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I found this written on the back of a page in my planner - Rob's 12 (or actually more because some of them include more than one) favorite movies. Everybody who knows Rob well knows what a horror-movie fan he is, so I think somebody asked him for a list, and that's where this came from. It's not all horror, but you will see it mostly is!

(It's numbered but I'm honestly not sure how significant the order is! And he put dates for a few of them so I just copied that also.)

1. Horror of Dracula (1958)
2. The Mummy (1959)
3. Hereditary (2018)
4. The Thing (both the 1951 and 1982 versions)
5. The Shawshank Redemption
6. Field of Dreams
7. Exorcist 3
8. The Howling
9. Hill House (The Haunting of Hill House, that is, but he also recommends the miniseries)
10. The Haunting (1961)
11. Terrifier series
12. The Fog

I found where I was writing down the movies we saw - this goes back to last September - I hardly saw anything but the list of what Rob saw always entertains me.

We both saw:
One Battle After Another
Wicked: For Good

Rob also saw:
Conjuring: Last Rites
The Long Walk
Good Dog
Black Phone 2
Shelby Oaks
Predator: Badlands
Keeper
5 Nights at Freddy's
The Housemaid

(And he's gone right as I'm typing this to see We Bury the Dead, which is that Daisy Ridley movie - basically a zombie movie, I think.)

I see that Holidailies is going until January 2nd this year, meaning I have time to put another entry on the portal. We spent New Year's Eve at my sister's - well, we went out to eat and then went to her house, that is. She lives outside the city limits (of the town that we grew up in, which is one town over from where Rob & I live now). That means that her neighbors are free to set off all the fireworks they want, and boy, did they want to. I can't imagine how much money some of those people must be spending on fireworks - I haven't bought any myself since maybe 1985, but they can't be cheap. (I drove by some of the fireworks stands today and one had a big sign that said "LAST DAY" - I guess they close down until, what, Memorial Day or something?)

Oh, we watched One Battle After Another for our NYE entertainment - we saw it when it first came out, but my sister and her husband hadn't seen it, and I didn't really think they would like it but they were interested because it's gotten a lot of award talk. Predictably, my bro-in-law was not into it, as it turned out (he muttered something afterwards about it being "pro-antifa" - I mostly just pretend I don't hear it when he says that kind of thing) - my sister at least liked it okay, I guess. Rob and I both still liked it a lot, and since it's been, what, six months or so since we'd seen it, we were ready to sit through it again - it's like 2 hours and 40 minutes long, I just looked to see. (We still got home in time to see the NYC ball-drop.)

Happy 2026, y'all! Let's hope for the best!

Added:
OK, I knew that One Battle After Another was loosely based on Pynchon's Vineland - I was looking that up and one thing led to another and I ended up buying Gravity's Rainbow instead, as one does. I know it's one of those books that most people never finish, or it has that reputation, anyway. But I thought I would give it a go just the same. (What's one more book on the to-read list?)

I read 29 books that were new to me this year - starting with Jenny Colgan's 500 Miles From You in January and ending with Scalzi's Starter Villain yesterday. And then I've really been on a re-reading tear - I read over 100 books that I'd already read in previous years (and I'm at 104, actually, with 20 hours to go so I might still finish one more, who knows!). The "new" list included Rivers of London, Maguire's Son of a Witch, and let's see, maybe four Naomi Novik books - all of the Scholomance series plus Uprooted (all of which I liked a lot). And then the re-read list includes all of Lord of the Rings, a lot of Katherine Addison books (including Angel of the Crows, which I got really obsessed with for a while), a bunch of old Mary Stewart books, practically everything Lois Bujold has ever written... hmm, well, actually no, I skipped most of the Miles stuff this year, but practically everything else... anyway, you get the idea.

I usually do a movie list at the end of the year, too, but there hasn't been all that much I wanted to see. Rob has been to a ton of horror movies, but I only went to Cinemark with him a few times, I think - I know I saw One Battle After Another, which we both loved, and Wicked: For Good, which was not nearly as good as the first one (but wasn't bad, either) - and I'm pretty sure I saw at least a couple more things earlier in the year but I can't really remember what.

"An Alice's Adventures in Wonderland crossed her vision, looking surprised to be off on an adventure of its own...."

The Secret Christmas Library, Jenny Colgan

I was in bed reading just now (at nearly 4am on Christmas morning, yeah) - and I was reading this particular book deliberately because it seemed so, well, made for reading at Christmas. And I love that line above so I thought I'd share. (I can't say much about the context there without getting all spoilery.) Anyway, happy Christmas, whether you take the holiday as religious or secular!

I said we were going to brave H-E-B on the day before Christmas Eve, and we did, and it really wasn't too bad. We waited until like 8:00 last night, I bet it was crazier earlier. By the time we got there there were places to park (if they're really busy, good luck finding one) - and there were a lot of people there, but everybody was being polite and mostly patient and it was actually kind of fun. We do low-key holiday meals - me and my sister and our respective spouses - so we were getting salad stuff and a pie and they had already bought a big frozen lasagne and we'll eat and watch movies tomorrow. (I'll report back on what movies we end up with - I had suggested the new Knives Out movie but they had already seen it.)

I got Rob a bunch of books, mostly, and he requested new running shoes at the last minute so those aren't here yet but they're presumably on the way. I'm not sure what I'm getting, except that I bought myself a perfume advent calendar from Dossier. I hadn't tried them before but they're well-reviewed and the 11 perfumes I've opened so far I mostly like. One more to go. They are samples but really big ones, so I'll be able to figure out something I really love, hopefully.

Oh, and I did red nails last week and it kept chipping and I really didn't want to repeat that, so I now have on a really showy glitter called Sin-derella (the brand is Sassy Sauce but I think it was a limited edition polish) and I put it over a turquoise base and it looks really good. (I tried to take a picture but I still suck at taking nail pictures and it fails to capture the shift in the glitter which is the part that looks so good.)

(In regard to vacay, it's not PAID vacay, but at least I'm off most of the next two weeks!)

I am not doing well on Holidailies at all, but oh well.

So let's see, what I've been reading this week is a thing called The Raven Scholar, which is basically a sort of Hunger Games for grownups, I guess? It's got a lot more complicated plot, but (like the original HG) it's going to be a trilogy, and the rest of it's not published yet so we have to wait to see how it works itself out. But I found it on somebody's list of favorite things they had read lately and I did like it a lot.

I spent a couple of very painful hours (one hour was on Friday and one was today) waiting around on the IRS to talk to me, but I did finally prove that I'm me to their satisfaction and they're sending me the paperwork I needed for the whole trust thing, hooray.

Rob's off too (he gets paid vacation) and we're going to venture out to HEB tomorrow, which is usually an utter zoo this time of year. That'll be fun, or else it might be a hellscape, you never know. Earlier I made him watch the new version of How to Train Your Dragon, and he said (as I did when I watched it, and probably everybody who had seen the original did), "Why is this movie even necessary?" and I said "So they can make more money off of it, of course," but I made him watch it anyway and he enjoyed it, just like I did. If they had to do a live-action version, at least they did a good job of it!

(And I just spent about an hour following estate-related tags back into the Livejournal past. Wow.)

I mentioned that it was supposed to get down to freezing last night, but I don't think it did - upper 30s, maybe, though, which is still pretty chilly by our standards. We do usually get a freeze or two (or sometimes more) but it's usually later in the winter when that happens. (Is it even technically winter yet? I think not, come to think of it!)

I was off today and I only ventured out to go to the credit union because we are trying to close out the very last one of my mother's trust accounts. (Some of you who remember me from way back may remember hearing about this looooong ago - my mom died in early 2007, I believe, so darn near 20 years ago.) We had to do some thinking (and some querying of my sister) to figure all this out - at the time Mama died, my sister and her ex were getting or had just gotten divorced, and my mother had been very determined that my ex-brother-in-law should not be able to get his hands on any of her money. Which is what resulted in a trust so strong that that we're still trying to jailbreak the last money out of it at this late date, even though I'm the executor. (With help from the CU, we think we've got it figured out. We just need the right paperwork!)

I'm still half-sick, although I've been coughing off and on for almost two weeks and so I'm bound to be near the end of this cycle, I hope. We did manage to go try that Mexican restaurant that we hadn't been to before and it was really good. (I may go eat leftover fajitas soon, come to think of it!)

Currently reading: Wicked

I used to think Wicked was hard going, the first couple of times I read it, but I guess I've got the hang of it now - I'm blowing right on through. (I'm not to the Kiamo Ko part yet, though, so I might be premature in saying that!)

I think I mentioned that I was reading the new Jenny Colgan - The Secret Christmas Library - and I ended up liking that one a lot. Very entertaining. I read a couple of holiday-themed romance novellas that I dug out of my collection - I'm in the holiday mood, I guess!

This morning I was reading an October Daye book - I'm blanking out on the name of it, but it's the one where we find out Stacy's real identity - but I stopped because it's pretty depressing and I decided I wasn't in the mood for that. (It's right on the tip of my tongue - Be the Serpent, is that it? It's late - or early, depending on your POV, and I'm not really all here right now.)

Maybe I should go to bed, actually. We're supposed to have a cold front - it's been 70-ish but it's supposed to drop to somewhere around freezing by tonight. By Texas Gulf Coast standards, that's like a blizzard.

Current Mood: tired

I'm not doing so well at Holidailies - well, I've done a few entries, but it's already the 13th and I've done (pause while I go and count) five whole (short) entries. In my defense, I've been sickly, and it just seems not to be going away. Rob has recovered much better than I have.

We were talking idly about going to see Hamnet tomorrow, but really I intend to sleep all day, and the city holiday parade is also tomorrow - it's not impossible to get out during it, because it only goes down the main road and so you can get out by the back ways. But I bet we don't. We probably will go and get the fajitas that we put off last week - that will be Sunday, though.

(We can still go see Hamnet later, anyway - I assume it will still be around!)

50 Greatest Beatles Songs

I have definite opinions about the Beatles, especially because I was born in 1960 and so by the time I got old enough to have even the vaguest opinions about pop music, the Beatles were always there. I don't know that I even especially liked them, most of the time, when I was in elementary school, etc., but they were inescapable.

I basically derived this list by going down the list linked above and going "no no yes no" (etc.) - like I said, I have definite opinions. So out of the fifty on the list linked above, this is the ones I said yes to (in the order they were originally listed - I'm not going so far as to try to figure out whether I rank Eleanor above Lucy or anything!):

-- She's Leaving Home
-- A Day in the Life
-- Strawberry Fields Forever
-- Abbey Road Medley (or as I still think of it, "You never give me your money," because that's how it starts!)
-- Ticket to Ride (with the unfashionable caveat that I always thought Karen Carpenter's version was better)
-- Blackbird
-- Norwegian Wood
-- Hey Jude
-- Across the Universe
-- Let It Be
-- Eleanor Rigby
-- Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
-- Nowhere Man

I'm reading The Secret Christmas Library. (I'm a sucker for Jenny Colgan, what can I say.) It's a sequel to The Christmas Book Hunt, which came out last year and was a novella, I believe. I'm going to be interested to see where this one goes, because so far I have no idea. Well, I assume they'll find whatever it is they're looking for and there will be a romance involved, or possibly two. Past that, nada.

I just remembered to look to see if Texas got a bowl bid and they did, although not a terribly exciting one (Citrus Bowl, NYE vs. Michigan) - at least we'll be favored, I assume!

Y'all, my hand is finally getting better and now I have a cold, which I definitely got from Rob because his symptoms are a day or so ahead of mine. It's fairly mild, but coughing and sneezing are just not fun. (We were going to go eat fajitas for dinner and I cancelled because I didn't think the other customers would appreciate the hacking cough!)

Oh, the other thing I've been reading was Lord of the Rings. I'm almost done but I abandoned it temporarily for the one above - it's not like I don't know how LotR ends.

I was so busy talking about my car getting stolen, earlier this week*, that I forgot to talk about the other thing that happened to me, and that was that I had a fall at work. I hate admitting to this because it makes me feel like an old person, but then I am an old person, relatively speaking - well, I'm Medicare-eligible as of a few months ago, anyway. I don't really think the fall had anything to do with being old, in particular - I was picking up at closing time - somebody left a pair of shoes, for god's sake, on the gym floor (what, did they leave barefooted?) and so I was holding the shoes and I kicked a basketball out of the way, and then I lost my balance and went down and landed on one wrist. It could've been way worse, nothing was broken, but my left hand is still pretty sore two weeks later. Also, since I was out in the middle of the gym floor and nobody else was there and I couldn't put weight on that hand, of course, I had to wait for somebody to come help me get up, which is extra-embarrassing. (That's the part that really makes me feel old.)

Also, since I'm left-handed, I couldn't even really write for several days, except right-handed, which came out looking eerily like a 7-year-old's handwriting. Typing worked ok, and driving was mostly ok, I think because driving is mostly a right-handed skill anyway. (I'm actually sort of ambidextrous for a lot of things, but writing is not one of them, clearly.)

*The theft was not earlier this month, it was a couple of months ago, now.

I partly am using this icon to remind myself that I need to take the fall leaves decor off our balcony and put out the red-and-silver stuff instead. Our balcony is pretty visible so I feel like I have to keep up. (I don't usually put up lights, though. Too much trouble. I just do garlands on the railing and a wreath on the balcony door.)

Somebody mentioned baseball in their post and that reminds me that I got chided for rooting for the Blue Jays in the World Series - they're not American. I was like, whatever. First of all, since the Astros are in the American League* these days, I tend to be more familiar with AL teams. And also, I habitually root against any team with a ridiculously high payroll - mostly meaning I refuse to root for the Dodgers or the Yankees. And also, look at a map - Toronto is barely further north than Milwaukee. I have trouble thinking of them as "foreign" even if they do speak French sometimes.

I started this post when it was still Dec. 1st, and now December 3rd is already over and it's still not posted. This may end up being a lot of really short entries, but that's ok, right?

*There's also the point that the Blue Jays also play in the American League, so I guess MLB agrees with me?

("The earth is doomed" is probably going to be my default icon at least as long as Trump stays president.)

I've had a kind of eventful couple of months - mainly because my car got stolen. Turns out Kia's are easy to steal, who knew. (Well, I actually did know that by the time this happened, but I didn't know it before I bought the car!) So dealing with that was, um, not fun. BUT the police found the car - all the thief had done to it was rip out the ignition, along with a bit of body damage. It's all fixed now, and we just had to pay the deductible, of course. And I got a call a week or so ago saying they even caught the guy who stole it. Hope he's enjoying the county jail.

We went over to my sister's for Thanksgiving and watched movies - a couple of movies Rob had seen earlier this year, "Companion" and "Drop" - his tastes and mine don't always line up, but I liked both of those, and so did everybody else, fortunately.

P. (my sister) wanted me to come back over Friday so we could watch the UT-A&M game, but I had to work. (She went to A&M & I went to UT, so rivalry week is always interesting.) A&M was ranked #3 and we were like, 15, so I said if I was a person who bet on sports I'd've been betting on A&M - which I guess is why I don't bet, because UT won, go figure. P. was trying hard to be a good sport about it, and I was trying hard not to rub it in too much, so we got through it without any major sisterly drama.

I tried to sign up for Horrordailies just now - I had been thinking about it, mostly just as a way to get myself to post a little - and then it occurred to me that I can just talk about horror movies, as a general topic. (Only then it wouldn't let me sign up and I'm too lazy to chase down why, at the moment. I've had the week from hell and maybe I'll get around to talking about that at some point, too.)

Anyway. The thing is, I usually say I don't like horror movies, and that's true up to a point. I don't like jump-scares, mostly, and also occasionally a movie will really scare the pants off me and it's really hard to predict which ones. So basically, I do watch the occasional horror movie but it's likely to be the very least-scary ones, if you know what I mean. The PG-13 class of horror movies, I guess.

But I'm married to a real horror movie fan, that's the thing.

(And I was gonna write more but I didn't get around to it!)

In case any of my fellow October Daye fans happen to be reading here: I just accidentally discovered that Amazon has a pretty large sample of Silver and Lead posted - more than two chapters, minus one page, and I'm assuming that's not an accident. I'm dying to know what's on page 26. (Plus a couple more pages that pop up missing towards the end!)

I did movies I've seen, so now it's time for books. I'm not going to put the whole list here, but it says I read 41 books that were new to me, plus some novellas - 50 new-to-me things in all. Here's some of what I thought were highlights.

The first things I read in January were Luanne Rice's Last Night and Last Day, very good thrillers. (The 2nd isn't a direct sequel to the first, but they're connected, as I recall.)
The last new thing I read was Jenny Colgan's Cafe By the Sea, which I read in one day because I completely couldn't put it down. That woman's books seem to have that effect on me.
The very last book I finished in 2024 (it's currently 10pm on New Year's Eve, as I'm writing this, so I don't think I'm finishing any more) was not new to me - it was an Expanse book, Babylon's Ashes. That's the sixth book of nine in the series. I hadn't re-read them in three years, apparently, but I don't think I'm going to read the last three right now because I don't like them as much!
In all I have a list of 70-some re-reads for 2024 - I always re-read a lot. (I really don't obsess at all about the numbers because I read so much no matter what, but I do - obviously - keep lists.)
Possibly my new favorites from this year are the (indirect) sequels to The Goblin Emperor featuring the character Thara Celehar, Witness for the Dead and The Grief of Stones. I believe there's supposed to be one more of those coming out next year.

I also read several more books in the Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series, and those are always very good. There are quite a few of those still left for me, I haven't read nearly all of them. I also read another book about a Sherlock-Holmes-type character by the author of the books in the preceding paragraph (the Goblin Emperor universe, I like to call it) , Katherine Addison aka Sarah Monette, in which the Sherlock character is an angel, of all things - but not at all a typical angel. I really liked that book a lot too, but trying to describe it is very weird. In fact when I tried to describe it to somebody they said "so it's fanfiction?" and apparently it did start as fanfiction but now it's an actual published book! (I assume that's possible because Sherlock Holmes is out of copyright!)

Happy 2025, everybody!

Goodness, where did the year go? I'm sure I will forever associate 2024 with the elections - nothing much happened to us personally that was all that memorable. (No hurricanes, etc!) So good riddance, 2024, even though I have no reason to think 2025 will particularly be an improvement!

We do have plans to go out to eat tonight with my sister, her husband, her best friend and her husband (who I'm sure I've met years ago, since he's from our hometown and I know his older brother, etc., but I don't actually remember him) - but it'll be good, my sister is a talker and so is Kathy so if the conversation flags otherwise I'm sure they'll pick up the slack. And we're going to a really good Mexican restaurant so I'm anticipating fajitas. Then we'll probably go home and watch some NYE broadcast, that's what we usually do. Big excitement, right?

My new year's resolution, so far as I have one, is to be more organized. I forget things. I need to move some money around and I need to figure out Medicare (oh god, I'm old) and well, fun stuff like that. (Rob went over the weekend and bought me new tires, which is also something I'd been procrastinating about. Yay for husbands.)

I meant to write about the "color of the year" a week or two ago - Pantone always announces one in December, and it's something I kind of pay attention to, usually. This year's is "mocha mousse" - it's a neutral but not the terribly boring kind of neutral. I can't say it's something I see myself wearing, because I'm a bright colors person, but it's not a bad choice. I know I've seen lots of brown and burgundy outfits this year so this goes well with that kind of thing. But I can't say I have a whole lot to say about it!

Mocha Mousse

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Rob's favorite movies

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Goodbye for now, Holidailies!

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Mocha Mousse