is crispy enough to satisfy you.

As for silken tofu, for quick breakfasts/solo dinners, I've been nuking it with butter and soy sauce and a little bit of chili crisp, then topping it with a scallion that I chopped while waiting for the microwave. Maybe grating a little ginger over if I'm feeling fancy, or now that the lemons are slowly starting to come back, squeezing a little lemon over. It's like a hot hiyayakko, and might be more so if I ever remembered to pick up katsuobushi at Yaoya-San, heh.

*

In the meantime, our neighbors had been texting us while we were away about the annual plumpocalypse, and we came home to a carpet of purple underneath said plum tree, despite the neighbors coming by and picking up the excess while we were gone. Right now, we have enough to fill our entire dutch oven, with ~~dozens~~ hundreds more dropping daily. I really need to set up some kind of net situation to catch them before they hit the ground, I have made refrigerator jam literally every day for the last week and a half, and we are not keeping up. (Right now, our total jam despite our attempts to chip away at it fills my second-largest glass storage pan - 11 cups!)

But because my method so far looks like:

* sweep plums into a pile
* scoop plums of various softness into our largest kitchen bowl
* fill plum bowl with water and let it sit (

hyounpark says in case there are worms?!)
* sort plums - only the intact ones make it through
* cook plums until just soft enough to pit
* pit
* weigh the puree, add 40% sugar
* cook, skimming off scum, until it passes the spoon test
* cool
* find a storage container to put the jam in in the fridge
* put on yogurt and toast ad nauseum because I have not committed to buying the whole kit for Proper Jam Making that would let the jam last longer than a few weeks in the fridge

At least our neighbors are equally meh about Proper Jamming so I feel less bad about not doing it, LOL. Still, I did take a cup and a half of yesterday's puree and turned it into a plum version of my favorite roasted applesauce cake for yesterday's block party, and it went smashingly; I was barely able to snag a piece for H and I to split!

Between the cake success and the tofu triumph and lovely August tomatoes marinating in a pool of olive oil and mint and salt and their own juices, I'm proud of these recent food feats. Now to figure out what I'm doing with the pork belly (for dinner tonight). Probably something that can get topped with some of the plum jam, heh.

Current Mood: worried

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Nobody needs a drought, but here we are

The entire province is in a drought now, after a generally dry season that was already extremely dry in a lot of areas, and last I heard there was no rain in the forecast. Yesterday official word came out asking people to try to conserve water and telling everyone to stay the hell out of the woods. (Apparently there's a substantial fine, although my understanding is that no such fine has ever been successfully enforced, so that's...great.) So now is the time of hoping the farmers and crops come through as well as possible, and that wildfire season passes us by.

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Not all danmei this Wednesday, but close

Recently read

Xue Shan Fei Hu, The Disabled Tyrant's Beloved Pet Fish, vol. 3. Silly and fluffy danmei. It's basically domestic fluff crossed with palace intrigue, except all the intrigue plots are resolved with minimal trouble and everything always works out for the main characters. Conflict level: -500. I don't know that I actually enjoyed reading this, because there was absolutely nothing of substance in it, but I still started vol. 4 right away. I blame the cliffhanger.

I'll have to start being less of a completionist about danmei, don't I?

Xue Shan Fei Hu, The Disabled Tyrant's Beloved Pet Fish, vol. 4. Yeah. I've no excuse.

Gu Xue Rou, To Rule in a Turbulent World, vol. 1. Yet more historical danmei. I was pretty sceptical about this one, since the English translation is published by Via Lactea. Also, the translator/editor team is apparently Suika and Pengie, who made something of a mess of the TGCF and MDZS translations. Luckily, the quality of the translation and editing was better than I expected. Maybe nothing to write home about, but at least none of the tableware was tired of life, which was a step up from the TGCF translation.

But. The fucking epub file, oh my god. Rant incoming.

( Screeching about the epub. Accessibility, goddamit! )

It wouldn't have been a surprise if I'd just given up. I'm glad I didn't, though, because this was a surprisingly enjoyable read. So much so that I actually read it in one day.

The MC is a flightly young master from a filthy-rich merchant family who has been sent to the capital to study for the imperial exam and to eventually buy prestige for his family by becoming an official. The ML is a slave from one of the northern nomadic tribes, whose loyalty the MC earns by saving his life. Since the MC is a flighty wastrel at first, he'll naturally have to face some difficulties to grow as a person.

The prose isn't the most polished, but I liked the characters, and the pace of the novel is good. I also liked the farming, which is probably a weird thing to say about a story where the MC is studying to become a scholar, but there it is. A large part of this volume at least is taken up by restoring an old manor house and making the estate ready for spring planting. I happen to love stuff like that in fiction -- restoring something dilapidated, forging order out chaos, getting deep into the minutiae of a profession or craft -- but if you're bored by endless talk of watermills, then this might not be the book for you.

Some content warnings to keep in mind should you be someone who would like to avoid these things: age gap relationship (15/22), master/slave relationship.

A.J. Demas, Lion & Snake: Series One. Damn. Way to slay me again, Demas. Slow burn, enemies to lovers, arranged marriage, age gap romance in Demas's pseudo-historical setting. Basically tailor-made for me. I have this because I'm subscribed to Demas on Ream. I don't think it's available anywhere else (yet).

Currently reading

Little progress on the old RIPs. Oops.

Up next

More farming in historical China, perhaps?

Elsewhere on the internet....

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Entry tags:

recs-tv,
tv-cdrama

CDrama Rec: Nothing But You

Wu Lei and Zhou Yutong in Nothing But You

Nothing But You (愛情而已) is a 2023 cdrama. It's a noona romance set in the world of sports: between Song Sanchuan, a professional badminton player who later switches to tennis (Wu Lei - you might know him from Nirvana in Fire, or maybe from Sand Sea), and Liang You'an, a sports company sales person/executive assistant (Zhou Yutong). He's 22, she's 32, and basically the whole obstacle to their relationship is that she thinks he's too young for her. That sustains the tension for a very long time indeed. :D I personally find both of them very cute (and I say that as someone who was indifferent to Wu Lei's looks before).

Is it a rec? Yes! Yesyesyesyes! It's so, so good.

Does it have a happy ending?

ending spoilers

Yes! So much yes. They manage to wrap up pretty much all the storylines in a saccharine finale, and I didn't hate even a single one of the choices.

Where to watch? You can watch it on Viki or Youtube.

I love so many things about this show!

A) There's not a single 'evil' character on it (minus one very short exception in one of the later eps). Every character has their own valid reasons for doing the things they do. Some of those are callous or misguided, but nowhere near as cliched as I'm used to from other dramas, and overall, most of the characters are just wonderful all around.

B) Many of the main characters are women, and I feel like the story is definitely told from a female perspective. All the women are encouraged to stand up for themselves and follow their dreams. The men aren't idiots either, though, which is just fun to watch. Of the secondary characters, I especially like Sanchuan's stepdad. He always has good advice (which doesn't always match Sanchuan's actual needs, but I love that too), and while I don't know the actor, I got the distinct impression that he must be a popular comedian. I also really like the boss's storyline. Overall, I like a lot more of the storylines and characters than I expected.

( many more reasons, not spoilery (two minor spoilers separately tagged inside) )

Now I'm looking through fanvids and interviews on bilibili instead of starting something new. That's not the case for many cdramas for me, and I'm enjoying that, too. (I haven't found any really good ones yet, though. I'll keep looking.)

Some pictures of the couple

They always look this adoringly...

Nothing But You - dinner

...at each other

Nothing But You - good hair

He looks good sweaty and sporty

Nothing But You - cuddles

They're very cuddly together

Nothing But You - baobao

Gimme a hug!

Nothing But You - hugs

More hugs

Another hug!

Nothing But You - kiss

There are quite a few kisses too

Nothing But You - hugs

But mostly hugs :)

Entry tags:

weekly update

Me-and-media update

Previous poll review
In the Your Name poll, 73.5% of respondents spell their name out, unprompted, 26.5% offer an explanation or additional information, and 14.3% exaggerate the pronunciation to reflect the spelling. I've concluded that names are super inefficient, and we should switch to serial numbers.

In ticky-boxes, being gentle with yourself (69.4%) came second to hugs (77.6%), followed by three enchanted owl feathers that can draw forth the dawn (53.1%). Thank you for your votes!

Reading
10 Things That Never Happened by Alexis Hall, read by Will Watt -- I loved this! The banter was hilarious, and the reading was flawless. Neither of the lead characters are exactly cinnamon rolls, but that helped to offset the impacts of some, er, questionable choices. I giggled my way through most of it and found it genuinely moving at the end. The basic premise is that the regional branch manager of a bed-and-bath store gets himself and his entire team fired for underperforming, immediately has an accident, and grabs the opportunity to fake amnesia and move into his prick of a boss's house (for "monitoring the concussion" reasons) a month before Christmas, in a bid to reverse the damage and save his team. Reads like a wild remix of the Sandra Bullock While You Were Sleeping Christmas movie, which I also love.

Will Watt is such a great reader that I then listened to another Alexis Hall, this one set half inside a MMORPG, despite my knowing nothing at all about gaming. Looking for Group was cute, contained a) a lot of gaming references and terminology, and b) a fair amount of '19-year-old guy falling for another guy for the first time, and also being very clueless!19, but eventually getting his act together.' The story scaffolding was showing by the end, but it still worked.

I'm now listening to Will Watt reading A Market of Dreams and Destiny by Trip Galey. Magical AU London. This is an adventure story with lowkey m/m, set in a goblin market and a workhouse full of indentured children. The comps are Neverwhere and The Night Circus, and both seem apt; I'd add in Six of Crows, too. I'm 4 hrs 20 in and enjoying it so far.

Also in audio, Andrew and I started the new Rivers of London. It feels super self-indulgent so far, but you know, fun. Good sense of place, as always (to the point where I keep imagining Aaranovich swanning around Scotland, taking notes).

Ongoing: Guardian by priest, and Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman.

Kdramas
Just passed halfway in my Nothing But Love (AKA Nothing But You) rewatch. Still loving it. *smishes everyone*

Other TV
More North of North, the first few episodes of Middle Class Bogan (Australian sitcom about an upper middle class doctor who discovers that a) she's adopted and b) her birth parents are drag racers; features New Zealand's Robyn Malcolm; the main character is very uptight and it stresses me out, but not in a terrible way); the first episode of Chief of War (Temuera Morrison is outstanding); Bluey! Fringe with my sister.

Hudson Hawk (DVD from my collection) -- shamelessly ridiculous, and I am totally here for it!! :D Apparently New Zealand is the only country where this film was a hit. Rated five out of five giggles.

Desperately Seeking Susan at the cinema -- I love this so much!! Delightful romp with TV/movie-amnesia. Stars Rosanna Arquette, Madonna, and young!Aiden Quinn. Rated five out of five hearts.

We have tickets for Jaws at the end of the month.

Fandom
I posted a poll to the

fan_writers comm -- possibly a tactical error given the state of my arms, but the discussion there has been great. It's so interesting seeing people's different approaches to writing.

Audio entertainment
Writing Excuses, Letters from an American. (I should get back to Midnight Burger sometime -- I stalled out in the middle of chapter 18.)

Online life
Busy, busy, busy, but it's all good fun stuff.

Writing/making things
At this point, if I can finish my flashfic for the Crowd round of

fan_flashworks for the 11th NZ time (10th in most places), I'll count myself lucky and satisfied. A lot of my time, energy and arms are going into other things.

Life/health/mental state things
Same as last week, via-à-vis arms being bad and things otherwise being mostly okay.

Food
I made easy fried rice on Sunday, malfatti yesterday, and today I have a beef stroganoff minus onions in the slow cooker. Also, yesterday I made a ton of Korean pork dumplings minus cabbage. I'm still slightly baffled that I cook now -- what is happening??

Good things
The profusion of m/m profic and excellent audiobook readers. Online friends, and active Dreamwidth comms and fandoms. An inbox full of things to reply to, and a life full of things to do. Cooking. Fic and art. Wishlist is coming!!

Poll #33465 Reading preferences

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 46

View Respondents

I prefer

View Answers

standalone novels
32 (69.6%)

duologies / trilogies
17 (37.0%)

finished series
26 (56.5%)

ongoing series
9 (19.6%)

re-reads
21 (45.7%)

new books by favourite authors
27 (58.7%)

discovering new authors
24 (52.2%)

gazing helplessly at my TBR list
20 (43.5%)

mostly fanfic
17 (37.0%)

other
2 (4.3%)

ticky-box full of swinging on a star
18 (39.1%)

ticky-box full of carrying moonbeams home in a jar
24 (52.2%)

ticky-box full of having more fun than you are
14 (30.4%)

ticky-box full of teenage giraffes adopting more of a flamingo aesthetic
25 (54.3%)

ticky-box full of hugs
29 (63.0%)

More perfumy stuff

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Fannish July

I was still terribly stressed and my stress-watching is usually things I never planned on watching in the first place. I got very lucky with all my choices this month!

TV new

Ballboy Tactics, a Korean BL on iQiyi - Han Jiwon, retired gymnast, meets Kwon Jeongeu, their university's most popular basketball player. It's a very slow, thoughtful drama with a lot of internal dialogue. There's communication and sweetness instead of unnecessary drama and tropey staged scenes. I loved it a lot! There are barely any external obstacles (depending on how you count the base setup of homophobia in sports), it's all in their heads - I found that awesome! I absolutely rec this show. It has only eight 25-minute episodes, and I went through it in two days.

When it rains, it pours, a Japanese BL on Viki - Hagiwara lives in a frustrating sexless relationship with his girlfriend, while his colleague Sei lives with his best friend from childhood on whom he has an unrequited crush. They connect via a wrongly addressed email, and start confessing their problems to each other. There's a lot of talk about sex, which surprised me - it's very blunt and honest for a Japanese drama. There's also actual sex, and I really enjoyed the sex-first-romance-later plot here. Both characters are interesting, and I found the actor who played Hagiwara, Muto Jun, especially good/attractive. It's even shorter than the other one with only 7 25-minute episodes. CW for rape and infidelity.

My watchalong finally started When A Snail Falls in Love, with a few weeks' delay. It's an old cdrama with Wang Kai and Wang Ziwen. I'm enjoying how much more Chinese I understand now than when I first watched this seven years ago. The only thing that confused us is the weirdly unfitting soundtrack. Sometimes it tries to pass the show off as a Bond film (which is fair enough), but other times we were completely unable to figure out why the music was chosen the way it was. Granted, that's not unusual for cdrama, and it's not going to stop us. :) We've seen three eps now, and are mostly just cackling at Wang Kai's character's Bond-esque swoops and saves-of-the-day and general hero-halo awesomeness, at the Sherlockian intuitive leaps of logic of the female lead. So far we enjoy Wang Kai's voice and the leads' combined tall-and-smol-ness. What's not to like? :D

And then the biggest surprise of the month:
Nothing But You, a noona romance cdrama set in the world of sports (badminton and tennis) - a rec from

china_shop. When I'm stressed, I tend to drop all my shows and instead watch silly romance things that I hadn't planned on watching. But this one was so good I just tore through it, I binge-watched all 38 eps in three weeks, and I ended up loving it from start to finish. It's a romance between a professional badminton player who later switches to tennis (Wu Lei - you might know him from Nirvana in Fire, or maybe from Sand Sea) and a sports company sales person/executive assistant (Zhou Yutong). He's 22, she's 32, and basically the whole obstacle to their relationship is that she thinks he's too young for her. That sustains the tension for a very long time indeed. :D I personally find both of them very cute (and I say that as someone who was indifferent to Wu Lei's looks before). I am writing up a proper rec post for it and will post it soon. You can watch it on Viki.

Movies

I saw #schwarzeschafe at the theater. I should not go to the theater anymore, the camera movements on the large screen make me so nauseous! I had my eyes closed for the second half. Despite that, I rec this movie. It's a German comedy (a loose sequel to the original "Schwarze Schafe" from 2006), and it's about a handful of very quirky characters whose storylines intertwine throughout the movie during a heatwave in Berlin. It's really hard to describe, and all the trailers are (imho) misleading. What can I say, I enjoyed it, I rec it.

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rl-thingslearned

Things learned in July

I felt like I learned a lot... more than half the slots are filled, yay. \o/

( 16 things, all different categories this time )

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review: books

Media roundup Jun-Jul

An Immense World, by Ed Yong:

Pop sci about animal senses. One scientific error (if you consider light to not be instantaneous, neither are electric fields), though of course some of the science has actually updated in the years since it was written (hypotheses on why birds call in the morning). This is probably one of the best pop sci books I've read: well written, informative, and interesting, when discussing both material I already knew or didn't know. Highly recommend.

Inspector Imanishi Investigates, by Seichō Matsumoto, translated by Beth Cary:

Police detective investigates a mysterious death of an unknown person. The best parts were about 1960s Japanese society, but I overall wasn't a fan. It's probably because of expectations around coincidence, plot holes around why someone would take certain actions, that sort of thing. Was a bit of an awkward feeling translation, but I thought it was interesting that this was abridged in order to be published as a mystery and because the original was a serial and needed polish.

Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel (DNF):

Thomas Cromwell during his rise. Certainly the style was interesting, but I was somewhat bored 15% of the way though... I think knowing how it ends does detract (which I don't usually find to be the case). Maybe I'm too immature a reader to enjoy this like it should be because I don't care enough about the subtleties of the language? Distinct Cromwell is my woobie vibe.

Lady Eve's Last Con, by Rebecca Fraimow:

Interstellar rom-com between a con woman and the sister of the man she is trying to get revenge on. A fun romp and I love prince type (female) love interests always, but does follow rom com logic.

Memoirs of a Spacewoman, by Naomi Mitchison:

Old school sci fi about exploring other worlds! I liked this well enough, and I appreciated the weird aliens (who still felt weird today!) But am not sure the social stuff aged as well (in terms of insightfulness / interesting newness). The fascist butterflies were a lot, but I am still thinking about them a month later...

Language City, by Ross Perlin:

The history of NYC through the lens of language. Frequently fell into the trap of lists, which I did not enjoy. I learned some things, but I think less than I wished to have (despite all the lists... density of information in the form of lists is not the way...)

Wellness, by Nathan Hill:

A couple that met as counter culture college students in the 90s in Chicago face the doldrums of middle age and marriage. I was Highly Skeptical at the superficiality of the psych major's understanding of psych (I think this is really the author's gap in knowledge) -- and I think compared to the poignancy and emotion of sections that probably were more in line with the author's actual experiences e.g. of the beauty of the prairie, Wellness the company and the supposed psychological research sections felt much less realistic and therefore frustrating. HOWEVER, overall I kind of loved it? All its disparate plot strands, spanning locations, people, and time, really came together in a perfect jigsaw puzzle way, and in the end I did really want to root for the main couple as a couple. Highly recommend.

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monthly word count: 2025

monthly word count - July

TOTAL: 3 635

POSTED: nuthin.

IN PROGRESS:
-In This Economy (grimmichihimenel suburban ot4) (2 217 words)
-cherry wine (madatobiizu ABO) (886 words)
-SVSSS cosplay fic (532 words)

ALSO POSTED:
In This Economy chapter 11.

...sighflops.

( teasers )

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Weekly proof of life: mainly media intake

We didn't decide before going to bed last night whether we'd get up and head straight for the market (not helped by going to bed at different times), and before getting up we halfheartedly opted against it so as not to be rushing around. (This was influenced by knowing that

scruloose won't be at work next week and will almost certainly have to grab a car and go acquire odds and ends for the household project, which means swinging by local-produce places will be easier than usual.) Naturally, now I'm having regrets. But hopefully sometime this week I'll get my hands on my first peaches of the season.

Reading:

scruloose and I are soooo close to done with the audiobook of All Systems Red (which is good, since it's due tomorrow). We listened to chunks of it over supper for the last couple of nights, but their regular Friday-night video chat meant we had a cutoff time last night, so we still have about half an hour left. (Potentially dangerous, this realization that we can maybe listen to audiobooks while eating if the meal isn't "TVable", as I say.) We have Artificial Condition checked out now, too; I remembered to snag it before the month ended (since Hoopla seems to only allow five loans a month? Or does that depend on its deal with specific library systems?).

As for fiction in print, I finished E.K. Johnston's Sky on Fire, which is not set nearly as far after Aetherbound as I initially thought, but also smoothly wove in reminders to key my memory of how that book played out, so all was well. I really enjoyed this. ^_^

Then I read The Butcher of the Forest, which was my first Premee Mohamed work. As with most novellas, it didn't sink its hooks into me, but I liked it and get the feeling I may do well with her novels.

And now I'm reading my first Victoria Goddard book, The Hands of the Emperor, which is a TOME (I think the print edition is 900 pages) but a pretty quick read; I think I'm approaching halfway through? Really enjoying this, too.

On the non-fiction side, I'm leafing through The Afrominimalist's Guide to Living with Less (Christine Platt), which I picked up on a whim at some point. Not very far into it yet, I don't think. (Really what I should do is figure out which decluttering book I read years ago that resonated with me and reread that in hopes of having the same feeling from it and maybe actually taking action this time. It's genuinely awkward that

scruloose and I both tend to hang onto things too much but for completely different reasons. ^^;)

Watching: I think we're three episodes into The Summer Hikaru Died now? (I think episode 5 comes out today?) Creepy and weird. I'm not sure I'm bonding, but I'm interested.

Current Mood: tired

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A Ning comic

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Inexplicably August (hope of a movie | a household project)

I'm not at all clear on how it's August. Time, what is, etc. But word has it that Canada's getting Z1L's Dongji Rescue this month, so that's something to look forward to--assuming we get local showtimes. (I'm haunting the Cineplex site.) Having gotten to see both Lost in the Stars and Land of Broken Hearts in theatres makes me optimistic about this one being my third in-theatre experience since covid arrived.

(We won't dwell on not having gotten Long-ge's Only the River Flows, which I still haven't seen. >.< It seemed like that one mainly/only got film fest sorts of releases. In theory it's had an official English-subbed DVD release, but Amazon has three different listings, all from third-party sources, and I'm not at all sure which, if any, is the legit one.)

scruloose is taking a bit of vacation time to try to get a long-delayed household project done. The clowder won't enjoy the upheaval, and neither will I, but it needs doing (and I was the one who was like, "Hey, were you still thinking of taking time off for that this year?", so I have no one to blame but myself).

And now a three-day weekend. I don't know if I'll be able to get my next rewrite fully polished and turned in, but at least I'm going into the weekend with a draft of it, so I should be able to read and maybe start in on the next rewrite.

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link roundup

Link round up

I'm gonna try not to complain too much about things (but hugs and stuff are all welcome... I think I've been constantly stressed since I came back from the U.S).

Instead, here are some interesting things I've found recently (recently being the past few months but I keep forgetting to toss them up here):

Sino-Japanese Studies Archive

How to Rip Blu-rays and DVDs using MakeMKV and Handbrake

Older LGBT Science Fiction Database

One Minute Park: One minute of a park from anywhere in the world

Current Mood: tired

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In which a venture was had, a tomato plant was purchased, and a rodent was glimpsed

Yesterday we ran All The Errands! We made ten or so stops, all told, which is a pretty good outcome; there were two places on my list that we ultimately opted against, because it was really quite a lot (and one of the two is a stop

scruloose can make pretty easily when coming home from work).

The critical thing, of course, is that I did indeed get the lemon ice cream. I'd initially decided to go all in and get the lemon sundae, which IIRC also involved lemon curd sauce (I'm pretty sure that was the phrasing, and I don't really know why "curd sauce") and some sort of crunchy lemony thing, but one or both of those toppings was out of stock, so the sundae wasn't on offer.

The ice cream itself was tasty and I'm glad to have gotten it, but I didn't fall in love. (Just as well, really, since it was a temporary thing. I'm not good at ephemeral joys.) The flavor wasn't terribly intense, I think? But it was a delicious thing on a hot day.

The absolutely ridiculous thing I bought was this Hallowe'en figure from Michael's, which I saw go by on Bluesky a few days ago and for which I felt an immediate mighty need. It's very small and very inexpensive and is genuinely cute in person. It's presumably meant to be a Sphynx cat, but still looks enough like Sinha that I feel gleeful just looking at it. It may have to be a bit of year-round decor. ( other things that came home )

( and lo, we have a tomato plant! And...a rodent in the garden? o_o )

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boost: Handling Nosy People Policing Your Impairment

Eliza Rain disabled_eliza posted an excellent 1:30 skit on how to interact with busybodies who can’t cope with the reality of ambulatory wheelchair users. (I'm also able to stand and reach for some things, so I appreciate helpful scripts.)

I loved her response to a stranger portrayed as complaining about the unbelievability of wheelchair users who can briefly stand. Eliza says, in a level tone, "Okay well, it makes no difference to me if you do or don’t believe me, this is my reality and I need a chair to get around."

You can watch it on on her Instagram or stream with open captions as well as narration from loud text-to-speech plus human dialogue ( right here )

Do you have go-to scripts to shut down invasive strangers (or family members, for that matter)?

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FIC: Togainu no Chi: Peacock Pride [Arbitro/Akira; R]

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

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2025 Reading #10-18

( DNF and picture books )

And now the goal set!

Nadine Harris - Deepest Well. NF, psychology and trauma. While the information about traumatic events and their cumulative effects on health was interesting, I ran into the same problem I always do with psych books. Not enough case studies/details. I really wasn't interested in the blather about her personal life, or the multiple chapters devoted to getting a clinic set up and so on. More memoir than case studies and that's not what I wanted. 5/10

Hannah Maehrer - Assistant to the Villain. #1 in series. I love this recent trend of books from the perspective of someone who works for the "villain". Hench was another favorite in the genre. Enjoyed this very much, though it did feel fanficcy at times, and I really don't think there were enough clues pointing to the identity of the Actual Problem. Have bought, though, as well as the second in the series waiting on my TBR. 8/10.

Boyd and Beth Morrison - Lawless Land. #1 in series. Now, I love me some medieval drama, and this had that in spades. The story itself was great, no troubles there, but there was so much telling where there should have been showing. 6/10, will not continue.

Terry Pratchett - Mrs Bradshaw's Handbook. I had some confusion on this one, as I had it on my "owned" list but definitely didn't have it on my shelf. Finally found it buried in my "ebooks to read" folders. XD A lovely addition to the Discworld's world, great illustrations and fun facts. Not something I'd want to buy, since I'm not a completionist, but a grand time for those curious about exactly what sort of travel book the woman from Raising Steam would have written. 8/10.

Eliot Stein - Custodians of Wonder. NF, history. Some individual sections of this were more interesting than others, but that's always the way in a NF book with discrete topics. Overall a good look at some people with skills/training/jobs that are on the verge of disappearing. The Swedish night watchman was a particular favorite, as was the Cuban cigar factory reader. 7/10.

Evie Woods - Lost Bookshop. Bit of a slow and dreamy read, but that really fit with the book overall. At no point was I actually bored or tempted to move on to a different book, it just wasn't a "can't put down" sort of read for me. 6/10.

Tanya Guerrero - Cat's People. I had a note in my tbr file that said "be careful about cat", as the book blurb itself said the cat gets sick. Fortunately, it didn't become one of my "hurled book across room" notes.

Spoiler for people like me who get upset about cats in peril.

There are actually two moments of peril: A. Physical. The cat interrupts an attack/assault on one of the characters and the attacker grabs him by the neck. He isn't hurt much, just really scared. and B. Illness. It's toward the very end, and the cat is found ill. He's found relatively quickly and immediately rushed to a vet where he gets diagnosed with kidney disease. He's treated and taken in by one of the characters.

Lovely book about caring for a stray cat, found family, and the interactions between strangers that become more. 8/10.

Daniel O'Malley - Royal Gambit. #4 Checquy Files. I just love this series. The characters, the world-building, the variety of powers and skills. Overall, fantastic. Finished in two days and only because I had to sleep at some point. XD 10/10, to buy when my fun budget refills.

WOOHOO! Have achieved my expanded goal of 15 complete books read! Shall we push it to 25? Let's see if I can make it! Still four months to go!