My absolute favorite type of candy is chewy SweetTarts. Whatever form they take, either as sugar discs or sugar pellets, I will rapidly consume more of them than is wise. Which isn’t a huge number, seeing as those things will absolutely destroy the inside of your mouth and make my sensitive teeth prone to hurting in a way nothing else but copious amounts of Mountain Dew can. As a result of the danger these things pose to my health and well-being, I have a tendency to avoid them in favor of other candy on the rare occasion I choose to indulge my sweet tooth. I don’t really care for sweet things most days and I’ve thankfully broken free of the habits of my youth, when candy played a more central role in my life, but every so often the craving just hits me and I decide to treat myself.
Continue readingMusing
Making Peace With Porch Spiders
Content Warning for discussion of spiders and encountering spiders in daily life.
Continue readingThe Days of Not Complaining About My Job Are Over
Once I’ve bottomed out on spoons during a week, I’ll start most days after that in a state of quiet determination. I kind of enjoy this state of being because it is easy to push myself to work on small projects. When I’m that tired and worn out, I don’t waste any time or energy procrastinating or getting in my own way. It can be a great way to have a calm, productive day if I’m left alone. After all, being out of spoons doesn’t mean I can’t still accomplish stuff, it just means that my ability to handle stress is greatly reduce. For instance, heavy bass in music bothers me all the time. If I’m not out of spoons, I can handle it (by spending spoons to ignore it). If I’m out of spoons, I am almost entirely incapable of ignoring it and will get more frustrated the longer it goes on. Worse yet, my ability to calmly and rationally do something about is dimished because that ALSO takes spoons, so I usually wind up needing to endure it longer than I might on a day that I’ve got the spoons to ask whoever is making that noise to lower their volume or even just turn the bass down.
Continue readingThis One’s About Active Shooter Training And Gun Violence
Content Warning for me ranting about Active Shooter training, Guns in the US, Gun Violence, Mass Shootings, Activer Shooter situations, and “Active Assailant” training.
I’m going to be clear: I’m pissed as hell after a thing came up with work and I went a full rant about this stuff. I get it if that’s not something you’re interested in, something you’re already traumatized by, or just want to (ENTIRELY UNDERSTANDABLY) avoid these topics creeping into more of your life. There’s no harm in leaving now. You don’t have to click to expand and read about this stuff. I needed to write about it, though, since it has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember and I’m so angry that even the stuff created specifically to prepare people for these scenarios tries to be coy about it. The US has a problem and it is only getting worse.
Continue readingA Turning Point In My Relationships
One of the side effects of leaving behind the trauma of my youth (along with all the places and peace I associate it with) is that I don’t have many relationships that are more than a decade old. I have a few friendships that have finally hit that age, but I wound up losing (or ending) contact with a lot of the people I was close with in my first few years of college and I didn’t really get close to most most of the poeple I’m still friends with until my final year, so most of them are only just now hitting the 10-year point. I have only one person I knew in high school that I’ve spoken to in the last few years and our current time zone difference means we’re pretty much never awake and online at the same time, which would put a damper on reconnecting even if I was so inclined. The only people I’m still in contact with from further back are two of my siblings, and that’s a weird situation to bring up in this context given my complex feelings about family and the life my siblings were a part of. Most of the people who are still a part of my life are from just the most recent third of it, despite the prevalence of social media, and that list seems to only ever get smaller with time rather than bigger.
Continue readingI Now Understand The DIY Boom
So far, in the past month, I have taken apart a PS4 controller, a Nintendo 64, two Super Nintendos, a wireless headset (three times), a blender, my computer (which is probably a lot less impressive than the rest considering I’m the person who built it in the first place), and a backpack, on top of all the things I take apart at my workplace as part of my day-to-day work. I managed to put everything back together correctly, and fix all of the problems I was trying to diagnose aside from the PS4 controller. I managed to diagnose the issue with the PS4 controller, but I would have had to take it apart even further and I just don’t have those tools on hand at home. I’d need to bring it into work and, since I’ve already replaced the controller, I feel a lot less urgency when it comes to getting that particular problem solved. I also managed to achieve my goal with the backpack, which was to free up the straps and a bunch of heavy-duty fabric so I could use them to create a modified carrying case for my video game consoles, since I’ve got a bunch of spare padded briefcases/laptop bags I’ve accumulated as a part of various promotions and mobile computing purchases I’ve made over the years that weren’t quite the right size or shape for video game consoles.
Continue readingI’m Tired and Sad, So Let’s Talk About The Legend of Zelda: Episode 18
Amazing that I’ve only had 18 days in the last year that I was too exhausted, emotionally drained, or just plain sleep-deprived to come up with a good blog post idea. This time, it’s all three, so today’s a special post about what USED to be my favorite idyllic Legend of Zelda activity, before hanging out in the rain in Breath of the Wild became an option. I used to load this game up just so I could relax when I was younger, tooling around the map without any specific destination in mind and enjoying the feeling of controlling Link as we dodged enemies, swerved through hazards, and did our best to avoid getting roped into any cutscenes or battles. The swelling music rising and falling as the wind blew from behind me, hopping from the crest a wave to see how much air I could get, and the way islands slowly passed into and out of view as I sailed from one spot on the map to another at random… Nothing was as relaxing and satisfying as cruising around the surface in The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker when I was a teen and college student.
Continue readingDigital Object Impermanence Ruined Streaming For Me
I don’t watch a lot of movies. Or TV shows, for that matter. I live alone and don’t really have a lot of people who show up in my day-to-day life and share my interests in a way that would motivate us to watch the same shows across a distance (one exclusion being my younger sister, whom I’ve convinced to watch Steven Universe with me), so most of my leisure time is spent on video games, books, and the occasional TV show. It’s not that I don’t enjoy TV shows or movies, I just don’t think of them. Most new media exists only as a digital icon I can interface with through a streaming service, so I honestly just forget most of it exists. I have the same problem with e-books and audio books. I just forget they exist. I think the only reason I don’t have that problem with podcasts is because I keep my podcast app open on my phone all the time and listen to more podcasts than music these days.
Continue readingWisconsin’s Woes and Weather
For the second summer in a row, the weather where I live has been fairly dry and relatively mild. Eighties during the day, sixties overnight, and mostly small strips of storms and rain that rush past, or clouds that seem to split around us before reforming once they’re past so they can drop their moisture elsewhere. Mild, compared to the heavier storms, flooding, and record-adjacent seasons of the first six summers I spent in the area. I mean, my first summer was marked by a massive storm system that dropped a few tornados southwest of Madison that, among other things, tore up a bunch of trees and some of the buildings of my then employer (my memory of the storm was being the only one in my apartment that woke from the tornado sirens at one or two in the morning to take shelter in the basement).
Continue readingIs It Worth Unearthing the Good Game Beneath the Bad Battles in Paper Mario: The Origami King?
I was recently struck by the urge to replay Paper Mario and, instead of going through the hassle of digging out my old systems or signing up for the more expensive Nintendo Online account so I could play it on my Switch, I’ve spent my time finally playing through Paper Mario: The Origami King. I bought it shortly after it came out two years ago, based on some reviews I read, started playing it right before I moved into my current apartment, and then never played it again after moving. I’d gotten distracted by getting my wisdom teeth removed and the PS4 I purchased with the moving and dental work budget I had leftover when those were all finished. Ghost of Tsushima was incredibly compelling and I had some other PS4 games I still hadn’t played. I barely even used my Switch for months.
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