Promiseland

[erikavonkaiser]

(In college I had the same/similar issue of like ...... if I don't volunteer or answer questions then no one else does and it becomes awkward or starts to feel hostile because the teacher is annoyed, fairly, everyone is giving them blank stares, and also I want class to move forward so I can move on, but then if I answer all the time I feel like I'm doing some weird teacher's pet showoff routine kdkdjfkslsnfjf)

[Fetian]

We went for a walk to the park! Where we hung out on the playground equipment very briefly and then on the swings for a bit longer, and then a kid came over to the playground and we didn't want to make his parent slash guardian uncomfortable so we wandered off and ultimately decided to start heading home.
"Now," I said, "when I came here before I tried to get home by going down that street, instead of the one we came in by, and it was a pain in the ass but I don't remember why it was a pain in the ass"
And we decided to go that way and find out why it was a pain in the ass
(it's a pain in the ass because suburbs are twisty and confusing and this neighbourhood in particular fucks with my sense of direction, but I am getting better at navigating it)

Anyway we got lost. And at one point we stopped to look at someone's yard because it looked like there was a large stuffed bear in it and while we were trying to figure out if it was a statue that looked like a teddy bear or an actual mold-ridden, damp teddy bear (it's the former) a neighbour-woman came out and seemed to want to know why we were on her driveway examining her neighbour's yard, so we enthused that we were admiring it and really liked the decor (it is a no-water lawn (decorative rocks &c) with neat statues like the bear and some alligators and a disembodied head and some turtle stepping-stones) and the woman started enthusing back about how several of the items were made, and we ended up looking at her yard where she has some concrete-dipped towels and doll clothes to make planters out of, and she goes "Actually would you like to come into my backyard and see [the rest of my planters/where and how I make them]" and we were like "Sure!" so we went into this nice woman's yard to look at all the weird stuff she made, that were largely ugly as sin but she was very enthusiastic about them and happy to share them with us. She also said that if we ever wanted to make one ourselves we were welcome to come over, and I did get her name and write her address down, and maybe I will go take her up on that and maybe I won't

After that we looked up some directions back to the house and finished walking home. My shoes scraped a bit off my feet, so I put some bandaids on those but I'm honestly fine. And we spent the evening bothering ash, and then watching Taskmaster with ash, and then playing PlateUp! with ash, and now we're hanging out in my room. We will probably watch a Dungeon Meshi and then play some more PlateUp! and then go to bed.

[Fetian]

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[Fetian]

Sor just coined "fucks to be you"

[Fetian]

Today we woke up Too Goddamn Early (Sor got six and a half sleep hours by my count, I got about six), ate breakfast and watched a Total Forgiveness and a Dungeon Meshi, played a little Moving Out (I think it's called; it's a game by the people who did Overcooked where you have to move furniture into a truck, it is fun but some mechanics make it just a little too meh to really want to play it much) and a little PlateUp and then we headed out on another adventure! The plan-ish was to take the train up to Historic Folsom but there's construction on the line in that direction so we had to get off at Ironpoint and were meant to take a shuttle the rest of the way, or there was a local bus that also went there. But I took a look at the map to see if there was anything interesting nearby and saw there was an arcade, so we decided to go check that out and then come back and take a bus if it didn't look interesting. We ended up spending a fair amount of time in said arcade -- it's small and doesn't have a lot of variety and it's pretty expensive for what it offers, but it was fun and it has some more Japanese-style claw games which is interesting to me. The throw-a-ball-hit-a-clown game seemed to give the best ratio of tickets-to-credits, though we didn't exactly, like, check, so we played a good number of games of that and still ended up with like, 150 tickets? And in the process of getting said tickets I scratched my hand on a bolt sticking out of that game -- there was some hand sanitiser laying around and I washed my hands when we found a restroom later, so hopefully I don't get a terrible disease from it. While we were working out what we wanted to spend our tickets on, the guy working there came over and asked to see one of our cards and then put another 30 credits on it and -- without saying so -- 100 extra tickets. Very nice and a little odd! Sor thinks he was really bored. He was just a little pushy throughout our stay, coming up a lot to explain how things worked, unprompted, and such. Given the location I wouldn't be surprised if they're hurting for money and he's being pressured to turn people into repeat customers.

Anyway, we got a small handful of toys you could get out of a quarter machine and then we left to see if we could find something to eat. And that's about when we discovered we were in some kind of outdoor mall! Complete with Auntie Anne's and Hot Topic and such. And a bunch of claw machines and some cotton candy machines dotted here and there. We got some pretzels and wandered around a little bit before heading home. The area was not abandoned but did generally feel like it was doing about as well as every other mall is doing (not good). It was a little liminal-feeling, especially earlier in our wanderings when we were the only people around with all this space that's meant to cater to crowds.

So we headed back to the train station and went home, which was pretty uneventful. We've since been hanging out, watching Dungeon Meshi, youtube, Taskmaster, whatnot. Playing PlateUp! with ash. Now Sor is writing their words out and I'm going to get my daily games done and then we'll, continue doing whatever. Tomorrow is class again and we'll probably stay in but Thursday we have tickets for the underground tour and then we can hang out in old sac for a while, probably go to the costume store again.

[Fetian]

Class done! Largely uneventful except that just before break the professor's zoom stopped working right and she did most of the rest of class through zoom on her iphone, which was a little awkward. But yeah, just the rest of the numbers exercise from monday and then some practice conjugating verbs and using も/でも/にも, etc. That's the particle that means 'also' and you replace は and が (topic and subject particles) with it but combine it with で (at), に (toward), and I think some others. That's what's off the top of my head though.

No homework has been added to my to-do list so I'm still good to ignore it until Saturday, but I should check it again tomorrow to make sure she doesn't just assign some more later today

Meanwhile the cats got into some bullshit at 5 this morning straight through 6, just, running all over the place, demanding I get out of bed to take care of things, it was annoying. So I'm a bit less sleep than I'd prefer but it's alright

Before class, Sor and I watched another Total Forgiveness and a couple more Dungeon Meshi then played video games until I needed to get ready for class (more PlateUp!). Now we're probably going to do more of the same. We're almost done with Total Forgiveness (two episodes and the epilogue) and if we watch two more episodes of Dungeon Meshi today and four tomorrow we'll be good to watch the new one that evening.

I am going to eat a lunch and hang out for the rest of the afternoon before ash gets home, and you can predict what'll happen then (bother him, eat dinner, watch a thing, play video games, if his hand and head are okay to do so).

[Fetian]

It's been a couple days! Sor leaves tomorrow morning and wants to get to the airport at about 8:30, which means waking up at like 7:30, which is a rough proposition for me under any circumstances so I'm going to do my best to just stay up until then. They, however, are sleeping now so I'm just going to hang out online until they're awake again, whether that happens at 7:30 and we don't really get to hang out more, or it doesn't and we do. The rough plan is to get them to the airport (with ash's help) and then come back and nap for a few hours, then wake up and record an arcadia, and go from there.

It has been a nice week! Always too short, though I will be happy to have my living space back to just me and the cats. They've been very good with Sor's company, except in that I've spent a lot of time out of my room and Oz would rather I didn't. Wednesday we stayed in all day, except for a brief chat on the patio after we finished the main content of Total Forgiveness, but Thursday we went to Old Sac to do the underground tour, which was very fun and pretty different from when ash and I went on it a while back, just for having a different guide this time. Largely the same bits and information but presented differently. After the tour we hung out a bit with the guide and just chatted about stuff, ranging from her costuming to her philosophy in how she presents history on the tour to her real-life inspiration for the character she portrays herself as to politics. She seems cool and I'm glad to have met her for a bit.

Our tickets for the tour were also an all-day pass for the history museum, so we wandered that for a while afterwards. I was not super impressed with the museum's contents, I feel the exhibits aren't arranged very well and that they largely lack context, but I also wasn't really in the mood to fully engross myself in the museum-going experience, so. It was nice anyway and there was some cool stuff, including an exhibit on tattoos that I'd been meaning to go see at some point but that largely had the problems I've already highlighted (including just not being in the mood to stand around reading entire booklets on a subject).

After that we were pretty hungry but didn't want to eat A Meal in a touristy (expensive) area, so we found a place that would sell us a snack and got a couple packets of donut knots. They were not great but they gave us the energy to go look at the costume shop for the rest of the day. Unfortunately by the time we were almost done with that, I was getting a migraine (too much sun, not enough caffeine), and by then it had gotten a bit late, so we decided to forego finding food and just go home. When we got there, we caught ash and Erik just about to leave to go get themselves food, so ash changed plans and made everyone dinner because he is nice like that, and then he, Sor, and I hung out and watched Taskmaster and Game Changer, and Very Important People, and Breaking News (we had a couple because I tend to save those for when ash seems to be particularly in need of a good laugh, and last night he had a nasty migraine). After ash went to bed, Sor and I finished off Dungeon Meshi so we'd be ready to watch the new one with him earlier tonight.

Today (Friday) we watched the Total Forgiveness epilogue/reunion (and Grant's stand-up special from the show) and then headed out to finally get that lunch I kept saying we might go out to get. Before we left I checked for directions on google maps and it told me to take the gold line to 65th and transfer to the 38 bus. When we left I pulled up directions on my phone so I'd know what stop to take the bus to, and it said to get on the gold and then the 38, so I got us off at 65th and got on the 38. And then as the bus was running through its route I noticed that, uh, none of these stops are on the list of stops that our bus was supposed to be hitting. So I looked closer at the directions and google at that point said to take the gold line to 29th and transfer to the 38. I had to quickly convince google to give me directions for the bus I was at-that-point currently on, which I was able to do, but what the heck google. I guess the 38 connects to the gold line at two ends, but why give me two different directions for the same trip with no indication in the list of possible directions that the other exists

Anyway, we went to a Japanese place that google said wasn't too expensive, and it was really nice and had really good food! I am a fan. We got two kinds of gyoza, I got a bento box, and Sor got sushi. I did try a sushi that came with my bento and determined that I still do not like sushi, but the gyoza were so god damn good, the miso soup was alright, all the tempura was delicious. The shioyaki was delicious but still had bones in it which I did not want to deal with, so I didn't end up eating much of it. We also took our food out back behind the restaurant (and over a bit to a different building) to eat outside, you know, covid and whatnot. We ate for a while and chatted about food prices and spontaneous, adult-onset allergies, both of which are awful. Then we took the bus to the train to home (and got off at the right stops this time).

ash had a Breathing Space premier tonight so sor and I hung out in my room until he was ready to make dinner, then hung out with him while he made dinner, and then watched the new Dungeon Meshi! It was a good one, kind of a payoff for some of the setup we've been getting, and we finally got a reveal (sort of) of what happened to Falin after the cliffhanger a couple-few episodes ago. Can't wait for next week. Sor and I might keep watching it together online through the power of the internet, which would mean that I'll be watching it three times a week -- with ash, with Sor, and by myself with subs instead of dubs after rereading the chunk of manga the anime is up to.

Through all of this we've been playing a lot of PlateUp!, we've gone through three restaurants not including the one we just started with ash, and not including the ones we started, played for a while, and then moved on to something else. We're currently on a hot dog restaurant with fully automated hot dogs, and if I get another couple parts it'll also have fully automated baked potatoes. The dishes are semi-automated, and we recently got our hands on a second teleporter and we have plans for other automation to work on. While we were talking on the way back from the train station we realised that teleporters are probably the solution to the impassibility of conveyors so there's a lot of experimentation to do, and I'll also probably start work on my solo conveyor restaurants again after they're gone home.

I think that's about it! I need to pill Oz and give Cael the rest of his food -- it's about 2 AM -- and then I'm not sure what I'll do. Possibly doze for a while

[Fetian]

Also my grape vine arrived! Gonna try to get it in the ground tomorrow, very excited

[Fetian]

Oh it's Cael's birthday!!

[Fetian]

Obviously we don't know his actual birthday (even the people we got him from didn't actually know how old he was) but this is around when it would be for how old the vet said he was when she saw him, and a date that doesn't make him Another God Damn Taurus