Dee Moyza

As mentioned previously, I don’t use streaming music services. So I do a DIY end-of-year wrap-up for my music listening. Obviously, I listened to music I already owned as well, but this is the highlight reel of the year’s new purchases.

I feel like this summary could just be a copy-paste from last year: more instrumental music, less pulled from the classics I missed in my youth. A lot of musicians I love had new albums this year, so I spent a fair amount of time listening to very current music.

I had a lot of weird one-offs, often found via poking around on Bandcamp. I often found that while I liked them enough to buy and listen to the whole thing, the albums did not tend to stick for me. That's okay--I know I sometimes come back to music years later and rediscover it when I'm ready. I don't mind.

Top album of the year was, without question, Djo's The Crux. If other albums this year lacked in stickiness, it's because this album was goddamn flypaper. The longer I listened, the more I got out of it, circling back around to tracks that didn't immediately grab me and suddenly finding something to love.

New albums* heard: 64--down yet again, I had fewer multi-album weeks, in part because I bought fewer short/light albums that needed to be bundled to make enough for a week's listening
*(discretely purchased music items, includes singles, EPs, and other short forms along with “full” albums)

Contributing artists: 54 (not counting multi-artist compilations)--same as last year

Oldest album: An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer, 1972

Newest album: Through This Fire Across From Peter Balkan (The Mountain Goats, November 7, 2025)

Top artists by albums: Louie Zong continues to lead in this category with four albums, but this wasn't a big year for me to dive deep into the back catalogs

Most repeated albums: Even In Arcadia (Sleep Token), This Wasn’t Meant For You Anyway (Lola Young), The Crux (Djo), Coydog (Carter Vail)

Tracks of note: Stunner (Carter Vail), Nervous Dancer (Louie Zong), Anoana (Heilung), We Will All Go Together When We Go (Tom Lehrer), March of Cambreadth (Alexander James Adams), Charlie's Garden (Djo), Alibi (Hurray For The Riff Raff), Factories In Heaven (The Scoffs), SCRAP HEAP (Louie Zong)

The Icebreaker Challenge: Introduce yourself. Tell us why you're doing the challenge, and what you hope to gain from it.

I'm Jay (he/him). I'm a fandom old, though my fannish contributions have been thin on the ground for a few years due to life things. I write and post original fiction regularly, though. I also talk about music, which I'm always open to recs for, and gardening.

Snowflake is a nice, low-pressure way to potentially meet new people. I look forward to it as a touchpoint for each new year. There's usually a good mix of prompts for looking forward and looking back. In place of setting resolutions, I think of this event as my yearly taking stock activity.

The annual lighting of Beacon House will take place at sundown on Wednesday, so bring your candles, flashlights, lanterns and pocket lighters and meet on the hill. Our lights will be reflected into the many mirrors in the House, helping to renew the infinite light that bounces around inside there. Local tradition says that this light is needed to ensure that the new year can find its way to our community, which sounds like a good idea whether taken literally or metaphorically.

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LL#1349

Ouagh...I am so sick. I woke up Thursday morning with sudden and substantial signs of infection in my right ear and my left ear basically going, hey, what’s that guy doing over there, is he having fun, I wanna have fun too! Things escalated rapidly. I went to Urgent Care Friday morning and got pills and drops both. I am maybe, sort of, just barely starting to see signs of improvement here on day 3 of treatment. I am absolutely obliterating my liver with the amount of Tylenol I’m choking down to manage the pain--it’s not even working well, to add insult to organ damage.

I have accomplished nothing. I am probably going to spend my whole vacation sick, and miserable, and simultaneously in bed at all hours but unable to actually sleep. I am deeply unhappy about this turn of events, but I feel too poorly to work up a proper level of outrage.

Mum was surprised and delighted by the books I got her and has been ravenously reading, so that’s fun. I have a new set of speakers for my computer, which I will enjoy eventually, and a new pillow, which I currently love more than life itself.

Lewisia: 0 new pieces written ;__;

Day job: 17 hours

Cooking: yule log~~~

Reading: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Quandry Phase (continuing the BBC Radio productions), Strangers in Paradise #19 (*ugly sobbing*, that is technically the whole original series! Holy shit! It only took me about 25 years from when I first started reading the comics.)

Watching: the Game Grumps holiday livestream has been my constant companion in these trying times

Clock Mouse: 915 words