I'm so glad I brought an extra large quantity of tea back with me this time. A hot cup of tea is one of the few things getting me through the cold outside.

( Agatha Christie's Seven Dials )

( When Harry Met Sally )

The Long Goodbye
The Pitt | Gen | ~1200 words | Thanks to sheafrotherdon for reading over this.

(Also on AO3)

( Dana has something to tell Robby. )

I should have done the boiling milk in the new pot thing last night, but I didn't so my bread-baking was a little delayed until I did that, waited for the pot to cool, and cleaned it, so the dough could do its second rise in it. The dough does rise, so that was not an issue at all. I might have overcooked it a titch - the bottom was a darker brown than I'd prefer - but it's a beautiful boule (pic). It only tasted okay, though, I guess we'll see how it tastes tomorrow and the day after, and with butter instead of cream cheese. *hands*

Then this afternoon I watched the Miracle on Ice documentary on Netflix, which was really good - that team is the reason I became a hockey fan, and specifically a Rangers fan, so they have a lot to answer for! Kidding! I'm kidding. It was lovely to see so many of them in the present, watching them watch their younger selves.

And then after dinner, I watched the s3 premiere of Shrinking, which made me laugh a lot and also tear up. They are all so ridiculous and I love them. And I read it already got renewed for a season 4! So that's good.

I also did the January recs update:

unfitforsociety has been updated for January 2026 with 17 story recs and 1 vid rec in 3 fandoms:

* 16 Heated Rivalry
* 1 The Good Place story and 1 Avatar the Last Airbender/Legend of Korra vid

If you are reading HR fic, there is probably nothing new there for you, since most of those recs came from you all, but maybe there's something new for you to enjoy? I still have so much Batfamily fic open in tabs that I want to get back to reading, and still more HR fic and some Pitt fic open as well. I've just been mostly unable to settle in with any of it, and have instead been slowly continuing my DCC reread, with occasional notes. *hands*

*

Heated Rivalry

Adopt/Adapt by aRegularJo
Yuna has questions. Ilya doesn't have answers.

Or

Ilya needs a mother. Luckily, Yuna is mother. <333

Duty of Care by boopboop
"My father was very fair," Ilya says immediately, and it's got the rigid, almost mechanical emphasis of something practiced a thousand times. "If I was bad, I pay price. No problem."

"I think maybe we have a different definition of the word fair."

"Yes," Ilya admits. "Probably. Shane thinks so." Lovely look at David and Yuna caring for Ilya.

english as a second language by Idday
Shane's been fucking Ilya Rozanov for a decade and yet somehow the more time they spend together the more he realizes how little he actually knows about Ilya, like, as a person. As a partner.

Again, he wishes he spoke Russian. That they had any shared native language besides sex and hockey. Really lovely.

from the cold by stammiviktor
He was going to cry.

He was crying into Yuna's porridge. He was crying in front of David Hollander. Maybe if he did not move, David would not notice? This was ridiculous. It was just that Ilya was so full of feelings and they needed somewhere to leak from. They soaked his face and he licked them off of his lips. He was so hungry and depleted of electrolytes that they almost tasted good. Yuna and David take care of Ilya while he's sick. Oh heart.

Good by ShanaStoryteller
The second dinner goes better than the first.

(Shane is his mother's son.) This is a super sweet look at Shane and his mom (and Ilya and Shane's dad). <3

how do you feel? by exogenesissymph
Shane Hollander, interviewee, throughout the years. Nice look at Shane and his relationship with the media over the years.

how your garden grows by moonsock
5 people who were pleasantly surprised by ilya rozanov Lovely!

I Like Jane For You by Icopythefax
After a mix-up leaves Hayden with the wrong phone for three days, he ends up learning more about Ilya Rozanov and his secret girlfriend, Jane. I literally laughed out loud repeatedly while reading this. <3

It's hard but it's harder to ignore it by losernotfound
the missing scene of David and Ilya while Shane and Yuna were talking outside. <333

Keep Pace by toomuchplor
What happened when Yuna and Shane were talking. Quiet and lovely.

Messaging: Boston Lily by HollowIsTheWorld
In which Hayden reaches out to Boston Lily about Shane's condition after he goes down on the ice. Despite his curiosity, he's determined not to pry... But things come out all the same. Oh boys...good thing Hayden is a good bro.

on the shoulders of giants by theclaravoyant
After the MLH awards, Scott is surprised by a... well-wisher?
World Famous Asshole Ilya Rozanov Oh heart.

Rules for Survival by Hatchigo
Shane's anxiety came from Yuna. What if Yuna went to the cottage instead of David? Lovely and plausible look at Yuna Hollander.

text me when you see this by emilystopflying
Shane and Svetlana start texting. This made me laugh out loud.

The Waiting Game by Rizandace
Hayden Pike and Ilya Rozanov are waiting for Shane to wake up after he took a bad hit on the ice. They get to talking. Aw, this is lovely.

You Have (81) Unread Messages by Ravenesta
Sarah
Does anyone have the number for Shane's girl from Boston? I feel bad that they've been seeing each other for this long and we've never added her here.

Jackie
Oh good point! Let me ask Hayden.

Jackie has added Lily to the conversation

Lily
what
what is this FANTASTIC! <3

✭

The Good Place

Icarus by shrift
Attempt #479 aka Chidi and the series of escalating disappointments. <333

✭

Avatar: The Last Airbender

Vids

We Didn't Start the Fire by beccatoria
Excellent AtLA/LoK vid - perfect for this song!

✭

Peachy
The Pitt | Gen | ~1100 words | Missing scene for 2.04. Thanks to sheafrotherdon for betaing.

(Also on AO3)

( And there Joy had been thinking that the worst part of her day would be the constant stream of updates in the group chat about all the fun that everyone else was having without her. )

Ugh, this week felt like it was EIGHT WEEKS long, and everyone I spoke to at work today agreed. I did not get everything on my to do list done but I don't even care. There was no way I was focusing on much after a 2 hour team meeting. I logged off at 4:45 and took a glorious nap, and then put together the dough for everything bread, which I will bake tomorrow.

In other news, I was so sorry to hear Catherine O'Hara died. RIP. What a legend!

*

I really enjoyed last night's episode of The Pitt. Again, my brain is soup, so I'm not really up for saying much about it, but I did literally yell, "NO!" when the credits rolled. Sometimes I am okay with an episode ending (or at least it feels like it reached a good stopping point) but last night was not one of those times.

This weekend, I will watch the new episode of Shrinking, plus the new episodes of Bridgerton, and possibly I will continue with Pluribus, which I didn't love but kind of want to see why everyone else raves about it. It could click at some point or it could be like Severance, which I also don't love the way many other people do. *hands* Sometimes, that's just how it goes.

*

Seven vid recs for Heated Rivalry. (I cant figure out how to make a public post to my own journal, so I'm copying these here).

RUN BOY RUN [VID] Queerness Makes Queerness Possible by nordreys
Fandom: Heated Rivalry (TV)
Rating: Mature

Warnings:

Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Relationships: Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Kip Grady/Scott Hunter, Shane Hollander & Scott Hunter, Scott Hunter & Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander & Ilya Rozanov
Characters: Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Scott Hunter (Game Changers), Kip Grady, Rose Landry, Svetlana Vetrova, Yuna Hollander, David Hollander
Additional Tags: queer syntax is infinite, queerness makes queerness possible, Hockey, Romance, the closet, Social Media, Representation, Love, Accidental Outing, Driving Into The Sunset
Series: Part 6 of vids
Summary:

queer syntax is infinite. queerness makes queerness possible.

being gay and being a hockey player and the years in between until something helps you realize change is possible.

Naked In Manhattan by sisabet
Fandom: Heated Rivalry (TV)
Rating: Mature
Relationships: Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov
Characters: Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov
Additional Tags: POV Shane Hollander, First Time, Fanvids, Video Format: Streaming
Summary:

Shane experiences a series of firsts.

[vid] Blow by bingeling
Fandom: Heated Rivalry (TV)
Rating: Mature
Relationships: Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov
Additional Tags: POV Shane Hollander, Sub Shane Hollander, Closeted Characters, Physical Triggers, Embedded Video, Captions Available, Download Available, Fanvids, Video Format: MP4, Video Format: Streaming
Summary:

You taste like cigarettes

[VID] 11:11 (16 words) by Nestra
Fandom: Heated Rivalry (TV)
Rating: Mature
Relationships: Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov
Characters: Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov
Additional Tags: Video, Embedded Video, Download Available, Subtitles Available, Canon-Typical Everything
Series: Part 20 of Vids by Nestra, Part 31 of Creator's Favorites
Summary:

I knew from the beginning.

Fine Not Fine [Vid] by jennavids
Fandom: Heated Rivalry (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Relationships: Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov
Characters: Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov
Additional Tags: Fanvids
Summary:

and I've never been myself, I just follow orders

[A Hollanov video set to Fine Not Fine by Spector]

[Vid/Edit] Pilot With a Fear of Heights by technicallyverycowboy
Fandom: Heated Rivalry (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Relationships: Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov
Characters: Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov
Additional Tags: Fanvids, shane "brave little toaster" hollander
Summary:

I've been thinking 'bout you all night
Like a pilot with a fear of heights

is it ever gonna be enough? [vid] by copperiisulfate
Fandom: Heated Rivalry (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Relationships: Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov
Characters: Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander
Additional Tags: Fanvids, Video, Embedded Video
Summary:

a relationship study of sorts through the first season of the series

As a post-Christmas treat, I bought myself this Emile Henry dutch oven and the instructions say to boil milk in it (and then clean it out) before using it the first time? I've never heard of that, but my other dutch ovens are enameled cast iron, not ceramic. Has anyone heard of this/done this?

anyway, mainly I bought it because I want to try this no-knead everything bread but didn't want to deal with my 6 qt cast iron dutch oven, which is extremely heavy and also tucked away in a closet somewhere. My plan is to mix it up tomorrow after work since it needs an on-the-counter overnight rise, and then bake it Saturday morning. We'll see how it goes!

I might also make garlic and bread soup again this weekend, and also maybe some version of citrus and soy noodles (it's a ramen recipe but I'm just going to use angel hair instead since I already have it) for dinner tomorrow. Oh, and those orange cranberry scones again - the cranberries are still taking up too much room in my freezer and must be used up!

*

In case you haven't listened to it yet: Streets of Minneapolis by Bruce Springsteen.

It's in my bsky feed and my tumblr dash and I saw it here on DW first (in a locked post), so I needed to have it here too.

And since I've been listening to it a lot lately, here's Help Save the Youth of America by Billy Bragg. Unfortunately always timely.

*

Today was super annoying because I had a very weird internet outage. Spectrum acknowledged that there was an outage in my area even! But it was only partial? Or intermittent? Just fucking weird. I could get to my work-related sites fairly frequently (outlook, sharepoint), but literally nothing else would load except for some reason gmail. Like, no news sites. No bank. No shopping sites. Bitwarden timed out trying to log into my password vault. I couldn't get anything at all to load on my personal laptop until I plugged in my phone to use it as a hotspot, which was greyed out and not allowed on my work laptop. Finally, around 4 pm when Spectrum said the outage was over but I still didn't have full service, I chatted with them and somehow their reboot of everything worked (even though I rebooted the modem and router several times on my own without any luck), so I was able to get full access to the internet on both laptops and on my TV. *hands*

In other news, I found that a stint overnight in the fridge greatly improved those cupcakes. I wasn't impressed by them at room temp (texture was super spongy), but they're really good with the extra time in the cold! So if you need vegan cupcakes, the KAB recipe is recommended, especially if you make them ahead of time.

Meanwhile, it looks like we might get a nor'easter this coming weekend? A big storm potentially, though with less snow and more wind. No warming of temperatures anyway. Oy.

*

I would guess we got about 7-8" of snow today before it either stopped or turned to rain (I'm not sure which), and my phone lit up with work chats because they did not make the choice to close the office and make everyone remote on Friday like they should have (in past years, these big forecasts have sometimes turned into duds in reality), so they had to do it today. I was wfh regardless, so it didn't matter to me.

I hope all of you in the path are safe and warm.

More delightfully, I also got pics of Baby Miss L in her Minnie Mouse snowsuit with big smiles on her face - and a video from earlier when she was all, "go in the snow, Mama!" and her mama was like, "We will, but not yet." But Baby Miss L insisted, "But snow, Mama!" Super cute! 🥰🥰🥰

I spent the whole weekend in pajamas, and today I finally tried out a couple of recipes I'd had my eye on for a while: vegan chocolate cupcakes (always useful to have) and whipped ganache (not vegan but delicious) (pics). The cupcakes are okay - a little spongier, texture-wise, than I like, so I'll probably stick with my preferred recipe unless I have a need for ones that are vegan - but the whipped ganache is delicious. It also has butter in it, which I haven't seen before - previously when I've whipped ganache, it's just been the chocolate/cream/vanilla version. As for the cupcakes, I made minis instead of standard, and I swapped in coffee for the water, but otherwise followed the recipe. I got 40 cupcakes out of it, and probably could have gotten a few more, but 40 was more than enough, since I am not taking them anywhere.

*

It is so, so cold. So cold. And the really bad snow hasn't even hit here yet. Brr.

( The Pitt, 2.03, 9A.M. )

( The Traitors Ireland, S1 )

Wound Care
The Pitt | Robby, Gen | ~1400 words | Thanks to sheafrotherdon for betaing. Episode fic for 2.03.

(Also on AO3)

( Mrs Kovalenko was nothing like his grandmother, except for how she reminded Robby of her all the same. )

Over the past few days, I finally watched the most recent season of Only Murders in the Building and I enjoyed it tremendously. I feel like I laughed a lot more than I did last season. The thing that is so great about this show, other than all the other things that are great about it, is that the cast is so stacked that you can't play the "most famous guest star is the murderer" game. I mean, this season alone, we had ( spoilers )

In other news, we are - and possibly you are too - supposed to be getting a big winter storm this weekend so I'm thinking about baking plans. I will definitely post if I make something good. *g*

*

I did indeed get in bed by 9:30 last night and slept pretty hard. I probably could have slept even more, but 11 hours is a pretty good night!

For some reason, I woke up with Barely Breathing by Duncan Sheik in my head, and when I wondered to angelgazing whatever happened to him, she said he co-wrote Spring Awakening, which I did not know, so good for him! From one-hit wonder to Tony winner!

On the Mets front, they finally got a centerfielder in Luis Robert Jr. I guess if he can stay healthy, he'll be an upgrade over last year, offensively at least, though I am still a Tyrone Taylor fan for his A+ defense. #better call tyrone

In other sports news, my attempt to get interested in basketball seems to have done serious damage to the Knicks. They have been losing a lot lately. Plus, everyone I mentioned it to was like, don't do that. I didn't realize people in my wider circle felt that way about basketball. I guess there's always the Liberty! I should figure out when that season starts. Or the Sirens for hockey, but I don't think they've been very good either. Just a bad time all round for NY sports, I guess. And it's not like I'm a fair weather fan, though this certainly sounds like it - it's just I'd like to root for a team that isn't completely terrible, you know? As a treat!

On the books front, there is finally cover art and a real blurb for Dungeon Crawler Carl 8: Parade of Horribles, but still no Kindle* or e-book edition, so I broke down and pre-ordered the hardcover. (I can't do audiobooks. I've tried.) I also decided to do a reread of the series, because I've been trying to map out all the various stuff that needs resolving - and it is A LOT - so I wanted it to be fresh in my mind. So at some point there will be a post that is basically me as that Charlie Day-at-the-murder-board meme trying to figure it all out. *hands*

*I realize that I probably need to do a "free trial" of Kindle Unlimited to get the Kindle edition but I do not want to do that at this time. As the release date gets closer, we'll see if a Kindle edition shows up and I end up cancelling the hardcover, as I would prefer not to buy a hardcover tbh. I have all the rest on kindle, which is where I do 99.5% of my book-reading these days.

So anyway, I guess for the Wednesday reading meme, I just finished a reread of book 1 of Dungeon Crawler Carl and started rereading book 2: Carl's Doomsday Scenario. And I will probably read book 3: The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook after that and so on and so forth. *wry*

***

Title: House
Music: House - Charli XCX feat. John Cale
Fandom: The Black Phone (Movies - Derrickson)
Summary: ". . . other houses, the lights were dim, and with some houses they were almost out and I didn’t know the people who lived there. I’d get a feeling from these houses of stuff going on that wasn’t happy. I didn’t dwell on it, but I knew there were things going on behind those doors and windows." - David Lynch
Warnings: Canon-typical abuse and violence against children; suicide by hanging
Links: On AO3 | On Tumblr | On DW

Title: Gimme Sympathy
Fandom: Heated Rivalry
Music: "Gimme Sympathy" by Metric
Pairing: Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov
Summary: We're so close to something better left unknown

AO3 | DW | Tumblr

The conference was interesting, if maybe 1 panel too long (it ended at 4:55 pm, but the last panel was...not great, imo), though the lunch options were, to me, appalling. (Many people ate and enjoyed the sandwiches but there was not one that I would eat. I made do with salad, chips, and cookies.) My boss and I both felt validated by some things being mentioned that we already do and some that we are planning to do (if the new board chair approves), so that part was good too.

It was hard to get up (it was hard to sleep, knowing I had to get up 90 minutes earlier than usual), but I did it. I also saw two fun signs on the way: "Lube Entrance" and "You can ship anything." As devildoll said when I told her, I'll take AO3 tags for $200, Alex. *g*

Now I'm going to try to stay awake for another hour and then go to bed because I am le tired.

*