ELSEWHERE

Cael's first July 4th, he's not super thrilled about it. Oz has never really minded fireworks and she's doing fine. I've trapped Cael in my room because I'd rather him feel insecure in here where I can watch him and he has company than hiding under the couch in an empty house -- I'll let him back out once the celebrations start winding down. They've both been getting treats and I've put reggae on the TV because if it works for dogs maybe it'll work for cats? Dunno if it's helping but if nothing else maybe it masks the sounds a little. I also have my white noise machine going for the same reason

After circling the room for a while he's put himself in the cat-tree-house and doesn't look super duper stressed

Hopefully everyone else's animals (and themselves) are getting through the night fine

Do need to go out periodically and make sure nothing's on fire

 
Put Cael's food bowl on the tree so he could eat his dinner if he wanted without having to leave his hidey-hole, so he came halfway out and ate with his butt still in safety. He's come fully out now and is lounging on the top of the tree, seems to be doing okay. Going to give everything until midnight before I consider opening up -- the Big Bangs seem to be done for the night but there's still smaller bangs happening in the neighbourhood

One of these days I'll remember to check out that open source camera software for phones so my zoomed in pictures can maybe stop looking like complete ass

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There was supposed to be an arcadia recording today but it got called on account of heat (and on account of ash wanted to actually be off on his day off). So when I got up I played Shashingo (Japanese vocabulary game) for fifteen minutes and then went out to hang out with ash before dinner. He showed me some of his No Man's Sky project and then ordered pizza, and we watched a taskmaster both while we waited and while we ate. Then we played more Resident Evil, did a lot of running around accomplishing not much, and also did a fair amount of running around accomplishing things, before I fought the giant snake, killed it, and died anyway to its poison, losing a bunch of progress because I hadn't saved first (ash wanted to go to bed after the fight and I didn't want to lose an ink ribbon by saving, fighting, and then saving again. More fool us, I'll have to fight it again tomorrow). We have been taking notes on what's in which rooms, so shouldn't be too painful.

We've gone to our respective bedrooms, now (or, ash intends to, after he's done getting ready for bed first). I need to empty the dishwasher, write up the chore list, and put leftovers away before I go to bed. My current schedule is staying up until like 6 when it's cooled off and then sleeping through the bulk of the day, I'll switch back after the heatwave ends, hopefully in another week. Hopefully this isn't just, summer for this year.

I've been playing Breath of the Wild again so in a minute here I'm going to jump back into that.

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An extremely miserable morning. Up later than I should have been, though I did set myself up to get enough sleep before I had to be up for Arcadia, just - except that an hour or so ago I woke up with abdominal pains and toilet-related distress. It's also still miserably hot and humid, it didn't cool down last night so it's liable to get even hotter than it did yesterday. So just, real uncomfortable all around

Anyway, let ash know I don't know what state I'll be in by 1 so he called off the recording. Erika, Dave and I have plans to PlateUp further into the evening and I believe I'll be up for that at least

I do should take a covid test if we still have any. My throat and breathing have been bothering me the past few days and I've been attributing it to having the AC running so much, but with these digestive symptoms maybe it's not

Last night's Resident Evil finally got us past Yawn, after another three tries - I beat him every time, but he also bit me every time and I failed to get the serum (sorry, the SERUM) before Chris died every time - a problem I guess is a skill issue, because I could find no one else with it when I searched online for tips, but I also gather most people just grab the mask and nope out of the fight so perhaps it is everyone else who has the skill issue. After that we re-did all the progress we lost when I died the night before, and now I think we've done everything we can before we put the death masks on the faces - a thing I have been avoiding doing until the game forces me because why on earth would I ever do this??? Chris is an idiot

In other media news, I have been reading A Master of Djinn and I think I'm going to give myself permission to give up on it. I'll elaborate on this later when I've slept more and I'm not typing on a phone, but I'm three chapters in and looked up some reviews to see if the problems I'm having with it either get better or if the rest of the book will be worth dealing with them, and (despite the reviews being overwhelmingly positive) it doesn't seem like that'll be the case. So I'll throw it in the 'not for me' pile and move on to something else, though it pains me to do so

That was a book club pick for a podcast I listen to, which means I can finally listen to episodes of that again - you may remember I had this issue with a previous episode of that podcast and taking forever to read a book they were doing. Definitely going to immediately happen again when I find out what the next book is

I am going to attempt more sleep now and hopefully when I wake up I'll feel better

mek wrote: ↑Sun Jul 07, 2024 5:04 pm

In other media news, I have been reading A Master of Djinn and I think I'm going to give myself permission to give up on it. I'll elaborate on this later when I've slept more and I'm not typing on a phone, but I'm three chapters in and looked up some reviews to see if the problems I'm having with it either get better or if the rest of the book will be worth dealing with them, and (despite the reviews being overwhelmingly positive) it doesn't seem like that'll be the case. So I'll throw it in the 'not for me' pile and move on to something else, though it pains me to do so

Alright, so, this book is an alternate-history murder mystery (/political thriller/urban fantasy), and given the genre I feel like the author is intentionally writing the characters as tropey and two-dimensional? But it's not doing it for me, and the prose in general is falling flat. He's got a voice that comes across to me as very elementary writing, very formulaic '[description] [dialogue] [action] [description] [dialogue] [action]', etc. From reviews the characters stay pretty meh unless you're specifically looking for more lesbian rep, but if you want your lesbian to be competent at her job and to focus on things other than fashion and her girlfriend you're out of luck. A big thing showing up in reviews that sold me on not finishing is that the main character is framed as being Very Good at Her Job but the narrative does not follow through on showing that. To top it off apparently the plot is overfull (see above 'it is in four genres', which can definitely be done but does not seem here to be done well), and some of these genres are not really my thing, so. The worldbuilding does get very high praise throughout the reviews, so if you're into letting that carry a book then it may be your thing, and it does seem solid from how far I got, though also not shown on the page super well. I feel like this is another author that does better at shorter works than novels

I want to just push through it, I hate leaving books unread (or, rather, I hate admitting that I'm just giving up on a book and never going back to it, because I do leave books unread for months at a time, often), but it is 1000 pages and I think I'll be kind of miserable if I force it.