Another 4 inches of snow? And high winds? And "arctic chill"? I cannot.
I am trying the applesauce loaf again, this time with some chunks of "Gold Rush" apples in the batter and making sure not to use lumpy brown sugar. Fingers crossed.
Amtrak's 2FA system is garbage and I may have to contend with Julie, my nemesis (Amtrak's phone customer "service" bot) to get to New York to see Dessa in March (and sneak out of a conference early); my splurge on Restaurant Week was kind of a waste of money (pasta oversalted, rosé weirdly bland); I am sick of all my clothes, no doubt because I have been wearing all of them at the same time for the past month, and the idea of acquiring different clothes is the epitome of exchanging money for bads and disservices.
1. Our hotel tickets are all sorted! We're going to be staying at three different hotels this time as opposed to just one last time, so that will be interesting. Originally I had wanted to just make it two, one in Tokyo and one in Osaka, but the hotel near Universal Studios Japan only has a hotel shuttle earlier in the day and there's only two flights daily from LA to Osaka, both of which arrive later in the evening, after the shuttle stops running. So the options are take a taxi (expensive and not what I want to spend our money on) or the train, which requires multiple transfers and is not ideal after a twelve hour flight. The shuttle does run to the area around Osaka station all night, so since we're only planning to go to Universal Studios two of the four days we'll be in Osaka, we decided to get a hotel in the city for a couple days then switch to one closer to Universal Studios for the time we'll be at the park. For the Tokyo leg of the trip, even though we won't be doing Disneyland every day, we did opt to get a hotel near the parks and just stay there the whole time, even the days we go into the city, because our Disneyland days will be spread out.
2. We got Popeye's for lunch today. We both really like their chicken, but there's none around here. In fact, for some reason we have no fast food chicken options nearby except Chick-fil-A, which we refuse to eat at. But we happened to be near Popeye's, so we took the opportunity.
3. I took a longer than usual walk this morning and stopped at the fancy donut place. They have a couple new Valentine's donuts and I got a strawberry chocolate malasada, which had a chocolate coating and was filled with like strawberry pudding. It was super tasty.
Last night I went to the Electric Blocks and also branched out a bit along the east side. Still need to make a list of what else I want to hit before the festival is over.
After I wound up at Wonderlove and had the first cider I'd had in a while, nice dry one. They've got screens with 3 separate Olympic feeds on it so there was skiing, skating and curling all playing at once.
An American spectator at a figure skating event in Milan held up a U.S. flag with a message apologizing to the world. Photo credit: Vincent Alban / The New York Times
Hi, all, and happy Sunday!
Hope you’re enjoying the Superbowl—or not, if football isn’t your thing. I’m watching only for the halftime show. Gotta support Bad Bunny and Greenday!
We had another rough week, but we’re still seeing wins—in fact, quite a lot of them. So enjoy this long list of all the ways we triumphed against fascism, cruelty, stupidity and avarice. People exactly like you are the only reason these victories are happening. It’s your courage, your strength, and your determination that’s carrying us through. Thanks for that.
Please remember to share this list with anyone who says “nothing’s going our way.” Quite the contrary—a lot is. And the more we celebrate it the more likely we get more like it.
Have a great day!
Read This 📖
This article will make you weep, but also totally inspire you. Read it.
Celebrate This! 🎉
JD Vance got booed at the Olympic opening ceremony in Milan.
More than 170 countries — including the U.S.! — have agreed to phase out hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), a group of gases used in refrigerators, air conditioners and other cooling systems that heat the atmosphere more than almost any other pollutant on Earth. HUGE.
Just hours after MoveOn delivered a petition demanding that the NFL stop ICE from targeting fans, workers, and communities at Super Bowl LX the NFL’s Chief of Security announced that there would be no ICE operations at the Super Bowl this Sunday.
An anti ICE chant broke out at AEW Dynamite (a professional wrestling match!)
In New York, Attorney General Letitia James announced an initiative that will send trained observers to monitor federal immigration operations in her state.
A Minneapolis City Council committee delayed action on renewing liquor licenses for two Minneapolis hotels that have housed ICE officers.
Bad Bunny’s genre-bending DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, became the first Spanish-language album to win album of the year. His acceptance speech began with the line: "Before I say thanks to God, I'm gonna say ICE out. We're not savage. We're not animals. We're not aliens. We are humans and we are Americans.”
Massachusetts and Minnesota utilities are offering discounted electricity rates for customers who use heat pumps to keep warm through the winter, with Colorado set to follow.
10 European countries have formed an alliance to build out 100 gigawatts of offshore wind power and transform the North Sea into what German Chancellor Friedrich Merz called “the world’s largest clean energy reservoir.”
Tom Homanannounced that 700 ICE officers will be immediately withdrawn from Minnesota.
Do you remember when I invited you to send messages of support to Minnesotans via a local activist there? Well, he’s been putting your messages up around the state AND a wonderful web designer launched this website as a permanent place to share them more broadly. Thanks for your help!
New records show that “Abolish ICE" was submitted 9,200 times for Chicago's snowplow naming contest.
A Minneapolis cycling community, of which Alex Pretti was a part, organized a memorial ride in his honor — and thousands of local cyclists joined. It was one of more than 200 memorial rides organized worldwide.
A federal judge struck down the Interior Department’s order to halt work on a multibillion-dollar wind farm off the coast of New York State.
Donald Trump and the Republicans are losing their newest voters at alarmingly fast rates, leading to the rapid emergence of one of the worst political environments Republicans have seen in years.
A new analysis shows that for the past two decades, U.S. forests have been absorbing carbon dioxide at a historic rate, increasing storage by about 66 million metric tons per year from 2005 to 2022.
Federal Judge Ana Reyes blocked the Trump administration efforts to end TPS for some 350,000 Haitians.
Almost 1,000 Springfield, OH residents packed into a church last Sunday to show support for Haitian residents waiting to learn the fate of TPS. Dozens of attendees held signs that read, “Community Over Fear,” “Families Belong Together” and “Love Thy Neighbor.”
We stopped Senate Dems from caving to the crypto giveaway! All Democratic Senators on the Ag Committee voted NO on the crypto bill! Nice job, y’all!
The DCCC launched HouseRepublicanPriceHike.com as a tool for Americans to explore how much Republicans’ extreme agenda is costing them on everyday items at the grocery store.
In GA, the Fulton County Commissioner announced that the county is filing a motion to challenge the seizure of 2020 ballots, calling the FBI search warrant “not proper.”
The reverse side of the U.S. Mint’s 2026 Sacagawea $1 coin will now feature Polly Cooper, a woman from the Oneida tribe known for helping George Washington’s Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.
A Multnomah County jury determined that four men who pepper-sprayed and clubbed anti-fascist patrons at a bar called Cider Riot in Portland in May 2019 must pay the cider maker’s owner $760,007 in damages.
Despite good weather and a forty-one species list, the morning never quite made it to wonderful. No mixed flock, no phoebes, and the only raptor was a last-minute Turkey Vulture. The morning started with American Robins flying in from the East to the trees and snags on the ridge crest. They seemed to come in groups of ten, lots of chirping and some singing; I put the number at fifty, but there were probably many more. A couple of hours later, on return, there were only a few. We'll see how many there are down in Wildcat Canyon tomorrow. I also saw a small flock of Cedar Waxwings, also flying west. There have been so few this season. There was a new arrival, though, the first Tree Swallow I've had up there. ( The list: )
There were many frustrations (merlin a major source) but the worst was standing in the trail under a wooded hillside, hearing the sound of many small wings, and not being quick enough to see what flew over before they were behind the ridge. Red-winged Blackbirds, possibly, but I'll never know.
部首 手 parts 10-15 抚, to comfort; 抛, to throw; 抢, to snatch; 护, to protect; 报, to report; 抬, to raise; 抱, to hug; 抽, to pull out; 担, to take responsibility; 拆, to tear open; 拇, thumb; 拉, to pull; 抛, to cast away; 拌, to mix; 拍, to pat/to photograph/racket; 拐, to turn a corner; 拒, to refuse; 拔, to pull out ( pinyin ) https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?cdqrad=64
[Edit to add: Last week I lost my wallet on the bus. Reported it to lost and found right away, but no luck. It wasn't stolen/no unexpected credit card transactions, just made me feel like an idiot. But I was able to start the ball rolling on getting stuff replaced, and debit card I was able to get in person rather than by mail, so that was great. I almost mentioned it in the first draft of this post but it's like...it's fine now, I'm not worried.
Then I wrote this entire post and only later did I realize I might. Have left my e-reader with all the annotations/highlights/stuff to remember I just made. On the train. aaaAAAa I will call the lost and found tomorrow but, really feeling like an idiot again. D: ]
Very close to hearing back on the thing I've been working on for the last few months. If it's a rejection I know I'll get over it eventually, but just the nerves of being on tenterhooks for the last few days.
A couple weeks ago we had a snowstorm that, while not as epic as anticipated, was still enough to require a lot of road thawing, so I got two and a half days off of work, which was great. The joke is that I make fun of people out here for not being able to drive in the snow, because where I grew up, most people can and do drive in the snow. "But you can't drive in the snow either." Right, but I also can't drive at all, so that's totally different :P
Anyway, obviously this was a good excuse to revisit "The Worst Journey in the World" and have emotions about it all over again! Maybe this time around I will even get to writing kinkmeme fills because I have a lot emotions, but it's just so hard to keep all the details/canon review stuff in my head at once...
This is probably going to repeat myself from several previous posts (see, "polar nonsense" tag), but I wanted to have it in one place:
Title: Spare A Broom... Word Count: ~1,100 Rating: NC-17 Characters & Pairing: Harry Potter/Katie Bell Content: PWP, casual sex, kissing, cunnilingus, vaginal sex, cowgirl position, mildest of femdom if you squint. Disclaimer: The characters, settings and HP Franchise as a whole are owned by JKR and not by me. I make no profit from writing this piece of fanfiction. Summary: ...ride your seeker instead. A/n: I wanted to write a little porn this sunday. Hope you enjoy.
so as I say I'm not hugely hopeful for this, but hey, maybe I'm being unfair to it.
Writing. Did you know that getting knowledge out of your own head and into other people's is a specific set of skills that has very little to do with how well you know the things you're trying to communicate? TRY TO LOOK SHOCKED, PLEASE. (6.3k words, and am absolutely in an Iterative Cycle of trying to make the introduction more-or-less work. It is progressing, just... very slowly.)
Listening. I realised that Hidden Almanac was possibly in fact exactly a useful sort of thing to listen to while Wrangling Laundry, and have therefore started again from the beginning, at least in part as an attempt to actually listen to some of the episodes I dozed through while they were playing in the car...
Playing. Incomplete White Puzzle progresses. (Today I have added I think three pieces to the contiguous section, two of which I had already joined to each other as a free-foating lump, and made another couple of free-floating lump connections.)
I think we also did a bit more Inkulinati before I got horrendously distracted by Puzzle. And the sudoku fixation continues, though it is at least ramping down a little.
Cooking. I have been having A Rough Week brain-wise, but I have today managed to make some bread, and I did earlier in the week gently fry up some celery and garlic to add to the mashed potato & parsnip that we were having with Vegetables and Veg Sossij. I think that is about the extent of it.
Eating. VEGETABLES, including a couple of peppers from an overwintered plant. (Restricted diet for a week up until the Tuesday just gone, so the return of Fibre was Extremely Welcome.) Favourite chocolate stars with raspberries. Fruit With Skin On. Lebkuchen. Stollen. Seeds and nuts.
Growing. I think the nematodes (applied as a split dose a few days apart) have dealt? at least temporarily? with the sodding Sciarid Flies? for now?
Lemongrass needs pricking out. Physalis are showing zero indication that they have any intention of germinating, which is mildly annoying. There are still three not-dead Lithops seedlings, though I doubt they're the same three as last week. Orchids getting increasingly enthusiastic about their plans to flower.
Have not managed to get anything else sown, yet.
Observing. Lots of bulbs: daffodils and crocuses various and snowdrops are Definitely Underway, at this point. We are fairly convinced that the Yelling from the garden around dusk is Amorous Foxes, though we have not (yet?) bestirred ourselves to ask the internet if what we think we're hearing is in fact what we're hearing...
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