Daily Happiness
Apr. 28th, 2026 07:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
torachan1. Last night when I took a shower the water never got that hot, and I thought it odd because while Carla had taken a shower, it was hours before and should have warmed back up within 15-20 minutes. Then this morning I did dishes and the water never got above warm-ish, and that was even having it fully on hot and not using the cold tap at all.
I went out to check the water heater only to find that sometime between when it was installed (eight years ago, according to my journal) and now, the sort of shed/add-on thing that it's inside had shifted slightly so that the door was now sitting below the adjoining back steps and couldn't open at all. Thankfully the door is wood, and we have a small saw, so I sawed off the bottom bit of the door so it could open (it is old and crappy anyway, so this is not damaging it or anything).
The water heater has a thing on the front that helpfully tells you what the issue is if the light is red and blinks X number of times. It was blinking 7 times, which is gas or valve failure, so we called a plumber and they said that replacing the broken part would cost like $400 plus over a thousand in labor, which seemed ridiculous. A new one is about $800, and they said we could go get one and they could install it, but they were quoting like $1800 for the replacement and removal, which again seems ridiculous. In my journal entry eight years ago, we were charged for one hour labor and free removal, which was a different plumber. I know prices have gone up a lot in the intervening years but that seems excessive.
So since I didn't think we'd be able to get a water heater in our car to bring it home anyway, I told them we'd just pay for their diagnostics today and get back to them. I ordered a new water heater from Home Depot and they delivered it today and we called the plumber from last time to have them come out tomorrow. They couldn't give us an estimate over the phone, but I feel it can't help but be cheaper than today's guys.
Anyway, we still have some warm-ish water we can at least use for washing dishes, and maybe just save the showers for tomorrow after they install the new one.
2. I was already planning on working from home today, which worked out well for all the plumbing stuff.
3. First puzzle finished since getting back from vacation:
This one was a lot of fun. I think when I bought it I saw some other similar ones, so I might have to check those out.
4. I've been sleeping better and waking up at my usual time again for several days in a row now, so I'm feeling a lot better about that. Now that I have this morning walk routine, it was really throwing me off to be waking up so much later.
5. Cutie Molly.
I went out to check the water heater only to find that sometime between when it was installed (eight years ago, according to my journal) and now, the sort of shed/add-on thing that it's inside had shifted slightly so that the door was now sitting below the adjoining back steps and couldn't open at all. Thankfully the door is wood, and we have a small saw, so I sawed off the bottom bit of the door so it could open (it is old and crappy anyway, so this is not damaging it or anything).
The water heater has a thing on the front that helpfully tells you what the issue is if the light is red and blinks X number of times. It was blinking 7 times, which is gas or valve failure, so we called a plumber and they said that replacing the broken part would cost like $400 plus over a thousand in labor, which seemed ridiculous. A new one is about $800, and they said we could go get one and they could install it, but they were quoting like $1800 for the replacement and removal, which again seems ridiculous. In my journal entry eight years ago, we were charged for one hour labor and free removal, which was a different plumber. I know prices have gone up a lot in the intervening years but that seems excessive.
So since I didn't think we'd be able to get a water heater in our car to bring it home anyway, I told them we'd just pay for their diagnostics today and get back to them. I ordered a new water heater from Home Depot and they delivered it today and we called the plumber from last time to have them come out tomorrow. They couldn't give us an estimate over the phone, but I feel it can't help but be cheaper than today's guys.
Anyway, we still have some warm-ish water we can at least use for washing dishes, and maybe just save the showers for tomorrow after they install the new one.
2. I was already planning on working from home today, which worked out well for all the plumbing stuff.
3. First puzzle finished since getting back from vacation:
This one was a lot of fun. I think when I bought it I saw some other similar ones, so I might have to check those out.
4. I've been sleeping better and waking up at my usual time again for several days in a row now, so I'm feeling a lot better about that. Now that I have this morning walk routine, it was really throwing me off to be waking up so much later.
5. Cutie Molly.
I opened and opened
Apr. 28th, 2026 07:43 pmoliviacirceI have two Andrea Gibson poems for you today, since I couldn't pick and also missed yesterday.
( Instead of Depression )
*
( How the Worst Day of My Life Became the Best )
( Instead of Depression )
*
( How the Worst Day of My Life Became the Best )
Our Party Nearly Wiped and Then Everything Went Downhill, Vol. 1
Apr. 28th, 2026 10:08 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
mangabookshelf_feedBy Ameria and kodamazon. Released in Japan as “Zenmetsu End wo Shi ni Monogurui de Kaihishita. Party ga Yanda” by Enterbrain. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Leah Sargent.
Our main character, Walker, remembers his past life from Japan, and also that he’s in a grimdark manga that begins with an adventuring party getting murdered (him) and raped and murdered (the rest of his party) by a monster almost no one has defeated called Grim Reaper. He remembers all this just in time to figure out a way to defeat it. He does not remember this in time to avoid losing an eye and a leg to it. Now he’s recuperating in the Church and trying to combine his stoic, overly serious in-world memories with his somewhat current personality, as well as try to work out if he can ever use a sword again. Because boy, does Walker love swords. He’s invented a new sword style this world doesn’t know. Which is probably why he was able to survive. As for the rest of his party… well, they’re a bit traumatized and guilt-ridden. He really should do something about that too.
Things that annoyed me about this book:
• Lisellarte, the girl with the giant witch hat on the cover, is a supposedly hundred year old magic user who acts like a 7-year-old child most of the time, even before the tragic event that starts things off. She feels like she was added to fulfill the “loli” quotient.
• Euritia, a 13-year-old swordswoman who has a problem with men constantly trying to pick her up, has decided that the best way to deal with her grief is to kill everyone who even comes close to being against Walker.
• Atri, the obligatory Amazon girl, has been told by her grandmother that when she finds the one she loves she needs to “Accept his seed”, but of course every time she tries to he assumes she’s trying to fight him because he is dense.
• Walker himself started off (in the fantasy world) as a stoic blank slate dedicated to his sword fighting and his party. Adding the memories of his past life mostly makes him more annoying than anything else, and the book could easily have happened without any of that.
• Anze, the holy woman who knows their party, gets the fanservice jokes. I’m mostly annoyed at this as otherwise the book is relatively free of a leering fanservice gaze. There are rape mentions throughout, as that’s what originally happened to the party in the “manga”, but Walker doesn’t see the girls as anything but family.
• This is far more serious than I expected it to be, and that works to its detriment. I had assumed, based on the premise, we’d be in for some yandere stuff, and that’s true, but it’s really mild and not funny. Honestly, I wish there was more yandere stuff, it might lighten up the book.
• Most importantly, though, is that the author’s barely disguised fetish in this book isn’t yanderes or lolis or large-breasted nuns. It’s the girls all crying brokenly and feeling guilt-ridden and sad. They say in the afterword this is true, I’m not reading into it. And that makes this a different kind of book. It’s not about this group having to overcome a severe setback and tragedy, about Walker overcoming his disability, and about the girls regaining their confidence. We won’t see the girls regaining their confidence because the sad crying guilt-ridden monologues are the point. This is about the reader going “awwww” while seeing them castigate themselves.
And you know what that is? It’s torture porn. Bye-bye. You weren’t enjoyed.
[ SECRET POST #7053 ]
Apr. 28th, 2026 06:01 pmcase posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
fandomsecrets⌈ Secret Post #7053 ⌋
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Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
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vital functions (ish)
Apr. 28th, 2026 10:29 pmkaberettLast week I:
- finished weaving in the ends on A's gloves (before we hit site for the first event of the year)
- read more She's A Beast
- ate a bunch of food I didn't have to cook (current experiment: do Lichfield brownie bars only taste That Good in a field?)
- explored Steeplechase LRP Centre when it had PEOPLE on it (and also when it didn't)
- including seeing a green woodpecker!
- and SO many birds of prey
- made a bunch of unilateral decisions about where tents would go directly affecting two other departments in response to external constraints, and redesigned internal tent layout on the fly in response to different external constraints, and... it all worked???
- rethought several steps in the lost property process and goodness that works way better and is much less stressful
and then today has been about half and half "sleep" and "endless lost property paperwork". And Now: To Bed.
The Wild Shore, by Kim Stanley Robinson
Apr. 28th, 2026 10:55 amrachelmanija
This was Robinson's first novel, one of a set of three set in future Orange County, Californias, exploring three different futures for America. The second one is about a future much like the present day, hyper-capitalist and dystopian. The third is set in an ecotopia which apparently involves lots of softball. (I've only read The Wild Shore, and gleaned this information from reviews of the others.) After reading The Ministry of the Future, I thought I'd give Robinson another try, and this book sounded most relevant to my personal interests. (I've attempted Years of Rice and Salt multiple times and never gotten very far in. It sounds so interesting!)
The Wild Shore is set about sixty years after the US was shattered by multiple neutron bombs, then quarantined by the rest of the world. It's now a bunch of extremely small, struggling towns which are kept separated from each other as the rest of the world uses satellite imagery to bomb them any time they attempt to do something like build railroad tracks. The California coast is patrolled by Japanese vessels who prevent them from sailing too far out. No one in the book has any idea who bombed the US or why, but given the quarantine I assume the US started the war and someone else finished it.
The book is narrated by Henry, who is 17 and lives in a village of 60. He hangs out with a bunch of mostly-indistinguishable other teenage boys. (I spent three-quarters of the book thinking Steve and Nicolin were two different boys. They are not. I wish writers wouldn't randomly call characters by their first or last name.) They fish and farm and trade with scavengers. Henry is the prize student of Tom, one of four elders who recall the pre-catastrophe days. It is immediately obvious that Tom's teachings are a mix of real and complete bullshit, but as the younger generation has no context or means of fact-checking, they tend to think it's either all true or all bullshit.
The village gets contacted by the remnants of San Diego, which wants to build a rail line and fight back against the quarantine. Henry gets sucked into this, with disastrous results.
This book is SLOW. I often like books that are mostly about daily life, but Henry's daily life was not that interesting - he spends a lot of time hanging out with boys and talking and thinking about girls and daddy issues, and you can get that in any contemporary novel about teenage boys. The only real character is Tom - everyone else is lightly sketched in at best. Girls and women are only present as girlfriends, potential girlfriends, and moms. (There's one girl who's the leader of the farmers, who are mostly women - the men are mostly fishers - but she doesn't get much to do.) The book was just barely interesting enough that I finished it, but it didn't end anywhere more interesting than the rest of it.
( Read more... )
Content note: Characters use racial slurs for Japanese people.
May London meetup
Apr. 28th, 2026 04:16 pmcaptainawkward_feedAnnouncement: the audience for these has changed, so I’m going to do them once every three or four months instead of monthly. So please come to this May one if you’re interested, there won’t be another until probably August.
9th May, 1pm, Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, SE1 8XX.
We will be on Level 5 blue side (the upper levels are no longer closed to non-ticket-holders), but I don’t know exactly where on the floor. It will depend on where we can find a table.
I have shoulder length brown hair, and will have my plush Chthulu which looks like this:
Please obey any rules posted in the venue.
The venue has lifts to all floors and accessible toilets. The accessibility map is here:
Click to access 21539-32_Access-Map_DIGI.pdf
The food market outside (side away from the river) is pretty good for all sorts of requirements, and you can also bring food from home, or there are lots of cafes on the riverfront.
Other things to bear in mind:
1. Please make sure you respect people’s personal space and their choices about distancing.
2. We have all had a terrible time for the last six years. Sharing your struggles is okay and is part of what the group is for, but we need to be careful not to overwhelm each other or have the conversation be entirely negative. Where I usually draw the line here is that personal struggles are fine to talk about but political rants are discouraged, but I may have to move this line on the day when I see how things go. Don’t worry, I will tell you!
3. Probably lots of us have forgotten how to be around people (most likely me as well), so here is permission to walk away if you need space. Also a reminder that we will all react differently, so be careful to give others space if they need.
Please RSVP if you’re coming so I know whether or not we have enough people. If there’s no uptake I will cancel a couple of days before.
kate DOT towner AT gmail DOT com
Imperial Reincarnation: I Came, I Saw, I Survived, Vol. 5
Apr. 28th, 2026 10:09 ammangabookshelf_feedBy Masekinokatasa and Kaito Shinobu. Released in Japan as “Tenseishitara Koutei deshita: Umarenagara no Koutei wa Konosaki Ikinokoreru ka?” by TO Books. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Gwendolyn Warner.
Of all the series to be reminded of while reading this isekai military fantasy, I was not expecting it to be The Executioner and Her Way of Life. But with this volume, it’s unavoidable. Executioner has at its core the premise that being isekaid’s to another world can be bad, especially if you’re not the only one. Catastrophic world ending things happen because Formerly Japanese folks get magical power and abilities and go slightly mad. And while that’s not happening here, it is very clear that this world has the potential for also wiping out civilizations because of their interdimensional travelers. Not only is Carmine not the only reincarnator, but there are absolute piles of them out there, some of whom are on his side but some of whom are working for the enemy… and easily manipulable. And they’re also having children, who sometimes have to suffer for the sins of their parents. Carmine will have a rough ride ahead.
When we last left Carmine, he was finding that his legendary victory was not without a cost, that being everyone suddenly deciding that now is the time to turn and wipe him out. Fortunately, (military things) and he is able to return to the palace, where plans are afoot for him to marry Rosaria… at least in two years, once he’s fifteen, the age of adulthood in this world. He also is urged by Rosaria to take Nadine and Vera-Sylvia as his concubines, which he pushes back against at first but is reminded that this world runs on politics rather than love and caves in… that said, he clearly also likes them, and they love him. After this he goes on a campaign to take Teyanave… which ends up going very badly indeed because (military things). He is barely able to make it back in time for his wedding.
As you may have guessed by reading the above, I am the wrong audience for this series, even though I enjoy it a great deal. I really do not have any interest in the battles, the strategies, and how we get from point A to point B while losing as few men as possible. This series, and this book, really do love that. Expect more of me eliding in future reviews. For now, let me focus on my favorite part, which is Carmine and his wives. He is a classic case of “does not realize what a smooth player he is”, and it’s very amusing seeing him say bluntly to Rosaria, who lives in a world where everything is couched in subtle metaphor, how gorgeous she is and how much he owes to her. Other than that, the most interesting thing in the book was the introduction of Mei Hatsume… erm, Lady Valenriehl, the daughter of a reincarnator with a grudge against the Church but a fantastic mind for taking apart magic things. I like her. Carmine is very wary of her.
If you like military history you will eat this up. If you don’t, you are me, and I still liked the smaller parts of the book that were not that.
Icon Game
Apr. 28th, 2026 02:15 amerinptahReply to this post saying 'icon', and I will tell you my favorite icon of yours. Then post this to your own journal using your own favorite icon if you're one of those inhuman things that are actually capable of choosing betweenYOUR PRECIOUS BABIES!userpics.
I occasionally rotate my default icon, going between the ones I think are both "general, not expressing a specific reaction/emotion" and "especially pretty." Whatever I have as current default is usually the one I like most right now.
Setting this entry to the computing one. Decades ago, when I was really little, my family had a computer that would play this pattern of shifting squares -- it must have been a screensaver of some kind, I can't imagine what else it would be -- but I've never been able to find it in collections of retro/classic screensavers. And "abstract color-changing squares" isn't something you can narrow down on google. If not for somebody else making this icon with the exact right colors/combinations/pacing, I wouldn't be sure if it was something I really saw, or just something I imagined.
There's a special kind of nostalgia to it. Like a screenshot from a cartoon that blew your mind when you were eight, and then you never managed to watch it again, so there's a magic to the memory that never got tainted or tarnished by "oh no, it didn't hold up."
...so, uh, does anyone reading this know what this pattern was called? What OS was it shipped with? Who came up with it? Or at least, what niche Reddit community do I need to ask to solve this mystery?
Daily Happiness
Apr. 27th, 2026 08:30 pmtorachan1. I got my hair cut this morning. It's been about six weeks instead of the usual four because four would have been when we were in Japan, and she didn't have any (convenient for me) openings last week. I actually didn't mind the length it had gotten to, but I went ahead and set my next appointment for four weeks anyway.
2. I worked from home today and am considering working from home every day this week except Friday, as I really don't have anything requiring me to go in. I had multiple snuggle sessions with Jasper today, which is a pretty good reason to stay home, IMO!
3. Tuxie was out in the cat house this morning. I'm always so happy to see him using it.
2. I worked from home today and am considering working from home every day this week except Friday, as I really don't have anything requiring me to go in. I had multiple snuggle sessions with Jasper today, which is a pretty good reason to stay home, IMO!
3. Tuxie was out in the cat house this morning. I'm always so happy to see him using it.
Pick of the Week: Doggos and Goddos
Apr. 27th, 2026 10:21 pmmangabookshelf_feed
MICHELLE: Honestly, I’m not entirely sold on Merit and the Egyptian God, but I do like grumpy love interests and it’s from Hana to Yume, so those things convince me to give it a shot!
SEAN: I just can’t resist the look and the idea behind DOGGO, so I’m picking that this week.
ANNA: I’m generally intrigued by Hana to Yume titles, so I’m going to join with Michelle in picking Merit and the Egyptian God.
ASH: And just to even things out, I’m going to make DOGGO my pick. I’m in the mood for something ridiculous and/or absurd; it seems as though this series should fit the bill.
KATE: Sign me up for a taking yakuza pug! DOGGO is my pick as well.
Witch Hat Atelier + Sailor Moon Icons
Apr. 27th, 2026 07:21 pmlinky posting in anime_mangaPosted both some Witch Hat Atelier and Sailor Moon icons to my icon comm! 16 icons in total. :)
Find them here atchemyxstory
Find them here at
chemyxstory[ SECRET POST #7052 ]
Apr. 27th, 2026 04:53 pmcase posting in fandomsecrets⌈ Secret Post #7052 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
01.
( More! )
Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 27 secrets from Secret Submission Post #1007.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.