Sally's Journal

Happy new year! I was thinking about doing some sort of year-in-summary thing but it just seemed much too exhausting. I still have November and December booklog plus the year in review for that and honestly I've spent most of the past week lying around limply reading Yuletide stories. I was going to post about that also but again with the too much effort.

However, tragically tomorrow I have to go back to work, so I am having to bestir myself to prepare for that.

In the meantime, my washing machine broke on Monday, with a load of laundry inside it, and apparently all the washing machine repair people are off until next Monday. Dad very kindly came over today and wrestled it out of the slot, which allowed us to revive it for long enough to finish the last few minutes of the cycle it was doing; we still don't know why it started erroring, and I don't trust it enough to wash anything else, but I no longer have a pile of clothes festering in there and I'm taking that as enough victory for now.

I also finally built the bookcase I bought on my November IKEA trip, and while Dad was here he volunteered to rearrange it and the CD racks I was using it to supplement. I have reshelved everything, with gaps for future acquisitions, and it all looks very beautiful; I have one CD rack left which will need rehoming, but I haven't worked out what to do with it yet. Possibly overflow DVDs, but there's no room for it in the spare room with the rest of the DVD storage. ETA: have just tucked it in the corner by the door and will work out what to put in it later.

And now, time to make packed lunch for tomorrow and go to BED.

i lied before, we're doing 2025 retrospectives after all. tagged by commanderspock and fake-monalisa on tumblr <3

🎧 music

albums

(2025 releases only)

• SPELLLING - Portrait of My Heart
• Sophia Kennedy - Squeeze Me
• Anna von Hausswolff - Iconoclasts
• Sorry - COSPLAY
• Leon Vynehall - In Daytona Yellow
• Haru Nemuri - ekkolaptómenos
• Bria Salmena - Big Dog
• Jane Inc. - A RUPTURE A CANYON A BIRTH
• ganavya - Nilam
• Deradoorian - Ready for Heaven

... and some runners-up to the top 10 list:

• Wet Leg - Moisturizer
• Lucrecia Dalt - A Danger to Ourselves
• Circuit des Yeux - Halo on the Inside
• Cate Le Bon - Michelangelo Dying
• Debby Friday - The Starr of the Queen of Life
• Automatic - Is It Now?
• Faetooth - Labyrinthine
• Lady Gaga - MAYHEM

singles & standalone tracks

• "Toxicity" - Fionn
• "Mine or Yours" - Hikaru Utada (& its various remixes)
• "SLIME is BESTIE [Sega Bodega + JT]" - Shygirl
• "Foundry" - Yu Su
• "Koko (Sun's Signature Remix)" - Goldfrapp

📚 books

(fiction only & as usual, some of these were started in 2024 because I'm an insane person who reads 20 books at the same time and takes forever to finish any of them)

• Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov
• Gormenghast - Mervyn Peake
• A Wizard of Earthsea & The Tombs of Atuan - Ursula K. Le Guin
• Beowulf: A New Translation - Maria Dahvana Headley (translator)
• Perfumes: The Guide (2018 edition) - Tania Sanchez & Luca Torin
• By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept - Elizabeth Smart
• Margery Kempe - Robert Gluck
• Spinning Silver - Naomi Novik
• Ballad of Sword and Wine (vols. 1-3) - Tang Jiu Qing
• Marilou Is Everywhere - Sarah Elaine Smith

🎥 movies

• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
• Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack (1988)
• Sinners (2025)
• Carnival of Souls (1962)
• Basic Instinct (1992)
• Night Tide (1961)
• Strange Days (1995)
• John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017)
• Conclave (2024)
• Vampire Hunter D (1985)

Rabbit, rabbit! After my family had banged the new year in with pots and wooden spoons and I had blown the conch, my niece asked if our neighbors were still talking to us. I could say truthfully if not causally that some of them had moved away.

It snowed all morning, a postcard mantling of soft-spiraled white over shriveled leaves and evergreen spikes while the occasional crow called out of sight. I would be fine with a little ice age if we could get one without the jet stream falling to pieces or some other climatic monkey's paw.

My movie-watching abilities have been on the fritz for some weeks, but I was so surprised by the internet existence of the 1965 RADA Romeo and Juliet that I watched it. If it was the autumn term, Clive Francis was nineteen years old and his blond prettiness looked it and his voice is instantly recognizable for its dry and slightly harsh, easily sardonic timbre that he would learn to make even more of. It's better than some of his line readings; it should have made him a natural Mercutio on the John McEnery model, but his inarguable good looks evidently fixed him for Romeo. He must have worked overtime against them in order to accumulate his next decade's catalogue of trash fires: it's a little unfairly funny how much more familiarly he flashes out with humor or distress than when falling archetypally in Elizabethan Liebestod. I would love to know more about his student roles, how fast anyone identified his gifts for cynicism or sympathetic weakness that played so well against a sensitive face and diamond-cut diction to produce some spellbinding fuck-ups. (I can find the information for Gareth Thomas, who was the same production's Benvolio.) It's such an odd record to have in the first place, 16 mm, intermittently cinematic and abridged. Were there others made and this just the one that escaped containment? If not, what made this particular production of a play which must have been in constant rotation at a drama school worth memorializing? It is exactly the sort of thing I would have expected to need a time machine for and some very tolerant friends.

We are eating Chinese food with my brother for New Year's Day. I am delighted with my twelve-days-of-Christmas present of my very own paperback of Kate Dunn's Exit Through the Fireplace (1998).

Urgh, the lack of routine in the Merryneum is knackering my sleep patterns. I didn't get out of bed until nearly 4pm today. I woke up at 10am with my alarm, then fell asleep until my 11:30am Pokemon Sleep alarm, then I stayed up for a bit but dozed off again. Then I got caught up doing Squaredle. I meant to do a couple of hours of day job work today to get ahead of next week's audit but I didn't get round to it.

At least I have the New Year Doof TV show this evening. It's nice to catch up with the Doof regulars and watch lots of cool and silly videos.

Will try again tomorrow...

Somehow I was under the impression that I didn't do much travelling in December. Making this video reminded me that I went to London twice as well as Harwell and then Norfolk for Christmas. I didn't fly, but I certainly spent a lot of time on trains and in the car.

The full year video reminded me that I flew to new places for conferences: Hamburg (Germany), Nicosia (Cyprus) and Larnaka (Cyprus). I visited my parents in the USA. I went to Paris (France), Darmstadt (Germany), and Frascati (Italy) for workshops. We travelled as family by train across Western Europe to go to a conference in Vienna (Austria). We holidayed in Wales and Norfolk. I went to Maui (USA) for a conference. It was an incredibly busy year.

( Full year - 12 min 30 sec )

These questions were written by tabular_rasa.

1. Do you mostly drink tap, filtered, or bottled water?

2. Is it safe/recommended to drink tap water where you live? If not, why?

3. What does the tap water taste/smell like where you live?

4. Do you collect rainwater? If so, what do you use it for?

5. Do you/have you ever had restrictions on water use where you live? What did you have to change about your lifestyle?

Copy and paste to your own journal, then reply to this post with a link to your answers. If your journal is private or friends-only, you can post your full answers in the comments below.

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**Remember that we rely on you, our members, to help keep the community going. Also, please remember to play nice. We are all here to answer the questions and have fun each week. We repost the questions exactly as the original posters submitted them and request that all questions be checked for spelling and grammatical errors before they're submitted. Comments re: the spelling and grammatical nature of the questions are not necessary. Honestly, any hostile, rude, petty, or unnecessary comments need not be posted, either.**

Well, it's a whole new year. Or it will have been, if we can make it to the other end of it. So here are some things I hope to get done.

1. I/we have to get the business up to the point where the authorities let us stay for another five years. Our understanding is that we don't have to be profitable yet, but we need to be able to prove that we're working on getting there.
2. I still need to make a will. The hard thing, as always, is identifying an executor. Al, maybe? No, he has health problems.
3. There are some accounts and other matters in the US that need to be closed out, and I need to set up an international banking account in order to make it easy to move money back and forth without having to use PayPal, debit cards, and wire transfers.
4. I need to get back to the US at some point -- preferably enough before my birthday to renew my driver's license.
5. I still need to release an album. It might just be cobbled together from old scratch tracks, but it really wants to get done.
6. I should finish getting all of my websites updated, and my software more thoroughly documented and possibly refactored. (Splitting up MakeStuff would be a good start, along with making it self-documenting independent of GH.)
7. I want to make some progress on my memoir. I owe it to my kids. I mentioned "introspective and autobiographical journaling" as part of a more general writing goal for last year. Maybe by making it more specific this year I can achieve more focus and make more progress.
8. There is going to be a total solar eclipse on 12 August, visible from northern Spain among other places. We have reservations. This probably be my last good chance to see one. I really don't have very many bucket list items -- it's not something I'm in the habit of thinking about. But this is one.
9. Physical self-care. I need to get myself to a dentist (and in general take better care of my teeth, which I haven't been doing for the last year), and connect with a source of CPAP supplies. Beyond that I'll settle for staying alive and in reasonable health for my age.
10. Acting my age is another matter. I don't expect to do that. But that would come under mental self-care, along with self-kindness and self-compassion.

I was thinking of making some predictions for the next year. Political, mostly. But sufficient unto the day... We'll find out soon enough.

Turns out I was wrong, it's not housekeeping, but introductions requested of us for the start of the series. Which usually means that the thing we can expect is "Hello, new people!"

Challenge #1

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

( Hello again! )

May it be better than last year.

I don't really do New Year's resolutions, but I have the intention of updating here more often.

I forgot to say anything about my teeth situation. The earliest my wonderful dentist could fit me in for a big complicated filling replacement was Dec 16, yes that's six weeks since the emergency filling he put in. Then it turned out that I needed a crown instead. Whee. But the great thing is that it didn't hurt AT ALL, not during the process, not even after the numbness wore off.

My friends Ashmead and Spouse and Kiddo have been here for a week, leaving tomorrow. They used to be local, now they're not, but A's parents are still in town. I took Kiddo to the library while Parents were off doing eldercare things. She picked out half a dozen graphic novels and finished them that evening. We're not related but our souls are! We did hotpot last night and we'll have leftovers tonight. And then I'll eat like a queen for another two weeks or so.

A is my cdrama zoom-watching buddy of choice, and it's a lot more fun and easier on my poor fragile brain to watch in person. We got hooked on Vendetta of An, featuring Cheng Yi at his most quietly unhinged, and we also watched some vertical dramas. Tiny budgets and narrative conventions that remind me of 1980s Harlequins, make of that what you will, but they're fun and require very little in the way of thought. The one I liked best was Take Away Love With A Knife (https://mydramalist.com/796770-take-away-love-with-a-knife), with Schemer4Schemer. Then we watched two more with the ML, Liang Si Wei, who does wifeguys better than anybody I've seen lately. I don't foresee any rewatches, but the next time I'm bored and brainmelty, I'll keep this guy in mind.

(healthwise, nothing new, so boring)

I usually try to get my end-of-year post in before Jan 1st, but this year I made my peace with the fact that it'll come after.

Mostly because I already know this new year will be hard. Personally and otherwise, it will be a difficult time, I have no illusions about that.

But, a year ago things were so much worse. Personally and otherwise.

I was unemployed, extremely broke, sick for a prolonged period of time, there was one more war directly affecting me than there is today, and mostly all of those things seemed endless. There was no expiration date, no way to budget mental or physical or financial resources. It was all just survival mode.

But this year... this year on Dec 31st I had a job. A job I actually took time off from to celebrate novyi god. A salary! Coworkers I like, a really good boss.

This year a close friend just had a baby. Another close friend is due in the summer. A niece will be born within the next month or so. My family tree is weird but this one will be as close as I get to being a "real" aunt.

The world is full of horrors, but there's one less war. One less fucking war.

Last year I felt mostly helpless, and voiceless, and like there was no place for me in the communities I grew up in. I haven't talked about that yet, not anywhere, I think I'm still processing it. But this year I feel less helpless and more angry and disillusioned. Which may not sounds like it's any better? lol but it means I have more of a sense of control over my life, which is a good thing.

And of course, everything old is new again, with the hottest fandom right now being a Sid/Ovi secretly-fucking-all-along fic.

Everything still feels so fragile, so brittle. Like I said, this year will be difficult, I already know that. But it's still so much better, already, than the situation I was in last year.

I painted my nails a festive color, with holiday themed stickers. I got my loved ones presents on time. I am... mostly mentally coping with my upcoming birthday.

May you be the light and receive the light, friends. Thank you for being here for another moment, another year, another tiny lifetime.

S novym godom.

Went for walk with himself. We walked across the fields to the old mill at Milverton. Muddy & lots of dog walkers wishing us Happy New Year. There's always a shock when I step outside & have to stop a moment to let my eyes adjust. Even at the dead time of year it's so much brighter outside than inside.

I napped on sofa under a soft woolly throw for most of the afternoon. I am still very tired.

My cat is asleep in the airing cupboard. There's something very endearing about a sleeping cat. We surrendered to catitude some years ago, realised that keeping cats out of such a cosy warm space was clearly impossible and bottom shelf in airing cupboard is now designated cat safe space. No more claw holes in clean sheets, or car fur over the clean towels.

Challenge #1

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

Hi! I'm Tammy. I'm in my late 30s, Desi, and have been in fandom since 2000.

I'm back on DW after a little over a year of a mostly unintentional break. I want to get back into the journaling habit, and be mindful and present when I post vs just doomscrolling. I'd also like to make some new friends!

Things I love:

Reading. Another of my goals this year is to read the books I already own. I mostly read romance, SFF, and light/cozy non-fiction. I've honestly tried litfic, but it bores me to pieces. I avoid the crap out of horror, dystopia, and anything too dark.

Podcasts. My favorites are the ones that teach you things, like Gastropod, Dressed, and Stuff You Should Know. I also adore Writing Excuses, which honestly is practically an MFA in podcast form. 

Food. I am a competent cook at best, but I love thinking and talking about food and culture. Also, I am aggressively pedantic about that not all Indians eat naan and curry, damn it. Also that coconut anything does not belong in butter chicken. 

Music: I am mostly a pop, pop-rock, and feminist country girlie, but I'm looking to expand my horizons. I also unapologetically love Taylor Swift. 

My fandoms: 

Numb3rs: The fandom of my heart. I just love how KIND this show is, and how well it's aged, a few episodes aside. Also? So much shipper potential, lol. (Even if I do bear a grudge about the portrayal of Amita that's as old as the show at this point. In my defence, we're from the same subcommunity and the writers... did not do their research.)

Harry Potter: More specifically, the first four books and parts of the fifth. No shade to those of you who loved the direction the series went in in Six and Seven, but it was epically not for me. Also, JKR and her bigoted bullshit can take a long damn walk off a short damn pier, but damned if I'll let her take away this thing I've loved since I was nine. I refuse to support her monetarily; that's my line in the sand. I'm honestly mostly here for AUs and fix-it fic, lol. 

The Avengers: Specifically, the pocket universe post the 2012 movie where they're all in the Tower and also functional adults who are slowly learning to become a family. Not here either for SHYDRA or the whole 'my dad can beat up your dad' bullshit of the later movies. I'm a Stony girl at heart, but I'm willing to read a well-written Stucky. 

The Goblin Emperor/ The Cemeteries of Amalo: Maia and Csethiro are adorable, as are Thara and his circle. I especially love the canonical pairing, which I won't spoil here, lol.

Superbat: Look, these two have been special since their first appearance together. I've loved them since I was a teenager, and their dynamic of best friends and partners, two men who are so different yet are so close. 

Other more minor fandoms: Pride and Prejudice (love me some Jane/Colonel Fitzwilliam), Check, Please!, all Sherlock variations, LotR and the Hobbit, the Electra McDonnell spy thriller series, and L.A. Hall's The Comfortable Courtesan.

2025: A horrible year! Except for reading.

I see that I got increasingly too busy to actually write reviews, and also that the better a book is, the harder and more time-consuming it is to review. I will try to review at least some of these this year, and also to be more diligent about reviewing books soon after I actually read them.

The Tainted Cup & A Drop of Corruption, by Robert Jackson Bennett. Very, very enjoyable fantasy mysteries set in a very, very odd world whose technology and science is biology-based magic and kaiju attack every monsoon. The detectives are a very likable odd couple thinker/doer in the tradition of Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin or Hercule Poirot/Hastings, except that the eccentric thinker is a cantankerous old woman.

The Daughter's War, by Christopher Buehlman. This is a prequel to Blacktongue Thief; I liked that but I loved this. A dark fantasy novel in the form of a war memoir by a woman who enlisted into the experimental WAR CORVID battalion after so many men got killed in the battle against the goblins that they started drafting women. War is hell and the tone is much more somber than the first book as Galva isn't a wisecracker, but her own distinct voice and the WAR CORVIDS carry you through. You can read the books in either order; either way, the ending of each will hit harder emotionally if you've read the other first.

Arboreality, by Rebecca Campbell. I like to sell this in my bookshop as a mystery parcel labeled, in green Sharpie, "A green book. A mossy, woodsy, leafy book. A hopeful post-apocalyptic novel of the forest."

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, by Shannon Chakraborty. The heroine is a middle-aged, single mom pirate dragged out of retirement for one last adventure, the setting is a fantasy Middle East, and it's just as fun as the description sounds.

The Bog Wife, by Kay Chronister. When the patriarch dies, the oldest son summons a wife from the bog to bear his children. Only the family is now in modern Appalachia rather than ancient Scotland, they're living in miserable conditions, and the last bog wife vanished under mysterious circumstances. Is there even a bog wife, or is this just a very small cult? (Or is there a bog wife and it's a very small cult?) A haunting, ambiguous, atmospheric novel.

The Everlasting, by Alix Harrow. This is probably my favorite book of the year. It's a time travel novel that's also an alternate version of the King Arthur story where most of the main characters are women, and it's also about living under and resisting fascism, and it's also a really fantastic love story with such hot sex scenes that it made me remember that sex scenes are hottest when they're based in character. (If you like loyalty/fealty kink, you will love this book.) It's got a lot going on but it all works together; the prose is sometimes very beautiful; it's got enough interesting gender themes that I'd nominate it for the Otherwise (Tiptree) award if I was a nominator. An excellent, excellent book.

King Sorrow, by Joe Hill. I've had mixed experiences reading Joe Hill but this book was fantastic. It's a big blockbuster dark fantasy novel that reads a bit like Stephen King in his prime, and I'm not saying that just because of Hill's parentage. Five college kids (and a non-college friend) summon an ancient, evil dragon to get rid of some truly terrible blackmailers. King Sorrow obliges, but they then need to give him another name every year. It's an enormous brick of a book and I'd probably only cut a couple chapters if I was the editor; it's long because there's a lot going on. Each section is written in the style of a different genre, so it starts off as a gritty crime thriller, then moves to Tolkien-esque fantasy, then Firestarter-esque psychic thriller, etc. This is just a blast to read.

Buffalo Hunter Hunter, by Stephen Graham Jones. Another outstanding horror novel by Jones. This one is mostly historical, borrowing from Interview with the Vampire for part of its frame story, in which a Blackfeet vampire named Good Stab tells his life story to a white priest. It's got a great voice, it's very inventive, it has outstanding set pieces, and it's extremely heartbreaking and enraging due to engaging with colonialist genocide, massacres, and the slaughter of the buffalo.

Hemlock & Silver , by T. Kingfisher. A very enjoyable fantasy with interesting horror and science fiction elements.

What Moves the Dead, What Feasts at Night, What Stalks the Deep, by T. Kingfisher. A set of novellas, the first two horror and the third mostly not, with a main character I really liked who's nonbinary in a very unique, culturally bound way. I particularly liked that this is lived and discussed in a way that does not feel like 2023 Tumblr. They're also just quick, fun, engrossing reads.

Lone Women, by Victor LaValle. An excellent historical fantasy with elements of horror, based on Montana's unique homesteading law which did not specify the race or gender of homesteaders, allowing black women to homestead. So Adelaide flees California for Montana, dragging with her an enormous locked steamer trunk, too heavy for anyone but her to lift, which she never, ever opens...

We Live Here Now, by Sarah Pinborough. What can I say? I really enjoy a good twist, and this has a doozy. Also, a great ending.

Pranksters vs. Autocrats: Why Dilemma Actions Advance Nonviolent Activism, by Srđa Popović. How to fight fascism with targeted mockery and other forms of nonviolent actions designed to put your opposition in an unwinnable situation. This costs five bucks, you can read it in less than two hours, and it was written by the leader of one of the student movements that helped overthrow Slobodan Milošević. This is not a naive book and it is very much worth reading.

Under One Banner, by Graydon Saunders. Commonweal # 4. Don't start here. I liked this a lot, hope to write about it in pieces when I re-read it, and was surprised and pleased to discover that it is largely about the ethics of magical neurosurgery and other forms of magical mental/neurological care/alteration.

Troubled Waters, by Sharon Shinn. A lovely, character-driven, small-scale fantasy. I wish this book had been the model for cozy fantasy, because it actually is one, only it has stakes and stuff happens. Also, one of the most original magic systems I've come across in a while.

Shroud, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. An outstanding first-contact novel with REALLY alien aliens.

Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir. I guess the premise is spoilery? ( Read more... ) That's not a criticism, I loved the book. Funny, moving, exciting, and a perfect last line. This is probably duking it out with The Everlasting for my favorite of the year.

I also very much enjoyed American Elsewhere by Robert Jackson Bennett, The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman, Dinotopia by James Gurney, Open Throat by Henry Hoke, When the Angels Left the Old Country, by Sacha Lamb, Elatsoe by Darcy Little Badger, The Bewitching & Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, Sisters of the Vast Black, by Lina Rather, Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, Liberated: The Radical Art and Life of Claude Cahun, by Kaz Rowe, Into the Raging Sea, by Rachel Slade, The Haar by David Sodergren, The Journey by Joyce Carol Thomas, Strange Pictures/Strange Houses by Uketsu, Black River Orchard by Chuck Wendig, and An Immense World, by Ed Yong.

I'm probably forgetting some books. Sorry, forgotten books!

Did you read any of these? What did you think?

Sis and I are back from our South American cruise. I'll write more on that later, but let it suffice that we were confined to our cabin for two days (sea days, fortunately) thanks to bad colds. I would also like to shout out LATAM airlines for having a really comfortable business class and multi-lingual stewards.

I was awakened by my sister this morning because Nora's back legs weren't working properly. She's not paralyzed, per se, but she can't walk right, can't jump at all, and was clearly in great pain. Sis took her to the emergency vet -- I carried her to the car, since Sis has a bad shoulder -- and I looked after Nicky. Nora will be at the vet overnight, have an MRI tomorrow, and, possibly surgery to help her bulging disc, which is what they think is the cause.

Not the best New Year's beginning.

Nicky is sad because his sister didn't come home with my sister. I'm sad because no one wants to see an animal in pain. And Sis is sad because she loves her dogs.

We have pet insurance, so most of the expenses should be covered, but the fact is the bill has to be paid and the insurance reimburses rather than the insurance taking it directly.

And with the flipping of a calendar page, 2025 is in the rearview mirror. It was an eventful year. I retired from Circle A ranch in July, and haven’t missed either the daily grind or the cybersecurity field. My only remaining involvement is ACSAC (Annual Computer Security Applications Conference),  which will continue for a few more years. We had a successful ACSAC in Hawaii this year (with attendance roughly equal to last year, which given the current environment says something); the next two years will be here in Los Angeles (making logistics easier). I’ve been keeping very busy with the highway pages and the podcast. I attended the mandatory holiday movies, and even squeezed in some theatre and concerts. Lastly, but not leastly, politics-wise, 2025 was very stress inducing; hopefully, 2026 will bring some hope for the future (especially in November). But we have to make it through the campaign season first, and I predict that will be a messy spring, summer, and fall. The other messy question for 2026 is: Do I upgrade my Windows 10 machine (purchased at the end of 2018) to Windows 11, or just buy a new Windows 11 machine? Each option has its own fears, stresses, and headaches.

I’m continuing to work on podcast episodes. I’ve completed the first episode on Route 12, and will complete the remaining two on Route 12, one on Route 13, and one on Route 14 after the last round of updates for 2025 are posted. For those, all that remains is incorporation of this headline post, and then it is time to generate and post. Episode 4.05 is also recorded and pending editing, so that should go up around the end of next week.

Season 4 of the podcast continues, and we’re now using new recording software  (Zencaster). I think it sounds better, but I would love to hear from the listeners. Let us know what you think. It looks like the regular audience is between 60-70 folks, and I’d love to get that number up (as of today, we’re at 37 for 4.04, 61 for 4.03, 69 for 4.02, 93 for 4.01, and 72 for 3.15), although the numbers don’t included those who listen directly from the CARouteByRoute website (as I don’t know how to get those stats). You can help. Please tell your friends about the podcast, “like”, “♥”, or “favorite” it, and give it a rating in your favorite podcatcher. Share the podcast on Facebook groups, and in your Bluesky and Mastodon communities. For those that hear the early episodes, the sound quality of the episodes does get better — we were learning. If you know sound editing, feel free to give me advice (I use Audacity to edit). As always, you can keep up with the show at the podcast’s forever home at https://www.caroutebyroute.org , the show’s page on Spotify for Creators, or you can subscribe through your favorite podcatching app or via the RSS feeds (CARxR, Spotify for Creators) . The following episode has been posted this month:

• December | CA RxR 4.04: Route 9: Pre-1964 – Milpitas to Castro Valley. Episode 4.04 is our second episode exploring Route 9, which in its post-1964 version runs from Santa Cruz to Saratoga and Los Gatos. Before 1964, Route 9 continued N up to the Mountain View area, and then across to Milpitas, and up to the Castro Valley. The previous episode covered post-1964 Route 9 (and the first segment of pre-1964 Sign Route 9) from Santa Cruz to Saratoga and then into Los Gatos, as well as all the 9^th State Route and LRN 9. This episode (4.04) covers the pre-1964 Route 9 portions N of Saratoga: Sign Route 9 through Mountain View, Milpitas, and up through Hayward and the Castro Valley. This portion of Sign Route 9 became Route 85, Route 237, Route 17/I-880/I-680 (in portions) and Route 238. The next pair of episodes will be covering I-10, with episode 4.05 covering the Santa Monica Freeway portion, and episode 4.06 covering the San Bernardino Freeway portion. (Spotify for Creators)

As a reminder: One of the sources for the highway page updates (and the raison d’etre for for this post) are headlines about California Highways that I’ve seen over the last month. I collect them in this post, which serves as fodder for the updates to my California Highways site, and so there are also other pages and things I’ve seen that I wanted to remember for the site updates. Lastly, the post also includes some things that I think would be of peripheral interest to my highway-obsessed highway-interested readers.

Well, you should now be up to date. Here are the headlines that I found about California’s highways for December.

Key

[Ħ Historical information | ＄ Paywalls, ＄＄ really obnoxious paywalls, and ∅ other annoying restrictions. I’m no longer going to list the paper names, as I’m including them in the headlines now. Note: For ＄ paywalls, sometimes the only way is incognito mode, grabbing the text before the paywall shows, and pasting into an editor. See this article for more tips on bypassing paywalls. ＄＄ paywalls require the use of archive.ph. ☊ indicates an primarily audio article. 🎥 indicates a primarily video article. ]

Highway Headlines

• ＄ New ramp meters along Highway 101 in Sonoma and Marin counties to be activated Tuesday (Petaluma Argus-Courier). New Highway 101 ramp meters in Sonoma and Marin counties will be activated starting Tuesday to help manage traffic flow, according to Caltrans. Caltrans will turn on seven meters, which are traffic signals at onramps, in Sonoma County and five in Marin County in both northbound and southbound directions, the agency said in a Wednesday news release. All of the Sonoma County meters and both Marin County northbound meters will be switched on Tuesday. Three southbound Marin County meters, which are located along the Marin-Sonoma Narrows project area, will be turned on after some additional drainage and electrical work is completed, likely in early 2026, Caltrans spokesperson Matt O’Donnell said in an email Wednesday. The meters — located in Petaluma, Novato, Sausalito and Mill Valley — will be active at varying hours Monday through Friday. Signs will be placed ahead of the meters, letting drivers know of the new traffic signals.
• Work begins on Richmond-San Rafael Bridge ‘open-road tolling’ project (Richmond Standard). The Richmond–San Rafael Bridge is entering a new era of tolling. The Bay Area Toll Authority (BATA) announced that pre-construction work for a full conversion to “open-road tolling” (ORT) begins this week, weather permitting. When construction is fully underway, drivers can expect overnight westbound lane closures, with full overnight closures expected for the gantry installation (dates to be determined). This marks the first ORT conversion among the seven BATA-managed bridges. When the structure is built, vehicles will no longer need to slow for toll booths. Instead, overhead equipment will automatically detect FasTrak tags or license-plate accounts as drivers pass under at freeway speeds.
• The Bay Bridge, Nearing Age 90, Gets a Physical (KQED). For most of the past year, Caltrans contractors have conducted a far-from-routine physical on an 89-year-old patient: the monumental western span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. In a process completed in September, engineers opened up the massive main cables that support the bridge’s double-deck roadway between Yerba Buena Island and San Francisco’s Rincon Hill to check on conditions inside. The results from that exam are due by early next year. The last time crews looked inside the cables was in 2003, during a major seismic upgrade project. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission said this year’s checkup was the first systematic investigation of the 25-inch diameter cables since the Bay Bridge was completed in 1936.
• ＄ ‘The Snake’ stretch of Mulholland Hwy. reopens after 6 years (Los Angeles Times). For more than six years, adrenaline junkies have yearned for the moment that, once again, they can careen around the serpentine corners of a stretch of Mulholland Highway with the crisp mountain air rushing through their hair. Their wait came to an end Tuesday as a 2.4-mile section of the road known as “the Snake” slithered back to life. The area of the highway roughly between Kanan Road and Sierra Creek Road has been closed to vehicle traffic since early 2019 after it was charred in the Woolsey fire and further damaged by winter rains.
• Mulholland Highway’s Iconic 2.4-Mile Winding Stretch ‘The Snake’ Has Officially Reopened — After Almost Seven Years (Secret Los Angeles). Mulholland Highway is one of Los Angeles’ most iconic roads, famous for its winding curves and breathtaking views that make it a must for any scenic drive. Its serpentine path has become a symbol of the city’s adventurous spirit and laid-back lifestyle. So ingrained is it in L.A.’s identity that it even inspired the title of David Lynch’s cult classic film. For decades, locals and visitors alike have flocked to this legendary route to experience a drive that feels uniquely Californian. Everything changed in 2018 when the devastating Woolsey Fire swept through the area, followed by heavy rains and landslides that forced the closure of the iconic section. For nearly seven years, drivers had to bypass “The Snake,” leaving a gap in one of L.A.’s most celebrated scenic routes. Now, according to the L.A. Times, the narrow 2.4-mile stretch has officially reopened, restoring a beloved piece of the city’s landscape.
• New report paints damning picture of California’s aging infrastructure (SF Gate). In 1989, as the Loma Prieta earthquake shook the ground up to 60 miles from its center, a section of the Bay Bridge collapsed. The bridge failure was a visible representation of California’s vulnerable infrastructure; a 53-year-old span that hadn’t been retrofitted adequately to withstand a disaster. A recently released report shows just how much of California’s infrastructure is in dire need of repair or replacement. The report, which assigns a grade to 17 different categories of infrastructure and is compiled by the American Society of Civil Engineers, gave the state’s cumulative infrastructure a C-, unchanged since 2019, but below the nation’s C grade. Since 2019, grades for aviation, energy, hazardous waste, levees, ports and rail all improved, while the state’s dams, drinking water, schools and stormwater declined. The study is completed about every six years.
• ＄ Plans to raise Vincent Thomas Bridge rejected by state (Los Angeles Times). Construction on the Vincent Thomas Bridge near the Port of Los Angeles is slated to begin next month, but the project will not include a 26-foot bridge hoist that port officials were hoping for. Port Executive Director Gene Seroka proposed raising the bridge earlier this year amid existing plans from the California Department of Transportation to re-deck the emerald green overpass connecting San Pedro to Terminal Island and Long Beach. Raising the bridge would allow larger, more efficient ships to travel underneath carrying cargo. About 40% of the port’s cargo capacity is beyond the bridge, which sits at 185 feet high.

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 So. Uh. I didn't ACTUALLY intend to basically disappear from DW for over a year. But, well, Certain RL Things happened in November of 2024 and I needed a break from ALL social media that had anything even remotely US politics related on it, and then once I surfaced from that, I'd feel bad about how long I'd been away and somehow wind up not posting. /o\

But! It is a new year, and the lovely ilyena_sylph was generous enough to gift me some paid time, so here I am making an attempt to get back in the saddle. I realized that I need SOME kind of fannish social media that's not Discord, and Reddit was just not good for my brain, so good old DW it is.

I realized that one of the reasons I wasn't using DW as much as I meant to was that I was all up in my head about that I needed to have Something To Say to make a post, and I... often don't, lol. So this time, I'm allowing myself to use DW for long posts, yes, but also like I would the site formerly known as Twitter - for short, silly things, individual links, and just... interacting with people. 

I don't really want to do a 2025 recap, I'd rather start with a clean slate, but! I am very proud to say I published over 38k of fic last year, and some of it wasn't even for exchanges! It would have been over 40k, but I only wrote 7k for ficinabox rather than the required 10k. 

This year, I'd like to focus on things other than mindless doomscrolling - I want to get into new fandoms, since honestly, as much as I love the little corners of HP and Marvel I've staked out for myself and my co-writers (/waves to Rhi and Yena/) the broader fandoms do not spark joy and I want something new. Recommendations welcome, although no horror, dystopia, or C-dramas, please.

I also want to write more solo fic - while I love exchanges for pushing me out of my comfort zone (I would never have written P+P or The Goblin Emperor fic without recips who wanted them) - this year I would like to focus on writing more for me, since Gods know nobody else is writing Colby/Amita, lol. And very few people are writing Jane/Colonel Fitzwilliam.  

But that's enough about me! What have y'all been up to? I've missed my friends! Tell me all the things! 

My goals for 2026 are not a whole lot different from any previous year. o_O


1. Write more fic. Circumstances this year conspired to keep me from writing, but I’m hoping I can find make time to do more writing this year. According to AO3 I posted 21 fic and 14 half moon ficlets for a total of over 101,000 words in 2025. I didn’t do half bad for not having a lot of time to write (or type things in), but I’d still like to do more.

Immediate fanfic goals for January: I need to finish one more fic for smallfandomfest, finish my fic for smallfandombang, write one (hopefully two) more fic for fandomtrees.

I have more time for this, but now that my recipient has been in contact with me, I need to write a fic for sunflower_auction. And even farther out, I have a fic I’d like to finish for wipbigbang. I originally signed up to finish it last year, but the summer went to hell in a handbasket, so it never happened.

Besides that, I just want to write! More Jessica Fletcher, no doubt. Especially crossovers, as I love throwing her into other fandoms.


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