1. Finished another puzzle!



This is from the same new series as the Stitch one, but this one has proper square corners. Carla is actually the one who finished it (and worked on it a lot throughout), though I did do about half of it.

2. I continue to feel very stuffed up but otherwise not sick? I guess I'll take that over being properly sick, but it's not a lot of fun. My lips were so chapped today from breathing through my mouth and I only got about an hour, maybe an hour and a half of sleep last night because I was tossing and turning. Though if I felt properly sick I'd also feel like I could take off work, but since I feel otherwise fine and there's a lot of work to do, I've still been going in (masked).

3. Friday afternoon I was feeling really stressed and anxious about work, which caused me to just keep obsessively running over things in my mind all that night and through Saturday, which is not great when I just want to enjoy the weekend and not think about work, but this week has felt better, like we are making real progress and can meet the deadline and that things will be okay. It just feels like there's a lot on my shoulders at a very late stage in the game, and I don't love that.

4. Chloe's got the right idea.

1. Had a pretty chill day today. Mostly just reading and playing Donkey Kong.

2. After having such good success with a couple other local restaurants we'd been meaning to check out for a while, today we decided to check out another one, a pizza place semi-attached to a little Indian market. They have some interesting toppings as well as standard stuff, and the one that caught our eye was paneer pizza. It has mozzarella but also big slices of paneer, plus red onions and jalapeños. The menu says marinara sauce, but it did not taste like regular marinara sauce. All in all it was super tasty. We had meant to just get a slice each and eat there, but it turns out they don't sell by the slice on weekends, so we got a medium pizza and took it home to eat. My stomach could not eat more than three pieces, but my mouth really wanted to finish the whole thing (sadly I do not like leftover pizza, so Carla will be eating the leftovers instead). Definitely will get that again.

3. Look at this little guy!

1. It was nice and overcast again today. Still very muggy, though. (It even rained a little overnight again.)

2. I beat Donkey Kong Bananza tonight. It's definitely a fun game. Looks like there's a ton of post-game stuff to do, and then there's a (paid, boo) DLC as well. I also want to play Final Fantasy Tactics, which is out at the end of the month, but I'll probably hold off on that and keep playing Donkey Kong for a bit first.

3. The lady at the farmers market had passionfruit bars again. They were soooooo good last week, I was really hoping she'd make them again. And the almond stand was back, so I was able to get my orange almond butter.

4. Jasper's posing for his mall photo.

1. I got tickets to see MCR next October (2026) at the Hollywood Bowl! I didn't realize they were going to be coming back to LA so soon, but gorgeousnerd mentioned it on bluesky the other day so I checked it out and there are three shows here, which went on sale at noon today. I was in the waiting room about fifteen minutes before and then in the queue itself for another ten to fifteen minutes or so. It was surprisingly painless. The last two times I bought tickets for them was much more of a struggle. This time both Carla and I are going, so that will be fun.

2. It was so nice and overcast today (actually rained a bit overnight, but not much) that I took a walk at lunchtime and there was no sun blazing down on me at all, and I was able to do a mile walk without getting sweaty or warm.

3. I interrupted Tuxie mid-groom.

1. Today I had a meeting about one aspect of the upcoming system change that led us to discover something major that IT had totally misunderstood. Me and the other non-IT guy were pretty freaked out about it, especially when the guy leading the meeting kept insisting that this was the way the new system works and there is 100% no way that it could be changed, and also kept insisting that all of us were in the wrong for not having realized this before because of course it works that way, not the way we expected it to work. But in the end it turns out that the system can work the way we need it to work, and also that previous mockups show the fields we need, so I don't know where it went wrong between then, but I'm glad that we discovered this misunderstanding now and can fix it. Very glad that I am working on this project now, too, because there is just too much of a disconnect from the IT side, since none of them understand anything about how a retail operation actually works or what we need the system to do. They just know how the systems work, but not the reason we need them to work a certain way. (And they were supposed to learn more about the workings, but still have not.)

2. We had a nice evening at Disneyland. Especially nice after a stressful afternoon at work!

3. Chloe knows the cutest poses.

1. Got my hair cut this morning. I feel like I just got it cut, but somehow it has been a whole month. As muggy as it's been, I've definitely been feeling it the past few days, even though my hair is very short, even when it's needing a cut. (Sadly, my hair is so thin these days that very short is the only thing I can do that doesn't look terrible.)

2. My afternoon was basically just a string of meetings, but I actually didn't really have much else on the to-do list, since I am still waiting for others to pass things back to me, so that worked out fine.

3. Carla got another couple boxes of the Spider-man blind box lego figures and this time got all the ones we were missing! We still ended up with a ton more dupes, though, so now I am offering these ones as well as these ones if anyone wants. Totally free to anyone in the US, just let me know.

4. Molly loves that top corner of my bed so much. It's her favorite.

1. For lunch today we walked up to the neighborhood independent market, which does grilling in the parking lot on weekends during the summer. Well, I guess summer is officially over as they were not set up today. :( We'd been hoping to get a tri-tip sandwich, but I guess we'll have to wait for next summer. Instead we went a few doors down to the restaurant I went to yesterday, and got another grilled cheese, this time (since we'd already been in the mood for a hearty beef sandwich) a grilled cheese with short ribs and pickled onions. It was so good! So we're two for two on that place now.

2. I had some nice snuggle time with Ollie this morning. Actually both yesterday morning and this morning. He just hopped up on my lap and napped for a while. *_*

3. This is a new box. Exactly the same shape as two other boxes we already have in the living room, but everyone is super into it, so I guess we can't get rid of this one now lol.

Currently Reading
The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science
32%. Middle grade book written by Kate McKinnon of SNL. Three sisters have been kicked out of every etiquette school in town and are about to be shipped off to one in Austria when they get an invite to a new etiquette school they'd never heard of, which turns out to be a school for young mad scientists in disguise. It's amusing so far.

Lone Women
6%. Historical horror about a young black woman who has to flee after her parents' deaths, with a mysterious trunk in tow. I've only just started but it seems very interesting so far.

The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State
19%.

Recently Finished
The Murder Next Door
I enjoyed this. Definitely will read the sequel.

A Gallery of Rogues
This was fun. I hope there are eventually more books in the series.

The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter
I really liked this! And it was great as an audiobook, too, read by Kate Reading who also does the Lady Sherlock books. The daughters of Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde team up with the daughters/creations of Dr Moreau, Victor Frankenstein, and Dr Rappaccini (from a story I was not familiar with), along with Holmes and Watson, to solve a string of murders in Whitechapel. This was so much fun and there are two more books in the series that I'm really looking forward to reading.

The Phantom of New York
Very mediocre middle grade book about a boy who moves into a hotel in New York in a sort of half-hearted witness protection program after his father discovers his boss is doing shady things. The boy eventually finds out that he is descended from the Phantom of New York, a superhero from a hundred years ago who protected the city. Not going to bother with the rest of the series.

Yagate Kimi ni Naru vol. 1-2
Cute high school f/f manga about a girl who starts dating another girl in student council, despite feeling like she doesn't really understand love. These were on a free promo on Amazon Japan, but I'm not sure I was that into it that I need to get the rest of the volumes (eight in total).

Bibliomania
Horror manga about a girl who gets sucked into a book that will kill everyone once it has sucked in 666 people (she's 400 something). There is no way out except to go through each page of the book to the beginning, but that causes mutations and eventually death the closer you get. She chooses that anyway. Interesting twist towards the end, but I can't say I particularly enjoyed it. It was okay.

1. We were supposed to get a lot of rain, but that seems to have blown over. We did get a little rain last night (I was awake in bed to hear it, which is always lovely) and it was raining again this morning when I went out for my walk, so instead of walking around the neighborhood and getting wet (I did take an umbrella but it would still be blowing in from the sides) I walked over to the parking structure across the street and just did laps in there for about the same distance I usually walk.

2. Just one more day before the weekend!

3. We've been getting some really delicious grapes lately. They're called autumn crisp, which is not a variety I'd heard of before, but they live up to their name. Suuuuuuper crisp, which is just how I like my grapes, and a nice sweet flavor (I don't like them too sour).

4. Oh, too sleep as easy as a kitty!