Daily Happiness

Apr. 19th, 2026 09:25 pm
torachan: my glitch character (glitch)
[personal profile] torachan
1. Yesterday was Record Store Day (a day to support indie record shops where they have a lot of limited release albums for sale) and we went to Record Surplus when they opened at nine only to find that there was a huge line all the way down the block. The people working there were passing out order sheets so you could write down the things you were interested in (including backups if your top choices were sold out) and Carla filled hers out, but after waiting for about 45 minutes and seeing the line barely move, she decided to tap out and we just went home.

Today we went to see if they had anything left over that she wanted and found several albums on her wishlist, including one of her top most wanted. We probably could have gone back yesterday afternoon or evening to check again, too, as there were only a handful of people who joined the line after us, so after that initial rush you were probably able to just go in the store normally, but it worked out in the end.

2. Tonight Alex came over for her usual Sunday dinner and TV and we were able to give her all the souvenirs we'd collected for her, which turned out to be quite a lot as we'd just been picking up stuff here and there that we thought was something she'd like. We actually found several small items with Gaara from Naruto, her favorite character, just at random shops, when last year we'd had to really go deep into the anime shop areas to find anything Naruto. Maybe it's having a comeback?

3. We've decided to get back into bike riding and that we'd like to get ebikes. The area we live in has a lot of flat spaces, but then also some directions you can't go without a hill, often a steep and/or long one, and having the ebike to get back up the hill would be very helpful, especially for Carla, and (hopefully) make us more likely to actually get out and use the bikes.

I had hoped that there would be somewhere around here that buys used bikes, but there doesn't seem to be, so I'm cleaning the old bikes up to try and sell on Nextdoor or Craigslist or something. I don't think I'll get much for them now, but they cost enough that I'd rather not just put them out on the curb for free. I got mine dusted off and pumped up the tires and took it out for a couple mile ride today and it was so nice. I haven't really ridden my bike much since we got a car again and I wasn't using it for my daily work commute. I'm looking forward to more bike riding in my future, and I think I might even take the old one out a bit while waiting for a buyer.

4. Lately Gemma has been spending a lot of time with Chloe and Chloe has been very tolerant of her. We often see them together on Carla's bed, but the other day they were both out in the dining room by the window.

Daily Happiness

Apr. 18th, 2026 08:51 pm
torachan: karkat from homestuck headdesking (karkat headdesk)
[personal profile] torachan
1. We already got our tax refunds! Both state and federal were deposited in the account yesterday.

2. I got to sleep easily last night and woke up at more or less my usual time today.

3. Look at this perfectly camouflaged Jasper!

In random other news

Apr. 18th, 2026 01:43 pm
sholio: Text: "Age shall not weary her, nor custom stale her infinite squee" (Infinite Squee)
[personal profile] sholio
[community profile] whumpex and [community profile] idproquo are both in nominations right now. Whumpex closes nominations this evening (in a few hours) and IPQ on the 24th.

My track record with exchanges has been ... not so great lately - I defaulted on two in a row, I almost never do that - but I do think things are improving and I'd like to try again, maybe with slightly better planning this time.

2026 Japan Trip Part 1 (4/2-3)

Apr. 18th, 2026 11:01 am
torachan: (Default)
[personal profile] torachan
Like last time, I will be breaking out the theme parks into separate posts (and some of those may need to be split into multiple parts). This time I had the foresight to actually take notes daily so it should be easier to recreate the timeline than just relying on photos as I did last year.

Travel & arrival in Osaka )

Daily Happiness

Apr. 17th, 2026 08:46 pm
torachan: a chibi drawing of sawko, kazehaya, and maru from kimi ni todoke (sawako/kazehaya)
[personal profile] torachan
1. Both Carla and I had a really hard time getting to sleep last night (I don't think I got to sleep until around four), so I slept in again today, which I do not like, but I am hoping I'll sleep better tonight.

2. I had some very snuggly cats today. They are so glad we're home.

3. I turned in all my library books before we went on our trip, so the day we got home, I put several books on hold and they all came in today, so I went to pick them up. Depending on what branch they're originally at, they sometimes dribble in one by one, so I was pleasantly surprised that they came all at once.

4. When I walked up to get the books, I passed one of our favorite Mexican restaurants and it smelled so good and was almost lunchtime, so I got burritos on the way back and they were indeed delicious.

5. Look at this sleepy guy!

Weekly Reading

Apr. 17th, 2026 06:09 pm
torachan: (Default)
[personal profile] torachan
This is over two weeks' worth of reading, since I didn't do a post while I was in Japan.

Recently Finished
The Colossus Rises
First book in a middle grade series about a group of kids who discover they carry some ancient gene that can give them super powers but will also kill them soon after it manifests at age 13 unless they can find seven objects that were hidden in the seven wonders of the ancient world. This is clearly trying to be the next Percy Jackson type thing, but while I've never read the Percy Jackson books, I'm pretty sure they must be better than this. The characters were all stereotypes (and there's only one girl in the group of four and she's literally the only female character in the book) and the plot and worldbuilding all felt very haphazard. No interest in continuing the series.

The Disaster Tourist
Translated from Korean. Yona works at a dystopian company that sells tours to disaster zones and when she takes one herself to evaluate whether the company should discontinue it or not, things go off the rails. This was interesting but I didn't love the ending.

Bright
Translated from Thai. When five-year-old Kampol is abandoned by his parents, he is taken in and raised by the close-knit community. This is more a series of short stories than a novel. I liked it a lot.

A Murder for Miss Hortense
First in a new murder mystery series featuring a middle aged Jamaican British sleuth. I liked this a lot. Highly recommend the audiobook.

The Deep
Fantasy novel about a race of mermaids who were born from pregnant slaves tossed over the side of ships. Only one person in each generation holds the memories of their past, and must share them with the group. Interesting world building, but I never could get that into it.

Night Drop
First in a series of muder mysteries set in 1990s LA, around the time of the Rodney King riots. I liked it all right. Will continue the series.

Teaching What Really Happened: How to Avoid the Tyranny of Textbooks and Get Students Excited About Doing History
I am not a teacher nor do I have kids, but this sounded interesting and it was.

An Unnatural Life
A cyborg in prison for murdering a human claims he didn't do it. The MC is a lawyer who decides to take his case and attempt to get a retrial based on the fact that a human jury was prejudiced against him. I liked this but it dragged a bit. It's more novella length, but could have been even shorter.

Two Truths and a Lie
Short story about a woman who mentions a creepy children's show, thinking she's making it up, only to find out it was real and she was on it as a kid. Reminded me a lot of Mister Magic.

Unlocked: An Oral History of Haden's Syndrome
Short story tied to a series of sci-fi novels I haven't read. The novels don't sound that interesting, but this is like a mockumentary style write-up of the world building. I liked it a lot. No knowledge of the series necessary.

Age 16
Graphic novel about three generations of Chinese/Chinese Canadian women and their strained relationships with each other. Chapters alternate between the present when the MC is 16, her mom at 16 in the 70s, and her grandma at 16 in the 50s. I liked it a lot.

Stone Fruit
Graphic novel about two queer women, their relationship with each other, which is falling apart, their role as fun aunts, and their reconnection with their respective sisters. I liked it.

Kokoro no Ichiban Kurai Heya vol. 1
Newish horror manga with a framing story of an online chat group that tells off-the-cuff horror stories based on random words the group suggests. First volume was free on Amazon Japan. Vaguely curious about continuing, but the first volume didn't really grab me, and the overarching plot introduced at the end seems less intriguing, so I'm not sure if I will continue it.

A Star Brighter Than the Sun vol. 5

Mystery to Iu Nakare vol. 16

Saint Oniisan vol. 22

Daily Happiness

Apr. 16th, 2026 10:31 pm
torachan: close-up of a sleepy kitten face (sleepy molly)
[personal profile] torachan
1. I woke up late today (by like an hour or so) and felt pretty tired mid day, but otherwise am pretty much recovered from the travel.

2. Yesterday I went to Petco to buy more litter and decided to get a new cat tree for the kitties as a treat. I wanted to spray it with catnip spray to get everyone to notice it, but so far can't find the spray. Jasper really likes it, though.

3. I'm very glad I have a four day weekend before having to go back to work on Monday.

4. Molly didn't come out of hiding last night until around 9:30, but she's been pretty much glued to my bed ever since. And she was extra demanding of pets when I went to bed last night.

Small fandom pleasures

Apr. 15th, 2026 10:08 pm
sholio: murderbot group from episode 10 (Murderbot-family1)
[personal profile] sholio
I had a need for fluff and so I wrote me some (plus banter and a smidgeon of angst and sex) from my nebulous Babylon 5 post-canon fixit future: A Nice Little House on Narn.

----

Today I discovered the existence of Murderbot Maladies, basically a whump / h/c event for May, but the list of prompts is AMAZING and I am going to reproduce it under the cut. As someone who has participated in h/c events basically since they have existed on LJ and similar, I can only say that this is perhaps the best prompt list I've seen, mixing as it does a number of serious h/c staples with such glorious inventions as "harpooned", "inhaled a drone", and "accidentally called Mensah 'Mom'".

The prompt list )

Daily Happiness

Apr. 15th, 2026 09:09 pm
torachan: an avatar of me done scott pilgrim style (scott pilgrim style me)
[personal profile] torachan
1. We are back home! It was a long day of traveling and then a long day of staying awake for a whole other day so as to get back on LA time, but we did it. So glad to be home!

2. I looked at making reservations for the bus from the hotel to the airport last night but ended up not doing so because I didn't want to commit to a time yet and I had the vague memory of having made same-day reservations last year. Well, either I misremembered or this year they're just busier because this morning it was telling me I was outside the reservation period. We checked out of the hotel and then waited a few minutes downstairs for the bus to come by and asked the driver if we could get on without reservations and he said no, so we ended up just taking another bus to Maihama station and then taking the train (I think it was like three trains lol) to the airport. With the new rolling suitcase we bought last week, it was actually doable, and we would have been able to do the same in Osaka and save those taxi fares if only we'd had it then. idk why we thought backpack style bags were the way to go, but we are definitely converts to the rolling suitcase now. By taking the train, we were able to stop back at the Disney store in Tokyo station which we had checked out yesterday morning but then decided to make our purchases when we came back through on the way back to the hotel, except our plans ended up taking us a different route and we didn't go back through Tokyo station. So Carla was able to get a few more last minute Rapunzel items before we left.

3. Overall it was a really nice trip, but I'm not sure I want to do a full two weeks again. The last couple days we were away, there were some cat pee accidents, so I think the stress might have been getting to someone (we suspect Molly since she was in hiding most of the time we were gone, even though she knows Alex), and we just missed the babies a lot.

4. I never close my bedroom door but Alex was closing it while she was working, which of course made Chloe very curious as to what was going on inside!

Daily Happiness

Apr. 14th, 2026 07:13 pm
torachan: (Default)
[personal profile] torachan
Today was our last real day in Japan, with tomorrow being just a travel day. Our flight is at 5:30pm, but we don’t really want to do anything before then, so we’re just going to use the morning to pack before checking out and then take the bus to the airport and do a little more shopping there.

Today we had no plans so we ended up going to the Ueno zoo, which was very nice. A little sunnier than I’d hoped, but once we were in the zoo it was pretty shady for most of the time. We also finally made it to a Pokémon Center thanks to [personal profile] starlady’s suggestion of trying the Skytree one. Skytree’s mall was busy, but a normal level of busy, so we were actually able to get in the shop and buy some stuff.

Then we came back to Ikspiari for dinner before going back to the hotel and had super delicious tonkatsu and got dessert from Ichibiko again. We spent a lot of the day on trains, buses, and subways, but it was a fun day overall.

The Secret History - Donna Tartt

Apr. 13th, 2026 11:30 am
sholio: a red cup by a stack of books (Books & coffee 2)
[personal profile] sholio
I saw this in the bookstore on Friday while I was idly browsing for something to buy so I didn't just walk out with my drink from the cafe and nothing else, and I remembered that I had meant to read this for a while. By Sunday night, I was done with all 500+ densely typed small-print pages.

I needed something different from the light, forgettable books I've read so much of in the last few months, and this definitely filled that need. It was absolutely immersive in the best way. The writing is gorgeous, not just on the wordcraft level (although that, too; this book is a lavish feast of description) but also thematic and structural and just generally ... good! Good in the way where you feel that every choice was deliberate, every thematic styling meaningful. It was a really good book about incredibly compelling, terrible people. I did almost nothing on Saturday except read this book.

Also, in a twist that will surprise no one, it made me think of Babylon 5 in a couple of very specific ways. I'll put that at the end.

The other thing it reminded me of was The Great Gatsby, which .... knowing that the book is almost 40 years old and has been widely dissected, I don't know if this is something that's been talked about to death (is it widely known by basically everyone that it's sort of a Gatsby retelling? is that like the most obvious of obvious comparisons) but in any case, it was a similar reading experience (for me) of being slam-dunked into a world of terrible rich people who I want nothing more than to follow and find out what new entertainingly terrible thing they'll do next.

Also, the narration is lovely. This book has some shatteringly beautiful descriptions of fall/winter/spring in New England.

Spoilers galore, I mean really, so many spoilers )

Babylon 5 vs The Secret History )

Daily Happiness

Apr. 13th, 2026 08:53 pm
torachan: john from homestuck looking shocked (john shocked)
[personal profile] torachan
1. The weather today was pretty nice. Mostly overcast (though sometimes more glarey than I would prefer) and temps in the mid-high 60s. It was very muggy, though. Definitely better weather for a Disney day than Saturday was, though.

2. Today was our second and last DisneySea day. Last year I felt like two days was not enough, but that was because everything was new to us. This year two days felt just right, and one day is good for Disneyland, so while I had left tomorrow open for possibly more Disney if we wanted it, instead we will go to the Ueno zoo. Last year we went to a museum there and it was lovely, but we haven’t been to the zoo before and in fact haven’t been to a zoo since Carla first moved out to LA, so like 28 year ago?

3. Tomorrow is our last full day and then we’re flying back Wednesday (leaving here in the evening but arriving late morning in LA due to the magic of time zones). Alex has been sharing lots of cat photos with us but while we’ve had a wonderful time here, two weeks is a long time to be away from the kitties and I’m so looking forward to cuddling them again soon.

Space Swap

Apr. 12th, 2026 10:42 pm
sholio: murderbot group from episode 10 (Murderbot-family1)
[personal profile] sholio
Space Swap revealed today, and I got a lovely gift!

Not Their Hero (Murderbot books, gen, 9K!!)
SecUnit and Gurathin accompany Ratthi to a scientific conference, where they end up accepting a request for assistance against a corporation. It goes about as well as one might expect, given Murderbot's history.

I was amazed and delighted to find out that I had received a 9K gift, and it was a great time - plotty casefic with a dash of h/c, very canon-feeling, with interesting OCs and worldbuilding, fun character dynamics, and a great Murderbot voice.

(I have *no* idea who wrote this and cannot wait to find out.)

A cunning plan

Apr. 12th, 2026 04:29 pm
sholio: (B5-station)
[personal profile] sholio
It's really too early for me to feel like doing a full Babylon 5 rewatch yet, so instead I had a possibly cursed idea, which is to watch IMDB's top 10 and bottom 10 rated episodes and report back on them. And in fact I think I am going to do exactly that.*

*Unless I get distracted by something along the way, as often happens.

The best/worst lists are hidden in case you want to preserve the element of surprise.

The 10 best episodes according to IMDB, starting at the top

1. Severed Dreams 3x10
2. War Without End Part 2 3x17 (Since Part 1 is also in the top 10, I'm just going to watch them together, I think)
3. Z'ha'dum 3x22
4. Endgame 4x20
5. Sleeping in Light 5x22
6. The Long, Twilight Struggle 2x20 (By about this point I will probably have died of Drama and Tragedy. RIP me.)
7. Point of No Return 3x09
8. The Coming of Shadows 2x09
9. The Fall of Night 2x22
10. War Without End Part 1 3x16 (will be combined with part 2)
11. No Surrender, No Retreat 4x15

This looks fun! (For Babylon 5 values of fun.)


And as an escape from all of these heavy episodes, apparently I will be watching, in order of worst to ... slightly less worst:

IMDB's lowest rated1. TKO 1x14
2. Infection 1x04
3. Secrets of the Soul 5x07
4. The Gathering 1x00
5. Grey 17 is Missing 3x19
6. Grail 1x15
7. The Long Dark 2x05
8. Strange Relations 5x06
9. The War Prayer 1x07
10. Survivors 1x11

Genuinely surprised that they're not even all from season one and five! Absolutely unsurprised that most of them are! I do genuinely like some of these, and at least one of them, I skipped most of when I was originally watching season one, so it will be interesting to see what I think of it now.


Not starting this tonight (probably) because I have other things to do, but Soon™.
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