August 10, 2025 - bloghan 59

This week was half blank and half not blank. A half-week, in a sense. I mean, I did stuff sometimes, but it didn't always feel like it. I mean, it's good to take breaks. It's good to not take breaks. It's not great to be wishy-washy though, or so I hear. Here's how this wishy-washy week went:

Tier list of the week

This week's tier list: percussion instruments. Here's the tier list:

Ordered tiers, unordered wthin tiers. Honestly, it's hard to go wrong with percussion. In the S-tier we've got classic that don't actually get overrated or overhyped and allow for quite a lot of skill expression (drum kit, tambourine, etc.), as well as fun little one-tricks that are just wacky (the clapper, vibraslap, etc.). Down in A-tier, we've got instruments that are just as good as the S-tier but just feel sort of limited. Like yeah, drumsticks are great and all, but waht can you really do with them alone? That's the trend down in B-tier as well, where you get instruments which really only do a couple of things compared to the ones above. They still sound great and when they fit in a song they just fit so WELL! Lower down though we see the rote stuff like the kick drum or the obligatory gong that's just sitting there taking up space until it can come in every 64 bars or something. And in D-tier? Well, it's just so... meh. That thing feels like it should do more, but it just doesn't in my opinion.

Personal updates (achievements, reflections, and antics)

I'm not kidding when I say Monday was filled with absolutely nothing. I woke up early, and made my breakfast of bacon and eggs, not messing up the "basted" part this time. Picked up my grocery order with biryani stuff in it. Changed my ringtone for Grey-haired. After a long doomscroll session, I wrote a whole ton of bloghan, doing half of one week in just one day (considering all the effort I put into it this day, not just the "now"), my fastest pace yet. My fingers, specifically my thumbs started to hurt a lot from the speed and duration I was typing with and for. Stayed up late in the morning to write more, but as soon as I decided to take a break to play something, when I got back to writing, neocities's servers had gone down for some reason. I waited it out with other games, and once I finished that half of the bloghan, I went to bed 4 hours after midnight, ready to do it all again tomorrow. But like, with work added to it. And "from home." Slot "from home" into it too. My point is that I'm not going to be going into work physically tomorrow because I stayed up WAY too late.

I somehow slept in a little bit on Tuesday (can you imagine why? I sure can't), and started work a little late. That meant that breakfast would be cooked a little later on tooo. After sending the reminder message to the IT engineer like he asked me to last week and tlaking to my predecessor about why I wasn't in the office today (90% of the reason was the bloghan catchup work I really wanted to do today, 10% was not feeling all that great from Sunday's veal sandwich, I only told him the 10% though), I did that bloghan catchup while also being online on my laptop. And don't worry, I wasn't doing nothing but shaking my mouse; I had things running in the background related to the reimport process. Around noon or so I made my breakfast and started to have network issues with my work laptop, and for a good chunk of the day I couldn't actually see what was going on with those reimport processes. The network was working just fine for my predecessor, so I assumed it to be a minor glitch that only I was affected by and moved on. Soon enough though, I ended falling a distraction hole- but not one you might expect. Normally my distractions are YouTube videos or games, but today it was all about that cash money: applying for awards and loans for this upcoming year. First were a set of awards that needed my permanent and current address. I wasn't sure what to put for the former because it specifically noted it's where I lived in the past 12 months, so I only put my address of this city. I realized later from consulting the compatriot that that was a big mistake. Well, that's ok, I don't really need that award, it's just nice to have some extra money to pay for the expensive things in life, you know? As I was doing these applications, the not-manager messaged me about the thign I left him on delivered on last week, and straight up asked me to create the document he was asking me about if it didn't exist. Well, looks like I'm going to need to figure out this network issue anyways. I tried playing around with the settings a whole bunch to no avail, but I guess I should've tried restarting my computer way earlier because that just worked right away. My work laptop screen showed me a very Nice message from the not-manager once I was all logged back in: I'm now the one who'll be setting up the newest new project. Ah, great. I was hoping they'd forget or assign it to my successor or something but nope! Guess I'm reponsible for this too. Whoop-de-doo. After this was the loan application which wasn't too hard to fill in, except for one of those really private ID numbers you'r esupposed to keep hidden away. I don't know it off the top of my head, and I didn't bring any docs listing it over here. I was quietly panicking about it, but then realized that it's probably on the papers I submitted to the company when I accepted this job, and after a bit of hunting I found them on some web portal through my work laptop. Nice! I worked through the loan form, asking the compatriot for advice on things he put down when he did this form a couple months ago, even calling my dad to confirm money amounts and other relevant info. The process took me a little less than an hour, the fastest I've ever done it, and I got a pretty hefty sum. Now if the loans people were cool they'd let me keep this money for free and I'd never have to repay it, but I don't think I should really be worrying too much about being unable to repay this loan. That thought got me curious and sent me down another hour-long rabbit hole to track down the amount of all my debts (surprisingly more than I thought, and yet surprisingly less, surprisingly less indeed I will acknowledge). After I was done with that distraction, I decided to start updating my resume, since I'd probably need it to obtain one of those yearlong project things for when I'm off of work. Around this time, I also got a message from my dad with a single video, depicting him partaking in his new hobby (beekeeping) in my room specifically, turning it into the honey processing plant of his little operation. That house is a prison. The others I told about it find it hilarious but now I've got one more reason to dread returning to my home city. Once I had recovered from that trauma, I got back to non-work business, fully intending on stalling out the newest new project creation for as long as possible: I asked and received some financial advice from the compatriot about what to do with the money I had been granted, got an obvious spam email that was just a test by my organization (it was a complaint about the cleanliness of my desk, but I keep my desk pretty clean, so nice try! my work rival would've fallen for it for sure), asking the idealist for some advice on emailing instructors and company contacts for that yearlong project thing (specifically with the instructor and contact he worked with last year), and once all that was done, it was back to bloghan. That didn't last long though, as around 1.5 hours before my shift ended my manager would message me. There was this specific part in the project that was used multiple times in lots of places throughout the project, and he wanted to check all of them for certain info on how specifically they were placed. He suggested using Absconder, and yeah, I'm thinking some Absconder would work marvelously here! Do a bit on-the-fly, try to get this all figured out. I tried doing it in the newest project (no, not the newest new project, the newest project! keep up!) but since it was still kind of in a state of being nowhere near functional, I asked for permission to do this task in the last project. I tried like 6 or 7 times to get it working in the newest project too... probably should've just started in the last project, huh? Once I got Absconder to load up, I began to search for all the spots where that specific part was placed, a quite easy task. But the second part, getting those details of HOW they were placed? That was a new one, and it took me a little bit extra time to fully figure out. I got hung up on one Absconder tool that I thought would give me the info I needed (but didn't, for some reason? or at least it gave me some slightly different info), but even though the hour had just passed and my shift was over, this task had me captivated. I worked for another hour on until I found the correct Absconder tool and got all the information that my manager wanted. Ah, perfect, perfect! Once I sent him the file I produced (I asked him how he wanted the output, but he left me on read, so I made my own) I logged off my work laptop for the day. I hadn't gotten an Absconder task (or even a task that's from my own subteam and for my own subteam) in a while, so I'd forgotten just how engagin and fun they were. Sure, I don't mind being lent out to other subteams that much, but I like workign directly with the design of this project, which is what my subteam is suppsoed to be doing. Steve's team just checks it works correctly with a whole bunch of tests, and my work rival's involves taking the project and mapping it to some giant list of... something, by telling a computer to do it and looking at that computer for 8 hours. I think where I'm at though is probably the most engaging spot for me. Even though I logged off work just now, there was still a day for me to do... stuff! For example, I fell down a 3-hour rabbit hole involving watching and reading stuff about the game 'Until Dawn' (might work some of its plot delivery methods into my future D&D campaigns...), then ended up on call with Blue-haired and Grey-haired for a bit to watch Blue-haired play through the end of 'Persona 3 Reload' (this is the first time I've seen Blue-haired finish a game, and it feels WRONG. like, since when did he do that??). This call wasn't a rabbit hole because I almost never feel guilty about spending time with Blue-haired and Grey-haired, but it did take quite a while, bringing me to midnight. It was pretty fun, all in all, especialyl when we began to tease Grey-haired about the possibility of Blue-haired Alt+F4ing right now so that he technically will never have "finished" the game. After the call and after I made dinner, I worked on bloghan for hours at a time. Speed-typing all that out, making my thumb extremely sore, managing to finish the other half of yesterday's work to complete one full bloghan in two days. That brings me to being only one week behind, not two! Now, I will admit, it wasn't all bloghan, but some other stuff got mixed in there too: I got really curious about getting a name change (I'm going to give myself a middle name that starts with "D" for no reason in particular... also, did you know that if you get a name change in certain regions, they are legally supposed to publish that you changed their name in a government publication???? that feels off to me, but there's probably a good reason behind it..?) and looked up all the fees and stipulations that came with it, my landlord visited me and gave me some pumpkin cookies (yuck... I'm just going to bring those to work tomorrow because I can't stand pumpkin!), as well as getting jumpscared by a housefly that had crawled up the drain in the laundry room (I'll deal with you later, you'll see), but I did it. I finished that bloghan and cut down my "behindness" by half. Yes, it was 4 hours past midnight. Yes, I was going to have to go into the office tomorrow. Yes, I will suffer for it. You have to understand though. I had typed harder and faster than I ever had during all this. More than any other bloghan, more than during that communications course, it was pure (almost-)unfettered effort. Probably sounded like the room with the infinite monkeys on typewriters, but if they used a wireless keyboard from Logitech instead of a typewriter. This migth sound strange, but I was proud of what I had just accomplished, this amount of writing in two days (and let's be real: I saved all that writing for the four hours after midnight on both days, so realyl it was only 8 hours + a bit of effort I put in during actual daylight). I guess the lesson I would try to send from this, and I myself will take from this: try to make your stuff so that you're proud of it. And if you're not, work on the skill so that later you will end up producing something you're proud of with it. Yes, it was probably not worth the sleep I lost, but as I was climbing into bed, I couldn't help but think "yes! I've done it."

On Wednesday morning though, I was not thinking that. I was thinking "shoot, I'm going to be late!!" as I got out of bed late. It's like I'm staying up super late or something... weird. I know I have a meeting with my manager today though, so I decide to take a little time to shave before I go. It's not as relazing of a morning as I'd hoped, but I guess having the privlege of taking a late bus followed by a short walk to work without getting in trouble makes it well worth it. The morning was pretty calm at work. That IT folk told me he passed my feedback on to the relevant team, and the existentialist asked me to pay him for the burrito bowl from last week. My manager had also seen what I sent him yesterday night, but it turns out there was one little aspect of the placement information that I didn't account for and that he was asking about. Luckily, I never ended the on-the-fly Absconder stuff yesterday, so I quickly got him that info, which he left on read. Classic manager. I also had a bit of Music League activity for the workplace League, submitting a song for this fun category: "work rival core." I submitted a song with lots of meowing in it, because for some reason he keeps meowing. Just... out loud. It's disconcerting sometimes. I proceeded to work on, preparing more and more of that reimport of my work rival's team's stuff. He and my predecessor seemed pretty heated about something that happened that was going to cause them to have to redo a bunch of work, talking about a specific person changing files in an improper way? But the pumpkin cookies I brought seemed to calm him down. Frankly, I was a bit disgusted by how much everyone in the corner seemed to... enjoy them? Are your tastebuds normal?? Even my co-DM visited the corner at one point to talk to her replacement, and she commented on how those cookies looked good! SHe would come back for them later, apparently. Strange, utterly so... Around lunchtime, the not-manager messaged me (in about 15 messages) a new task, but I decided to leave that on read. No spooky stuff today. Honestly, I was pretty content with what I was doing, just working in the office on this little task. Reimporting stuff like this wasn't grueling work but not particulary challenging either, just kinda there. Still, someone has to do these manual comparisons to make sure things are being maintained roughly the same between projects. There's not much to say about this period after ignoring the not-manager. I explained to my work rival how much it costs ot get photos printed and a copy and print store, and he was absolutely flabbergasted at the relatively low price, telling it to other temps that visited us in complete shock. I ate lunch at my desk too, still spot merging all this stuff. Eventually though, the reckoning arrived: time for a meeting with my manager. He's gotten there slightly before I have, and in this meeting we sort of talked about the End of Things. I tell him about how I saw my predecessor in my position last year, still gaining tasks in his last month and being unable to finish them all before leaving, and how I swore to not let that happen to me. Welp. He had just gave me two new tasks, both related to changing stuff in the main files of our project's design. While they are two somewhat large tasks, in my mind I was sort of excited for them. A task that's actually doing some level of design! Finally! I listed out all my other responsibilities, all that I have left to do: a lot of documentation and one last thing for the antagonizing manager and the not-manager, and of course: the newest new project setup. By the end of the meeting, I had a list of things to prioritize: first was setting up the newest new project (fiiiiinnnnneeee...), then my two new tasks that change the design, then whatever else was commissioned to me by a manager. We finished talking about things about ten minutes before the meeting was supposed to end, so I began to stretch out the time we had left by bringing up tiny tasks I hadn't yet brought up. Once I ran out of those, we still had time left and the dreaded small talk began. At least we were at the end of my time here though, so that's what all the questions were about. But in those last 2 awkward minutes, we had somehow run out of those questions, so I had to bring up my dad's new hobby of beekeping and how he turned my room back in my home city into his honey production plant. My manager tells me "everyone needs a hobby," and that's where we kinda call it. I look over my task list. I could definitely get this all done before I leave. It all depends on my motivation. I resolve to do it all. Can't wait to see how my team prevents me from doing that! Now right after this meeting I had another to attend with my work rival's team, but once again it's listed with two meeting rooms. I try the one that's on our floor aaaand it's empty. Just great, now I look like an idiot in front of my manager as I double back and see him walking out of the meeting room we were just in. I head downstairs to the second meeting room listed and find the meeting, walking in quietly and taking a seat next to my predecessor and my work rival. I haven't really been doign much with this team, so I'm mostly just on my laptop starting up the newest new project setup as my manager asked me. I'm brought up once as someone asks about a file that I am NOT supposed to reimport, and they say that I wasn't asked to do that, but all in all I'm not really sure why I went to this meeting. During this meeting, my work rival has a couple of interesting moments. He brings up that thing with someone changing a file improperly and making a bunch of work wasted: apparently, someone on a team in a different part of the world went in and changed a tiny part of a very large file manually, when he was supposed to do it with some sort of automated process. This has caused some flows that my predecessor and my work rival have been running to stop running, and they are flows that take a real long time to run. My work rival's manager seemd frustrated and upset by this happening, and promised to discuss. The director showed up to this meeting online, but my work rival's prediction that he would be mad about this did not come to pass. Perhaps he just missed it? The other thing that my work rival did was bring up the nigthly run stuff for the newest project. That was for my successor to run, but according to my work rival it wasn't being run and it was very behind. Now the things is, he brought this up after his manager asked if there was anything anyone wanted to say, but after he did the room was silent. No one said anything about this, and pretty quickly we moved on. He had also told me about this frustaration earlier, since he has a flow he made that relies on that nightly thing running and because of the animosity he has towards my successor and her competence in general. I messaged him "well, you tried" after his concern was not met seriously, and apparently that made him feel better. When the meeting eventually ended, some of us stayed back in the room a little longer, just like the last time one of these meetings happened (just to chat, just to chat, and to talk work a bit too), but once we head back up it's back to work for me... for about 5 minutes. You see, I was a bit worried about what was going on with those nightly tings and what my work rival said. Maybe no one said anything in the meeting because they wanted to handle it privately with my successor. I felt as though she deserved an explanation for the sudden demand for all that stuff to work, if she did get one. And indeed, once I got there I saw someone did message her about it. She tells me that she can't even get the nightly thing working, that this entire time she's been faking it by running it manually late at night. WHAT?? Apparently, the utility that automatically runs stuff just didn't work for her anymore. Oh no... well, I hope for her sake she figures it out before someone else more important than me does. After talking about it some more (and watching her banter with Swarm in the middle of our conversation) I told her about what my work rival said in the meeting I was just in, and she got mad. Mad mad. Mad enough to get up rather ferociously to hunt my work rival down and confront him to his face about what he had said. I get what she was going through, but geez, calm down! It's not that serious. This is why I came to talk to you about it. She still wanted to give him a piece of her mind though, so I watched her draft a slightly passive-aggressive message to him that I helped to tone down. After helping her a bit more with trying to figure out why she was still having that issue where two of the things she was trying to run overnight (these were very selective versions of a much larger nightly thing, one that had a whole ton of stuff in it. these selective thigns only ran one small part of that) were just running everything instead of the selective part, I went back to my desk. I gotta stop playing peacemaker and news spreader like this. I stayed at my desk for the rest of the day after this, just doing this newest new project setup. There were other things that I should note maybe: my work rival responding to my successor's message about her nightly run situation non-passive-aggressively (she seemed disappointed by that, so I offered to be passive-aggressive to her; this led to her being passive-aggressive back at me, and she completely outclassed me at it too... never doing that again), hearing from my manager that HR is supposed to have a final meeting with me and not with him (are you SURE though???? why would HR be the one wh orecommends if I return or not???), reaching out to some other full-times on my team about one of my design change tasks to find a specific test for what I was changing. Near my regular leaving time though, most people had already left, but my predecessor was still here. He was thinking about going to that burrito bowl place to grab a meal for himself and hsi wife, and he offered to take me. I myself wanted to go to the dollar store to grab a sponge and some small food items to get me through this empty-fridge week, so I accepted. On the way out though, I noticed that my co-DM never grabbed a pumpkin cookie, and there's exactly one left. I leave it on her desk. I'm sure she'll like that. After that, me and my predecessor could finally head out to his car. I really like hanging out with my predecessor because we have some pretty similar interests and we're literally on the same team working on the same stuff, and we have similar sense of humour too. Our converation mostly flows naturally (for instance, from talking about the psychology and economics of car colouring to a hilarious altercation he witnessed at a gas station recently), but in the instances where it fades into silence, I feel like we're both comfortable with sitting in said silence. We go in, order our food, and leave in like 10 minutes (the speed of this place is impressive but also I FORGOT THE SOUR CREAM RAAAGH), and he begins to drive me back to the dollar store near my place. He gets called by his wife since he was supposed to be home a little bit ago, but she's more than ok with me being the little detour in his side this evening. As she's on the line I tried to stay silent jsut in case he didn't want to bring me up, but he did so I guess it's alright? Though, I guess my first response to that shouldn't have been "he's holding me hostage and making me read out this script." Ah well, I'm sure she thought it was funny. Right? Right. Right. Right, so, her call sparks a question in my mind that I pose to my predecessor: how does banking work when you're married? Do you have two separate accounts, or one joint account? How does it work if one person buys a meal for the other? Does the other pay you back? He described to me how they handle it, but that other couples have way different ways of doing things like that. This is another reason why I love talking to and being around my predecessor so much. Yes, he's significantly older than me (and much more mature than me too, regardless of age...), but all that life experience has been really helpful and interesting to me. We might have started off as mnentor and mentee, and we definitely still are that in a sense, but we've also grown a lot closer. I consider him a good friend. I hope he does too. He drops me off at the dollar store and heads off. Meanwhile, I spend a very long time in the dollar store choosing to buy a single sponge rather than a pack of 10, and figuring out which can of Chef Boyardee I want, also throwing in a little pack of pre-prepared pasta meals sachets or whatever you call them. I hurry on the walk back to my place because I put the can in my sweater pocket and it looks like I'm accenting something rather indecent in public. Once back, I stow it all away and stuff the takeout burrito bowl into the largest bowl I have (and it still barely fits). After my regular bout of Distractions, I get another visit from my landlord. She asks me how the pumpkin cookies were, and in trying to not come off as heartless I told her that they tasted great, and that I shared them with my friends at work and they loved them too. She seemed to be happy about this. So happy in fact that she gave me even more because I liked them so much, in addition to a tub of two-bite pumpkin treat things. UGH! This gourd is a prison. Once that interaction is over and I've gotten my fill of distractions, I think of doing a bit of bloghan, but decide against it. My call with Blue-haired and Grey-haired is tomorrow, so if I want to do that interactive board game thing that I wanted to do for them, I better make it now. My idea is solid I think. It's pretty heavily based of a video I watched once, but in essence it uses Google Slides to make a board game with spaces, and there's one space that gives you the points you need to win. But the main gimmick of the game is that there's a rules document that's 10 pages long and there's so many tiny little rules and nitpicks and systems that are extremely overwhelming. Yet, I will not be enforcing any of these rules. Instead, the players can tell me whatever they want on their turn, and I would accept it unless the other player points out if a rule was broken. Blue-haired and Grey-haired can get pretty competitive with each other, and I think it would be a really fun thing for us to do!! I want to see that ruthlessness, and I want them to interact with the game systems as much as they can to squeeze out all the benefits. I put a lot of work into this game, about 5 hours worth of selecting the right shapes, making cool items for them to buy, bloating up stat screens to disorient them at the start, adding fun little mini rules in strange places for them to claim one-time benefits (to reward the person who read that part of the rules first, naturally!). Don't get me wrong, it was fun, but it was a lot of work. I just kept having ideas for new systems that could be used to really lock down the board, ways to trick the other player into doing things, even a way for them to duel it out in the game (because Grey-haired will often affectionately threaten us with violence..!), all sorts of things! I stayed up for 4 hours past midnight writing and making this board game, and even when I went to bed I was still thinking about how much fun it would be. Yeah, I lost out on a day of bloghan writing, but I thought it was worth it. I just needed to get through work tomorrow, so that I could get home and theoretically have the most fun Blue-haired and Grey-haired call yet!

Thursday morning was as normal as ever, but at work I tried to focus at least a little bit. First, I submitted my votes for the Music League with Blue-haired and Grey-haired (our category was horny music this week, and I think it's our best playlist yet, barring one of Grey-haired's songs! I mean, 'Snake Eater,' "Cbat,' 'Versace on the Floor,' 'Ballbreaker,' 'Bang Bang,' and uhh... you know, maybe this last one should be left out, but man! great work everyone). Next, I turned to Steve to help me out with finding a test that tested a specific part of our project. This was for the simpler of two the design adjusting tasks I got, and it had to do with the parts of the project I found with Absconder earlier this week. In particular, there was a certain thing related to the way that they were placed that made them take up a certain amount of space, and my manager wanted to know if we could reduce that space without breaking anything. So, I had to make the change and test it with a specific test on those parts, not just a general test on the whole project, just to be extra sure. Steve was able to point me to a test for one of the parts I needed to change, but not the other; I eventually got that from the not-manager. I start up running those tests, then go back to the setup of the newest new project. I do this as my work rival begins to moan and groan once again about people being slow to vote in Music League, so I start getting to work on that. The step that I'm on for the newest new project setup is going to take a long time (it's the part concerned with the not-manager's team's stuff, and they got too much of just about everything!), and I'm not feeling like picking up the reimport of my work rival's team's stuff right now either. Around lunch time, the antagonizing manager and the not-manager both team up on me in a group chat to ask how it's going and if it's ready, so I leave them on delivered for about 30 minutes before telling them that it's been importing stuff since I started and that it's going to go on and on for a looooooong time more. The antagonizing manager DMs me right after, telling me that it needs to be ready at the earliest. I already told you it's running, what more do you want from me? I can't just tell it to go faster. I feel bad for people who have the antagonizing manager as their direct manager. Since it's all still running, I decide to check on the tests I started this morning, and I see that the one Steve gave me didn't even start running! We have a hard time figuring out why this test won't even run for me, and we eventually settle on the solution of having Steve run it on his device for me. Inconvenient, but if it works it works. There was still some time before my next meeting (the normal one that I'm not relevant to on Thursdays), but that was easily filled by joining whatever my work rival, my predecessor, the new compatriot, and the idealist were talking about. First it was about the requirements to be the Prime Minister of Canada, then it was a competition between my predecessor and my work rival to see who knew more nouns in their second languages of German and French respectively, then I got tired of that all and went to the meeting room early. I had everyone beat and claimed my seat in the very corner, much to the chagrin of my work rival's successor who thought he would be first. Everyone filtered in, and the meeting was had. Me, I sat in the corner like I was supposed to, not saying anything, not being brought up. I had something to work on during this one, at least. It was also only half as long as it used to be, so that was nice. There's not really much else to talk about with regards to today at work, becuase literally everything I had started working on today was just in a state of "it's running" and I just kinda had to wait for it all to finish. I did go visit the pair and gave them the entire box of bit-sized pumpkin treats, and there was also an incident where I accidentally leaned on my keyboard with my chest and zoomed in everything on my laptop screen to a ridiculous amount, spending half an hour to try and fix it (I ended up with everything being slightly smaller than it was before... fine...), visiting the crossword cubicle but passing by my work rival close to it and actively getting tricked into saying the n-word (the memer and the stoned kept saying "leg cog" and got him to say the synonyms "knee" and "gear" in quick successsion... how do you even fall for that??), then getting some visits from the existentialist and my co-DM when I was back in my corner as the latter tried to teach the former how to solve a cryptic crossword. He was not having a good time with that, but it got me to reopen the New Yorker website and do one myself. More and more people joined us here, including the gregarious, the idealist, even my successor (though she was there to ask me some work related questions... about things she should've already known?? well, I do guess she's pretty stressed out right now, so it's understandable). Honestly, I felt so great about all these people visiting here, just doing whatever. We've made ourselves a little community of people, and I really enjoy being around all these people. I'm going to miss this sense of community, I think. Yeah, I have my friends in my home city, but we don't spend 7 hours around each other, 5 days a week, for 14 months on end. Soon enough though, it was time leave this community behind for the day and head back to my place (nothing had finished by the way. none of the stuff I started running today came even close to finishing), and my excitement for the call with Blue-haired and Grey-haired was only building. When it finally happened though... well, it wasn't received great. They were terrified of the notion of a slideshow fromme, because I've used it for "experiments" on them before? What?? The only two slideshows I've given these two were a joke one, and a joke one that turned serious. I specificlaly told them this one was a game, but because they were expectng some sort of twist where I mentally tortured them, they decided to just not engage in any of the cool stuff I put in the rules, just trying to end the game as fast as possible so that they could get out of it. Blue-haired was especially bad with this, using the cheating clause to his advntage by just going to the points tile with as much distance as he could, becuase he knew Grey-haired was too scared or too nervous to use the "calling out rule infractions" rule against him. I thought this game would go on for hours and be super close between the two. I even had a rule in the game that limited each turn to 15 seconds because I thought they would take a long time to strategize on each turn but... no. No matter how many times I highlighted and bolded the "call out rule infractions" rule, they would not engage. It's not even about that clause in particular, just the game itself. They didn't really engage with any systems and it wasn't because they were too complicated. They just wanted to not be in the game, so Grey-haired just travelled all around the board not collecting any points, while Blue-haired focused on the points so that he could reach the win condition. He did just that, ending the game, and they just seemed confused about what had happened. I asked them why they didn't bother trying to engage with the game or the gimmick, and the ysaid they were afraid it was a social experiment. OK. Let's just say that it was a social experiment that I was conducting on these two. Why wouldn't you just participate in it anyways? What can I possibly do to you with a board game? Make you have fun playing a game? Laugh with you as you discover some sort of infinite point gainng loop I accidentally put into the rules? Like, why fear a social experiment of a board game to the point of not playing it? Is this not a safe environment, with just three of us, interacting only online? And that's all if it WAS an experiment, which it WASN'T! I just wanted to give an idea I had a try, and I put so much work into making all those systems and all those rules, and they just rolled it up and said "I'm not engaging with this at all or going to try to play the game because you always use slideshows as a way to prank us." Even those slideshows that I mentioned weren't just to mentally anguish them. Sure, they had a little bit of mental anguish thrown in there, but for the most part the purpose of those presentations was tell a long elaborate joke and to ENTERTAIN!!! That's why I do Jeopardy with these guys, why I do D&D with them. This board game with this gimmick has social elements I guess, but so is D&D! Is that a social experiment on them too? NO!! The most frustrating part of all of this, no, the part that made me just so angry was that everytime I tried to explain my intention with this game as entertainment for ALL of us, Blue-haired would interrupt me and say "don't listen to what he's saying, we're probably still in the experiment." I'm never doing this again, for anybody. What's the point? My closest friends can't even see that a BOARD GAME that I created wasn't a torment nexus at all, and it's not like it accidentally became one. There was no torment to begin with, and that's not saying that "the torment was the lack of torment" no, it's saying "it was a game and there was only game and the intention was purely: a game." Honestly, it's got me reconsidering creating any games to play with ever again. I mean, is that "social experiment" thing what they both start thinking when I hold a D&D session with them? When I do Jeopardy with clues that I myself wrote, do they think that I'm testing their social IQ or something? For the rest of the call, I'm mostly silent, my motivation to interact completely killed. I was frustrated with the two for being so wary of the things I make, and I was particulary angry at Blue-haired for dismissing everything I was saying as "just another social experiment" (comes off as "his feelings don't matter because he's clearly always trying to manipulate us"). I watched Blue-haired play 'Persona 3 Reload: Episode Aigis" I guess, but at this point I was just on my phone playing games because my mindest at the time was "I have better people to play with right now: strangers on the Internet." Grey-haired tried to get me to interact (ironic, huh?) but Blue-haired shut that down at every opportunity. Grey-haired also tried to make it better by saying "look, from our perspective you were opening up a slideshow so of course we were scared! Do... do you realize what you're saying right now? You guys don't think the slideshows are for entertainment either? Just for me to inflict mental and emotional damage onto you? Gah, what's even the point of all this? I'm never doing anything like this for anyone again, so I'll just stew in these feelings for a bit and delete all that work later. It was probably low quality anyways. The call ended, I left mostly wordlessly, and shortly after that, my landlord visited me. She was going to be going on a trip this weekend, so wanted me to water her garden for her while she was gone. SHe gave me the tutorial for the back (take the hose, set the water to low, use the mist setting, and water all the soil until it turns black, then turn off the faucet and rest the hose NOT on a plant) and the back (grab the watering can by the neck, dunk it in the rainwater collection bin, draw it out, give all the potted plants out here an amount of water proportional to the amount of green in the pot), then told me I only need to do it tomorrow, Saturday, and Sunday. Well, sounds great! Once back inside, I did other things: more Jeopardy work, cooking the Chef Boyardee ravioli with some brocolli and onions for extra flavour/health, and learning a bit about public key cryptography (I thought of using that and ciphers to make a fun little puzzle experience for people, but decided against it because people would probably think it's some social experiment or something), I went to sleep more frustrated than I had been while on call. Well, at least I went to slightly earlier than normal. That's gotta count for something. Hmmm... maybe I'm the one in the social experiment...

Friday morning started off normal, but this day was more quiet work-wise for the most part. It was also the compatriot's last day today. He came to me in the morning to review his goodbye email, and he sent it out pretty soon after that. I got the results of the tests that Steve ran from him, and a short call with my successor about gettign some more of her nightly test things passing, which they weren't because of something being linked to the last project when it shouldn't have been? Well, as long I don't have to deal with it! Part of the setup for the newest new project had finished today as well, so now I can move on to the simpler steps which involved updating things to use the new project's name and number. As I did this, there was some talking and all that: the new compatriot and I talked about that former Candian Prime MInister and how he's dating Katy Perry or something like that, and there was some more discussion with just about every temp that was here today about the hypocriticality of my work rival when it comes to attending our internal temp events. For lunch, we (it was basically all the old temps except my work rival, and the stoned, the memer, and the new compatriot joined us too) went to this Vietnamese place. This lunch was a goodbye for the compatriot, and we ended up walking in two different batches of people because I had to deal with some last minute things with the not-manager. I shared some of my fears about returning to my home city with my equivalent and the gregarious and got a little comfort out of their responses, but for the most part I walked on my own while in this group of people. At the restaurant itself, most people got these really huge soup bowls while I got a pork chop and vermicelli dish. The others were telling me I didn't spend my money very well because in the pictures, my dish looked a lot smaller than the soup bowls, but I was just as shocked as they were when they saw how huge my plate was. I can't belive I managed to finish all of that! Most people weren't able to finish their stuff (the gregarious got a GIANT plate like me too, but somehow bigger? she only had like 4 bites of it too...), especially the people who got soup bowls. These soup bowls could definitely hold an entire human head in them, and only the stoned was able to finish the whole thing off. Even the compatriot couldn't get through all that broth! It was a pretty cost-effectve meal for me, but I was absolutely stuffed, having a hard time walking. When we all got up to pay (I had to use the last of my cash too... shoot), I noticed some toothpicks on the counter. I grab one and proceed to talk for the next 10 minutes with a toothpick in my mouth, like I'm some Midwestern farmer or something. We walk back, most people diverting themselves off to a bubble tea place, but me? I needed to go right back to work after that 90-minute long lunch to work on getting the newest new project all setup, because... well.... I may have promised that it would be done by end of day today. You know, I was feeling really confident in that earlier in the morning, but as I struggled with the task, it started looking a little grim. My work rival showed up eventually, and we worked in silence for a little bit. From here, a bunch of stuff went down (this is an unordered list by the way): the compatriot returned his laptop and all that a little early and got that guest pass thing, and proceeded to sit at Steve's desk and play Osu on his own laptop; my successor visited the corner to ask she could get the Absconder test of the nightly run thing to pass, and I told her she wouldn't get it running on her own because ABsconder never works this early into projects, but my work rival said it could happen, just that there's so much wrong with the projeect that she can't do it on her own (I don't think she liked that answer); the existentialist and the gregarious decided to do a New Yorker cryptic in the corner, and my co-DM wanted to watch them do it, but this wasn't until after I forced the gregarious to sit in the corner of the corner and trap her in with some chairs; I took my Japanese coworker's chair, which was much fancier than mine (it's very nice but missing a bite sized chunk of its left armrest..?); the songs for the "work-rival-core" Music League category came out, and wow, some of these were super mean (I mean, songs from 'Skibidi Toilet' and humpback whale calls? geez...); the cable guy, the memer, my equivalent, and the fanatic trying to teach my work rival some very inappropriate sayings in Chinese; finally, my equivalent calling a restaurant and asking for a huge reservation for the fanatic's birthday dinner, somehow getting it. Again, I was feeling this strong sense of community as everyone piled into the corner to do very different things but to all do the same thing of being in each other's company. I'm going to miss this community, but don't take this as purely just a reminiscal look back at what I had. It's also a hopeful and bright look at a future, one where I hope I can find myself another new community in the days to come, no matter where I end up. In the here and now though, I've got this community, and I am ever so glad for it. Everytime someone leaves this community, we feel their absence so much. While my Japanese coworker didn't participate in our shenanigans as much because of how busy his manager made him all the time, we all feel his absence, and soon we will feel just the same with the compatriot. It took us all a bit of time to get people up and roused to go to the restaurant (especially me, since I was trying my best to get all this stuff for the newest new project all setup by EOD and it just WASN'T happening), but it was only until we were halfway down the stairs that we realized it would be way easier for people to split into different cars and drive there, instead of just walking as one conglomerate. Into the gregarious' car, it was me, my work rival, the compatriot, and the new compatriot. We unfortunately had to abanadon my equivalent, the one who called the restaurant, at the fornt door since the car was full. As we pulled away, my work rival called my co-DM to see if she could maybe grab my equivalent on her way out. However, she had to quickly run back to her place because she had a small errand she had to take care of. My work rival misinterpreted this as her cancelling yet another plan with all the temps at the last minute just to go home, and after the call ended he begn to rant to us about how her and the gregarious (who was currently driving THIS car) always kept cancelling on us. I mean, I don't mind it so much with my co-DM because she's got a whole ton of club stuff already lined up, and she doesn't actually cancel plans last-minute. It's a different story with the gregarious though, because I do notice a lot she will "forget" about a plan and then I'll later see her that day post on social media of her going out to dinner or something with a bunch of her own friends on the same night. I mean, not really my business, but agreeing to a plan then overwriting it with your own? Leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but again, she doesn't do it THAT often. Situations like these often make me think back to that conersation I had with my work rival many many months ago, about his dad and all that, about how the most important thing for him as he carves his future is 'relationships.' My indifference to these uncommon cancellations definitely feels worse to him, since he feels that aura of community even more strongly than I do, and he wants to hold onto that community even even even more more more strongly than I do. I empathize (that's a relatively new one for me...) with him a ton, and I get his frustration, but lashing out at those people when they are or are not here is not the answer. I'm not sure what the answer is (my initial thought is "live and let live" but that's not very satisfying), but I'm pretty sure that just being angry at them will disincentivize them even more from attneding our group events. We get to the restaurant, still talking about this topic, and while we wait for the other cars we get a call from the fanatic. Keep in mind that this second restaurant plan of the day is for the fanatic's birthday dinner. What had happened is that the fanatic's car wouldn't start, as the battery was dead or something like that. He would be very late na dmight not even be able to make it to the dinner, but he was extremely stressed out about his car not starting - which I think is completely fair! I guess my work rival didn't feel the same way though, because he lashed out at the fanatic, yelling at him about how people keep skipping out on events and- then, the fanatic hung up without a word. Work rival, what is up with you? All of us in the car were mad at him for the way he just treated the fanatic. Like I said, it was fine for him to be frustrated but he shouldn't be taking that out on those he was frustrated with in such a non-constructyive manner. However, while that may have been what I was thinking in my head, it was unfortunately sunny outside and the laughter contagion I had caused me to say this between bouts of heavy laughter masking my heavy anger, so I don't think my work rival took anything I said seriously. So, the more combative takes of everyone in the car are what he heard, nad he in tunr got all the more combative because of it. As the tension was high he began to talk smack about the gregarious and the times she ditched events, and I made a little bit of a joke mocking that perspective that accidentally came out as me straight up lying about how many times the gregarious actually did that. Things calmed down though as soon as someone decided to get out of the car, and the rest of us followed suit. Guess we didn't want to bring the conflict outside? I also apologized to the gregarious as she came to help me out of my door, and she accepted it as she recognized it was a joke. Outside the restaurant we met my predecessor and his wife, who came just to see the compatriot off. We decided to head in without the other half of our group, just so that we didn't lose the reservation. Inside, the conversation was a bit awakward, what with the constant teasing from my predecessor's wife towards me, and our group's constant chastising of my work rival. Also, an invite to karaoke tomorrow for me and my work rival, but my work rival turned it down because of an exam he had to study for and write. Well, take all the time you need for that buddy. No location or even time was given to me, but I'm sure it'll all work out in the end. The group eventually worked on my work rival enough to get him to agree to apologize to the fanatic when he walked in, which my work rival did end up doing. My co-DM was there too, so it genuinely was a case of her having to do a quick erranad and not her skipping out on the goodbye dinner. We all ordered our food (I got the pork chop and spaghetti with a cheesy tomato sauce thing at my predecessor's recommendation) and mostly focusd on eating. I feel like if there hadn't been all that drama in the past hour, we would've all been more talkative, but you can never go back to the past like that. During this dinner, I realized that I still hadn't given the compatriot the pin I got at that e-sports tournament and I knew he liked the team that was depicted on the pin, so I had to sneak it into his pocket. I didn't want it to be a whole thing, after all, and I rather like just leaving presents and such on people's desks like that. My instructions to my work rival, who was sitting next to the compatriot, were clear: sneak the pin into his pocket and do it slowly. I gave him the pin, and he rushed to jam it into the pocket as fast as he could, then got surprised when the compatriot turned around. Then he revealed that it was from me, and that led to a whole conversation about how I got the pin and why I was giving it to him. This seemed to bring a little bit of life back to the table, but it was still muted. As we got closer and closer to finishing up, I looked down at my plate and saw just how much I had eaten. I was so sure that I was going to have absolutely no room to eat after the huge servings I got at that Vietnamese place earlier, but I was wrong somehow! I managed to eat more than half of the plate at this other restuaran,t the one where I almost always have to tap out and take leftovres because of the sheer servings amount. I mean, I definitely did need a takeout bowl today, but eating half-a-meal at this huge servings place after eating everything on my plate at a different huge servings place only a couple hours ago? The 'me' from years ago would not believe his eyes. We paid, headed out, and all gathered in front of the restaurant in a semi-circle shape centered around the compatriot. We stood there in relative silence, not one of us wanting to be the one that said goodbye to the compatriot first. In all likelihood, I'm the one that's most likely to see him next since we're both going to our mutual home region by the end of this month, but for all the rest? This might be the last time they ever meet. My work rival was first, giving him a hug and wishing him well, before waiting off to the side for his ride to be ready. After like 3 minutes, I was next, giving him the same hug and waiting a bit for the ideal time to get to my bus. Once the appointed time came, I left, not seeing everyone say their goodbyes but knowing that they all would. The compatriot brought a certain kind of energy to our community, one that was more conservative and reserved at times, and one that was loud and crass at others. One of these days, before 2025 ends, I'll see him again and we'll have a blast. Until then, adieu! I took one bus to a halfway point between my place and that restaurant, hoping to catch another bus that takes me very close to my place, but the second passed in front of me just as I got off the first. Well, I don't mind a bit of walking in the sun! Back at my place though, there wasn't really all that much I did except feel insanley tired. I'm lucky that before I decide to get all cuaght up in the bloghan writing sesh for the day, I remembered to go water my landlord's yard. It wasn't great that I waited until after sundown, but it's better than never, right? I water according to her low specifications at first, but I find that barely any watering is actually going on, so I crank up the water a whole lot. WHen I get to the center pots though, my hose seems to lag behind and not have enough pull. There's probably a kink or something in it, maybe it got wrapped around, so I pull on it HARD until it gives. There's a very pungent smell that fills the air right after this, but I don't pay attention to it until I turn around to turn the tap off once I finish watering. I've had my phone flashlight on this whole time, and as I turn around I see this wet and sloppy orange substance all over the ground, and a toppled plastic container. Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no oh no. Just great! JUST GREAT! IT smells rancid, like a pumpkin or gourd thats been rotting, festering for years. I stand there for a good moment just staring, wondering what I should do. I guess it was a good thing I did this all at this time, because it wasn't light enough outside nor late enough for their to be masses of bugs all oevr the orange slop. I had time to kind of clean it up. At first, I grabbed a different bucket and tried scooping up the raw stuff into the toppled bucket, and that worked for a bit- but just a bit. Once there was a much thinner layer of whatever this was on the groun, it was much harder to efficiently collect it with a bucket. I looked around the yard and the garage for some sort of garden spade or scooper I could use to scoop it off the ground, but no such luck. I ended up using an old spoon I hadn't used in months to scoop as much as I could off the ground and into the container. For the pure liquie pulp of rot that I couldn't so easily scoop (nor did I want to, at this point), I used the hose to just kind of spray it with a bunch of water and hope that diluted it enough. The front garden was not as challenging as I had made the back, but that smell stuck inside my nose. I also had to use a lot more water than my landlord di in her exempalr, because whenever I used the watering can to grab rainwater from the front's barrel, half of it dripped out of the can as I drew it out of the rainwater collector bin. Once it was done though, and I headed back to inside my place (I could still smell the stuff I dropped... that better not be a problem), I ended up staying up doing bloghan, Music League (I made a YouTube playlist of the submitted songs for my co-DM to listen to, due to her not having Spotify Premium! I hope she appreciates the effort because it took a long time...), a bit more research into cryptography and such, until I decided I had better sleep just a few moments earlier than normal. Something big was going to happen tommorrow, after all.

Saturday was a bit of a lazier day for me. I woke up somewhat early, but decided to sleep for an extra hour and randomly scroll on my phone while in bed for the next hour, not getting out of bed until just before noon. I made my bacon and eggs breakfast, and that gave me the energy to face the day a little bit better. Then, I got on my laptop to work on bloghan and all my little distractions, all that, all that. Only about 2 hours after getting out of bed, I get a text from my predecessor, inviting me to karaoke later into the evening. Well, sure! I'm down! I spent the next few hours doing no preparation for getting there, just more bloghan, reading horror stories, submitting my votes for the work Music League (this work rival core playlist is so funny), and looking out my window to see what was going on with the bucket I dropped yesterday. No bugs were on the ground where the stuff got dropped, but there were some flies hanging around the dropped bucket. I went outside and stomped the top of the bucket lightly to close the lid, and they ceased to visit it any more. Closer to the time I should leave I start routing what bus to take and all that. My predecessor has purposely not given me a karaoke location just yet, just an intersection to head to, because the plan is to find a good place once we have boots on the ground there. A lot of these karaoke places just don't have websites, so you have to go to the location to find the rates and policies. Weird, but fair. After a bit of Jeopardy board making, watering my landlord's garden (this time, no gourd compost bucket droppage occurred!), and wilting in despair at the 'Homestuck' animated pilot that got announced (WHY!?????????????), I realized I had like 10 minutes to leave so I could make the bus. And oh shoot, I hadn't showered yet! I run and shower for 5 minutes, then hastily throw on some clothes (almost all black, just the way I like it for nightime activities) and pack my bag. I need the garage door opener, my headphones, and... you know what, I'll bring my copy of 'Much Ado About Nothing' too, why not? Maybe there'll be someone at the karaoke place who will catch me reading it and they'll be like "oh my gosh what a sophisticated young-" yeah ok that's a bit weird, I know. I'm sorry. It will possibly happen again. I rush out of the house, and already I'm sweating a bit, but the walk to the farther than normal bus station isn't too bad. Only thing is that I accidentally tightened my belt WAY too much just before I left, and it was making it hard to walk fast and also to walk comfortably. I felt like my organs were pushing back at the skin, like it had twisted around itself and was desperately trying to unravel at my demise. Once I got to the bus station, I turned away from the road to roll up my sleeves, undo my belt, and redo it with less holes secured. Looks like I'm going to need another round of dieting...I get on the bus a long-seeming 5 minutes later, which is enough time for the sun to fully set from the sundown-ish point it was at when I first got to this stop. I'm prepared for a nice bus ride on this bus I basically never take, when I get a call from my predecessor? When I answer, it's his wife. Oh no. She questions where I am; I answer "on the way, on a bus." She tells me about the plan to find a place on the ground when we get there; "Yes, I know." Also, she tells me to set my GPS to a specific location since it's in the center of all the karaoke places we want to check up on; "Oh, what a coincidence, that's the location I set my GPS to so I could figure out how to get to that intersection." Next, she demands I come up with a list of songs that I will be singing tonight; "Huh?? Well, alright then, I'll think about it and let you know once we meet up." Then a whole bunch of jibber jabber jabber jibber about me becoming a lot more confident and able to say "no" to people (her) now, and her telling me to get there safely (I'm pretty good at doing that unsafely, but I guess if she asks me too...). Once she finally hangs up I'm free to look out at the scenery again, but by now we've turned onto the busy streets of the uptown with it's bright signs with all sorts of lighting schemes. There's also quite a lot of people just out and about for some reason. Large friend groups, small friends group, couples (so many couples...), everyone laughing or smiling or chatting. What... what is this? Some sort of noctural state of being, living it up in the big city on a weekend? A life of the night, even? You must understand, this is all foreign to me, but I can accept the fact that it's probably a normal occurence. My bad for being a stay-inside guy I guess. The bus eventually stops at the bus terminal, and I begin to walk briskly towards the karaoke place listed on my phone map. Once I arrive at the dingy little corner of a 2-storey building (complete with a weedy, gravelly, and suspiciously dark parking lot right next to it!), I head in. Well, at first I struggle to because the door is just so extremely heavy, but eventually I put my shoulders into it and plant my back foot, and it swings open slowly. I plop myself down on the interior windowsill that lies just before the downward stairs which I assume lead to the actual karaoke place, then pull out my Shakespeare play and begin to read. I really do love this play, and the little actor notes and textual analysis questions on the side make it so much better. I wait for quite a while, but eventually my predecessor and his wife show up about 20 or so minutes after I got here. I talk a bit with them about what I'm reading, then we all head down to the karaoke place. It's kinda loud with screams and screeches, along with this front counter portion of the place being very cramped and warm. Actually, this whoel place seems cramped; is it all just the corner of the building's basement? Not even the full basement? My predecessor's wife begins talking with teh front desk man about rates and such, and he gives us some very cheap sounding rates. Less than ten dollars per hour per person? You can get a lot of songs done in an hour, and it wouldn't even cost 50 dollah! I guess that pricing model is the reason why they're so packed right now, because we have to leave a phone number and wait for a call to see if a karaoke room frees up soon. We head out, and my predecessor's wife puts her plan into action. After we meet up with the idealist and the existentialist, we all walk around this uptown area to find other karaoke places, especailly the ones without websites. We walk into one that has a whole bunch of CRT TVs playing noiseless camera feeds, but they are CRTs; they do produce that high-pitched noise that's nostalgic to my predecessor but extremely grating to me. As my predecessor's wife talks to the people behind the counter about rates and wait times, the idealist points out a printed Word doc they have that says we'll be charged $100 for bringing in any kind of alcohol, which seemed pretty steep. The owner overhead us though, and siad it was because they had issues with minors smuggling in whole bottles of whiskey and tequila into the place, so that measure was just to disincentivize it even more. I don't know what it says about that place if they had problems with minors bringing in hard liqours, but I feel like it's not a good thing? We headed out after my predecessor's wife put her phone number on their waiting list, and as she looked on Google Maps for more karaoke places that were nearby, the rest of us just kinda looked around. Me and my predecessor spotted a sticker on the back of a sign that said "fart mart" and we had a good long (and VERY mature) conversation about that. The idealist and existentialist started looking at reviews of that karaoke place we just left, deciding that the funniest one was a one-star rating claiming that the establishment confiscated a very expensive bottle of whiskey that they smuggled in. THat's not realyl environmental storytelling, but it sure is something. We walked on further, way way down the block, and I began to notice more and more of the nightlife. At this slightly later hour, it had transformed from large groups of friends to mostly couples. That didn't really bother me since I'm now pretty ok with myself and all that relationship stuff, but I suppose you can never fully get rid of the pangs of desire that come with seeing others in such a state. Oh well, maybe one day I'll get there! I muttered out loud about how there were so many couples as I messaged my compsci friend about it along with a joke that it bothered me greatly, and my predecessor's wife overheard it and asked who I was sending that to. I joked "the incel group chat," and we had a nice little talk about incels and how I ended up not being one, which was great for everyone else around me and extra extra great for me. We wandered more, not finding more karaoke places but instead finding this weird hotdog place that the existentialist and the idealist apparently really loved? While they did that though, I didn't feel like going in and getting food just yet, so I decided to make a call to Grey-haired to rant to her about the 'Homestuck' animated pilot that would be happening and how I was not a fan. She just laughed at me, mocked me. I'm sure that the wild gestures and panicked/grimaced expressions that I was making attracted some level of attention, just not in a good way. My predecessor and his wife then caught up to the street corner where I moved to take this phone call, telling me that the first karaoke place I went to was the one that called first with an opening, and that we were going with that. Alright then, let's go! We sort of speedwalked back, and once we returned to that extremely heavy door, staircase, and cramped front space, we were moved to a slightly more spacious (not really, actually. not really) room with a TV screen, a remote the size of my head and more buttons than a keyboard has keys, and an offer for instructions on how to switch it out of karaoke mode and into YouTube mode. My predecessor's wife seemed really happy that they had actual karaoke capabilities though, so rejected that offer, but I did spot that the system was initially on YouTube mode and had 'Creep' by Radiohead as the first recommendation. Unfortunately, me bringing that up caused my predecessor to get super excited and tell us about how his dad's favourite karaoke song was 'Creep' (what??), and pushed for that to be the first song we sung. There were two mics, and my predecessor gave me the second. I've never heard this song before, I only know that it existed, so I just try to follow my predecessor's lead. The lyrics are in English even if they have Korean subtitles, so it's not so bad to read them, but singing them out loud... well, I burst out laughing a bunch of times. These lyrics are ridiculous and I can't take them seriously at all. The video makes it even funnier, as its just as a Korean guy singing this to himself alone in a church. Several times I break down in laughter in the middle of a track, and my predecessor's wife gives me a dirty look every time I do, but we manage to finish out the song and score a 90% on it! What a stupid song. Next up was 'Waving Through a Window,' (my predecessor's wife looks at me and says "look, it's our song!!" uhhhhh ok? I guess?), but as soon as she finds it in the catalogue and queues it up, we both realize something's off. THe lyrics are all given to us in Korean, and there's no way for us to change it at all. Still though we push on and sing through this hiccup, because we both know the lyrics... right? Right? I found out in the bride up to the chorus that she doesn't actually have these lyrics memorized at all, except the first verse and the chorus? I don't have it down perfectly, no, but I'm pretty sure that the person who's a huge fan of the original musical should know the song better than the guy who last listened to it a year ago? We only socre a 50 on this, and its at this moment that the idealist and the existentialist join in. I won't describe the experience of every song that we had, but it more or less boiled down to this:

1. the others would choose a mainstream-ish song to sing (that I almost never knew) and start singing it as I just stared
2. sometimes, I would figure out the song halfway through and manage to join them, but most of the time I would end up playing the room's tambourine at the highest BPM I could for the most complex rhythm I could find that fit the song
3. there was a rap song played every 3 to 4 songs, and only the idealist, the existentialist, and my predecessor would sing those (don't worry, they censored the n-word by replacing it with the word "homie")
4. eventually, people realized I hadn't sung in a while, and they'd either put on a song that eveyrone knows like 'Dancing Queen' and give me the mic, or give me free choice of a song that nobody knows like 'The Wonder of You' and watch me solo it (I did very well with 'The Wonder of You' though, managed to hold the last note for the proper amount of time!)
5. every so often, the existentialist would go get a new beer. I think he had four over the course of the night?
6. 'Creep' by Radiohead would also come up very very often, but they only sang it one more time before I shut it down every time it was suggested.

Midway through the session we extended our time by an hour, and at the very end of it all, we decided to encore 'Creep' by Radiohead as our time ran out. And just like that, 3 hours of constant loud singing had come and gone. My predecessor paid, and we headed outside. We looked at our reciept and saw that they did not charge us for the extra hour we requested, and they also missed half of the beers that the existentialist bought, so that was a nice little surprise. I thought people were going to start making moves to go to dinner someplace or something, but I found out by looking at my phone that it was more than an hour past midnight! I've never stayed out that long before! Closest was probably when I went to see that Shakespeare play with my compsci friend, but even then I was out past midnight because of the wait for transit. Well, I guess it makes sense to start heading back. The idealist started walking to his place becuase apparently it was nearby, and everyone else got in my predecessor's car (his wife was driving though because my predecessor had also been drinking). She gave us in the back some of her chocolate chip cookies with some softness and ofter stuff in there (delicious as awlays, delicious as always), some talking about all our mutual home cities, some about the fire hydrants in this city here, and a little bit about my romantic life (thanks predecessor's wife...), and then: dropped off. What a great night. What a great night! In fact, it's such a great night, let's just stay up for another 2 and a half hours so that I can go to bed so late I regret it tomorrow morning! Woohoo! Don't know what's up with me now, but I'm just feeling so good about myself right now. I wish I could feel like this forever... oh I am not going to feel like this at all tomorrow morning, aren't I?

I woke up the exact same way on Sunday as I did on Saturday, except displaced by 2 hours. That's right! Woke up at noon, slept for another hour, then stayed awake and on my phone in bed, unmotivated, for another hour. I feel terrible. Blech. This was supposed to be a big bloghan catchup day for me, but... Well, I guess not. Can't be helped. I need help. But, still, can't be helped. There's really not much to say about this day, somehow even less than Monday. I didn't even have any grocery delivery or anything like that, becuase why would I? I haven't even touched the stuff I got at the start of the week. I guess I can say that I had the distractions you all have come to expect, but I was not expecting one of them to be a renewed interest in ciphers and cryptography. I remember that as a kid I was fascinated by these concepts but always frustrated that the implementations involved so much complex math I didn't know (not complex like it involves square roots of negatives, just hard for a kid who just learned how to solve simple algebraic expressions). Right now I'm much too busy to really explore or do a course on them on my own time and of my own volition, but one day I will be back for those ciphers, ready to use them in certain applications. I also did some more resume updating, and educated myself on the predator problem on 'Roblox' because I think it's a very serious issue that I have no stake in, really. Early in the evening, I watered my landlord's garden for the last time, and with absolutely no incident. As the evening gave way to night, I began to cook, using the pasta sachet I got from the dollar store in conjunction with my extra onion and frozen brocolli to make a rather nice tasting carbonara. Mostly pre-prepared, sure, but I liked it and I'm not eating in en masse, so I think it's alright. While I was doing that cooking, there was osme cooking I was preparing for tomorrow: the biryani. My chicken still hadn't fully defrosted yet, but after a couple of rounds of placing the plastic bags full of frozen chicken into some hot water, it defrosted just fine. I placed it in a large metal bowl with a good chunk of yogurt, and way more spices and curry powder than I normally prepare biryani with (less pepper though). I set that in the fridge for cooking tomorrow. As I prepared to go to bed (I do that prep before long sessions of bloghan writing so that I can go straight to bed after finishing the session, I ran into something in the laundry room: that pair of houseflies that had been bothering me all week. One had gotten caught in the fly ribbon glue trap already, somehow with its wings on the sticky part and its head facing down (how did you even fly in into the ribbon at that angle???), but the other seemed to have fallen off of it. Earlier in the day I briefly saw it land on the ribbon and laughed in its face, but I guess it must've digged itself out? But a little bit of the glue must've gotten on its wing, because that wing was stuck to the ground, and this fly was struggling so hard to get get off the ground, or even to a different spot on the ground. I poked it a bit with tweezers, and that let it eventually loosen the connection the ground enough so that it could limp around the floor. Oh, no no no, mister. That's not allowed. You're not allowed here, actually. I grabbed the fly ribbon by the hanging noose part and the cylinder, then lowered the sticky part to the ground where this fly was trying to make a run for it. It was now stuck on the sticky tape. The first fly to get caught on it 2 days ago or so was still moving its legs around, confused as to why it's not going anywhere. I wonder how long this new specimen will hang on to life for. Its legs and a bit of its wing are what's touching the sticky part, but it seems to have some sort of mischievous and illicit purpose to its movements. I watched it struggle, using its free legs to dig out its other legs. However, as the fly wiggled around it it would often slip and nearly fall over. It only happened just a tiny bit with every leg removal attempt, but each slip would've shifted its positioning and leverage by a lot whenever it happened. For every leg that got freed, a leg that assisted in the rescue would get stuck in the sticky portion as well. As I watched the first fly struggle, waving its legs around as if it would do something, I had some... other thoughts. They're not things that a mother should explain to her child (just for instance, I don't know why one would ever have to), but I still feel bad sometimes about how I can be surprisingly macabre around people I barely talk to. Or maybe it's because they don't ever want to hear my crazy talk anymore! After a good 20 minutes of watching this newly humiliated fly, it looked like it was just about to fully tip over and getting its wings stuck fully to the tape. I grew bored of watching this struggle before that happened though, and went back to my laptop to resume the typefest. As I got closer and closer to the witching hour, as well as "much after midnight," I did finally lock in on writing bloghan, finishing out yet another week of bloghan writings and starting to prepare the next. Obviously I was frustrated with myself, but I have kind of become more and more ok with it. There are other things in life to prioritize more than writing this, but if I got it doen faster, I would have less stress about it, wouldn't I? I crawled into bed another 4 hours after midnight, realizing that I was still quite behind on just about everything... yeesh. Too much to do, and not enough time on my hands, by my hands alone. What a life, huh?

Future plans

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

• Bloghan catchup: I fell asleep too much, and I bit off more than I can chew just overall. I don't even think I can do it next week, but maybe I can?
• Door: no progress
• Jeopardy board for my work rival and Steve: I have some category ideas, but not many clues.
• Interactive thing for Blue-haired and Grey-haired: yeah I'm not ever trying that again.
• Update resume: done! Really wasn't all that much work.
• Cat cafe and aquarium: yeah ok so things didn't shake out how I wanted them to and I lost out on this.
• Get fully caught up on 'One Piece': oh yeah I was going to do that this week huh? Whoops.

This next week, I have a good chance to get all caught up on bloghan. This week was half-blank, after all. Once I determine if I can or not, I know that I want to make the last Jeopardy board that I will ever make (maybe), and I kinda want to do one last mini cryptic crossword as a goodbye gift. For relatively sooner plans, I'll make one last biryani on Monday. Maybe this weekend I can do the cat cafe visit or a visit to that one park downtown with a zoo, since I have a better chance at it? I might finally catch up on the 'One Piece' manga too, since the stoner has somehow done that and he started 'One Piece' 4 months ago. I don't really want to list too much more stuff because I'm trying to give a pessimistic estimate, but a nice day full of deep cleaning my apartment would be nice. It's been a while...

Song of the week

'Creep' (https://youtu.be/zFYEYRcjK2g) by Radiohead is the song of the week. I hate this song now. I didn't know it before, no, but I hate it now. But maybe... just maybe... maybe I'm the weirdo for this opinion?

Eh, probably not. Nothing this week really demonstrates that.

Until next time

And just like that, we are (almost, very nearly) back! I'm never going to stop pushing myself, no, but while I couldn't hold true to everything I ever dreamed and promised you, I could at least hold myself to the next promise. Well, ok, not the immediate next, but pretty close to it. The end is approaching. My hands are drawn to the keyboard for now, but soon they will be dragged back to where I started, away from this place far far away. I'm excited to see you all again soon, whether it be in-person or from abroad. Ah, but look at me saying my goodbyes now. We still have some time yet! Like next week! See you then.

- bubbler

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