Queer Story Stuff

Thursday, March 18

I woke at 8AM and went whyyyyyyyy.

I got up anyway and did some gaming for two hours. At 10AM, I finally went downstairs to get breakfast (I had half of the leftover honey puff pancake). Chatted briefly with Nathan and Dad. Dad would have a sip of water if we asked, but he wasn't drinking that much unprompted.

Around 11:30, I went back to bed to nap, and slept until almost 2PM. But! I no longer felt like sleeping! Progress. I got up and went downstairs to reheat the rest of the honey puff pancake. It looked like Dad had eaten lunch, but I asked if he wanted anything.

"I could eat," Dad said. Okay then.

I checked the refrigerator and pantry. "It looks like your choices are soup, pork bao, or sandwiches."

Dad picked soup. I ate a few baby carrots while I waited for it to heat. M had picked up a giant bag of them for Alltoseek, which she'd been unable to finish. I've been eating several each day. Baby carrots are all right, but they take forever to chew. Maybe I should try making glazed carrots out of them. They'll be significantly less healthy but glazed carrots are delicious. :9

Back upstairs, I played more games and chatted on Discord with the Jokka community. The long thread about 'how/should we cap clan sizes' had mutated into 'how can we make things better for giant clans'. XD I think the game is just gonna stick with giant clans, though Maggie will probably implement a hard cap at some Very Large size, like 1500 or 2000.

I caught up on yesterday's entry, then wrote up today. I checked on Dad around 4PM and verified that poker started at 6:30 and we should leave for it at 6PM. I also made a Coke float. 

Well, I said I'd drop to one Coke float a day, not zero. Let's not get crazy here. 

When I ordered groceries last night, I'd checked on what ice milk/other low fat frozen desserts Walmart had, but I didn't pick anything up. First, the recommendation was "less sugar and saturated fat", so low fat is not a big help. Second, I already had a gallon of ice cream in the freezer and I'd be eating it anyway.

The sad part is that my favorite ice cream, for many years, was Edy's Slow Churned Double-Fudge Brownie. Which is reduced fat! But tastes as good to me as any full-fat ice cream I've had, so it's perfect. Except that I haven't seen it in stores for several years. I don't know what happened with it. I hunted down Edy's website. The flavor still exists, and they claim the brand is sold by a bunch of stores in my area. Including Walmart. Walmart's website disputes this claim. -_- I checked the websites for two other chains that supposedly sold it. The first was also "never heard of them", but Publix actually had some Edy's Slow Churned on their website. Not the flavor I actually want! But at least they'd heard of the brand. (Edy's has a sister brand, Dreyer's, but no hits on the first two sites for that, either.) Maybe I'll find somewhere I can get it eventually.

At 6PM, I took Dad to poker. When I got back, I was thinking, "I already have my sneakers on, so I should exercise now." The moment I got through the door, I took my sneakers off and put them on the shoe rack. Force of habit is Powerful. 

I forgot to write about this one at the time, but since I've started wearing slippers when going downstairs, the Correct Place for my slippers is now either the top of the stairs, because I don't wear them when I'm sitting down and I want to remember to put them back on before I go downstairs), or the bottom step (again, so I remember to put them on before going upstairs). A few days ago, I couldn't remember what I'd done with my slippers. So I checked the shoe rack by the garage door, and yep, there they were. I have trained myself so well to use the shoe rack that now I have to untrain myself. Alas, a mini-shoe rack for the bottom step would not be helpful.

Anyway, I put my sneakers back on (at least I hadn't gotten my socks off) and hopped on the exercise bike for 35 minutes. I watched an episode and a half of "The Dragon Prince". The latest episode is titled "The Red Wedding." I looked at the title card and said aloud, "Seriously? Seriously?!"

When I finished, I showered and returned upstairs. Instead of catching up on the day, I worked on the editing list for A Game to You. I figured I was more likely to do game-playing and journaling during Ong's stream, so better to put those off. I still have to divide up some too-complicated items, but I'm very close to being able to estimate how much work I've done and how much is left. EXCITING.

I ate a premade spinach salad as a late dinner around 8:30. Dad got home a little after 9, so I went downstairs to say good night to him. He came out of the bathroom to give me a good night hug, then returned to his bedtime routine. While I was downstairs anyway, I put away some laundry that'd been sitting on top of the laundry machines for a few days. 

When I got back upstairs, I started a 4thewords battle to catch up on the day. Before I could finish the battle, Ong's stream started at like 9:33 -- basically on time, woo! Watching the stream distracted me from doing anything useful. I wrote a bit more about the day and played some Time Princess. 

I worked on Kingslayer notes for about an hour while listening, completely losing track of time. I hurried to finish Time Princess things before reset, and then got ready for bed. I lay down around 1:30 and fell asleep at about 2AM.

Health and Fitness

I exercised 21 times in February! Pretty good for a short month. I'd thought maybe I'd done more cooking than usual? I've been making potatoes with broccoli, cheese and imitation crab every now and then since Eliyahu left in January. But it looks like I mostly did that during January and only once during February. I might have missed a time or two of cooking, though, since I wasn't as scrupulous about keeping my journal current as I have generally been for the last year and a half.

Dailies

I was not bad at keeping track of these! I have records for every day in February. I checked off editing 21 times, writing 19 times, drawing 17, and exercise 21. I was also pretty good about reading a little every day (usually manwha) -- 26 times on that.

Writing

I made more notes on Kingslayer, including starting to reorganize them to get rid of some cruft and make bits easier to find. The file is up to 4400 words, so 1100 words since January. I feel like I made more progress than this, but this is probably because I thought about it more than I wrote things down. Oops.

A Dragon's Secret is up to 59,000, so 4300 words for February. Perceptible progress, woo!

Business of Writing

My first readers were done with The Jewel-Strewn Night. Going through the comments and moving action items to the editing list took much longer than usual, but it was my only creative goal for February, so I made sure to finish it. 

Art

I finished the non-Olive-art, or at least pronounced it as done as I was gonna get it. It was based on a photo on Sandra Tayler's Discord server, so I shared it there and nowhere else. I remain weirdly more interested in painting than in showing anyone what I've painted.

After that, I went back to painting Olive, this time in a modern business suit. Her boymode in Time Princess is suit-inspired, with a neckcloth and a long coat. Even though it's much more interesting than a modern business suit, I kinda wanted to draw her in one anyway. So I did! I didn't finish it in February, though I got very close to done. To the point where most viewers will not be able to tell the difference between the version as of Feb 28 and the final version after several hours of additional work.

Reading

I started reading Tears on a Withered Flower, which probably won't finish for a few more years, alas. I didn't get to the end of the available episodes because I ran out of coins and figured I'd just let Webtoons bill me for another month of subscription in mid-March, as the most dollar-efficient method. When there aren't many episodes left on an unfinished story, I sometimes lose enthusiasm to catch up, because I know the last episode is unlikely to be satisfying. Not always, though; there's several series that I stay current on using Tapas.

I also started another unfinished series, What a Bountiful Harvest, Demon Lord! by BK_Moon, the same author who wrote The Greatest Estate Developer. Time Princess released the rest of The Coming Calamities, and I read a bit of it, but didn't get very far. I'm still enjoying it, just not patient enough to read it.

Social

I saw Kage, Sophrani, and Envoy every Friday in February, so that's on track! M also came down for a weekend, though he was mostly down to take care of financial things for Dad and related to Mom's passing. I was not very social during his visit, though we did go for long walks together with Rosie each day of it.

February Goal Scorecard

• Provide care for Dad: Done!
• Pay February bills & do withdrawal from brokerage: Also done!
• Look at comments for The Jewel-Strewn Night and make an editing list: Took me until the last day of the month to finish, so way more challenging than I expected. But I finished it! And haven't wanted to look at it since, so that part is not great, but oh well.
• Write 2000 words of A Dragon's Secret: I wrote over 4000 words! Woo, overachieved on extremely lowballed goal.

Stretch Goals Scorecard

• Edit A Game to You: I made some progress on this. I even started assigning difficulty values to the various points on the outline, so at some point I may even be able to estimate how much progress I've made. I think probably less than 10%, but mostly because edits on this book are so much more extensive than I usually deal with.
• Work on outline/notes for Kingslayer: I didn't write a lot of words, but I felt like I made progress on it, so sure, let's count it.
• Exercise 15+ times: 21! Aw yeah.
• Do some art: Finished the crypt piece and started a new fan art

March Goals

It's almost halfway through March and I have done very little creativity-wise, so I do not think this month is gonna be very productive at this point. 

• Do not go into hermit-mode while siblings visit for Dad's birthday
• Provide care for Dad
• Pay February bills & do withdrawal from brokerage
• Finish assigning values to A Game to You editing points. Break down the points that feel too complicated to tackle so they're more manageable.
• Do a perceptible amount of work on something else. 2000 words on A Dragon's Secret or notes on Kingslayer or edit Jewel or make progress on A Game to You. Whatever. Enough that I can feel like "yeah I can finish this within a few years."

March Stretch Goals

• Organize Jewel's editing list. Assign difficulty values to editing points.
• Write 5000 words of A Dragon's Secret
• Create a rough outline for Kingslayer (beginning, middle, end)
• Make 5% of progress on A Game to You after settling all the values for the list
• Any of my other usual stretch goals