Lighter than Air

1. Today was a long day with a lot of meetings, but I did manage to get all the other stuff on my to-do list done in between at least.

2. Most other businesses in Little Tokyo are already shut down temporarily so we made the decision to close our store tomorrow. While the protests (or rather the response to them) has been disruptive to business for that store, it's still been worth keeping it open, but those protests were more spontaneous and the planned events tomorrow for No Kings Day are going to draw a huge crowd. The only business we'd get would be some protestors buying lunch or snacks, and considering employee safety it's better to just shut down. We also had the store boarded up just in case, since one whole side is all windows and a lot of the front is as well. I definitely think closing tomorrow is the right choice, so I'm glad we were able to convince the company president to give us the okay.

3. While Carla's out of town I moved one of the cars all the way up the driveway into the back yard so I don't have to worry about moving it from one side of the street to the other on street sweeping days, and Tuxie seems to like having the car there lol.

Took an after work trip to Disneyland for dinner. Traffic was not bad at all getting down there (and even better getting home) and as of this week both the lower level pass holders are blocked out, so the crowds are lighter. Nice weather, too!

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1. A few months ago I started having problems with itunes where every time I tried to add a song to a playlist it froze. I tried a few solutions I found online and nothing worked, so I just stopped listening to music at my desk and basically only listened to it in the car through Apple Music. Finally the other day I just gave up and uninstalled itunes and reinstalled it again, and at first I was really regretting my decision because even after logging in, it wasn't showing any of the music I'd downloaded over the past few years from Apple Music, only my library on my HD, but then I logged out and logged in again and everything showed up, and adding songs to playlists seems to work again, so maybe now I'll actually get back to listening to music at home.

2. There is DLC for Sea of Stars, a whole new quest that I've seen a few reviews say is about eight hours or so of gameplay. I started it the other day and am enjoying it so far. Sea of Stars is definitely one of my favorite games from the past year or so, so I'm excited to be able to play more of it. (In between Mario Kart World, of course.)

3. Our Little Tokyo store is right next to city hall, so things have been kind of rough down there the past couple days with the protests. Both yesterday and today the store had to close early so employees could get home safe. This morning there was a ton of graffiti (all varities of "fuck ICE") along the windows of one side of the building, but thankfully no actual damage to the store and the property manager was able to get it cleaned up easily.

4. Chloe also says "fuck ICE"!

Anyone in the US interested in a used Switch? No original box, but I've got the dock, AC adapter, HDMI cable, two sets of joycons (black and red/blue), the holder thingy that turns the joycons into a regular controller, one set of wrist straps for the joycons, and a charging station. It also has a memory card already installed.

I'm looking for $100 including shipping.

Currently Reading
Murder in Season
33%. Most recent in the Lady of Letters series. Still enjoying this series, but compared to other recent historical mystery series that I'm also following, this one is very noticeably lacking queer and non-white characters. I also don't love the style of writing (everyone's eyes are always changing color with their emotions and the love interest is a former sailor so the MC is always describing his scent with ocean-y words but he literally has not been out to sea in ages so it makes no sense), but the mysteries are fun.

Riding the Rails
20%.

How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee
37%.

Red Hail
57%.

Architectural Follies in America
73%.

Recently Finished
Murder in Masquerade

Falls to Pieces
Thriller about a woman and her daughter who are on the run from her abusive ex-husband and have been living under new names for the past two years. But then her fiance goes missing, and then her daughter, and she's convinced her ex is behind it. This had some interesting reveals, but mostly it just felt like too many, where each new reveal was like, and now THIS guy can't be trusted and THIS guy is acting shady, etc. It was fine, but I won't be rushing out to read more from this author.

I Hate This Place vol. 1-2
Two volume graphic novel series about a lesbian couple who moves to an isolated farm that one of them has inherited. Farm turns out to be mega haunted and they can never leave the premises again. I liked this quite a lot.

Rock wa Lady no Tashinami Deshite vol. 1
Manga about a girl whose mom remarries into a wealthy family and she's sent to a fancy all-girls school where all the students are super sheltered. In order to become the perfect young lady and make her new family proud, she's determined to leave behind her love of rock instilled in her by her musician father, but then she meets another girl who secretly plays the drums and they decide to form a band. Sounded like a fun plot but the setting was too ridiculous. I don't think I'll be continuing with it.

Bokura no Hentai vol. 1-4
I stumbled across this on an Amazon Japan sale (first volume was free and the rest are all 55 yen each). Reminds me of Hourou Musuko. This focuses on three middle schoolers who meet on a crossdressing forum and then decide to meet up offline. One crossdresses because the boy he likes is only into girls, one because his mom kind of lost it after his sister died and insists that he's his sister so he wears her clothes at home, and one who is trans. (Another character is introduced later who wears a girls' uniform at school just because he prefers it.) I'm really enjoying this one a lot.