Reading

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Daily Happiness

1. I finished a new puzzle. After that Disney one, this one was a breeze!

2. Went up to the farmers market this morning and the stand that usually has lemonade didn't have any today! They said they forgot to load the cooler on the truck. :( But I noticed that the Filipino/Mexican fusion place where we often get tamales and cookies also has juices. I hadn't noticed before because they don't have the actual bottles out on the table, just a small sign. But they have a jamaica ginger one and a calamansi ginger one, so I got one of each and had the calamansi earlier and it was delicious.

3. Today I did a bunch of chores and also had loads of time to just play Donkey Kong Bananza and read and it was just a really nice, chill day.

4. Gemma lurking under Carla's desk (one of her favorite spots).

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weekly reading

Weekly Reading

Currently Reading
How to Survive a Horror Story
16%. A group of people are invited to the reading of a will for a famous horror author at his family mansion, only to find it's haunted. Interesting so far.

Newcomer
52%. Second (in the English translation order) Detective Kaga mystery. This is told in an interesting manner, not with the detective as the POV character, but with each section being from the POV of a possible suspect, but with each section wrapping up by clearing that person. I liked the first book better, but I'm enjoying this one, too.

Shady Hollow
74%. A typical small village murder mystery, but they're all woodland creatures. I got this on an audible sale when I was looking for a second book to buy on a buy one get one free sale, so I took a chance on something I was not wholly sold on and without having finished this book I can say I definitely will not be continuing the series. I have often struggled to figure out what makes something a "cozy mystery", and it seems that a lot of times things are declared to be cozies just because the person solving the mystery is a woman, or they're not a professional, but then I started this book and I'm like, that's definitely a cozy mystery. Way more time is spent on describing in detail the various animals and their town and all that than on the mystery, especially in the first third of the book. It's not what I'm interested in, and for me this would have worked much better as a comic, where you can just show all the cute animals and stuff through illustration, without going on and on about it forever. The mystery is fine, though, so it's not a bad book, just not a good fit for me.

The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State
13%.

Recently Finished
Isle of Ever
I was not expecting this book to end without wrapping anything up. There is a sequel, and this really feels like what should be one book split into two, which is not my preference.

A Death at the Dionysus Club
I guess these books are from a small publisher, but that doesn't excuse the lack of professionalism in the audiobooks. The first one had a narrator with a lozenge in his mouth the whole time, and this second one has a different narrator who did the whole first chapter in a wildly different voice than he did the rest of the book, like he was trying it out and decided not to continue with it, but rather than rerecord the first chapter, just left it at that. The voice used for the first chapter was terrible, so I'm glad he switched, but why on earth leave it like that?

Drop Dead Sisters
This was fun. Not sure if I will read the sequel or not, though.

Abscond
Coming of age short story set in the 1960s about an Indian American boy dealing with his father's sudden death. I enjoyed it.

Battleship 2025 Post-Game Roundup

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Things

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Daily Happiness

1. It's the weekend! I feel like it's been a long week for some reason, even though I haven't had to help out with the new store as much.

2. We ordered from this fried chicken place we got from a couple times a while back and then forgot about. They have a new salad on the menu which had fried chicken, edamame, cucumbers, daikon radish, crunchy ramen topping, and a yuzu dressing. It was so good and also so huge, so I have plenty left for lunch tomorrow.

3. Cutie sleepy Chloe.

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disney

2025 Disneyland Trip #55 (8/14/25)

We went down to Disneyland for dinner last night. It's that in-between season when we've pretty much exhausted all the new menu items and seen all the summer stuff, but while they're getting ready for Halloween, it's not quite there yet. It was very busy, though, because the two lower tiers of passholders have been blocked out for most of the summer and can finally come back, plus there are two special magic key promos right now (a free shopping bag and 50% off lightning lane passes), so people were after those.

( Mostly Halloween )

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Daily Happiness

1. We went to Disneyland for dinner this evening. It was very busy (lower level passholders who were blocked out for summer are back, plus there are currently two Magic Key promos going on that are probably driving even more people to visit specifically during these few days) but we had a nice time.

2. Our next two new stores both got pushed back, so they're now going to be February and June of next year, which means early April will be the perfect time to take another trip to Japan.

3. That snoot!

Oooo!

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Daily Happiness

1. We got Indian food from the same place as we did a couple weeks ago and this time both our main focus was the batter fried paneer sticks lol. I just ordered them on a whim last time (they're called paneer pakora so I was expecting more of something filled with cheese rather than what it was) but they were so good. (The other food we got was good, too, but these would be hard to top.)

2. I am so glad I spotted Ollie like this and was able to get some photos. Truly a sight to brighten any day.

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have I not read a book since I last posted?

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What I'm Doing Wednesday

( books (Hodgson, Greene & Arroyo, Rudhyar, Tyl, Gillig, Al-Rashid. Abulafia) )

yarning
I went to yarn group Sunday and learned one of our members is moving away next week. That is sad. I finished sewing together a bunny and started a new one, and my shoulder didn't protest too much, so that was a nice surprise. I finished the eyes and faces of 2 bunnies yesterday and need to take photos and list them. It felt good to be crocheting again.

healthcrap
I'm so worried about my parents and various other things that it's affecting my sleep. I always have trouble getting into Deep sleep, and lately the fitbit is registering single digit minutes in deep, and I've been having stupid insomnia. I need probably to start doing yoga nidra again, but I'm blocked about it for some reason. Like I'm blocked about Yoga and Pilates. Except that is at least partly due to it being so damned hot. There is little I can do about the things I'm stressing over, and yet. It's so frustrating. ( cut for discussion of weight loss )

house
I've done a fair bit of cleaning/chores today to counteract the worry. And hopefully the insomnia.

astrology
Mercury stationed direct in the wee hours of Monday, so communication and travel snafus are diminishing over the course of the week.

#resist
Monday, 9/01: Workers over Billionaires (#5051)

I hope you're all doing well! <333

Nonfiction and Wednesday

I'm 2 episodes into s2 and I think I'm going to have to stop. She's not funny, she's not punching up, she's just selfish and mean. I think this might be the showrunners having no theory of how the Addamses fit into a larger supernatural universe. Sigh. On to Alien: Earth!

Gretchen Heefner, The Missile Next Door: The Minuteman in the American Heartland: In South Dakota, people largely welcomed missiles but landowners often didn’t like giving up their land for them (NIMBYism for weapons of mass destruction). Heefner also tracks the persistence of antinuclear protest once it got started, and she makes the point that one reason the lack of success didn’t stop the hardcore protestors was religious faith—protest was an act of sacrifice and witness even if it didn’t have worldly effects.

Nathan Bomey, Detroit Resurrected: To Bankruptcy and Back: Newsy-ish account of Detroit’s bankruptcy. Bomey really doesn’t like unions; he’s more neutral about the interests of lender-creditors.

Grant Faulkner, The Art of Brevity: Crafting the Very Short Story: Paean to the affordances of flash fiction, including drabbles and six-word stories, with exercises. Interesting read.

Tiya Miles, Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Bondage and Freedom in the City of the Straits: Another attempt to reconstruct a history of people who were mostly spoken about in the records we have. I didn’t think the speculation about what they felt and thought was very helpful, but it was a useful reminder that there was an active slave trade in Indians in the area for a long time, as well as African/African-American slavery. Michigan was supposedly free territory after the Northwest Ordinance, but that didn’t mean that slavery disappeared (despite opportunities that many took to cross borders to change status).

Andy Horowitz, Katrina: A History, 1915-2015: The premise here is that the disaster didn’t start in 2005. Most of the book is pre-hurricane explanations of why the city was so vulnerable. Greed and racism play their roles.

Simon Schama, Rough Crossings: The Slaves, the British, and the American Revolution: Schama focuses on loyalist African-Americans who were forced out to Canada and then to Sierra Leone. While most whites were indifferent to their fate and willing to violate the promises that the Crown had made during the Revolutionary War, a few took their duties seriously, which is how the transitions were made. The first elected black government, and the first women voting for that government, was in Sierra Leone (though a subsequent white guy sent to replace the good one removed women’s ability to vote). It’s beautifully written as well as interesting.

Where the fuck is my life going?

I am still here! <3. I'm just so seriously middle-aged, I've got everything on the boil rn. But I'm here if anyone needs me and still contributing to fandom in all the ways I can. You can also reach me at all the places you've always reached me--or other me, or any of the mes you may need.

Things I have enjoyed/am enjoying lately include:

* Killing Eve - I know, I'm super late to Killing Eve, but my sister loves loves loves it and so she asked me to watch it and so I'm watching. First two seasons obviously the best IMO, but she's asked me to see it through so I'm seeing it through.

* Strange New Worlds - its like 100% actual Star Trek! Also it's so fannish - like, look, there are episodes where I can tell the entire reason for the plot is to make sense of one weird moment in ST; TOS and you know what: I RESPECT YOU!! I SALUTE YOU!! YES, GO AHEAD AND FIX THAT ONE MINOR PLOT POINT in TOS, I AM YOUR AUDIENCE, I TOTALLY SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE, GET DOWN WITH YOUR BAD SELF. Also, honestly, I will never be tired of Pike cooking, which is a bizarre characterization that I didn't see coming and which nobody I'm trying to pimp to this show ever believes until they see it. Also I would die for Number 1 and La'an. Also Pike cooks with cast iron and open flame in a spaceship. Really: I salute you, show. I am glad you are back! (Especially since no more Disco.)

* Bridgerton/Queen Charlotte - late to QC also, after watching Bridgerton, and thought it was actually really a notch above Bridgerton. (Which I did enjoy - I mean, I respect their commitment to the pleasure principle.) Glad to be caught up there.

* House - yes, yes, I know, I'm really kicking it like it's 2004 around here, but Tiberius, now a teen, had seen bits of it on the interwebs and was like, "Mom, do you know anything about this show House?" and I was like YESSSSS. YESSS I DOOOOO, and your aunt made a great vid of it! Whereupon I showed him astolat's "Bukowski" and we settled in for a watch/rewatch: we like to have a show we're watching together. He's into Trek also so we watched Discovery and Lower Decks and we'll watch SNW as a family now its back, but there's a lot of House to go through and that's a nice option too.

(Side note to those of you who don't have teens: what I did not expect is that Gen Z basically is getting culture in bursts of 10 seconds or less. He's seen literally BITS of House. He will tell me "I know that song--or well, I know 7 seconds of that song." Remember how there would be kids who wouldn't read a novel, they'd just watch the movie? My students now are like--THAT MOVIE IS TWO WHOLE HOURS? I seriously fear for the future, it makes previous claims of attention span deterioriation look PREPOSTEROUS. Holy shit. I swear, I spend so much energy trying not to be too judgy! But I am very judgy! Then again: this moment, this decade, really provokes judginess!! )

(Additional side note: Tiberius is super eye rolly because since middle school all the girls he knows are like "Wow, your mom is SO COOL," --because of course I am! I am really fucking cool, plus I helped to found the AO3 and all of that, so I am a high school rock star, and Tiberius is like, "please God save me from this hell" lol. Cause honestly there really is nothing worse than having a cool mom, I do get that, but I tell him he'll appreciate it later, when I'm dead.)

Entry tags:

book report

Interior Chinatown, by Charles Yu

What if your life was a TV show? Would you be the star or a background character?

Willis Wu lives and works in Chinatown and dreams of being Kung Fu Guy, just like his father before him, but Will's role in life—or in the script—is more Generic Asian Man Number Three. Then he falls for Attractive Lady Cop and has to make a choice between a family life in the suburbs or the job he's always wanted.

This is one of those stories that's more about an idea than a character, and more a thesis than a story. The idea is interesting and the thesis is credible—and completely spelled out for you in a courtroom scene at the end in case you somehow missed it—but the characters have the stock feel of a parable and gave me little reason to care about their struggles as they toil in a system that's been stacked against them for centuries.

The system is racist as shit and Yu supports this with real world examples but doesn't do much to personalize it for his characters. He does dramatize it, literally, as parts are in script format, but even much of that is intentionally clichéd, and despite some early ??? as I wondered what the fuck was going on, I didn't find this challenging or exciting, but I think it did what it meant to.

Contains: cops; racism (including stereotypes and slurs); elder care; poverty; generational trauma; pomo; second person perspective.

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Daily Happiness

1. The filming at the store went well today (and thankfully I did not have to be involved in any way). They filmed five segments that aired live and posted one on their website (not sure if it's region locked).

2. I had a chill work from home day today.

3. I played Donkey Kong Bananza when it first came out and then got so busy with the new store that I didn't play it at all for a couple weeks, but I picked it up again the other day and have been playing it more and am really enjoying it a lot.

4. Carla made butternut squash soup for dinner and it's so good! We also had quesadillas, which were delicious as well. Usually I like combining quesadillas with tomato soup (better than grilled cheese and tomato soup, imo, though I like that classic combo as well) but it works well with the squash, too.

5. I got too close to Tuxie this morning when trying to get pictures of him, but he paused politely mid scamper for me to get another one.

Small Rant Ahoy

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Daily Happiness

1. Tomorrow a local news station is going to be filming short segments at the new store all morning, so today I went down there in the afternoon to help stock and tidy up. The filming is starting super early (even before the store opens) so most of the tidying up has to be done today. Thankfully, while it was busy today, it wasn't nearly as hectic as it has been the past couple weeks, so it was easier to keep things in decent shape.

2. This morning I had a meeting with the Japan IT team who is here for the month helping with the inventory system project that is now my main focus, and I finally got some more clarity on what exactly will be expected of me, so that's good.

3. Jasper is so handsome.

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#681, Bashō

turn this way
I am also lonely
this autumn evening
-1690

Translation by Jane Reichhold.

( 俳句 )

RIP AOL DIAL-UP

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Daily Happiness

1. We took a nice walk this morning down to the Italian deli to buy sandwiches for dinner. We tried to get out before the sun got too bad, and mostly succeeded, though there was still more sun involved than I would prefer. Worth it, though.

2. We had a big plastic laundry basket in the hall by the dryer that we use to carry laundry from the washer (which is by the back door) to the dryer (which is all the way across the house by the bedrooms), but it was always in the way and I'd been thinking about looking for a better solution when Carla nearly tripped on it the other day, which made me actually go online and search for collapsible laundry baskets, which I was sure must be a thing, and sure enough there are tons. I got this one off Amazon, which is just slightly smaller than the basket we had before, but can be collapsed down small enough that it can just slot in on the side of the dryer and not be in the way at all! It's been a life changer. Why did we not do this before!?

3. Gemma loves Carla's hair ties so much.