nnozomi

chestnut_pod

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Current Mood: mellow
Current Music: City Hall - Vienna Teng

sineala

So everyone in fandom has become obsessed with the gay hockey show, and

lysimache and I watched it a couple days ago. Neither of us care about hockey (I think we are both hoping that fandom decides to care about baseball, though this seems unlikely -- but, hey, it's 42 days until pitchers and catchers report) but we do like gay things a lot.

It was nice? I mean, it's not going to be my new fandom, but I'm not sorry I watched it. I did nearly give up after the first two episodes for narrative reasons that I will explain below.

( Spoilers )

It's only six episodes, so... you might as well watch it if you like gay shows, I guess? It's not bad.

I somehow own the first book. I am not sure yet if I will read it.

Current Mood: okay

osprey_archer

And Picture Book Advent draws gently to a close. A note for my future self: although traditionally Advent ends on December 24, I think it would be nice to have a final picture book for the morning of Christmas. (My sister-in-law’s large extended family does a BIG Christmas, so we’ve simply ceded Christmas Day to them and have our own little family Christmas later on, which leaves Christmas morning open.)

Because of the way the dates of Advent fell, I had only two books left to review. First, The Wee Christmas Cabin at Carn-na-ween, by Ruth Sawyer, illustrated by Max Grafe, a picture book version of a story I first read in Sawyer’s story collection The Long Christmas. After a lifetime helping out in one cabin after another, with never a home of her own, old Oona is at last driven from her final house on Christmas Eve… only for the Good Folk to build her a house, and grant her wish that every white Christmas hence, the hungry and the lonely will be able to find her home for succor.

A lovely story. Another solid example from Sawyer that the spirit of Christmas is “generosity” and not “copious evergreens.”

And second, The Christmas Sweater, Jan Brett’s new Christmas book this year! Theo’s Yiayia knitted an extremely gaudy Christmas sweater for his dignified pug Ari. Hoping to win Ari over to the cozy warm sweater, Theo takes her for a snowshoe in the woods… only for a fresh fall of snow to obliterate his tracks! But fortunately, Ari(adne)’s sweater caught on a twig near the edge of the woods, so they can follow the unraveled yarn back home.

From the dedication, it looks like one of Brett’s children married into a Greek family, and this book is an homage to that family connection. I particularly enjoyed Ari’s expressive face, and indeed all the dogs running around in the snow in this book.

raspberryhunter

Every year I'm like, how is it there are so many good fics??
Three of these were my awesome gifts. Additionally, partial disclosure: I betaed two of these fics, but which ones are left as an exercise for the reader until reveals :)

( Recs in 18th CE RPF/Sieben Jahre, Chronicles of Chrestomanci, The Incandescent, Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (anthology) x 3 (!), Der Ring des Nibelungen, Some Desperate Glory. )

nnozomi posting in

guardian_learning

部首
心 part 3
志, will; 忘, to forget; 忙, busy ( pinyin )
https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?cdqrad=61

语法
2.11 Emphasis: 真 vs 很
https://www.digmandarin.com/hsk-2-grammar

词汇
采访, interview (pinyin in tags)
https://mandarinbean.com/new-hsk-4-word-list/

Guardian:
这个孩子的意志力超乎我的想象, this child has greater willpower than I imagined
真搞不懂老板威慑呢们说你是我们的新希望, I really can't understand why the boss said you're our new hope
[no 采访]

Me:
他百忙之中也不会忘记家人。
采访时，好好小心你的回答。

luzula

Day 28: Busy with family; alibi sentence. How about you?

Tally:
( Read more... )
Day 28:

luzula,

china_shop,

badly_knitted,

trobadora,

brithistorian,

goddess47,

sanguinity,

sylvanwitch,

chestnut_pod,

cornerofmadness,

garonne,

brithistorian,

Day 29:

luzula,

china_shop,

garonne,

brithistorian,

zdenka

An unsystematic gathering of some fics (and other works) I enjoyed from Yuletide Madness! Fandoms incide: Wyrmspan (Board Game), FAQ: The "Snake Fight" Portion of Your Thesis Defense - Luke Burns, Watership Down - Richard Adams, Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight, Young Wizards - Diane Duane, Tosca - Puccini/Illica/Giacosa, The Angel of the Crows - Katherine Addison, Concerned Children's Advertisers "House Hippo" PSA Commercial, and The Devil Came Up to Boston - The Adam Ezra Group (Song).

( Read more... )

Current Mood: amused

umadoshi

(As is so often the case, I'm generally up to date on reading my DW circle, but not doing at all well with commenting.)

I guess at this point we're well into the liminal last bit of the year. (I said to

scruloose earlier that I still try to hold "Christmas is twelve days, dammit" in my heart, but it's hard, especially when our observance of the the holiday at all is so low-key.) We had masked visits with both sets of parents (mine on Christmas Eve and

scruloose's on Boxing Day), and in between, Christmas Day was just the two of us and the cats and the Netflix fireplaces. My mom sent us home with Christmas stockings and some gifts (also very low-key; we still keep nudging for just not doing presents at all), and the latter included a hard copy of the most recent edition of Garner's Modern English Usage, which was a delightful surprise.

We actually had a white Christmas, which has never been a sure thing and is getting rarer and rarer at terrible speeds, but now ice and rain are arriving, to be followed by a cold snap, so I'm really glad we don't need to leave the house anytime soon. (See also: will we lose power? Very possibly! >.< But we're pretty well-equipped to deal with it.)

I'm feeling like I should be looking ahead or setting small goals or trying to find specific things I want to focus on, but so far I'm not really scrounging the brain for it. Anyone want to tell me about how you're approaching it?

(I do think I'll sign up for a GYWO wordcount goal again, despite having written almost literally zero words this year, but at this point I have the grim suspicion that the words may stay gone until a new full-on fannish obsession hits me, and that's so infrequent for me. ;_; I have so many Guardian WIPs and fragments. [And while I'm enjoying seeing all the fannish glee over Heated Rivalry, I don't currently feel fannish about it myself {which, honestly, I'm okay with}.])

Recent media, mostly books: All Is Bright, Llinos Cathryn Thomas' "read over Advent" novella, which was lovely; The Dark is Rising (book), which I'm glad to have finally read; I don't know if/when I might read the books that follow it; Snake-Eater by T. Kingfisher; Widdershins by Jordan L. Hawk; KJ Charles' Masters in this Hall (which I should've checked the series info about first, as it's the third Lilywhite Boys book and I haven't read the second. Oops); and Brigid Kemmerer's A Curse So Dark and Lonely.

scruloose and I finished listening to System Collapse, so we're out of Murderbot books. Yesterday (?) we listened to the four-minute audiobook sample of The Thief, which I might be able to work with? But wow, the voice sounds so much older than Gen to me. (Also, Kobo, four minutes is a reasonable sample length, but it literally cuts off mid-word.)

I watched the season finale of Heated Rivalry pretty promptly on Friday morning, for fear of being spoiled, which meant

scruloose, who hadn't seen any of the show previously, pretty much watched it too while feeding the cats and having their own breakfast. (I did give them some background info first.) As noted above: not feeling fannish, but I thought that was really well done overall, and the actors seem like an absolute delight.

And we've watched two movies since starting vacation (Wake Up Dead Man and Sinners), which brings me up to a whopping four [4] movies this year.

Current Mood: okay

oursin

Out for my walk today, went through the pocket park behind the house, and there was a lady with a small terrier (I think), that was going absolutely spare under some trees -

- and looking up I finally saw, right up at the very top where it had attained to, a squirrel, which was presumably the reason for the agitation.

Had some passing converse with the dog's owner anent this, who claims that he will never actually catch a squirrel, even though they are tame enough that if you go and sit on one of the park benches they will come and look you over.

Mostly the dogs that one sees being walked in the park are less vociferous, perhaps they have grown wise to the ways of squirrels.

So anyway, I passed on to the other somewhat larger park, and see no advance yet in what is supposed to be a development involving a pergola (???) and further eco-stuff but at least there is no longer unsightly work being done at that spot.

Have only very lately discovered that two objects which I vaguely thought, had I thought at all, were maybe bird-houses, are actually insect-houses. Much to my chagrin, I can find nothing about this on the park website which boasts of various eco and environment good stuff that goes on there (I am still trying to work out what the sparrow-meadow is, have not seen plume nor feather of a sparrow on my ambles).

However, I can at least point dr rdrz at this site where I perceive that insect houses are quite A Thing: designed to provide safe nesting, hibernation, and breeding spaces for beneficial pollinators such as solitary bees, butterflies, ladybirds, and lacewings'.

I assume solitary bees are a specific species, and have not actually been expelled from their hive for some vile transgression, to roam the earth etc etc etc like an apian ancient mariner.

garonne

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garonne

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skygiants

The Queen's Embroiderer: A True Story of Paris, Lovers, Swindlers, and the First Stock Market Crisis did quite a good job of giving me historical context around the lives of artisans and upwardly mobile bourgeois in 17th and early 18th century France and only a mediocre job IMO of convincing me of its central argument, but I was reading it for the former and not the latter so I can't say I was disappointed per se ...

As the author, historian Joan DeJean, introduces her narrative, she was browsing the National Archives when she came across two documents: the first, appointing Jean Magoulet as official embroiderer to Queen Marie-Thérèse of France; the second, decreeing that Magoulet's daughter Marie Louise should be put in prison and deported to New Orleans on charges of prostitution. DeJean immediately dropped what she was doing to Get To The Bottom Of This and went on a deep dive into the entire Magoulet family as well as the family of Louis Chevrot, the young man whose involvement with Marie-Louise resulted in the charges above.

In order to write this family saga, Joan DeJean has pulled out every relevant family document -- marriage licenses, birth certificates, guardianship statements, criminal charges, recorded purchases, etc. etc. -- and she does a clear and interesting job of explaining what we can learn from them, what these kinds of documents normally look like and what their context is, what the specific features of these family documents imply, and letting you follow her logic with your own brain. I appreciate this very much! I had no idea, for example, that it was standard in 17th-century France for the court to appoint a guardian for any child who lost a parent, even if they still had the other parent living, to ensure that their financial interests were protected, something that came up often in this narrative where a lot of kids were losing parents in situations where their financial interests were not particularly protected. It's a really good example of historical detective work, how you can draw a picture of a family through time through the bureaucratic litter they leave behind, and I appreciated it very much.

On the other hand, Joan DeJean also occasionally slips into writing like this --

In the course of their attempts both to get rich quick and to save their skin when they got into bad straits, the Queen's Embroiderers became imposters, tricksters, con artists nonpareil. They lied about everything and to everyone: to the police, to notaries, to their in-laws. They lied about their ages and those of their children, about their professional accomplishments and their net worth. They caroused; they philandered; they made a mockery of the laws of church and state. The only truly authentic thing about them was their extraordinary talent and their ability to weave gold and silver thread into the kind of garments that seemed the stuff of dreams. In their lives and on an almost daily basis, haute couture crossed paths with high crime.

Savage beauty indeed.

-- which made me laugh out loud every time it happened. So, bug, feature? who could say ....

Anyway, Joan DeJean makes a pretty good argument for most of the family gossip she pulls out about the Magoulets and the Chevrots, but the center of her argument about the Great Tragic Romance between Marie-Louise Magoulet and Louis Chevrot rests on a really elaborate switcheroo that I simply do not buy. In drawing out her family saga, DeJean has become obsessed with the fact that there seem to have been two Marie-Louise Magoulets, one being more than a decade older than the other, and, crucially, also more than a decade older than Louis Chevrot; ( I guess this is technically spoilers for a three hundred year old scandal )

But a.) context about material culture and craftsmanship is what I was here for and context is what I got, in spades, and b.) if you're going to invent a historical conspiracy theory, make it as niche as possible, is what I say, so despite the fact that I don't BELIEVE DeJean I still spiritually support her. Has she perhaps connected a few more dots than actually exist? Perhaps. But I still certainly got my money's worth [none; library] out of the book!

maggie33

ClaireBell

I admit I was a bit underwhelmed by the finale. I don’t really know why, because I generally liked what they did with it. But something in me wasn’t enjoying it as much as the previous seven episodes. Well, apart from one thing. That thing I enjoyed so much.

More with spoilers here.

And that one thing was what Bell did to get Top arrested. That was very satisfying. I even said “Hell yes, you deserved it, you coward” aloud. 😊

I also liked that Dao decided to keep the baby. IMO it felt very in character for her, knowing what we know about her fraught relationship with her son. Maybe I would feel differently if she was supposed to be in prison for a very long time. But we don’t know how long she’s supposed to be in prison. As far as I remember they never mentioned that in the show. So it might be just a few years.

I also liked Deedee’s sort of redemption arc. And that she did change for the better just a bit. And her cute something with Porsche made me smile.

I also absolutely get why Claire did what she did to Kae, even if that meant prolonging her stay in prison.

Now that I think of it maybe I was a bit underwhelmed that everything was tied with a neat little bow. All the villains were appropriately punished. All the good and goodish people got their happy, or at least happyish, ending. Which was nice, but I guess I was expecting something maybe a little bit messier?

Heated Rivalry

In general I liked the show well enough. And let me repeat that I’m very glad that the show like that is so popular. And I for sure will be rewatching the 3rd episode a few more times in the future. And the ending of episode 5, of course. And Scott/Kip tag on AO3 makes me very happy, too. 😊

Minor spoilers for the finale here.

Scott’s speech made me teary-eyed. And I really liked Shane’s talk with his mom after his parents found out about him and Ilya. That was very well done and very touching.

I also finally finished reading Heated Rivalry the book. It was meh for me. And I found Ilya so annoying in the book. At least in the show Connor Storrie has charisma and charm that make Ilya’s annoyingness easier to swallow for me. But yes, I don’t really care for Shane and Ilya’s romance.

I started reading Tough Guy – Game Changers book number 3. I read five chapters for now, and it’s rather meh, too. But I will give it a few more chapters. And if I won’t like it more by then I’ll drop it and try the next book in the series.

And I’m still very in love with Kim Go Eun, and I’m in the middle of the 1st season of Yumi’s Cells, which is very sweet and fluffy, and such a relaxing watch. And I started The King Eternal Monarch rewatch (two episodes for now, still as entertaining as I remembered). I’m thinking I might try Goblin again next. I found it boring the first time I tried it a few years ago, and dropped it after watching four episodes. But maybe I’ll like it better this time? 😊

And I still have a few interesting Yuletide fics to read, but I wanted to rec two fics from those I’ve read so far. First one is a perfect post-canon fix it fic for a background couple from the Thai BL drama Dangerous Romance. And the second is a sweet and lovely and very touching post-canon fic for Some Like It Hot.

Man of Many Talents (12705 words)
Fandom: หัวใจในสายลม | Dangerous Romance (TV 2023)
Rating: Mature
Relationships: Saifah Homchan/Name Thanadol Vattawut
Characters: Name Thanadol Vattawut, Saifah Homchan, Sailom Homchan, Kanghan Krittin Sukprasert
Additional Tags: Post-Prison, Home Improvement, First Time, Domestic Bliss, Emotional Hurt/Comfort
Summary:

Name goes to prison and then gets out of it. And just like he promised, Saifah is waiting.

Twice Over (6992 words)
Fandom: Some Like It Hot (1959)
Rating: General Audiences
Relationships: Jerry "Daphne"/Osgood Fielding III, Jerry "Daphne" & Sugar Kane Kowalczyk
Characters: Jerry "Daphne", Sugar Kane Kowalczyk, Osgood Fielding III, Joe "Josephine"
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Found Family, Marriage Proposal, She/Her pronouns for Jerry "Daphne", Canon Compliant, Trans Character
Summary:

Three months after their escape from Miami, a girls’ day out with Sugar becomes a reminder of how drastically Daphne's life had changed since she and Joe had fled Chicago - and how much of a perfect dream it had become.

Or - Osgood wants to propose again, properly this time. Sugar helps.

tinny

OMG I was so sure I had already posted this - I assembled it in November. /o\ All the icons I made for challenge communities in September and October:

When it Rains it Pours

( 63 icons - about half of Wu-Lei-related things )

Concrit welcome! Comments adored! Credit appreciated! Take and use as many icons as you like. If you want to know whose textures and brushes I use, take a look at my resource post.

Previous icon posts:

troisoiseaux

Finished I Leap Over the Wall: Contrasts and Impressions After Twenty-Eight Years in a Convent by Monica Baldwin, a 1949 memoir that is what it says on the tin and a fascinating read. It's a mix of explaining convent life to a secular audience (which was pretty much the same as in Catherine Coldstream's Cloistered, although I feel like Baldwin made more of an effort to explain why this or that aspect of life as a nun made sense in the context of Catholic doctrine), Baldwin's sense of culture shock from having entered the cloister in 1914 and left it in 1941, and her misadventures in adjusting to the modern world circa WWII— she worked various jobs in an effort to Do Her Bit for Britain, including as an unofficial Land Girl, dormitory matron at a munitions factory, hostess at an army canteen, assistant librarian at the Royal Academy of Science, and something for the War Office that she isn't allowed to talk about. (She was also the niece of former Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, which probably helped.) It's also a thoughtful, insightful memoir about a woman figuring out who she is as a person after nearly three decades of suppressing every instinct towards individualism; in a way, it reads a lot like someone recovering from a long-term abusive relationship— there was one particularly aching line about the first time she "had actually dared to open a window, in a place containing several other people, and the universe had NOT rocked to its foundations and then come toppling down about my ears"— although, as it's all written in such a bright tone and Baldwin's view was clearly that she personally was unsuited for religious life, rather than religious life in itself being The Problem, I imagine that she would have been surprised by the comparison.

Also finished my fourth(?) re-read of Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir, just under the wire for 2025. I don't have any new thoughts this time— no, actually, I have one: ( ... )— but I continue to enjoy this series so so much and will cheerfully re-read it on loop until Alecto gets published and/or the rest of my life, whichever comes first, even at my current snail's pace of three years to finish three books (having last read Gideon in 2023 and Harrow in 2024).

tinny

bestof_icons is back! \o/

I'd be very happy if you helped me choose icons to remake!

ICON REMAKE - JOIN IN! | MY THREAD

shadaras

1.
The darkest part of the year is always the hardest to remember to, like, be a person and not just curl up being grumbly about the long cold dark.

But, well, I do feel more like a person the more I act like a person and interact with people, as much as I might wish to be a lump and zone out while watching streams/tv that ask nothing of me.

2.
Yuletide revealed works!

There was perhaps 30min of AHHHH about 20min after reveals due to an Ao3 bug that revealed creators alongside works. Considering that this happened to Battleship this summer and the mods heard crickets from Support at the time, perhaps now that Yuletide hit the same bug (and solved the immediate problem with advice from the Battleship mods) Ao3 support will have more data and motivation to figure out wtf happened there and make sure it can't happen again.

Anyway, I received two Yuletide gifts:

The Promise (1222 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Oathsworn (Actual Play Podcast)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Dorado the Adamant & Nabain Palisade
Characters: Dorado the Adamant, Nabain Palisade
Additional Tags: and the absence of Serikali, Post canon, Missing Scene, Dialogue Heavy, Major Spoilers
Summary:
“Did you ever speak to Serikali?” Dorado asked.
“Not as often as I would have liked.” The broken promise settled over his shoulders like a yoke. But even under that weight, he still could carry curiosity. Dorado was direct: if she changed topic, there had to be a reason.

This is for a fandom that, as the author's note says, I wrote a promo post last year (and then mentioned again during Battleship season when people were asking about good actual play podcasts), and am thus inevitably the reason this person got into the show. <3 Delightful to get a gift for it! I was not expecting one, but also when I saw a gift show up for me and no fandoms I'd requested in the collection list I was like "omg... perhaps..." and it was!

This is a lovely little coda adding into the Oathsworn epilogue, about what people are willing to do for the sake of their community and what secrets they're willing to keep and why. Absolutely delightful.

The other gift is WORLDBUILDING VIA TEXTBOOK EXCERPTS

The Dresediel Lex Project And Its Consequences (2385 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Craft Sequence - Max Gladstone
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Maestre Gerhardt
Additional Tags: Worldbuilding, Epistolary
Summary:
Excerpts from documents found in Tara Abernathy's bag before her graduation from the Hidden Schools, sketching out the historical project to understand undeath and some pertinent later findings.

aka, someone taking me up on my Worldbuilding and Atypical Narrative Stuff things. <3 Absolutely delightful. A+ look into how weird it is to do SCIENCE to the magic of Becoming A Lich and Living Forever As An Undead Being. The change in thought about said magic from the first excerpt to the last is very fun, and it's a good look at a bit of magic that the series itself takes rather for granted.

I have also received absolutely lovely comments on both of the fics I wrote for Yuletide! Further commentary about those after author reveals; I had a great time writing both of them for very different reasons. xD <3

3.
Been thinking about projects for the new year and things I want to do and how, as much as I'm like "ughhhhh I am TIRED all the time" it is annoyingly true that often if I do things anyway I will end up having more energy overall.

So.

Fundamentally I believe in my ability to Write Stuff so long as I, y'know, actually focus and put time into it. xD The part where I need to get myself to actually write instead of zoning out on the internet is the hard part, usually! But I would like to actually write about the blorbos I've been rotating in my head since this summer.

There's this part of me like "that would be easier if you had a TITLE for it" and I'm like "OKAY SO GIVE ME ONE" about it. (

tavina most of the time I do not feel your pain about this BUT IN THIS CASE it feels weirdly true, considering that my brain can give me the primary arc of the story and the vibes I want but the idea of WRITING it is somehow ???. if a title helps I will sigh loudly but also be like "yeah okay sure".)

but I would like to be able to actually explain about my blorbos and their not-romance (it is an ADVENTURE STORY and they are absolutely Together but also get mad if one's like "so your BOYFRIEND" about it) (they are a half-triton/half-elf and a half-orc/half-dragon because why be Normal about your multiracial fantasy characters) (the half-dragon gets kidnapped to build an airship and that's what kicks the whole thing off) which means I need to WRITE IT

so really if I have any goal for next year it is probably simply "please actually write full draft of that <3", which, to be clear, is Very Doable based on how many words I am capable of writing xD just gotta make them words about this.

4.
It snowed the day after Christmas (or, well, the evening of Boxing Day into the early morning of the 27th), fluffy dry snow that's perfectly aesthetic and wasn't too much of a pain to clean off. Tonight it's supposed to be FREEZING RAIN, however, which is so much more UGH and is going to make going to work tomorrow Special. (I wish I got more time off for the holidays, but, whatever, it's not like I would do anything in particular except rest and read and write.)

5.
The dojo did get a new heater in. It's the same as the old heater, I'm pretty sure, except newer and thus works properly. xD

6.
A friend made me watch the first four episodes of I Am Nobody, a cdrama that they were like "I think you'll like it!" about because of the traits: Has Women (aka: is not actually a BL) and Is Modern Cultivation (because I'd made a comment about the Legend of Xiao Hei that they should've told me it was modern cultivation and not just "it has a cute cat! look at the cute cat!"). The thing is, it has women by virtue of being Probably Het (I think fandom is mostly like BUT BOYS about it) and the modern cultivation is "secret sects keep magic secret" and not the far more interesting "magical cultivation sects are integrated into everyday modern life" that Xiao Hei included.

So like... it's a show that I'd have fun watching with them, because it's honestly really well done for what it is, but unlike either friend I was watching with (either the one showing this to us or the other one new to it) I am not compelled to watch the rest on my own? It leans too much into comedy and not enough into the sort of worldbuilding or character dynamics that actually get their claws into me. Not a bad thing about it, really! I see why people like it! Just. Not as much my jam as that friend had hoped for.

7.
I watched del Toro's Frankenstein on Christmas Day, and spent the entire time talking with my friend about the use of color in that movie. It definitely understood what Frankenstein (the novel) was about! It portrayed The Themes (consequences of one's actions; accepting responsibility; the relationship between creator and creation) very well. It also did not shy away from gore and blood and the surgical nature of it all! (Also there were wolves that Did Not Act Like Wolves At All but also they're A Metaphor in the end so... whatever..) Very enjoyable, glad to have seen it!

grrlpup

a thick tangle of holly, with shiny green leaves and red berries

It’s the liminal days. I’m catching up on holiday correspondence and visits, restarting non-holiday things that got dropped (e.g. going to the gym), and eating a lot of delicious leftovers and improvised meals.

Sang and I watched Carol, and keep meaning to rewatch The Lion in Winter but also keep diverting or downgrading, twice to sample the gay Hallmark Christmas movies (The Holiday Sitter and Friends and Family Christmas so far), which are better than anticipated.

I’m working on a fic and a risograph print (they are not related to each other). There are many other things– piano, getting more flexible, drawing– that I’d like to practice steadily, but haven’t yet found where to work them in. I also browse rescue dogs on the internet.

I’m reading Philip Pullman’s The Rose Field and deeply happy that it’s 650 pages long so I get to read it for a long time. Conversely, all my favorite books of 2025 are picture books.

2025 has been a lot. My father died in February and was buried in a military cemetery; we also held a public memorial service for him in June. I retired from the university in September. Sang and I traveled to Japan for several weeks after that. My youngest aunt, energetic and vivacious as always in June, was taken down by pancreatic cancer and died on Thanksgiving. A less eventful 2026 would be just fine. I could find a lot of joys in homebody life with outdoor walks.

This post originates at everyday though not every day. Comments welcome here or there.

nnozomi posting in

guardian_learning

部首
彳 parts 1-4
彻, thorough; 彼, that, one another; 往, to go; 径, track/diameter; 待, to stay/to wait; 很, very; 律, law; 徒, apprentice; 得, must/to get; 循, to follow; 微, tiny; 德, virtue/morality/Germany
( pinyin )
https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?cdqrad=60
心 parts 1-2
心, heart; 必, must; 忆, memory; 忍, to endure; 忐忑, apprehensive
( pinyin )
https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?cdqrad=61

语法
2.8 Adjective reduplication
2.9 "From" words 从 vs 离
2.10 A little: 一点 vs 有点
https://www.digmandarin.com/hsk-2-grammar

词汇
布置, arrangement; 分布, distribution
步行, to walk/go on foot; 逐步, gradually
擦, to wipe/to scrape
才, ability/gift/only
材料, materials; 身材, figure
财产, property; 财富, wealth
( pinyin )
https://mandarinbean.com/new-hsk-4-word-list/

玩玩
Chen Shaoxi, 风再大, and Chen Jingfei, 春色悠悠不及你蕩漾.

今年最后的第七天！好冷！大家过得怎么样？好好保重身体，跨年得充分快乐。