seangaffney | Reading

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.

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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).

Tags:

weekly reading

1. They're remodeling one of the stores and it's been closed for a couple days and supposed to open tomorrow. This morning it looked like they might not be able to finish everything in time, but it's looking like everything should be okay. Fingers crossed! I'm going in early tomorrow morning to check on things before the store opens.

2. The Japanese bakery at one of our rival supermarket chains had a really tasty pastry that I got every time I had a chance but they had stopped selling it the last time I went there. Instead I got a mini baguette filled with whipped red bean paste butter (not red bean paste and butter separately, but red bean paste whipped into the butter) and it was so good! I stopped by there again today and they still have it, so I got another. That's near the store I have to go to early tomorrow morning, so I might stop in for another...

3. Buying things for the cats is always such a gamble because you never know if they'll like something or not, but this $20ish cardboard cat house from Target that we got several years ago has just been a consistent favorite. Chloe loves it best (those are her teeth marks) but Gemma and Molly also use it occasionally.

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1. Finally done with the last of the yearly evaluations today.

2. Carla took some old games and the Wii U to Book Off today and was able to get some cash for them. (She took the PS2 as well, but apparently we were missing a cord, so they wouldn't take it. Will have to look around the house and see if it's here anywhere. If we can't find it, I'll probably just put it out on the curb.)

3. Despite the crowds we had a nice dinner at Disneyland tonight.

4. Molly!

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We went down after work today and had a very nice dinner but omg the crowds were terrible. It's a Grad Nite, so there were tons of teens, and tomorrow is the last day the lowest level of keyholders can go until the second week of August so they're getting their last visits in.

( Read more... )

Tags:

disney

1. I had a lot of catching up to do today after the three day weekend and not a lot of time to do it as I had a store visit in the morning and then two meetings in the afternoon, but I did manage to get caught up.

2. Jasper is so handsome.

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1. After a busy Saturday and Sunday it was nice to have an extra weekend day to just spend at home. We did go out a little but mostly just stayed in and relaxed.

2. Lately I've twice found Ollie in the hammock on the cat tree, which usually no one uses but Jasper. It's nice to see someone else getting some use out of it. I love how serious he looks here.

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1. We finished up another puzzle this morning. After doing that 500 piece one last week, I decided to do the last of the 300 piece ones I'd bought, and it definitely felt a lot easier, so I think we'll probably stick to 500s for the time being. (Though the multi-pack puzzle I bought from Disneyland yesterday does have two 300 piece ones in it, so we'll do those just for completetion's sake, but I probably won't buy any more of that size.)

2. Tonight we went to see Paul F. Tompkins' Varietopia with Alexander. It was a lot of fun!

( Mini review and pics )

3. Gemma was kind enough to let me take her picture today.

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I'm surprisingly annoyed that Mozilla is killing Pocket, given that my personal use case for it is "that's where I throw unread links that I realistically know I'll almost certainly never actually dig up again, thus satisfying the itch of 'but I need to know where it is in case I suddenly have a desperate need to read it'". I've backed up my Pocket data and will presumably never look at it again, but what will I use as bottomless pit now?

Reading: I finished The Incandescent, which was a great read and also a wildly different book from Some Desperate Glory, so hats off to Emily Tesh's range! Now I'm a couple of chapters into Vivian Shaw's Strange Practice.

I'm also still working my way through Jennifer 8 Lee's The Fortune Cookie Chronicles.

Watching:

scruloose and I are caught up on Murderbot and (until tonight) The Last of Us, and have finished The Pitt, which was, as advertised, fantastic. (Medical shows are so very not my genre that I don't have anything to compare it to; I think the only other one I've seen is Scrubs, manymany years ago.)

I duly read through the trivia section and whatnot on IMDb and saw when season 2 is apparently going to be set, and I think that's more months into the future that the newbie!doctors' ER rotation will last? (Have I successfully absorbed the terms for the various levels of doctors in an ER? No. >.<) That's a bit of an upsetting prospect, since Mel is my favorite (and

scruloose's, and probably unsurprising for either of us). But I haven't read much else about the show at this point.

EXCEPT! I did remember that Sarah Kurchak [standard disclaimer: friend] wrote an article about Mel for Time last month, so I've read and can recommend that: "The Pitt’s Dr. Mel King Is a Small but Meaningful Step Forward for Neurodivergence Onscreen".

So now we have one episode left of TLoU, and odds are good we'll shift back to Kingdom for season 2, but Kingdom's seasons are very short, so we'll be back on the "what to watch now?" train relatively soon.

(Wheel of Time fans, I'm so sorry about the show's cancellation. :( On a personal level, I guess it pretty much guarantees that we're not going to go back and resume season 3 from where we drifted off after the first couple of episodes.)

Current Mood: tired

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1. Since we were planning to go to Disneyland later in the day rather than first thing, we were able to go to the farmers market this morning beforehand.

2. We had a really lovely time at Disneyland today. Saw some rare characters and a couple parades, but the best thing of all was the adorable tiny ducklings (so many of them!).

3. Tuxie!

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We usually go early morning or later in the afternoon/evening and hardly ever just go mid afternoon, but we specifically wanted to see the anniversary cavalcade, which is only at 1:30 and 2:45, so we went down late morning and got there around eleven.

( Read more... )

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disney

For those who have go-to versions of common things like, say, meatloaf or brownies or curried chickpeas, how many recipes do you try before settling on one? Is there a point when you say "THIS. THIS is my [x]", or do you sometimes try new versions even when you have one you love? (Possibly this is a "once you've actually cooked a lot, you can look at a recipe and have a fairly good idea of what the different seasonings might add up to"?)

(I didn't help enough with any of the meals under the cuts to tag this post with YKYC, alas.)

( meatloaf! (well, meatloaves) )

( belated notes on a batch of black beans a month ago )

Current Mood: tired

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1. Today is the start of a three day weekend! I'm very much looking forward to it.

2. The warm weather we had Tuesday and Wednesday seems to have been short-lived and we are back to having a bit cooler temps. We're going to Disneyland for lunch tomorrow rather than early morning, so I'm glad it's not supposed to be super hot.

3. I love how put out Chloe looks that Molly got the window spot first. Rather than go to any other sunny window in the house, she decided to just sit there and sulk lol.

Tags:

Currently Reading
Murder in Postscript
67%. My current audiobook and the first in a new historical murder mystery series. I'm enjoying it so far.

Riding the Rails
8%. Nonfiction about teenage hobos during the Depression. I picked this up from the library because it was mentioned on Tasting History in an episode where he did some sort of hobo stew. I only just got started but it's interesting so far, and reminds me of The Journey of Natty Gann, which I loved as a kid.

How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee
14%.

Red Hail
11%.

The Clockwork Ghost
25%.

Architectural Follies in America
40%.

Recently Finished
The Ladies Road Guide to Utter Ruin
At first I was finding this sequel a bit tiresome compared to the first as there was a really heavy focus on the romance and the adventure/mystery parts were really taking a backseat, but it picked up a lot in the second half and now I'm really looking forward to the next book in the series (which unfortunately is not out yet).

Parallel
Graphic novel about a gay German man who wants to reconcile with his estranged daughter. It goes back and forth between the past (from when he was young in WWII) through his two failed marriages, and the present day of the comic, which is the 80s, when homosexuality was still illegal. I didn't love the art style (it was sometimes hard to tell characters apart, especially with the two timelines) but I enjoyed the story.

Boku ga Shinu Dake no Hyaku Monogatari vol. 4-8

Tags:

weekly reading

1. Lots of driving today as I had to go down to the San Diego store, but the drive itself wasn't bad and I got a lot of audiobook listening in, and things seem to be improving at the store, so hopefully that keeps up.

2. Yesterday I found Jasper with his arms around Ollie's neck for grooming, and he kept pausing in the grooming but keeping his hold on Ollie and Ollie honestly just loved it.

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1. We finished up another puzzle today. This is the first 500 piece one we've completed. It actually didn't feel much more difficult than the 300 piece ones as the characters are all pretty well differentiated colorwise (which is why I bought it). A fun one for sure.

2. This afternoon I had to drive around to four of our stores (three of which were our more distant ones while still being in the greater LA area) with a couple guys here on a business trip from our Hawaii branch. Didn't love that I had to change my schedule when this week is already pretty packed (this was only decided on Friday) but it was a pretty enjoyable afternoon showing them around the stores.

3. I have one of those phone wallets that sticks on the back of your phone and holds a few credit cards/driver's license, and tonight after work I picked it up from my desk and noticed all the cards were gone. I knew they were there yesterday because I got gas, but I couldn't remember when I'd last seen them after that. Thankfully they had just fallen out in the car and not somewhere else! I'll have to be more careful about it from now on.

4. Look at that cutie curly tail Gemma's showing off.

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1. Recently Carla saw a video on youtube about making pistachio pesto and she tried that the other day and it turned out so good! We've been having it on sandwiches, mostly roast beef but also ham. It was fine with the ham but amazing with the beef.

2. I had an all day meeting today but was able to get a bunch of small stuff done on my to-do list here and there during the day. Tomorrow I've got a busy work day, too, but at least don't have to get an early start.

3. You can tell this is Molly's spot on my bed by how much white fur there is.

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1. We walked up to the little independent coffee shop this morning and got matcha (Carla) and hojicha (me) lattes. They have a bunch of really interesting sounding lattes on their menu but so far the best have been these really creamy ones called einspäaut;nner. Carla has been getting the matcha one every time we go there, but this was my first time trying the hojicha and I think it's my new fave.

2. Monday is often a work from home day recently and I usually don't have meetings so during the week I tend to put all sorts of deskwork on my next Monday to-do list. Usually it's not an overwhelming amount but today was kind of a lot. Thankfully it was mostly all small things, but the quantity was a bit overwhelming. I did get almost everything done, and was able to put a few lower priority things off till Friday or later (unfortunately I have a jam-packed Tuesday through Thursday and will have little time for deskwork so that's one reason I had so much on my plate today).

3. Chloe has such impressive whiskers.

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1. We had a nice time at Disneyland this morning. So much stuff to do and see (and eat) with the 70th anniversary!

2. Look at these sweet brothers!

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It's officially Disneyland's 70th anniversary (Friday was the first day) and there is a ton of stuff going on. Thankfully there are several months to take in everything.

( 70th anniversary! )

Tags:

disney

Sean Gaffney

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Cooking question/log/notes: meatloaf | black beans

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