Daily Happiness

Jun. 13th, 2025 12:20 am
torachan: (Default)
[personal profile] torachan
1. So much ughhhhhhhhhhhhhh work stuff today, but I stopped at Disneyland on the way home and had a lovely dinner.

2. Ollie was just writhing around playing with this blanket for no reason. Super cute.

Daily Happiness

Jun. 11th, 2025 11:02 pm
torachan: a kitten looking out the window (chloe in window)
[personal profile] torachan
1. We're still having to close the downtown store early, but as of last night a curfew is in effect in the area, which actually makes it easier since we can at least plan the early closing. And despite what the media would like everyone to believe, the protests overall have been peaceful, with little property damage (mainly graffiti). Any danger is from the police and really only in that one small area.

2. I have to go to San Diego again tomorrow, which I am not looking forward to because when I made plans to go it was because I had received one complaint that needed to be dealt with, and in the week and a half since then have received two more unrelated complaints, so now there are three things I have to deal with. But I am planning to go to Disneyland on the way home, since it's pretty much on the way, so at least that will be a nice way to end the day.

3. I finished another puzzle today. This is another 500 piece one.



4. When my Switch 2 came the other day, I put the empty box on my bed and boy were the cats intrigued about this new phenomenon. It seemed like every time I turned around a different cat was in the box checking it out.

Daily Happiness

Jun. 10th, 2025 11:45 pm
torachan: an orange cat poking his head out from blankets (ollie)
[personal profile] torachan
1. A lot of times when Carla goes back to visit her folks, she doesn't get time to hang out with her cousins aside from specific family gatherings where they're just hanging out at the house, but this time she went into Chicago today with one cousin and they went to a museum and got lunch, and yesterday she went with both cousins to a record store.

2. Work was kind of stressful today (just when I think the drama and issues at this one store are finally dealt with, I have three more issues pop up today) but I had a nice evening at Disneyland to make up for it.

3. Chloe and Gemma and Ikea Shark are having a party and you're not invited.

2025 Disneyland Trip #39 (6/10/25)

Jun. 10th, 2025 11:17 pm
torachan: karkat from homestuck headdesking (karkat headdesk)
[personal profile] torachan
Took an after work trip to Disneyland for dinner. Traffic was not bad at all getting down there (and even better getting home) and as of this week both the lower level pass holders are blocked out, so the crowds are lighter. Nice weather, too!

Read more... )

Daily Happiness

Jun. 9th, 2025 10:54 pm
torachan: jason momoa/ronon smiling (ronon)
[personal profile] torachan
1. A few months ago I started having problems with itunes where every time I tried to add a song to a playlist it froze. I tried a few solutions I found online and nothing worked, so I just stopped listening to music at my desk and basically only listened to it in the car through Apple Music. Finally the other day I just gave up and uninstalled itunes and reinstalled it again, and at first I was really regretting my decision because even after logging in, it wasn't showing any of the music I'd downloaded over the past few years from Apple Music, only my library on my HD, but then I logged out and logged in again and everything showed up, and adding songs to playlists seems to work again, so maybe now I'll actually get back to listening to music at home.

2. There is DLC for Sea of Stars, a whole new quest that I've seen a few reviews say is about eight hours or so of gameplay. I started it the other day and am enjoying it so far. Sea of Stars is definitely one of my favorite games from the past year or so, so I'm excited to be able to play more of it. (In between Mario Kart World, of course.)

3. Our Little Tokyo store is right next to city hall, so things have been kind of rough down there the past couple days with the protests. Both yesterday and today the store had to close early so employees could get home safe. This morning there was a ton of graffiti (all varities of "fuck ICE") along the windows of one side of the building, but thankfully no actual damage to the store and the property manager was able to get it cleaned up easily.

4. Chloe also says "fuck ICE"!

Daily Happiness

Jun. 8th, 2025 08:41 pm
torachan: karkat from homestuck headdesking (karkat headdesk)
[personal profile] torachan
1. I had another quiet day at home, though I did go out for two nice walks, including a longer one in which I stopped for ice cream to cool off. (It wasn't that hot today but it was late afternoon and quite sunny and muggy.)

2. Molly is a super cutie.

Nintendo Switch for sale

Jun. 8th, 2025 03:16 pm
torachan: (Default)
[personal profile] torachan
Anyone in the US interested in a used Switch? No original box, but I've got the dock, AC adapter, HDMI cable, two sets of joycons (black and red/blue), the holder thingy that turns the joycons into a regular controller, one set of wrist straps for the joycons, and a charging station. It also has a memory card already installed.

I'm looking for $100 including shipping.

Daily Happiness

Jun. 7th, 2025 08:53 pm
torachan: (rainbow avatar)
[personal profile] torachan
1. Had a pretty chill day at home. Didn't go anywhere other than the farmers market and library.

2. Jasper is suuuuuuuper snuggly with Carla gone. He's come and cuddled on my lap three times today.

3. I got the Switch 2 set up! I don't know why the downloads are so slow today but it's taking ages to download Mario Kart World and the updated versions of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, but Mario Kart did finally finish so I got to try that out and it's so good!

4. After saying that about Tuxie the other day now he's been here every day for the past week, so maybe he's decided he likes it better here than wherever else he was going after all.

Weekly Reading

Jun. 7th, 2025 04:43 pm
torachan: close-up of a sleepy kitten face (sleepy molly)
[personal profile] torachan
Currently Reading
Murder in Season
33%. Most recent in the Lady of Letters series. Still enjoying this series, but compared to other recent historical mystery series that I'm also following, this one is very noticeably lacking queer and non-white characters. I also don't love the style of writing (everyone's eyes are always changing color with their emotions and the love interest is a former sailor so the MC is always describing his scent with ocean-y words but he literally has not been out to sea in ages so it makes no sense), but the mysteries are fun.

Riding the Rails
20%.

How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee
37%.

Red Hail
57%.

Architectural Follies in America
73%.

Recently Finished
Murder in Masquerade

Falls to Pieces
Thriller about a woman and her daughter who are on the run from her abusive ex-husband and have been living under new names for the past two years. But then her fiance goes missing, and then her daughter, and she's convinced her ex is behind it. This had some interesting reveals, but mostly it just felt like too many, where each new reveal was like, and now THIS guy can't be trusted and THIS guy is acting shady, etc. It was fine, but I won't be rushing out to read more from this author.

I Hate This Place vol. 1-2
Two volume graphic novel series about a lesbian couple who moves to an isolated farm that one of them has inherited. Farm turns out to be mega haunted and they can never leave the premises again. I liked this quite a lot.

Rock wa Lady no Tashinami Deshite vol. 1
Manga about a girl whose mom remarries into a wealthy family and she's sent to a fancy all-girls school where all the students are super sheltered. In order to become the perfect young lady and make her new family proud, she's determined to leave behind her love of rock instilled in her by her musician father, but then she meets another girl who secretly plays the drums and they decide to form a band. Sounded like a fun plot but the setting was too ridiculous. I don't think I'll be continuing with it.

Bokura no Hentai vol. 1-4
I stumbled across this on an Amazon Japan sale (first volume was free and the rest are all 55 yen each). Reminds me of Hourou Musuko. This focuses on three middle schoolers who meet on a crossdressing forum and then decide to meet up offline. One crossdresses because the boy he likes is only into girls, one because his mom kind of lost it after his sister died and insists that he's his sister so he wears her clothes at home, and one who is trans. (Another character is introduced later who wears a girls' uniform at school just because he prefers it.) I'm really enjoying this one a lot.

Daily Happiness

Jun. 6th, 2025 10:44 pm
torachan: (Default)
[personal profile] torachan
1. Got up early to take Carla to the airport this morning. She's going to be visiting family for the next week and a half. She flew out of one of the smaller local airports rather than LAX, which means it was a longer drive to get her there, but it's just so much easier all around. Waaaaaaaay less crowded and much more chill. And not only did she have an easy check-in experience, but the flight arrived in Chicago half an hour early! Plus it's not that far from Disneyland so while I couldn't stop by there today after dropping her off, I will be able to stop in after work before picking her up when she comes back.

2. Last night the power went out at two of our stores, and while one of them came back on during the middle of the night, the other was out until around noon today. Thankfully they were able to keep loss to a minimum with dry ice, but it was a pretty hectic day. One of the things I most like about being the area manager rather than the store manager is that I'm no longer the one who directly has to deal with stuff like this when it happens.

3. When I took a walk around the neighborhood this evening I noticed that the junior high a couple blocks from us has a huge Pride flag out front. And there's a church down the street with one, too.

4. Very glad it's the weekend. Since it's just me, I'm going to save my Disney trips for after work next week (easier to coordinate going directly from work when it's just me) and just stay home and relax during the weekend.

5. This is one of my favorite pictures of Ollie and Jasper ever. Ollie loves plopping down next to (or sometimes on) Jasper and snuggling, and Jasper is not always that into it, but he can be pretty tolerant. He actually stayed like this with Ollie for longer than I thought he would.

Daily Happiness

Jun. 5th, 2025 09:02 pm
torachan: tavros from homestuck dressed as pupa pan (pupa pan)
[personal profile] torachan
1. I had a nice work from home day. Pretty chill. Got a lot done.

2. My Switch 2 arrived this afternoon! I have not taken it out of the box yet as I do not have time to set it up and transfer all my stuff from the Switch, so I will do that tomorrow or Saturday.

Last night Carla decided to swing by Best Buy just to see what the situation was, thinking that the store would not open until midnight, but actually they were opening at 9pm (midnight for east coast stores). She went by around 10:30, saw a bit of a line but not much but didn't want to hang around until midnight (we still thought that was the timeline) so she came home, and then ended up going back about an hour later to see if they were still open. They were, and they did not have the bundle left, but did have both the system and the cartridge version of Mario Kart, so she got both. Now we both have Switch 2s! Really surprised it was so easy to get one after all the fuss with the preorders. Since she is going out of town tomorrow, she didn't end up setting hers up yet either lol.

3. Gemma is so cute! How is she so cute!?

Daily Happiness

Jun. 4th, 2025 09:18 pm
torachan: my glitch character (glitch)
[personal profile] torachan
1. We finished another puzzle today. This one was a lot of fun!



2. I got the shipping notification from Best Buy on my Switch 2! It's supposed to arrive tomorrow, which I was not expecting at all because when I did the preorder they weren't guaranteeing launch day delivery. I never did get an email from Nintendo about preordering directly from them, so we're planning to check out Target tomorrow and see if they have any for sale in store, so we can each have one.

3. We had a nice morning at Disneyland. It was a little muggy but the temps were fairly low and it was nice and overcast. Started to get busy as we were leaving, but it wasn't very crowded at all earlier, which was nice.

4. Uploading the picture of the lego shelf yesterday made me realize I still haven't posted pics of the inside of the garage since it's been completed. It's still got a ways to go decorating-wise. We've got art we want to put on the walls, and more stuff to display, and it could use a few more pieces of furniture, but it has enough that it feels pretty lived-in now. I use it every day for the exercise machine and working on puzzles, and Carla goes out daily to read and listen to music (and also work on puzzles).

Read more... )

5. The other day I looked in the cat tree and saw Chloe was lying on her back in one of the cubbies like a silly girl.

2025 Disneyland Trip #38 (6/4/25)

Jun. 4th, 2025 05:55 pm
torachan: a cartoon owl with the text "everyone is fond of owls" (everyone is fond of owls)
[personal profile] torachan
Today was an early morning trip, so I took my magic key in, in hopes of finding all the rest of the stations and unlocking it today.

Success! )

(no subject)

Jun. 3rd, 2025 09:03 pm
torachan: a cartoon bear eating a large sausage (magical talking bear prostitute)
[personal profile] torachan
1. The bathroom faucet was dripping for a couple days and could not get it to stop, but it miraculously stopped dripping yesterday. Not sure why, but I'm glad.

2. I have been meaning to upload a picture for a while, but I have pretty much completed my flowers & nature lego shelf in the garage. There are still more nature sets, so I will probably remove some things and put out others eventually, but for now this is all of our nature-related stuff. I really like how this looks together.



3. I was not expecting rain today but it rained a bit! Not a ton, but it did get things damp. No rain tomorrow, though, which is good because we're going to Disneyland.

4. I decided to take tomorrow off. No reason. My usual Wednesday meeting was cancelled and we'd been planning on going to Disneyland tomorrow as Carla's last visit before she'll be out of town for a week and a half visiting her family, so I just decided what the hell, why not just take the day off.

5. Molly's getting that sun!

Daily Happiness

Jun. 2nd, 2025 10:47 pm
torachan: (Default)
[personal profile] torachan
1. I have been meaning to sign up for Venmo because I've been encountering more and more times when something that used to be cash only now has a non-cash option but only Venmo or other online payment services. I finally got around to setting up an account yesterday and then today I found myself in an unexpected situation where it was my only option to pay! I got my hair cut this morning and the salon was having issues with their payment software and could put the actual cut itself on the card they have on file for me, but not the tip. The only option for tips other than cash was Venmo. Now, I am a regular at the salon now, so if I hadn't had Venmo set up, I could have just told them I'd tip her double next time and I'm sure it would have been fine, but this was a great opportunity to practice using the app. We've been going to the farmers market a lot lately and most stalls do take credit or ApplePay these days but a few are cash only or Venmo (including the rhubarb seller from this past weekend), so now I have another option there, too.

2. Jasper is such a cutie.

Daily Happiness

Jun. 1st, 2025 10:15 pm
torachan: maru the cat peeking through the blinds and looking grumpy (maru peeking through the blinds)
[personal profile] torachan
1. I made rhubarb custard pie today with the rhubarb we got yesterday from the farmers market. It didn't even use half the rhubarb, so we've got a ton left to make a cake or something as well.

2. Tuxie has been spending more and more time away from our yard. Last weekend he was away for a couple days, then came back for one day, then has been gone the rest of the week. Because he's been spending more time away and often when he's here, not acting as hungry, I'm confident that he's being fed somewhere else and if he did disappear for good, it would be because he's decided to stay at his new home permanently (maybe even to become an indoor cat, which I would love for him), and I wouldn't be worried the way I might have been if he just disappeared without warning. But he was back today and spent the whole day in the yard and got several meals. I hope he continues to spend at least some time here!

2025 Disneyland Trip #37 (5/31/25)

Jun. 1st, 2025 03:23 pm
torachan: (Default)
[personal profile] torachan
We went down later last night with the intent of seeing the Paint the Night parade. When the Electrical Parade was running, we had some good luck with getting seats for the second showing, since it was so late, so that was my hope for this trip, too.

Paint the Night! )

Daily Happiness

Jun. 1st, 2025 01:10 am
torachan: onoda sakamichi from yowamushi pedal with a huge smile (onoda smile)
[personal profile] torachan
1. They had rhubarb this morning at the farmers market! It's so rare to see here so it was such a pleasant surprise. Going to make a rhubarb custard pie tomorrow and then freeze the rest to make something else when Carla gets back from visiting her folks (she's leaving next Friday so don't want to make a whole lot of baked goods when it will just be me to eat them up).

2. We did a later Disneyland trip today and saw the Paint the Night parade. It was so cool! This isn't a brand new parade but it's new to me as it only ran for a couple years ten years ago.

3. Ollie!

Daily Happiness

May. 30th, 2025 09:03 pm
torachan: arale from dr slump dressed in a penguin suit and smiling (arale penguin)
[personal profile] torachan
1. Everything went okay with the store reopening today. Still needs some finishing touches but overall looking good.

2. I went in to work really early today to check on that store before they opened for customers, but I also was able to go home early this afternoon so that balanced out nicely.

3. No window ledge is too narrow if you really want to sit there.

Weekly Reading

May. 30th, 2025 08:46 pm
torachan: tavros from homestuck dressed as pupa pan (pupa pan)
[personal profile] torachan
Currently Reading
Murder in Masquerade
47%. Sequel to Murder in Postscript. As enjoyable as the first.

Riding the Rails
No progress.

How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee
24%.

Red Hail
27%.

Architectural Follies in America
47%.

Recently Finished
Murder in Postscript
I liked this. Glad there are already two more books in the series.

The Clockwork Ghost
Big twist at the end! I'm looking forward to reading the third and final book in the series.

Cosmoknights vol. 1-2
Volume one of this was a reread as I started volume two only to realize I remembered absolutely nothing about the first one. I expected this to be the conclusion to the series but it looks like there's going to be more. I liked this second volume just as much as the first and am looking forward to the next one.

Boku ga Shinu Dake no Hyaku Monogatari vol. 9-10
I really enjoyed this series. Neat framing story to link together a bunch of stand-alone horror shorts (all of which I enjoyed as well).

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