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journal entries

pretty girl activities: nails

i dug up some nail files i'd bought maybe 7+ years ago. as a little girl, i was deeply invested in spa routines, bubble baths, pretty self-care. ahhh, if i'd had a girlier environment growing up, i would've been so different. anyways, i want to honour that, the imagery of having pretty girl things to do is just nice. plus, my run-in with depression previously has taught me that if you're not invested in your own life, it seems even more hopeless. carelessness breeds apathy, kinda thing. this is a small step of many to getting rid of that, addressing something i've mulled over, glancing at my hands, and to have something pre to do. so:

cut them short, as usual. perhaps less short than i did this time, more straight too.
file them down a little, softening the edges, shaping the sides (especially if cut fairly straight)
push back cuticles with nail file's rectangular/oval edge, filing down any skin on the nailbeds to clear them.
soak hands in warm/hot soapy water for a minute in the sink
rinse, apply some light moisturiser.
optional extra: watch something while doing it, or put on a playlist.

today, i had the first and second episode of the genius prince on, a little random.

Current Mood: low on fucks

Entry tags:

school life

Remind me

I have to rant about my philosophy teacher tomorrow. He seems like a genuinely good guy, I'm enjoying the class, but his opinions on ChatGPT are...

Look, he suggested it as a study aid for our first test, coming up next Thursday. Anyone know if that "Tell me how many times the letter 'X' appears in [word]" trick still works? I'm thinking of emailing him a suggestion of that, and also that he recommend all students who consult ChatGPT save or print off their results. My hope is that, if ChatGPT gives them bad info to study off of, having proof that their incorrect response is because of ChatGPT will result in fewer points lost for the students. (And hopefully, ultimately, the teacher understanding why I keep visibly and emphatically shaking my head whenever he suggests relying on it as a study aid in class, but I'm not holding my breath.)

...Actually, I think that's about all the rant I need right there. Describes my problem succinctly (aside from how he might be a little confused about what "passing the Turing Test" actually means WRT machine intelligence or lack thereof), gets to what I think might be actionable and a possible solution, etc. I might talk about the fun stuff from his class tomorrow, instead.

Current Mood: nervous

Entry tags:

Fic: Clean Session

Title: Clean Session
Author: blueraccoon/rebecca
Fandom: original characters, a/b/o tropes
Pairing: Will Greene/Jesse, aka original/original
Rating: NC-17/Explicit
Summary: It's a weird system for weird biology. And it's very weird to realize your kid has to go through it.
Notes: The author's id, let her show you it. Or, rather: This fic is what happens when an author obsessed with worldbuilding tries to make sense out of a trope that inherently defies reality, but also wants to write smut.

This is the first thing I've posted to AO3 in eight years and it's fucking original a/b/o. I don't even know, y'all, but I've written more in the last two and a half months than I did in all of 2023 so I'm not complaining too much, and I think there's some nicely hot smut in there.

More notes over at AO3 explain how the universe came to be (tl;dr it's an AU of an AU of a ST:AOS fic but by this point there's no Trek in it whatsoever) so while you might not recognize anyone in this fic, this is actually the prequel to the main storyline and there might be a familiar face or two in that. The main storyline is written to a point; the problem is that it just kind of keeps going and I can't figure out where to cut it. I figured out a break point for the first story but I can't figure out where the second one should end. Once I figure it out I'll post. Assuming anyone cares about this.

Yeah, so. Be nice, I'm very out of practice.

Entry tags:

personal: jottings

(no subject)

A couple of times a year I go through my social media and prune down my following list on each site. When I realize that I'm avoiding looking at a particular page because it's TOO MUCH, it's time.

This past week I've gone through Tumblr, Twitter, and Dreamwidth (removing comms I always skip past). Instagram, I basically don't look at anyway but I'm removing the app later. Facebook is ... well, I only follow five things there so it's not like it's a trial. XD And Bluesky I haven't yet reached the point where I don't ever want to look at it.

I'm very rigid about keeping all my socmeds (minus DW) below fifty follows wherever possible, and moving what I can to my RSS reader. It helps the mental clutter, and eases the FOMO.

Current Mood: anxious
Current Location: the home office
Current Music: Kingdom: Legendary War

Entry tags:

Dept. of Kitchen Work

Orange Cake and Daily Tasks

Very quickly, because I'm busy rewatching a Korean music group challenge show (because of course I am), I wanted to announce to a waiting world that the second time I baked this particular orange cake, it was just as good as the first time. I am satisfied.

Today was supposed to be the first day that I gathered up all the paperwork we need to prepare Bob's Canadian permanent residence application. I ended up dealing with other things, but I hope it wasn't just a case of me trying to avoid a tough job. It's undoubtedly not nearly as tough as my fears make it seem. I'm going to do my best tomorrow to get the job done. Then Bob and I will figure out the following day's tasks wrt the application. We figured that we'd try to tackle one job each every day, and we're going to try to stick to that.

Well, except for me, obviously. Sigh.

Wish us both luck tomorrow.

I want to ride my bicycle I want to ride my bike

When I was ten years old, friends and I came back from seeing a James Bond movie and were playing at James Bond on our bikes, and I swerved too sharply, fell over, and broke my left leg. I broke both the fibia and the tibula, in fact, but they were clean breaks, very tidy. Hurt like screaming hell, though. As was the custom of the time I was in the hospital for several days and came out in a full-leg cast. My father, who lived some distance away, couldn’t get there right away and sent me a dozen roses in the hospital, which made the whole thing absolutely worth it; I had never felt so grown-up!

But that was the end of my bicycling career. For fifty years.

Now, however, I've moved to a small, mostly flat, navigable city, and I want to try getting back on that literal-not-proverbial bike! I fairly often have places to go and errands to run where driving feels silly but walking might take juuuuust too much time, and a bike seems like the obvious option. But do I want to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on a new bike and run the risk that I won't enjoy it, or feel safely balanced after so long, or whatever, and will in fact end up not using it much? I do not.

Fortunately this city has a couple of nonprofit bike repairing and reselling organizations! So I stopped by one of them this afternoon and chatted with the head mechanic, and he picked out a bike for me from their (all donated) stock on hand, and we verified that it fits me. It needs some repair work and tuning up, which they will do over the next couple of weeks (him: "There's about six bikes ahead of you in line." me: "It's been fifty years, another two weeks is not a problem!"), and they asked for $125-$175, according to my ability to pay. I wasn't able to actually test-ride it, since it has no tires at the moment, but I was able to balance pretty well; I do feel pretty confident that I haven't forgotten how to ride a bike.

(And this time I hope to learn how to shift gears, too! Kid-me's bike was a three-speed and I just left it in second all the time.)

Now I just need to get a helmet -- which I do know to buy new/unused. And a lock. Whee!

Entry tags:

ps longer letter later

things I wish to consolidate the cope to talk about

... include:

six months on from surgery: what's recovery looking like?
this is actually secretly mostly (but not entirely) about Pilates
grousing about getting the Framework actually set up Adequately under Debian (power management noooot doing what I want it to and the GPU seems to keep falling over; have not yet had time/brain to sit down with either the guide to Debian 12 or cross-referencing the way the Linux battery life tuning thread disagrees with the various guides for Ubuntu (which is an officially supported distribution)
What I Am Up To This Week

But everything is Very, so for now you just get the list.

Current Mood: productive

Entry tags:

school life

School Routine

Currently between classes! I spent the first couple of hours after my morning class studying, and now I'm seeing what I can do to spend the rest of the time before my evening class. If either of the classes were in my hometown, I'd just go home for a nap and some relaxation, but unfortunately they're both in the same city where I work, which is half an hour away by car and seems like a waste to drive. I mean, I could still technically get almost five hours at home between classes? But that's a lot of time and especially gas money that I'd just as soon not spend, for the time being. I may change my mind by the end of the semester, but until then...

I only had one item left to do for this week's evening class (one evening a week): A quiz on the first chapter of our textbook, all multiple choice or true/false, three attempts allowed. I got 90% on the first two tries, and 100% on the last one. So far, so good!

I also figured I'd try and get a little bit ahead for my evening class stuff. I have the time, so why not? Unfortunately, I can't actually tell at the moment if what we're going to be assigned this week is three whole textbook chapters, or just the introduction for those three chapters. I read the entirety of the first of the assigned chapters just in case, then threw in the towel for today; I plan to ask for clarification tonight, since the website I access the (legit free) textbook through marks the to-do item complete once I open just the intro part of the chapter. Our reading for last week had been the opening of the first chapter and all three sub-parts, each of which got checked off as I opened them, so I would say I have reason to be confused!

ANYWAY. Wednesdays aside, I have a morning class Monday through Thursday, after which I usually visit the college library to work on homework for an hour or so. I'm pretty sure this is something I can keep up for the rest of my classes, so I'm cautiously optimistic about keeping my grades up for these last few semesters and actually getting my Associate's degree!

So far, so good ✌

Current Mood: Better
Current Location: my desk!
Current Music: ways to go - Solar-C

Entry tags:

Hows It Goin?

I've been really busy doing multiple different volunteer things, overloading and overwhelming myself and subsequently falling into a rhythm of doing A Lot of things for a couple days and then Absolutely Nothing for a couple of days. I've started trying to twitch stream again recently, mostly because job search is horrible and whether or not I can make any money (or more hopefully raise money for other ppls fund needs), I'm gonna b playing random games for hours by myself usually anyways so streaming it is barely any different.

I've been trying to draw more again, my tablet is playing badly with CSP so i lose pen pressure or just pen being usable At All, its annoying but ive made stuff im happy with

-I accidentally pressed enter and it posted the post LMAO,

Anyways, if u see this maybe think of checking out some of this music ive been listening to recently! I've been burning more cds and taking advantage of bandcamp friday, thers so many people out in the world makin art its incredible!!

(this artist is gonna be doing a concert i can actually go to, and might in September!! ^_^)

Entry tags:

fiction rambles

extracts of old and new character playlists i've been studying to.

lovestruck.
— miyuki shirogane, from kaguya-sama: love is war
↳ he is so tired, works so hard, and is in denial about it. confidently awkward and yet—occasionally tactful.
"top of my school" – katherine lynn-rose
"the fine print" – the stupendium
"a winter's ball" – hamilton

the strongest imo
— satoru gojo, from jujutsu kaisen
↳ flippant. egotistical. need i say more? watch this swing violently between ecstasy and isolation.
"the feeling" – simon blaze
"six degrees of separation" – the script
"one shot" – jls

prosecutor van zieks
— barok van zieks, from the great ace attorney chronicles
↳ "but at times, the mire i've sunk into has made it almost impossible to breathe."
"seven devils" – florence + the machine
"head above water" – avril lavigne
"(don't fear) the reaper" – keep shelly in athens

ch. protagonist
— yoo joonghyuk, from omniscient reader's viewpoint
↳ "you were supposed to save them. you were written to save them."
"the world we knew (over and over)" – frank sinatra
"who are you, really?" – mikky ekko
"demons" – milmine
(i wanted to include all the songs. i really like his playlist.)

karuma, the blade
— kazuma asougi, from the great ace attorney chronicles
↳ "until i'm ready to face the demon within me—to slay it once and for all...
i leave this in your care."
"wrong side of heaven (acoustic)" – five finger death punch
"cemeteries of london" – coldplay
"first generation" – unlike pluto

nice!
— nice, from to be hero x
↳ looking your replacement dead in the eyes before killing yourself is WILD.
"legends never die" – against the current
"paragon" – sawano hiroyuki
"never enough" – loren allred
"achilles come down" – gang of youths (obligatory addition)

Entry tags:

journal entries

some deserved indulging.

similar exam morning routine as previous times. ungodly wake-up at 4am, wrestling myself out before 5am, and cramming whatever the heck i could left. i had a proper breakfast this morning too. fried eggs, brown sauce, turkey slices, salad. i put some coffee next to me while i tried to memorise whatever the heck i could for today's exam. i felt less focused than previous mornings-before, but tried my best and showered before i got ready to leave. seeing compsci students everywhere definitely had a different vibe to the mathematics exams. those felt more normal. this had more personality, i suppose. i had fun observing a little, seeing which faces i could recognise. anyway. there was an absolutely diabolical grin on my face when i flicked through the paper. topics i had literally crammed this morning and last night. hell YEAH. i paced my way through it, and tried to flesh out my answers best i could. there were stuff i had to still skip, but given how my revision had been going, this was good. i was disspointed to hear others talk about how decent that exam was afterwards, but the professor said he wouldn't scale the marks. if we all did well, we all did well. so, that's decent.
me and my jittery thoughts made it out of the exam hall and to the shops, i bought milk, wandered around in the rain, came back, grilled a load of chicken thigh meat (taking great satisfaction preparing it, it's a little unusual, but i enjoy handling and cooking raw meat), eating, showering, and then texting my friend a little. a full belly, a hot meal and a hot shower, i really had spoiled myself. it felt really good. i might nap before i get down to work, but tomorrow morning's exam will be a wreckage----whatever i can do to salvage it tonight and tomorrow morning will be worth every extra mark it gains me.

A Fantasy Life i set of notes with a brief spoiler-free review

I've spent quite a bit of time in Fantasy Life i (I haven't managed to finish Chapter 7, due to my frustration with the game, but that may be more a me thing than a game thing). Here are my thoughts on it, mostly under cut because I tried to avoid spoilers but they're there.

Spoiler-free review version: More combat-heavy RPG than cozy, though the cozy certainly is there. Unlike the 3DS game, this game emphasizes both developing a set of Lives/classes and a set of villagers in a town that you will establish. The crafting minigames require a fair amount of reflexes. 3DS players will enjoy the nostalgia but be aware that you will not be able to do a 1-life challenge - in fact, you will be using at least 11 of the 14 available classes by the end of the game. The omnipresent quest marker can cause players to rush the plot where they really need to slow down.

(Also, I will mention that while this is not the game I fell in love with, I've poured in a lot of hours and don't feel the purchase was a waste.)

ETA: I think I'm getting the hang of the game! Still irritating that you have to at least intro quest the majority of Lives but quite doable. My one tiny item I want is the ability to unselect the main quest - my brain tends to want to hurry because you can unselect side quests but not the main quest, which my brain translates into a priority to-do.

( A lot of comparison between Fantasy Life i and Fantasy Life 3DS )

Entry tags:

journal entries

breaking thought patterns

1. thinking that putting effort in is cringe. -> this is delusional, the idea of hard work is romantic to you, but you desperately want to be already there? embarrassment + hoping it was easier is a bad, emotionally-riddled metric to let control your self-judgement of your own capabilities. if you're incapable of something, hope to change. if you're struggling, just outlast others. what has your own mother taught you? it's sometimes just about who hangs on. putting effort is the biggest barrier.
2. thinking you, your own life and because of your identity, makes you a person unworthy of working hard. -> this is actually rather gross. why are you putting others on a pedestal and yourself in a ditch? if you feel you're in a ditch, you should hope to claw your way out
3. thinking you're irrelevant -> the way you moon over things and feel, it's unfortunate proof you have wants that could be fulfilled. ignoring them and not putting in work for things is both stupid and hard to look at
4. letting your jealousy turn you hollow, baseless and frail. -> emotions like confusion, jealousy, awe, inferiority are very bad metrics for judgement. they mean nothing tangibly. you gotta practise-- force redirecting yourself into action. when feeling them, it is genuinely best to busy yourself.
5. sabotaging your own efforts of doing work -> it's a result of the above points. what an annoying mental web to find yourself in.
these realisations were directly sparked by some re-reading of love is war. holy, heck.
"you can't be loved if you're the real you? you gotta pretend to be the ideal you? you really believe this? that that's just how the world is? fuck that. i've got a perfect mask, too. but i strive to make that ideal me true." coming out of the mouth a chronically sleep-deprived, fearful teenager who genuienly lives that, and also said "i have to put more hours than anyone. i'll never reveal my true self as long as i live."
but finally, something i've got to break more than anything.
6. realising things doesn't get you any further. it's not tangible. it's not actual progress by itself, unless it translates. action, all in all.

Current Mood: sad
Current Location: the home office

Entry tags:

holy days,
passages

Dept. of Holy Days

Once Again, I Remember.

There are thousands upon thousands of men and women across the country's military branches who have given their lives in defense of the nation, or as victims of the country's necessary and unnecessary wars. This day is complicated, especially for someone who grew up in Canada, where solemn remembrance of such losses are marked on Nov. 11.

Over the years, I've come to mark Memorial Day in two ways. I honor those people, so many of them young, who gave the last full measure of devotion in wars. And I also remember people who I lost. So here are two essays I wrote in previous years.

*** *** ***

Memorial Day: It's Complicated

( It's complicated. )

*** *** ***

I Remember: A Personal Memorial Day

( I Miss Them )

Current Mood: siiiiiiiigh

Entry tags:

recipes

Pet Peeve

Dear My Parents,

Sometimes when I am making a meal that is more complicated than a sandwich, I want to make it for just me. Especially when I have only bought ingredients with a meal for a single person in mind. Like, I'm usually happy to make something else instead! Just. I'd like to know before I start making a meal for Just Me that it's instead going to be for three people. Possibly so I can start making something else instead.

(I would be willing to accept "Not feeling guilty when saying that I'm only making enough for one" as a compromise.)

Yours,
Someone who really wanted to eat what was initially planned as one hungry person's worth of gyudon last night.

Current Mood: grateful
Current Location: the home office
Current Music: Ateez, "Say My Name" on repeat

Entry tags:

Dept. of Sunday Success

Bread Worked Out. Plus 2024 Ateez Coachella Performances Located

Yes, I am but a tiny speck on this globe, and my successes and failures are as unimportant as can possibly be imagined. Still, one takes one's victories where one can find them, she said pretentiously.

First the bread. I went back to a Kitchen Aid recipe for two loaves of white bread. I'd previously had minimal success with it, but I wasn't going to fool around with a completely new recipe, and potentially lose more ingredients, a la yesterday's whole wheat bread failure (I'm not going to call it a debacle, because I've learned from it.)

I was pleasantly surprised, to put it mildly. I paid a great deal of attention to the heat of the liquid into which I was supposed to put the dry yeast, and I'm embarrassed to say that was something I previously failed to do well. And surprise! The bread came together and rose beautifully, not just during the first rise, but during the final rise. They're now out of the oven and they look spectacularly ordinary, which was what I was aiming for. Huzzah!

The second bit of success was within the field of my latest obsession, the KPop group called Ateez. Like SKZ, they have eight members, and they debuted just a bit later (Oct. 24, 2018) than Stray Kids (March 25, 2018). The two groups are very friendly, despite working under different entertainment agencies.

Ateez songs, choreography, and lore differ noticeably from SKZ; to my ears, they're just a hair rougher than their hyungs. Both groups have labored under peoples' view of them as noisy, and I think that's one of the reasons they appreciate each other. But I digress. I was trying to find videos of one or both weekends they performed at Coachella 2024. It was difficult, but the KPop subreddit came to my rescue. And since Bob agreed to watch one of the performances with me, I now have something to show him. Again - huzzah!

Current Mood: morose
Current Location: the home office

Entry tags:

passages,
politics

Dept. of Remembrance

George Floyd

It's been five years since George Floyd was murdered by Derek Chauvin. Little has changed, except to get worse.

The racist rot runs deep in this country - arguably it's one of the rotten support beams holding the United States up. Perhaps we can change that, and create support beams that partake of justice, but these days I'm not overly optimistic.

I remember George Floyd. I mourn him, at least in that way that a strange white woman can mourn him. I hope other strange white women, and white men, and others who aren't Black Americans can also mourn. And perhaps starting working for something better.

Entry tags:

vital functions

vital functions

Reading. ( Bridget Collins, Feather (lalaietha), Jenny Lawson )

Listening. More Hidden Almanac, including First Appearance of Pastor Drom; slightly grumpy with myself for dozing through a chunk of it (to a greater extent than I realised; I did get snippets, but missed more than was apparent at the time) and am steeling myself to relisten.

Cooking. More from East: aubergine katsu curry with pickled radish (meh on my part, but A liked it), roasted carrots and cabbage with gochujang (meh on A's part, but I liked it enough to nibble at it between meals even though I'm unlikely to make it again), asparagus and mangetout with chilli peanut crumb (not actually worth spending in-season asparagus on outside the Cook Everything In This Book project, but pleasing given that context).

Eating. WILD ASPARAGUS is I think the most exciting thing I have eaten this week.

I have been Disappointed by Wagamama. Much less disappointingly, I have been plied with blueberries and yoghurt. Finished the hazel-bay-rye-and-rhubarb cake; have made some progress on the birthday cake I got sent home with.

Exploring. I am currently Away From Home. There are postbox toppers. One of them is Many Round Hedgehogs; another is Sea Creatures including Mollusc. I am sort of curious about who else I might spot in the area.

Making & mending.

Growing. ... I did not get cucumbers started. I did get some more squash into the ground (well, raised beds), and planted out a bunch of tomatoes, and at least two kinds of pea are now flowering, and I will be mildly resentful if I get home and discover all the strawberries have been eaten.

Did I mention that my established rocket remains established? I was a little concerned that I'd buried it under too much manure, and then it showed up in the next bed over.

Observing. BABY WOODPECKER.

Entry tags:

journal entries

relatively long, asian hair

i don't know what i did as a kid to be blessed with genuinely silky hair. well. even back then, it was thin and incredibly pin-straight. it's always been thin, and it's thinning out significantly more these days. i've let go of grieving that now, thin hair isn't as uncommon as i first internalised. the quality of it has degraded lots since i was twelve, and i've been puzzling this out a little. lately, i've been slowly building a better routine to take care of it. applying rosemary oil sometimes before showering (started when i ran out of alma oil, and mostly to set the intention to myself to actually wash my hair), and then applying it again on my damp hair afterwards too. i've been trying to use better conditioner too, leaving it for a few minutes, putting my hair up with a claw clip while i wash the rest of my body. plaiting my hair before putting it in a bun, so it damages less. brushing it gently more. generally expecting more out of my hair, actually thinking about it more. another thing to add to the list of little ways i'm putting more effort into myself. i've been fairly naive (and depressed) during my teenage years to think these things don't make a difference. they do. it's good. it's better.

Entry tags:

exam week three: numbed, channelled panic

two exams, one day after the next. i could aim for 50-70% range of one (depending on two factors: how well i can memorise the summary sheets i made today, and how far i dip my hands in the last two topics). the other is more hopeless. i'll be working to pull myself from knowing essentially nothing (in a way that would actually get me marks) to trying to hit 40-50%. it's work and hours and concentration at this point. the to-do list is clearer. focus on what you can learn from, focus on what you can replicate.