Compadres. Partners in crime. People I stalk.

I was going to say this week has been endless and somehow it's still only Tuesday! but that's especially hilarious because I logged off work yesterday at 3 pm to go back to bed, and I'm taking off Thursday and Friday (and Monday), so really I only have tomorrow left of the work week. But subjectively it has felt endless. I do feel better though - still congested and coughing like mad, but no more fever. So you know, marginally better. *wry*

Anyway, I've got a recs update for you:

unfitforsociety has been updated for March 2026 with 13 story recs and 2 vid recs in 5 fandoms:

* 10 Heated Rivalry
* 2 The Pitt
* 1 Batfamily
* 1 Leverage vid and 1 Star Wars vid

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Even Nyquil couldn't keep my cough at bay all night. At least it's a productive cough? Bah. I feel like I am made entirely of mucus. How is there so much of it??? Plus I woke up with a fever this morning and again when I woke up from my nap just now.

I'm going to eat a bagel, poke around the internet, and then go back to bed and hope I feel better tomorrow. See you on the flip side!

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Blurgh I think I am coming down with something - my throat is incredibly scratchy and every third breath I need to cough loudly and horribly. It kept me from sleeping very well last night so tonight i think it's going to be Nyquil or bust. Bah.

I keep intending to share these links and forgetting, but at least I can do it while it's still Mika March:

= Mika Zibanejad and the lasting moments of a 1,000-game NHL journey
= A Forgettable Night, A Memorable Career: Mika Zibanejad’s Top Moments

since he's my favorite player now that Kreider is gone. Well, him and Shesterkin. Even though I gave up on this season fairly early (not earlier than JT Miller though!).

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I know I owe comment replies and I am going to get to them. The intermittent internet situation this week made me very reluctant as it would drop and I'd lose track of what I was planning to say by the time it came back etc. But! My new modem and router arrived yesterday and early this afternoon, I hooked them up. It worked, though at first I was like, what is happening? Because you do all this waiting for the modem to boot up and activate and then the first thing the router instructions say is "reboot your modem" and I'm like "are you for real? I literally just activated it!" but I did it and plugged everything in and it worked briefly! And then the router started blinking and my phone told me I had no internet and I was like WTF? Because it could 100% be an outside the apartment problem, or it could be a cabling problem because I did not swap out the coaxial cables - why would I do that? They are all nice and tight and the splitter is connected and I have had no issues with my cable box. So I unplugged everything and then plugged it back in and went to the Spectrum website to activate everything and it told me I had nothing ot activate, everything was working! And it has been so far! I will keep the old equipment for a couple of days, just in case, and bring it back to the Spectrum store midweek, probably.

After that adventure, I baked these whipped shortbread cookies (pic). I did not separate into lemon vanilla/orange chocolate. Instead, I used 1 tsp of almond extract in place of the citrus zest, and added chocolate sprinkles once they were piped but before they were refrigerated.

I've mentioned this before, but I am trying to replicate a childhood favorite cookie from an old Italian bakery that closed long before I even moved out of Ozone Park. They were not kept with the fancy butter cookies but with the S-cookies and the biscotti and the anginetti, and they had a much crumblier/drier texture than the typical Italian bakery butter cookies (you know the ones, either dipped in chocolate on one end or sandwiched with apricot or raspberry jam etc.). they were piped round and a slightly darker brown than the butter cookies too. And they were my absolute favorites. I've never found them at another bakery either.

I've tried a few Italian butter cookie recipes but none were quite right (though the one from Dolci was pretty close!), and then last week on thee second or third day of the pecan shortbread, I was like, this is the texture! And almost the taste, but the pecans obviously made the flavor different, though they do have almond extract in them (almond extract is the smell of Italian bakeries to me). So I googled to see if there was a chocolate sprinkle shortbread recipe out there, and found the one I linked above, and they also seemed like they'd be close. So after checking to make sure I wouldn't leave myself out of butter if I made them (I had another pound way in the back of the fridge), I got to baking. I think these also need a little longer in the oven, but we'll see how they taste tomorrow - I think that will be the test. but I think I'm getting close!

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We were all super anxious about today's board meeting, but despite all the agita, it went well. Whew. We will still need to do some tweaking in terms of the order stuff is presented in, but thankfully nobody got all up in arms about the changes.

My router keeps dropping my internet connection in short spurts every few hours, and I finally opened the chat with Spectrum about it. I was like, could it be that I need a new router? It's 6 years old. And the chatbot or whatever was like, it seems to be working right now! And I was like, yes, but it's been dropping the connection repeatedly for the last three days, several times a day, for 5-10 minutes at a time, both on wifi and with the computer that is plugged into the ethernet cable. And it was like, please hold. And then it came back and was like, ah yes, now I see there is some bad signal coming from your router! Perhaps we should replace it. It is 6 years old. And I was like, yes please! How do we do that? And it offered to ship it and a new modem, which is also 6 years old but has not (yet) been troublesome, so I said yes, let's do that. So now they are shipping me a new modem and a new router, which I will install and then return the old equipment to them. So we'll see how that goes.

I also signed and scanned back my tax returns to my accountant and I'm so glad they take payment by Zelle now so I don't have to mail a check. I'm getting money back from both Fed and State, which will have to go right to paying bills. At least I can't rack up more credit card charges atm because my niece has put a moratorium on any new clothes for Baby Miss L until they clear out out some space. It is very hard to restrain myself but I have done so womanfully. There are just so many cute toddler girl clothes out there though, and she enjoys playing with her clothes (she likes to do fashion shows by trying on various items, accessorizing with a hat and a purse, and then walking round the living room), so I enjoy giving them to her. Hopefully they'll get some old stuff that no longer fits put away and I will be given free rein again.

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