torachan: (Default)
Travis ([personal profile] torachan) wrote2025-08-23 07:55 pm
Entry tags:

Daily Happiness

1. Got a decent farmer's market haul this morning. The lemonade place did not forget their lemonade twice in a row, and they've added some flavors, too, so I got a yellow watermelon lemonade (not sure if it will actually taste any different to the regular red one) and a cucumber lemonade. I did drink the latter already and it was a bit disappointing as it was too chunky for my liking, but the flavor was good.

2. It was hot today but aside from my trip to the farmers market in the morning (I went right when they opened at eight but it was so muggy and gross already) we stayed in the house and kept relatively cool.

3. Ever since we had the pizza pockets with cajun ranch dip at DCA, we've been on the lookout for that kind of sauce in the store and could not find any, but the other day Carla finally did find some (Hidden Valley Kickin Cajun Blackened Ranch) and we got pizza tonight and it was perfect!

4. Look at this little face!

torachan: (cartoon me)
Travis ([personal profile] torachan) wrote2025-08-23 06:14 pm
Entry tags:

Weekly Reading

Currently Reading
What Happened to Lucy Vale?
5%. A girl and her mother move into a house where sixteen years ago another girl disappeared and her mother was found hanged in the house. The story will be told in alternating timelines, but I haven't gotten that far yet, so it's just present day. Sounds interesting. I read another book by this author and liked it, though I blank out on what book it was literally seconds after looking it up each time, so I don't think it was that memorable.

Our Hideous Progeny
41%. A sort of Frankenstein fanfic. Victor Frankenstein's grand niece decides to follow in his footsteps and try to create life, but this time since she and her husband are paleontologists, they decide to create a dinosaur rather than a human. That said, while that is the main plot, it's only a small part of the book, which is more about the MC's struggles to be taken seriously as a woman who is interested in science. I'm really liking this so far. I'm listening to the audiobook and the narrator is great.

Suddenly a Murder
9%. A group of friends from a ritzy high school go to a 1920s themed party and there's a murder. I decided to pick this up because the 1920s themed party aspect sounded interesting, but I have quickly (within the first few paragraphs) become annoyed by rich teens being obnoxious (though the MC is a scholarship student and not rich herself). I'll finish it because I dislike not finishing things, but I doubt I'll really like it that much.

The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State
No progress.

Recently Finished
How to Survive a Horror Story
This was an interesting premise but I never felt like it really got good and I didn't think the twist was all that. It was fine, but doesn't make me want to run out and check out more by the author. Also, this didn't really have an impact on my enjoyment of the book, but I could not believe that the author couldn't take two seconds to google to see if a store they are mentioning by name exists in the place they are saying it does. No one in LA is going to the Piggly Wiggly, because it is very famously a southern grocery store chain. She could have just said grocery store, or she could have checked to see what stores exist, but nah. (The same character also lives in his parents' basement, which is not quite as unbelievable as the Piggly Wiggly, because I'm sure there are at least a couple houses here that have basements, but it just added to the general vibe of carelessness.)

Newcomer
I found the format a little tedious at first, but ended up enjoying this.

Shady Hollow
This was definitely a miss for me. Too much focus on describing the animals and their town compared to the rest of the story.

DeadEndia vol. 1-3
I reread the first two books because the third is finally out! Apparently it came out last year, but I just realized it was out a week or so ago. It's been too long since I read the others, so I had to refresh my memory, and I'm glad I did, because I would have been struggling to keep up if I'd just jumped right in to volume three. This was a good conclusion and I really love this series.

Skip to Loafer vol. 12

Hen na E vol. 3
musesfool: Zuko, brooding (why am i so bad at being good?)
i did it all for the robins ([personal profile] musesfool) wrote2025-08-23 07:15 pm

righthanders wear him out

I tried making mozzarella sticks again for dinner tonight and I don't know if the oil wasn't hot enough or what, but they stuck to the bottom of the pot. They stuck to the spatula when I finally scraped them off the bottom of the pot. They stuck to the PAPER TOWELS.

I have fried a lot of things in my time and then put them on paper towels to absorb the excess oil and NEVER BEFORE has anything stuck to them. What the actual fuck. I still ate whatever I was able to salvage, but wow, what a mess.

*
torachan: a cartoon bear eating a large sausage (magical talking bear prostitute)
Travis ([personal profile] torachan) wrote2025-08-22 10:29 pm
Entry tags:

Daily Happiness

1. So glad it's the weekend!

2. One nice benefit of the timing of my promotion/role change is that I don't have to help with inventory. People are busy with inventory this week and next week, but not me! It's not my problem anymore!

3. We had a nice time at Disneyland and I'm glad we went today instead of tomorrow, despite the heat and crowds, because now I have a weekend with no big plans so I can just rest and relax.

4. Jasper!

torachan: (Default)
Travis ([personal profile] torachan) wrote2025-08-22 10:19 pm
Entry tags:

2025 Disneyland Trip #57 (8/22/25)

It's officially the start of Halloweentime at Disneyland. It was also in the mid-nineties today, so crowds and heat, not a great combination, but we still wanted to go, and we had a great time despite the heat (crowds weren't actually too bad once we were actually in the park).

ExpandHalloween! )
sholio: Made by <lj user=aesc> (Atlantis city)
Sholio ([personal profile] sholio) wrote2025-08-22 08:35 pm
Entry tags:

Foundation 3x01-02

Watched the first couple of episodes of the new season!

ExpandSpoilers )

If you're watching it, no spoilers beyond episode 2, please!
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squidgestatus ([personal profile] squidgestatus) wrote2025-08-22 10:44 pm

Hosting (including Squidge Images) FYI

Right now we're needing to adjust some webserver configurations, because the site seems to be hanging and not allowing connections randomly. Things are there - it's just the webserver needs to be tuned to prevent this from happening. We'll be doing adjustments over the next week. If the site doesn't load for you, wait a couple minutes and reload, and you'll be fine.
runpunkrun: sunflowers against a blue sky with a huge billowy white cloud (where hydrogen is built into helium)
Punk ([personal profile] runpunkrun) wrote2025-08-22 09:10 am
Entry tags:

myNoise.net update

While I was away from my keyboard at the start of the year, Dr. Stéphane Pigeon was busy creating a bunch of new soundscapes! Here's a round up of all the new generators he's posted this year:

The Nyquist Frontier: An electronic music generator that sounds like it's coming straight to you from the 1980s. I felt like The Pet Shop Boys were about to start singing at any moment. Comes with a little history lesson about synthesizers.

Glacier Lagoon: Recorded in Iceland! Lots of different water noises here, including ice. Play around with the sliders to combine them. I like the "Fresh Water" presets with lapping waves and some of the underwater recordings (the four on the right) thrown in.

Flock Of Flutter: Well, this isn't what it sounds like at all. It's not birds, it's a Swiffer duster attached to a motor that causes it to brush against crumpled kraft paper, creating a warm white noise (though perhaps closer to what's called pink noise), similar to the steady hum of a fan.

Organic White: A white noise generator created from carefully selected recordings of wind and rain. Unlike synthetic white noise, which is unchanging, this has a bit more texture and variation to it.

Indigo Amanita: Dr. Pigeon's attempt at Goa Trance, which I'm unfamiliar with, but is, apparently, a genre of electronic dance music that originated in the early 1990s in the Indian state of Goa. It's upbeat.

Floating: From Dr. Pigeon's description: An ambient soundscape for deep relaxation, Floating avoids rhythm and melody, using slowly evolving textures and warm low-frequency tones to help the mind slow down by removing musical expectations.

Upstream: This soundscape traces the path of a waterfall back to its source, a small stream.

Uganda Tales: Recorded on the shores of Lake Victoria in Uganda. I recommend trying the presets to experience the many different pairings of natural sounds, music, and human speech this soundscape offers.

Glacier Chorus: More from Iceland. This time it's underwater sounds recorded in a glacier lagoon. Dr. Pigeon writes, "At times, you might think you're hearing birds or sea creatures. But these sounds don't come from any animals. They all are the voice of the glacier itself. As the glacier melts, the ice cracks and groans under its own heavy weight and small rocks that were once frozen inside are freed and tumble down the ice. Underwater, tiny air bubbles that were trapped in the ice pop and fizz as they escape."

Gong Bath — ft. Reggie Hubbard: A meditation in vibrations, taken from a live recording during a public sound bath at Kripalu. Dr. Pigeon writes, "These are not sounds that say, 'everything is fine.' These are sounds that ask questions. That challenge your sense of ease. That's why gongs are so powerful in meditation: they don't lull you — they awaken you. They agitate the quiet — revealing what usually lies buried beneath." Which is a very generous way to say that this sounds like the soundtrack to a horror movie.

The Architect's Eclipse: Space ambient music. This one sounds like a more relaxed version of the soundtrack to the movie Cube.

Icelandic Shores: A sea, wind, and rain noise generator. Very similar vibes to that of the beloved Irish Coast Soundscape, only recorded in Iceland. This is for you if you like your beaches cold and windy.

Now we're all caught up!

If you want to keep up with the myNoise news, Dr. Pigeon has left corporate social media, but there are plenty of other ways to get updates. You can follow myNoise.net on Mastodon or wherever you access the Fediverse. You can subscribe to his mailing list that notifies you of new soundscapes. Or you can follow the myNoise RSS feed in your favorite RSS reader or here at Dreamwidth at [syndicated profile] mynoise_feed.
torachan: maru the cat sitting in a bucket (maru)
Travis ([personal profile] torachan) wrote2025-08-21 10:42 pm
Entry tags:

Daily Happiness

1. It has been warm and will be warm through the weekend (tomorrow is supposed to be the peak) but then is cooling off through the rest of the month. Thankfully it hasn't been super hot yet, but September is always the worst, so I'm sure that's coming.

2. Chloe and Gemma were so sweet and cuddly today! *_*

squidgestatus: (Default)
squidgestatus ([personal profile] squidgestatus) wrote2025-08-21 07:27 pm
Entry tags:

Squidge.org & Image Hosting Recent Downtimes

This morning the system seemed to have barfed and took image hosting down along with everything else it was serving to the web.  I've got things back up at the moment, but haven't finished checking all hosted sites to make sure everything is good.  It'll be back to normal asap.
musesfool: (gift)
i did it all for the robins ([personal profile] musesfool) wrote2025-08-21 02:30 pm

wade in our workboots, try to finish the job

I meant to post yesterday but fell asleep on the couch after dinner, which has been happening with more and more frequency over the last few months - usually it's only for 30 - 45 minutes, because it's never intentional and I am not in a comfortable sleeping position, but oh boy the dreams I have when it happens are super vivid and weirdly almost always take place here in this apartment. Usually "home" in my dreams is the house I grew up in (or some dream facsimile) or my first apartment - my second apartment is never what it actually looked like but always some much larger Manhattan apartment with a view! But when I am falling asleep on the couch, I am frequently also asleep on the couch in my dreams, and trying to wake up and not managing, or waking up in the dream to answer the door or something. Weird how that works!

Anyway, I did read something so Wednesday reading on a Thursday:

What I just finished
The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri, book one of the Burning Kingdoms trilogy. I really liked Suri's Books of Ambha duology - the second one in particular I thought was AMAZING - but this one isn't really doing it for me. It's fine.

What I'm reading now
Allegedly, the second book in the trilogy, The Oleander Sword but I haven't really been picking it up when I have time to read.

What I'm reading next
Well if I finish The Oleander Sword I will probably move onto the third book, The Lotus Empire, but who knows?

I did find time to finally watch K-Pop Demon Hunters on Netflix and I enjoyed it very much. It's like Buffy except there are 3 girls and they're in a band. Very fun!

Work today has been bonkers - it was 1 pm before I even thought about having breakfast so I just held out until 2 (my regular lunch time) for lunch. Hopefully the afternoon is quieter!

*
torachan: (Default)
Travis ([personal profile] torachan) wrote2025-08-20 10:04 pm
Entry tags:

Daily Happiness

1. We got dinner from Shake Shack tonight and they have a really good banana shake right now.

2. I finally got all our lego sets catalogued, so now we can keep track of what we have. (You know you have too many when you need a site to keep track of them.)

3. Molly looks so sweet here! (It's because she is sweet.)

sholio: book with pink flower (Book & flower)
Sholio ([personal profile] sholio) wrote2025-08-20 07:12 pm

Unraveller - Francis Hardinge

I haven't read Hardinge in ages, so I'm catching up some of her books I missed. I started with this one, and really enjoyed it! Although it's not specifically similar to it, I was reminded of Fly By Night in its general vibe - not as dark as some of her books (... I say this about a book in which
slight spoilerone protagonist's brother ate her sister and that's not even the worst trauma of her life),
with entertainingly unhinged worldbuilding including a kingdom partly ruled by spiders, and kid protagonists caught up in adult politics in which they're not sure which of the various morally gray adults around them they can trust.

ExpandBasic setup/characters/etc )

ExpandSpoilers )
cimorene: closeup of a large book held in a woman's hands as she flips through it (reading)
Cimorene ([personal profile] cimorene) wrote2025-08-20 08:08 pm

most of them aren't wealthy enough to guillotine, just enough to be annoying

I am fascinated by reading antique magazines and the fiction published in them, and I don't want to imply that I'm not enjoying it, but... sometimes it's very hard to sympathize with the wealthy, or even the upper middle class.

Of course I'm used to literature being by and for the wealthy further back in history, and I don't say that I read about them without class consciousness, but somehow it's not as hard when it's from the 19th century or earlier. Maybe it's just that it's longer ago, or maybe it's because the society is more alien to me and harder to view through a personal lens.

But with these American upper middle class magazines from 1900-1940... well, the middle class was exploding in size and not all fiction or nonfiction was by and for the wealthy!

It's disorienting reading things about "every American girl" or "every new bride" in the 1920s that actually mean every American debutante. All four of my great-grandmothers got married in America around that time and none of them were worried about cruise ships and couture hats. (One was a nurse, one was a schoolteacher, one was a farmer's daughter and a farmer's wife, and one was a daughter of servants, from a big Catholic family.)

My tolerance for the wealthy perspective in fiction and nonfiction is lower the closer it gets to the present. I always have to overcome a strong impulse of disbelief that you're supposed to seriously sympathize with the idle rich, or people with maids, or the sphere where only people from recognizable New England families "count". Of course those people exist, but this is a big circulation women's magazine! Where are the average middle class women? The average middle class housewife was not a former debutante in 1908! But Woman's Home Companion could easily give the impression that she was. (Maybe there was a competing magazine that was preferred by the working middle classes. I'll try to find out.)
runpunkrun: Dana Scully reading Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space' in the style of a poster you'd find in your school library, text: Read. (reading)
Punk ([personal profile] runpunkrun) wrote2025-08-20 08:42 am

You Gotta Eat, by Margaret Eby

You Gotta Eat: Real-Life Strategies for Feeding Yourself When Cooking Feels Impossible, by Margaret Eby:

A gentle and funny book about how to feed yourself when that seems impossible.

This book offers three things: permission, inspiration, and recipes, in about those proportions if this were a list of ingredients. The chapters are arranged in increasing order of effort, from, basically, eating straight out of the fridge, right up to chopping stuff up and turning on the oven.

Each chapter starts with a theme and a bunch of ideas about how to turn things like eggs, greens, beans, noodles, dumplings, and canned foods into a meal, then finishes with one or two basic "do exactly this" recipes. The permission is throughout. Yes, it's okay to eat popcorn for dinner. Yes, a dip is a meal. Yes, you can just eat cheese with your hands. I gotta say, though, there is A LOT of cheese and dairy in this book. And, it's true, if I could eat dairy, a lot of my eating problems would be solved, but alas.

Still, I love the energy of the book and how funny and relentlessly kind Eby is. From the introduction:
When food felt like a chore, I kept reminding myself: the best food is the food that you'll eat. This is the mantra of this book. Michael Pollan famously had three rules for eating: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." That's nice for him! Here, we're gonna stop with the first one. And we're going to make it easy.
And there are a lot of easy ideas in here! Frittatas! Hummus! Smoothies! For when you're too tired to even chew!

This is more of a survival guide than a cookbook, though, as some of the cooking advice is a bit on the thin side, and if you're new to cooking, you might not know, for example, that you'll want to undercook pasta if you're putting it into a casserole, something Eby fails to mention. The book is probably best for someone who already knows the basics, but just can't imagine lifting a spoon or picking up a frying pan. Eby has a lot of suggestions for things to cook in the toaster oven and the microwave, and the most involved this book gets is casseroles and stirfrys. There are even two (2) quick desserts.

Recommended! Though if you have dietary restrictions, you'll have to do the extra work yourself to make this book work for you (just like every other day) and large sections of it might not, but I think it's still worth it for the inspiration and the reminder to go easy on yourself. You're doing the best you can.
torachan: karkat from homestuck looking bored (karkat bored)
Travis ([personal profile] torachan) wrote2025-08-19 08:17 pm
Entry tags:

Daily Happiness

1. Both yesterday and today I had longish meetings that started at three, so I didn't get home until later, but for the rest of the week all my meetings are earlier, so I should be able to finish up sooner (or at least come home earlier and finish up there).

2. Yesterday one of our store managers turned in her two weeks notice, which sucks, as she is a good manager and also I like her personally, but she has to move back to Hawaii for family reasons. When I mentioned that to our company president, though, he said that if she's interested, they can probably find her a position at one of our Hawaii stores. It's not as easy as transferring locations within California, because while they're under our same parent company, they're separate from us, but it looks very likely, and she's interested, so I'm glad for her about that. (In terms of what will happen to the store she's at now, thankfully it's not one of our further away stores, so it should be easy to sort out a new manager.)

3. The armrests on this sofa are perfectly cat height.

torachan: maru the cat sitting in a bucket (maru)
Travis ([personal profile] torachan) wrote2025-08-18 09:18 pm
Entry tags:

Daily Happiness

1. The area manager who has been out on maternity leave for three months is back to work today. I'm glad to have her back, but wow there was a lot to catch her up on while she's been gone. I feel like I did so much talking today lol.

2. Tomorrow I have a meeting in the afternoon, but can have a leisurely morning, which I am looking forward to, as today was spent almost entirely with the aforementioned catching up and then an afternoon meeting, and I got home lateish and didn't really have much time to do other stuff, either work or personal.

3. Tuxie loves curling up under these plants.

musesfool: a baseball and bat on the grass (the crack of ash on horsehide)
i did it all for the robins ([personal profile] musesfool) wrote2025-08-18 10:15 pm

i don't know how you keep on giving

Just ordered some not really necessary stuff from Penzey's since they've got a 25% off everything (but gift cards) sale going until midnight. Also ordered some cute monstera-leaf-shaped earrings because sometimes I need cute new earrings. And a couple of new books and a dress with llamas on it for Baby Miss L.

I guess I needed a little retail therapy...

Here's a cool link: On Set for The Pitt Season Two: Noah Wyle and the Cast Finally Lift the Curtain (contains some spoilers for season 2).

And here is a cute video of a bunch of NY Mets being interviewed at the Little League classic. #LFGM

*
cimorene: Olive green willow leaves on a parchment background (trees)
Cimorene ([personal profile] cimorene) wrote2025-08-18 09:00 pm
Entry tags:

Chicken Florentine

I posted a few weeks ago about Florentine omelette, a recipe we really liked, after I saw it mentioned in a book (neither of us had heard of it previously).

Florentine or à la Florentine is a term from classic French cuisine that refers to dishes that typically include a base of cooked spinach, a protein component and Mornay sauce. Chicken Florentine is the most popular version. Because Mornay sauce is a derivation of béchamel sauce which includes roux and requires time and skill to prepare correctly, many contemporary recipes use simpler cream-based sauces.


A Florentine omelette doesn't have Mornay sauce; it's just an omelette with spinach and cheese filling (parmesan and gruyere traditional). However, eggs Florentine is a common café/diner dish from the UK and Australia, a breakfast sandwich with a poached egg, spinach, and sauce on an English muffin. (People seem to expect Hollandaise instead of a Mornay sauce in that case.) Chicken Florentine might be the oldest version: that idea is out there, but it might be apocryphal too. The history of the term and the style is colorful but probably not accurate:

Culinary lore attributes the term to 1533, when Catherine de Medici of Florence married Henry II of France. She supposedly brought a staff of chefs, lots of kitchen equipment and a love of spinach to Paris, and popularized Florentine-style dishes. Food historians have debunked this story, and Italian influence on French cuisine long predates this marriage.[4] Pierre Franey considered this theory apocryphal, but embraced the term Florentine in 1983.[5] Auguste Escoffier included a recipe for sole Florentine in his 1903 classic Le guide culinaire, translated into English as A Guide to Modern Cookery.


(Quotes from Wikipedia, Florentine (culinary term))

Because Chicken Florentine was trendy in the US in the mid 20th century, the popular English-language versions of the recipe have suffered from simplification. Recipes from the midcentury reportedly used mushroom soup. Modern ones overwhelmingly use cream instead of Mornay sauce; it was necessary to put "Mornay" in the search terms before I found any recipes with it (because 1. it's not hard to make a roux, like what are you talking about? & 2. we wanted to try the more authentic recipe). We looked at three and used this one because the Mornay sauce called for wine, mustard powder, and nutmeg. We didn't use gruyere, though, just parmesan, and served it over white rice and it was sooooooo good. So delicious.
torachan: a cartoon bear eating a large sausage (magical talking bear prostitute)
Travis ([personal profile] torachan) wrote2025-08-17 08:29 pm
Entry tags:

Daily Happiness

1. We had a nice time at Disneyland this morning (overcast and low temps most of the time and very light crowds) and successfully got the Kuzco sipper! We try not to collect the popcorn buckets and sippers because they don't actually get used and are just decorative, but take up a lot of space, but Kuzco's poison is always a must buy.

2. I don't have to go to Irvine at all this week, which is nice. I do have meetings in Gardena every day, but that's like less than half the drive.

3. Jasper looks so solemn!