Promiseland

[Fetian]

So today ash and I took the train into the city! The goal was ice skating, and I brought a bag with a scarf and some gloves in case I got cold, but when we got there the rink was closed due to inclement weather, which I can only assume means it's too warm today. So ash found a new boba place for us to try that wasn't too far away, and as we were walking we started seeing a lot of people wearing costumes of one kind or another, and then we realised that SacAnime was happening this weekend. We were both sure that usually happened in February, but apparently this year it's at the beginning of January! It was fun seeing all the different nerds wandering around, and our walk took us right by the convention center so we saw a lot of nerds. The boba shop was good, I got a snakefruit cocoa with popping strawberry boba, which I really enjoyed, and ash got a 'winnie the pooh' which was strawberry and mango (red and yellow) with lychee boba, which he enjoyed less. It was a good price, though, and probably worth going back to some time when it's less loud and crowded. And also we'll keep looking for other places to try!

We sat across the street for a bit and I got chilly and put my scarf on, and after a while we got up to start heading toward the train. The plan was to stop by a butcher that's very close to a gold line stop and see if they have stuff I can give Oz, but when I got there they also didn't have any chicken heart and also the proprietor was kind of rude to me and I have a mild suspicion that it's because I was masking but I of course don't know for sure. But that was a bummer and I'm starting to wonder if there's some kind of heart shortage??

Also ash's hands started hurting so I loaned him my gloves, and that is how I ended up using both the just-in-case items I brought with me today even though we didn't go ice skating!

Anyway, from there we just went home and now we're sitting around getting some rest after all that walking and transit. In a bit here I'm going to go break down the other hen for Oz and then I imagine it'll soon be time for ash to start making dinner. While we eat we're going to watch Delicious In Dungeon (/Dungeon Meshi) which has started airing! I'm very excited both to watch it and specifically to share it with ash!

Have some pictures I took through the day

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This is a dog someone brought onto the train -- that almost turned into an incident, because obviously the dog is sort of sprawled across the aisle, so when someone had to try to walk by and made an irritated comment about it, the dog's owner got belligerent and the other person apparently tried to "snitch" on the owner to the train driver. The dog and owner got off at the next stop but there was a fair amount of angry noises from specifically his side. Meanwhile a very gay elderly man was sitting a few seats away and being very visibly amused about the whole thing before he also got off at the next stop.

But the dog is cute

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These were at the boba shop

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This car was outside the boba shop and I just really love the paintjob

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This is absurd and I kind of love it

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This is the most thoroughly smashed in one of these I've seen

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I'm 12

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This is some Japanese in the wild that I was able to read, mostly! I forgot 八 was 8 and kept trying to read it as 人, but I got it when I put together that 四十 is 40 and we were at the 48th street station. What I don't know is why that's there!

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This is at the same station, so something about the panamerican railroad and Japanese workers? Next time I'm at that station I'll have to have a better look around.

[Fetian]

"New" computer means my murdle streak reset so please look at my results from yesterday

THE MYSTERY OF THE BODY BEHIND THE PIPES OF AN ORGAN
Murdle for 1/4/2024

:

♝♝

[erikavonkaiser]

"New" computer means my murdle streak reset so please look at my results from yesterday

THE MYSTERY OF THE BODY BEHIND THE PIPES OF AN ORGAN
Murdle for 1/4/2024

:

♝♝

wha,

[Fetian]

Every emoji is a puzzle solved

[Fetian]

Kind of annoyed! Netflix told me that there were two episodes of Dungeon Meshi (I'm just going to call it that instead of Delicious in Dungeon) available but it turns out they were lying to me, so we only got to watch the first episode. It was good though! Like the manga, it's a little slow to pick up, but it's funny and the food looks delicious and I can't wait for Plot Things to happen. ash also enjoyed it, I think! Laios and Senshi's voices are alright*, Chilchuck's is very wrong for me, and Marcille's is perfect and amazing. They're pronouncing Falin's name a little weird for me, but it's in line with the Japanese name, I think.

It's fun jumping back so far in the plot after reading 56 chapters of the manga and seeing so much that I had completely forgotten about, but that come back later or evolve in interesting ways. I need to get back to reading it, now

 

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*I just learned that Senshi is voiced by ProZD in English, which is extremely cool! When I say his voice is 'alright' I mean for the character and not as a voice actor

[Fetian]

Very rough start to the day (cats) and didn't get enough sleep. But at 1-ish, ash drove me to dad's house where I shot the shit with him and we went through some of the stuff he has laying around the house. I have nebulous plans of taking pictures of the Stuff and recording him talking about it to just kind of document that aspect of the family history, so I started doing that and also brought home some pictures my aunt took and a little japanese inkwell. And there's a crafting chest that I want to bring back to this house when that's a possibility, if it'll fit in the place I want to put it. Also we found what might be a placecard for like a dinner or something, for "German" and in Japanese, and I was able to read out the katakana for 'German' which seemed to impress dad, so that felt cool.

At about 2, ash texted that he wanted to be heading home soon so I said my goodbyes and headed out, and when we got home I pilled Oz and emptied the dishwasher and then I played about three hours of Lethal Company with Erika and Dave! You're a team of scavengers going to alien planets and grabbing whatever you can while trying not to get eaten by monsters, and after three days you need to have made enough money to make quota or you're yeeted into space. Most importantly, the in-game voice chat is proximity based, and on dying you are separated from the living chat, so you can hear the live players talk, and can talk with other dead players, but can't talk to the live players. It makes for some extremely funny situations, and after a few missions we sort of got a pretty good handle on it! It would be very fun to play it again

Tomorrow, ash and I are going to play Cooking Simulator together except I've set the language to italian so we're going to have to try to puzzle out what the instructions and recipes say. It should be silly and fun! But tonight I'm going to play some ESO and then go to bed

Oh, my course finally appeared on Canvas last night, but the main page for it looks like this

  Hidden text. You are not a member of the groups to which this text is available

And all the announcements from the previous semester are visible. Also my grades

  Hidden text. You are not a member of the groups to which this text is available

But the syllabus appears to be correct, and also is full of a lot of "NO Late Work or MAKE-UPS", which, ugh.

Just realised the calendar is also for the previous semester. Oh, also also there's a link to a google drive containing the textbook and workbook in the modules, which, uh. Weird

Anyway! This stage of things always makes me nervous because I see the things that I'm supposed to be able to do at the end of the learning process and I can't conceptualise getting there, so I feel like I'm bound to fail because I don't already know all the things, which, like, that's why I'm trying to learn them, please keep up, brain.

Okay, ESO! And hanging out with the cats and eating snacks and then sleeping forever.

[Fetian]

This morning the cat peed on my bed again! So today was Yet More Laundry. It's almost positively definitely just her being stressed, which I'm doing my best to help with, but I am a little worried about her. I am also worried about her diet, since we're still unable to get more than muscle and bone into her meals until Tuesday at the earliest. I am supplementing with kibble for now, but she of course will barely eat it, because her not eating her kibble is the entire reason I started switching to raw in the first place.

Today ash and I played Cooking Simulator together, in Italian! The goal was to have to try to puzzle out the recipes and instructions -- neither of us speak Italian (whereas ash speaks French and Spanish) and it's a romance language that has a lot of words that have become common cooking terms, so it's not like Russian where we're going to be completely lost. The tutorial section has a lot of 'do specifically this in this specific way' steps that slowed us down, and ash wasn't feeling well so we only went a few days into the actual game part. But it was fun and we want to do it again! I am looking forward to getting into some slightly more complicated dishes

Since ash wasn't feeling well, he went to bed early-ish, so I'm in my room hanging out for the rest of the evening. I have some Arcadia bits I need to record and I need to put together the chore list for the week, but otherwise I'm just going to chill

[Fetian]

Was getting Very Nervous about waiting so long to get heart and organs into Oz's diet, so at 6 this morning I found a place I could instacart hearts from and ordered both chicken and beef heart, chicken livers, and a 6-pack of quail, then spent several hours fretting that the hearts would be out of stock like they've been everywhere else. They didn't, but the quail was, so none of that yet

But Oz has heart and liver now and I can start incorporating those into her food, and also, importantly, hearts make extremely good snacks. Pre-preparing all of her meals means that when she starts yelling that she's hungry between mealtimes there hasn't been a whole lot I've been able to do, but now I'll be able to just toss her a heart or two to tide her over. Since getting her to gain weight is a primary goal here, it's good to have that option.

I also refreshed myself on which organs do what for her, nutritionally, and we'll want to get kidney and spleen in there soon, and some fish or brains

Anyway, that's been my morning and I haven't actually slept more than like an hour so I'm going to go back to bed now that Oz has had a little treat. When I'm up I'll need to break all that down and throw bits into her meals and freeze whatever isn't going to get eaten soon. I probably should go ahead and break down another hen while I'm at it, it'll need to get done by Wednesday anyway

[Fetian]

Last night I finished Dungeon Meshi (the manga)! I hadn't realised it was a completed story, I thought it was still ongoing until I started suspecting it was coming to an end someodd chapters before it did.

It's really good! Very, very well told -- it's very good at, every time the characters achieve their current goal it very naturally sets off a complication that leads them to their next goal, and these all build on each other in a way that leads to the ultimate climax and denouement. The first time it happened I was worried it was just a cheap attempt to keep the story going, but as things went on I noticed that things from earlier in the story were important for things later in the story

But yeah! Very satisfying, very cute, a little horrifying, big fan. Hope the anime holds up as well

[Fetian]

Again I was able to tell the feliway had run out, this time because Oz was suddenly a lot more skittish and nervous. Also again I'd already ordered the replacement, so that's in, today.

She's doing okay. Eating the raw food, though it clearly tires her out a bit to do so, and she so far refuses to touch the liver, but she's definitely eating enough, even if she has to do it over a couple meals with a break in between them, or with me tearing her food into even smaller pieces for her. She's still too skinny, but she's growing in a winter coat which seems like a good sign (her body believes it has the calories to spare to do so). She does seem to be sleeping more, but I think that, paradoxically, is also a good sign -- her body able to go into more of a repair mode rather than a survival mode. I am keeping an extremely close eye on her and fretting over every tiny thing, but I think things are okay right now. Okay-ish.

Cael is definitely jealous of the special food and attention that Oz is getting, even though I make sure to give him treats and attention while she's eating. It's not what she's getting and what she's getting is obviously better. I do Not have the energy or money to feed two cats raw, especially since he eats about twice as much as Oz does and I'm generally uncomfortable feeding kittens raw anyway (getting the right nutrients for development is So important and there's less leeway than for adults).

I think that will get easier as Oz gets better at eating her food all at once and takes less time to do it

All of this [waves hands], cat stuff, is most of what's occupying my mind and time lately. I have other things that I need to be doing, but I just don't have it in me to do them as yet. Hopefully things get easier soon, touch wood.