torachan: ryu from kimi ni todoke eating ramen (ramen)
1. I had another work from home day. I'm about halfway caught up with my email and fully caught up with teams. Tomorrow I've got a couple meetings, so I've got to go in to the office, but I might work from home again on Thursday to finally catch up on everything.

2. When Carla was out today she stopped at Uncle Tetsu's, a Japanese cheesecake chain. They have a sakura cheesecake right now and we had some after dinner tonight and it was sooooooo good. I normally prefer New York style cheesecake to the Japanese fluffier style, but this was really good consistency and the sakura flavor was amazing.

3. I finished playing The Plucky Squire. Overall it's a pretty fun game, but it is not just a straight action adventure game. There are a bunch of (frankly not that fun) mini games for the boss fights and stuff where you have to play other styles of games and that is not what I signed up for. Like for one character's boss battles you play a Mike Tyson style boxing game, for another it's a rhythm game, and for the third it's a Puzzle Bobble type. Then there are some stealth sequences where you have to sneak past enemies who can kill you instantly if they sense you, and if they sense you there is no way to run to escape, even if you're close to a place you could get away. You're just instantly dead. And the final battle is a space shooter type. The good thing is that if you die in a boss battle you can sometimes restart partway through, not all the way at the beginning, and the stealth sequences have multiple checkpoints and you'll respawn there rather than back at the beginning. But I would still have preferred not to have that "variety" in my action adventure game. Still is a fun game, though. But if you suck at those types of games it might ruin it for you.

4. I finished editing all my Disney Japan pics, so hopefully I can get the last day's posts written up later this week.

5. Jasper is just so handsome.

torachan: (Default)
When I last left off, we had just checked out the big gift shop at the Fantasy Springs hotel and were exploring the land while waiting for our return time for the Peter Pan ride.

More DisneySea adventures! )
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torachan: palmon smiling (palmon)
1. I worked from home today, getting a fair amount of catching up done. Unfortunately I forgot that I also had to double check all my stores' budgets for next month today so that did take some time away from the email and teams catch-up, but I should be able to focus more on that tomorrow. (Probably will mostly work from home tomorrow, too.)

2. We bought a sweater for Alexander for his birthday and even though his birthday is not until next week, gave it to him yesterday so he could try it on and see if it fit, and it was a little big so we said we'd be happy to go exchange it. I was just thinking to exchange it whenever we next go, but there was availability today and Carla felt like going to Disneyland, so while I had to stay home and focus on my email backlog, she went and exchanged the sweater and had a nice morning at DCA. She managed to find all the rest of the hidden easter eggs there (eventually with some help from an online guide) and took pictures, but I'm just going to include those with our next trip post rather than make a separate one. They had Lightning McQueen and Mater ones which are super cute, though.

3. We bought a stereo for the garage and it arrived today. As all modern stereos do these days, it also has bluetooth capability to connect to your phone, but she mainly wanted it for playing actual CDs. Her current CD rack is overflowing, so we need to get another and then move the CDs out to the garage so she can have them out there with the stereo. Nice thing is, unless you're standing right by the door or window, even with it turned up pretty loud you really can't hear much from outside. Amazing what insulation can do!

4. I love the look on Ollie's face here, but he was even cuter before I turned on the light and came in. It wasn't dark but was dim enough that he was really well camouflaged in the box!

solarbird: (korra-on-the-air)

Indivisible reports that these Democratic senators in particular need to hear from their constituents right now to oppose HR22, a bill which would disinfranchise millions of people, mostly women, from voting.

Again, urge these Senators in particular to reject the GOP’s voter suppression bill and protect our freedom to vote:

KELLY (AZ)
WARNOCK (GA)
PETERS (MI)
SHAHEEN (NH)
HASSAN (NH)
CORTEZ MASTO (NV)
ROSEN (NV)

If they aren’t your Senators, give your own a call anyway. You can call directly, or you can use Indivisible’s tool to help you call if you prefer.

HR22 is intentionally a voter suppression bill, and it’s intentionally suppressing votes of married women in particular. You need a birth certificate in person or a passport in person to register, and if you’ve changed your name (by, say, getting married) and haven’t changed your birth certificate to match, and you don’t have a passport (as most people don’t), then last I heard you’re just kinda fucked. You have to get one or the other done, and then get registered to vote, a process which will take months.

This is not an accident. Also, it eliminates registering to vote by mail or online, which is something else they want in order to, again, make it harder to vote.

This lines up with what the far-right openly say that they want, which is either eliminating votes for women entirely or assigning one vote per household, which would be executed by a man (presumably where such exists).

Also, they know that men vote Republican far more than women do, and it’s about making sure they can’t ever lose another election. This is what they’ve done in state after state where they have power, and it’s what they want to do across the country.

This can’t pass. It absolutely cannot pass. Make sure your senators know. Today.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

torachan: ewan mcgregor pulling his glasses down to look over the top (ewan glasses)
1. Back to work tomorrow. I am not enthused about that, but I did really enjoy my time off and I felt like being off for three weeks allowed me to actually disconnect more from work than I usually do if I'm just off a couple days or even a week. I did glance at my email and messages every day, but only responded less than ten times and even when I looked at the phone screen to see the messages, I only did so once or twice a day, rather than multiple times throughout the day. Tomorrow will be the start of a huge catch-up (thousands of messages to get through) and I think I will just work from home tomorrow unless something else comes up, so at least it will be a slow easing back into things. And since it's the last week of the month, there are less meetings, which means for time for catching up.

2. We had a lovely time at DCA this morning. I've heard that easter can be a pretty busy day but while it was getting a little busier by the time we left, it was super light in the first few hours and the weather was great.

3. I love getting shots of the cats looking out the window.

torachan: maru the cat peeking through the blinds and looking grumpy (maru peeking through the blinds)
Last day of the Food and Wine Festival so last chance to ride Soarin' Over California before it goes back to Soarin' Over the World.

Read more... )
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torachan: scott pilgrim pouting (scott pilgrim - pout)
Currently Reading
The Undiscovered Deaths of Grace McGill
26%. The MC is a cleaner who goes in and deep-cleans the houses where people have lain dead and undiscovered for a long time. She stumbles upon a mystery when two of her recent jobs have had the same dried flower at the scene. Pretty interesting so far.

Architectural Follies in America
16%. This is a short, picture-filled book about various odd buildings in the US. Randomly found it in a neighborhood Little Library. It's interesting.

A Drop of Corruption
23%. This has definitely picked up now and I'm a lot more interested in what's going on. Just haven't been making much progress because I've been off work and the majority of my audiobook time is in the car. Also a note on the audiobook, and I had this problem with the otherwise excellent audiobook versions of The Locked Tomb series, but there are pronunciation changes from the first book! I'm guessing that after the first book's audiobook came out, the narrator got feedback from the author and then made changes for the following books, but it's really jarring and I wish that if the author really wanted names/words said a certain way (or in the case of The Locked Tomb, certain accents used) then they would make note of that first, rather than changing mid-series. (And if it's just the narrator making changes rather than author feedback, I wish they wouldn't make those changes, either. Pick a pronunciation and stick to it!)

Hidden Figures
44%.

Recently Finished
Winterborne Home for Mayhem and Mystery
Sequel to Winterborne Home for Vengeance and Virtue. This felt like maybe there was supposed to be more books in the series and it all got wrapped up quickly in the end? It was all right, but I wasn't super into either book.

The Boney Hand
Sequel to Charlie & Frog. Another mystery in the town. This was cute. Seems like the author maybe wanted it to be a series but there haven't been any more books after this.

The Amelia Six
Middle grade book about a group of girls who win an overnight stay at Amelia Earhart's childhood home, but while they're there, her goggles go missing and they have to solve the mystery. It was just all right.

Murderburg
Apparently originally a web comic, this graphic novel is about a small island town inhabited mostly by criminals. The actual name is Muderburg, but everyone calls it Murderburg. The main characters are not even thinly veiled Morticia and Gomez, though the children are not Wednesday and Pugsly. It was fine. Somewhat funny in places but mostly just there.

Break Out
Heavy-handed graphic novel about a world where mysterious and possibly alien cubes appear in the sky and start randomly kidnapping people. But it only happens to teens, so when the governments of the world have done all they can and can't find a way to stop it, they just say well, it's just a few people here and there, we'll just have to live with it. Then the kids save the day. Obviously paralelling school shootings, but it felt like the message was more important than the story itself, because the plot is just one of those types where so many coincidences happen just right that it feels unbelievable.

Do Da Dancin'!: Venice Competition vol. 1-2
I'm not enjoying this quite as much as the original series, but it's good enough that I'll finish it.

Umimachi Diary vol. 8-9
Overall this series was just okay. I originally read the first three volumes on a limited time free promotion and liked them a lot, but when I finally got around to reading the rest of the series now I just found it kind of dragged. Not bad, but just okay.
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solarbird: (korra-on-the-air)

Pretty good turnout in Bothell, counter had over 600 which is a good number given the rain in the morning and the unavoidable timing against Easter. It’s not what we had two weeks ago, but again, conflicts and worse conditions. Still a bit larger than the 2018-era protests, so I’d call that another win.

There were still people on the far downtown bridge, too. There were just gaps in the crowd between us and them.

I’d post pics but I totally forgot my phone, oops. And I actually did, not “lol no phone oops” did.

There was one (1) counter-protestor/heckler on the ground; he didn’t like my “NO KINGS” signs at all and started ranting about how Biden was the real “king” they got rid of. He didn’t have a sign himself and stayed pretty far back; I came across him accidentally while walking around testing our FRS radio range.

(As an aside: FRS handheld radios are f’real, team. Consider getting some and getting practice with them. No license needed, they’re channelised so can’t be used against you as “police scanners,” the range is shockingly good, and even with prices going up they’re super affordable. Ignore the only review on that Best Buy link; those are the exact model we bought. If you want to spend a little more you can get the T30 version, which has a headset and I think is rechargeable, but is otherwise pretty much the same radio and only comes in black. We specifically wanted replaceable batteries for extended-blackout reasons. Just remember: they are NOT private. Just relatively obscure.)

As with every other protest here, we had overwhelming support from the vehicle crowd. Hundreds to one in favour, easily, just like in person. I even got support from a presumably embarrassed Tesla driver.

I don’t know if there were more Bothell PD out this time, or if it just felt like there were. Might’ve been a difference in crowd to cop ratio, might’ve just been the escalating situation, might’ve just been where they were standing. But I wasn’t the only one who noticed.

Keep on your toes. Even here, the cops are Trump’s friends.

Anyway, that’s it for this week’s report, I hope your protests went well. Remember to save the date for May 1st, and to turn out at your local Tesla Takedown or similar before then, too. Momentum is everything, and we need to keep it.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

umadoshi: (pork belly (chicachellers))
Reading: Still working my way through The Spear Cuts Through Water--somewhere past the halfway point now.

Watching: I finished my Guardian rewatch!

[personal profile] scruloose and I finished season 1 of Kingdom and did indeed opt to hold off on season 2 until after we finish season 2 of The Last of Us. (Is Kingdom complete at two seasons? Anyone know offhand? Fear of spoilers makes me not want to search up the info.) We also saw the season premiere of TLoU and the first episode of The Pitt.

Playing: Because the evil 368chickens game keeps track and springs the number on you when you beat it, I know that when I finally rescued 368 chickens a few days ago it was after 454 tries. And for reasons that are not clear to me, the victory screen (at least in the browser version) also informs you that you can't play anymore and is all that shows if you reload. (There are ways around it, of course--incognito tabs, simply using a different browser, whatever--but it just seems weird to me. I have thus far avoided going back to it, but that just means returning to my default couple of games that I play endlessly when my brain is completely incapable of focus but needs to be doing something. >.<)

Adulting: Mid-week, [personal profile] scruloose and I took the day off for my birthday and both dropped off our tax documents with our tax guy (bless our tax guy) and voted in the federal election at the Elections Canada office. I'm glad we got the voting taken care of so early--sounds like lineups for advance polls have been unusually lengthy this weekend (and here's hoping that's a good sign for the outcome!).
under the cut: fruit and meat consumption (separately) )
torachan: arale from dr slump with a huge grin on her face (arale)
1. We went to the farmers market this morning. I wish it was on Sundays instead of Saturdays because we usually go to Disneyland on Saturday morning, but this week we're going tomorrow instead, so we could go to the farmers market today. Sadly the Filipino tamales guy was not there this week, but we did get some of the delicious chocolate dipped macaroons we've gotten the last few times we went.

2. For dinner we ordered pizza from a fancy local place we have been meaning to try for years and never get around to. Sadly the one pizza I was most interested in from their menu was not available (butternut squash), but we got a zucchini one and a meat lovers one and both were very tasty. Definitely would order from there in the future, though it's not an every day place, that's for sure.

3. Usually I make a chocolate sheet cake for Carla's birthday but because we were out of town, I totally forgot about it, until randomly a channel Carla follows on youtube had a video about it, so I decided to make it today. I don't bake very much anymore and this cake is a lot of work, but it's soooooo good. After I'd already started mixing ingredients, Carla mentioned making a half-batch, but it was too late by then, but for next time I definitely will. We hardly use our large oven anymore and it's become a cupboard instead, so it has to be made in two small sheet pans to fit in the Breville, and that made it a little more annoying, plus we just don't need that much cake. I can give a good chunk to Alexander to take home with him tomorrow, at least.

4. Chloe and Molly were twinning on the bed.

torachan: (chloe yawn)
Up until just recently (April 1st, as it happens), the rides in Fantasy Springs were virtual queue only, so you really had to get there early to lock in the return times, but as of this month, they now have regular standby lines in addition to the paid premier access for three of the four rides (the Tinkerbell ride is standby-only). Still, I wanted to make sure we were in the park right when it opened to get those premier access passes, especially for Frozen, since that is the most popular ride.

So I went over to the park around seven and got in line, and Carla planned to meet up with me before nine. That was definitely the right plan! )
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solarbird: our bike hill girl standing back to the camera facing her bike, which spans the image (biking)

Greater Northshore Bike Connector Map 1.6 – 18 April 2025 – is now available on github, as is MEGAMAP 1.6.

Additions and changes since 1.5.1:

  • Large expansion north to Lynnwood City Centre and rail station across all of SW Snohomish County
  • Extension of Interurban Trail in Edmonds to 78th Place West reflecting new construction
  • Improved street labelling, mostly in SW Snohomish County
  • Route indicators at map edges describing past-map continuations to destinations such as UW and City of Snohomish
A screen-resolution preview of the newest megamap

All permalinks continue to work.

If you enjoy these maps and feel like throwing some change at the tip jar, here’s my patreon. Patreon supports get things like pre-sliced printables of the Greater Northshore, and also the completely-uncompressed MEGAMAP, not that the .jpg has much compression in it because it doesn’t. If you have an iPhone, please use the website interface and not the app, because Apple takes 30% if you use the app. I’ll keep doing this regardless, but you know. Thank you! ^_^

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

torachan: scott pilgrim pouting (scott pilgrim - pout)
1. Nintendo announced that preorders for the Switch 2 will start on 4/24 and the price will stay the same. Hopefully it won't be too difficult to get one.

2. I had ordered some jeans from Target the other day but have to return them because they don't fit (they discontinued the style of jeans I have been wearing these past few years so now I have to try to find an equivalent), so we were planning to go to Target to return them today, and then last night we watched a video about the new pickle menu items at Popeye's, and there is no Popeye's conveniently nearby but there are two near Targets on the other side of town. So we decided to go to one of those Targets and then get lunch at Popeye's. Sadly they seem to be already out of the fried pickle chips, but Carla did get their pickle brined wings and a pickle lemonade. I just got regular chicken tenders, but they were really delicious. I wish we had a Popeye's or even KFC nearby but the only fast food chicken near us is Chick-fil-A. :( Anyway! Returned the pants, stocked up on cat food, and had a nice lunch. Oh, and Popeye's also right now has strawberries and cream biscuits, which are very tasty.

3. Chloe was being so tolerant of Jasper being near her, and Jasper was being a good boy and not pestering.

torachan: (Default)
The final days of our trip!

Last full day and flight home )
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torachan: maru the cat sitting in a bucket (maru)
1. We took a longer walk today and went down to Bay Cities Deli to get sandwiches for dinner. It gets super busy at lunch and dinner time, so we went down there mid afternoon, which was definitely the right choice. It wasn't too crowded inside, and we got our sandwiches to bring home for dinner later, and a snack and something to drink while we sat and rested before the walk home. Plenty of tables available outside at that time of day, too.

2. Jasper says, you may kiss the paw.

torachan: (Default)
On Friday we went in to Tokyo in the morning and then decided to go to Disneyland for dinner and spend a few hours there in the evening to enjoy it on a non-rainy day. Tickets are reduced price for evening visits, and the price varies per day, but I think these were about 5000 yen each (~$35) and we could enter from 5pm.

The electrical parade! )
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solarbird: (korra-on-the-air)

Okay, so remember when I told everybody to hold April 19th? Here’s where you can search for a 50501 event near you, and there are definitely going to be other events on the same day by other groups.

It will NOT be as big as April 5th. But a good turnout is important – and basically will continue to be important for months and months.

The next really massive turnout day looks like it’s going to be May 1st, though. Reserve the day. Indivisible is cooking something up, 50501 will be in on it, so will a lot of other people, or so I hear. Put it on your calendar now, so you’re ready.

Here are some other April 19 events in the Seattle area, compiled by Indivisible. I’m sure you can find something to do.

Puget Sound-area April 19th Neighbourhood Day of Action schedule, with too many events to type into an ALT TEXT box, sorry.

See you out there, and as always – good hunting.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

torachan: nepeta from homestuck (nepeta)
1. Disneyland Pride Nite tickets went on sale this morning! We are going on Wednesday 6/18.

2. We had a nice lunch at DCA today. Nice overcast weather and not too crowded.

3. Gotta love Gemma's judgy face.

torachan: ewan mcgregor pulling his glasses down to look over the top (ewan glasses)
The fifth was Carla's birthday and our first day at DisneySea. We did not do anything that day except Disney, so that will be a separate post on its own.

4/5-7 )
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torachan: charlotte from bad machinery saying "oh the mysteries of the moth farm" (oh the mysteries of the moth farm)
We went down to DCA for lunch today. I think we've now tried everything from the Food and Wine Festival that we wanted to, though we're going again on Sunday to hopefully ride Soarin' Over California one more time before the end of the event.

Food and Wine Festival )
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