May 11, 2025 - bloghan 46
I got sloppy this week. I enjoyed myself too much, and now I'm behind once again on important things. Well, the week's over now, so I can't exactly change anything. So, here's what I wouldn't change about this week (I would say all of it but uh.... I'll go with most of it instead):
Tier list of the week
This week's tier list: the seven seas! These include the Arctic Ocean, the North and South Atlantic Oceans (separately), the North and South Pacific Oceans (separately), the Indian Ocean, and the Southern Ocean. Here's the tier list:
Ordered tiers, unordered wthin tiers. I'm not really the type of person who loves loves the ocean, you know? But I do really appreciate that they exist. I think I like oceans mostly for what they stand for, which is why I will stand by them, if not in or for them, usually. The Indian Ocean just feels so much less grand than the other ones, and the ones on the extremes of the Earth seem the most "cool" to me. It's hard to explain, but it feels like there's so much more to those colder oceans that we just don't know because it's so cold people don't want to go there as much - I think that's what's so alluring about them. Wow, I would just die if I was a pirate and I heard a siren's song, huh?
Personal updates (achievements, reflections, and antics)
It was nice waking up on time for once, and I felt at least a bit more rested than the morning before. The sky was cloudy sure, but I was feeling pretty good regardless. At work, I saw the results of the renovation to our corner. My desk was a foot shorter, and there were two desks along the other wall. THe small circle been moved but not removed, and the coat rack was now next to my desk instead of the entryway to the corner. Huh... ok. I got to work putting stuff back on my desk, taking the things I left on the gregarious' desk (she was WFH today, so I was fine with just snatching them up) and showing my co-DM what had changed in the corner. The windows on Steva nad my Japanese coworker's side was completely frosted, so I guess no more watching the sunset from the office anymore. That's too bad. Once I figured out what was going on with my monitors not working (apparently, their order on the desk mattered??), I sat down and got to work. My work rival walked in midway through my process, and he seemed pretty disappointed about how the renovations left things. Also, one of the new desks is placed closed enough to my work rival's so that he will constantly be bumping into the eventual person who will sit there. As I settled into things, my work rival brought some diced watermelon he got from my predecessor, and as we ate we talked about how the government works and baout the rivalry my home city has with another city. My predecessor eventually joined us and we all talked some more, but evnetually he headed off. I read some more of the 'One Piece' arc of Wano, and eventually people from the crossword cubicle came to visit. My co-DM and I talked quite a bit more at this point, and she recommended a park in the downtown area for me to visit since the cherry blossoms are apparently in full bloom there. Hmmm, maybe I will! We are all waiting for my work rival to finish some call before go to lunch, and he tells us to wait 5 minutes. 15 minutes later, he just ends the call early and we all head down. My conversation is primarily with my equivalen,t talking about 'Ace Attorney' and Freudian slips, but I also watch as everyone else plays three rounds of 'President.' I don't really pay attention to the first round, in the second round I point out a straight flush in the cable guy's hand to him (eventually he gets second), and I do the same in the third round for my equivalent (and he got third). These matches were probably the most I've been entertained by watching the group play this game, especially with the wildness of them using 3 mixed decks to play. Upon going back up, it was a whole lot more conversation with my predecessor and my work rival, this time about work . At some points my work rival would leave, and at others my predecessor would, but I was focused mostly on comparing a spreadsheet that my manager edited with the version I had, trying to figure out what his change was. My work rvial also tried to work on something for Steve, but he gave up on it pretty quickly, going off to chat in the crossword cubicle multiple times. Me? I spent a lot of time reading on my phone, looking at course stuff, or talking to my predecessor about school and work in lots of different places. Some techs came by to put monitors and cabling on the new desks, and strangely they only get one. I guess the new people can request a new monitor later? I was still trying to figure out my task (the one with the A, B, C, and D files), but it looks like my manager had solved the issues between the A and B files, so I just needed to find out why there were now issues in the overall coversion from B files to D files. This kept me busy until the end of the work day, with one little meeting with my mentor to show him some Absconder techniques he knew he needed but didn't know the name of. Near the very end of the work day was where I spent a little bit of time working on bloghan, but... well, I ended up spending a lot more time on fooling around looking for excuses not to do bloghan while on my phone. I left pretty soon after that, and although the sky looked like it was going to rain, thankfully it didn't! What was upsetting to see though was all the new growth on the trees. The new leaves, the flowers, the return of the green. It all served as a reminder that my time in this city was almost up. I don't want to leave yet. I don't want to give up all this freedom yet. When I got home I greeted my landlord while she was gardening and talked to my dad about credit card stuff. I spent a good bit of time cleaning and eating and catching up on bloghan, but I did all of that before midnight. I was getting sleepy though, nearly falling asleep at my desk. A thought occured to me as I was finalizing the bloghan entry for this day - what if I went to bed before midnight? At first, I was very against the idea. I still had a bunch of notes to take! How could I even think of doing it. But... I was feeling very tired. And tomorrow, I would not feel very tired at all if I just went to bed early. I migth get more done, and more done well the longer I keep that habit up. Hmmm, alright then. Let's try it! And I did hold myself to it too! At first it felt a little strange, preparing to go to bed so early, but I realized something: if I get to work earlier, then I can leave earlier too, allowing me to have more time in the evening to work on my own things! In hindsight, this is what I should've been doing all these months, but let's try it before committing to it. I set my alarm to half an hour earlier in the morning, and went to bed 2 hours before I normally do. I know it'll make some difference, but I do wonder just how much it will?
Yeah ok it made a huge difference! I felt so refreshed and ready to face the day, even if it looked like it was about to rain. I made the earlier buses and got to my desk early, working a little bit on the various tasks I had been given - the A,B,C,D file thing, dealing with what I heard back concerning that waiver issue (they just told me to do what I did the very first time, so I guess I'll try it again?), all that. There was also an email from my manager asking me to set up stuff for the new project, which involved me having to fill out some form to request storage space for it or whatever. Oh boy... My Japanese coworker and Steve saw me a couple times, wondering why I came in so early, but I kinda just shrugged it off as "just felt like it." After around two hours, Steve told me there was some sort of grand team meeting taking place soon, but I wasn't sure if I was meant to go. We got up to go ask the compatriot but ran into my predecessor, who came to let me know that we should probably go. Oh. Well, alright then, let's go! It was a meeting led by the VP, and it was about 10 minutes of him having audio issues and 50 minutes of him detailing stuff about how our direct competitors are doing and how our team will be evolving in the next few years. I was pretty uninterested at first, but I got more invested when he talked about what our team would be adding to our future projects. Honestly, it all sounded like really cool stuff! Too bad I probably won't be around for it... There was some pizza afterwards and I grabbed a few slices, then headed upstairs to eat. I ate at my desk while the rest of the temps went ot eat in a break room, but at least my predecessor joined me. At one point I got up to grab a root beer form the break room, then back to my desk to enjoy the now blue sky and the sun, and continue my work. I had achieved a new-ish breakthrough in figuring out the A B C D file issue, which I did by finally referencing the D files against the C file. This led me to some tool created by the director, which did things with the A and B files to edit the C files. My manager had reported there was something missing from a D file, and I found today it was also missing from the C file. THis tool that the director made was reponsible for adding certain lines to the C file - specifically, some of those were missing. It was at this point that I suddenly lost all interest in studying this issue further, and ended up reading 'One Piece' for about 2-3 hours, reading up to the end of the second act of the 'Wano' arc. Things are really heating up, but unfortunately so too is the tragedy that Oda masterfully layers into the peaceful scenery. I mean, I guess that's just the whole point of this arc. At the end of the day, I get back to working a bit, with Steve back in the corner, and me and my predecessor trolling my work rival as much as possible. As conversation lulls, my predecessor leaves, but soon enough the compatriot and the greagrious arrive to ask my work rival about some sort of bubble tea plans. He gets all defensive and meandering about the topic, and succesfully distracts with talk of "do you think you would look good as the opposite gender" (my answer: the power of estrogen is amazing and can only do good things to a man), and "would you date a genderbent version of yourself" (my answer: no, but we'd be good friends), the finally the engagement ring question again. Then, the hour digit ticked over on all our digital clocks (in our laptops), and my work rival slunk out. Ahhhh, that's why he avoided their question: he was stalling so that he could just use his clock out time as an excuse. Clever, clever. It also made the gregarious and the compatriot a bit mad, but they got over it quick since this is just the regular behaviour we've all come to expect from my work rival. Since I had come in early, I was set to leave in the next 15 minutes, but my manager replied to amessage I sent him earlier about some of the work I did this morning. His message was a bit hard to parse though, so as he saw me typing then retyping my message, he ended up just asking me to come downstairs to a meeting room. Oh. OK. When I got there, I saw that he was in a meeting that was just finishing up: my manager, the not-manager, someone I hadn't met before, and another manager on my team that I don't interact with much (but doesn't like me). The first half of the meeting was just me, the not-manager, and my manager talking about the form and helping me finish it all up and submit it. There were some fields (that I didn't know how to fill in) which I fileed with little jokes that I forgot to erase (for something to do with overall project lead I put my name as a joke), but neither of them noticed. I think they both saw and chose not to say anything... yikes. They were surprised about some of the new features of this form, including a comment field that they told me to just write "OK" in, but other than that I got the go ahead to just submit it. After this the not-manager left, so the meeting ended up being me updating my manager on two of the things I was working on, and him giving a little bit of feedback on how those were going, and some further instructions on where to go next. He ended up keeping me another 30 minutes after the time I was supposed to leave, but I didn't mind it too much since it lined up better with my buses anyways. I mixed in a little walking with my bus rides back, and when I got home I had an ice cream sandwich before locking in and focusing on all the writing that needed to be done. I quickly caught up bloghan, took a long time to write a tiny email to the course instructor, then focused on writing notes for another textbook chapter. With only a little bit of gaming in between. Only a little, I promise..... if you count two hours as a little... I have got to get my act together.
A sunny blue sky greeted me in the morning on Wednesday, and because it was just so nice outside I didn't mind my first bus being 15 minutes late at all. I did mind that my transit pass wasn't working at all, so I had to pay a higher fee on my credit card instead. Ah, but that feeling vanished pretty quickly as I basked in the sun through the windows. At work, I asked a clarifying question to the person who was dealing with my support ticket regarding the whole waiver thing and got an immediate answer (his answer to my question was no, which is unfortunate: it would save us a file and a bit of complexity). Well, that's that! I started up a new seires of tests just to make sure the given waiver solution worked, and turned back to my monitors to figure out just what I should do next. I clicked through the different tasks I had open, doing so as some people visited me to talk about how things were going, but by complete accident I discovered something: the thing I was waiting for the not-manager to submit was submitted? When did he do that?? I told him to tell me when he did it!!!! AAAAAH. Well now I've got to hurry and get all my stuff in! I've been waiting for this for a MONTH. I started checking all my changes from a month ago, making sure they were all OK and working, but before I could set them off to run, it was time for lunch. Only a few of us ate together today, just myself, my work rival, the cable guy, Steve, and the compatriot, but we ended up eating together for a good while. This was because we played a bunch of poker, using a red-backed deck of cards as the chips, and the blue-backed ones as the playing cards. We didn't really play by proper side pot rules or hand-tying rules, but it was so much fun! Steve won quite a lot by never bluffing but psyching everyone else into thinking he was bluffing, while the compatriot typically won stuff by randomly going all in at weird moments. My work rival knew a lot more about the game than I did, but ended up losing everything to contesting Two Pairs where his second pair was higher. I was dealer the whole time, and even I had quite a lot of fun theorizing about what kinds of hole cards everyone had based on their reaction to the flop, turn, and river. During our little lunch break all our managers passed through this break room at one point or another, so I think our reputation has been reduced even more from all that. Ah well, what can you do? Back at my desk, I focus on running the stuff related to the not-manager's change to prepare for submission, then reviewing the tests of the waivers that I did: they all passed, so I can go ahead and submit! I ship that off and go ahead again with the stuff for my not-manager, as my work rival starts up some discourse with the gregarious and Steve about hot yoga, nail polish, and "if you would date a genderbent version of yourself" once again. Eugh. Later on in the day I checked back on my submission of the waiver thing but it turned out that it was stuck... weird. I watched it for a good while more, and it was not moving at all. Not failing, not glitched, just... stuck. I'm not really sure what to do, but I know the check that it is stalling on was something my predecessor worked on, so go to him. Right away he asks me if I have the native spreadsheet software open. What? Well, I do, but for something completely unrelated in another project... he tells me that doesn't matter, and that I can't do any submissions if I have any spreadsheets open on my device because of how the checks work with the software. What???? Apparently people on my team have tried to improve the submission process and that check in it specifically, but always hit a wall with how it interacts with our spreadsheet software of all things. So weird... and as soon as I close it, it all goes through. Always something new with this team. I love it! I hope it never changes. I went to the crossword cubicle to tell my work rival about this new development, but it seems like I caught him while he was engaged in some sort of discourse, which he attempted to rope me into. It was all about his whole "uniformed people shouldn't vote" thing that he KEEPS COMING BACK TO, asking me questions about what I think about the whole situation. I manage to get him distracted so I don't have to answer, but my equivalent rounds the corner demanding to know my answer so that he can denounce my work rival's point. For the next half-hour, I'm on my laptop writing documentation for my Absconder stuff as my work rival debates for his life that people should have to watch a 30 minute video on every political platform before being allowed to vote, while my co-DM and my equivalent argued and told him he was wrong. I chimed in occasionally whenever there was a shot I could take at my work rival, but also sometimes to make points that I thought were interesting, contentious, and would just make the argument spiral out of control. Meanwhile, I had my compatriot coach me in documentation stuff since he's pretty good at it, and we also used our shared region to mess with the debaters even more. it was quite entertaining to watch them go at it, though I think the volume of the arguers got quite a bit more loud than they knew, since when we all got up the VP asked us which one of us was running in the next election, since they were "campaigning from across the floor." I think that it's fine for uninfromed voters to vote, because I don't really think with today's infromation age anyone is perfectly uninformed about politics and issues in the country and what the most popular parties stand for, but I don't think my work rival liked my answer of "I'd rather people vote with their hearts than not at all." Can't win them all, I guess. Now I mentioned that we all got up, and we were heading to the new temp employee space where our replacements would be until they took over our desks. We had been asked to decorate their whiteboard, but we were asked to removed all the work-focused stuff that we had put on previously because apparently that's not the first thing we want them to see when they walk in to their new job? What? I would view that as very helpful and necessary information that would jumpstart my work but... ok? Over the next hour I work more on my documentation and watch as the others add things to the board: my co-DM does a nice little calligraphical welcome message, my work rival drew Charlie Brown saying "Welcome newcomers, I love you," the compatriot put up a programming pun, and my equivalent put another work focused thing again. I eventually ended up putting one of those MS paint reaction drawings (one of the ones with a very wide grin and cat ears), and the compatriot made a reference to 'Ai♡Scream!' by AiScReam. Various full time employees came in to see what we were doing (or pass by being annoyed by our immaturity). To be fair, we were being a little immature with it. Once my co-DM finished her fancy calligraphy, she put a wohle bunch of 'Among Us' crewmates on the board, and I opened a marker while standing behind my work rival, scaring him into thinking I would stab him with it or something. I was just being a little silly in the workplace that's all! Eventually though, we all had enough. I'm pretty sure that we're going to be asked to remove everything we drew (except my co-DMs welcome message), but now's not the time for that! Now, it's time for D&D, and while my Japanese coworker isn't here, we finally have more than 50% of the players, so we can actually advance the main story! I've been waiting for this for a month! Overall though, it's kind of a boring session. THe tiredness of staying up so late last night was finally catching up to me, and most of this session was planned by my co-DM, who really seems like she doesn't want to be there? There's a couple moments where I offer to let her do some session leading and she tries to turn it down as much as possible, but she relents near the end and begins having fun then. Now I really feel like I've probably taken the game over too much, but I think that will be resolved quite nicely by us moving out of sidequest territory and me being busy enough with my course to not have much time leftover to do much session planning. Hopefully. I don't really know, but I've got to try. My co-DM has to leave a bit early, but we only continue for about 15 minutes before the rest of use up and leave too. My journey home involves a single bus (and my bus pass works now!?), then a nice long walk in the sunset until I reach my place. I really do love living the life (or should I say "loving the live" !?) here, just walking along the highway giving way to parks and woody creeks, then spending time in a place all my own. When I got home I worked on bloghan and my course like I probably will be for the forseeable future, but this time, not as much gaming! So you'd think that I went to bed earlier than yesterday, right?
No. Not at all.
The first thing I had to deal with at work on the cloudy morning of Thursday was a message from my manager, asking about the form I submitted on Tuesday. It was only a request for storage space for the new projecty, but apparently there was a bunch of information missing from my request. My manager saw how I was typing and retyping messages to him, so he eventually just got me to come over to his desk. He started soft-berating me about how I must've missed half of the entries on the form as he showed me an empty version of the form open on his monitor. Well, there were a bunch of extra fields on that form that were NOT there when I did it. I pulled up the form myself and began filling it out in front of him, and we discovered that if you fill out the username field first (which is the first field at the top of the form), the website doesn't show you helf of the stuff you need to fill out. My manager was very confused by this whole process and kind of ignored it and went back around to me missing it in some way, but whatever, I don't mind too much. I was instructed to go ahead and refill out the form, and once back at my desk that's what I did. The new fields weren't anything too difficult but there were a couple that both myself nad my manager didn't know how to fill out, but apparently the not-manager would? Once I sent the question to him, it reminded me of the submissions that I still needed to do for all my various Absconder things. Conveniently, it was around this time that the not-manager also asked me to run something I hadn't in a while. This was related to my Absconder work, and I previously had it running every night. I stopped that about a month ago as I waited for the not-manager to submit an update so that I could submit my own updates to relevant Absconder things. Well, I guess now is the time to get all those sorts of things submitted. I spent a good amount of time doing that, but just as I was about to submit my work rival decided it was time for lunch, and he chose to do it in the corner today. The lunch rooms were being used or already occupied I guess. The cable guy and the compatriot and Steve joined us, and at first we were just sitting at our desks and eating with our chairs facing each other, but my work rival really wanted to play cards. Well, we do have a small circular table... wait, a circular table? That's perfect for poker! We set it up exactly like yesterday, but this time we did it with proper side pot rules. We played so many rounds of poker, and usually it was the compatriot or my work rival winning, though Steve had his mooments occasionally. People would come in to visit us ocassionally: IT guys, someone above a manager position, the gregarious and my co-DM (she told us we were doing re-raising rules wrong and eventually joined us in the last few hands), even my predecessor and my equivalent. They were either somewhat surprised we were just straight up playing poker on the job or didn't say anything about it. What we must look like, huh... Once we had all finished lunch and my work rival was cleaned out for the last time, I attempted to get right back into work. My predecessor walked in at just the right moment to ask if I was going to the team meeting for the new project. OH yeah, that is today. Well, I guess I've got to go, right? It was the most boring of that meeting series by far, as absolutely none of it was relevant to me, and there was nothing really contentious going on. I guess there was one moment where the director's director was talking to a manager about some issue and said "let's take this offline and discuss later," only for that manager to completely ignore him and continue talking and arguing about that topic for the rest of the meetingm but honestly? Yeah I just checked out mentally and worked on my own stuff. By now I had finished the Absconder updates for the not-manager, and now was moving on to submitting other Absconder things that were "brand new" (as in this was the first time they were being made available to the team at large). I had to make a little bit of documentation for them though, which was what I was mostly doing during that meeting. After that long hour, I stepped out with my predecessor, but that one manager on my team who I think doesn't like me very much was just in front of us, also walking out of that meeting. I wasn't really expecting anything to happen, but as we passed by that former meeting room turned "room with 7 desks crammed in it for the new temps" that manager stopped and looked at us. There were people from IT putting in monitors and such in the room, so I thought he was just going to ask us about what was going on. Then he looked at us with a little smile and said "this is our company's new concentration camp, right?" I was utterly flabbergasted. I gave a forced laugh out of politeness. Did he really just say that??? He goes on to talk about how he was expecting them to add a second floor to the room next year, then in future years, more stacks of temps on temps until the whole thing collapses. It only gets more crazy when another manager on my team (the one who kept pushing that issue with the director's director in the meeting I just left) and another person ABOVE the manager position (not the director) pass by us, and this manager doubles down on the concentration camp joke. The other manager just laughs, but the one above the manager position gave the same polite laugh of complete disbelief. Those 3 people keep on going, by myself and my predecessor go into the break room to process what was just said. WOW. What the actual- you know what, I'm just going to- I'm just going to put it out of my mind. Back to work it is then! I wander around the office a little bit whild doing my work, plopping myself down in different cubicles as I work: at one point I end up in the crossword cubicle (the gregarious talked about how some people seem all dark and mysterious but are actually into quite cute things, then looked at me - what did she mean by that?), or my equivalent's cubicle, even trying out the new temp room, but I do get everything I neeed to get prepared, prepared! When I return to the corner I prepare to do some last preparations before submitting what I've written, but someone walks into the corner: oh, just my predecessor. Well ok, I'll let him and the work rival talk money stuff or whatever. Only a couple minutes later though, the admin for our floor (person who essentially coordinates things on the floor: she doesn't do technical work like I do or my manager does, but stuff like desk arrangements, handling catering stuff, booking rooms and meeting times for viewings of big company-wide meetings and such) comes in. She first talks to us about how we feel about the recent changes to our corners, what with our desks getting smaller and two more people being seated here, and our conversation quickly turns to other changes: there used to be a house tree in our corner that's since been removed to who knows where, and there's a bit of wiggle room with our desks that could possibly prevent my work rival from constantly bumping into the person sitting at the newest desk. Then, she goes into talking about the new temps joining us next week. Now for context on what I'm about to say, in the office we have pictures next to everyone's name and desk number spread all around the office close to the locations of their desks. For example, on the path to the corner area of our floor, you can find a sign with my work rival's, Steve's, my Japanese coworker's, and my face. Each face is labelled with our desk number. This is no different than for the new temp room, with 7 faces for 7 desk numbers. Three of the new temps are girls and four are boys. Now our floor admin is the one responsible for printing those out and maintaining their accuracy, and she shares the following: as she printed them out she noticed there were a couple girls joining the team, and (she starts looking right at my work rival at this point in her story) "one of them is really pretty!" My work rival, currently in a situationship, plays it off with "oh yeah, well I'm not really sure which one that is," to which the floor admin says "oh come here let me show you!!!" She's super excited about this, and at first I thought it was because it means having more women in the office? I guess there's more than 50% men here, after all... But later my co-DM visits us in the corner and engages in more conversation with the floor admin, who then reveals to my co-DM that she's "so excited to look at all the pretty ladies!!" Huh... doesn't this person have a husband and kids??? Eventually, they both leave, with the floor admin teling me to contact another person about replacing that small circle table with the tree if I miss it so much. While I do miss the tree, I really actually quite like that circle table. It's just so round, and it's perfectly sized! Not too big that it takes too much space and bumps into us, but not too small that it's unreasonable to have more than 3 people using it. To prove my point, my predecessor and I bring the table to the very center of the corner, then work on our laptops at that table. My work rival joins, then eventually the compatriot, then my co-DM and the gregarious too, all working around this laptop. They all agree that it feels nice to work collaboratively like this, and it also facilitates group conversation way more too! Uh, maybe that last point isn't great though, because when I go to submit my new Absconder stuff I forget one step, causing it to delete all the ABsconder stuff I spent the day preparing and also crashing my computer. Oh. Of course. I think what also enhanced this feeling was the sun: the sky had become completely and vibrantly blue by now, and even though my work rival was complaining of the heat with having 6 people in this corner (GET OVER YOURSELF ALREADY!), I was greatly enjoying this last little section of my work day. Just having the group of people I (mostly) enjoyed talking to, sitting around this tiny little table, doing some work and not doing some work too. It was real nice. Those times are going to change soon, and overall in my life I soon won't have such a thing in the first place - but, now is not the time for thinking that sort of thing. Eventually a bunch of us left the office together a little early, because my work rival wanted to get bubble tea. I'm not one for bubble tea, but I am one to walk outside in the sunshine on the way to the bus station, so I joined them on their way. MY work rival and the compatriot walked up quite ahead and they were very animated in their conversation, whatever it was. I stuck closer to my co-DM and the gregarious as we just talked about random things. Ishared about the baby cardinals I saw earlier this week, and when I was telling the gregarious about the dimorphism I noticed in them she said something along the lines of "the males have to dress up pretty to attract the females" as she glanced back to look at me - what did she mean by that?? They all go to get their bubble tea, and I to the bus stop. I do have to walk half of the journey back to my place but I don't mind doing so even if I'm wearing my winter jacket. When home I do the standard Thursday call with my friends from my home city, Bluehair and Greyhair. At first it's just Bluehair and myself, even though Greyhair said she would be here. As I'm sharing stories and talking about how I need to become more normal with Bluehair, I text Greyhair to see if she's ok. She joins the call right away, apologizing for falling asleep and missing the start of the call. Some things never change. We played through the next 'Jeopardy' board that I prepared, with Greyhair's ability to break electronics (what did I call it? the Break-Break Fruit I think?) appearing at full force. Her mic would send her to the realm in between constantly, glitching out her voice as if she was actively being sent to the Void, and eventually her laptop just bricked entirely so she had to join from this old tablet. The board was pretty fun, and I'd like to think it's my most balanced yet, but it's also the one that had the most amount of feedback too. I think it was the most amount of feedback I got on a single board though, so I'm pretty excited to run it next week with all the new people. After the call ended, I made my dinner and wrote a little bloghan, but I was feeling pretty tired from this week overall. I really wanted to do some of my coursework, but it was getting late. Although... that didn't stop me from playing 'Balatro.' It should have. I need to stop. Once I hit a wall I can, I think...
Unfortunately on Friday I wasn't all that much more productive. I mean sure, I spent the workday rewriting everything that got deleted yesterday (it was all supposed to go to some sort of recovery space, but when the files got sent there they got wiped), and dealing with messages from my manager concerning those very files, as well as figuring out why my stuff for the not-manager wasn't working- but all in all, I'm surprised that I was doing work on my WFH day when I could have been working on, I don't know, bloghan or my course? Once work was over and various things submitted, I had a perfect chance to do that sorry if work. But what do you think? Do you think I did it? NOPE! More 'Balatro' stood in my way. Or I guess I stood in my own way? I did another three stakes of the green deck but thankfully I hit a wall at purple stake, so I could continue working... way after midnight. I stayed up late but again, I was feeling that feeling of unmotivation. It wasn't so bad on Saturday though! I woke up early so that I could do some bloghan catchup at the same time as some chores, but soon enough I realize I've only left myself 15 minutes to get to the bus station - today was the day I chose to go see the cherry blossoms at that one park downtown! I rush around to get changed and sunscreened up, but in between all my "getting ready to leave" tasks I realize I've left a full load of laundry in the washing machine, so I have to rush around to get hangers to dry them all. As I leave my place I run (only the amount that I need to of course), under a perfectly cloudless sky. It's also quite hot today, but at least there's a small breeze. A bus ride and two short subway rides later, I make it to the station closest to the park, in just about an hour. At first I walk the wrong way heading out of the station, but once I course correct and make it closer to the park - wow! It's SO BIG. But... where's the cherry blossoms? Also, I thought there were going to be gardens, and a view of a lake or something. I walk along the sidewalk around the park's edge, following the initial crowd of people. This works out for a bit, but there's so many little paths and other things that this crowd dissipates a lot more. I eventually choose a couple to follow (they gave off the vibes of "we're heading to the cherry blossoms"), and once they came into view, I took a long meandering path to them. This park was gorgeous. Most of the cherry blossoms were gone, but some trees still had them in full, and they were so wonderful to see. I think I really underestimated how pretty a tree could look when it was adorned in all pink flowers that were delicate and tiny and constantly shedding. I don't think I have the skills as a writer to really portray how I felt about them. Glad I got to see it, sad that they would soon be gone, but something more than bittersweet. Some other forme of bittersweet, one hidden behind the word bittersweet that echoes more joy and melancholy than "bittersweet" ever could. I walked along the lake as well, trying to spot all the different birds I could. Sure there were geese and a ton of American robins, but I was very pleasantly surprised to see my favourite species of bird present, the red-winged blackbird! There were also some wrens, sparrows, and cardinals too, which were very nice to observe. Once I had gotten my fill of the cherry blossoms, I took a very long meander throughout the park. I know I said that these sort of things wouldn't really affect me but... man, there were so many couples out. Just straight up necking on picnic blankets laid out in a bunch of places too. But... I don't know. For the first time in my life, I think I'm in a spot where I can say I don't need that to be happy. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, I'm walking around a public park in a zigzag pattern in the afternoon all alone: and I'm happy. Sure, I'm also extremely stressed right now, what with me being behind on bloghan and also where I want to be with my course, but to be honest? I don't think I would enjoy my life much more with a special someone in it. I've got this idea in my head about what such a life would look like, and it does seem appealing, yes, but is it realistic? The imaginings of a relationship surely don't reflect what a real relationship looks like. What I see of the relationships that my friends are in don't actually reflect the full nature of what that relationship is like. There's a public face and a private face, and having never seen the private face and only the public face clearly means that I have a warped perspective of what both faces look like. I've said this multiple times, but I really do seem more fit to be alone. But it's no longer a bad thing for me, something that I despise about myself. It's become a thing that I just recognized about myself, something I was just OK with, and now it's further evolving into something I embrace. It's clear to me, at least. I'm surprised by how quickly I'm becoming more and more receptive to this idea, and to embodying it more and more, but... I don't really know how to explain it. It's not a form of aromanticism or asexuality, since they still seem like appealing things to me and I do have preferences in those categories, even if it really doesn't matter what those preferences are given who I am, but I guess it's just... it's hard to explain. Maybe it's comparable to a friend I had in high school. He was single but I distinctly remember him saying he could get a girlfriend whenever he wanted, he just didn't want one right now. Right now, I'm not looking for a relationship. Instead, I'm really just preferring being as alone as possible. And unlike my high school friend, I am incapable of changing my status from single to something else. But now, I no longer care that I can't do that. I care more that I enjoy staying all alone, and only recently have I done that, moved towards that. So in this walk in the park, where I'm thinking about things like how cherry blossoms are a recurring symbol in the original 'Love Live!' and about how much I love the red-winged blackbird and all these other silly thoughts in my head: why, if I had someone with me here to talk about it with, I'm sure they would just grow tired of that conversation, and eventually, me. But as I am right now? That's probably the closest to my ideal state of being I can achieve. All this thinking, all this walking, all this taking in the constructed water fixtures and butterfly gardens (with accompanying butterflies) has made me real hungry, but I'm not sure what to get. Then I think to a chain restaurant I used to work at for a very long time, and set my mind on that. I haven't eaten from that restaurant in almost a year, trying to resist, but I finally broke the streak. After a short walk and an even shorter bus ride deeper into the city, I walked in: looks pretty similar to the location I worked at. And it tasted exactly the same too. THis is probably the only burger restaurant that I will enjoy, simply because of construction and nostalgia. The drink serving style and the fries and the sauce I got with it all, all the same as well. I felt like Anton Ego tasting the ratatouille and being sent back to his past in 'Ratatouille.' The restaurant even had a customer demand to see the manager after harassing the employees, and a washroom that smelled absolutley rancid and was barely clean. They really got me in the nostalgia department, didn't they? I spent quite a lot of time at my window seat just watching the city go by, enjoying my meal. I will not be back to this restaurant for a good while, but I can't lie that I have my favourite items from it which are always a special treat. You could probably use it to tame me, like that one girl who works with abused dogs and used the behavioural training skills she learned to train some guy she was dating. I think. Who knows? After some quick shopping at a dollar store for some toothpaste and shampoo, I started to make my way back. A nice walk with loud whistling in the downtown, then a series of subway trains, then another bus and a long walk back to my place. THe sun was starting to be a little more effective, the amount of walking was starting to make me want to take things slow, but you know what? I don't regret a single second I spent out today. What a fun day, an ejoyable day, an enlightening day! Once I got home I had a quick talk with my landlord about new tenants living upstairs and needing one of my chairs (fine, I guess...), then had a nice long shower to wash away all the sweat I'd built up in the course of the day. I returned to what I started the day off with afterwards: bloghan catchup, then taking time to do another set of notes for my course. All the same, tomorrow's going to be a busy day...
It was a struggle to wake up the next morning, probably because of the two long 'Balatro' runs I ended up doing last night. I tried to do that thing where you put your phone far away from your desk so that you have to get up to turn off the alarm, but I chose to get up, turn it off, set a 30 minute timer, then go back to sleep, twice. Once I got up and ate some breakfast, the first part of my day was spent playing some games as I waited for my grocery delivery. I didn't feel like doing much of the more important things I had to do with my day until this timed obligation was done. My instructions were to call me but the dirver never did, so I when she texted "I can't find you" I headed out to collect it all myself. Once all the groceries were put away, NOW I could start my day. First order of business: go out and get a haircut. The sunny walk to the place was not as warm as yesterday, a very good thing considering the amount of sweat I had collected yesterday. I only had to wait a little bit once I arrived at the place, and the haircut proceeded normally for the most part. There was a dog just roaming around which made me very nervous, and at the very end I was asked if I was a student? Does that matter for a haircut?? I walked home right after, made a bloody mess in my bathroom (I shaved my face), then got to work on a whole lot of other stuff. There were way too many dishes to wash, and way too much dust on the floor to sweep. There were some socks to fold, and some cinnamon candies to put in a Tylenol bottle. There was 'Balatro' to be played (WHY DO I DO THIS TO MYSELF???) and notes to take, and quizzes to do (with one very obvious error in the answer key because of course! of course!). I spent a good while also making another large batch of chili, then eating a giant bowl of the stuff, ending off with publishing this bloghan. Of the things I needed to do today, I only missed on doing that email assignment in full and mopping my bathroom. I guess those can wait for next week? Man oh man, things are about to get so much worse... How does it feel like I've done so much work, yet so little at the same time??
Future plans
Here's the results of last week's plans:
- As much of the course as I can do: oh. oh no. I have failed this, spectacularly. Well, at least I did the notes and quizzes! Oh I am so screwed this week.
- Document sleeves thing: I have no document sleeves in my shower and I must scream.
In all honesty, it's actually looking really bad for me this week. The weekend will feel super free, but... I really don't know what I'm going to do. I might have to cancel some plans to meet deadlines I could've met weeks ago. The priority is perfecting the email assignment as much as possible, then doing another set of notes form 3 chapters and doing their quizzes. I migth honestly do the note taking at work during down time. Has it really gotten that bad!? On the weekend, I'll mop my bathroom, and I think that will finally give me the opportunity to put the document sleeves idea into action. It HAS to.
Song of the week
'Work It Out' (https://youtu.be/1Z-p1xeq7ao) from 'Sonic R' is the song of the week. Things have just started to get busy, and now, more than any other time this past year, I really need to get it together! This song is all about working with others to get to the resultant world you want, something which I'm going to have to do pretty soon given the upcoming group work. Also though, I think this song's probably pretty relevant to the course I'm doing too, which is all about professional communication. Like you know, having to talk with people you don't really know to build the world, to resolve conflict... ah, I don't really know where I'm going with this. I like this song a lot, and it's nice to listen to this entire game's OST on sunny weekends! So, why not share it?
Until next time
I know I'll survive next week, if just barely, if just barely. I know I'll have fun next weekend, lots of it for sure. But before then? From Monday to Thursday? Oh that's going to be very frantic. You're telling me I need to write the most stressful email I'll never send and that I've ever written, in 4 days!?? Well then... what's that thing I've caught myself saying lately? "I've made stricter deadlines on harder things?" Fine. I'll do it.
- bubbler