April 29-May 3
May. 3rd, 2025 09:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rowynA Discord friend, Pemaladesi, has been doing daily sketches in a tiny sketchbook. I have two tiny sketchbooks myself (art-card sized ones, plus art cards, plus a small sketchbook (6" x 6"). The 6" sketchbooks were ones I used all the time many years ago, back before Lut was dianosed with cancer and when I still liked Twitter. I used to bike to the coffee shop with my marker case, take prompts from my Twitter friends, make marker illustrations to the prompts, and post photos of them to Twitter. I filled most of two sketchbooks doing this. I don't remember if there was a particular reason I stopped or if I just moved on to other pastimes.
After a little consideration, I picked the 6" sketchbook that still had some blank pages. Then I browsed the image search results for Mucha, picked one at random, and make a sketch based on it. I didn't like the sketch enough to color it, though.
Tuesday is too long ago now and I don't remember what else I did with the day. I started using my checkbox tracker again and checked every box, though. I did some editing on A Game to You and wrote a little of The Secret Dragon.
I also unpacked more boxes. I was into single-digits of boxes remaining to unpack and that was exciting.
Wednesday, April 30
Another "Blue Prince" stream by Veo! They only got through two days this time. The first day of ths stream was slowed down by spending twenty minutes messing with the time-locked safe. They got it open, though!
More unpacking. Also, like Tuesday, spent some time editing A Game to You and writing The Secret Dragon. I also decided to try another Mucha-inspired sketch. This time, I modeled my female figure on Koysko, a protagonist from The Secret Dragon. I liked how this sketch came out, but didn't start coloring it yet.
I bought the rest of "You've Got the Wrong Girl!", a manwha on Tapas, and immediately regretted it. In the very next entry the male lead tortured and then killed a servant because the servant had withheld the ML's correspondence by the orders of the ML's now-deceased father.
Just. What. Why is this in a romance comic. The problem with reading manwha is that the authors have Very Different sensibilities and sometimes this will show up in horrific ways.
I kept reading because I'd already paid for it, but even aside from Random Offhand Murder, the ML's behavior is incredibly grating. I had really liked this comic and now I've got seven purchased-but-unread episodes left and I'm not sure they're worth reading.
Thursday, May 1
In the morning, Sue, my dad's health aide, reported that my father's right hearing aid wouldn't fit back in his ear properly. It looked to me like it had been assembled wrong -- it matched the configuration on the left hearing aid. But I couldn't figure out another way to reassemble it. After some back and forth with my mother and Google maps, we figured out which audiologist he used, and I gave them a call.
Receptionist: "Your dad's audiologist is on vacation, so the first appointment availaible is Wednesday."
Me: "Can we get in any sooner? It doesn't have to be the usual audiologist; it's a mechanical problem with the hearing aid, not with my dad's hearing or the electronics."
Receptionist: "Not at that location."
The other location was much farther away. I asked Dad if he wanted a sooner appointment with a much longer drive, or to wait until Wednesday. He picked waiting until Wednesday.
Sue took the hearing aid from him and told him she'd put it on the charger. To my mom and I, she said, "It won't stay in, so if he keeps trying to wear it, it'll fall out and he'll lose it."
A bit later, I washed the comforter I use at my computer. (Some people like to have a small lap blanket when they're sitting. I like to have a king-size comforter.) My mother has a fancy dryer that tries to detect when the contents are dry, then turns itself off. It is not great at this. With the comforter, it turned itself off when 80% of the comforter was dry but the balled-up center was still wet. I straightened out the ball, put the wet parts on the outside, and put it back in the dryer for another cycle. The dryer told me it would run for another ~81 minutes.
3 minutes later, it shut off.
I checked the comforter: still giant wet spots. I put it back in. Dryer: "okay 81 minutes, go."
3 minutes later: "done now!"
Comforter: still wet.
Me: "..."
Me *goes into mom's office* "Is there a way to get your dryer to just, like, dry something for a while instead of turning itself off while the thing is still wet because for some reason it's sure it must be dry?"
Mom: "If there is, I haven't been able to find it."
I fiddled with the settings some more, trying "Very Dry" instead of "Normal Dry", with no better results. But "Timed Dry" turned off the auto-detection and just ran it for X minutes. I put it in for another hour Just To Be Sure, and also because I had to go visit my friends.
As with last week, I visited Sophrani to do crafting together in the afternoon, and then got dinner with her and Kage afterwards. I brought my ginormous marker case, plus the Surface and my small sketchbook. Sophrani did Delicious Crafting for her part, making a half-batch of chocolate chip cookies. She'd seen an article that recommended adding milk powder to the cookie batter and wanted to try it out. The cookies were delicious, but Sophrani and I couldn't tell if milk powder had made them extra delicious. Kage thought it did, though. I may make a more scientific effort at this at some point, and make a batch that's half with and half without milk powder.
While Sophrani baked, I colored the sketch I'd done on Wednesday. I am content with the way it came out but for some reason I haven't bothered photographing it yet.
We went to The Loop for dinner, a counter-serve place with pizza/sandwiches/burgers. I got a veggie sandwich that was quite tasty and possibly even healthy, and French onion soup that was also delicious but definitely not healthy.
After dinner, we went to Trader Joe's. I don't think we plan to make "grocery shopping after dinner" part of the routine. It just worked out that way. I got maple syrup, truffles, goat cheese, and eggs. Eggs because we were almost out but I'd forgotten to include them on Friday's grocery order.
The truffles are small dollops of chocolate ganache dusted in cocoa. The appearance on the box reminded me of truffles I used to get from Costco around Christmas time. They taste the same, too: so good. This is a mixed blessing at best. o_o;;;
Friday, May 2
I got up a little before 8AM and made pancakes for myself and my father (Mom didn't want any), so I'd have an excuse to eat the maple syrup I'd bought the night before. For some reason, there's no baking soda in the house, and my usual pancake recipe uses both baking powder and baking soda for whatever reason. But we had some Bisquick from when my sister-in-law had made shortcake, so I made Bisquick pancakes, substituting melted butter for vegetable oil because we didn't have that, either.
The Bisquick pancakes came out perfectly. It was uncanny. Fluffy and golden brown. I was like "why do I bother making pancakes from scratch? I should just use Bisquick." (Now I feel like an advertisement. They really did come out great, tho.)
I finished making pancakes and went upstairs to eat them while I waited for Veo's stream to start. This was more of "Blue Prince". I had a good time watching the stream and making notes in my spreadsheet for most of it, but around 90 minutes in, I started getting motion sick for some reason. I listened to the stream and watched chat for a while instead. My mom wanted to get subs for lunch, so I picked something to order and my mother placed the order. Around 11AM, I left to pick up the order. The stream hadn't ended yet, but I didn't miss much -- it ended a bit after 11AM. Blue Prince streams continue to run late, but not 3.6 hours like Monday's stream.
My mom had accidentally order a full sub for me instead of a small. I ate half of it for lunch and put the rest in the fridge. After lunch, I really wanted a nap, but we had grocery delivery scheduled for 1-3PM, so I had to stay awake for that. I unpacked the last box, which was mostly cosplay clothing and fabric. I threw out a bunch of things that didn't fit anymore, and put much of the rest in the wash because it was musty from a long time in storage.
A little after 2PM, I'd finished with the last box and went upstairs. Shortly afterwards, I heard my father call, "Come in." I hurried back downstairs to get the grocery order. I was kind of impressed that the delivery person had somehow made enough noise to get the attention of my mostly-deaf father without either ringing the doorbell or making enough noise that either I or my mother could hear it (granted, we were both much farther from the door than my dad. Still.) The delivery person had the bags on the front porch. While I collected some, she carefully moved the rest just inside the door, positioned so the door couldn't be closed. I am not sure exactly what the point of that was. Fortunately, Lyric was enjoying Garage Time and so did not take the opportunity to bolt outside.
One case of caffeine-free diet Coke was soggy, so I dealt with that first. Two of the cans inside were damaged and leaking, so I threw them out along with wet cardboard box. While I handled that, my father loaded groceries onto the seat of his rolling walker, and brought groceries into the kitchen. "You don't need to do that, Dad," I said to him. "I'll handle it."
My dad said, "I thought I'd take advantage of my wheelbarrow here to help out."
As we put away groceries, my father mentioned that the grocery webpage had a habit of adding things to the shopping cart because you'd bought them before and it assumed you would want them again. So you had to check the cart to make sure the thing you wanted wasn't already in the cart.
I giggled. "I don't know if the page still does this, because at this point, I'm ordering for myself, and K is putting in what Sue orders for you, and Mom either emails K or adds things to the cart directly. So there's no way to tell if the grocery did it or if one of the other two people ordering did."
My father's observation may have been prompted by me ordering two packages of smoked salmon despite there already being a full package in the fridge (plus an almost-empty one). I'd thought we only had the almost-empty one and I was thinking of buying fresh bagels and eating some this week. Now I really have to get bagels. (My father eats plain grocery-store bagels but I'd much rather eat fancy ones from a bagel place.)
After putting away the groceries, I moved laundry into the dryer and went back upstairs. In addition to being bad at detecting when things are dry, it is terrible at estimating how long the dry cycle will take. It told me 38 minutes when I started the cycle. I came down ~40 minutes later and it now said "9 minutes." I came back half an hour later and it was now at 8 minutes.
...
I opened up the dryer and took out all the stuff that was already dry, then threw the remaining few items back in for another round.
Since it was now May, I realized I could start editing Be That Way, so I did that for much of Friday. I spent Coffee's stream in multiplayer with them, sometimes working on edits (and giving myself editing credit to defeat monsters) and other times writing up my April-in-review post.
Saturday, May 3
I haven't done a daily entry since Monday, so I don't know if I'll be able to reconstruct the previous days well enough to write about them. I'll take a crack at it, though.
I woke at 6AM and played with my phone for an hour, but got back to sleep and didn't wake again until 8:40AM, so that was nice. I played some Time Princess and then got up.
I had cereal for breakfast and discovered that the grocery had delivered one box of Raisin Bran Crunch, as requested, and one box of Raisin Bran, as not requested. The difference between the two is that Raisin Bran Crunch stays crispy in milk for several minutes, while Raisin Bran is soggy by the time you get the cap back on the milk. I suppose I'll eat it, though. They also delivered a battered case of soda with two out of twelve cans leaking. I should talk to my parents about changing groceries because the service from Walmart is better and cheaper. They won't go for it but I should at least try instead of silently groaning at their current grocery.
After eating breakfast and playing some Race for the Galaxy, it was 10:30 and I was like "what am I supposed to be doing now?" I didn't have ay plans for today but I felt as if I ought to. It's weird having all the boxes unpacked. I need to try to straighten up the plastic bins and stuff littered about my room. I made a token gesture at doing this today, but made no meaningful progress. I still have a few empty spaces where I could put stuff. I just haven't. I ran out of transparent plastic tubs before I ran out of things I wanted to put in them, though. The biggest pile of random stuff is parts for Lut's computer -- cables and keyboard and whatnot. I don't plan to set up Lut's computer, so that seems like a good bin candidate. But I don't have a free bin for it. I think I'll move some things that are currently in bins into the inaccessible and mostly-unused cabinets in the laundry room. (The top shelves are not only high but you have to reach over the laundry machines to get to them. I put some stuff in them but not much because I need to get the stepladder out to reach them.)
It'd be a good place to store the king-size mattress pad until I get a new bed. Though it's so large and fluffy, it fills up a bin by itself; it might be too big for the cabinets. Also, I'm not sure if I'll end up using it; after 20+ years of having a California king mattress, my fitted sheets and mattress pads were all California king, I think. And I doubt I'll get a new California king bed. I don't need the extra length. Not that I need the extra width when it's just me, either. But I plan to get a king-size bed anyway. It's just the normal bed size for one person. All the other sizes are too small. I guess they're for kids or something, idk?
I am presently sleeping on a twin and it literally is uncomfortably small. Even with my weird O-shaped pillow to keep me centered in the bed (and to make sure I can't knock my side pillows off the bed), I keep draping over the side or having my arm pressed against the wall. And I'm not a large person! I know so many people who are fine with sleeping in twins but I am not one of them.
Anyway, instead of organizing my possessions, I went through first-reader feedback on Be That Way. I've been reading through comments and making changes when a comment prompted a quick alteration. With comments that need more consideration to implement, I make a note on the editing list and move on. I am a little over a third through and the editing list is at seven points so far. Looking very manageable.
At 2PM, I asked my mother is she wanted a walk; she declined. I thought about napping, but went back to editing instead. I didn't lie down until 3:30PM and didn't try to sleep until after 4PM. I napped for maybe 40 minutes: short for me, but I had done a pretty good job of sleeping the night before, so maybe I just really didn't need a nap.
After I finished eating dinner, I went to CoffeeQuills' stream page a bit after 6PM to wait for it to start, only to find it already running, to my surprise. It'd only been up for 90 seconds; it was very early for Coffee (7AM in Japan). They had plans with their partners and would be heading out at 10AM their time, so they'd started stream early. I hopped into multiplayer with them, and started writing this entry.
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Date: 2025-05-11 05:55 am (UTC)Boo @ bad groceries!
Yay for Trader Joe's! I live off of their stuff, literally. I also use their pancake mix rather than assemble the ingredients myself, it's just so much easier.