Scout, PuncProsody

Scoutlife

We celebrated Scout’s adoption day last month, which for us is more significant than a birthday… because we don’t actually know when his birthday is. He was brought in as a stray, so his age was estimated based on the condition of his teeth, and the day he was brought in to the shelter was designated as his birthday. We still do some special things for his birthday, but his adoption day is far more important.

After all, that was the day that he adopted Birdie!

Scout has grown and flourished so much since I first brought him home, and we’ve both felt even happier since moving to a new apartment together where we have more space… and sunbeams! Scout never had sunbeams to nap in at our old apartment and always seemed to dislike the heat in general, but it seems he’s a typical cat after all, getting in at least a little bit of sunbathing every day.

He’s also completely fascinated by new our record player and loves to sit next to it to watch the vinyl spin when one is playing… or to stretch up on his hind legs to take a look. I finally finished building my first Gundam and its stand recently, and I wanted to display it on the record cover when it wasn’t being played… but Scout was way too interested in trying to steal the Gundam’s gun or tail parts, so I moved Aerial onto a high shelf in my bedroom instead lol.

After that dinner with my brother, I finally decided to do my research and found a great refurbished Audio Technica record player so that I could finally play the records I had preemptively bought in my own home. I really do love selecting a single vinyl to play the whole way through — even though I still love streaming services and my digital music player of choice (itunes) for creating playlists and discovering new songs. It’s just really satisfying to intentionally play music album by album again… and of course, to collect favourites.

This morning, we’re listening to the latest vinyl I’ve added to my collection: White Buffalo by Crown Lands. I’ve listened to this EP over and over since it was released and it’s utterly awesome every time. Highly recommend.

I write this entry before preparing to head out to the Writers of Ottawa meetup, coffee currently brewing. I’m about to make myself a mocha of sorts — my parents accidentally bought chocolate milk, and I have inherited it. They found out when my father went to pour milk into his cereal and got an unwelcome surprise lol. I find it too sweet to drink on its own, but it’s quite good when you add a bit to coffee, so that’s how I’m using it up.

Yesterday, auroras were actually visible all over Canada, and even further south into the States; I told my team at work that that would be the case… and then it completely slipped my mind to keep checking the sky after nightfall to catch sight of the lights. I’m a bit disappointed in myself for not setting alarms to remind myself, but there’s nothing to be done about that. I still remember seeing them once from my bedroom window at night when I was a teen. I’ll never forget that feeling of wonder…

Instead of watching for the northern lights, Scout and I took a bath. Well, I took a bath and Scout guarded me. He stayed at a distance at first, but curiosity got the better of him and he came up to the edge to look at the water, then spent the rest of the bath prowling along the edge of the bath, sitting up next to my shoulder like a little sentry upon a castle wall.

Ah. Coffee’s ready. I’ll end this entry with some recent photos of myself with and without makeup, and head off to do some writing/editing before the meetup. Take care, reader!

Weekend Edit

Footnotes, Slice of Life

Scout needed food yesterday so I got ready to run that errand and figured I might as well put on some makeup and turn the outing into a solo date at a café. Of course, as these things do, one thing led to another, and my original errand spawned several side quests.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I woke up to this sweet little baby angel (and occasional fluffy mischief-maker) cuddled up next to me in bed and after a good bit of reading, got up to start the day. The book? センチメンタルワールズエンド by 武瑠, which I have finally been able to return to after setting it aside for a while — my studying in the interim has made it much easier to understand. Not every word individually, obviously, but I’m much better able to understand sentences as a whole without having to know every word in them. I’m enjoying it so far, enjoying the descriptions and dialogue especially — the conversations have a natural feel to them (at least from my non-native speaker perspective…).

The pie pumpkins sitting on the kitchen table will have to wait another week or two before getting turned into baked goods because my mind is currently set on working through my third big edit of The Everyforest — which is what I set my mind to again after my early morning of reading.

I’ve already renamed the first chapter, added an extra passage, and reworked a lot of the wording. It’s something I should have done originally, but I still hadn’t let go of the idea that it needed to stay as it had been in order to match the audio narration. But the story had morphed so greatly between the first chapter and the last that it truly needed to be reshaped. And so the audio narration is a preservation of the story’s original draft, but the ebook/print will diverge from it quite a bit.

The days are getting colder, to the point where it may start snowing in the next few weeks so despite the looming rain and general chill, I made a point to leave my coat at home. One last hurrah.

After stocking up on food for Scout, I started walking home, keeping my eyes peeled for any cozy-looking cafés along the way, and instead found myself walking into a comic book shop. I’d intended to buy a Gundam Plastic Model kit, but they didn’t carry any that I wanted to build and I instead ended up perusing the shelves of graphic novels… and selecting a few that were on sale. I own a ton of comics and graphic novels, but in digital format, so it was a bit of a pleasure to indulge in physical copies for once.

Wet Moon, volume 3

The Last Book You’ll Ever Read

Beautiful Darkness

When I went back outside, the temperature felt as though it had dropped further. I took refuge indoors again, this time heading to Uniqlo with a mind to buy myself another top like the one I’d had on… but of course, it was already well out of season, so I had no luck there.

Until I noticed, lined up on a shelf, a little contigent of Doraemon plushies. Oh, the cuteness! I walked past.

And then I doubled back and picked one to bring home with me. I simply couldn’t resist. I paid for my magical little friend, feeling rather gleeful about the unexpected find (and the fact that I had bought the only thing in the store that wasn’t clothing of some kind), and made a beeline for the exit.

Finally, it was raining.

I thought I could make it to the café before it started pouring, but I barely had time to put up my umbrella before the rain started pelting the pavement.

I was a tiny bit soaked when I reached the café… but no worse for wear.

And very much in need of the peanut butter cookie and mocha I bought.

I didn’t start drinking coffee or tea regularly until I was in my late twenties and had severe social anxiety, so I never really developed a habit (an indulgence) of going to cafés or coffee shops on my own to read or study. It’s something I’m learning to enjoy now that the pandemic has ended and my anxiety is no longer severe — I wish I could share that sense of quiet mental freedom with my younger self who was petrified of being in the wider world alone, constantly worried about invisible social rules, scripts, and unknown spaces.

I sat in front of the window, listened to music, read a bit of one of the graphic novels, read a bit of an ebook.

I love the feeling of being cozy and warm indoors, watching rain falling out the window.

When I finally got home, shoes and umbrella dripping, Scout immediately swarmed me at the door, eager not only to sniff at what I’d bought but also to remind me that his suppertime was Very Soon. When Scout noticed our new friend sitting nonchalantly on the reading chair, he snuck up behind him and… caught Doraemon with his paw!

Then he went back to enjoying his supper.

Doraemon, meanwhile, mysteriously teleported to the living room couch, where he is still sitting as I type this… as far as I’m aware.

Tag!

Slice of Life

What kinds of things does Scout dream about? What wakes him up with a sudden jolt? What little phantasmagoric entities does he spy out of the corners of his eyes in the unassuming nooks and crannies of the room?

As I was writing that dramatic little paragraph burrowed under a blanket in bed, Scout suddenly leapt up onto the bed, nipped one of my forearms, chirped, and then leapt back off the bed before I could react or catch him.

Now he’s observing me from the lower level of his cat tree.

That cute little mothafluffa.

He loves to tap me with his paw or nip one of my limbs and dash away — his version of playing tag. Now he’s back, preparing to tackle my arm until I say uncle and give him his supper.

And heat up mine (leftover soup).

Never a dull moment in ホームBASS.

Nosemountain Style

Slice of Life

After a very sleepy morning, the ホームBASS received a delightful surprise when two packages arrived at the door. Scout was immediately excited to climb to the summit of the boxes and I had to distract him with some crinkly paper to be able to lure him away long enough to open them.

Saga praying up at the moon and some aliens on the back of the new hoodie is everything. I love the whole idea behind it, and it’s definitely going to be keeping me warm and comfy at home during the winter. The new shirt is so much more textured and vibrant in tone than I had expected — I love it. It’s the kind of piece you can interpret a little differently every time you look at it because of all the little details that have been incorporated into the collage. What shall I pair the shirt with to form an outfit…? ♡♪

沙我くんの特典ビデオカッコよかった…

Saga lounging on a couch after a hot live, footage of him playing bass, kissing and licking 焔ちゃん’s neck after a solo… heaven. 💋🗻

I felt so inspired and energetic after holding those pieces in my hands and trying them on that I decided to make お弁当 for tomorrow instead of my usual sandwich 😋 not that it in any way approaches the coolness and beauty of those clothing pieces… お弁当が可愛い系だからね笑

💜🍴For supper, tonight’s ホームBASS special was pierogis with greek yogurt instead of sour cream. Yes, I’ve increased my ability to eat yogurt! My body needs those sweet, sweet probiotics… it also needs sweets. And naps.

Last weekend I met up with my fellow local writers to discuss symbolism — next weekend, for the first time ever, I am going to participate in the “Canada Army Run” (though I’ll be walking). I grew up an army brat and work in the national defence sector now, so it seemed fitting…

Here’s Scout sitting strangely on the couch next to a photo of the adorable Shishamo coin purse design. Cuties.

Research-ish

Footnotes, Music, Slice of Life, Writing

Saga and ALICE NINE. have completed their Act 4 Summer tour and now all that’s left is the big finale in September. It seems pretty definitive that I won’t be able to travel to Japan and attend in person… but I will be with Saga and the band in spirit. It is sad… logistically, I just can’t see a way to do it, barring a miracle. So I’m just going to support and cheer on from afar and look forward to (hopefully) going to attend something that Saga does after the freeze… ♡♪

I’m currently working on interview translations for the deep-dive for Funeral (so much glorious content) and then I’ll move on to the GEMINI suite. It is strange, I admit, but even though I consider the GEMINI suite (and album, of course) to have been such a huge influence in my art, I’ve kind of been skirting around the prospect of translating the lyrics of the suite in full. Oh, I’ve read them many times (listened even more) — it’s just that, I’ve been afraid of making them sound less epic than they are. But that’s silly. The original poetry will shine through no matter what. It helps that a fellow 9kumi asked me if I planned to do deep-dives on those songs, giving me an even more concrete reason to face that imposter syndrome and just do the thing!

So there you have it.

I’m doing it.

And the imagery of the lyrics is exactly as rich, as introspective, and as epic as the music sounds.

It was much later than I’d planned, but I finally recorded the Brothers Grimm fairytale that I rewrote to start the newest series that will be part of The Side B Anthology: Sable’s Tales, or ST for short. It was really fun to adapt The Seven Ravens in my own writing style and so I will slowly add more to the series. It was fun to record the narration too, of course; here’s an outtake of me making fun of one of my voices to Scout (who attended the recording by snoozing underneath the comforter of the bed behind me).

This weekend I intended to sit down at my laptop and write more for Casseltaur, but instead had a sudden flash of inspiration for the next fairytale re-write so I ended up typing away at that instead until I had a first draft. As a kid, one of my favourites was Little Red Riding Hood, but having read a few versions and retellings over the years, I had a very clear idea of how I wanted to shape it in my own words.

This is basically just a fix-it fic lol.

Casseltaur, meanwhile, gets weirder each time I sit down to do the worldbuilding for it.

Which, of course, is a good thing. :p

I’m now on week two at my new job and the amount of change it has brought about in my day-to-day life already is incredible. Scout and I get lots more time together, for one thing. Aside from that, my commute is actually pretty energizing now (what?!), and I have so much more time and energy during the week to clean, run errands, and even write and translate. The new team I’ve joined are great bunch of clever, funny people and I’ve barely scratched the surface so far of what I’m going to need to learn to do this new job correctly, but they’re all very supportive, and this kind of challenge is exactly what I wanted.

Also, this week I started watching episodes of Gundam The Witch From Mercury before work while eating breakfast. It really takes me back to my childhood, watching anime in the morning over a bowl of cereal… キャリバーンがやっとデター！Obviously I want to watch the latest Dragon Ball stuff (lol), but the next thing on my list is とつくにの少女 (The Girl From The Other Side), which I started reading the manga of a year or so ago, but stopped because I couldn’t get the next volume, I think. In any case, I hope watching it will be just as beautiful and mysterious.

In terms of live-action TV, what I recently finished watching was the arctic season (6) of the survival series “Alone” (set in Northwest Territories, Canada). I used to watch quite a number of similar wilderness survival series back in the day because seeing people living off the land and personally finding the pockets of abundance in a given landscape is both impressive and soothing, in a way. CONTEXT and Casseltaur both involve living in an arctic zone at some points in the plot, so my watching was sort of research-ish…? I did learn a number of really cool facts as I watched, anyway.

Also: one of the survival experts was basically an arctic Forrest Gump… if that isn’t a good enough endorsement, I don’t know what is. Haha.

One of the survival experts made an incredibly beautiful, durable shelter and was just so adept at creating handmade things from natural materials. Another was doing fine in terms of shelter and food but decided to leave early because he realized that time with his wife and kids was more valuable than the prize money (or bragging rights) he could win if he spent more time away from them… nothing but respect from me for that mindset.

Last night it was a documentary about the concept of infinity that I watched (A Trip to Infinity) and it was a delightfully strange thought exercise for my mind — it gave me goosebumps in the best possible way. I think it’s safe to consider this research-ish as well. As much time as I’ve spent thinking about the concept of infinity and of how our universe is configured, there were several things I hadn’t considered before — facts that tilted, stretched, and reframed my imagination and thinking on the subject.

Why in the night sky are the lights hung?

Music, Slice of Life

The office surprised me with a pizza lunch the day before my last, and I really do mean surprised. I was working the last thirty minutes til my actual lunchtime, enjoying my music and the stillness of the room as everyone else went to work in another, when my fellow team lead came up to my desk with a serious question and asked if we could go talk. I felt kind of concerned and followed her. She led me to the closed board room door saying we should talk in there and motioned for me to open the door. When I saw that the room was completely full of coworkers apparently having a meeting, I automatically made to close the door, but before it was shut, everyone was saying “surprise!”

Feeling somewhere between sheepish and embarrassed, I went inside and thanked them (my fellow team lead had not allowed me to shut the door and make the tactical retreat I had intended to).

My embarrassment wore off as they started cutting the pizzas, and I thanked them all again (also mock-complained, “you guys really got me!”). Those two huge slices were definitely a tasty alternative to the sandwich that I had brought with me that morning.

Then, finally, it was my last day at the office I’d been working at for years, that I was going in to every day for most of the pandemic. I’d had quite a bit of notice and time to prepare beforehand so all of my responsibilities and jobs had been neatly handed over to others before I left (with plenty of time to train each person and make sure they were comfortable with the hand-over), the result being that I had no regrets upon stepping out the door for the last time yesterday afternoon.

I felt light, ready for the next chapter of my life to begin.

So I decided to kick it off by leaving early and going to Bluesfest for the first time since 2019.

Going back to this music festival after so many years was fun, even comforting — but I am also so much more centered now than I was back then. It didn’t feel like a new beginning, it felt like taking the next step in my life by leaving my old job, and then setting foot in this familiar place, days away from starting a new one.

The weather was warm but the breeze was cool making of the evening a perfect one for going to see some bands play outdoors.

I was a little late arriving to the River Stage for the first act, Pony Girl, so I encountered them mid-song, having never heard them play before. They were having such a blast on stage, it was impossible not to get into their music. When they suddenly played a clarinet solo outta left field, I knew I was in the right place, their songs delightfully unusual — art pop being a music genre I hadn’t been familiar with until their performance. Thumbs up for these talented, energetic, local musicians!

The frontman told the crowd they were having an amazing time playing for us that evening, which was especially important considering the night before had been the exact opposite: their rehearsal space had started flooding… with sewage. Yikes, man. He gave us extremely clear (read: comically roundabout) directions to the merch tent to buy their new album, and then got emotional thanking us for coming out to see them — because there’s nothing quite as special as “playing music with your best friends.”

And it showed. They just kept grinning at one another, sharing said jam session among friends with us, the crowd.

We cheered as they ended their set and began clearing away their instruments and equipment for the next band as the sun began to set.

As the sun continued to set, casting warm golden light onto the stage, Allison Russell came out with her band, beaming at us in her glittering blazer. Though she lives and works in the US, Allison Russell explained (en français) that she grew up in Montréal and that performing at Ottawa Bluesfest had been a longtime dream of hers. A dream so big that she’d missed her daughter’s first performance in a play to fulfil it… and we, the crowd, were grateful for her and her band’s presence that night.

I’d never heard any of Allison Russell’s music before and was touched by her lyrical storytelling through her radiant singing voice and radiant, radical message of love, peace, and acceptance. She spoke of growing up with an abusive adoptive father, of running away from the abuse, finding her chosen family, and of slowly unlearning the shame that her adoptive father had forced on her through his white supremacist ideals. It made the overpowering sense of love, compassion, empathy, and acceptance in her songs that much more beautiful. She introduced each member of the band as part of her circle, her chosen family, and all four of them radiated with purpose as they played, whether the song was sad and heartfelt or whether it was uplifting and euphoric.

They took their final bow to our enthusiastic applause.

The crowd packed in elbow-to-elbow as they cleared away equipment and rearranged the stage between bands; the sun had set entirely when Fleet Foxes came onstage as a cheer went up from the crowd. Their opening vocal harmonies were so soft, so clear, and finally seeing them live I understood that up to four band members would sing together at once for those beautiful, layered melodies, that it wasn’t several tracks layered together as I had figured. It was a wonder to see and to hear. I was also fascinated by all the different instruments they played throughout the performance.

The crowd was utterly thrilled by the performance (me included), singing along to songs, whooping, cheering, calling out to the band — and the band seemed pleasantly surprised by this enthusiasm, with the frontman continually exclaiming “thank you so much!” with a grin after almost every song.

Hey man, that’s our line! 🙂

It was particularly meaningful to me to hear Your Protector, Blue Ridge Mountains, and Blue Spotted Tail live, three of my favourite songs by them. Your Protector gave me chills… Blue Spotted Tail was so quiet and beautiful, the lyrics deeply touching. Something about Blue Ridge Mountain’s lyrics just puts the coziest sort of image in my mind.

I heard about their self-titled album through one of Saga’s entries on his old ameblo. It wasn’t nearly as easy to sample albums back in those days, so I just decided to trust Saga’s taste and buy it on a whim — it became one of the most-listened to albums in my library (especially when I was writing), and is the album that clued me in to the fact that folk rock is one of my favourite genres. Thanks, Saga! ♪

The two other songs I’d recommend (that they didn’t play that night) are Tiger Mountain Peasant Song and Sim Sala Bim.

They played right up until the minute it turned 11, and then they stopped and left the stage… an Ottawa bylaw prohibits loud noises past that time, so even though the whole crowd was ready to call out “one more song!” (and I’m sure the band would have wanted to play one) they wouldn’t have been allowed to do an encore.

It was a gorgeous concert.

I made my way home, tired but glad that I’d gotten to hear such great sets, and went to bed as Saga and アリス九號., on the other side of the world, were setting up to play what would turn out to be a seriously wild and passionate live at 新潟NEXS… ♡♪

Splish Splash

Slice of Life, Writing

It was truly a momentous occasion at ホームBASS last night, as Scout discovered that mixed in with cans of food and a bag of litter were some new toys! But not just any toys. Bath toys. That float.

He hasn’t had another bath yet, but he was absolutely delighted to just be able to admire his new ocean friends before bed.

This morning I drifted back and forth between the offline writing laptop and the web-dev laptop, preparing a new page for Alice9Lives while Scout cooled off, belly-up, on the hardwood floor. He’s a perfectly strange character, and I wouldn’t have it any other way! Just after breakfast, he was having fun untying the bow of the ribbon I use to keep some kitchen cupboards shut. He untied it and then carried the ribbon over to me, utterly pleased with himself. I had to figure out another way to tie it to keep my little tactician out of trouble lol

I spent the afternoon chatting with other writers at the monthly pub meet-up and aside from just relaxing and catching eachother up on our writing lives (during which time I heard yet more interesting bits of advice), we also discussed how to keep the monthly meet-ups going because the current Ottawa Writers’ Circle is set to close at the end of the month. We sat around the pub tables and discussed rudimentary plans to keep parts of the group going under a new name. At the very least, we wanted to make sure we’d all know where and when to meet up again the following month.

I volunteered a subdomain for this purpose (until or unless we decide to buy a domain as a group), and others volunteered to take on organizational responsibilities so we could carry over some elements of the original group (it has a huge online user base and had many events, so we just chose to focus on maintaining the core elements for now).

Much like last month, a contingent of introverts stayed behind at the end for a bit of extra conversation (myself included) and then, once more running into another meet-up group that needed our space, we said a quick goodbye and headed our separate ways. My feet carried me to a newer shop downtown: Midori Gifts.

Correction: I intended to go to right to Midori Gifts to peruse the cute stationery imported from East Asia, and was on the right street, but I walked almost four blocks in the wrong direction. Yep. I completely passed the store front. When I finally checked the map and realized my mistake, I felt incredibly embarrassed (also amused) and made a u-turn. The store’s selection was exactly as cute as I’d expected. I may or may not have bought a new eraser and sketching pen to add to my regular lineup…

Oh, I got one other thing out of the afternoon: a mild sunburn. This, despite having slathered on sunscreen beforehand! Ah, well… nothing a bit of deep moisturizing tonight and tomorrow won’t soothe. I was craving a salad of all things on the way home (fun fact: the tastiest salad I’ve had in the city so far is from my fav pizza bar) so I picked up some greens and Scout and I have been settled in at home ever since. In fact, we’re enjoying having the windows open for some fresh air tonight, since there’s no smoke and the temperature has cooled…

Over in Japan, Saga is preparing to go onstage with the other members of アリス九號. in Sapporo… ♡♪

The S-Files

Slice of Life, Writing

Is it just me, or was the latest season of Black Mirror gorier than usual? Another excellent selection of thought-provoking short stories, though, and superbly acted. I ended up watching the whole season over the weekend, riveted to my seat with horror.

The rest of the week I’ve felt depleted of energy, though. Not exhausted, but depleted. I’m not sure how to explain the difference, but I suppose it’s something like this: exhaustion is sort of pleasant after putting a lot of effort into something, and a good night’s sleep will generally fix it, but depletion is a persistent lack of energy that a good night’s sleep can’t remedy. Normally, I wake up before my alarm, but this week I’ve struggled to get out of bed with enough time to catch the bus. And I keep forgetting to charge my phone.

If I think of it with a bit of emotional distance, as though it were a scene in a book, it’s almost comical, the number of times I groan and hit snooze, completely out of it. Even Scout, who normally will wiggle himself under my pillow to wake me up for breakfast, isn’t trying to get me up every morning. It’s like he can tell I’m not myself this week.

I finished reading Carmilla (a rec from the Queer for Fear documentary) and was pleasantly surprised by how overtly queer-coded it is and by the fact that I found the writing style more or less enjoyable to read. That’s saying something, because I normally find novels from that time period a bit of a slog to get through.

After the first half of the first season of Gundam The Witch from Mercury, every other episode has at least one scene that is like an emotional gut-punch. It’s good, just… emotionally harrowing.

The cover art for the Everyforest is still very much a work in progress, but last night’s sketch feels promising.

Last weekend I finished the first installment of a new anthology which I am tempted to call Sable’s (Tall) Tales. It will simply be a collection of classic fairytales that I’ve re-written in my own style and these, of course, will end up on the podcast eventually. The first story I chose to re-write was The Seven Ravens, because I simply loved the sister protagonist’s bravery in going on a quest alone to free her brothers –and the fact that the originally translated text implied that she had a disability. I made this much more overt — a gutsy, clever heroine who saves her brothers with a support of her trusty walker.

Saga seems to have mostly left Twitter at this point, and so there’s very little reason for me to stay on the site either. Rather than move firmly to Mastodon or some other microblogging platform, it seems more sensible for me to try and get back into the groove of long-form blogging instead.

They released another photo of Saga’s birthday hoodie and there IS a UFO on it. Has the inside of the Nose Mountain been visited by aliens?

Find out on the next episode of The S-files…

🛸✨👃

Ahem.

The design for the T-shirt is even more intricate than I had realized, too, and the symmetry of the two pointing fingers makes the eyes even more compelling somehow. I love the ST logo as well, and the colours… ♪

The silver amethyst pendant is simple, classic, and beautiful, but since I already have an amethyst pendant… ♡

Oh, and I’ve finally finished translating the entire GRACE album; they’re all up in the Cryptography section! They’re beautiful. I’m glad I took the time to fully understand and reflect on all of them.

I went to bed before finishing the writing of this entry, and finally woke up just before my alarm this morning feeling relatively well-rested. Scout was very pleased that I decided to join him at the window begore breakfast to see what little creatures were scurrying about outside.

Happy Birthday ♪

Slice of Life

In preparation for Saga’s birthday today me and Scout made pizza from scratch for the first time in a while yesterday (I have a cake in mind to make for tonight or tomorrow, too). This was meant to lead up to an online pizza party this morning, but unfortunately Saga felt too physically wrecked from the lives earlier in the week and so had to cancel. I’m a little worried about how Saga must be feeling, but glad that he chose to cancel the event instead of pushing himself. Hopefully he still had enough energy (and wasn’t in too much pain) to enjoy his birthday to some degree with family or friends… feel better soon, Saga. ♡

It’s been a very slow day here for me and Scout — intentionally. I did a little tinkering on the laptop in the early morning but then both me and Scout laid down and napped on and off into the afternoon while I did bits of editing on my phone. I had the leftover pizza while watching some more extremely cute episodes of はじめてのつかい and then gave Scout a bath. He actually splashed the water with his paw a little! I have every intention of getting him a floating rubber duckie for future baths to see if he’ll play with it… he’s basically a mischievous little kid.

Scout’s currently sitting next to me, grooming his still-damp fur, but it’s just about time for his allergy medication and his supper, so I’m off to do that.

I hope you have space to relax this weekend, drink plenty of water, and do something you enjoy.

Straight to the Action

Photo Reflections, Slice of Life, Writing

The writing circle meet-up last weekend was just as interesting as the first one that I went to, but for an entirely different reason this time. I didn’t participate all that much during the meet-up proper — the energy was a little different than the last time, where we were all sort of discussing in small groups and having fantastic conversations that spanned a wide array of subjects. The gathering felt somehow a little sour this time. That is, until people slowly left and there were just two of us at the table, the other person having spoken even less than I had during the gathering.

The thing about introverts is we become more talkative and relaxed the smaller the gathering becomes. So I took a chance and asked her if she’d like to sit a little longer to talk some more… and she was happy to. As it turned out, she writes screenplays which is a format I’ve never attempted before, so I had plenty of questions about it and we both got to talk about our WIPs and the differences between our preferred formats. As obvious a thing to say as this is, it’s truly comforting and fun to talk to fellow writers.

We probably would have stayed to chat even longer had an organizer not come up to us in the restaurant we were in and asked us if we were there for a “language exchange” meet-up that was being set up in the area ours had been in. We said no and excused ourselves, paid for our drinks, and parted ways.

On the way home I perused my local comic book shop to admire their wall of Gundam plastic model kits (I refrained from buying one on the spot), and to take a look at some of the newest comics and graphic novels on display (it’s not new, but I still need to get the latest Saga volume), and then I left to take the long way home because the weather was fantastic (warm, but with a cool breeze).

I hadn’t intended to do any shopping at all during my walk, but when I noticed that Nordstrom was in the last couple days of its store closing sale, I couldn’t resist taking a look (a couple weeks before, I’d nabbed a heavily discounted YSL lipstick I’d had my eye on for years) and ended up finding a very comfy pair of leggings along with a holy grail find of two bras in my (specialty petite!) size in a style that I liked. Talk about lucky.

I didn’t have the energy to make anything complicated for supper when I got home, so I made a comfort meal of そうめん (cold noodles) with side dishes of cold tofu and sliced tomatoes. As always I had to fend Scout off several times, as he wanted to either sniff or stick his paw into the noodles, but after that we just relaxed and ate side by side.

I bought great new PS4 games when I was in Japan, but wouldn’t you know it? Instead of playing those, I’ve been hooked on replaying Dragon Age Inquisition instead. I finally cleared the trebuchet battle (without lowering the difficulty, heheh) so I set about exploring Skyhold and clearing up some minor quests before bed. And then woke up in the middle of the night and played some more until I could fall back to sleep.

Before that, though, I made some more notes for the next story, which I expect will be a novella or at most a short novel. Even now I’m still more or less in the outlining phase, but that Sunday, I did start the writing proper, though with a lot of false starts. It’s been in my mind since 2018, so I have bits of writing from that year and 2019 to incorporate in it (or discard if it no longer aligns) which is rather exciting in and of itself. A bit of spring cleaning for the imagination, you might say.

I even added another old art piece to the home page — void/eden from 2018.

In the week since I’ve put a bit more work into a short story that’s been percolating in my brain for a number of months and I finished translations for a few more アリス九號. lyrics (though they still need a bit of editing before I can post them). Though given that I worked yesterday, I’ll be spending a good deal of time, I expect, giving in to Scout’s requests for naps and pets…

Sounds like a good way to spend an afternoon to me 🙂

p.s. I ate yogurt all throughout childhood without any issues, but when I became a teenager, the smell suddenly started making me gag and ever since then I’d been keeping my distance from the stuff. Well, wouldn’t you know it? I recently figured out a way to trick my brain into eating it again! I take plain greek yogurt, slather it in my favourite salsa, and eat it with chips as a replacement for sour cream! Paired with the salsa, as long as I eat it while its still cold, I really can’t smell the difference between it and sour cream. I wonder if I’d be able to eat it with pierogis and green onion…