Weekly Reading

Dec. 20th, 2025 11:49 am
torachan: john from garfield wearing a party hat and the text "this is boring with hats" (this is boring with hats)
[personal profile] torachan
Recently Finished
Strange Pictures
I was going to hold off on reading the novel version of this until the final volume(s) of the manga are released, since I've already read three volumes of the manga, but it came up again as recommended, this time on Hoopla, so I went for it. I do think Uketsu's novels work better as manga. Inserting the illustrations in the novel version feels more repetitive, whereas since the manga is all pictures, having the characters refer back to stuff feels more natural. I'm still going to read the rest of the manga when it's released (Strange Houses was five volumes, but Strange Pictures feels like it could be just four, so the next one might be the final one), just to see if there are any major differences. Anyway, I enjoyed this one but I do like Strange Houses better.

The Bletchley Riddle
Middle grade book about a girl who is trying to investigate her mother's disappearance. When she runs away from the man her grandmother hired to take her to live with her in America, she instead goes to live with her brother, who is working at Bletchley Park as a code breaker. The book is told in alternating POV chapters between brother and sister, and the audiobook had two narrators. I liked it a lot.

Murder on Platform Four
Another Tate and Bell mystery. These are very quick reads.

The Kamogawa Food Detectives
Speaking of quick reads, this one was super short. I got the audiobook in a sale and figured I'd check it out. It was only about five hours long. I did like the narrator, decent Japanese pronunciation, but the book itself was pretty dull. I think I might enjoy this okay as a manga, where you can just glance at the pictures of food and be on your way, but I don't need to listen to long descriptions. And a lot of what I like about mysteries is the process of the characters finding clues and working things out, but the way this is written is each customer's request is broken into two chapters, one where they come to the restaurant and tell them what kind of food they are looking to recreate. Then the second chapter is the food being presented to them. There is some exposition about how the guy figured out what they were remembering and how to find it, but it wasn't at all satisfying in any sort of mystery way. There are several more books in the series, but I'm not going to bother with them. It's not bad, just not for me.

Maps of the Disney Parks: Charting 60 Years from California to Shanghai
I bought this at Disneyland the other day. Nice coffee table book of maps of all the Disney parks currently in existence, with a small amount of text sprinkled throughout. I noticed several other reviewers on GR mentioned what I was feeling, which is that while this is nice, it's not quite what I was expecting or wanted from the title, which was the actual park maps. This has a few, but the vast majority of the maps are concept drawings and things like that. I would a book that compared park maps over the years.

My Home Hero vol. 18-19

12 Days (til) Christmas Day 7

Dec. 19th, 2025 10:50 pm
ashkitty: (calvin eeek!)
[personal profile] ashkitty
So I got on a plane this morning and saw my parents and then took my mom to the hospital AGAIN because the dialysis catheter keeps jiggling itself loose or whatever, so it's been a long day. But you know what's not long? Today's fic!

Even shorter than some of the others, this treat is TINY! Also not technically Christmas, because the Dragon Age universe doesn’t have Christmas. They do have Satinalia, which also involves giving presents and some medieval-Christmas-ish traditions, so I have decided that’s close enough.

Dragon Age Calendar 2023: An Appreciative Audience
. Varric tells stories. It’s too short to say more.

‘Varric coughs pointedly. “If none of you want to hear this….” A chorus of apologies, as if anyone could stop Varric telling a story once he’s started. There’s a bite in the crisp Satinalia air, beneath the bonfire-scent of autumn, and lazy sparks float from the crackling fire like tiny stars. There are toasts and gifts and ghost stories, and laughter echoing across the hazy hillside.’

A song:I did actually manage to find a Christmas song about a dragon, but it was incredibly cheesy, so you're getting Six White Boomers instead.

And a rec for the road! hurry down my chimney tonight by gusuvibes. (Untamed AU, wangxian)
Rated T

NHS convinces JC and WWX to work as Santa's Elves for the local mall's Christmas grotto. LWJ brings his adorable child A-Yuan to see Santa. You see where things are going. 

Back to Day 6 | On to Day 8

Daily Happiness

Dec. 19th, 2025 06:53 pm
torachan: charlotte from bad machinery saying "oh the mysteries of the moth farm" (oh the mysteries of the moth farm)
[personal profile] torachan
1. Finished up another puzzle today. It's Santa Vader lol.



2. We decided to renew our Knott's annual passes after all. I knew it was cheap but had forgotten just how cheap, but then I've been seeing ads saying it's only $118, and that really is so cheap that even if we only go a handful of times it's worth it. And then when I went to actually do the renewal it turns out that the renew price is even cheaper! It was only $99! And the way their parking pass works is it's an add-on rather than being a higher level of pass, so we only have to buy parking for one pass since we always go together.

3. Not only is it the weekend but I'm now looking at two weeks in a row with four day weekends. And I was able to get off early today, too.

4. I found out the amount for my bonus today. It's quite a bit higher than the last couple times because the company performance overall was higher and also my salary is higher and it's based on a percentage of that. Next time's will be lower because this time I was still an area manager during most of the scope period (the December pay out is for April through October) and the percentage for store management is higher than for the rest of HQ.

5. We ordered from Coco Ichibanya tonight and now I am full of delicious curry.

6. Tuxie's looking handsome.

re: Outsourcing

Dec. 19th, 2025 02:35 pm
merridia: (Creeps)
[personal profile] merridia
At the beginning of the week, I had zero plans for the new year, and now I have tickets to three fresh wrestling shows in April, including my third-ever pay-per-view! Life comes at you fast!! First row in the corner for Dynamite and Collision in Winnipeg, dead centre ringside for Dynamite and Collision in Edmonton, then third row behind Spanish commentary for Dynasty 2026 in Vancouver!!! I will begin planning things like travel and accommodations once January rolls around (when I start my new additional work duties, ugh), though I will probably request those two weeks off of work immediately. Something to make getting to 37 worth it!

This week has pretty much been an entire blur aside from that??? I really need to get my life back into some semblance of order now that my back is mostly feeling better. I can make it about two thirds of the way home before I start to feel a twinge, and a heat wrap with a movie settles it right back down, so I should be able to start being a person properly again. It's very cold, and very snowy, and very... heavy outside. Just that overwhelming pall of light grey diffusing through everything for the six or so hours of daylight we have, and then just the most oppressive pitch darkness the rest of the time. We're going to be deep in the -35 to -45 degree trenches for the rest of the year with little to no reprieve, so it's really time to turn my attention inward and just try to feel good. Which unfortunately means doing a lot of laundry, god adulthood is lame.

Movies Watched in December: The Mastermind, They Live, Memoirs of an Invisible Man, Song Sung Blue; Silent Night, Deadly Night; Starman, In the Mouth of Madness, Ghosts of Mars, Prince of Darkness, The History of Sound, Five Nights at Freddy's 2, Big Trouble in Little China, Escape from L.A., Zootopia 2, Escape from New York, Christine

The Housemaid this weekend, probably? And then the new Avatar with my brother. I don't particularly want to actually see it unless it's at a theatre with the fun moving seats to make it into more of a ride, but I figure if I just make sure to get really, really high beforehand, that should be just as good.

21. What Would You Outsource if You Could?

Uh... the money-making part, obviously. Is this a trick question?
umadoshi: (Christmas - peace (iconista))
[personal profile] umadoshi
Since I'm vaguely tracking things we've been making: a few days ago we made Smitten Kitchen's gingerbread apple upside-down cake. It's tasty, although I didn't like it nearly as much as the SK Mom's Apple Cake that we made not that long ago. ([personal profile] scruloose likes it more than I do, for the record.) Now I mostly just want to make an actual gingerbread. ^^;

(My brain keeps starting to compose a post or posts about my currently-annoyingly-complication feelings about holiday baked goods etc., between our intensely-covid-cautious life and my still-newish need to stay aware of my blood glucose, but will I actually manage to write about it? Who knows. It's exhausting.)

I started my first day of vacation waking ahead of my alarm from a weird, teeth-clenchingly stressful dream, possibly one of a sequence, and it takes me a while to shake off dreams like that. >.< I've gotten a couple of household things done/underway, though, and am sitting down to do some manga work once I've posted this.

We still haven't decorated Bucky; he comes with lights, which are the most important part of a Christmas tree, especially without the smell of a real tree, and at least one year we bought our tree and put lights on it and never did anything more, and that was fine. I guess it's possible this'll be another such year. (Although we're due for strong winds and heavy rain tonight and into tomorrow, and if we lose power, I guess that's something we could do tomorrow afternoon.)

But we got most of our other fragments of decor up last night, and this morning I put out my Nativity set for the first time in a few years. It's wooden, but a couple of the pieces have taken damage over the years nonetheless (before my time, or when I was young enough that I don't remember what happened), and having it out around the cats has made me nervous since my mother gave it to me* several years ago. But a few months ago I bought a piece of display wall shelving for my office (and my office mostly stays shut when I'm not in it for long), and the set fits in it fairly well, so now it's there and I've got my fingers crossed.

(Also, this year I bought an old-fashioned ceramic tree from a local artist, and it's on a speaker under the wall display, so realistically, if a cat gets up on my desk where they shouldn't be, I'll know about it from the tree going down. [Which I really hope it doesn't, because it's breakable and the lights aren't actually attached, so that's all kinds of cat hazard in a package. And thus, it's in my office; if the cats were actually prone to getting on my desk and messing with things, I wouldn't have bought the tree at all, but even Sinha is really pretty good about it.])

*I think I mentioned at the time that this is the Nativity set of my childhood, carved of olive wood. My mother's parents once--in the '50s, I think? When she was a kid--were in Jerusalem over Christmastime, and brought it home. Mum deciding to pass it on to me is genuinely one of the best gifts she's ever given me.

(no subject)

Dec. 19th, 2025 10:19 am
aurumcalendula: gold, blue, orange, and purple shapes on a black background (Default)
[personal profile] aurumcalendula
I'm partway through the 10Dance movie. I'm enjoying Sugiki and Suzuki's chemistry (and like that they kiss each other onscreen - I really enjoyed the subway car sequence). I also ship their female dance partners together. I haven't read the manga, but I gather it's ongoing.

Read more... )

I'm looking forward to (and am a bit anxious about) ClaireBell's finale tomorrow. I'm hoping it sticks the landing (and is a happy ending for Bell and Claire).

Daily Happiness

Dec. 18th, 2025 07:27 pm
torachan: (Default)
[personal profile] torachan
1. I had a meeting scheduled at 2pm today and then one at 4pm, and was expecting to have to stay at work until after the second meeting was over, but we moved the earlier one up a bit and were done by like 2:15, so I decided to go home and take the second meeting from there. Traffic is a bit better at that time, plus it meant once the meeting was over I was already home and could just get on with my evening, so that was nice.

2. This cutie guy snuggled with me while I had my meeting this afternoon. :)

12 Days (til) Christmas Day 6

Dec. 18th, 2025 06:17 pm
ashkitty: (christmas cat)
[personal profile] ashkitty
We are halfway through! And we’re going back to Oxford. This is maybe cheating a little – the story itself was written for Yuletide, and is dated the 6th of December, but there isn’t anything especially Christmassy in it.

In 2075, OUP publishes a festschrift (this is, for non-academic types, a book of essays honouring a particular distinguished scholar) celebrating the world of James Dunworthy. It is edited by Colin, now a fellow of Balliol himself, who writes the introduction to the volume and the various things in it. It’s one of my favourite Yuletide experiences – something about the connections of people through history, and the value of good teaching, really hit people (including me, unexpectedly, while writing it). So here is:

Paradox (Oxford Time Travel, gen)
Rated G

‘It is traditional to begin this sort of project with a biography of the person to whom it is being presented, and following that, to list the contributed articles and how the author and outcome of each was started on its path by the eminent scholar being celebrated within the pages. In this case, it seems both unnecessary and redundant, as the essays themselves have become more retrospective than tribute.’

Song: Stop the Cavalry (there IS in fact a Christmas song for time travellers!), version by the Cory Band and the Gwalia Singers

Fic rec: Once and Future by phoenixflight (The Dark is Rising, Will/Bran)
Rated T

Christmas is still a good Dark is RIsing time, and this little treat is full of great lines (Bran's reaction to Will getting a bit melancholy about eventually losing him is brilliant) and, like all the best TDIR fics, evokes a strong sense of place and atmosphere.

Back to Day 5 | On to Day 7

umadoshi: (Yona-hime 01 (snarfles))
[personal profile] umadoshi
"Yona of the Dawn Gets Sequel Anime". [Anime News Network]

I'm delighted both that this is happening and that it was announced so promptly on the heels of the manga ending. (;_;) As we learned from the second Fruits Basket anime arriving thirteen years after that manga ended, anything is possible, but it's sure nicer to have this sort of thing happen with a speed that makes more sense.

ANN says "sequel anime", which I'd imagine means it'll pick up where the first one left off, but how OAVs factor into that, I'm not even going to try to guess.

2025 Disneyland Trip #78 (12/17/25)

Dec. 17th, 2025 11:40 pm
torachan: brandon flowers of the killers with the text "some beautiful boy to save you" (some beautiful boy to save you)
[personal profile] torachan
Disneyland is still way more crowded than I was anticipating. We got over to the parks around 6:30pm and were planning to get dinner from the Festival of Holidays carts at DCA and assumed it would be less crowded there than at Disneyland, but the lines to get in were really long for some reason. Once we were actually inside it wasn't too bad (still crowded, though), so I guess it was just a case of a lot of people arriving for after work trips at the same time.

Read more... )

12 Days (til) Christmas Day 5

Dec. 17th, 2025 11:13 pm
ashkitty: (christmas baubles)
[personal profile] ashkitty
Back to Kirk and Spock again! Told you they’re almost half the list. Advent 2012. The Enterprise crew carry out their mission to investigate weird shit wherever they find it. Guided by a Christmas star (kind of) they stumble on an unexpected birth (kind of). One of my favourite things about writing Trek fic is how weird and unexplainable you can make things (this will come up again later).

Nativus (Star Trek Reboot, Kirk/Spock)
Rated G

‘By the time they reach the surface, it is no longer the barren wasteland the initial scans had indicated. They stand surrounded by vegetation, lush and thick and a shade of green so bright it's almost gold; by the sound of trickling streams and the growing thrum of insect life. The tricorders vibrate with each new discovery as lifesigns appear around them with increasing rapidity, and above them coloured clouds rush through the sky like a gymnastic rainbow.…’

Song: Silent Night (There are of course many versions; this is the absolutely haunting one by Sinead O'Connor.)

Fic rec: Feast of the Unwise Men by Drayton (Oxford Time Travel)
Rated G

Technically this is an Epiphany fic, but since I'm doing pre-Christmas days and not post-Christmas days, here we are. It's about those few days after Dunworthy and Colin retrieve Kivrin from the Black Death, and the fallout - while knowledge of the canon will definitely help here, it's also a fic for anyone who has had to deal with university administrations.

Back to Day 4On to Day 6

Daily Happiness

Dec. 17th, 2025 11:17 pm
torachan: a cartoon bear eating a large sausage (magical talking bear prostitute)
[personal profile] torachan
1. Spent most of the work day cleaning up data and while I originally thought it was going to take me a couple days, I actually got the whole file done today, which was nice.

2. We went to Disneyland for dinner. Still way more crowded than I would have thought with so many passholders blocked out, but not quite as bad as last Monday. We did have some really delicious food, though. And we finally managed to get some more of those cranberry orange loaves from Jolly Holiday and brought them home for breakfast tomorrow.

3. Jasper's really loving the warming bed now that it has lost its sides and become a warming cushion. Not sure if it's because of the new shape or because it's on top of a chest rather than on the floor, but he's into it.

(no subject)

Dec. 18th, 2025 12:13 am
aurumcalendula: gold, blue, orange, and purple shapes on a black background (Default)
[personal profile] aurumcalendula
The Secret of Us episode 10:

Read more... )

(no subject)

Dec. 17th, 2025 07:53 pm
aurumcalendula: gold, blue, orange, and purple shapes on a black background (Default)
[personal profile] aurumcalendula
I discovered at the grocery store the other day that Tony's Chocolonely now sells mini individually wrapped chocolates as well as large chocolate bars!

Okay so more context

Dec. 17th, 2025 09:29 pm
rydra_wong: Lee Miller photo showing two women wearing metal fire masks in England during WWII. (Default)
[personal profile] rydra_wong
(Re: the previous entry.)

Dragonslayer Ornstein & Executioner Smough (also known as Oreo and S'mores, Biggie and Smalls, Pikachu and Snorlax, Rodgers and Hammerstein, and any other name the fandom can come up with) are one of the most iconic boss fights in the entire Dark Souls series.

There are much harder ones in later games (and in the DLC), but they're still legendary and still regarded as a Serious boss fight.

They're also a famous mid-game difficulty spike and cause of rage quitting. Conversely, if you can get through O&S, people often say you should have the skills to beat the rest of the base game.

The major issue is that it's a duo boss fight, with one agile speedster (Ornstein) who can zip most of the way across the room in a single move, and also throws lightning, and one heavyweight bruiser (Smough) who is slower but not that slow -- he has a charge attack to close distance fast that hits like a freight train -- and does huge amounts of damage.

So for the first phase of the fight, you have to try to keep track of where they both are simultaneously (not to mention where you are in relation to the room, so you don't back yourself into a corner and get trapped) and constantly manoeuvre to try to be able to get in a hit on one without being hit by the other.

If you kill one of them, the fight goes into a second phase where the surviving one absorbs some of their powers (so if it's Smough, he gets lightning, while if it's Ornstein he gets sized up and picks up part of Smough's moveset) and also restarts with a full and vastly increased health bar. Though there is a general consensus that the second phase is more manageable than the first phase simply because you're not having to fight two bosses at the same time.

Illustrative example of someone doing the fight:



(You can summon an NPC or other human players to try to help you, but the bosses get extra health to compensate and it's still tough. And also I have been having enormous fun trying to beat all the bosses without summons so far, and am averse to the extra complications and unpredictability of having more people -- human or NPC -- in the mix while I try to figure out a fight. Though I've also had enormous fun being a summons for other people on boss fights, so zero disrespect to people summoning*, it's an excellent game mechanic.)

As I may have mentioned once or twice, my brain has huge difficulty tracking multiple moving objects (which is why I can't drive or cycle on the road) and I have the reaction speed of a slime mould.

So yeah. I knew O&S are the big mid-game stopper and I was very aware that this could potentially be the point where I hit a wall and the game became flatly impossible for me. Or at least where I'd have to summon to get through it.

And that did not happen. I solo-ed O&S.

It took multiple sessions over multiple days before I mastered it, but that's standard for me on DS boss fights. And I had SO MUCH FUN. It's SUCH A COOL FIGHT.

I did a thing that was a real achievement for me and I am very proud, and especially given the shitshow this year has been, I'll take it.

{*Necessary disclaimer only because Dark Souls fandom has historically had a section who are toxic as fuck and would like you to know that you didn't really beat the game if you summoned or used magic or whatthefuckever else they disapprove of.}

re: Kondo

Dec. 17th, 2025 11:06 am
merridia: (Every shade of wrong.)
[personal profile] merridia
One week out from Christmas, and I'm getting the blues about it all. I keep trying to write about why and deleting it all because I can't get it quite right, but basically a lot of years of miserable Christmases has led to us just not really bothering this time around, which is probably for the best because it greatly reduces the likelihood of my having to spend Christmas Eve running between different rooms to try to get everyone to stop crying again, but I'm sure my mom is quietly disappointed about it regardless. Probably doesn't help that this is our first Christmas without a pet, like, ever? We've got to at least get a tree next time.

Just got pulled in for a meeting with my managers because I've been doing my job too well and they're giving me more to do starting next month, damn it! More techs to work with, a whole other department (in a whole different building) to manage internal work orders for and coordinate with, whyyyyy? I spent a decade keeping my head down just to avoid this sort of thing!

Successfully walked home from work yesterday for the first time since throwing out my back. I was pretty sore by the time I made it, but not cripplingly so, and then mom ordered Boston Pizza so I was able to rejuvenate myself with overpriced pasta and the one-night-only return of AEW Dark (oh my god, I've missed Taz so much).

Experimented with magnetic nail polish again last night. Was still unable to do anything cohesive with it, but it looks prettier than it did last time!

My goal of not spending money that I don't have willy-nilly anymore is not going great so far (I blame the sleep deprivation), but hopefully this expensive yoga mat will aid in my recovery efforts??? I have, however, shut down two very pricey subscription services that I've been on for years to make up for it, so NOW it's time to get serious about saving. Two days to the AEW pre-sales!

Movies Watched in December: Memoirs of an Invisible Man, Song Sung Blue; Silent Night, Deadly Night; Starman, In the Mouth of Madness, Ghosts of Mars, Prince of Darkness, The History of Sound, Five Nights at Freddy's 2, Big Trouble in Little China, Escape from L.A., Zootopia 2, Escape from New York, Christine

In honour of Saya Kamitani becoming the first woman to ever snag the top spot in the Tokyo Sports awards, Stardom uploaded a killer playlist of all the big singles matches from her current run, so if you want to see a bunch of dramatic women beating the ever-loving shit out of each for several hours, fill your fucking boots (the third of the three Tam Nakano bouts is particularly poignant in the immediate wake of John Cena's hilariously lackluster retirement match).

20. Are You a Hoarder or a Minimalist?

All my shit is what separates me from the animals!
umadoshi: (Christmas - winter berries (skellorg))
[personal profile] umadoshi
What I Just Finished Reading: Legendborn (Tracy Deonn) and Season of Love (Helena Greer), both of which fall into the category of "I enjoyed this but I don't feel any urge to pick up the sequel".

And not that recent, but I did finish Anne Lamott's Almost Everything: Notes on Hope not terribly long ago.

What I am Currently Reading: Llinos Cathryn Thomas' Advent novella All is Bright, one chapter per day. And [personal profile] scruloose and I are a few chapters into the audiobook of System Collapse.

What I Plan to Read Next: Very possibly The Dark is Rising, with solstice nipping at our heels.

Bonus TV note: [personal profile] scruloose and I have finished season 2 of Silo!

When we finish System Collapse, that'll be the end of Murderbot listening until sometime after the new book comes out. Listening to the audiobooks together has cut way into our shared TV watching, but does have the advantage of being easier to drop in and out of if we don't have a lot of time in an evening, so I've been trying to see what our iteration of Hoopla has that [personal profile] scruloose might be into. It does have Gideon the Ninth, which they might get a kick out of, but that's a significantly longer book, and we already had to check Network Effect out twice to get through it.

Last night it occurred to me that the Queen's Thief books are on the shorter side, and lo, Hoopla has them all! Have any of you listened to them? Any comments on how their reader is? It remains possible that finding out that I really like the Murderbot audiobooks isn't a sign of anything other than that I like that narrator in particular. ^^;

Daily Happiness

Dec. 16th, 2025 08:39 pm
torachan: brandon flowers of the killers with the text "some beautiful boy to save you" (some beautiful boy to save you)
[personal profile] torachan
1. Carla needed the car for an appointment today so since we've still only got the one, I worked from home. I didn't have anything that required being in the office anyway, so it worked out.

2. Speaking of the car, they finally found the leak, yay! It should be fixed tomorrow or Thursday. The not so yay part is that apparently it was not a malfunction but was caused by a rock or something getting kicked up into the engine, so we will have to pay for it. We have the money, so it's not a problem in that regard. I'd just rather spend my money on nicer things than car repairs. :p

3. Molly's getting cozy.

12 Days (til) Christmas Day 4

Dec. 16th, 2025 05:55 pm
ashkitty: (christmas cat)
[personal profile] ashkitty
On to Day 4!

It wouldn’t be Christmas season without The Dark is Rising! What surprised me the most is how few I’ve apparently written that are actually Christmas-centric, when it’s such an important part of the series! (It might also be that I just don’t have them anymore, or didn’t post them to AO3, because I’ve been writing for this fandom a long time.)

This one was, as the author notes indicate, scribbled out quickly during Christmas Eve church, and fixed for posting afterward. I did go back more recently and do some edits. I didn’t live in Wales yet in 2002, so got a few little things wrong – mostly younger!Ash didn’t quite get the church/chapel divide, and had them all heading into Tywyn to the local Anglican church even though Owen is explicitly noted as going to chapel. The further problem is that by the time this takes place, the chapel in Tywyn was already turned into flats, though I think the one in Abergynolwyn (closer to Clwyd farm anyway) was still going. I realise these details are really not that important to most readers, and especially have no real bearing on the direction of a very short fic about accidentally coming out to your parents, but well, I live here.

It is very short – barely over 1k words – so I don’t want the intro to end up longer than the fic.

While Shepherds Watched (TDIR, Will/Bran)
Rated G

‘It was the first Christmas Eve of his lifetime that he had not spent with his family, noisy and bustling in the bright din of a two-storey farmhouse full of children and spouses and nieces and nephews and neighbours dropping by just to say hello, the smell of cinnamon and apples and pudding, the warmth of the fire interrupted by bursts of cold air when the door opened, the sound of six or seven Christmas carols all jangling together at once.’

Song: While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night 
(I wanted the Welsh version but couldn't find a good one, so we went with Carols from Kings for choirboy Will.)

Fic rec: We Wish You a Logical Christmas by little_ogre (MDZS Star Trek AU, wangxian)
Rated M

What caught my attention first about this fic is that it's the JIang, not the Lan, who are Vulcans. Half-Vulcan WWX brings LWJ home during Christmas shore leave, and pon farr happens. It's excellent.

Back to Day 3Onward to Day 5



merridia: (Throw some glitter; make it rain.)
[personal profile] merridia
Three days until pre-sales for the AEW shows in Winnipeg, Edmonton, and Vancouver in April! Finally, I have something long-distance to look forward to again! Time to tighten my belt, post-holiday splurges, so that I can actually afford to go (or at least pretend that I can afford to go). Trip planning will begin tentatively next week (after I hopefully have tickets), and then begin in earnest come the start of 2026. DYNASTY!!

Mom bailed on the MMM last night because it was snowing (lame excuse), but I hopped on a bus and went all by myself and had a great time anyway with an insane melodramatic mess of a movie (complimentary???). I definitely overdid things with my back a bit, though, and should probably go back to taking it easy for the rest of the week to keep recovering. Things hurt! It's cold out! An outing was extremely necessary for my mental health!

Album #502/1001: Soft Machine - Third )

Movies Watched in December: Song Sung Blue; Silent Night, Deadly Night; Starman, In the Mouth of Madness, Ghosts of Mars, Prince of Darkness, The History of Sound, Five Nights at Freddy's 2, Big Trouble in Little China, Escape from L.A., Zootopia 2, Escape from New York, Christine

Six more hours until I can go home and make delicious noodles and put on a movie and also a heat wrap. BACK TO BASICS.

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