April 20, 2025 - bloghan 43

Well shoot. Maybe I got a little too free. As in, too free to do what I want so I end up using that freedom to not do what I want to do. This happens everytime... Here's how it happened this time:

Tier list of the week

This week's tier list: meats. Here's the tier list:

Ordered tiers, unordered wthin tiers. I mean, this seems pretty standard to me? I feel like this is how most people feel about these meats. You'll understand why I chose to rate meats if you read this bloghan (specifically the Friday section), but yeah. I don't really think there's much to say here other than "I would never try pigeon meat." That just sounds... wrong. Also, I could totally believe duck being moved a tier up, I just don't think I've had enough duck yet to really justify it.

Personal updates (achievements, reflections, and antics)

I woke up early on Monday to a grey sky. Not grey like about to rain, but grey like "oh its just a lot of clouds out I guess." On the way to work the sky became more and more blue, but just as it would, more clouds would come in to replace it. This would be a pattern that continued throughout the day. Work was mostly boring and mostly work on bloghan to be honest. I mean, in the morning I saw that I could finally start doing those runs for my work rival's manager, and once I repeated that hour-long process for maybe the third time in 2 weeks, I got back to catching up last week's bloghan, with a little bit of culling the fill for the new 21x21 crossword coming up. I am pretty happy with the fill, and I'm actually pleasantly surprised at how common I can get the words to be. I guess having mroe letter avaiable means more combination are too? Very interesting... People begin to go down for lunch, but my work rival is still busy with a call, so I hold off on going until he's done. My predecessor visits us as we wait, mostly to invite us over to his place on Friday for turkey! I'm not really a fan of turkey, but hey, I'm down! It'll be nice to go out at least. While I continue to wait for my work rival, my predecessor also chats with me about work stuff (apparently more things are going to need changes when it comes to the runs I JUST KICKED OFF OH COME ON), and a little bit of gossip (actually, it was more like catching up?) and story-sharing about a mutual friend of ours. Apparently, he and his girlfriend of a couple years broke up. Also, my predecessor seems to think that this mutual friend of ours is very very gay and/or transgender. I mean... maybe? His public image, and the images he posts publicly go a long way in suggesting that. Kinda. I don't know, he might just be commiting to the bit. What bit, I don't know, but he's certainly comitting to something. I was very shocked that my predecessor would say something like that too, but I guess it's a good thing overall? He's supportive and an ally? I think? My work rival finally finished his call (and immediately accepted the invite to turkey on Friday), and we went down for lunch right after.He went to join the others in 'President' while I stuck to myself and worked on my crossword fill as I talked with my equivalent about 'Undertale,' 'Homestuck,' and ethics. It was a fine luck, but over quickly on account of myself heading down late. Not much else happened at work when I got back to my desk, other than finalizing the crossword fill with some post-autofill change orders and writing a whole ton of bloghan. I had a dizzying conversation with my predecessor about one of the inputs to the runs I was doing for my work rival's team, because apparently mine were outdated? This whole task is such a nightmare, but I rerun everything multiple times and report to my work rival's manager that the old ones failed. The rest of the workday is honestly spent doing absolutely nothing. I've filled out the crossword, I've exhausted my app limits, and I've still got a ton of bloghan to write, which ends up being all I really do until I leave the office. Tomorrow, more will be done, I'm sure. When I get home, it's time to sit down and just do. Bloghan gets all finished up, then the next one is started. I red stake and green stake the blue deck in 'Balatro,' and I read another little bit of 'Homestuck' (I KNEW that Jade's island home had to be where the Wandering Vagabond ended up at the end of Act 2!!! It just fits so well!), as well as some more review of my 21x21 crossword alsos got on call with one of my friends who has an exam tomorrow, and we chill for a little bit just doing the things we do. My dinner is just a couple fish sticks, so that I can get myself some more time to do stuff, but I still end up staying up quite late. I think I'm going to try and sleep earlier each day by 30 minutes this week, so once I notice the time I just go to sleep immediately.

Somehow on Tuesday morning, I slept through all my alarms but woke up exactly as the last alarm gave up. Lucky me? It's another cloudy day today, and this time it actually is one themed with rain. It starts to rain very lightly as I walk to the bus, but as my bus ride goes on, it lets up into nothingness again. In the morning, I am primarily focused on trying to figure out why I'm seeing this one specific error in another team's file. I'm doing the math and it all checks out, so I have no idea why there's something saying the math is off by one. My predecessor visits me to ask me about how my runs for my work rival's team went, and I get to share that they all failed! Some got better, some got worse, and none got a reply from my work rival's manager. How wonderful. Really. After a bout of extremely aggresive rain that lasts for 5 second before dissipating, I overhear some talk from others who sit in this corner (and also from my predecessor) about how there will soon be more desks in this corner. It's already a little packed but now it's going to be even worse. Oh, joy. I don't mind having more bodies in here because it means I will be able to get warmer, better, but it also means that there will be more people to distract and talk to me here. Ugh!! That I cannot stand. Time passes, my predecessor goes back to his desk, and eventually people start making motions to go to lunch. By now I've figured out the error and where my math was going wrong (it was never wrong, its just that there was another thing I didn't check which changed the numbers I needed to use), so I've begun to work on some clues for my big cryptic. Then: a message from my work rival's manager, telling me that it's very critical that we get things passing on those runs, NOW. Uh oh. She asks me if I bothered figuring out why they weren't working - uh, no I haven't been, because I've been busy on what MY manager asked me to do. THe work I do for your team is takes so long and is so picky, and it's strating to get annoying how much of a "team player" I'm being right now. I know I don't really have an excuse for complaining like this, and its a bit immature, but once this task is done then I think I'll have deserved it. She asks me if I've got the results open in some special program, and I don't, so I try to get it to open. #0 minutes later, I'm still waiting for access to a computer to run it on! This is relying on the same systems/services that all my runs rely on for just about anything! Absconder, functionality tests, even the runs I do for my work rivals team. I've never had to wait this long for one to start. I quit out then retry on a slightly different system/service that's slower and it works immediately. Unbelievable. Everyone's gone down for lunch at this point, so I'm eating at my desk as my work rival's manager tells me that she's already got it open (great, looks SO great on me), my manager sends me a message (oh great what now!?), and apparently there's an easy fix to the problems I have right now with the runs. Apparently, in that whole "there's different version of our project files and you need to give them the same updates," there's one that I missed back when I brought in another team's project 2 weeks ago. Oh. Could've sworn we got them all... but ok. I go ahead and start making all the necessary changes, then restarting all my runs. I check what my manager needs (he's just letting me know that he talked with my work rival's manager about what I'm doing and I guess just wanted to remind me about it?), and I ask the senior guy who helped me with the "bring in" of two weeks ago what we changed, so that I can go fix our changes everywhere they need to be fixed. One of the administrators from a floor below (she's the one who manages those pizza events we have once per month) comes to visit our corner with a contractor, and she asks that contractor if it's possible to get another couple desks in hree. She's got a measuring tape going from Steve's desk to the end of my work rival's desk, and I really can't believe that this is happening. They tell me to stay seated though, and the admin jokes that they're doing this for drapes around my desk, to separate me from the rest of the team. Hmmm... well, I guess I don't care TOO much about all this. Those two leave, and I get back to my work as people start to come back from lunch. I inform my work rival about what happened, but he doesn't believe me until my Japanese coworker and Steve confirm it. He is very upset about this, and heads over to the crossword cubicle to vent. What a guy, what a life. I've begun to draft an email to the person in charge of the file I found issue with in the morning (as per my mentor's advice when I visited him this morning), but once it's completed, I feel like not doing much but type and type on my phone for more bloghan!! WOOO!!! It's a bit of a hectic last hours of a shift. Milk chocolate eggs have been placed near the crossword cubicle as a treat for everyone in the office, so everyone in our little corner goes over to grab some. My work rival grabs an entire handful and HE sparks a conversation about fat acceptance, and about differences in weight for women and men. I succesfully redirect the conversation into talking about where that fat distribution is located in men and women to try and drive this away from him having a sexism moment in the office once again, but he actually starts speaking a little more. What gets him to stop is when he claims that women tend to have a higher weight to height ratio than men, the fanatic disproves him immediately, and he leaves in shame. That leaves me free to talk to the crossword cubicle about other things, like the compatriot's "suggestions" on how to fix traffic (we are NOT getting swimming lanes bro), and the gregarious struggles with her task (you got it girl, I think). When I got back to my desk I started up work on bloghan and listened to some music from 'Homestuck,' getting quite a lot done. The four of us in the corner played a little game where my Japanese coworker would pass something from his desk to Steve, then to me, then to my work rival, and eventually things would get passed back in the chain. At smoe point after we stopped I ended up in possession of my Japanese coworker's baseball, the one that Steve likes to fidget with, and I dropped it on the floor. Took me a while to find it (since it ended up near my bag), but my work rival and I hid it as Steve searched everywhere to find it. When he started searching out into the hall we felt a little bad, so we placed the baseball on my work rival's desk. It still took Steve another 5 minutes to find it though, and he didn't trust me with the ball for the rest of the day. The rest of the workday was a little quiet, then a little hectic. As I typed I felt myself getting more and more tired, until eventually I must've fallen asleep at my desk. I woke up when I heard my predecessor's voice, and he told me the director left a chocolate egg on my desk. Yeah, yeah, sure. It's a bit embarrassing that I got caught sleeping on the job, but I guess it just means I need to be more careful about all this. There was more conversation, as always, as always, and it actually ended up cascading with parties entering and leaving our little corner until it was time to go. Work rival left first, then the compatriot and the fanatic came to talk about iOS vs. Android, my predecessor left (but not before one of my runs for my work rival's team finally passed! and also not before I had a little scare when submitting some changed files to the whole team, when I forgot to actually finalize the change... oops!), but after all that non-mindless drivel, I headed home. It had gotten really cloudy and slightly rainy over the last few hours, and when I walked outside I felt that it had gotten intensely windy too. It wasn't all too bad though (it wasn't even enough to knock me over!!), and I got back with no event. Unfortunately, I let myself slack off way too much when I got back, so all the writing and reading and playing I did felt super rushed and back-loaded on my evening/night. Still, I got a whole bunch done! Did black stake and blue stake on blue deck, caught up bloghan fully, had a very bloody shave, made dinner, completed 20% of my 21x21 cryptic, hopped on call with my friend just to work and talk (and distract her away from other things), then read more 'Homestuck' (I can already tell that I'm going to enjoy this for all the same reasons as I do 'One Piece' - the interconnectedness, the hooks for plot points paying off thousands of pages later, the worldbuilding being dynamic in the background as we see it through the eyes of the main characters - ah, love it!). Now, as I read 'Homestuck,' I decided to read a little more than I should probably have, so I ended up already breaking that whole "I'm going to go to bed a half hour earlier each day" thing - but that's ok. Tomorrow I know I won't fall asleep at my desk. At least, I hope I won't...

Another cloudy day, but this time, a day at work better spent, I think. Once again, things have failed for those runs while I was gone and I spend the morning trying to figure out what to do about it. I'm pretty sure that yet again there's some difference in the 4 different version of things, so time to go hunting. I also got a response from that person on another team telling me that the warning we found in there stuff is ok, and that we can waive it. Well, that's all well and good, I suppose. I'm mostly just trying to figure out where these diffreences are when right before lunch I get a message from ym work rival's manager: it's a request to re-run all of the runs I'm currently doing, but on the newest version of the files AGAIN. Apparently, that senior employee who called me a good boy weeks ago made some big change recently, and another team elsewhere in the world wants to take a look at our project files or something, today. So, I have to get all this done, today! How wonderful. I go ahead and do all the stuff, but at the cost of skipping out on going down for lunch (actually, it seemed like a pretty good trade off since my work rival went down for lunch). My predecessor came by though and noted that I didn't go down, staying with me to talk as I worked on stuff. I think I ended up talking more than I ended up working, but hey! I did get the stuff done, at least. There was a good period of chatter and waiting for things to happen, but I did have to get up eventually to go see my manager for our weekly meeting. It was as awkward as ever, with him asking what I've got on my plate and me telling him about all the things I haven't done because I like to focus in on one task at a time. I don't think he liked that answer, but he liked everything else I had to say (I think?). He talked to me about a new task he emailed me earlier about (yeah... sure, I'll do that.) and told me to ask either my work rival or my predecessor about it. We also talked about that "bring in" task that I had put on hold because of the work I was doing for my work rival's team, and I shared more with him about how entire errors were being ignored until now. He gave me a list of people to reach out to so that they could split the load of making sure the errors we were finding were ok. He was still sort of confused about how this even happened, and he tried to show me an example to make sure I wasn't the one misunderstanding. He told me that waiving entire rules is not even allowed, and he opened one of our files to show me what he thinks I saw... he was a bit shocked to see that some senior people on our team actually did that very thing in our own files, so I cheerfully pointed out that that was what I saw. I also shared that those folks in India told me to do the same for our files, and he was a bit shocked they did so, but realized they were just trying to pass the buck to me. Once this was done, we called the meeting, but ended up walking in the same direction as we left. It was SO awkwardly silent, but I wasn't about to be the one breaking it. He tried to break the silence by asking if I was enjoying the weather, and after a simple "yeah" we continued to walk on in silence until we reached a junction in the hallways and went separate ways. Some things never change. After my meeting, it was back to work, and I eventually saw that one of my runs finished succesfully! This was the same one that did so yesterday, but I Thought it would be good to update that one group chat that at least this part was done. As soon as I did though, my predecessor undermined all my work by pointing out in a joking-ish manner that it had already passed yesterday, and that everything else was failing. I was terrified: there were multiple managers in this chat, and my work rival was laughing so hard at this whole situation. His manager ended up responding by telling me to really dig into the errors to find why stuff was still failing - just my luck. Eventually my predecessor realized that this wasn't our DMs and came over to apologize, but the damage has been done, and I spent the rest of the work day working directly with my predecessor to figure out where they were. Apparently, there was a weird thing which I thought I already solved with a certain design element that was duplicated in multiple places, where a change was made to one but not the other. I Was thinking of fixing it, but the D&D group was getting a bit antsy and wanted to head down to play. My predecessor, still feeling bad, told me I should just go and play, and that he would take care of fixing the error. I still stayed a little longer to start up new runs as he did it, and then we went down for D&D. My co-DM finally joined me to co-DM, and while I decided to put her on the spot to improv a pre-established NPC she knew nothing about to make her feel more included, I think she did a really good job! I don't know if she liked that though... even if I asked first, maybe I should've warned her earlier today. She had to leave early, but he rest of the session continued as normal. I can tell that the players are getting a little restless from the more recent sidequest content, the more slice-of-life stuff, but soon things will move away from that. We went a little late today too, but the bus ride into 15-minute 2km walk wasn't so bad! The busyness of the day didn't really make me want to do much in the way of writing, but I'm always down for a little bit of 'Balatro' and a little bit of 'Homestuck,' after which I went to bed.

Thursday was a vibrantly sunny day, and my desk was frequently washed in the sunlight. I came in to multiple messages from various team members which I answered throughout the day. My mentor wanted to know when I would be submitting my Absconder work that I did for him - ha, that will have to wait until my work rival's manager is done with me! But I told him I would be getting to it "soon." That senior who called me a good boy also had a message for me in the morning, but I didn't actually reply until way in the afternoon. He just wanted to know the command for something I've never run, which my predecessor helped me figure out. Finally, my work rival's manager wanted to know the progerss of the runs. To that, I Said they were still going. Remember how yesterday my predecessor said he would go ahead and make a fix so that I could go do D&D? Well, he did the correct fix in the wrong place, so I had to restart every run again. It's fine though, because that gave me some time to finalize my Absconder work for the not-manager for maybe the 5th time now? I'm sure I'll be finalizing it once more in the coming months, but now that I know he wants that one update I made to always be present, not just a one time thing, I've got to figure out how to handle all the new files, and I want one of my files to be more easily read, so I convert it into an entire other format. I also want to submit my Absconder for my mentor at the same time, so I can get all these things in right away. But right as I'm almost done, I think of one tiny little question about one file I must update. I ask the not-manager, and he says he already did it. What? I don't see it... Then he tells me that he hasn't submitted his changes yet, because he's actually decided to go ahead and reorganize a bunch of stuff, changing file locations and whatnot. This means that I'm going to have to wait until he does his submission, and with the long weekend coming up... yeah, I doubt that he's actually going to get it done today. Would've been nice to know that before I spent my whole morning working on this as fast as possible to submit it as fast as possible. Man... I ended up deciding to eat lunch at my desk again, not because of any particular busyness but because I Wasn't feeling like going down. My predecessor visited me once again, and asked if I was going to see the workplace showcase downstairs. Uh... well it sounds boring, so probably not. He managed to convince me (only partially because of pizza being present at that event), and we went down. I was right, it was boring, but not for the reason I thought it would be. I was concerned that it would be people just blabbing about their work, but it was actually just people standing around these poster stands with words about their work that I didn't understand. After checking out each poster, we got pizza and headed back upstairs, where we worked on making sure that once and for all there would be no more differences between the 4 different versions of the project files to mess with our runs. We found nothing... but eventually, the runs all failed. I went over to my predecessor's cubicle to figure it all out. Why, why, why? Everything was matching, so why were these run results saying they weren't? The worst part of this whole situation was my work rival, who would constnatly pop in to taunt us about this whole task for some reason. Eventually, through a lot of discussion, brainstorming, and trying to figure things out, we found a graphical representation of where the error was. However, it was slightly unexpected. The error was that something was disconnected in the most recent version of a file compared to an old version where it was connected. What? Why would it be like that? I would understand if it was the other way around (because at that point we probably just didn't get around to doing it), but why like this? We raised the error in that group chat with my manager and my work rival's manager and a bunch of other relevant people, and my work rival came by the desk. He asked to see our file which listed some random things that the test ignored, and told us that the erroneous object we were concerned about probably wasn't in that ignorables file. He left, but me and my predecessor looked into it: it was there? To make things worse, my work rival shared this in the group chat too. We thought we'd one up him by taking a screenshot and showing that it was already there in the group chat, but in the end he had the last laugh. Apparently, we were ignoring that point half the time, and he got to point this out in front of all our managers. He came to our cube to gloat in person, then went to all these other cubicles to gloat about it too. He was so loud we heard the story three times in all that day. UGH. My predecessor and I tried desparately to find a way in which he could be wrong, any way, but to no avail. We made the change that was suggested to us, and reran the runs. I hate this guy. So. Much. I headed back to my desk in defeat, staring at various screens and not talking to my work rival. He had done it. He won. Completely and totally. This continued for some time until my predecessor came by to visit with the fanatic, asking if I wanted to go with them for bubble tea, then a visit to the warehouse store. Oh, well, sure, yeah! I don't really like bubble tea, but I'm just about ready to end this work day, and I can get a couple sauces "in bulk" for these next few months. Perfect. My equivalent and the fanatic would join us on the walk to the bubble tea place (I wasn't even going to get anything. I just wanted to go early), and I got to see my predecessor's wife for the first time since last year. We were somewhat familiar with each other but sadly, she ignored me when I said hi. She and my predecessor were in their car, with her in the driver's seat. I greeted her through the passenger seat and my work rival went up to her sided window to say hi. Even in basic social interaction he wins. I walked off, spurned, but at least she said hi as I walked back (or did she say bye?). Some short conversation about Absconder and our teams with my equivlanet filled the walk to the bubble tea place, and once we reached the one where my work rival wanted to go, those two walked off somewhere else. INside, I finally got to converse with my predecessor's wife for the first time in like half a year, and the first thing she did was tease me about how I prefered colder weather and wearing the same type of outfit wherever I go. Wow. First time I've seen her in a good while and she's already back to psychoanalyzing me. How wonderful. Thankfully she switches the target of her teasing to her husband as we leave the store, making me wonder if I should even be near them as they do, but once my work rival returns from whichever other store he went into for some reason, we all pile into the car and begin heading to the warehouse store. Somehow, the car's conversation isn't awkward, but I still try to stay out of it as much as possible. Once we enter the store and my work rival grabs someone's empty unattended cart in the middle of the store, we start shopping. My work rival immediately separates from us and gets lost, and I stick with my predecessor and his wife as we go down some side aisles. She's looking for some specific things, but my predecessor just keeps moving on whenever she stops to see any new things that catch her eye. That's kinda the theme of how this shopping trip goes. His wife will go to something she find interesting or something they need (like vegetables for tomorrow's dinner), and I'll be with her. Then, we'll go back to the cart, except the cart isn't there because my predecessor has moved on to who knows where? Sometimes my work rival is with him, most of the time he's not. I pick up some pesto and some butter chicken (which everyone roasts me for until I tell them it's what I'm used to from home - I hope that guilt tripped them a bit, serves them right), and as we wait around for eveyrone else to finish picking up stuff, my predecessor's wife (who was talking to me about which chips they should get for tomorrow's dinner) suddenly switches the topic to if I would come back to this job later, waiting to do so until her husband and my work rival are out of earshot. My last day is in August, but there's a good chance that I get an offer to return. She just up and asked me but made sure no one else could hear. What??? Where did this come from all of a sudden? I gave her my standard answer of "hopefully not, but I would be ok with it, " and we immediately stop talking about it as soon as my predecessor brings some snacks round (his wife has already ceased control of the cart by this point so that he can't just ignore her requests). Everyone's collected all their things and people are going off to visit washrooms and such, but I'm left wondering why I'm suddenly being asked this. Even when we're heading to the restaurant at the back, my predecessor's wife keeps bringing it up and talking about how it's important to consider the people you work with and such. That's the best part of this job in my opinion - is she trying to convince me to try and return here? One hot dog later and a strong desire to just get back to my place, it's just me and my work rival talking at a table. I ask him if he was being asked the same questions by my predecessor's wife, but apparently he hasn't really been speaking with her much. What am I supposed to take away from this situation?? He ends up asking the question back to me, but I should've known better than to give him the standard response; now he's talking up a storm with everyone about how important the people you with with are. This continues even in the car as I'm being dropped off, and I'm quickly sick of it. Yeah yeah, it's important, sure, but I really think it's only important in the professional side of things. In the future, I won't need to be friends with my coworkers. It's not going to be like it is right now. I'm just going to end up clocking in, working, doing meetings and all that, then going home. I can't imagine that people would choose to be around me as much when I'm given a little cubicle to work in anyways. My work rival is being really annoying about this (as always), but what can you do about relationship-focused people like him? The only thing that ends up interrupting this conversation is the car passing by the pole dancing studio which my predecessor's wife attends, and she immediately asks if I want to join her the next time she goes. Are you for real right now lady. She tells me it's a great place to meet guys, and when she sees the repulsion in my eyes, she corrects by adding there's lots of girls too. There's just so much I'm hating about that sentence but I'll just share two things: first, it's just SO GREAT how she assumed I'm gay because I don't know what (because I'm on the more feminine side compared to most men??? who knows!), and second, that's a bit creepy of me to go to some sort of club/hobby thing with the intention of just finding a date. Thankfully, a lot of the attention of this hypothetical is then redirected to my work rival, so I can go back to staring out the window and interjecting laughter when the moment calls for it. Was my predecessor's wife always like this towards me? I know she's brought up the pole dancing suggestion before but... well, anyways, the conversation steers into snacks in the office and how they put up signs saying "only take one snack" recently (probably because of my work rival) just as the car steers into my neighbourhood, and after profuse thanks I finally make it home. I'm not done socializing yet though! I've still got that regular Thursday call with my friends from home to look forward to. Now one of them has recently had a flare up of her "breaking electronics" powers, with her laptop basically toast. She had to join us from her phone, and while it limited us in what we could do, we still ahd some fun. We tried 'Death by AI' (it just kept favouring me for some reason?) then moved into some sketching games. It was pretty fun, but it did keep me up late. I was alreayd behind on a bunch of stuff so I tried to write and read as much as I could before going to bed.

Friday morning was rough. A cloudy day where I made a nice little breakfast but spent quite a bit of time just staring at my screen. By this point I had gold staked blue deck and got pretty far in yellow deck, but I really needed to catch up on bloghan. As the day went on though, and I ate lunch and had tea and all that, I had barely gotten any progress in before I realized it was time to get ready to go. I had a turkey dinner to attend, so I got dressed pretty quick. Since today was a holiday there wouldn't be much bus service, so I had to time things well for my 2km walk to a bus stop. While the day started out pretty cloudy, just as I was getting ready to leave there was sunlight peaking out from between the clouds, so I grabbed myself a freezie on my way out. I ate as I walked, dressed in a black jacket, black hoodie, black dress short, black cargos, black socks, black shoes, black headphones, black sack, and a blue raspberry freezie in hand. You know, typical spring attire. The 15 minute walk to the bus stop was actually quite enjoyable, though I was starting to regret bringing this jacket. It was getting a bit warm, but it got better once I got underneath the bus stop's overhang. It was a bit boring of a wait, but most waits are just like that, and I got on the bus with a little flair that I think scared everyone nearby. It was at this moment that I decided to look up which bus stop I needed to get off at. When I was figuring out timing details at home, I only bothered to check when I needed to reach the station. So, I looked at the app and it said... the very next stop. Wait, what? That's it? I could've saved bus fare and just walked the whole way! I get off in a minute and head to my predecessor's place, but man. This could've been a free 20-25 minute walk. Whatever... consider it a donation to the transit folks or whatever. I text my predecessor with work-related terms to let him know I was out in the parking lot and being annoying about it too, but he quickly came down and brought me into his apartment. His wife greeted me and told me that based on my comments from yesterday she made a giant dish of mashed potatoes just for me. Uhhhhhhh... that looked like about 2 kilos of mashed potatoes? I cannot eat that all. She laughed it off and said that she was just teasing me. Ma'am. You have a perfectly good husband to tease. Why must you do this to me. I take a seat and there's more conversation about the turkey and the other food that's been cooked, most of which I remember from yesterday's shopping trip. My predecessor's wife asks if I like turkey, and I give her the honest answer of "I usually go for chicken, I prefer it way more, but I'll eat turkey if given to me." For the rest of the night, she would constnatly tell people that I "hated turkey." Again, I must ask: why me???? Get off my case!! I was the first to arrive by a long shot, so I was put to work stirring some juice. Once it was done, we waited for people to iflter in. My work rival decided to not show up (night was made so much better because of it), but everyone else on the invite list did attend. Steve and I were the only ones who were not full-time employees, just temporary ones. After a round of baked brie with crackers to dip it in (and me not realizing we were doing this on a turn-based system and holding up everyone else), we were mostly getting grilled by my predecessor's wife about food and music and such, conversations which I tried to stay out of as much as possible. Eventually we got started with dinner, and I was put on the spot as the first person to grab food (because of COURSE I was), and all eyes were on me. I made the mistake of grabbing a turkey leg, not realizing that no one here was going to be ok with me eating it with my hand until I sat down to eat. I saved it for last, having all the vegetables first. It was really quite tasty, and this was the first time I've ever enjoyed eating turkey, if I blocked out the embarrassment of trying to eat the turkey leg with a single fork. Everyone else was pretty satisfied with the meal too, but no one went for seconds. If my work rival was here we would all be inticed to do so, but that's ok. I need to eat less to lose more weight, you know? My predecessor's wifer asked me pretty early on what kind of music I listened to, and while I did tell her 'Love Live!' stuff, she settled for another artist I mentioned, ABBA, and so that was playing the whole night. One of the full-times brought her boyfriend to the event, and he was a pretty big ABBA fan, so I guess I have some rapport with him? We spent the next 3 hours doing board games: the first was 'Wavelength' (a game where you guess where one person on your team places an object of their choice on a scale form one adjective to another), with the highlights being Steve saying that the number six is "sixty percent" a big number rather than a small number, my predecessor saying that a Ford F150 is basically completely small rather than tiny (and me finding out that no one here knows what an F150 looks like), and my predecessor's wife using me as her example for loud versus quiet, and the other team getting it spot on. Why. Why. WHY. Next was 'Telestrations,' (a mix between 'Telephone' and drawing charades, like in person 'Gartic Phone') with the highlights being Steve labelling my drawing of a jolly roger as "killing it" and completely derailing that, doing the same for my drawing of a chat room (he labeled it "notebook and pencil"), and me feeling so big brain for knowing what a cockatrice and basilisk are, only to find out that the propmpt I got was derailed by Steve once again. It was the NSFW version of the game, but because everyone was so concerned about having to work with these people on Monday no one got too risque with it. I would've been find with it, but I don't relaly have much knowledge about those things anyways (and certainly not the drawing skills to portray them well), so I didn't REALLY mind. The final board game of the night was a 'Cards Against Humanity' clone where the black cards were weird DMs one might receive that have blanks, and the white cards were things that fill in the blanks. My predecessor's wife got most of my points, and I got most of my predecessor's. What does this mean? No clue! I was getting pretty tired of all this by now. It was getting late, I was behind on a lot of things I needed to do, and (you're all going to roll your eyes when you hear this) I was getting tired of how "couple-y" the two couples present were being. Eventually, my predecessor was the one who suggested that we end, allowing us all to realize that we should proabbly head out. Before I could get started on my walk though, the topic of my fridge contents came up and I reported that it was practically empty. My predecessor's wife told me to take some of the leftover mashed potatoes, so I did. I only took a little at first, maybe a third of the container she gave me, but someone pointed out how little I took. Fine. I'll take more. I scooped up a significantly larger portion of mashed potatoes into my container, and glared all around the room to see if anyone else would interrupt me. I closed the lid, and slowly, one by one, closed the latches. Someone described it as me teasing the group with Tupperware. OK that's it I'm just closing it. I'm about to set out on my walk when I'm interrupted once again by someone offering me a ride, then another person offering me a ride. I don't know which direction my place is compared to here (in terms of north/south and such), so I resolve the conflict by providing my address. We all head down after a night well spent, all well fed. It's actually started to rain outside, but while everyone runs to their cars, I just walk to the one I'm being driven in. It's not raining that har- ok it kinda is but I'm comitting to whistling and walking in the rain. The drive back is a little awkward - I'm being driven by someone quite new to driving apparently - but I make it back safely in the end. This weekend's going to be busy, huh? I do some bloghan work, but I fall to sleepiness pretty quickly.

My first order of business on Saturday is to bloghan and get distracted with 'Balatro.' As such, only two interesting things happened on this day:

1. In the afternoon, a call with the executives of a club I was in back in my home city. People in this club want me to come back in a position of leadership for one of the club's divisions, and this call was just for me to get more info on the role and the opinion of the executives on me being in that role. Of course, I did have an ulterior motive for this whole thing... You see, I've been in this situation before. Last time, I was being offered the role of a "junior" lead of sorts. In both these cases, I already knew I wanted to do it, but I had two reasons for lying and pretending I was unsure. First, I find that if you're presenting yourself as unsure, you get to hear more honest info about roles like this, and more info and more honesty is exactly what I wanted out of both roles. Second, I wanted to do just a little bit of mischief. I "chose" that "junior" lead position by flipping a coin, and I would do exactly the same here. After half an hour of very useful and convincing information and glazing, I turned on my camera, and pulled out the coin. I wrote on two pieces of paper "H" and "T," and told them I was only writing on one paper. Just before I did the flip, the club's president made one more point about how I can share leadership if I want to - ah, the desperation in his voice almost made me break character. I flipped the coin, showed them the side I got (heads), and then the "H" paper. I was going to sign up for it yes, but god forbid I do a little trolling before doing so. Even the person who knew I was going to do this coin flip stuff was scared that it would land on the "don't do it" side. Ah, I guess technically they'll know now that it was rigged from the start, but... I'm ok with that now. Tee-hee! I'm pretty nervous but also excited to do this, so we'll see how it goes! This exec council will be gone by the time I'm there, so I'm a bit owrried about that, but on the bright side that means they won't be able to confront me about what I did to them! Hee hee!
2. Late in the evening, I ended up in another call with my closest friends from my home city. One's birthday was today, and we celebrated it by watching him play a game of 'Mario Party' on his own? He recorded it though, as if we were doing a let's play or something. I mean, I wish he had told me that was what we were going to do tonight when he told me to get on call, instead of making it seem like I personally slighted him. It was a pretty fun night, all things considered, and I think my commentary was pretty great this time! Got to talk about things like boibortion and my knowledge of a game I've never even played, and the banter all around was pretty on point too. Once hte recording was done, since our friend with the power of the Break-Break Fruit was still struggling with all her tech, we ended up playing a good hour of 'Is It Woke?' A blast, as always, with these guys.

I ended Saturday with another little bit of 'Homestuck' (we're finally getting to the good and mysterious stuff... I'm so curious to know about the trolls, about John and that moon around Skaia, whatever is going on with the Vagabond, Medicant, and Renegade), but stayed up way later to do some bloghan. I got so behind, so quickly. Ugh... I'm just going to go to bed.

Finally, Sunday. I had plans. First, bloghan. I wanted to wake up early, but I ended up staying in bed for an hour longer than I wanted to. A small breakfast and a short amount of time dedicated to bloghan (mostly distracted away from it though) later, I got dressed and headed out the door with another freezie in my hand. It was time to go downtown to make good on a promise to go see the aquarium with my compsci friend, before he leaves this area to go back to our mutual home city. The bus ride was uneventful, just more bloghan work, and I tried to do it on the subway too... didn't really work out with so many service drops in the big concrete tunnels I suppose. When I got to the main station we were meeting at, I was a bit lost trying to find the restaurant he was talking about. There are so many couples in this station, and so many tall people too. Very upsetting, very. If I had a compass I would've been able to get to the restaurant faster, but I didn't so I had to stumble around like a buffoon. The restaurant was pretty good tasting - it was a fried chicken place but bougie and expensive (as is everything in this city...), but I was still pleasantly surprised by how good it was. Maybe I'm just easy to please though. During this delicious meal, we kept getting interrupted in our conversation (more on that later) by the waitress, constantly. To make up for it, the meal was extremely filling and way better than I was thinking. I got full nearly right away and barely touched my fries. I fully intended on taking them with me to go, but first, I wanted to clean the sauce from the sweet and spicy chicken sandwich off my hands. The washroom was so weird. It was tiny, the door was nearly blocked by the toilet, there were rooster patterns coating the walls all the way, and the sink was a tiny little square that looked like it was prcelain perfectly impacted by a regulation bowling ball, with brass faucets extending out the walls like they were out of a retro-futurist genre film. Also, the hallway had this weird picture of the Mona Lisa but she's a chicken. SO strange. We got the bill and I forgot to speak up about taking the fries to go, so there goes quite a bit of money in wasted food. Not much time to worry about that though! It was aquarium time! The line seemed busy but it was really quick because the counter was manned by three people! I can't believe that's a rarity these days. I had a membership that I bought in October, so my admission was covered, but it also discounted my compsci friend's admission too! The guy at the counter told me that I could also check one bag for free, and that I should have gotten a physical card for my membership. Once I check the bag and get my card, we have a standard old aquarium time. I love it a lot, because I think aquariums are magical places and that everyone should have the experience of going out with someone (friendwise or datewise) at least once. My compsci friend seemed pretty bored by it all, but I kinda expected that. I'm kind of boring (KIND OF, kind of, not really if you think about it), but the aquarium was probably too packed with kids and "brainless fish" (in his words) for his total enjoyment. I don't really know too much about the things he likes. Scamming people? His girlfriend? Raw granola? What a guy (but this time, in a good way, even if he's tall). It was nice to take some time to hang out with someone who doesn't work with me and go see the aquarium. I know it's a bit childish, but just as I really love birds, I really do love fish too, especially manta rays. They're essentially both anyways, in my eyes. The aquarium is still magical to me, a fantasy where you really get to see another path life has taken in generating creatures. Once we had finished, we really had nowhere to go, so before I got sent on my way, we did a transfer of groceries (he won't need them since he's leaving in a week, but why did he buy so much pasta if he was only going to be here for 4 months??????) I asked if he'd take me to a big mall. I wanted to see what it was like in the big city, and wow! It was massive. I don't think I could comprehend the size of it even if I was looking at it from above. He got himself a drink as I looked around at all the marvels of the modern mall: stores dedicated to such niche target customers, girls a foot taller than me, restaurants with their own massive seating areas in the food court - ah, I have to go back one of these days. Pretty quickly though, he sent me on my way, with a goodbye that would definitely last longer than a month or two. Now, I'm sure you're curious as to what we talked about. And to be honest... I saved it for the (relative) end of this paragraph because we talked about the same things over and over again, just with different flavourings each time. It's not even "the same things" but the same recurring topic: work. Well, ok. We talked more than our current jobs, mostly focusing on our future jobs. My concerns about not being in the career field I want to be in, but also about pay and how I'm going to live if I have to take a pay cut to do what I want to do. About name recognition, about even having the experience to do half the stuff these companies want. About how it might be easier to move across industries after I get a little more experience in the one I'm currently. And finally, about a mutual friend of ours who is stuck in a very dire situation when it comes to finding future work,the same one who had his birthday yesterday. Well, this all made me think about something as I was writing this bloghan, recounting these events. Do I work too much? There's certainly an argument to be made about how I am during school and my actual job, always doing things "extra" because I don't realize a simpler/easier way or because I feel like I need to do more, to surpass expectations always. But what about the things I do in my spare time? A lot of the games I play seem like work to those looking on from outside: 'Papa's Freezeria: Deluxe' had me literally clocking in to do a minimum wage job every night I came home from my actual full-time job. Even 'Balatro' could seem like word. I play so methodically, considering all the math and the best plays for every tiny little decision. My non-video-gaming interests could also seem like work. D&D and DMing for it? Lots of prep work and people skills and group facilitation. Cryptic crosswords? Takes a lot of work to build up a good grid, know the people who will be solving it to make it fair and all, and then having to make the clues is a whole other story. Even bloghan is a whole lotta work. Typing and writing for hours and hours on end... I'm not sure if I work too much. But, as long as it's enjoyable, I think it's alright. My shoulders being unrelaxable is fine. The increasing madness I'm experiencing is fine. How OK I've become with just keeping my future life all work focused and less socially focused is just the natural progression of things. This is normal, I'm sure you can see. Sometimes it feels like I'm about to explode, or at leas ta blood vessel in my neck is. Maybe it's on my forehead now. The worms. The waves. No, not those waves, I mean the ones in the air. THe EM ones. They're listening. Are you? Where am I even going with this? What is happening? Will they need question marks in the future, or will they have solved everything? If everything's been solved, then is there no more work to be done? But then... if there's no work, what do I do? What do I do, in general? Can anyone tell me? Or do I have to find out? Wh-

ANYWAYS... today was a very fun day, and for a guy who is not going to have friends for much longer, I'm not sure how many more of those I'm going to have. At least, when I go outside that is. The train back is quiet (very very nice!), and the bus ride back isn't too bad either, though the amount of groceries I'm lugging around is starting to get quite heavy. I find it hard to believe I've been out for about 6 hours now, but hey! It was a great use of time. My landlord's in the garden as I come back in, and after I roll up my socks and sweep my floor, I spend so much time getting this bloghan out on time. I don't know how I did it, but somehow I brought it back from being so behind to being on time. Of course, that means I had to sacrifice a bunch of other things on my to-do list, but I think I just need to readjust to having freedom from my course work. Next week better be a bright sunny week though... it just makes me work better, you know?

Future plans

Here's the results of last week's plans:

• 21x21 cryptic: OK so the fill is done. The clues? NOPE! I overestimated myself with this one for sure.
• 'Homestuck': failed to do it every day this week, but I did read quite a lot! A win in my book.
• You Watanabe's birthday: Celebrated. Man I just want to fall in love at the aquarium...
• Maki Nishikino's birthday: All I have to say is "It's painful, but would you like to rewind time? No, the present is best (9)"
• Door: no progress
• Aquarium and compsci friend visit: read the Sunday paragraph above.
• Document sleeves: oh yeah I still have to do that huh
• Devious club activites: rad the Saturday numbered list, point number 1.
• Photo editing thing: oh yeah I still have to do that too huh
• Next 'Phoenix Wright' game: oh yeah I still have to do that too too huh

This week, I've got to be better, and I think I can! This is because no one will be inviting me to anything this time, surely, right guys? I want to complete my first 21x21 cryptic ASAP, and you know what? I want to read even more 'Homestuck' this week. I need to do that document sleeves in my shower too. I think this week I will get back to that photo editing thing, and I'll start the next 'Phoenix Wright' game too. I think this is a lot more achievable, because it's a smaller list.

Song of the week

'Mattete Ai no Uta' (https://youtu.be/XD-vjznVNXs) by Aqours is the song of the week. It's a title that translates to 'Song of a Waiting Love,' and like... yeah? I mean, I'm no longer waiting (there's no ticket office at the end of this queue, after all! hee hee), but I did say I like songs for the living. There were a lot of examples of that kind of love I saw this week, some stranger interactions than others. While I have a new peace from no longer needing to wait, this song brings me back to imagining it, at least. It is quite nice, it seems. No, it's not really meant for me, but I have been thinking about this song quite a lot this week, and this is the best I could come up with to connect it to the week itself.

Until next time

Man it's late. I let it get this bad and I didn't even have vital important work to do, just way too much of it. THis time I'll get it all figured out. See you next week for that success story!

- bubbler

Click to return to bloghan