ELSEWHERE

Fetian wrote: ↑Thu Sep 11, 2025 5:12 am

I did not know Nixon was Californian

From Orange County no less

Yep! One of the projects I did in elementary school was to go to his presidential library and write a report about him.

Bit of a stressful day today¹ so after ash went to bed I hit Dave up for some more Satisfactory. Pretty productive! Finished coloring the south leg, put some blocks and paths down on the Albion/Scenic Route line, put conveyors on the north leg, put a train station at the top of the highest natural point on the map, and ran a rail from there to the west leg. Neither of those are connected to the rest of the rail map yet, that'll be a next week project. We are surprisingly close to running out of power again, which Dave will (probably) work on next week

Do I feel better? Eh, but it was a good time

I'm going to go eat more dinner and then go to bed

¹The renter's insurance that's had me as an occupant the entire time we've lived here is suddenly no longer enough so we've had to buy an entire second renter's insurance policy to cover me, and getting that sorted was annoying, and we also have our annual inspection scheduled for a couple weeks from now and that means making sure the house is in shape and also finding a way to get Cael out of the house during the time of the inspection which is complicated because ash and Erik both work and someone needs to be at the house during the inspection so our previous solution of having Erik drive Cael down the street and hang out with him in a carrier until the inspection is over is possibly not an option. Among other things that need to be happening

50 hours into my save and I just did the first Oblivion Gate

Today we moved furniture around! ash bought a new sofa that's supposed to arrive in a few weeks, and rather than rearrange two entire rooms all at once when it gets here, we're doing some rearranging in advance, and today that was getting rid of one of the couches it's replacing and moving two bookcases from the family room to the living room (soon to be a nook, library, or parlor, whatever you want to call it). ash also took the opportunity to organize the books in said bookcases, so all told that took up a couple hours. After that we ordered pizza, and watched a couple Worst Cooks (we're onto season 3, the first of the Bobby Flay seasons, and while I'm not huge on the contestants (yet) the hosts are just great for it; we've also both already seen this season but ash doesn't remember it super clearly and I remember it even less). We finished Unboxing the Cryptic Killer, which we'd started last night -- it's a co-op puzzle game where you play as a couple detectives trying to catch, uh, a Cryptic Killer. One of those ones where one player will have half a puzzle and the other player has the other and they have to work together to solve it. It was pretty well done and very fun, definitely worth the couple bucks I got it on sale for

After that ash still had some awake left in him so we watched an NZ Taskmaster, the season finale of what's been airing on Youtube the past while. Also a lot of fun, I really liked the contestants for that season

I have been playing Oblivion again, as I either mentioned or implied previously. I just upgraded a bunch of my spells, including a new iteration of Power Word Fuck You that does 30 points of fire, frost, and shock damage (each) over 10 feet for 5 seconds; and I made a new Pacify spell that drains Fatigue for 100 points for 10 seconds and disintegrates weapon for 100 points that takes up much less of my magicka pool and should get me space when I need it. I also upgraded my Charm spell to 100 points for 120 seconds -- I cannot afford to also give it a range of 100 feet but when I can I'm going to make that and call it Love Bomb.

I'm going to keep playing for a bit but I do need to go to bed pretty soon. I need to do homework tomorrow and I want to shave and shower. I do need to get garden fencing up but I don't think it's happening tomorrow and so I do need to put the fencing materials somewhere less 'by the front door' so it's out of the way and cats don't chew on the plastic packing materials. Monday will be class, and Tuesday we'll be having a new fridge delivered that I'll need to be around for, so hopefully Wednesday I'll be able to make fencing happen. Oh, I also need to get cleaning done for inspection

Alright, yes, video games, more dinner, and bed

Genuine Q, what is the difference between a living room and family room?

So for me and my family the difference is that the family room has a fireplace. I don't know how we would handle a house that has two 'this is where we spend all of our leisure-time' type rooms but no fireplaces, it's never come up (and the way houses are evolving with more open floor plans and fewer rooms devoted to A Single Type Of Activity it probably never will)

Historically, the living room evolved out of the parlor and is the main sitting-room, but crucially it did that during a period where it was uncultured to let anyone experience the existence of your children. During the baby boom, that was harder to maintain, so architects started including a room where children could go and play after dinner, and where their toys &c could be kept, and that became the "family room" (it's the room you be a family in)

Side trivia, but we call the living room the "living room" to contrast with its original purpose as a "death room" to hold wakes in

(The parlor evolved into the living room after radios and TVs became common household entertainment, and people relied less on entertaining each other (a floorplan shift from people facing each other near the center of the room into people at the edges of the room facing a TV or radio). Between living rooms and family rooms there's also the difference that the living room is more usually at the front of the house, because parlors were originally treated as sort of the house's face, the first thing guests saw after entering and the room people could see if they peered in through your windows; whereas the family room is more commonly in the back or middle of the house where people can retire after dinner)

I literally just watched a video about all this a few days ago, haha

Homework done. I still need to stop putting it off to the last minute, but I'm having a lot of trouble being motivated to learn Japanese this semester. Genuinely tempted to drop out and take it again next year, but I also want to get it out of the way. But there's also no actual guarantee that the class will be available next year. I dunno.

Today was a pretty lowkey day after moving furniture around for a couple hours yesterday. I did shave, shower, and cut my nails, and ash and I watched a few youtubes and a Gastronauts, but other than that I just sat around watching youtube. Cael has been waking me up around 10, and I've been staying up late enough that that's not getting me quite enough sleep, so I should try to be asleep around 1 to catch up some. Before that I'm going to watch more youtube and play a little video games.

I've got the depressions again I think.

Another class done! Today we finished out chapter 12, doing some 〜なきゃいけない practice and then some kanji reading practice, then we started chapter 13 (and book 2!) with verb potential forms. That latter is super easy, it's just 〜られる for る verbs and える for う verbs. The homework this week is writing this chapter's kanji out 20 times and a couple pages on potential forms, so should also be easy to knock out. Wednesday has the end-of-chapter test for 12, so I do will want to do some studying for that.

There was not anything particularly notable that happened during class, oh except that we did breakout rooms for one of the exercises and I and my group literally just sat in complete silence for five minutes, sigh.

Meanwhile, outside of class, there is more insurance bullshit I need to figure out, and also the yardwork people apparently destroyed one of the hedges out front, so that's, uh, cool. ash has taken pictures and is going to let the property management people know that it happened but I mean, there's not much to be done, I guess. We're also rescheduling the inspection for next week so I do need to haul ass on getting my room picked up, I believe we're hoping Erik will have that day off and can abscond with Cael during it. And tomorrow people are coming to install the fridge.

And while I'm listing off things that are happening or need to happen, Cael is due for his checkup and I need a doctor's appointment to get more refills on my meds, and ash is absconding himself pretty soon to do a little road trip across the country.

But none of that is happening tonight! Tonight I am going to play Moonglow Bay and watch youtube.