dorchadas | Reading

My dwarf shaman has made it past the level 30 milestone.

I rolled a new blood elf paladin as well.

Not so certain about the aspect of role playing. I sorta lost journaling about my character last week; however, what I can say about my dwarf is that he has become much more militant... which is sorta the genre that WoW goes under. The game has been fun so far. I did do some world PvP. I lost horribly to a character with equipment that levels as you play. It's a new feature in the game that sorta bugs me. How can world PvP be balanced when players have unequal equipment? It's sorta forced on WoW players to purchase the scaling equipment, so they can play competitively.

I'm not entirely competitive. The idea of world PvP is more fun than actual battles. I enjoy the thrill of being in contested lands and sneaking about with quests that force me to enter into camps and do different sorts of things. WoW has good quest writers and game design.

How did your weekend go?

q99

Crossposts: http://q99.livejournal.com/560518.html

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pshaw_raven

I Feel: tired
I Hear: Led Zeppelin - Immigrant Song

This hasn't been a great year for pets. Whirr died this morning.

Whirr was a budgie, and he used to have a cage-mate, Wobble. He was actually fairly old for a budgie, so this wasn't unexpected. And he'd been acting like he didn't feel great, so I'd tried to make him more comfortable - moved some of his toys to the bottom of the cage, bought more millet sprays since he really liked those, kept the room a little warmer than usual. I don't think I'll be getting more birds, though. With the cats, you can't allow them to fly freely, and it seems a shame to make a bird spend all its life in a cage, even a big cage.

So I'll be cleaning that cage up and seeing if anyone local wants to buy it.

In happier news we tried Amazon's Prime Pantry and the box showed up yesterday. It's pretty cool, except that there's a lot less that qualifies for Pantry than you'd think. For example, I drink Community Coffee and I prefer the breakfast blend or medium roast. Pantry only has dark roast in ground coffee, and everything else is k-cups. I don't guess I need to tell you all that I hate k-cups. But I did get my Irish Breakfast tea at less than Publix charges, and we found several Kikoman sauces, like the "light soy sauce" often called for in Japanese recipes, a cold noodle sauce, and of course they have a plethora of other soy sauces available. Even adding toilet paper I was only able to get our box to 23% full so I think this is not going to be a frequent occurrence. Cat food would fill it up, but do I really want to mail order a 20-something pound bag of cat chow? Anyway, the cats also like the box a lot, Nanna even napped in it this morning.

It'll be weird adjusting to the quiet now, until the windows are open again. We'd had birds for something like five years, so you really get used to hearing them twitter and peep. (And scream like idiots for no apparent reason)

q99

Crossposts: http://q99.livejournal.com/560129.html

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nelc

I Feel: contemplative
Current Location: Somewhere I don't need a phaser rifle
I Hear: The Ritual/Ancient Battle/2nd Kroykah—Gerald Fried

The Star Trek original series phaser rifle is really not very ergonomically designed. Is that part really safe to hold? And that trigger looks too easy to pull accidentally. And it's terribly balanced, you need to press it against your shoulder to be able to use it at all.

cocosmileyboo

I Feel: restless
Crossposts: http://cocosmileyboo.livejournal.com/472578.html

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ironymaiden

Just some office plants, nothing to see here. something i saw

pshaw_raven

I Feel: awake
I Hear: David Bowie - Oh! You Pretty Things

I just realized it's been ages since I updated here. Nothing has actually happened, so it wasn't like an emergency dragged me away.

Mom came through her surgery just fine and is back home. So far there are no complications.

I'm going back to practicing my contact juggling. I've retained a lot of the muscle memory, but some of my movements have gotten rough. I should also pick up tai chi again, that was really good for my balance. I'm still having trouble learning three ball juggling, but I'm also not sure how to fix the problem I have of tossing the balls towards me. Most people tend to want to toss the balls out and away from their body, so there are plenty of tutorials on how to fix that.

I picked up a new manga series - well, an old one but it's new to me - Goodnight Punpun. It's very weird and kind of dark, and I like it.

And I finished mostly setting my studio up and got to work on a new box. But the chair is awful and it kills my back, so I need to find something more acceptable to sit in.

nelc

I Feel: psychedelic
Current Location: The 5th Dimension
I Hear: The Lions and the Cucumber—Vampyros Sound Inc

Forgot to write it up earlier: Got an aura after coming out of the game on Wednesday. Small patch right in the centre, grew rapidly over the next fifteen-twenty minutes, just long enough to cover the stop at the chip shop on the way home. No repeat. No pain, as usual. Small amount of confusion, but no more than you might expect from having a kaleidoscope installed in your visual system.

Don't think there was any particular trigger, just tired because I had a short night's sleep earlier, and hungry because I'd missed lunch and dinner.

ironymaiden

I Feel: accomplished

i made my first contribution to

scans_daily!

the origin story of Thori the foul-mouthed hel-hound

cocosmileyboo

I Feel: contemplative
Crossposts: http://cocosmileyboo.livejournal.com/470685.html

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ironymaiden

a shiny object found on the internet

ironymaiden

imagine, if you will, a portal fantasy where we're the other world and mostly what people do is eat a meal they really like and describe it like they're a judge on Iron Chef (the Japanese show, not the US remake).

that's Restaurant to Another World . I've watched four of the six episodes that are available and it's just adorable. each episode profiles two restaurant regulars and how they found the door and chose their favorite dish, so it's easy to drop in and enjoy it as an anthology show.

anyone else watching? It's available from Crunchyroll in the US.

ironymaiden

"here’s an article about a dude who not only kicked Fascist balls for the U.S. of A., but a man who hated those assholes so bad that even after he got captured he broke out of his POW camp, joined up with the Soviet Red Army, and became the only man in World War II to kill Nazis while wearing two different uniforms"

ironymaiden

it is beautiful today. the air is misty and cool, the smoke has blown away, and the sky is pearlescent gray. i never know how much i miss these days until i get my first one.

as i write this, C is taking the same intro to kayak class that i took last month. i was worried that it was going to be rainy and windy today, but when i dropped him off the lake looked like a sheet of glass, just perfectly dreamy. at 9am on a gray Sunday everything was quiet on the water; it looks like they'll have the lake to themselves (with no wind for the sailing people and too early for the motorized people). i envy him today. i want to GO.

i walked him to the staging area and kissed him goodbye.* then i made the mistake of turning on the radio on the way home, and had to fight back tears in order to drive.**

i feel so sick and so ashamed and so disappointed. i have tea and food and the dog and this weather that i love, but no wonder i can't stop looking at little boats and planning imaginary trips.

*he gave me some shit about mom walking him to the bus, but he's been wound up about this ever since he agreed to do it. it's mostly my fault since i am trying to be neutral but i can't hide my enthusiasm and my hope that he will like it too. really, if he doesn't like it i want to know soonest so that i can stop imagining us going out together.
**for posterity, and anyone who isn't soaking in it, there's some filthy racist shit going down in the US this week, and the chief executive is being inexcusably soft about it because he's a garbage person and those Nazi and KKK fuckers are part of his base.

ironymaiden

i've been staying away from facebook, which is great for my mental health but cuts off a major communication channel for my friends with kids. that blows. it also means that i don't see posts from my niece and nephew, who are awesome young adults.

one of my friends has been trying to get me to use Facebook Purity but since it's a browser extension and i'm more likely to look at facebook on mobile, it's not useful to me. which is too bad, because i need keyword blocking.

but i found the best thing: Friendly. (or at least it's the best thing as of today.) for my purposes it's definitely worth slipping them a couple bucks. basically they take the facebook mobile page designed for developing countries and customize the display. it even includes messaging.

here's my preliminary keyword list: trump, homeless, clinton, hillary, congress, share, 45, copy, white house, breitbart, bannon

i probably don't need "homeless", it's just instinct from NextDoor. i added "45" and "white house" after my first browse.

i can still see topical stuff and news that doesn't mention the forbidden words. i can't see earnest "copy don't share" memes, i can't see rage posts about political stuff. i'll probably need to shape some keywords for the left-leaning fake news sites (the people who used to share the right-leaning ones have mostly unfriended me) but they need to slip though first.

that said, check out a not-atypical screen:

Edited to add: i use the Make America Kittens Again extension. apparently the T-word in this post triggers replacement of the above screenshot with sweet kitties. took me a couple attempted edits before i realized there was nothing wrong with my photo hosting 😆

maplepine

Sorry. I've been busy for the past few days.

Concerning games, I've played quite a bit of WoW.

My Shaman is now at level 20, and this is part of the game where I'm not actually sure what to do. A guild added me, and I joined just to see what the guild interface looked like. Lost interest in the guild and tried to look for an exit. No "leave guild" option button seemed available. So I logged off for the day.

Anyone else been playing games lately?

mrs_patootie

I watched Hacksaw Ridge earlier this week with Leo. It's a story based on a real man, Desmond Doss, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his amazing and courageous acts during World War II. He was the first pacifists to not carry a gun in US Army History. If you can deal with seeing gruesome images of death and blown up body parts, then I'd suggest giving it a watch. If you can't deal with that sort of imagery, then I suggest looking up Desmond Doss. His story is an inspirational one - whether you are religious or not, believe in the military or not. His compassion is overwhelming.

I went to hang out with my best friend (Levi) yesterday... I'm not really sure if I can still call him my best friend after the drama that he put me through months ago (that I may explain some other day), and it was a mix of awkward, emotional, and entertaining. I met two of his friends that he spent our entire friendship bitching about (they both seem like lovely girls), and they cooked turkey tacos for us. We played Bob's Burgers Monopoly and indulged in some Moscato. I apparently had a whole bottle to myself, but I didn't really notice until I got to my last glass and my gums felt numb... It hit me pretty hard after that.

Levi drove me home, and as soon as I got inside I decided I needed to prepare my son's clothes for school and made his lunch. At least drunk me is very productive...

Unfortunately, I completely forgot about my reflux issues and woke around 3am to nurse an upset stomach that just would not go away...and I was still feeling a bit intoxicated, so I didn't want to waddle to the car to grab my antacids. Yeesh... Needless to say, I didn't get a lot of sleep.

Today was my first day of the Fall semester, and my first class for Anatomy and Physiology. I'm glad that I have a professor who seems passionate and truly wants his students to succeed. Thankfully, my class is very small (no more than twenty-four students are permitted for this particular class) and an acceptable alternate to my text book is free (through OpenStax). I'm probably going to pay $15 to have it printed out so that I can highlight and make notes. ♥ Overall, it saved me $300USD.

I also discovered that I can buy a book bag with my book stipend from financial aid, so I was able to get a nice JanSport from the college book store!

The book store also had these really awesome reference binder inserts for A & P 1 and 2 (and they were only $7USD each) that label everything even slightly relevant, so I bought one of each and a blank version for studying. I'm actually very excited about this class!

Now, I'm being a hermit and playing GW2 (waiting for WvW reset) and ignoring Levi's texts. I told him I would go to a gay club with him tonight, but I still have serious reservations about reigniting our friendship. As a result, I'm being a shitty person...