The Cracked Mug v 2.0

[erikavonkaiser]

These are my sons I would die for them

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(they're basil and lavender seeds in dirt)

[erikavonkaiser]

Weekend!

Yesterday I did some projects and had D&D in the evening, today I ran errands and hit up the farmer's market. I also went on a nice long run because today is our last day of unseasonably warm weather before it drops back down to the 50s and storms on-and-off, which I'm not mad about since the heat spike has been slightly more uncomfortable than pleasant. (It's too early to put in my window AC unit, so during sunset hours my apartment gets pretty stuffy.)

I'm watching a bit of Babylon 5 with Sophie before she goes to work and then I think I'll cook a food and play some video games. Maybe ping Greggo and see if he wants to backpack me through a bit more Elden Ring!

[erikavonkaiser]

I enjoy having a FF14 community to hang out with but if one more person tries to mansplain basic video game concepts to me I am going to break them in half like a twig

If I have expressed I do not want to do X thing in the video game you like, that is not an invitation to explain the content to me or to explain the benefits of playing it! I comprehend what a high difficulty raid is and did not ask you! I am allowed to casually decide I am not interested in doing something because it turns out I'm a grown goddamned adult with a keen sense of what I do and don't enjoy in a video game! I will bite you!

This same person just tried to mansplain how sourdough bread works and while I have 100% decided to just ignore him when he does the thing because it's not worth the conflict, there is a part of me that wants to go "Wow you, uh, haven't been told to shut up very much in your life, have you?"

[erikavonkaiser]

tl;dr if you have information about a thing that has come up and no one has asked for that information the solution quite simply is to go "I have knowledge of X if you are interested" or some variant of that and I promise you will get less grumpy faces from people who did not fucking ask for your sourdough bread lecture

(advanced level solution: instead of making statements, ask questions! if you have knowledge of X, ask about how the person is doing X, or what their goals are, or how their project is going, and then you've started a conversation that has back-and-forth and gently invites your knowledge instead of SOURDOUGH BREAD LECTURE FAEBREN I WILL BITE YOU)

[erikavonkaiser]

Relevantly I have begun a sourdough bread starter project!

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Their name is Baby Bread and they are doing well so far (since I took this picture I have done one feeding and it's starting to double in size and definitely bubbling/yeasty/starting to smell sour in a good way so holla atcha boy)

[erikavonkaiser]

Sank back into Elden Ring a bit this weekend!

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I used the checklist guide @mek was kind enough to link a few pages back and went around cleaning up some dungeons and triggering some quest stuff that I had missed over. This meant I was overleveled enough to do things like defeat the lake dragon and clear some catacombs without needing help, which was cool! I also did confirm that,

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I also enchanted my weapon with blood magic or whatever and it's LEGIT! I use a falchion in one hand and a whip in the other and then sometimes swap to a crossbow for ranged and whoops I am realizing I'm just, yep, I'm a vampire hunter, aren't I? AH WELL it's cool and I like it. I am still bad at the game and always will be, but it has enough tools in place to keep that from being completely prohibitive, which I appreciate.

[erikavonkaiser]

I forgot to share this but Sophie drew Gild (my Elden Ring player character, as a reminder) a while back!

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I really need to try and draw them, too. I've been slowing down on the drawings because I'm finding that drawing and writing use similar parts of my creative brain and it's hard to do them both in a balanced way. It is, however, pleasant to draw while I do things like watching YouTube or waiting for my turn in D&D since it doesn't take the talking/listening parts of my brain quite like writing does (I could never write and play in D&D at the same time, my head would asplode).

Anyways! I need to exercise and get some stuff done since it is, alas, a workday.

[erikavonkaiser]

Vampire Hunter D Volume 2: Raiser of Gales by Hideyuki Kikuchi
Two stars but they're actually faces

This volume suffers most of the ones I've read so far from the sins of this series; as much as I adore the IP, the Vampire Hunter D books are ultimately gritty science fantasy westerns written by a man in the 1980s and boy do they often treat women about how you'd expect. D himself is, naturally, a gentleman, but that is in stark contrast to basically 95% of all other men in this universe. This particular book is heavy on attempted (and at one point successful, albeit mostly off-screen) sexual assault and while the parties involved get their comeuppance it's, well, it's icky.

(There's a reason they skipped over this one when making the movies! The first movie is based off the first book, which you'd expect, but when they made Bloodlust they noped right out of Raiser of Gales and went straight for Demon Deathchase, the third volume. This is because Mayerling would NEVER, thank you very much)

Anyway the lore stuff is interesting and good, we find a bit more about D's backstory, but it's definitely at the expense of making the token damsel-in-distress's life absolutely dogshit miserable.

#books2023

[erikavonkaiser]

cw: am going to talk freely about work yesterday, so mention of dead body stuff

Yesterday I went to a scene of a decomp with reported animal predation; the officers said a "big pit bull" was on scene and had eaten some of the remains. When I got to the scene animal control was removing the "big pit bull" which was a medium-sized mutt that did not remotely look like a pit bull type dog. I won't get on my soap box but tl;dr "pit bull" is a descriptor, not a breed, and this guy didn't even fit the descriptor. Like if you Google "tan dog" you'd probably see this dog a bunch, just a sort of generalized mutt that's a mix of a few breeds but didn't have any typical pibble traits like the muscular body, blocky head, etc.

Anyways, the dog seemed friendly but scared and unfortunately is likely not going to have a happy ending because people get really taboo and uncomfortable about animals eating remains and he definitely chewed the entire arm off that guy. When I was examining the scene (which included collecting fragments of chewed-up arm bones in an evidence bag, my job is weird), the deceased had a bunch of dog stuff all around his home. Treats, toys, dog beds, etc. This man clearly loved his dog and I'm gonna go ahead and guess wouldn't have particularly minded being a postmortem snack if it kept his dog fed. You're just meat, at that point.

I'll keep my fingers crossed the dog can get adopted again but it's unlikely since he's a "big pit bull" that is a known people-eater. Gonna go ahead and refuse to check the county website to see if he ever comes back up for adoption, I don't wanna know.

[erikavonkaiser]

I am tired! Not for any dramatic reason, it's just my Thursday equivalent in a work week and I'm starting my period either today or tomorrow so I would prefer to be cozy on the couch playing Elden Ring rather than doing things like laundry, exercise, and performing capitalism. I have to do all of those things today (as soon as I post this I need to go throw my laundry in the dryer, actually) and while I'll certainly survive,,,,,

tireds

Anyway, lemme throw aforementioned laundry in dryer and then I'd like to try and draw or do something creative because otherwise I think I'm going to sit in front of my computer with static brain until I have to get up and exercise.