alt_fen | Member Posts

I brought my raincoat and boots down to SoCal for Christmas because the news had been spouting dire warnings about historic levels of rainfall, and they weren't kidding. The one time I chose to wear sneakers to walk around instead of my boots, they got completely soaked through; corner puddles rivaling in depth the ones I've stepped into in Boston hidden underneath grey-brown snow. Got to chat with a few neighbors and local restaurant owners about whether or not being open for Christmas was going to be worth it given the copious precipitation - takeout and delivery, yes; dine-in: almost certainly not.

( Christmas Eve: historic rain, Colombian food, hanging with family, Korean pizza and food TV )

( Christmas Day: jogging, more historic rain, gingerbread house-building, KBBQ )

( San Diego: mostly escaping the historic rain further north )

( ensaymada musings )

And then we got back to LA and mostly it kept raining, but we did manage to slip out to Santa Monica for the sunset on Monday when the skies cleared for a few precious hours. One more lunch out with Jung and Uhmuhni at Republique (H and U loved their chicken sandwiches Jung got the potato pancake with smoked salmon, and I got the seasonal ricotta toast with persimmons and pistachios. Cheesemaking goals; I'd love to make a ricotta at home that creamy!). Clearing out the leftovers.

And then the long drive back up the coast. Sandwiches at Red Scooter Deli in Paso to break up the journey (French dip for H, bacon jam grilled cheese for me); heading straight to the Aquarium upon arrival in Monterey. Mediocre overpriced pizza and garlic bread at the closest place still open (it was New Year's Day and we were in the heart of tourist trapland). I awoke the next day in time to catch an utterly sublime sunrise, jogging slowly along the coastal trail. Hyoun woke up half an hour later, caught up to me; we walked back together through the park where we got married sixteen-plus years ago.

Picked up Jollibee on the last leg so we wouldn't have to cook when we got home; drove past the sign we always spot too late talking about artichoke cupcakes, another thing I'll have to try to replicate at home this year. And then we were HOME and we did laundry and slept forever.

Current Mood: sleepy

azurelunatic

* didn't do much for Solstice
* amusingly, both Aunt Tish and V got me the same slipper-socks for Christmas
* pear + green tea perfume was extremely relevant to Thorn's interests, even straight out of the bottle
* got my pill boxes filled for the coming quarter
- started the desk top cleanup for that a little before Just In Time
- did the morning pills first, which always gives me a little grace period to get the evening pills done the subsequent day
- ran out of my joint supplement after the first five weeks were done, but that did allow me to put the first five weeks away and start using them
- Belovedest picked up the missing pills in a very short turn-around, yay
* NYE cat pilling results: Yellface deigned to swallow, finally, after several very polite arguments in favor of spitting the pill out; Mila was too sharp to be pilled
* watched the festivities up at the Space Needle from the comfort of bed, with Belovedest and Thorn and sparkling cider (Belovedest dipped into the Faygo stash also)
* legs still awful
* did not lose the second set of black teardrop beads for the crochet projects
* made an OTC meds order from the usual supplier (Wellspring Meds) despite the sale having expired
- if your household needs industrial quantities of Imodium and you hate blister packs with a passion, consider this vendor: 200 pills in a nice little safety cap bottle, no peeling or shoving required

sporky_rat

The house has been either entirely too cold or very pleasant, and no middle ground. There's been a fire all day, and it has helped a lot. One of the big issues we have is concrete floors, and it's slick and keeps the cold really well. Perfect for summer. Awful, terrible, no good, and bad for winter.

But I do have house shoes that supposedly are arriving tomorrow? I'm fine if they show up Monday though. I don't really like how the USPS has to deliver packages on Sundays.

The upcoming months are already filling up. I'm going to be busy so many weekends!

Current Mood: cold
Current Location: Rat te Kāinga

elisem

(Whoever hellseries on AO3 is, this is for them, because it was their comment on https://archiveofourown.org/works/75916086 that made it happen.)

Edna St. Vincent Black Lightning Millay

Says the reader to the poet, “Your verse fine and wild

My attention has caught, and my senses beguiled”

Says the poet to the reader, “Are you going my way?

I am Edna St. Vincent Black Lightning Millay

You’ll not find me in found verse; the sonnet for me

Is the path of a poet determined to be free”

And she’ll pull you on behind

And down among the Muses you will ride

Some say that her love life is skid marks and swerves

But she’ll tell you in earnest it is Beauty she serves

She is changeable weather with a quicksilver soul

Edna St. Vincent’s not the kind you can control

But she writes like an angel with a devil’s sense of style

With heavenly precision and a wicked knowing smile

She says “They all will know some day

The name of Edna St. Vincent Black Lightning… Millay”

“Come down, come down, dear reader,” said the poetry patrol

“For they’ve taken young St. Vincent for the stealing of souls

She was speed racing Sappho, the Brownings, and Poe

Oh, come down, dear reader, to her final folio”

Now her body is broken and her breath is enjambed

She’s off to be the laureate of lays for the damned

But she smiles to hear you say

“I love you, Edna St. Vincent Black Lightning… Millay”

Vincent, by all opinions, could pour power into a poem

And take your breath and your heart before she took you home

Now too many poets — I won’t name names — they just came to play

They didn’t have a soul like St. Vincent Millay

She left us all longing, in spite of our pleas

But she reached out her hand and she left us with these

She gave us her visions, she gave us her poems

And the Muses swooped down to carry her home

And the name we still reverence today

Is Edna St. Vincent Black Lightning… Millay

pegkerr

Christmas itself was pretty quiet for me. Delia was in Eau Claire with her fiancé's family, and the Onas gathered with Alona's family. They invited Eric and me to join them, but Eric wanted to keep things low-key because he was still recovering from his surgery. So I made roast duck for the two of us on Christmas Eve:

any my traditional Christmas breakfast on Christmas morning:

In my family, however, Christmas isn't over on the 26th of December. My extended family gathers between Christmas and New Year's day:

My brother, who lives in New York, has been faithfully bringing his entire family out for family week for decades. We gather in various configurations: some go out to movies. Some of my nephews and nieces went to one of my nephew's house to get a lesson in throwing pottery. We gathered with my mom for lunch one day in the party room of her assisted living facility. We gathered in the evenings to eat hors d'ouevres, cook food together, and play games. And as always, we gathered at my sister Cindy's house on New Year's Eve and spent the day together, feasting on Chinese take out and sharing memories. All of the nieces and nephews had stories to tell of their memories of family week. My brother-in-law remarked how splendid it is to see the rich and deep relationships that the cousins share with one another, which have been nurtured by our family traditions of getting together every year to enjoy one another's company.

This year we had the additional joy of two new babies joining the festivities. M is a genuine extrovert who obviously had a wonderful time flirting with everyone, and when Fiona and Alone arrived each evening, there were plenty of eager volunteers to cuddle with her.

We genuinely enjoy each other.

I hope you all had as splendid a holiday as my family and I did.

This is my last collage of the year, but I intend to continue next year.

Image description: Top: members of a family, men and women, smile at the camera. Below: a table covered with a red tablecloth set for Christmas breakfast. Right: an older woman holding a walker (Peg's mom) stands beside a younger woman (Peg). Lower right corner: four young woman smile. Left corner: a silver candlestick with a gold lit candle with two glittering snowflake brooches.

Christmas

52 Christmas

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Current Mood: grateful

edschweppe

Rabbit, rabbit.

(In memory of Daphne Worth, aka

trollcatz, whose habit it was to post thusly to open the New Year. Pay no attention to the fact that she was a fictional character.)

synecdochic

I just posted a thread to my Bluesky account about why I think it's extremely urgent for people to back up anything they still have on LiveJournal, however they do it. Thread starts here:

https://bsky.app/profile/rahaeli.bsky.social/post/3mbebi2xfxc25

ru-news LJ post I was relying on:

https://ru-news.livejournal.com/80899.html

Please spread this far and wide so as many people see it as possible, because I really don't see English-language LJ continuing in its present form for much longer, and I know some people may still have things they care about there. It doesn't matter how you get it backed up, but it's absolutely crunch time for getting it backed up.

ursamajor

Sitting in the most beautiful Apple Store (really! I'm staring at all sorts of historical facade detail work right now) with some downtime; popping in to say hello. :)

Since my last update:

- ( chocolate green curry birthday cake! )

- ( holiday concert, where I'm still belting out Whitney Houston arias two weeks later )

- ( all of my cookbooks are shelved now! )

- ( Paso Robles: actually intriguing wines and a cozy book nook )

Interlude: the reason I'm at the Apple Store right now is because my phone reinstall went rogue. Le sigh. At least things are progressing well, but on a four-year-old phone with some newly-discovered physical damage, I know it's probably new phone time sooner rather than later.

- ( Hearst Castle, Morro Bay, the most extravagant cinnamon roll, and one night of Santa Barbara gems )

- And then we knew the storm was coming, so we finished our drive down to LA the next day. Of course there was traffic two days before Christmas, but at least we were coming down the coast and from barely 100 miles away. Leonard and Sara took the valley road, which is faster, but they were driving the whole distance from the Bay in one day, and had to go over the Grapevine, and there were literal tumbleweeds causing crashes. But everyone made it safely; Jane and Uhmuhni's flights came in without too much delay, and we celebrated with curry plates at CoCo Ichibanya, followed up by rolled ice cream at Holy Roly.

Still feeling like I want to send out New Year's cards, re-establish contact with those I've lost touch with. Still need to see whether my reach exceeds my grasp here. Still have LA and San Diego to write up. Still aspiring to be in better touch with people, as always, and trying to navigate how to best do that in 2026 with the shifting sands of everything. Miss you all, and here's to getting to hug you in the new year.

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: and there's a hand my trusty fiere // and gie's a hand o' thine

sporky_rat

Anyone else get the massive urge to make jam and can tomato sauce and do the rest of the sort of food put up in the liminal space between Christmas and New Year's?

Current Mood: hungry
Current Location: Rat te Kāinga
Current Music: Bobbie Gentry - Fancy

edschweppe

Once again, one of my fellow choristers is reporting that they've got COVID, and quite possibly spread it at the Christmas Eve service. (Like most of the choir, and most of the congregation, said chorister was not masked for any part of the service.)

Surprisingly (not), we had an outbreak last year around Christmas. And the year before that. And the year before that. And the church's policy is still mask-optional, with almost everyone opting for no mask. We do run a bunch of HEPA filters in the Sanctuary, but the CO2 levels at the Christmas Eve service peaked over 1800ppm by my little Aranet.

The good news for me personally is that I have been constantly using N95-grade singers masks, plus a nasal spray (Covixyl) that has demonstrated some protective properties, ever since I started singing again in-person. And, to date, I'm still testing negative - including just now.

So keep on masking up, folks. COVID ain't fucking over, not by a long shot.

pegkerr

Eric had surgery last Friday and needed to have someone accompany him and stay with him for twenty-four hours afterward. The aftercare turned out to be a bit more intense than expected afterward, and so I ended up staying at his place all weekend to assist him.

We were very quiet together. It occurred to me on Sunday, as we sat together in his living room, drinking coffee and looking out the living room window at the winter landscape, that it was the winter Solstice. A year ago on the winter Solstice, I was hosting a solstice party. If I had been at home, I would have lit all my candles to mark the day. Being with him on that day as he was recovering seemed fitting.

The winter solstice is a time for deep rest and healing, for reflection and resilience.

He is feeling much better now and counts the surgery as a success.

Image description: A window with a winter view outside. A pair of feet clad in red and white striped socks are propped up on the windowsill beside a red mug with a steaming hot beverage. A hand holding a couple of pills hovers above the feet.

Rest

51 Rest

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Current Mood: peaceful

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Member Posts

out there having fun in the warm california sun

Miscellaneous holiday and post-holiday scraps

The dichotomy of living in a warm time and cold house

filk: Edna St. Vincent Black Lightning Millay

2025 52 Card Project: Week 52: Christmas

Rabbit, rabbit.

Get anything you have left on LJ backed up ASAP

on those less than silent nights

It's always winter when I feel like this...

COVID in the choir. Again.

2025 52 Card Project: Week 51: Rest

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February 2025

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