ELSEWHERE

Vacation day three! Also my birthday!

I am awake at an ungodly hour because, man, I dunno, I woke up at 3:30 AM and was Wide Awake so I figured I would just get up for the day. I'm trying not to get a weird sleep schedule on my vacation but Day One I had extremely unsettling dreams, Day Two was a huge storm that kept me up (it was nice to storm-watch from the safety of indoors but it was too intense of a storm for me to doze well during), and I guess today we're just gonna be up before sunrise for, reasons. I'll try to mitigate it if I can; probably I should avoid taking a nap today and try to sleep for the evening earlier than usual, but we'll see how that goes.

Anyway! Today I am finishing up household tasks and my digital clean-up/back-up. I'd like to go to the Asian grocery store later, too, and a nice long birthday run sounds nice.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

I've had a really nice birthday so far!

I went on a nice long run which included a lengthy beach walk at the end, I did the thing where you walk along the shore and let the water wash over your feets. The lake feels nice and cool, so it was really refreshing! Afterward I made myself a smoothie and tried to take a nap, but it ain't happenin', so I'm just gonna have to accept that I'll crash around like 8 PM, which is fine. I'm feeling weirdly restless, possibly because I'm tired but my body just won't sleep, so I'm gonna try to space out on some video games and then redirect my energy to creative stuff. Tonight I think me, Shane, and Masque are gonna start Gears of War 3, which I'm excited about.

It's a nice birthday, though! I don't think past me envisioned a future where we'd be 33 years old, and I am doing alright for myself, to boot. I feel very lucky!

bouncing off mek talking about Neil Gaiman: Sophie has a lot of Amanda Palmer opinions, as someone who grew up really into goth scene/dark cabaret/etc content and who realized that Amanda Palmer is just, not a nice person, and who hurts other people at the expense of making "weird" art

So anyways in talking about the whole Gaiman allegation situation with her, AFP came up, and Sophie mentioned her writing a poem to the Boston Marathon Bomber. I wasn't aware of this particular controversy of Amanda Palmer's, because she's outside my media bubble enough that I've only picked up a few of her shitstorms (mostly that despite her trying to create a platform of "I love weird indie art!!! artists deserve to be paid!!!" she constantly asked performers and artists to do free work for her, or open for her shows with "exposure" as payment). I went to look up the poem and found it, as well as a follow-up that Amanda Palmer did:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/26177383
I wish I could say she learned something but uh,

yeah, no

Local white woman incapable of expressing regret over actions that harmed others because actually she is harmed the most, always

Birthday was good! I went to bed a little early, like I mentioned, and still had some issues w/ my dreams but did sleep through the night. I had a family member reach out to me in a way I feel not amazing about, and I'm kinda low energy, so today I finished up my miscellaneous projects list and otherwise am gonna take it easy. I think I'll go to the farmer's market later, then it's video games time with mek and Dave! Tomorrow morning I'm going to aforementioned park (I was gonna go this morning but, low energy).

I do wanna do digital cleanup/writing today! For now I'm gonna eat a food (amazing how much more likely I am to cook when I have, time) and space out with some YouTube.

I did, in fact, go to the farmer's market yesterday!

I gave Baby Dog a pre-emptive pain pill (the vet has prescribed her gabapentin that she takes as needed) and we walked to the Uptown Farmer's Market, which I love but often can't go to due to my work schedule. It's a bit less than a mile away, so not very far, but when you have an elderly pit bull who likes to meander, it takes some time. I honestly went more for Baby Dog's benefit because she absolutely loves the farmer's market, since it's very dog-friendly and lots of people want to pet her and give her treats. My dog is infinitely more extroverted than me, and stopped at every single stall to sniff what they had (politely, I did not let her nose actually get up to whatever the things were, I am not a monster) and stare at the person behind the stall until she determined if they were gonna stop and pet her or not.

She is a goober and I love her

After that I came home, cleaned up, and hung out with mek and Dave! We played PlateUp, which I have been enjoying. I feel like it's a game that could be more stressful than fun, but we're all chill enough that it's just a good chaotic time.

Today I'm going to focus on creative tasks and finishing digital clean-up! I am feeling kinda low energy today, which makes sense since I've had kind of a busy week, so I'm about to go ahead and knock out my run and then chill. I need to grab a quick thing at the grocery store at some point, and I also have a class (for work) from 12:30 to 1:30 PM. Otherwise I want to finish organizing my notes in Scrivener, make sure everything is backed up, and remove any lingering stuff off Google Drive since I've fully decided to remove my original creative work from there.

Okay, lemme go ahead and run, and then I'll determine if I wanna groceries-errand now or after my class.

I did buy some fancy olive oil from this vendor, also:

https://www.twistedoliveimports.com/

I wanna get some bread to dip in aforementioned fancy olive oil when I go to the grocery store

erikavonkaiser wrote: ↑Thu Jul 18, 2024 2:49 pm

After that I came home, cleaned up, and hung out with mek and Dave! We played PlateUp, which I have been enjoying. I feel like it's a game that could be more stressful than fun, but we're all chill enough that it's just a good chaotic time.

We've been playing with a couple mods turned on that reduce the stress levels a bit, the default game can get Extremely stressful pretty fast

mek wrote: ↑Thu Jul 18, 2024 3:07 pm

erikavonkaiser wrote: ↑Thu Jul 18, 2024 2:49 pm

After that I came home, cleaned up, and hung out with mek and Dave! We played PlateUp, which I have been enjoying. I feel like it's a game that could be more stressful than fun, but we're all chill enough that it's just a good chaotic time.

We've been playing with a couple mods turned on that reduce the stress levels a bit, the default game can get Extremely stressful pretty fast

Ohhhh that does make sense, well thank you for that then Maybe soon we can try without the mods just to see how quickly we get decimated since we're used to our much more relaxed pace.