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Snowflake Challenge 02026 #10: The Aesthetic of It All

Monday, January 19th, 2026 23:05

The

snowflake_challenge has put out challenge number 10, and it works in media that I generally do not think in nor work in.

Challenge #10: Big Mood (Board)

CHOOSE SOMETHING YOU LOVE AND CREATE A MINI MOOD COLLECTION OF THREE (or more) ITEMS THAT EVOKE YOUR FEELINGS ABOUT IT. You don’t have to limit yourself to visual media, or collect the items into a special format like a square (though you can if you’d like).

( I suppose I can make a fanmix for El Higgins? )

Current Mood: artistic
Current Music: Bloodhound Gang - I Hope You Die

Tags:

fandom snowflake: 2026

Ow

azurelunatic

Monday, January 19th, 2026 21:54

Two canes can be better than one.

I have a battery of tests aimed at me for the leg weakness, in case it's neurological.

And my primary care is leaving (again) within a few months. They said last time that I would be assigned to someone in the same practice. That was inaccurate. They're saying it again this time, so I will prepare for battle.

Cats are nice and warm, and extraordinarily heavy on the knees.

Daily Happiness

torachan

Monday, January 19th, 2026 19:02

1. Pretty chill day at work today. I got stuff done. The office situation is a bit annoying now because as of last Thursday we have a handful of new people moved in, but there weren't enough empty desks so they brought desks from their previous office and crammed them in where we had previously had a meeting table and it feels very crowded now. I'm sure I'll get used to it, though.

2. I love the dramatic lighting on Gemma. It suits her dramatic personality lol.

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Daily Happiness

torachan

Sunday, January 18th, 2026 17:37

1. I got my tattoo wrap stuff from Amazon this afternoon but I actually think I'm just going to go without it. I took off the bandage a few hours ago and there hasn't been any seepage (there was a bit in the bandage). But both Carla and I would like to get more tattoos in the future, so it will be good to have on hand.

2. Carla had been wanting to go to an English pub, so we went down to the King's Head for lunch and got fish and chips. It was so good. It's a little too far to walk for Carla right now, so we took the train, which still gets us a good walk between the station and home and the station and the restaurant (which is down near the Promenade and mall, so we checked out some shops while we were there, too). It was a nice afternoon and the sun wasn't too bad on the way there, though we were definitely feeling it on the way home.

3. Every weekend I've got it on my to-do list to do a little more planning for our upcoming trip to Japan and we're making good progress.

4. Look at that Ollie face!

Tags:

vital functions

kaberett

Sunday, January 18th, 2026 23:07

Reading. Small progress on Index, A history of the (Dennis Duncan); quite a lot of Wrangling My Terrible E-mail Situation feat. skimming geochemistry abstracts; flipped through some of the latest batch of Alex Was Sad cookbooks; also some more poking to see if there's, like, An Official Formulation of CBT-(for-)I(nsomnia), and came to the conclusion that the reason I can't find it is that there isn't. Exactly.

Writing. Alas I have not made sufficient progress this week to announce that the number at the front of the wordcount of The Putative Book has got bigger, BUT I have spent a bunch of time tinkering with ideas and asking you lot things, so. Maybe. Maybe this will be the week the second complete reworking of the introduction actually takes shape.

Playing. I continue with Squardle (via vass) and, despite its shortcomings, Metaflora (via ewt). Sudoku remains The Special Interest Of The Moment.

Cooking. It has been a Weird Week for food because A and I have mostly not been eating together (because A has been unwell and mostly not eating), but: another dal variant for my breakfasts (thereby also ticking off another item on the Cook The Cookbook project list), and lots of minor variations on Leon's ~superfood salad~ from days of yore.

Making & mending. Technically progress on glove and learning continental knitting; in practice I'm probably going to frog it and have Attempt #3 At Tension.

Growing. Lemongrass is germinating! Lithops are germinating?????

At home: the overwintered bell peppers and ancho chilli are turning Ripe Colours. The overwintered jalapeño is extremely unwell and I should... do something about that. Both orchids continue Determinedly Making Flower Stems.

At the plot: I MADE IT TO THE PLOT, Project: Bulk Up The Spinach Seed is progressing, and I have done a tiny bit of weeding and infrastructure (mostly taking down last year's growing supports...). At some point I will want to kick the things that are currently in the propagator out of the propagator in order to sow the next batch of seeds, but they'll get a little longer yet.

And more saffron keeps appearing in the various places it's planted on the patio, though I sincerely doubt any of it will flower...

Tags:

vital functions

(no subject)

ursamajor

Sunday, January 18th, 2026 01:12

Today has been a very bookish day for me, albeit a highly social one.

Romance book club in the morning; this month, a Regency romance (J. Winifred Butterworth's A Bloomy Head. (Reminder to self - send

minervacat the book club list, it's just in inconvenient-to-share format.) Good to shake up my usual contemporary/romantasy tendencies, and we had a fun discussion about the perils of how to introduce a large cast of characters (I compared it both to the Baby-Sitters Club *and* Pucking Around, ahahaha), and historical portrayals and understandings of nonbinary and alternate genders, but I think overall I still don't gravitate towards Regency romances in general. Also, the series is literally "Regency Cheesemakers," I would like more cheese content please!

Afterwards, I headed over to Book Passage as a friend was having an event for their book on transportation advocacy (If You Want to Win, You've Got to Fight). Of course we chatted some about specific local bugbears (why do people keep trying to close SF's newest and reputedly most popular park to turn it back into a highway, how do we get things done when we're a small minority against an entrenched system, how do we get across to people that parking on a public street isn't their personal space, it belongs to all of us? how do these lessons apply in a broader context?). Then Heather and I were hungry, so after stumbling across a surprisingly long line at El Porteño (no empanadas for us!), we went down the street to Gott's to address our growling stomachs with chili and sweet potato fries and milkshakes.

Our timing meant we finished eating, looked up into a cotton-candy sunset sky, and both yanked out our cameras to chase the color for awhile. The sun had mostly set by the time we got on the ferry, but it meant we had a lovely view of the city lights as we pulled away across the bay, under the bridge. Unanimous agreement: the ferry is such a relaxing transportation option compared to BART.

And then I came home to the scent of 红烧肉 (hóngshāo ròu, Shanghai red-braised pork belly) wafting out of our kitchen. Now that our cookbooks are all organized and on shelves again instead of half of them being stacks on the floor, it's so much easier to browse through them, which is how

hyounpark spent his afternoon while I was out gallivanting around the bay :)

*

Before that, catching up with

bitty and

anirt Friday evening; an amazing rose pistachio cake at Mey Friday morning with Jen,

ladyjax, other Heather, and Cade; solid rehearsal Wednesday at choir as we work on two pieces for this spring about migrant experiences. Time with friends all the more precious now.

Current Mood: cheerful

Tags:

Daily Happiness

torachan

Saturday, January 17th, 2026 21:39

1. The tattoo seems to be healing well. There was a lot of fluid buildup in the bandage even though I'd put on a new one yesterday, and around midday I noticed some floaty bits of either dead skin or adhesive residue from the previous bandage but either way didn't want to leave it on like that, but the tattoo place had only given me enough to change it once, and the stuff I ordered from Amazon isn't coming till tomorrow, so I checked to see if there was anywhere I could buy it in person and it seems like the answer is no. Google told me the Ulta near me sells it, so I went over there and they did not have any, so I decided to check CVS to see if they at least had larger tegaderm patches than what I have at home leftover from when I had surgery, and they did have ones that are at least big enough to cover the tattoo with three patches, so I got a pack of those.

After taking off the old bandage and washing my leg, I used some lotion and let it just air out for a while, but then put the tegaderm patches on before we went to Disneyland just to keep it protected. There seems to be a lot less fluid coming out now, but I'm still going to change it again tomorrow when the stuff from Amazon gets here and at least use it for another day or two.

2. I went to the farmers market this morning and got an ube cinnamon roll, among other things. This is my second time getting one and they're so good.

3. We had a really nice time at Disneyland tonight. Despite the warm weather, it's getting cool quickly in the evenings (only good thing about hot weather in the winter is that it never lasts into the night) so it was pleasantly warm rather than unpleasantly so, and the crowds were light. We walked back to the car from the park rather than taking the bus, and passed by a mochi donut shop we always see from the car and stopped in to get a few for tomorrow's breakfast. We got matcha, passionfruit, and guava donuts. The place we usually get from always has matcha, but I don't think we've had either passionfruit or guava, so I'm looking forward to trying those.

4. Working from home yesterday almost made this feel like a three day weekend. I still have another day before going back to work!

5. Jasper!

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2026 Disneyland Trip #4 (1/17/26)

torachan

Saturday, January 17th, 2026 21:14

We decided to wait till later in the afternoon to go to Disneyland since it was hot again today and it had been so pleasant when we went on Wednesday evening. We left the house around 2:45 or so and got down there at four and the sun was already low enough that we didn't need sunglasses or anything and the temps had already gone down a lot so it was very pleasant.

( Read more... )

Tags:

disney

[eyb] you continue magnificently helpful!

kaberett

Saturday, January 17th, 2026 23:01

The context for yesterday's frivolous low-stakes question was of course indexing for Eat Your Books, where I've been stalled on my current cookbook for... a while... for ...reasons... including but not limited to needing to ask for a bunch of new ingredients to be added, and then having a social anxiety about ever touching the work-in-progress again.

And then I did touch it again! And a recipe where I'd requested the new ingredient "mixed leaf salad" had instead... been given the ingredient "mixed greens", synonymous with the base ingredient "mixed lettuces".

The cookbook in question is The National Trust Cookbook; The recipe is Goat's cheese tartlets with pickled cucumber; the headnote to the recipe includes

Serve with a home-grown asparagus, pea and broad bean salad mixed with baby salad leaves.

The ingredients for the salad, helpfully listed under the subheading "To serve", are:

12 spears of English asparagus, woody ends trimmed off 55g/2oz podded broad beans 85g/3oz fresh or frozen peas 70g/2½oz mixed leaf salad with rocket leaves 3 tbsp extra virgin rapeseed or olive oil 1 tsp runny honey

So I am reassured that the breakdown of opinions falls almost entirely along side-of-the-pond lines, suggesting that the reason I'm going "this is neither of these two things??? if EYB told me I needed mixed greens for a recipe and turned out to mean mixed leaf salad I'd be extremely annoyed??? if a recipe told me I needed mixed greens for a recipe and turned out to mean lettuces--" because, yes, I think "mixed greens" are a thing that need cooking (probably referring to brassica but I only roll my eyes a little at pre-packaged bowls that decide that various forms of pea, broccoli, and leek also count), and "mixed lettuces" is a strictly narrower category than "mixed leaf salad".

I had absolutely no idea that this might be a point of US/UK confusion, and thank you all for providing me with Data!

(no subject)

staranise

Saturday, January 17th, 2026 15:11

What a week, up and down the whole time. I hope I don't have the flu because I'm supposed to be starting painting classes tomorrow.

I unfortunately have to ask for money again; here's the gofundme campaign.

Snowflake Challenge 02026 #9: Tropes Are Tools

silveradept

Saturday, January 17th, 2026 10:03

It's time for another

snowflake_challenge, and this one is geared more toward those of us who like to talk about the building blocks, the character types, and the storytelling pathways that link and underlie any given specific story being told.

Challenge #9

Talk about your favorite tropes in media or transformative works. (Feel free to substitute in theme/motif/cliche if "trope" doesn't resonate with you.)

( Discard the momomyth and understand that Tropes Are Tools )

Current Mood: weird
Current Music: Dove - Cymande

Tags:

fandom snowflake: 2026

Random Doctor Who Picture

purplecat

Saturday, January 17th, 2026 14:16

Ah! The BBC Foam machine. For a brief period, it figured prominently in Doctor Who.

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This year begins with an increase in atrocity and destruction - Early January 02026

silveradept

Friday, January 16th, 2026 20:20

Let us begin with an annual roundup of things that had to be removed from rectums, because people make bad decisions about objects without flared bases.

Trans women whose culture includes the quinceañera are celebrating the rite of passage for themselves as an important touchstone of their lives.

A white suit worn by Kate Mulgrew as Captain Janeway in a Star Trek: Voyager episode is about as loud a billboard declaring Janeway queer as you could get away with on television at the time. I get to be part of the Lucky 10,000 in understanding that suit and its origins, and so, hopefully, do you.

People familiar with the culture and traditions of Hawai'i explain why the live-action Lilo and Stitch disrespects that entire tradition, history, and the original animation's messages as well.

The ways that humans have for expressing affection for each other are greater than sex and romance, and many of those acts that WEIRD people would classify as sexual or romantic are instead culturally appropriate expressions of affection. Because there's still not an underlying acceptance of the idea that people can be affectionate to each other without it being sexual, and extra so for people of the same perceived gender.

What we think of as local culture and tradition is global culture and tradition. We have just forgotten that things like food migrate and then integrate really well into wherever they land. Which is why you will occasionally have someone yelling that Italians of an era before the tomato migrated out of the Americas are not having marinara sauce with their pasta. The idea that there is only one human culture, and what we have are a bunch of local implementations and place-and-time specific manifestations of it, is really rather true, but because our memories and our records don't always persist over time, we forget that we have already done this before. Repeatedly.

Research into autism that has done less assuming the neurotypical is "normal" and the standard continues to find things that are classified as deficits and disorders are often strengths and consistencies, just at a different angle than the neurotypical one.

Claudette Colvin, who was getting arrested for not giving up a bus seat in a segregated South before Rosa Parks became the face of it, has died at 86 years of age.

( Murder most foul, an administration gone rogue, and techbros on the warpath inside )

Last for this entry, dressed as the pink ranger from the original Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers / Zyuranger, Martha Root demonstrated how she had gained control of white supremacist websites, had the members talk to chatbots, and then deleted the sites live during the talk.

A plea to start posting the snippets of our lives again, rather than trying to figure out what would be the best for the algorithm or withdrawing entirely from posting because we are trying not to chase the unsatisfiable algorithm. I think that will be an easier task on sites where there is no algorithm to game, but the difficulty of getting people to those sites is that they also need to have their friends decamp to a compatible network as well, and that's not necessarily an easy sell, even if someone wants to leave a toxic environment. (And, as has been well-documented in places like the Fediverse, for minorities, it's a question of leaving one toxic platform for another, and evaluating whether or not the controls on the new platform are good enough that they won't get subjected to more harassment getting through their filters or not.)

The ways that people are using chatbots as social and erotic companions, even though a fair number of them know they're chatbots. Which is the kind of future the techbros would like - interactions as event flags with characters that aren't human and don't have human needs or changes in mood.

And a method that presumably allows you to not have CoPilot or other "AI" features in your Windows 11 install, and sets things up so that they won't reinstall themselves, either.

(Materials via

adrian_turtle,

azurelunatic,

boxofdelights,

cmcmck,

conuly,

cosmolinguist,

elf,

finch,

firecat,

jadelennox,

jenett,

jjhunter,

kaberett,

lilysea,

oursin,

rydra_wong,

snowynight,

sonia,

the_future_modernes,

thewayne,

umadoshi,

vass, the

meta_warehouse community,

little_details, and anyone else I've neglected to mention or who I suspect would rather not be on the list. If you want to know where I get the neat stuff, my reading list has most of it.)

Current Mood: aggravated
Current Music: ROZEN - Destati

Daily Happiness

torachan

Friday, January 16th, 2026 17:26

1. I had a very nice relaxing WFH day. (The only annoying part was the very loud construction on one end of the street and the tar smell which was coming from either that site or the construction at the other end of the street lol.)

2. We walked down to the Italian deli this morning to get sandwiches for lunch. Also a nice part of working from home! We knew it would be pretty hot today, so rather than walk there at lunch time, we went right after Carla woke up, when it wasn't too hot and there was still some shade for most of the walk.

3. I changed the bandage on my tattoo this morning and cleaned it up. It's looking really good! After changing it, there is still some fluid coming out, but doesn't seem to be any blood. They said to use the clear "second skin" bandage for up to a week, so I actually ordered some more off Amazon (she gave me enough for one change) in case I need to change it sooner. With the amount of fluid under it right now, I might.

4. Upon closer inspection it looks like Tuxie is missing some fur on his forehead, so I think he might have been in a fight while he was gone, but he seems fine otherwise. Better than that time he got a chunk of his ear ripped out.

Tags:

you are all magnificently helpful - thank you <3

kaberett

Friday, January 16th, 2026 23:58

Today's frivolous low-stakes question is: if following a recipe, to what extent do you consider "mixed lettuces", "mixed greens", and "mixed leaf salad" synonymous?

Weekly Reading

torachan

Friday, January 16th, 2026 15:38

Recently Finished

Peril at the Exposition
Second in the Captain Jim and Lady Diana mystery series. I was disappointed to see that this one doesn't take place in India, so I hadn't jumped right on it after finishing the first, but my backlog of audiobooks was going down, so I decided to give it a go. It was fine. I'll probably read more in the series at the same pace, but it's also not really what I'm wanting in a mystery (and that was the same with the first one).

Deeds and Words
Another second book in a mystery series, though it seems like this is also the final book. It was also just all right.

Riot Baby
Set in a slightly more dystopic alternate reality, this tells the story of a girl with psychic powers and her brother, who was born after the LA riots, thus being nicknamed Riot Baby, in alternating POVs. I liked this, but it felt like the two POVs weren't really well integrated.

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street
In the late 1800s England, a man gets a mysterious watch that saves him from a bomb exploding, and then is tasked with finding out if the watchmaker, a Japanese man who can remember the future, is the one who set the bomb. I didn't much like this at all. The first half or more was extremely boring, and then once the action seemed to finally get going, the characters got worse and worse, especially the lone female character, who seems to exist only as a plot device to make everything horrible for the men.

Little Monsters vol. 1-2
Two volume comic series about child vampires living in an empty city after an apocalypse. I liked it all right. The ending was good.

Sakura, Saku vol. 8

Tags:

weekly reading

a birthday has been had

marina

Friday, January 16th, 2026 23:01

I've officially completed all my birthday activities for this year, so I can like, breathe again.

There was recreational axe throwing, joint TV marathons, dinners, gifts and hugs. I chose not to have any kind of party or gathering this year, so just saw friends individually or in small groups, and it worked out OK. I also celebrated

roga's birthday (and will continue to tomorrow), so it all kind of worked out with multiple events.

How have you been doing, friends?

I'm feeling a bit better than I hoped to, at this time of the year.

ETA: I have cautiously started looking at social media again, in very very limited quantities, and as twitter seems like... not the place, I now have a bluesky. IDK IDK. But if you're on there I may also be on there sometimes too I guess.

Tags:

birthday

Random Neolithic Stones on a Friday

purplecat

Friday, January 16th, 2026 20:20

A Stone of Stenness, Orkney

Tags:

picspam:prehistoric monument

Vouched for by various folks in Minnesota

rydra_wong

Friday, January 16th, 2026 13:59

This collection of links to local mutual aid funds, food banks, and other organizations doing work on the ground:

https://www.standwithminnesota.com/

Tags:

dance apocalyptic

Side note re: Souls and summons

rydra_wong

Friday, January 16th, 2026 08:53

Elden Ring also has the summons mechanic.

Which is how the fandom ended up with a sort of folk hero who appears as a naked man with a jar on his head holding two katanas and soloes the game's hardest boss for you:

IGN: We Spoke to 'Let Me Solo Her,' the Elden Ring Community Hero We Need and Deserve

YouTube: Let me solo her. 3rd summon solo Malenia (you don't have to know the game to appreciate that this is someone doing something perfectly)

Tags:

dark souls,
games

Snowflake Challenge 02026 #8: Process the Creative

silveradept

Thursday, January 15th, 2026 20:35

We're over the halfway line at

snowflake_challenge, and this challenge wants us to introspect about how we turn things out.

Challenge #8

Talk about your creative process.

( Not exactly a process that has a lot of visible things )

Current Mood: creative
Current Music: You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown - My New Philosophy

Tags:

fandom snowflake: 2026

Daily Happiness

torachan

Thursday, January 15th, 2026 19:44

1. Tuxie was gone for three days but back this morning like nothing happened. He does this occasionally so I don't get worried, per se, but I am always glad to see him back and know he's safe. I wish he could tell us about his adventures when he's gone!

2. I have a tattoo!

I'll post another picture once it's healed. The yellow especially is very dark in the picture because it was the last color she did and it had a lot of blood welling up still. But it's exactly what I wanted and I'm very happy with it.

Overall the session took nearly three hours but the first was just discussing the design and prep, and the actual needling was about an hour and forty-five minutes. It's large, and since it's a wrap around, it's kind of fiddly, but since it's just color fill and not a lot of intricate line work or anything, it went pretty quickly overall.

It did hurt a fair bit, especially since there were some boney areas, but mostly I was just very tense from having to hold still. I felt like how I feel at the dentist, which always leaves me with a tension headache. I took some advil when I got home for the headache, but my leg itself didn't really hurt once she was done.

3. My usual Friday meetings were cancelled and the stuff I need to do tomorrow doesn't require accessing our system (which I hate doing from home because we're not able to use a VPN anymore and have to remote into a PC at the office, which is a pain), so I'm going to relax and work from home tomorrow.

4. I love getting pics of the cats looking up like this. It makes their cute faces even cuter!

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What were you taught about atoms?

kaberett

Thursday, January 15th, 2026 23:40

Expanding on one of the things I mentioned yesterday: for Pain Project reasons, I'm interested in knowing what you learned about atoms at school, and roughly what age you were. I'm especially interested in whether (and when) you were exposed to the Bohr model (there's a nucleus, with electrons orbiting around it at fixed distances) and the current consensus model (electron orbitals defined as regions where an electron is most likely to be found).

( Read more... )

Tags:

on pain of pain

Daily Happiness

torachan

Wednesday, January 14th, 2026 21:49

1. We have been wanting to do a weekday trip to Universal Studios, but like Knott's, they have really limited hours during the off season and right now they close at 6pm on weekdays, which means dinner is not really doable due to traffic, so I'd suggested going for lunch today since I didn't have anything time sensitive at work until three, but the forecast was sunny and 80 degrees, so we decided to pass lol.

Instead we decided to get lunch from a place in Gardena we'd heard about recently from youtube (which Carla actually tried out herself last month and liked) and then she'd do some shopping while I went in to work. So we did that and had a delicious lunch of teriyaki chicken and beef with a Chinese chicken salad on the side, but when she semi-jokingly brought up going to Disneyland for dinner since we were already halfway there, I checked and there was availability, so we ended up doing that as well after work and had a very nice dinner down there, too. (And since the sun was down by the time we got there, the temps had gone way down.)

2. I'm getting my tattoo tomorrow! The appointment is for 2pm, so I'm going in to work in the morning and then heading over there straight from work.

3. Yet another cat getting cozy in Carla's new suitcase lol.

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2026 Disneyland Trip #3 (1/14/26)

torachan

Wednesday, January 14th, 2026 21:35

We weren't planning a mid-week trip but Carla came down to Gardena with me today so we could go to lunch and she could do some shopping while I was at work, and she semi-jokingly suggested going to Disneyland for dinner afterwards, and when I checked there was full availability for both parks, so since we were already halfway there I figured why not?

( Read more... )

Tags:

disney

inside me are two wolves - make that 3 actually...

kareila

Wednesday, January 14th, 2026 12:46

On the one hand, my free trial of Kindle Unlimited ended and I should read the books I downloaded from that so that I can stop paying for it. Mostly LitRPG-type stuff.

On the other hand, I've actually been making some progress on the TBR pile? And I decided to restart Spider Robinson's Callahan series, which I never got around to finishing.

On the third hand, I have my usual pile of library books - ten checked out right now, and another half dozen or so scheduled for holds at the end of the month.

I swear I used to have other hobbies.

Current Mood: busy

Tags:

books

Snowflake Challenge 02026 #7: Be Nice.

silveradept

Tuesday, January 13th, 2026 18:58

The dreaded "say nice things about yourself" challenge has appeared at

snowflake_challenge!

While we’re busy celebrating fandom, it’s good to remember to celebrate ourselves, too. Fandom is all of us! I know it’s often easier to talk about what we like about other people than it is to talk nicely about ourselves, but challenge yourself here --

Challenge #7

LIST THREE (or more) THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF. They don’t have to be your favorite things, just things that you think are good. Feel free to expand as much or as little as you want.

( Challenge: Say good Things About Yourself. Difficulty: Very )

Current Mood: energetic
Current Music: Yoko Shimomura - Lord of the Castle

Tags:

fandom snowflake: 2026

Panel Suggestions Open

boxofdelights

wiscon

Tuesday, January 13th, 2026 18:09

If you have an idea for a Wiscon panel -- even a half-baked idea -- you can propose it here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfvi7TCCIHg82rSpzrUKl8wX2SNMevlGP5HxOOnqa0pkrWu2w/viewform?usp=sharing&ouid=106072416256127446722

Seriously, even if your idea is just "We have to talk about Heated Rivalry!" it's okay to propose that. The Panels team will take all the input we get, and work to shape it into a proposed schedule.

If you'd like to talk your idea over before you suggest it, you can use the comments to this post, or start a new post in this group, or start a new post in your own space and maybe also point your readers here?

Daily Happiness

torachan

Tuesday, January 13th, 2026 16:49

1. They posted the foodie guide for lunar new year at DCA and there are so many tasty looking things this year!

2. I have a web meeting at 5pm tonight but had enough time to come home between my previous meeting and this one, so I can take it from home and not be getting home at like seven.

3. Spotted Gemma and Jasper sitting together on the sofa.

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I know why, but: why

kaberett

Tuesday, January 13th, 2026 23:56

On the one hand, it is sort of obvious why I've decided I want to have another go at working out how Continental knitting works for a project that involves reversible cables and ribbing on DPNs.

On the OTHER, this feels like a bit of a trial-by-fire given that my problem has historically been tension...

Tags:

knitting

blah blah update blah I am not that exciting atm

niqaeli

Tuesday, January 13th, 2026 11:59

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

2025 Blanket

purplecat

Tuesday, January 13th, 2026 18:42

This is the 2025 Mooglycal blanket. I was still attempting to use up the stash which, it transpired, had mostly orange and purple wool in it - not the most auspicious combination but there is now at least a lot less of it than there was and all that really bright orange has gone. The general concept was vertical stripes of red/orange and purple/pink with the darker colours at the top and lighter colours at the bottom. It didn't really work, in part because there was just so much of some colours. Anyway, I have decided to actually have a colour scheme next year since the stash is now under control (well at least that bit of the stash that involves the wool I use for making these blankets).

Tags:

Daily Happiness

torachan

Monday, January 12th, 2026 20:06

1. Well, the bathroom sink did not stay unplugged for long, and after trying Drano again a couple days ago, it pretty much stopped draining altogether, so we ended up having to get a plumber out after all. But we got someone to come today (it wasn't an emergency as we could just use the kitchen sink, so didn't want to call over the weekend) and he was able to fix it very quickly and it wasn't expensive. And Carla asked him if he could take a look at the knob that switches between the shower/tub faucet, which has not been working for like a couple years, and he fixed that without charging extra, so now we can switch to the tub faucet if we want to.

2. Although the rain is gone, it's so windy that we're still getting a ton of berries coming down from the tree out front, so I took the car in for a wash again and once again there was no line, so when the guy offered to let me go through twice, I took him up on it. The car looks much better!

3. We had a meeting at work today to get approval for some expenses on the project we're working on and I was expecting it to be difficult but it was super easy!

4. Ollie has also been enjoying Carla's new suitcase.

Tags:

Snowflake Challenge 02026 #6: The Top Ten

silveradept

Sunday, January 11th, 2026 20:03

snowflake_challenge has sent up number 6 on the challenge list, and it's one of the ones I struggle more with than not, the recommendations-related one.

Every challenge we try to make at least one rec post, and each year, we try to find a new way to make it fun for everyone. This year's attempt:

Challenge #6

Top 10 Challenge.

The category(ies) you choose are up to you. You can give top 10 Fics you read last year, the top 10 songs to create to, the to 10 guest stars on your favorite show, top 10 characters in your favorite book series, top 10... well, you get the idea.

Can't think of 10 of anything? That's okay, 10 is just an abstract. It's totally up to you.

This is one of those situations where being profoundly multifannish is a disadvantage, because a top ten list of anything may or may not make it to me. Or I might not get so deeply into a fandom to where there would be enough material for a top ten list. And while I read and enjoy the gifts that get sent my way in the various exchanges that I participate in, they don't necessarily cohere to any kind of top ten list of anything, either.

Eventually, a random idea will settle into my head, and I can go forward with it and see what might happen from there. So, here you are:

( 10 roles one person played during my formative years )

Current Music: ROZEN - Midna's Darkest Hour

Tags:

fandom snowflake: 2026

Daily Happiness

torachan

Sunday, January 11th, 2026 17:37

1. We went to the Indian market today and got lunch there as well, as they also have a small restaurant (cafeteria style). Everything was so tasty!

2. I contacted someone about making an appointment for a tattoo! I figured now that I know what I want, I want to get it done sooner rather than later, so it's fully healed by the time we take our trip in April.

3. Carla got a new suitcase backpack. It's about the size of a backpack, but opens like a suitcase. I think all the cats tried it out yesterday, except maybe Molly.

Tags:

vital functions

kaberett

Sunday, January 11th, 2026 23:40

Celebrating. A's birthday!

Reading. ( Rogerson, Rundell, McGuire, Clarke, Duncan, Scalzi, Hermé )

I also: remain up to date with Dreamwidth; worked through a brief pain management course for Youth, as background reading.

Writing. The Document continues to be expanded a little every day. It is now over 4000 words.

Playing. A bit of The Bridge, "a 2D logic puzzle game that forces the player to reevaluate their preconceptions of physics and perspective", which sounded like it might be about the right speed for me given that we'd just enjoyed playing through the Monument Valley series, and which instead for the most part does not seem to fit into my brain terribly neatly and is also weirdly evocative/reminiscent of Braid (lonely dude in a suit) while also being kinda... gay? possibly? I can't tell yet? Anyway we've played through I think the first four levels and might or might not continue.

We have also engaged in some Spirits -- mostly A playing and me watching, because I am not feeling up to timing problems and having to keep pressing Esc also feels overwhelming, but I have been Providing Commentary and enjoying watching the process of TURNING MUSHROOMS INTO CLOUDS to HELP THE LEAVES GET HOME.

We have also been playing (independently) sudoku, & grousing about each other's incomprehensible approaches to solving things, and then I nerdsniped A with a specific puzzle & they went to look up Theory And Strategy Of Sudoku, and I may yet get around to uh actually looking up the approach named "jellyfish"...

Elsenet vass has introduced me to Squardle.

Cooking. One spice mix, and subsequently one recipe from East featuring a vegetable I think I have not previously consciously eaten (Jerusalem artichokes). Another batch of medlar sticky toffee pudding as A's birthday cake; I think that in fact one cannot tell the difference between medlar that has not been jellied and medlar residue from jellying, at least in this setting. Also, turns out you can successfully add beetroot to the red cabbage and cauliflower udon noodles thing. Oh, and pineapple fried rice, which A had somehow never previously encountered???

Eating. We were both, on Friday, quite tired and sad. The internet brought us Pizza Express. It was good.

Making & mending. I FINISHED A GLOVE. I WOVE IN THE ENDS. Now to cast on glove #2 of that pair...

Growing. Both orchids seem to be putting forth flower stems! And I have sown lemongrass, pineapple physalis, and (not expecting any of these to actually germinate) some lithops I was sent as a gift a while ago...

Tags:

vital functions

Daily Happiness

torachan

Saturday, January 10th, 2026 20:15

1. As usual, the dry, windy weather is bringing warmer temps, but thankfully it's not getting super hot. High 70s, which is not the weather I want in January, but seems like it'll just be a few days. And it's still very chilly at night.

2. We had a nice morning at Disneyland. They've got a bunch of new menu items that started earlier this week and everything we tried was delicious. And we brought home a chocolate caramel apple to have for dessert, which we haven't done in a while.

3. Tuxie's new favorite spot is under the grill.

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2026 Disneyland Trip #2 (1/10/26)

torachan

Saturday, January 10th, 2026 16:19

We got down to the park right when they opened, so the crowds were very low. Unfortunately they recently reduced the number of restaurants that open when the park does, so we had time to kill before breakfast (even though we were both very hungry).

( Read more... )

Tags:

disney

This seems unfair

jadelennox

Saturday, January 10th, 2026 15:56

IMO vigils and protests shouldn’t cost spoons.

Also when you’re already deep in spoon deficit spending it’s probably not an ideal time to go to the spoon loan shark. They charge a lot.

Anyway my heart will always be here for protest medics who can be trusted to have instant cold packs. ❤️‍🔥

(I’m going to leave comments open on this post, which contains no requests for advice. I trust none of you will make me regret it.)

Vid rec: Around the Bend by danegen

cesy

Saturday, January 10th, 2026 20:15

https://fanlore.org/wiki/Around_the_Bend

I love this vid, I remember it well, I saved it and rewatched it when I needed a mood boost, I even saved the song after hearing it for the first time from this vid.

And I'm posting here to have the memory published and quotable for Fanlore. Did any of you see it when it first came out?

Tags:

fandom,
reviews

Random Doctor Who Picture

purplecat

Saturday, January 10th, 2026 14:24

This is the cover from Lawrence Miles' Christmas on a Rational Planet New Adventure. This was his debut novel. I recall very little about it. I think many people immediately recognised him as someone with an exciting suffeit of ideas, but sadly, I can not claim to have been among them.

Tags:

(no subject)

ursamajor

Saturday, January 10th, 2026 00:30

The horrors persist, so I have a pot of jambalaya bubbling away on the stove. We actually had chicken and shrimp and sausages in the fridge all at the same time, even if the sausages were technically brats instead of andouille, and the Bay Area's under some kind of historic extreme cold weather warning; a nice big warm pot of comfort food seemed called for. (Realfeel when I left the house this morning for coffee ride was 31F; I actually needed my full-finger gloves for biking.)

Re our jambalaya: red bell peppers, not green, I know that's blasphemy against the holy trinity. Celery, yeah yeah, I hear you and your passionate defenses of said aromatic,

kallmir2000 and

heathers. ;) But we did have some to use up from our produce box. And instead of chicken broth this time, we took advantage of having a bunch of crab and shrimp shells in the freezer and made shrimp broth instead.

I have so many things I want to make this year, as evidenced by my last post (artichoke cupcakes, Dubai chocolate ensaymada my way, sourdough starter, ricotta?!). And YouTube steered us the way of the pavé potato again this week, which we haven't yet made, so that is currently in progress as well.

But we're also, as a bigger project, going to try to cook our way through Pasta Friday this year as well, albeit as a weekend thing. We riffed on last week's "crispy chickpeas with cencioni and sausage" based on what we had in the pantry after being away the previous weeks, and ended up with "not-crispy white beans with strozzapreti and sausage."

hyounpark thinks it's because white beans have thinner skins than chickpeas that they didn't crisp up in the pan, but aside from that texture mismatch, the flavor profile of Italian sausage, a dry white wine (chardonnay my dad had brought over), butter, sage, and rosemary felt cozy for the endlessly rainy nights we've had lately. We also had to substitute parsley for arugula, but overall the results weren't bad considering what we had at hand, and we got a couple of actual vegetables in, go us.

Somehow, I have accumulated multiple pounds of strozzapreti (and cavatappi, probably my fave pasta shape), but have zero boxes of small shells on hand despite it being what we consider a baseline pasta for us to stock? (Our pasta pantry baseline: cappellini because it's fast, orecchiette or conchiglie because their shell shapes hold chunky sauces better than cappellini; anything beyond that is gravy. Other loved pasta shapes: bucatini (

hyounpark: "Italians finally figured out an udon counterpart!"), pappardelle (me: "pasta ribbons!"), cannelloni/manicotti for stuffing.)

Looking forward to next week's "garlicky conchiglioni with spinach and cheese." Though there will, again, probably be some swaps (see our current lack of shell-shaped pastas of any size, but more than enough pasta in general to make acquiring additional pasta feel greedy). But I appreciate Allison Arevalo offering alternate pasta shape suggestions that would go well with the sauce (in this case, paccheri, fusilli giganti, or rigatoni), even if ... yeah, once again we don't have any of those on hand. 99% certain I'll be using the cavatappi here. And I also appreciate her wine suggestions for both red and white each week, even if we may not necessarily keep up with them. (I don't even know what a barbera wine is besides it being red and Italian, but we probably have a pinot grigio around, and thankfully my recipe database has plenty of suggestions calling for a cup of the likely leftover wine!)

Just so you don't get the idea it's all cooking successes around here, I tried to bake a hazelnut-frangipane galette des rois for choir this week, and it was a massive fail; my puff pastry never decided to behave, and then when I baked it up, the whole thing smelled like cheese - in a bad way - despite zero cheese in the ingredients. Alas! I will try again, hopefully before Mardi Gras, probably when it's the sopranos' turn to supply snacks at break.

Current Mood: tired

Tags:

Daily Happiness

torachan

Friday, January 9th, 2026 20:54

1. It's the weekend! I am continuing to feel fairly optimistic about the upcoming February deadline at work, so hopefully that won't change. There's enough other stress going on outside of work.

2. Chloe doesn't really like any of the other cats but Molly, though her tolerance level for the others varies. She is the least tolerant of Jasper, though, so it was so nice to see her, Molly, and Jasper all on the bed together! And it happened two days in a row, too!

Tags:

Weekly Reading

torachan

Friday, January 9th, 2026 20:12

Recently Finished
Hummingbird Salamander
A woman is given a mysterious taxidermied hummingbird and a mysterious note and throws her entire life away trying to find out why. I did not like this much at all, but I think I would have liked it better if I hadn't been listening to the audiobook. The narrator was lovely, no problem with her. But the writing style was reeeeeeeeally annoying to listen to. I've read Annihilation and the two original sequels (haven't read the recent one yet) and don't remember if it was like this in those and I just vibed with it better because I can skim or if he changed his style up a bit, but it's super annoying here. The narration is also very rambling and goes over and over the same things so many times, which also gets annoying to listen to, but would have been easier to deal with when reading. But that wasn't the only issue as the story itself also felt very weak to me. The final reveal at the end was interesting, but the rest was just pretty boring. Also the constant focus on the protagonist's size felt weird. She is stated to be six foot and 230 pounds, which is large for a woman, but not so out of the ordinary yet it's treated as if she's the hulk or something, and constantly commented on by herself and others.

My Name Is Leon
London, 1981. Leon is a half-Black nine year old boy whose mom has a breakdown and when he and his baby brother are put in foster care, his brother, who is white, is quickly adopted, leaving him all alone. I really liked this a lot.

Tsumetakute Yawaraka vol. 6

Hen na Ie vol. 6
This is the first volume in the sequel series. So far I am enjoying it a lot! Curious to see if it will be as wild as the first one (knowing the author, I'm sure it will).

Ore Monogatari vol. 14
I had no idea there was a new volume out! Well, new is relative, as it came out in 2024, but the original series ended in 2016. This collects some bonus chapters of them in college.

My Home Hero vol. 25-26
Finally finished this. The ending was satisfying and overall I enjoyed the series a lot.

Tags:

weekly reading

some things make a post

kaberett

Friday, January 9th, 2026 23:57

I HAVE FINISHED A GLOVE. Even I wove the ends in! So A now has one (1) glove, only... however long it's been since the 19^th of March 2025... since I cast it on, and hey, maybe I'll even get the second one done inside the year. Maybe.
I have contacted a potential therapist. (I am very annoyed about the therapist who looked extremely promising until I visited their actual website, rather than just their listing on the directory, and discovered the weight loss hypnotherapy offerings. The person I've contacted instead is explicit about HAES.)
In partial reward for same, I have asked Oxfam to send me more books. Most of them are about food; one of them is about pain. (Probably Philosophy Of Pain, rather than my area of interest, and definitely Old, but it was A Landmark In The Field and it was £3.99, so.)
SEEDS arrived, by which I mean oca. V glad I ordered a specific bag of the variety I was most interested in as well as the Mixed Bag, because the variety I was most interested in is not represented in said Mixed Bag. Which is fine, the difference is Largely Colouration Anyway, but oca generally do well for me and they're tasty and they're also very low effort.
I am having a bad brain week, but this evening we got the internet to bring us pizza and we spent a bit of time curled up on the sofa playing two different games, except my brain wasn't really cooperating so mostly A played them and I watched, and between the food and the shared activity and the knitting it's a bit quieter in here now, for which I am very grateful.

Snowflake Challenge 02026 #5: Wishlist

silveradept

Friday, January 9th, 2026 11:08

snowflake_challenge's fifth request is upon us, and it asks us to do things taht some of us are not very comfortable with:

Challenge #5

In your own space, create a list of at least three things you'd love to receive, a wishlist of sorts.

( A few things that will hopefully be manageable )

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: Nobuo Uematsu - Final Fantasy VIII - Find Your Way

Tags:

fandom snowflake: 2026

Fossil Friday

purplecat

Friday, January 9th, 2026 16:06

Mussaurus - the above, stolen shamelessly from Darren Naish's The Great Dinosaur Discoveries, is of a hatchling.

Tags:

fossil friday

Anyway lately I've been crossing the gaps between the worlds to engage in jolly co-operation (tm)

rydra_wong

Friday, January 9th, 2026 11:34

On Monday evening I had the BEST time being repeatedly summoned by someone who (it gradually became clear) was wildly lost in the Duke's Archives.

Context: in Dark Souls, you can put down a summon sign so that other players can* summon you into their game to help them out (at the risk of also opening themselves up to potential hostile invaders).

You can only be summoned by people in the same rough level range as you, so if I don't feel like moving on yet from an area after I’ve completed it, I often put down my summon sign and hang around for a bit before I level up out of the usual range for that area. It’s been a lot of fun.

VERY IMPORTANT CONTEXT: there is no channel for voice or text communication. There's a very limited menu of gestures, and a few signals (e.g. repeatedly tapping the block button to jiggle your shield or weapon, which generally seems to communicate "I'm here, let's go!") which the fandom has evolved by default.

This makes communication challenging. But it also means it makes zero demands on my capacity for verbal conversation or pretending to be a semi-normal human being.

( Cut for length )

Tags:

dark souls,
games

Daily Happiness

torachan

Thursday, January 8th, 2026 20:35

1. We recreated the delicious pineapple & ham tater tots from Knott's Berry Farm at home and they turned out really good! Not exactly like the ones we had at the park but considering it was a Christmas thing, we won't be getting it again for a while and it was super easy to make at home.

2. The Christmas tree is all down and boxed up, all decorations are boxed up, just a few more lego sets to take apart and then everything will be done. Sad to put everything away, but I am glad we can decorate again now that we have a cat-free space.

3. It is very chilly and windy today. I like having wintery weather that doesn't involve rain.

4. Chloe enjoyed the sunny window this morning. Cats are glad the rain's done, too!

Tags:

2025

momijizukamori

Thursday, January 8th, 2026 18:40

A new year means time for one of my six posts a year here, lol. I'm most active on Bluesky at the moment but 90% of it is reposting TKRB fanart and replying to friends.

2025 was weird in that I kept being like 'wait how is it [date] already???' but also there is stuff where I'm like 'wait that was this year????'. Time, man. Anyway!

* Big thing this year - top surgery! Was early June, and everything went smoothly, so all the initial healing has been done for a few months and it's now the long tail of like, nerve regrowth and scar remodeling. I was also extremely lucky in that my health insurance covered basically all of it!
* Related to the above, I did my first truly shirtless cosplay at Dragon*Con, which was also my first time trying to do fake facial hair - Goro Majima from Yazuka for an 'oops all Majima group with friends'. We also got badge ribbons made to hand out for the first time.
* After years of refusing to care about 2.5D stuff, I made new sword friends at Katsucon who convinced me to give it a go and two months later I had watched basically all the Musical Touken Ranbu back catalogue and I now own more blu-rays that I'm sure I want to admit. Half the songs are like 'these lyrics are so dumb but this melody line slaps so hard'
* I bought a kit to copperplate 3d prints - I've only done a few small things so far, so my technique still needs a lot of refinement, but it's very neat to be able to basically turn things into actual metal.
* I took an intro blacksmithing class! It was offered through the community education program at a localish vocational high school and was very resonably priced. It was really need and got me interested in learning more, even if most of my creations from the class are extremely janky-looking (no, we didn't get to make knives, being at a school meant no weapons)
* Went outside the US for the first time in... probably close to a decade? Only as far as Montreal to visit family for Christmas, but look, the world's been weird. Managed to forget cellphone roaming was a thing, but we spent most of the time inside watching movies and playing with cats anyway.
* Got around to setting up my lathe, and turned one extremely messy test piece out of some scrap pine I had, then realized I needed better safety gear before getting more into it. So more to come on that this year hopefully.
* Signed up for an e-learning course on sewing machine servicing and maintenence, in part because the place I used to take my machines to closed and in part because I want to Learn All The Things.
* I finally saw Labyrinth. Yes, the 1986 Jim Henson film. Yes, I somehow managed to have not seen it before. It was delightful, I want most of Jareth's clothes, and afterwards we watched the making-of featurette filmed at the same time as the movie and it was super-cool to see all the stuff that went into the puppets and effects.
* Bought a smart ring in September, which feels hopelessly tech-bougie of me, but I wanted some fitness/heartrate tracking and the one I have (Oura) is particularly good at tracking sleep as well as having good privacy policies. We'll see how useful it ends up being.

Tags:

year in review

open sky / shooting star / nothing else but who we are

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