Promiseland

[Fetian]

Hold the 'o' in the 'bo' for an extra beat, then "ken" and "ka" as you'd expect them to be, and you've pronounced it. Your instinct is probably to put the stress on the 'ken' (boKENka), do that but maintain the stress through the 'ka' (boKENKA) and you get extra "pitch accent" credit

The kanji for it would be 冒険家, individually meaning "dare", "risky", and "house" or "professional" -- you'll find the 冒険 (bouken) in a lot of video games, like here, because that's the "adventure" part!

Not to say you should adopt it as a name or anything, but now you know some extra facts about it

[Fetian]

It's a very rare treat because I almost never have the energy to do both in one day, but I do love the feeling of getting into freshly washed sheets after a shower. Everything is so clean!

[Fetian]

People are really, really bad at understanding what seasons are and it's pretty frustrating, you see those 'how many seasons x ACTUALLY has' lists that go around and it's clear they're just, attributing every minor temperature change as a season change

One 80F day does not an autumn make

Only kind of related but also fun is googling "don't like the weather? wait 5 minutes" and seeing how many places think it's uniquely about them

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I have seen literally this exact list spread around as "California's seasons"

[Fetian]

What's been happening! I've been depressed, been zoning out to ESO a lot since I renewed. Did some quests but now I'm grinding archaeology sites, which is a good mix between active engagement and passively just following quest arrows.

I'm enrolled in Japan 411 for the fall semester. Have almost completely checked out on linguistics class but if I ace the final, which I believe I can retake same as every other quiz, I still get an A in the class, so.

Tomorrow is my birthday, ash and I are going to go see Sinners at the drive-in. I'm considering going to a drag brunch on Sunday -- I have covid-related concerns but like. It's not like we're ever going to stop having covid-related concerns, right. I'm also considering attending a book club in about a week and am reading the book for that. Finished Woods All Black and enjoyed it.

Emptied out one of the boxes getting stored in the garage -- ash and I worked out a way around the mental block that was stopping me, and then health prevented me from getting to it. That does mean I'm doing more laundry --

Oh on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday I washed all the bedding so it could get put away for summer. We've been fighting a very minor but persistent flea problem and hopefully that'll help -- I even threw the giant alligator in the dryer on the sanitise setting. But it was A Lot of laundry and I actually haven't put the winter blankets away yet. I generally need to clean my room, it's gotten pretty bad.

But I'm doing more laundry tonight because one of the boxes I went through (one got emptied out, the other got repacked with things to take care of later) had clothes in it. Some nice clothes in there that I hope will make it through the washer fine, but if they get ruined then that's just the cost of leaving them in the garage for several years.

I'm on a queer-media-made-by-queers-for-queers kick lately, which largely is getting filled by drag, Dragula in particular but also just some youtubers that do their thing while dressed up. ash and I are watching the most recent, 6th season of Dragula together and I'm enjoying it a lot more and consistently than other seasons! Much less capital-D-drama and more focus on the art of it all. I've also been listening to the Boulet Brothers' podcast, which was a risky move and did result in me spoiling who wins season 6 for myself, but there's a lot of insight into the behind-the-scenes stuff that I'm enjoying. I'm enjoying the show a lot more, actually, since I've been able to reconceptualize the production team as the main characters I'm rooting for, and every god-awful person of a contestant as the antagonists. I don't really like Reality TV, as it happens.

Sleep has been shit, still struggling with insomnia which is both exacerbating and exacerbated by the depression.

We hit at least 94 outside today, and I still need to cobble together and put up the replacement sun-shade, but I did finally get a couple of box fans to circulate the air in my room at night with. Every year I think 'I should get some box fans' but then it's summer and they're too expensive, and then it's the off-season and I forget. Not anymore! I've got one fan blowing air from the outside door inside and one blowing air out my room into the hall, which should hopefully help with the thing where my room heats up during the day and then no matter how cool it gets at night it just Will Not cool off in here.

I dunno what else I've got going on, probably nothing important.

[Fetian]

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I'm this many

[Fetian]

Fun weekend! Woke up yesterday to feed the cats, read for a while, then took a nap -- which did try to trigger a migraine, because of the heat, but I ended up alright by the time we went to the movies. When I woke up I shaved the sides of my head and took a shower, and ash got us food from the Japanese/Chinese-american-food place down the street, which was alright. Then we went to go see Sinners at the drive-in -- it's very good, very interesting, takes most of the movie to set up the plot and then has all the action and horror in the last third. Very nicely period in the dialogues and costumes, but the lighting and being projected onto a screen washed it out in a way that made it hard to tell who was who sometimes. The soundtrack is fantastic, though, a lot of great music in it.

I did get mislead by a plot summary -- the movie is entirely vampires but I was under the impression there were vampires and something else getting summoned. Was a little disappointed but that's on me.

When we got home ash opened the back door for Ivy for a bit, and then a combination of it being 11 at night and being pre- or mid-migraine meant it got left open all night with no one noticing, and then I couldn't find Oz for like half an hour of looking everywhere for her, so that was not a fun way to end the night. But I did find her (inside) eventually, and went to bed. Unfortunately my night did not get better, Cael kept harassing Oz all night and even outside of that I kept waking up every half hour or so and so didn't get very much sleep.

Today I woke up, fed myself, got dressed, and headed out to the lavender district for drag brunch! I got there at about 1:20 and then stood in line until they started letting people in, close to 2. It was packed, and since I was a single person I got seated at the bar. I was expecting there to be some kind of stage area for the performers but they just performed between the tables, doing a circuit of the restaurant. It was fun! Four performers lip-syncing and dancing to music, each performed twice except the hostess who performed three times, I recognised like three of the songs (That Don't Impress Me Much; Man! I Feel Like a Woman; I Will Always Love You) and nothing else. The staff all also seemed to be gay, including the tiniest lesbian DJ, and of course there was a high concentration of gay patrons as well.

It was really rejuvenating to be surrounded by other queer people and allies and to be immersed in a queer experience. To see how popular the drag brunch is -- like I said, it was packed, and they have drag brunch twice every sunday, so it must be lucrative enough to keep it going.

I hope I didn't catch anything. I did mask up until I had food and then I left it off for the rest of the afternoon. I got a strawberry-and-cream waffle and a paloma, they were decent.

During the second act, like a minute into it, the show had to stop because someone passed out, and then we had to wait for paramedics to arrive. I couldn't see what happened, but at the end of it all the person was walked down the stairs by said paramedics, so they were conscious and able to walk, at least. Hopefully they're okay by now.

Yeah! After the show I walked around the city for a little bit, with an aim of getting eyes on the bookstore I want to attend the book club at next week. They were closed when I got there, I'm not sure if they're usually closed at 4 on Sundays or if it was just an indie bookstore being randomly closed, but I took note of some of the flyers in their windows and started heading home. By then I really needed to pee, so I asked ash if I could get a ride home from the station, and that did work out.

At home I watched a youtube while ash did some work on a fan project, and then we hung out while dinner started happening. We had planned on watching To Wong Foo, as I think I mentioned, but it was getting late and we also wanted to watch the last two episodes of Dragula so we did that instead and will Wong Foo another time.

Also as mentioned I'd spoiled myself on the winner for the season, so there wasn't any suspense for me there, but the episodes were still good. We have Resurrection and Titans now to watch, and then we'll be out of Dragulas.

I am super tired! So I'm going to go zone out until sleep happens and then hopefully I'll be able to sleep through the dingdang night for once. Erika got me the Oblivion remaster for my birthday, so I might check that out for a while!

[Fetian]

The hardest question in any Elder Scrolls playthrough -- do I want night vision or do I want water breathing

[Fetian]

Second question: do you want deflated or inflated lips

[Fetian]

So at about 11:30 there was a distant 'boom' and then what seems to have been a power surge that fucked up a lot of our electronics, including the washer and the oven (the oven is the homeowner's responsibility, the washer is not). A bunch of outlets seem to be getting very weak power, now, so something is very definitely fucked up and will require a professional electrician to assess.

A wonderful way to end the night

[Fetian]

Completely lost power for like an hour, then the power flickered in and out for like ten minutes, and now (touch wood) we seem to have power again and everything that had stopped working during the semi-outage is working again

Extremely strange but a relief, if it holds