rowyn

January 10

I woke at 7:40AM, did not want to get up, and checked Fediverse to see if Vicorva would be streaming. Stream was cancelled, yay, I could back to sleep.

But instead of going back to sleep, I started to play Time Princess, "just to do a few quick time-sensitive things". Eliyahu got up at 7:45AM and went out to shovel snow. Another inch of snow had fallen during the night, so they had to clear the walk again, too, but that part was quick.

Around 8AM, I gave up on the idea that I might go back to sleep and got up.

At 9AM, I went out to take the shovel from Eliyahu so they could do morning prayers. They'd gotten most of the driveway done, so I just widened the top a bit further and then cleaned off the car.

Once the car was cleaned off, I went inside at 9:30AM to get ready to go out, and found Eliyahu had just finished showering and was still drying off. I sat at my computer for a bit while I waited for them to finish in the bathroom, so I could use it before I left. Around 10AM, I set out on Challah Quest.

I listened to a podcast on the way there and most of the way back: Left, Right, and Center. I started following this podcast six or seven years ago, but I may drop it this year just because USA politics are so dreary now. The value of the generic "stay informed" is extremely unclear to me. The show got to the topic of trans atheletes in schools and I turned it off. I do not know why there is a national conversation over whether maybe 100 American trans girls should be allowed to play sports. Why are you this threatened by a tiny number of young women. Why do you care which kid is playing a sport you don't follow in a state you don't live in. Please just leave them alone. (Sometimes people care about trans boys in sports too but that seems so much rarer.)

Anyway, I got challah and bagels and returned to the house around 11AM. For the next two hours, I did very little. I ate two bagels and a brownie, played a lot of Race for the Galaxy. Oh, and groceries arrived, so we got those put away. Around 1PM, I decided to take a nap since I wasn't doing anything else useful.

I woke around 3PM, dragged out of bed, and poked at my computer for a bit. A little before 4PM, I had Eliyahu keep me company while I made spaghetti sauce. I finished making food around 4:30PM and ate while playing RftG like usual. At 5PM, Coffee Quills started their stream and I wrote in my journal for the first part of it.

For the rest of the evening, I wrote some of The Secret Dragon, and finally finished the last Apothecaria illustration.

January 11

Woke around 8AM, played Time Princess for a bit, and dragged myself out of bed around 8:30AM instead of sensibly trying to sleep in further. Made breakfast, played Race for the Galaxy, ate a brownie, played some more Race for the Galaxy. Eventually dragged myself away from RftG and started writing up my 2025 goals.

A little after noon, Eliyahu finished prayers and came in to play with Lut's computer (now the guest computer, since I don't use it.) I'd thought to go through more of the living room credenza, but decided since Eliyahu was already in the den, I might as well decluter in the den instead. I have two drawer units next to my loveseat that are mostly full of cruft. I emptied the top two drawers and threw away much of the contents, then cleaned the drawers and put the drawer organizers into the dishwasher for a more thorough scrubbing. I moved most of the stuff I didn't throw out to the top of the credenza for staging. I want to organize things in a way that makes sense and so I'll be able to find it again, instead of stuffing them back into the same lack-of-order.

I am not sure it makes sense to organize things when I plan to move soon anyway. But some level of organization will survive even the move; things stored together tend to get boxed together even when you're hiring movers.

After I finished the second drawer, I asked Eliyahu if they wanted to play Flamecraft. I'd been carefully leaving the top of Lut's desk pretty clear so there'd be place to play. Eliyahu was up for that, so we played a game. This one was pretty quick by our standards: under two hours.

After the game, Eliyahu did afternoon prayers and I made myself late lunch/early dinner. I was cold after dinner, unusually, and so fixed a hot chocolate using the last of the premade chocolate bombs I'd bought in November. Storebought hot chocolate bombs are not as good as homemade but homemade are so much work. I used two little ones in a single cup of hot milk and that worked all right.

Now it's time for Coffee Quills' stream but all I really want to do is declutter some more. o_o;;;

I'll try writing a bit of The Secret Dragon until the next break instead, and declutter after break if I still feel more like doing that than writing/drawing/editing.

Ended up just writing The Secret Dragon and doing a little reading after stream.

January 12

I posted the last Apothecaria entry. I'm free! \o/

I did more decluttering on Sunday. I emptied all the remaining drawers on my side of office with the exception of the tax paperwork drawer. Throwing away tax paperwork is not generally advised so I'm just keeping that. I moved one drawer into the living room, because it was a stacking drawer and didn't fit well under the drawers it'd been resting on. I moved all the music CDs into sleeves in a binders, stacked a handful of data CDs on a spindle, and threw away all the jewel cases. I haven't used any of these things in 10+ years, but once you get rid of the jewel cases, they don't take up much space and it's nice to have backups. In an ideal world, I would back up this stuff to some even smaller medium but ripping that many CDs would take quite a while. I also threw away all the ancient software (most of it was 20+ years old. The copy of Windows 7 was the most recent item. It's been a long time since we bought anything on CD.)

Lut and I had bought a few dozen movies/shows on DVDs, and most of these I will either donate or pitch, though. If I decided to stop using a music subscription, I might listen to the music I bought on CD again. But I almost never watch movies a second time. I'm not gonna dig out a DVD to watch something even if it's not available on streaming. I haven't reached the shelves full of DVDs or Lut's music yet, though. There are a few DVDs I might keep out of love or nostalgia, even though the odds I will ever use them are almost nil.

I restocked the drawers near me with a handful of things that I actually use, and put about half of the remaining things I hadn't thrown out in the drawer I moved to the living room. The top of the credenza is stacked with miscellaneous small items that I want to keep but haven't decided how to organize.

After I finished with that, I showered and looked at my daily habits list. Coffee Quills had taken the day off because it's a holiday in Japan (where they live). So no stream to watch. I opened Be That Way and collected notes into an editing list so that I could check of "edit". Then I fought a few monsters in 4thewords while writing The Secret Dragon, so I could check off "write" and "4tw". I read a little of Timecrossed Engineer and checked off "read". I thought about drawing something so I could get "draw" checked, but didn't.

I keep thinking of loading the last Apothecaria entries -- 221 of them, IIRC -- into Atticus, but not actually doing it.

The Time Princess society event "Fantasy Promise" started after at 11PM, so I stayed up fiddling with Time Princess and the event. My society is very keen on Fantasy Promise, and I'd dragged my alt into it to replace a long-time member at the last minute, because she hadn't logged in for the last 5 days and wasn't communicating outside the game, either. :( Hope she's okay.

Went to sleep a little late, but not ridiculously so.