The Door Is Open Wide

March really is coming in like a lion! February was long and cold, but as March drew near the snow turned into fog, and today a wild wind has blown the fog into scattered clouds. It was a wonderful day for my first bike ride since July - the ebike is in good shape, fortunately, it just needed a little wash! I've really missed biking.

One of many things I've missed since my chronic illness flared up and I lost my hold of "normal" during a summer and fall of hospital stays and emergency surgeries... I'm still on part time sick leave, still waiting for another surgery. But then perhaps I can go back to commuting by bike and going for slow runs and making plans for things I can be reasonably sure of actually getting to do!

Writing here - we'll see if that becomes part of that new normal I am dreaming of. For now, a little post. Maybe one with sections?

Fandom Trumps Hate
I am doing something very exciting (and a little scary) for the first time ever, and offering to vid almost anything (within limits) over here for fandomtrumpshate. Bidding opens soon and I am about equally nervous about nobody bidding on my offer, and about fulfilling the offer! (I am confident in my abilities, but my anxiety does not care.) Feel free to contact me through the details in the post or right here in the comments if you've got any questions about the offer!

Currently Watching
...I was gonna start with a few things I enjoyed in the past few months, but that got overwhelming. And since I'm on part time sick leave under doctor's orders to rest up as much as possible, I've been watching TV on my own - also while embroidering.

Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo is an anime from 2004 that I watched back then. I remembered the fascinating animation style, using patterns and textures instead of flat colors, but I had forgotten how extremely, canonically queer it is. Having a slow rewatch and really enjoying the whole experience.

Mushishi is available for free on YouTube, thanks to Kodansha! IF, of course, you live in an "English Speaking Country". I do not, but I have my ways... It's a slow rewatch, which is really perfect for enjoying it properly. Which I also do through giffing it! I decided to do 10 gifs for each episode. So far I've done the first ten. I'm putting them all in the tag 10xmushishi on my Tumblr. Eventually I think there are going to be episodes I've never seen, which is going to be fun (and not too heartbreaking, I hope).

Chef & My Fridge is what Skuld and I have been watching...basically for a month straight? It started with us both getting really into the second season of Culinary Class Wars, having been really into S1 as well (it was my comfort show when I was hospitalized in December 2024). Then we ran out of that, and Netflix was like "Hey... do you wanna see more of chefs who have been on CCW? We've got a bunch here in this variety show!" So we checked out the variety show and got hooked because it's delightful. Now we're caught up with the almost 60 episodes (each over an hour long) and it'll be fun to have it to look forward to, but it would be even more fun if Netflix could make the 254 episode back catalogue from 2014-2019 available too... (I have my ways but the ways did not have subs for all the episodes, alas.)

I loved Sell Your Haunted House so much that I vidded it after watching it in 2023. Now I'm using it to introduce a friend to Kdrama, and it's worked fantastically well - we watched 4 of the 16 episodes just on Friday night and Saturday before she went back home. It's got so much I love, including great characters, a canonically gen (but easy to ship) M/F friendship, lots of h/c, an intriguing plot, found family, and a great sense of humor.

And we just started a new-to-us show that is not a reality competition or variety show! Knight Flower, which I got curious about after seeing requests for in Festivids letter, and decided we needed to check out after watching marah_sarie's vid for it. I like the concept so far, and love Lee Hanee, so I'm confident it'll be a good watch!