The wall behind my desk was still blank after the remodel. For displaying art, I lost several walls in the remodel, so I had all kinds of art I could put there, including two of my three large square framed prints. Or I could just put the wall back the way it was:

Wall in My Home Office 2016-2025

( Blank Wall Makeover, Below This Cut )

Assorted Small Photo Frames from Aaron Brothers

I was a longtime customer of Aaron Brothers Art & Framing – and besides having a few art pieces framed by them, I bought many, many photo frames from them. Not only did they have the best, widest selection of frames in all (including obscure) sizes, Aaron Brothers frequently had half-price sales (sometimes marketed as 1¢ sales).

8"x12" and 20"x30" frames are often hard to come by, and Aaron Brothers had an amazing selection of those. I used those frames a lot – and also stocked up – especially upon news that parent company Michaels was closing all Aaron Brothers stores in 2018.

Through their half-price sales, I also had accumulated a number of 4"x6" and 5"x7" photo frames. I had created a Photowall in my dining room using frames of that size. Generally, I don’t make prints in that size, and my box of photo frames has been in storage for years.

However, I’ve decided I need to rebuild the photowall in a new location, and I wanted to update the set of photos. I didn’t know if the two photos I wanted to add would be 4"x6" or 5"x7" photos, so I needed to choose the frames first. I didn’t know what I had on hand.

I decided I would go with 5"x7". In that size, I had a good assortment of frames:

5x7 inch photo frames
iPhone 13 mini photo

I have to say, I really do miss Aaron Brothers. Michaels operates Aaron Brothers as a “store within a store,” but product selection is a tiny shadow of what it used to be. I don’t even shop there anymore.

With the closure of local Costco photo centers, getting things like small 5"x7" and 4"x6" prints is a pain. I ordered the prints I wanted through Shutterfly, which gives me a 50% Costco discount on all prints. I stuffed my order with 13 prints (of three images) – and with 50% off, the total came to just under $8. However, shipping was over $12. Wow.

Shutterfly has an option for prints to be picked up at a local CVS or Walgreens – but that option isn’t available to Costco members. Say, what?

I ordered the prints yesterday (Sunday 1/4), and their estimated delivery is Friday 1/16. 12 days. Good thing I’m not in a hurry. I guess I could have gone to The Shutterbug or something. In fact, I think I’ll try that, just to compare.

Tl;dr I got some Hades stuff for Christmas and a new mini phone.

( Read more... )

The phone has not, unfortunately helped me avoid doom scrolling, which was one of the reasons I got it. So I still need to work on that.

For some reason my brain came up with an idea of a society that's stuck in a time loop. Like Bill Murray, from Groundhog Day. Except everyone remembers the day before, not just one person. But each day, everything is set to the exact state it was in on the day the time loop started.
And I mean, like, mass chaos at first, right?
Real purge shit. But like, it'd get old, yeah?
And so eventually everyone settles down and basically re-establish the social contract
And murdering and shit is just considered like, a total dick move.
Eventually, every single person on earth will have lived out every permutation of the same 24 hour period. Everyone would have literally done everything.
It would be extra fucked up if the time loop ended, and we had just a planet full of people who had lived millennia in a world with no consequences, suddenly snapping back to the "real" world
This weed is some good shit

Current Mood: high
Current Location: The Outer Limits

Birds of Prey Omnibus Vol. 1

After visiting Sequential Noir, I followed up with a scan at Amazon for Birds of Prey books... and discovered an amazing book that was published just a few months ago – Birds of Prey Omnibus Vol. 1 by Gail Simone and Ed Benes. Oooh! A hardcover version of one of my favorite series? Count me in!

I ordered the book last week, and it arrived yesterday. It’s beautiful! The inside pages are brilliant color on glossy pages – much more durable and vibrant than the trade paperbacks I have. The book covers Birds of Prey #56-90, which I do own in trade paperback. But this book is much higher quality. Super happy to have this in my library!

There’s a Gail Simone Birds of Prey Omnibus Vol. 2 coming out in August. This is a no-brainer for me.

Google Chrome is my primary browser – and I certainly have mixed feelings about my dependencies on the Google ecosystem. But I also have mixed feelings about Apple and Amazon, and I have a lot to think about regarding what platforms I use. However, that’s a topic for another time.

For now, all my bookmarks are in Chrome. And while there is a modicum of hierarchy in my bookmarks, a lot of cruft has accumulated over the years. In recent weeks, I’ve occasionally stopped to clean up a folder of bookmarks related to my current task.

Cleaning up a folder is a process of clicking on every link in the folder – and sometimes moving down the folder hierarchy if I have the time and inclination.

Mainly, the first level of cleanup is deleting any bookmark that is a dead URL. That’s easy.

The next test is to see if the site I’ve accessed is active/current. A lot of old Wordpress blogs are still out there but haven’t received any new posts in five or 10 (or 20) years. I then have to make a decision. If I go there intending to see current information, then I’ll probably delete the bookmark.

Sometimes, though, the old content at the site is still worth reading. Depending on the topic/content/nostalgia, I may keep the bookmark for reference. I’m starting to file into separate folders for Active Blogs/Sites and Old Blogs/Sites.

One example of an old blog that I’m keeping the bookmark for is Sequential Noir. Jennifer is a Black Canary / Birds of Prey fan like I am, and she generously has archived her posts for us. I had followed her blog more actively during the Gail Simone / Ed Benes years, and I will always treasure the content. Bookmark – Keeper.

There are a lot of anime blogs I used to follow, and most stopped adding new posts years ago. I’ve ended up deleting all those bookmarks. The situation is similar for some tech sites. The bookmarks cleanup is slow but satisfying. Whenever this all is finished, I still will have way too many bookmarks. But they don’t weigh much and don’t get in my way – so what’s the harm?

Google Chrome does make it pretty easy for me to manage bookmarks. (You can drag and drop in the Bookmarks Manager.) Here’s just a sample of my workarea:

Google Chrome Bookmarks Manager

two log cabins with snow on the roofs in a wintery forest the text snowflake challenge january 1 - 31 in white cursive text

Happy Snowflake Challenge Season!

It's a testament to my messy first week of the year that I'm already late in doing these. Here's 1 and 2 combined.

The Icebreaker Challenge: Introduce yourself. Tell us why you're doing the challenge, and what you hope to gain from it.

Hello, I'm Lea. I also go by GotQuiet in a handful of fandom spaces. My stickied post gives the general lowdown on who I am and what I post about. I find the Snowflake Challenge is a great way to meet new people on Dreamwidth, and to cultivate more frequent posting habits, which sometimes go by the wayside when I get busy or otherwise distracted. It's also fun to chat with people also taking the challenge! Sometimes it's really the only time of year that some of us interact all that much because our journals are otherwise not as aligned in interest, so now I also see it as having a chance to say a friendly hello to DW acquaintances.

I hope everyone has a lovely January and that 2026 is at the very least better than 2025 lol.

And here's Challenge 2:

Loosely defined! Post about your pets, pets from your canon, anything you want!

Hmm, here's some scattershot responses.

Our family dog was called Luke after Luke Skywalker. I think Marty after Marty McFly was also considered.
Best boy of gaming probably has to go to the Mabari in Dragon Age: Origins who stayed in my party through my entire first playthrough and naturally was named Luke.
My prefered starter Pokemon is always the grass types. Bulbasaur is king. However my preference was always for Digimon and Monster Rancher. The Monster Rancher game kind of sucked, or at least I didn't really have the patience for it, but it had this novel system on the PS2 where you got new monsters by inserting random CDs into the system, and some magic calculation would result in a new monster for you. I had a decent CD collection and I fed all of it into the game lol. That's the only thing I really remember about Monster Rancher.
My early internet life had a large chunk dedicated to the Petz games. There were websites dedicated to "breeders" who offered custom pet files for both breeds and individual pets that you could either take for free or literally put in an adoption application for. I never had a Petz page of my own but I kept track of about a dozen of them. There is a free executable of Petz 4 available now, but it's just not the same now that I'm not 14.
I think the gaming environment would be vastly improved if all fishing minigames were replaced with pet raising minigames.

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions – but I do a lot of planning. Last year was an ambitious Year of the Home – which had been originally planned for 2020 – until some darn pandemic derailed that plan. I’ve declared 2026 the Year of Tech. I’ve had a long list of tech tasks that have been deferred time and time again. I’ve long been saying that I’ll address those issues once I’m retired. A year and a half later, I’m finally getting started. It’s possible this is a two-year project; I have a lot of tech debt.

Here are the themes from 2024-2026. (Click on the thumbnail for a larger image.)

Project Years 2024-2026

Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge (Game Boy, 1991): A Mini Review

It's like Mega Man, but smaller.

Smaller 'cause it's on a Game Boy, but also smaller because it doesn't have as many levels as a typical Mega Man Game.

Starts almost as an adaptation of the original Mega Man, except only 4 robot masters are available to fight: Cut Man, Ice Man, Elec Man, and Fire Man. Get through their stage, defeat them, get their powers, and then it's on to Dr. Wily's fortress. Yep, just 4 normal stages! You do fight four robot masters from Mega Man 2--Heat Man, Quick Man, Flash Man and Bubble Man--but they're all in one of those teleporter rooms located at the end of one of the Wily stages.

Mixing robot masters from two games is kinda fun, and there are original levels, enemies, and other elements that don't show up in the home console versions, so kudos to the handheld version for having the ambition to add to the series, rather than just adapting it.

The smaller screen size means you have a tighter field of view than the NES versions, which may make this game even harder than the original Mega Man on NES.

I don't regret playing it, but I think my favorite part was at the end credits, where you get to see goofy portraits of all the robot masters go by. They look happy and silly for some reason! I haven't seen these portraits anywhere else, and I kinda love them.

I played it on the 3DS and tried to avoid using save states, but my willpower crumbled on the last two levels.

Worth checking out if you're a fan of Mega Man and Mega Man 2.

Current Mood: content
Current Location: Monsteropolis
Current Music: a Dead Domain VOD

New Office Credenza

With a full slate of holiday tasks and events, work in the library has slowed to a crawl. I also have a very full January and February lined up, so the library won’t receive much attention until perhaps March. I might not have everything in place until summer. There remains a lot to figure out.

( New Replaces Old, Below This Cut )

Current Mood: pleased

Christmas Cards Received This Year
iPhone 13 mini photo

In the first year of the new library, there was actually a good space for displaying the Christmas cards I received. They just fit on top of the Gallery credenza. Makes me smile.

my mail-order pharmacy pushed back the expected fill date for my ADHD meds like 4 times in a row since the week before Christmas. i avoided dealing with it until today, (i have basically just been getting by with coffee. it hasn't been great.) partly because i am tired and experiencing the symptoms of several of the other million things that are wrong with me and it's seasonal depression miasma time and so on and partly because every single time i have to get on the phone and deal with this there's a 75% chance i end up spending the rest of my day in a rage or crying or both.

today i called all the places that usually have it. every tech i spoke to was exasperated because the manufacturer had been jerking them around for a while on actually shipping the medicine they ordered. then i called my clinic. they pointed me to a help line for my CCO where they can search up the pharmacies most likely to have it in stock. then i found out not a single pharmacy within my nearly 200,000 person city had my dosage in stock. it is the most common fucking dosage.

alternative medications are a problem for me because i have Basically PTSD from a bad encounter with a bad prescription once. generics are no help because all the generics for vyvanse are useless (and mostly just make me feel sick). i can't drive, so i can't just go hunting out of town. i'm basically just turbo fucked. the only good news is i'm apparently next in the queue, IF Takeda Pharmaceuticals deigns to ship any more vyvanse to my pharmacy any time this century.

i'm sick of this. i'm sick of having to do everyone's work for them, ALWAYS when it's down to the wire and/or i'm unmedicated, because everyone is more terrified of me becoming a drug abuser than they are of me becoming DEAD because i absent mindedly wandered in front of a car or something. sick of having to shout GET ME A FUCKING HUMAN at phone robots over and over and over until they comply. sick of going weeks unmedicated, grouchy and exhausted for no good reason. i lived 26 years thinking i was just lazy and unproductive and good for fucking nothing, i got on some meds that changed everything, and now i find out that the real lazy, unproductive good-for-nothings are the people that PRODUCE THE FUCKING MEDS.

i know the DEA is also at fault for some of this and fuck them too, but Takeda is clearly just fucking around right now. this might sound childish, but i think that if you do bad things to me, it is you who should experience the consequences, instead of me. and also maybe i should be paid fairly for my work ($9000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 per minute on the phone is all im asking)

i swear to god i'm going to start invoicing people once i am done crying

Current Mood: infuriated

Once again there is a mass exodus from LiveJournal – see the news from Denise: Привет! LiveJournal imports may be slow. tl;dr: Russia is being Russia. Again.

dine posts Get anything you have left on LJ backed up ASAP. (Details inside post.)

I’m not worried about saving my posts at LJ; they all come over when I migrated to Dreamwidth in 2012. Dreamwidth became my primary blog host, and I crossposted to LJ until crossposting broke back in 2022.

What did not come over in the migration are my LJ photos/images, which remain hosted at LiveJournal. Up until now, they’ve been fine there. The posts migrated to Dreamwidth still link to those LJ images. If those images go away, all the image links will be broken. I already have a problem with broken image links caused by Zenfolio moving content to new servers. I’m still trying to figure out how I’m going to repair that. But at least I have all the master images for Zenfolio.

I don’t have (in any organized fashion, anyway) the source images for the LiveJournal pics. So I guess I’m going to drop everything and download images. I have over 2000 images in the photo albums there. (I had a permanent account, so there wasn’t a practical space constraint. I could store as many images as I needed.)

Anyway, its going to be a big chore – but necessary work. I need to have a structured archive of those images so I can rebuild my blog. *sigh*

And just for my reference, from Nov 2012:
A Sudden Move (1)
A Sudden Move (2)
Layout, Revised
Layout Adjustments, Round 3

Revisiting the best from McSweeney’s is a good way to start the new year. McSweeney’s 25 Most-Read Pieces of 2025

https://archiveofourown.org/works/13408770/chapters/201101401

i aten't dead

Miko, Shiori, and Hinako
This Monster Wants to Eat Me, Episode 13 (Season Finale)

It wasn’t really a great year for anime. I wasn’t much into the mainstream anime. (The shows were OK, but I didn’t have lots of enthusiasm for making time to watch them.) I don’t think there are any shows I need to have in my personal library. But if I were to rewatch a show, the following series would be at the top of the list.

1. This Monster Wants to Eat Me
Oh, hey! Something that isn’t an isekai, an adventurer quest, shonen action, or a high school rom-com! This fantasy drama had me guessing every episode – and I cared about the characters. I liked the art, direction, dialog – and story.

2. A Ninja and an Assassin Under One Roof
Perhaps I needed something lighthearted. Shaft is a great studio, and they did an excellent job directing and animating this fluffy comedy. And I have a soft spot for ninja girls. Plus, Shaft can do comedy. (Can you say, Pani Poni Dash?)

3. May I Ask For One Final Thing?
Scarlet, The Lady of Beatings, is just so much fun to watch. And the villains deserve every fistful they get. So satisfying.

4. Grisaia: Phantom Trigger
Well, I’m a big fan of The Fruit of Grisaia and character designs by Akio Watanabe – so a sequel is a no-brainer for me. Phantom Trigger isn’t as good as predecessor Fruit/Labyrinth/Eden, but the anime succeeds as a guilty pleasure. The characters are similar to their predecessors.

5. I’m the Evil Lord of an Intergalactic Empire!
Just plain fun. Liam is wildly successful in spite of all odds and players against him. He and his poor fiefdom deserve all the wins they get. The first episode was heartbreaking, but things turned around after that.

Previously
My Five Favorite Male Anime Characters of 2025
My Five Favorite Female Anime Characters of 2025
My Five Favorite Anime Couples of 2025

Prince Julius von Pallistan and Scarlet El Vandimion
May I Ask For One Final Thing? Episode 13 (Season Finale)

I’m a romantic, and I always am on the lookout for couples who find love and happiness in the midst of generally tempestuous circumstances. Here are my couples of the year.

1. Scarlet El Vandimion x Prince Julius von Pallistan, May I Ask For One Final Thing?
Prince Julius has carried a torch for Scarlet for years, while Scarlet is oblivious. Scarlet sees Julius’s playfulness as adversarial. Yet, Julius is the only person who accepts Scarlet for who she truly is – and laughs every time Scarlet shows her colors, while everyone else is dismayed. In actuality, these two make a great couple. Julius is a really good guy.

2. Philia Adenauer x Prince Osvalt Parnacorta, The Too-Perfect Saint: Tossed Aside by My Fiancé and Sold to Another Kingdom
This is another one-sided romance, initially. Philia is too socially immature to recognize Osvalt’s honest affection. But she’ll come around. Osvalt is a really good guy.

3. Melphiera Marchalrayd x Duke Aristide Rogier do Galbraith, Pass the Monster Meat, Milady!
What I liked about this series is that the author didn’t waste any time getting this couple to become a couple. The Duke proposed in episode 2, and the couple were officially engaged in episode 4. And the Blood-Mad Duke and the Voracious Villainess are a fine couple. Aristide is a really good guy.

4. Princess Amelia Rosequartz x Akira Oda, My Status as an Assassin Obviously Exceeds That of the Hero’s
Akira is too much of a loner to be in relationship – or so I thought. He surprised me in episode 7 by making a vow to Amelia and declaring his love. So they are officially a couple – and I am happy with that.

5. Marie x Kazuhiro Kitase, Welcome to Japan, Ms. Elf!
Marie and Kazuhiro are a wholesome couple, sharing adventures in two worlds – and enjoying themselves immensely. Happy couples are fun to watch.

Previously
My Five Favorite Male Anime Characters of 2025
My Five Favorite Female Anime Characters of 2025

Scarlet El Vandimion
May I Ask For One Final Thing? Episode 13 (Season Finale)

1. Scarlet El Vandimion, May I Ask For One Final Thing?
Scarlet is simply too much fun to watch. She is intelligent, beautiful, powerful... calm to the point of appearing cold... and viciously wields fists of justice. Her dry statements of fact are direct and humorous. And she always seems to be having fun. Scarlet can be my champion any day.

2. Murasaki Ikoma, Grisaia: Phantom Trigger
What can I say? I have a soft spot in my heart for ninja girls. Murasaki is a classic anime ninja girl – quiet, pretty, dry-witted, stealthy, and skilled. I want her on my side.

3. Miko Yashiro, This Monster Wants to Eat Me
One would never know that Miko is a yokai who eats humans. But her love and support for Hinako is pure and unwavering. No one is more earnest than Miko. Miko sacrifices part of herself to keep her yokai side under control. Now that’s true love.

4. Mizuki Usurai, Flower and Asura
The second-year president of the Sumomogaoka High School Broadcasting Club brandishes an infectious optimism. Her upbeat and adventurous attitude move the people around her into action.

5. Amagi, I’m the Evil Lord of an Intergalactic Empire!
Female in appearance and behavior, Amagi is the AI maid robot that serves Liam Sera Banfield. Amagi is supremely competent as well as totally loyal to Liam, even when Liam demands nonsensical (in their world) things. While Amagi has a stoic and logical demeanor, it’s clear that she truly loves Liam.

Other Candidates
Alina Clover, I May Be a Guild Receptionist, But I'll Solo Any Boss to Clock Out on Time
Marie, Welcome to Japan, Ms. Elf!
Sara Haizaki, Hotel Inhumans

Previously
My Five Favorite Male Anime Characters of 2025

Male Lead Characters were often burdened with paperwork
Felix Arc Ridill
Secrets of the Silent Witch, Episode 3

No award.

I tried hard to make a list of candidates, but the male characters this year were all bland and stereotypical, although many were likeable. There were angsty or naive overpowered protagonists. There were kind and noble – or bland – romantic leads. Would I watch an anime series centered around any of these characters? No. They’re boring.

Here are the best(?) of a boring lot: Louis Scarrel (The Gorilla God’s Go-To Girl), Prince Julius von Pallistan (May I Ask for One Final Thing?), Jade Scrade (I May Be a Guild Receptionist, but I’ll Solo Any Boss to Clock Out on Time), Prince Osvalt Parnacorta (The Too-Perfect Saint: Tossed Aside by My Fiancé and Sold to Another Kingdom), Duke Aristide Rogier do Galbraith (Pass the Monster Meat, Milady!), Prince Felix Arc Ridill (Secrets of the Silent Witch). As an aside, I believe you could swap any of these male characters with another in the set and not see any difference in the anime.

Привет and welcome to our new Russian friends from LiveJournal! We are happy to offer you a new home. We will not require identification for you to post or comment. We also do not cooperate with Russian government requests for any information about your account unless they go through a United States court first. (And it hasn't happened in 16 years!)

Importing your journal from ЖЖ may be slow. There are a lot of you, with many posts and comments, and we have to limit how fast we download your information from ЖЖ so they don't block us. Please be patient! We have been watching and fixing errors, and we will go back to doing that after the holiday is over.

I am very sorry that we can't translate the site into Russian or offer support in Russian. We are a much, much smaller company than LiveJournal is, and my high school Russian classes were a very long time ago :) But at least we aren't owned by Sberbank!

С Новым Годом, and welcome home!

EDIT: Большое спасибо всем за помощь друг другу в комментариях! Я ценю каждого, кто предоставляет нашим новым соседям информацию, понятную им без необходимости искать её в Google. :) И спасибо вам за терпение к моему русскому переводу с помощью Google Translate! Прошло уже много-много лет со школьных времен!

Thank you also to everyone who's been giving our new neighbors a warm welcome. I love you all ❤️

Profile

upthorn

he/him + they/them

Human life is more important than property values.

All human beings deserve to be treated like human beings, not just straight white cisgendered males born in the US or its allies.

White middle-aged curmudgeon of many-trades

Page Summary

lovelyangel - Library Update #25: The Last Wall
lovelyangel - Post Aaron Brothers
got_quiet - Gifts and other Material things
amphobet - Groundhog World
lovelyangel - Birds in Hand
lovelyangel - Bookmarks Housecleaning
got_quiet - Snowflake Challenge 1 & 2
lovelyangel - The Plan for 2026
amphobet - Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge (Game Boy, 1991): A Mini Review
lovelyangel - Library Update #24: Last Pieces
lovelyangel - Christmas Cards 2025
doodlemancy - (kicks down door) guess who's uuuuuuuuuuuuuuunmedicated
lovelyangel - A LiveJournal Headache
lovelyangel - McSweeney’s 2025
wingedcatgirl - dsi
lovelyangel - My Five Favorite Anime Series of 2025
lovelyangel - My Five Favorite Anime Couples of 2025
lovelyangel - My Five Favorite Female Anime Characters of 2025
lovelyangel - My Five Favorite Male Anime Characters of 2025
denise in dw_maintenance - Привет! LiveJournal imports may be slow

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Upthorn

a person, maybe

Reading

Library Update #25: The Last Wall

Post Aaron Brothers

Gifts and other Material things

Groundhog World

Birds in Hand

Bookmarks Housecleaning

Snowflake Challenge 1 & 2

The Plan for 2026