My latest library haul

 I got a sweet haul from the library this past weekend and wanted to show them off.

1. The Silent Patient

The cover is great but this copy felt like it was older than I am

This is the book I came to the library for. I had it on hold and picked it up. My friend told me about it and said (spoiler?) it has a twist. I know some people consider simply knowing that the story has a twist as a spoiler, but I kind of like knowing there's a twist because it keeps me engaged in what might otherwise be a bit of an underwhelming.

In full honesty, I just finished this book today. And (spoiler) the twist was indeed good.

Although the writing was a little bland, it was a super fast read with very short chapters, and the intrigue keeps you going. It's fun. Apparently it's going to be a movie with Anne Hathaway? Exciting.

 2. We Can Do Hard Things

I've never heard of this book before or anything. It just caught my eye because like look at it. It's eye-catching. It's cute. It's a good vibe book. I like the title. I opened it up and flipped around and it looks unique and eye-catching inside. I'm excited to try it out.

fun text

3. A Glitch in the Matrix

I've seen this book somewhere before (don't remember where; I've seen a lot of books in a lot of places) and it sounded interesting.

I thought it was cute that it's an influencer that talks about this stuff, seems like they're passionate about it. I like reading Reddit stories too and I've read a few spooky r/GlitchInTheMatrix stories before and they're pretty weird and freaky sometimes. So a whole book of them? Sure, sounds cool. I'm interested to see if they're just stories that people directly posted on Reddit or if there's some extra editing and commentary.

 4. Clamor

Going to the library, I told myself that I'd only get 3 books. I have to set these limits for myself but it can be hard because my little rat brain tells me I need to get all the books immediately or else I'll combust.

Anyways, I broke my limit but just by this one book. I mention it in an earlier post but I've been feeling more lately like the world has become so loud, mentally and visually and in a bunch of weird subconscious ways that I don't actively think about. Not sure if this book is going to explore any of those, maybe it just literally means like physical(? is it physical? auditory) maybe it just literally means like auditory noise and only auditory noise.

But we'll see! I'm pretty hyped about these choices, I think they're each fun in their own ways. 

 

CURRENT RAT EVENTS

It feels like work chewed me up and spat me out today. I think I did my best today and it kind of wasn't enough. One of those days. Now I'm just watching the wedding episodes of Love is Blind with my bf.

The Empress (upright)--Beauty, abundance, growth, maybelline.

Hoppers was fun but nobody laughed except me

When we bought our tickets, it was only our two seats and two seats in the very first row that were taken. So when we walked in at 5 pm and it was packed, I thought we walked into the wrong theater. Kids were everywhere.

The taken seats randomly turned into lizards after we bought our tickets (this was at 11 am)

We had to squeeze past three recliners, all full, one of which the adult of the group had taken off his shoes and was raw doggin his feet in the air, no socks. Intimidating for me. I think when I sat down it took me a solid 15 minutes to get my heart rate down.

lizard lizard lizard lizard lizard (at 5 pm)

The movie was cute. I think Turning Red still hit me harder, but the humor of Hoppers felt stronger overall. And the animation was adorable. Mabel was a cute protagonist and I liked her relationship with her Grandma. I also liked that she was 19, that's surprisingly old for a Disney/Pixar protagonist in my opinion!

I love him

The climax was absolutely hilarious and Dave Franco went absolutely nuts in the recording booth (good for him).

One thing that surprised me is how quiet the theater was. It was full of kids, so I assumed it was going to be a loud showing. But the kids only laughed at one joke where all the animals were yelling and screaming over each other.

I feel like when I used to go to the theaters, people were sometimes jerks, but not always. Like sometimes someone would pull out their phone a few times, and if it was annoying you'd be like, "Hey, can you please put that away" after like 20 minutes of hyping yourself up and picturing them reacting in the worst way. And then they would put it away.

My worst story was some couple brought a really young kid into John Wick 4 and gave him a phone to play some app with no headphones, and I think the kid got bored of John Wick and kept turning the volume up until it was blaring. That used to be my worst story.

But it's strange, in the last couple of weeks, I've gone to the theater twice and at Project Hail Mary a guy kept pulling out his phone at full brightness and Hoppers today there was a guy bare footing it who took a call during the climax. At FNAF 2, some dude talked the entire time. Is it just me or are audiences getting worse? It used to be every now and then, but these days, it's almost a certainty.

 

CURRENT RAT EVENTS

Current rat hobby: I am like 20 pages from finishing The Silent Patient.

Current rat worry: Work -_-

Can people at work please do any tasks on their own? I swear I feel like the only person that is working on my entire team... Someone is helping me with a task and they were told it needs to be finished pretty much as soon as possible. Guess what, not only did they never finish it, but they never even started on it. My manager said, "Oh, that's fine. We'll just push that then, they're busy." We can't push it, it needs to be done ASAP! Am I the only person at my job that understands what ASAP means? I feel like I'm going slightly insane.

The Fool (upright)--Beginnings, spontaneity, leaps of faith.

The peaceful silence of audiobooks

Lately, I've been really enjoying audiobooks, which is new for me. I've tried to get into audiobooks in the past and failed, and whenever I heard someone talk about a good audiobook, I'd think something like: Good for them, but not for me.

It started when I put timers on some of my apps, like Instagram and Reddit. I already had timers on them, but I went from 20 mins on weekdays and 40 mins on weekends to just 10 minutes for every day. I didn't think this would have a huge effect on me, after all, I already had a timer on them, but it did.

There would be times I'd be sitting around, timer already up, feeling bored. Trying to figure out what to do. And I guess all the times sitting around quietly made returning to those apps feel even louder.

I'd open Instagram and suddenly everyone is delivering their lines at me in over the top yelling, telling me what products to buy, what I should feel about a recent event, what exercises I need to do to maintain mobility by the time I'm 70, or asking me to comment something to get a DM with the link. Same with Youtube and Reddit: people speaking loudly and making me feel like I couldn't even think. I had never noticed it before, or maybe I was able to resist feeling pulled and stretched around (probably not that one honestly).

Anyways, I was craving something calmer than that. I had heard good things about the Project Hail Mary audiobook--only good things, actually (do I italicize if the book title is for an audiobook?) I read the book last year but the movie was coming out soon and I wanted a refresher, and the bonus to it being a book I've already read meant that if I missed a sentence or two I wouldn't be completely lost.

I actually really dig the poster. Probably related to that: I also really like Ryan Gosling.

So all the moments where in the past I would've put on a Youtube video or mindlessly browsed Instagram, I would instead put on my audiobook, and after awhile, the thing I really noticed was how much quieter it felt. Instead of influencers and content creators clamoring over themselves to grab and hold my monetized attention, feeling like every application was pushing and pulling me around, I felt nothing there. A silence. Nobody trying to sell me something, nobody trying to influence me. Silence.

It was lovely. Would recommend.

(I saw the movie and the book was better, which isn't a huge surprise. The movie did add some great ideas that I liked, like having video logs be a thing, having Project Hail Mary mission hats, and letting Carl have more of a presence, but the book was maybe my favorite book of 2025, so it was going to be hard to beat.) 

CURRENT RAT EVENTS

Current rat hobby: Reading The Silent Patient and constructing a planner I'll actually use.

Current rat worry: Work. Work work work. Work! Work...

Woke up full body sore today, but worked really hard. (Worked over the weekend too--for free! I'm that much of a dummy.) I did a full 30 minutes of yoga, I showered already last night, I have lunch and breakfast ready for tomorrow, and I already sent off my query to my coworker, created my PR for my other project. Even took a 40 min nap after work, read about 40 pages of my book already, and it's only 7:30. What does this mean? I think it means that for the first time in like two weeks I can sit here and feel okay. I mean, there's still a million horrible things over my head, looming like ugly rainclouds--my insurance appeal was denied, my remaining ovary is throbbing in a concerning way, and a guy in the PHM screening pulled out his phone on full brightness out three times. Listing these out side by side is a little funny because one is real dumb.

Five of Wands (reversed)--Inner conflict, conflict avoidance, confusion.

2026: The era of finishing

I am a serial incompletionist. It's taken me a lot of therapy to realize this lol.

I think something I've learned a lot about myself lately is how I react to discomfort, realizing I'm very sensitive to it. An unfortunate byproduct of being sensitive to discomfort is doing nothing, because everything has some degree of discomfort.

Things as small as going to the movies, answering phone calls, and coming back full circle to my first sentence: finishing things. Not finishing projects might be under the umbrella of common. But I have also realized how little I finish in terms of books, tv shows, and especially video games.

I've been thinking a lot about this year laid out ahead of me (Year of the Horse woo) and how I want to really change during it. 2024, I went through a very serious trauma at the end of it. 2025, I was healing from it in more ways than one, and now that the waters have settled somewhat, I think on 2026. For me, I think I want 2026 to be my year of discomfort and my year of finishing things I've started (aka also discomfort).

There are some bigger goals I want, like to seriously jump into some crazy hobbies and travel more, but on a smaller scale, I want to finish things.

Anyways, the other day I made a list of games I've started and not finished (but want to!) and I've been pontificating over how to tackle it. I thought it would be nice to write them here as I've been kind of using my blog as a bit of a journal, and I'm really hoping to come back at the end of the year and see where I was and track my progress.

Here is my list in no particular order:

• Detroit Become Human
• Expedition 33
• Loddlenaut kind of
• Resident Evil 2
• It Takes Two
• Cyberpunk
• Little Kitty Big City
• Baldur's Gate 3
• Cat Cafe Manager
• Monster Hunter Stories Wings of Ruin 2
• Hades
• Red Dead Redemption 2
• Disco Elysium
• The Coma 2 Vicious Sisters
• Carrion
• Sunset Overdrive
• The Witcher 3
• Okami
• Paper Mario and the Thousand Year Door
• Ori and the Blind Forest
• Devil May Cry 5
• Night in the Woods
• Yoshi's Island DS

I had all of this written on a tiny little list and writing it all out and seeing it take the full screen is a bit daunting.

Maybe I'll add all of them to a randomized wheel and spin it to pick which one to start on. Or maybe I'll just do a kind of... last in, first out method? Tackle the ones I started the most recently first. 

CURRENT RAT EVENTS

Not a huge fan of Daylight Savings. Windows fucked me on a failed update and I ended up having to reinstall. I'm still picking up the pieces of my PC. It ate half of today. The drain is clogged too (or something, not sure what), the disposal won't run. The dishwasher is connected to the disposal drain, so running it means this nasty un-disposed food water comes out of the drain, meaning the dishwasher is sitting full and has been since it broke. What does all of this mean? The kitchen stinks like old food. It's a horrible smell. I was unable to do my meal prep today like I normally do. This weekend was supposed to be relaxing and then all this happened. I have a work deadline due this week. I'm stressed.

Temperance (reversed)--Imbalance, burning out, excess.

Meal prepping week four

This week I made a "One-Pot Cheesy Orecchiette With Cabbage and Paprika". Do not ask me what an Orecchiette is. I do not know.

Leeks + onions

I feel like it was a little reminiscent of sauerkraut because of the cabbage, and I accidentally only put half the amount of cabbage the recipe called for in.

Barely pictured in the top left: the roasted zucchini/squash

There were definitely plenty of veggies made, I went the lazy route and just did some zucchini/squash and broccoli again, but my partner ate all of them (two full sheets of each).

Glad I tried this recipe but honestly it wasn't my favorite. My partner loved it so I told him to go crazy and I'll find something else to pack for the week.

CURRENT RAT EVENTS

Current fixation: Sourdough starters.

Current hobby: Sourdough starters?

Current worry: Still stressed about work.

I woke up super early today, by which I mean about the time I wake up on workdays. I fed my sourdough starter and I've been monitoring it closely. Once it peaks (if it peaks), I will make sourdough cookies :3

The Hermit (upright)--Introspection, solitude.

Thinkin bout the new year

So Lunar New Year was a few days ago. Year of the Horse! Very exciting. Honestly the Year of the Snake was very kind to me, I feel like I crossed a huge distance.

Do you think the horse is like the horse from spirit stallion of the cimarron or like just a regular horse (image source)

I thought a lot about what kind of goals I'd like to set for the year, and I kind of like the idea of using the time between New Year's and Lunar New Year to brainstorm before putting them into effect. I have a vague list of things, but I've been feeling my goals already pulling me internally.

One of the biggest things (unfortunately, I think) is that I want to work to be more comfortable.

I've been learning so much about myself the past year, and one thing I've recently realized is that a lot scares me. Some things have always been scary to me, some things are new, but lately I've felt like they've been keeping me confined in a small box that I'm outgrowing.

A big thing is that I want to travel more, but it's probably one of my biggest fears. It's tough--I don't like feeling like the thing I want to do the most is also the thing that scares me the most; it's a very uncomfortable place to be in because no matter what direction I go, I'm unhappy (or uncomfortable) in some way. I'm definitely still figuring it out.

I want to make sure to feed a lion at the lion dance this year. I already checked and there will be some performances in town next Saturday. When I fed the lion last year, I had had a big traumatic medical event happen to me and at the time I was physically recovered but still mentally reeling. Watching the cute lions dance and then getting to feed them made me feel lighter about the upcoming year, as if I was getting a protective layer of luck surrounding me.

Plus the red envelopes are super cute! As a stationary nerd, I kind of always love to go look at the designs and pick up a couple cute ones.

CURRENT RAT EVENTS

Current fixation: Figuring out what makes me uncomfortable.

Current hobby: Shrinking.

Current worry: I am working on three projects at work. Two are due in March. One is due in like June. Yesterday, I was stuck on a blocker all day and wrote maybe one line of code total. Idk if I can make these deadlines? I feel like no one has noticed that I have been put on three projects and am struggling and I feel like I can't tell people I'm struggling because it'll look bad. But also I'm frustrated because I'm on three projects and people are expecting me to do all this work with almost no help on some of these. Anyways.

We dressed up and went to a theater show today! I stressed about parking all morning but it was a nothing burger. The temp dropped so much and the wind picked up that we were eager to get home.

The Empress (reversed)--Creative block, insecurity, prompting re-examination.

I am bad at traveling

I don't know why but I get very uncomfortable about traveling. I've always been like this.

However, I'm pleased to announce that this year, I have already traveled. My parents invited me to go with them to Universal Studios for the long weekend and I was so excited to join them, I knew I had to go along. And then... the days passed and the date of the plane ride came closer and closer, and I felt the dread sink up my body like a sponge soaking up water.

Anyways, I did it. It was actually pretty hard for me, but I somehow did it. I only cried on the plane a little.

Frost on the window

Universal is pretty weird because some of it kind of isn't worth it. It feels like a glorified Six Flags or run of the mill local amusement park. There's nothing really "deluxe" about some of the areas of the park, because some of them are old and show their age unfortunately.

I think one of the ways the old parks (Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios) show their age is in their approach to food. Like, I went to Disney a couple years ago and food was a big deal; they try to make really interesting or weird looking food because it could go viral and get more butts in the park. The old Universal parks don't really have this. They might have a couple things that are great or "famous" things to try, but it'll be like... "I heard the baked potatoes here are really good." Idk. I'm not going to go to Florida for a baked potato, no offense.

We did go to the new Epic park, which was pretty amazing in a lot of ways, and Epic definitely puts way more of an emphasis on food (which I think is a much more modern thing in theme parks). This is great in my opinion because I like food. Like many of you, I need to eat.

Some of my favorite/most photogenic items include the following.

The Monocane Mocktail from The Burning Blade Tavern

Monocane is from the 1933 film The Invisible Man. Honestly I just love a good mocktail and I really appreciate that they have a lot of non-alcoholic options because I don't want to walk around a theme park that I'm paying hundreds of dollars to be inside day-drunk, stumbling, and dehydrated (I get tipsy after like one drink). 

I didn't realize it had edible glitter in it until my second one

 

The Hunter's Garlic Stake from The Burning Blade Tavern

Honestly it tastes like what you expect it to taste like but it's such a cute idea and visual that I wanted to include it. 

Mt. Beanpole Cake from The Toadstool Cafe

I was a bit nervous ordering this because the top is matcha and as much as I wish I was a cool matcha girlie I am not. It tastes so earthy it's basically dirt (sorry). This was great though. I've honestly heard some pretty horrible things about the Toadstool Cafe food, and the other dish I got had something hard in it that got stuck in my tooth for the rest of the day. But this was good.

Traditional English Breakfast from The Three Broomsticks

This is from one of the older parks so it doesn't pop as much as some of the Epic stuff, but it's a really hearty breakfast. I'm not english so it was also fun to try a traditional english breakfast (beans?!) I probably should've ordered the child size because the child size one is still massive and it doesn't come with the blood sausage. As an American, blood sausage is crazy. I guess not crazy that it exists, but crazy that people eat it, because it tastes just like blood, probably because it's made with blood.

Classic Mac and Cheese from The Spit Fyre Grill

This one pisses me off so bad. We had an Incident ordering these where the mobile ordering app glitched while people not using the mobile ordering walked up to the window, ordered it traditionally, and walked away with their food. We even got kicked out of the mobile ordering line (yes there was a line to pick up mobile orders) because ours didn't say it was ready for pick up yet, even though the line was like 6 people long. Can you imagine pre-ordering your food so it's ready, only to watch people walk up, order it, and walk away with it? Also there's a line for the pre-ordered food! We stood there for 20 minutes before getting a refund.

But we really wanted it, so at the end of the night we slunk back with our tails between our legs like the consumer sheep we are and bought it again, and the app did not break this time.

And it makes me so mad because it was really good. Actually amazing. Yes, those are Gold Fish on top. Yes, they actually go amazingly with mac n cheese and I never knew that. It was crazy. My bf and I split this one and we were taking these massive bites just trying to fit the entire thing in our mouths.

Gaze upon it in equal parts anger and envy

We went back the next day and tried one with pork on top and it was even more amazing and even now, I wish I had one of these in my hands.

Doesn't this sound disgusting? I thought so. I hate that I liked it so much.

On one hand, I feel really brave for traveling. Having nothing go wrong while I was gone is maybe conditioning me to not freak out as much for when I do it again.

However, on the other hand, it sucks to have to fight my discomfort to try and do something like this, especially when it feels like a lot of people don't think twice about it. It can feel like climbing up a steep hill when the other people around me are taking a nice level stroll through a lovely park.

But I do think travel is important. I'm sure this is a bastardized version of it, but there's a quote from St. Augustine: "The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page." I do think there's some truth in that and so I want to try and travel more this year, which will honestly be very hard for me I think. 

CURRENT RAT EVENTS

Current fixation: I think I'm between fixations atm.

Current hobby: Brainstorming scrapbooking my trip and also watching new things. Been trying new shows and movies this week.

Current worry: Expanding my "zone of discomfort". Basically doing uncomfortable things until they become more comfortable. But I guess the worry is how much that's going to suck. Also I left a little early today and another manager saw me and I think she doesn't like me so what if she fires me. Yesterday she kept coming up to my cube like she was looking for someone, like what if she was checking I was working? I just don't think she likes me kinda.

Went to the office. Got boba. Came home and did therapy. Currently debating making a big dinner or a lil small dinner.

Seven of Swords (upright)--theft, betrayal, self-preservation.