January 2025
Happy new year!
As of the 22nd, I've officially been on LJ for twenty years. I'm not certain I could say that about many things in my life, so I am glad to have the milestone. In that time, I've posted 2,437 entries and 38,331 comments, and received 30,932 comments in return, which ratios the hell out of any other social media, certainly.
Last night I celebrated Dean Winchester's birthday with this very fine meal:
The salad in the back is a Cobb salad, which is not a salad I typically choose for myself but felt very American diner (in this scenario Sam bows to stereotype and does get the salad, because I wanted one--I maintain that Sam *does not eat salads for every meal*). The burger is cheddar-jalapeño. The plate was a gift from septembers_coda and brightly_lit many years ago! <3
As far as the rest of the month goes, I opened it in California, visiting family, which involved eating a lot of things. The rest of the month has been fairly routine--by design, as I try to be very conscious of my time and energy and make workable plans for myself.
One thing I've started is to write down one new thing I learn everyday, however big or small. My most staying things so far are: 1) That barn quilts exist (I went for a walk and noticed a bunch of houses had these pretty quilt-square things on the sides of their houses, and was like... have those always been there?? What do they signify?? What they signify is that my neighborhood community center held a barn quilt workshop and a bunch of people went to it, and then adorned their houses with the results, which I think is super cool!), and 2) a bunch of information about how to touch-up varying levels of paint damage to your car, because I drove my colleague home one night and was rewarded for this good deed by scraping against their fence on the way out. =_= There's not much to be done right now, because it's too cold for paint to function, but it should be an edifying project come spring.
I also watched the first season of Interview with the Vampire while stringing together 1000 paper cranes (a goal of 2024 I did not complete, and thus committed to now). I enjoyed it, and I think Sam Reid is a great Lestat. In high school, Anne Rice vampires were *our thing* amongst my friends group, so it was pleasant to return to that canon with very little retained memory of it. I love Louis's alternate backstory and the additional historical contexts it affords, in terms of setting the series in time and place. But I also kind of felt like the series felt like it had to be a little too buttoned-up about their presentation of the spectacle that is Anne Rice vampires. Like, everyone in this series is basically doing crazypants things the entire time, and they get to do that. But it often felt like there was this quiet insistent need to assure the audience that yes, that's all crazypants, and *we know this is problematic behavior don't cancel us.* Not that I think it's realistic to trust a general audience to be discerning and aware of that on their own--I just think either you're prepared as a text to take that risk, or you aren't. And it never quite felt to me that IWTV was.