ISMM manhua bonus art

Totally missed this update from mid-2024: extra art of Gu Yiliang and Wei Yanzi as students. Cute!!!


It's been a pretty busy month, but Happy New Year! NYE was lackluster (a lesson not to order from DTF this time of the year, though we did have a nice steamed fish to make up for it) but today is a new day. ♥

Snake it till you make it

Obligatory hotpot photo because there was a satisfying number of balls:

Some personal/family stuff

Over the past few years my dad has been, hmm, reconnecting with his immigrant roots and recreating ye olde generational recipes, his most successful attempt being Fujianese mochi (麻糬). Traditionally the filling is crushed peanuts (which I'm frankly sick of, after years of taste-testing lol), but this year he made black bean ones for CNY. They were overly but appropriately sticky when they were newly made and the dough hadn't had the time to firm up yet, making them a worthy substitute to tikoy (sweet 年糕) which we never really ate anyway in spite of it being the community staple. So anyway, that was nice, as was the hotpot, which I've been craving madly for weeks. XD

New year things:

Didn't get to do much decluttering, but I did manage to... attempt to get back into putting my clothes in proper places instead of living out of a laundry basket. ^^;

Let go of my computer because I realized I just didn't want to carry the stress over into the new year. This means I've been computer-less for more than a month now, and a lot of things are more difficult: watching shows and movies (I simply do not, outside of group watches), group watches, commenting on posts (I've been reading, though!), and doing any amount of creative work... Thankfully I'm not in the creative industry, but it's been frustrating trying to make do with phone and paper in the absence of a computer in the occasions I've been called to use my ~skills~.

Felt some knot of negativity inside me untangle in the days leading up to the new year, which was a relief. I didn't realize how uncharitable I'd been feeling until it was gone and I suddenly had more room in my heart. I can't tell if it was my introvert need for space and distance making me extremely catty, or if it was just my bad personality causing me to fixate on stupid things that normal people would just move on from... Either way I'm happy to feel normal again. XD