NEW MAJOR FALLEN LONDON UPDATE ANNOUNCED.
New map and skills and quest line and item slots and items and YAY!!! APRIL IS LOOKING LIKE A GREAT MONTH!!
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I initially got a zero on an exam because of some mismanagement on the administrative side, challenged the mark- and the regraded test shows I got a 93 on it. Absolutely thrilled about not needing to rewrite it in a scramble during the early morning today, and stoked that I did well and my gut instinct to challenge the mark paid off- I was pretty incredulous that I had gotten a zero, because I hadn’t felt like I’d done a zero’s worth of work, and I’d studied my ass off for it, but it was still a pretty intimidating process to contest the grade. But it paid off! And Dan was very sweet about having held faith in that I hadn’t done like, a zero’s worth of work, even though I was seriously doubting myself there for a bit.
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It’s snowing! Came down hard out of the blue, but I took the opportunity to doodle this little kitty for other passerbys to discover.
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I haven’t posted in this thread for a while because not a lot of positive things have happened this month. The best I can say for it is that none of the bad things happened directly to me-- I just helped with the fallout. Family bad things. Friend bad things. It’s been a month.
But now I’m home and with some time to myself and there are some very positive things going on:
It has been remarkably cool here for March. It hasn’t gotten above 80F for weeks, and it’s forecast to stay below 80 into April, which is crazy weird, as it should be getting hot now. We’ve had a little rain and more is forecast tonight and tomorrow. The wildflowers are exploding and I’ve never been anywhere with better wildflowers than the Texas hill country. Oceans of blue, blue, bluebonnets everywhere. Pink and yellow primroses, red Indian paintbrushes, purple verbena, wisteria that smells like grape Kool-aid. The milkweed, poppies, and wild white roses will be up soon. After a peaceful 5 months without them, Tom’s army of hummingbirds are back, pipping their war cries and buzzing angrily everywhere, attacking me on the porch when I try to read there.
So it’s a lovely cool Spring, I’m reading a riveting series of books, I have time to breathe and focus on my world, and perhaps I’ll get a few weeks without a death or a divorce or some other major catastrophe that I have to go attend to calmly and helpfully. Maybe it can be selfish time for a while?
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Jinx made and released a template, which would be really useful for the Dialogue Jam we’ve got running- I’m so proud of her! It looks beautiful, the instructions look easy enough for me to tackle, and the writing samples are gorgeous. It really made my day when I recognized a bunch of the AUs she had used for the scenarios. (And the easter egg for some of my OCs was super adorable.)
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Started up a new TTRPG campaign with some friends this weekend. There were a couple of bumps in the road, but we had lots of fun- and it’s always a pleasure to spend time with people you care about. I’d been looking forward to it all week, and it was just as fun as I had hoped- and a super bright spot to break up some of the tedium of the take home exam I’ve been grinding away at all weekend. I really missed playing TTRPGs. It’s so much fun, and I am thoroughly looking forward to seeing how the story spools out- and to have scheduled time with people I cherish to anticipate and tide me through difficult weeks.
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Positivity rules over negativity (*). Glad to hear it’s getting better!
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I applaud your cheerful attitude towards The Emboldened Arsehole of Negativity.
May the Forces of Optimism unfailingly prevail over the Shit That Happens.
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Appointment went well, even though the other party was quite a bit late to it. Things have gone smoothly so far, and I’m in pretty good spirits about it.
Today a bunch of daycare kids from the church program were walking by, and one girl excitedly pointed out my purple jacket and pink backpack to her friend, and called them princess colours, which was so adorable.
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Arlo reminded me of this, actually- but I also heard back from a security guard I’m acquainted with, and apparently the man that I had called a security wellness check on awhile ago (he was collapsed on the ground in a doorway in the middle of winter, wrapped up in a garbage bag (legs poking out) and while other people were there, they just sort of stepped around him like he was garbage and no one else had phoned it in- apparently wound up being referred to an addiction treatment center nearby, so he did at least survive the initial incident. (At the time I was unsure if he had died already or not, as it was hard to discern if he was breathing without getting too close, and I had completely mistaken him for a misplaced bag of trash, it wasn’t until closer inspection while phoning in an initial ping to the custodians that I realized it was a person.)
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I also found a new gender neutral bathroom (previously the accessible bathrooms for disabled people) near my morning class today also, which is fantastic, because I don’t have to suffer the horrors of the bathrooms built for freaking mice or something in the science building. Yay!
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My Spring Thing entry is almost ready for release! Bugs are still getting squashed but there are a couple days left for that!
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My partner asked me this question earlier (“what’s a positive thing from your day?”), and I said eating a bag of mini pretzels. Fortunately I can now add to that being cozy at home with a blanket and a dog on my lap!
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This came today.
I spent most of my working life as a marine chemist. The first day on the job as a trainee, I was given an old combustible gas indicator (CGI) Sniffer to start testing confined spaces. (circa 1975) My original was old. I had to refurbish it to get it to work correctly. I found this one on ebay in pristine unused condition. (Mine didn’t have the fancy wooden box.) Memories
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no wonder that OPEN BOX often reveals useful instruments/tools/gizmos… 
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
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Easter! Family dinner and egg hunt later today!
My father’s hiding chocolate eggs in the garden as we speak, and I made rabbit stew for dinner.
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Prepare for a dramatic, edge-of-your-seat Easter story!
So we have a big tall pot full of flowers by our porch, and our dog got really interested in it this morning and was hopping up on it, and there was a very angry wren shouting nearby and so I called the dog off and went to look in the pot, and that STUPID wren had built a nest in it, and there were eggs hatching in it with little red squirmy peeping hatchlings and an egg hatching right that very second.
If you aren’t familiar with wrens, they build nests in the dumbest and most inconvenient places. A few years ago Tom hung his favorite pants over the fence to dry and in the morning, wrens had built a nest in the pants and Tom had to cede them. And this pot is like 2 feet tall. There’s a world of critters aside from our dog who would happily hop up there and eat nestlings.
So were were like, “Crap.” Now these little birds were our responsibility, and we had to find a way to keep our dog from eating them. So we found a post and some wire fencing (we have tons of that stuff lying around) and rigged up a fence around the pot. It won’t keep a raccoon out, but it’ll stymie the dog.
We know from prior experience that it takes 2 weeks for these guys to fledge, and if they make it that long, when they fledge they’ll be popping all over the yard for a couple of days, as they are ground fledgers. Which is also pretty dumb.
But anyway, we now have an egg story this Easter, and we have done everything we can to protect these little ‘uns from their parents’ folly. I hope they make it.
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That’s very sweet and really cute! (Although a little sad inevitably.)
I just wrote up a bunch of lyrics for a potential song. Okay! The lyrics are considerably darker than I expected but imagine Fitter Happier by Radiohead with lyrics that sound like a person (because they will be sung by a person, unlike Fitter Happier!), and with lyrics that try to focus on some very specific topics without giving them away because, well, if you immediately knew the meaning you would be … not concerned, but more… “Huh.” And just sit there. Which isn’t really a good thing but whatever. Good night!
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Little man had a blast dyeing eggs, (he’s very interested in the colours you can get out of red cabbage), petting little fluffy peeps, and hiding them around the house, haha.
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Some of the Comeows are interested in tackling either the April or July runs of Camp NaNoWriMo (unofficially, it’s really more so of an excuse to keep each other accountable, and to spend a little more devoted time on our writing projects) which is super exciting. I have a great excuse to use the Pompompurin calendar for April, (Sanrio releases some free printables/downloadables of monthly calendars with their creatures) and it’s always more fun to go into something with other people.
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