Daily Happiness

Dec. 14th, 2025 05:25 pm
torachan: (Default)
[personal profile] torachan
1. I have recently ordered multiple things off Amazon that are not at all urgent, and they're offering good rewards for getting them delivered after Christmas rather than before (most have been 7% cash back but the most recent one was a $2 ebook credit). So now I have a ton of stuff arriving on the 27th. D:

2. I finally got all of Alex's books repacked into nice boxes and stacked on the new shelves I put in the shed. It's looking so much more organized. I ordered two more sets of shelves (one of the above-mentioned purchases) so then there will be three sets on each wall, which will mean plenty of space for long-term storage as well as things like toilet paper and paper towels, which we buy from Costco and they come in huge packages that are too big to store the whole thing in the house.

3. I love getting these shots of Gemma looking out the window.

Daily Happiness

Dec. 13th, 2025 08:15 pm
torachan: maru the cat sitting in a bucket (maru)
[personal profile] torachan
1. The weather today was very nice. It looks like it's supposed to be in the low 70s for a few days coming up, but I hope it actually stays at those temps and doesn't end up warmer than predicted as it often has recently.

2. I've been waiting for the right size box to ship some stuff out and today I finally got one! Amusingly enough, what I want to ship out is puzzles and the perfect box had some new puzzles I ordered recently in it. (The actual size of the puzzles I'm sending is different from the ones that just came, but the box fits both and came with lots of packing paper.)

3. Tuxie is fattening up for the winter.

2025 Disneyland Trip #77 (12/13/25)

Dec. 13th, 2025 05:58 pm
torachan: my glitch character (glitch)
[personal profile] torachan
I thought today would be less crowded than Monday because all three lower level passholders are blocked out, but it was super crowded. D: Still not as bad as Monday (especially because Monday was unfortunately timed with the parade, which makes things cloggier), but not great.

Read more... )

Weekly Reading

Dec. 12th, 2025 08:06 pm
torachan: karkat from homestuck looking bored (karkat bored)
[personal profile] torachan
Recently Finished
The Girls Who Disappeared
On the 20th anniversary of a car accident where three girls mysteriously disappeared, the MC is assigned to do a podcast on it and goes to the town to conduct interviews, but strange things start happening. I didn't love the reveal of what actually happened, but overall this was interesting.

Mirage City
Fourth in the Evander Mills mystery series. I had no idea a new book was out until I saw it pop up on my goodreads feed. Looking back it seems like every book has come out in October, so I guess I should try and remember to keep an eye out around that time next year. I enjoyed this one a lot.

Murder on Harley Street
Most recent Cleopatra Fox mystery. Still enjoying this series.

The Final Curtain
Final book in the English translated series of Detective Kaga mysteries (and I believe final book in the original, too). I can see why the four books that were translated into English were chosen, if they knew they weren't going to be able to do the whole series, those ones all tie into each other somewhat. I liked these a lot, so I'm definitely going to try and see if I can find some of the ones that didn't get translated when we take our next trip to Japan (sadly they are not available as ebooks).

Murder at Merry Beggars Hall
New-to-me mystery series. And fairly new in general as the second book is just coming out next month. I enjoyed this a lot and am looking forward to the next one.

The Ghostkeeper
Graphic novel about a man who almost died as a child and can see ghosts ever since. He uses his powers to help ghosts deal with their issues and move on to the next life, but one day a ghost girl steals the key to the door to the next life and all the ghosts start flooding the town because no one is able to move on. I liked it.

My Home Hero vol. 17
sholio: Gurathin from Murderbot looking soft and wondering (Murderbot-Gura)
[personal profile] sholio
As I don't have the bandwidth for a lot of reccing tonight, here are two quick recs of short Murderbot friendship gen from the last couple of days that I enjoyed. Both of these are more bookverse than show-based.

Ransom by [archiveofourown.org profile] BoldlyNo (400 wds, Gurathin-centric)
Augment-based ransomware! What a terrible/brilliant idea. This is short but complete-feeling and satisfyingly whumpy.

The Truth, Bitter as It Is by [archiveofourown.org profile] HonorH (900 wds, Gurathin & Murderbot)
An even worse truth comes out about Ganaka Pit. I went into this fic worried that it would be terribly depressing, but it's not; it is much sweeter and kinder than it has to be.

Daily Happiness

Dec. 12th, 2025 06:16 pm
torachan: a cartoon owl with the text "everyone is fond of owls" (everyone is fond of owls)
[personal profile] torachan
1. It's the weekend! I had a pretty productive day today and finished up what I was working on earlier than anticipated, so I just ended up going home early (around 2:30), which was nice.

2. It was warm and sunny when I took a walk after work, but it's very overcast and chilly this evening, and we're supposed to have cooler weather for a bit. Tomorrow says it will be overcast all day, which would be nice as we are planning to be at Disneyland and I don't want it to be too sunny.

3. We got burritos and tacos for dinner. Very tasty! Not agreeing with my stomach too well tonight, but worth it.

4. Look at this sleepy boy!

A couple of links

Dec. 12th, 2025 03:51 pm
sholio: Hand outlines on a cave wall (Cave painting-Hands)
[personal profile] sholio
[personal profile] amperslashexchange just announced a collection delay and still needs pinch hitters! See if there's anything you can pick up here - there are some with bigger fandoms as well as some small fandoms.

Romance author Fern Michaels died recently, and I enjoyed reading this old article from early in her career (NYT archive article from 1978, not sure if it's paywalled). I didn't know that Fern Michaels started off as a writing duo of two different women! Apparently the one who eventually became "the" Fern Michaels took over the pen name later, but at the point this article was written, they only had three books out. The article is not at all disrespectful, and I was interested in the details of how the two women chose to position themselves in the market, which reminded me of our brainstorming process for Zoe a bit:

“There used to be a market for the little 60,000‐word romance with no plot,” Mrs. Anderson said, “but our publisher has become very demanding.”

Fern Michaels's books usually end up containing about 250,000 words.

Mrs. Anderson credits the success of the books to the authors’ attitude about women. As she put it:

“We don't have women love men who brutalize, beat and brand them. Our women don't put up with that.”


Anyway, I enjoyed this look at the state of the genre circa 1978, as well as the very early days of an author (or authors) who became a powerhouse in the 1980s-2000s romance scene.

Daily Happiness

Dec. 11th, 2025 08:26 pm
torachan: arale from dr slump dressed in a penguin suit and smiling (arale penguin)
[personal profile] torachan
1. Still no word on when we will actually get the car back, but at least Carla popped in and got the stuff we needed from it so even if we don't have it back for this weekend, we can use the sip and savor pass at DCA.

2. I have really been enjoying Horizon Zero Dawn. And now that I have the Playstation Portal, I can easily pick it up for a short session at my desk whenever I want to. I've already put a lot of time into it and only barely got past the Proving and started on the main game, but that's because I just keep running around killing machines and collecting parts.

3. Jasper's gotta investigate that bag. You never know what might be inside.

Year in review and next year's plans

Dec. 11th, 2025 12:23 pm
sholio: glittery Christmas ornaments (Christmas ornament 2)
[personal profile] sholio
I normally do this at the end of the year, but I'm doing it early this year because I'll be out of town 'til the 27th, and I don't really expect much to change; all my publications for the year are publicated. See the tag for previous years' updates!

This year's cover grid:

grid of 6 covers

3 full-length novels, 2 novellas, 1 collection. That's honestly much better than I was expecting; I spent most of the year clawing my way back from burnout, and the final two books were slammed out at the end of the year when suddenly my creative brain came back online.

Checking in with last year's plan )

Next year's plans )

Edited to add: one more thing )

Babylon 5 fic: Movie Nights

Dec. 11th, 2025 01:46 am
sholio: (B5-station)
[personal profile] sholio
I finished something I started a while back!

Movie Nights (2735 words) - Babylon 5, seasons one to five
Summary: Just a bunch of aliens getting hooked on each other's trashy serial media.

Daily Happiness

Dec. 10th, 2025 07:23 pm
torachan: (Default)
[personal profile] torachan
1. Today was the last day of the heat spell. Whenever it's hot this time of year, it's always a very dry heat, and I do prefer dry heat, but ugh, too dry today. My eyes were stinging really bad this afternoon (and still a bit now). It seems the weather will still be warmer than I prefer for December for the rest of the ten day forecast, but at least it won't be hot. :-/

2. The car is still in the shop. The issue is that while they know something in the AC system is leaking, they can't find the leak, despite having used various methods. Carla spoke to the guy today and he said they're getting in some sort of specialized equipment tomorrow, so it may be fixed by the end of the day? We'll see. She did ask if we can go by and get some stuff out of the car and he said any time, so I'm going to drop her off there tomorrow before going to work so she can get my Disney backpack which has the sip and savor pass in it, so we've got that for Saturday if the car isn't ready yet.

3. I had a work from home day today. Tomorrow and Friday I've got to go in for sure as I have stuff to do in our system that is difficult to do remotely (it can only be accessed from within our network and that requires me to remote into a pc at work and just adds extra hassle), but the main thing on my to-do list today (aside from meetings) was just checking stuff in excel, so no need to go in, which was nice.

4. Molly!

MASH Christmas fic

Dec. 10th, 2025 05:31 pm
sholio: Red ball with snow (Christmas ornament)
[personal profile] sholio
This is actually something I wrote last winter, February or so, when I was bingeing MASH. I figured that although I could post it at the time I wrote it, I could also wait and post it at actual Christmastime.

Goodnight Moon (1816 words) by Sholio
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: MASH (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, Charles Emerson Winchester III, B. J. Hunnicutt, Minor Characters
Additional Tags: Christmas, Missing Scene, Episode: s09e05 Death Takes a Holiday
Summary: Hawkeye makes a discovery. (Missing scene for 9x05 "Death Takes a Holiday," the season 9 Christmas episode.)
torachan: (chloe yawn)
[personal profile] torachan
First post is here.

After lunch, I decided to try my luck on the Jurassic World ride. It's a water ride and I googled and the consensus seems to be that as long as you're not in the very front, you don't get too wet.

Jurassic World, Simpsons Land, Minions, and more. )

Overall it was a very fun trip and I'm looking forward to going again on Christmas with Carla.

Daily Happiness

Dec. 9th, 2025 09:08 pm
torachan: (cartoon me)
[personal profile] torachan
1. Carla made pesto and we had cheese ravioli with pesto for dinner. Since it's homemade, we can make it without garlic, and IMO, it tastes perfectly fine without. The ravioli were just Trader Joe's fresh ones where you just boil them for a few minutes, so it was super easy to put together. And delicious!

2. Another puzzle done. This one was fun, but went pretty fast. I'm definitely starting to feel like the 500 piece ones are less of a challenge (but still enjoyable to do).



I have a few 500 piece Christmas/winter ones that I'm going to do next, but then I think I'll tackle one of the 1000 piece ones and see how that goes.

3. Chloe! She is very much making use of the warming bed lately.

(no subject)

Dec. 9th, 2025 07:09 pm
sholio: tree-shaped cookie (Christmas cookies)
[personal profile] sholio
Daily updates for Rec-Cember are going about as well as anything daily usually does for me, so I think I'll switch to weekly posts - say Thurs or Fri. That sounds like a plan.

I think what I'm finding is that writing one rec is actually not much less work than a batch of them, and the batch style is more fun for me because I don't feel like I have to come up with as much to say about each individual fanwork. Even though I know I could just yeet the link on DW and flee. Why are brains.

I'm really enjoying the event, though!

(In other news, it is cooooooold, and I am struggling with motivation for Christmas. Maybe I need to write some Christmas/holiday/winter fic. I went to a holiday concert this weekend with [personal profile] ellenmillion and it was lovely! I need more of that kind of thing.)

Daily Happiness

Dec. 8th, 2025 10:46 pm
torachan: scott pilgrim pouting (scott pilgrim - pout)
[personal profile] torachan
1. We had a nice dinner at Disneyland today, though it was way more crowded than I was expecting. (Though after thinking about it, I should have known! This week is the last few days the lowest tier of passholders can go before the blackout, and the second tier only has a couple more days than that, so everyone's trying to cram in a last visit.)

2. Gemma was so cutely writhing around with this carrot.

2025 Disneyland Trip #76 (12/8/25)

Dec. 8th, 2025 10:26 pm
torachan: anime-style me ver. 2.0 (anime me)
[personal profile] torachan
We went down to Disneyland for dinner tonight. I very foolishly did not get my Disney backpack out of the other car before we took it in for repairs, so I don't have the sip and savor pass for the Festival of Holidays booths, and decided on Disneyland rather than DCA, but that ended up being a bit of a mistake as we got there right before the parade started and the park was suuuuuper crowded because the lower two levels of passholders only have a few more days before being blocked out for the rest of the year.

Despite the parade crowds, we still had a good time )

Inspiring Quotes - Why do we write?

NSFW Dec. 8th, 2025 09:29 pm
pushkin666: (TEXT - be open to whatever comes)
[personal profile] pushkin666
( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Daily Happiness

Dec. 7th, 2025 04:49 pm
torachan: a cartoon bear eating a large sausage (magical talking bear prostitute)
[personal profile] torachan
1. I walked to the donut shop again this morning and this time tried one of their holiday offerings, a gingerbread donut with biscoff cookie topping. It was really good!

2. The Christmas tree is pretty much finished. If we see some sort of topper we like, we might buy one, but otherwise the decorations are done.



3. Ollie is very curious about what Tuxie is doing out there.

sholio: (B5-station)
[personal profile] sholio
I figured that I'd group these together as they're by the same author. I wanted to talk about this anyway, because this is one of the more gratifying experiences I've had with leaving comments on older fic. Basically, I commented on a long WIP that hadn't been updated in several years, and the author not only wrote the rest of it but ALSO, to my delighted amazement, posted another long fic in the same universe, and started posting some new fanart too. It was wonderful. ♥ Never be afraid to comment even years later; sometimes you not only make someone's day but get lovely fanworks in return.

3 Londo/G'Kar Babylon 5 recs (by the same creator) cut for spoilers )
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