Keep Hoping Machine Running

1. Yesterday was the first day of soft open for our new store in the SF Bay area (tomorrow is the grand opening). They were only open from 10am to 4pm (same hours today) and no advertising of the soft open, so we weren't sure what to expect, but they did really well, if not as good as the Irvine soft open in July. But word of mouth must have spread fast because today's sales were sky-high, even higher than for Irvine and that was such a hectic day. Since I'm not directly involved in the store side of things anymore, I didn't go up there to help and just got reports on Teams. Honestly, the best way to experience it lol. I've had enough of grand openings for a while.

2. I finished another puzzle today. Decided to do an easy one as a palate cleanser after that long one I just finished up. Not only is this one only 500 pieces, but because each cat is in its own square with really different colors, it went super fast. Still very cute and fun to work on.



3. So far no tattoo itchiness today. Fingers crossed we're over that part of the healing process!

4. Since I was working from home today again, we walked up to the fancy bagel shop for breakfast and while Carla did get a bagel, I opted for a slice of lemon loaf and it was soooooo good. They also had a couple new drinks on their menu, including a passionfruit matcha latte, which I couldn't resist. Definitely getting that again at some point. It did not disappoint.

5. Look at this handsome man!

Recently Finished
The Honjin Murders
The first in the Detective Kindaichi series. I am a long time fan of the Kindaichi Shonen manga in all its iterations, and the central conceit of those is that Kindaichi is the grandson of the famous detective, which is like saying he's the grandson of Sherlock Holmes to western audiences. But despite loving the manga, I've never got around to checking out the original novels. There's been a boom in translations of Japanese mystery series in recent years (this book was originally published in 1946 but only published in English in 2019) and having now read a few, more are popping up in the recommendations on Goodreads and such, and they all seem to be easily accessible at my local library. Anyway, I enjoyed this, and it was fun seeing what the Kindaichi manga drew on in addition to the name. The OG Kindaichi is a shabby, eccentric young man who no one would expect to be a famous detective, which is definitely something they carried over to his grandson! I'll be reading more in the series for sure.

The Night Diary
Middle grade book about a girl whose family has to trek from what is now Pakistan to India when Partition goes into effect. Told through diary entries to her dead mother. I really liked this. I listened to the audiobook and enjoyed it, though the narrator is Indian American and while she does a very good Indian accent, she does randomly sound American every once in a while lol.

The Souls of Black Folk
Classic essays by WEB Du Bois. A lot of interesting stuff in here.

Fadeout
First in a series of gay mysteries written in the late 60s. There's definitely some stuff that's "of its time" and not in a good way, but I enjoyed it and will be reading more in the series. Looks like they were written all the way up till the early 90s!

Dreadnought
YA about a closeted trans girl who inherits super powers from a dying superhero and is transformed into the body she's always wanted. But there's no escaping transphobia. At home, her dad tries to find a way to turn her back into a boy, while another superhero exhibits more TERFy type hatred towards her. Feeling uncomfortable with the superhero league when they make no move to stand up for her, she instead starts fighting crime with a minor crime-fighter, a girl in her class, and they start trying to find out who the super villain is who killed her predecessor and what she wants. I liked the story well enough, but cannot recommend the audiobook. The narrator made some weird choices, including having a bunch of minor characters speak with southern accents even though this is taking place in the pacific northwest, and the superhero persona of the MC's classmate is cowgirl/western themed and has an exaggerated cowboy way of talking that would be annoying enough to read but is excruciating to sit through in an audiobook. There's a sequel, but the main story is wrapped up in this book, so I'm not going to bother with it.

Twixt
A young woman wakes up in a strange place with no memory of anything before that moment, and is told by the first people she meets that they are "sleepers" who have to hide from "snatchers". It's not a spoiler to say they're dead and this is a sort of purgatory because it's super obvious from the beginning. There were some twists, but the pacing wasn't great and motivations didn't really make a lot of sense. There's a f/f romance between the MC and the girl who first finds her, but it's insta love, which I always find annoying (in fact, the whole timeline seems extremely compressed and would have been a lot better stretched out). The ending is abrupt. It's not terrible, but it wasn't good, either.

A Star Brighter Than the Sun vol. 1
Current series by Kawahara Kazune. I had seen this on Amazon Japan and it sounded sort of generic, so even though I really liked a lot of her stuff over the years, I hadn't bothered with it, but I saw it's on the Viz app in English, so since I already have a subscription for that, I decided to give it a go. It's cute. I'll continue for now.

1. This morning I walked to the fancy donut shop and got a fancy donut.



It was called crispy (or possibly crunchy) french toast donut and it was so good!

2. It was a very nice morning for a long walk, so rather than go directly home, I headed down towards the beach, which is only a few blocks away at that point. This area is actually on a cliff quite high up from the actual beach, so there is a little area with plants and trails and a railing to separate the upper part from the actual cliff, and at one point I spotted the cutest kittens who appear to be living there.

( Kittens! )

There was a bowl of water set out for them and they look very healthy, so it seems like someone's taking care of them. I almost got the black one to get within petting distance, but not quite.

3. My tattoo continues to be itchy but is looking really good. As the redness and bruising goes down, the colors are looking brighter. There are a few spots between the colors where it needs to be filled in more, but she told me to come in after a month or so for a free touch-up, so that will get taken care of soon enough.



4. I finished up my first 1000 piece puzzle today! Looking at the date of the previous puzzle, it looks like it took be a little over three weeks.



5. Gemma's a cutie pie.