i got a new desk the other day and it's so luxuriously big compared to the last one. to celebrate i'm listening to old vocaloid songs and using the space to hold TWO drinks. (an apple juice and a hotted chocolate, if you were wondering)

the state of things

fucked up on a work assessment but smashed my degree (1st gang). did not go to graduation (and did not care). honed my special technique of 'read 2/3rds of a page then fall asleep dad-style'. met up with friends old, new, and returning; had a great time in all cases. thought about cassander from friends at the table too much. new desk swag. still waiting for the tomatoes to ripen up!

what now

now that I'm technically done with school (ever?) (with the exception of one assessment piece resit, which was actually not technically part of the degree) i feel like i need to make an effort to Do Something.

I'm going to finally, finally, finally start uploading recipes here like i said i would. And make an effort to do games nights with the boys (gender neutral). But i also want to get into something creative.

I need to consider next year's cosplays, which will require learning how to use a sewing machine. And i've seen a few resources on zine-making and recently came into ownership of a long-arm stapler, so maybe that would be fun?

I was also really charmed by the new Welcome Home update (they have such a nice site, as well as everything else), and those trains of thought have somehow combined into the idea of like 2000s game box insert style booklets about ocs (cause god knows what else I'm gonna do with them). I'm not sure what else to call them—i know exactly what I mean but i wasn't really a gamer kid and the only frame of reference i have is like pokemon or sonic rush. But it seems like it could be fun.

I also also Really need to get back skating again soon. I miss it so bad but it's been so long that i can't quite build up the emotional momentum to make myself go, and I'm worried that the health problems that made me have to stop will return... But i do miss it, and i might as well try!

look at this thing btw

also also also, look at this charming friend who lives in my house now!


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summer does make me sentimental! i can't help it. it's probably just a lack of seasonal depression that comes with the longer and not-unbearably-cold-or-grey daylight hours (hiiii my best friend the sun (celestial object)!!! i miss you every year!!!) but something about it is just so. you know.

i met up with an old schoolfriend the other week, and just last weekend i went to a market with my other friends (if ever you see this, hi my beloveds!). the whole thing was really fun and there were some lovely people there - cool-looking strangers and chatty stallholders and cute dogs. kind of thing that reminds you that things aren't all shit.

one of the stalls had this huge box full of old postcards - i would have stayed there all day and read through them all if i could, but as it is i only got through three before i started tearing up.

(too full of that Wonderment at the affliction of Being, and the Intricacies of Others' Lives, and Connections Despite the Passage of Time, etc etc. i don't think i could work in an archive.)

and to be entirely honest, that's kind of why I'm doing this. diaries are fine but i'm prone to burning any trace of past me i can find. (literally, i mean.) and i can't share them, not really. I'm not really interesting enough for a proper tailored 'here's the cool things i did this week' blog, but i hope that someone (somewhat selfishly - and most likely - just me) finds this page in a few years time and gets as sentimental as i did at those old postcards, or at any other old personal website I've stumbled into in the past. i hope they smile at the mundanities of someone else's life or reminisce about where they were then or wonder where i am now, and i hope i remember these days fondly, or even at all, and i hope my friends are all well and that we're still friends and that they remember them fondly too, and i hope it gives us all hope.

(a couple of old sites in that vein come to mind, none of which i can post links to. one old site of a trans woman, maybe in the late 90s/early 00s, excited to transition or something to that effect. i don't have the link anymore but i hope she's happy now. (eta: found the page!)

(the other two i found just today, stumbled into them at work; two sites, the works of a couple of professors of some niche chemistry topic - one meticulously maintained and recent, full of free textbooks and analytical tools written and created by the owner, and the other still extremely neat and useful but started before i was born and stagnant since 2013. not in a patronising way at all, but i admire that they'd start up their own sites for something like that. and besides that i love free resources.)

anyway. my strawberries are fruiting (the tiniest berries ever, just about thumbnail sized, but sooo sweet), and my tomatos and flowering (they're so big now!!) and my raspberries are growing (they didn't quite survive the frosts, but they're growing back right from the root! hopefully we'll get some berries this year) and the sun is out and the birds are singing and the longest day is in under a week now. if i was being pessimistic I'd say that probably means things will start going downhill from there, but I can't afford to think like that!! it's hard fucking work but there's so much other good going on right now!! I've seen proof of it. and i have to believe that, even if it means never reading or watching the news ever again. <3

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i keep writing things in my notes app and forgetting to upload them here. which is fine, because either way it means i'm writing more (a good thing!) but i do want to put them here too. still not sure what i'm trying to achieve with it but hell, it does no harm.

it does look like i love to complain though. i wrote over 1.3k words grumbling about how Everything is more complex than it seems and how i wish folks would research their posts before spreading misinfo (no one knows anything about microplastics or recycling or many other things) but also that i know a lot of the most accessible articles are imperfect, biased summaries and nobody's gonna write a cited lit review for an incensed tumblr post...

there was another 300-odd words about logging in to places (i love security but hate inconvenience. fuck 2fa, fuck biometrics, fuck captchas, fuck emails to check i'm the correct user, fuck cookies popups). and a solid 800 (ongoing) 'liveblog' of tears of the kingdom. turns out liveblogging is actually a lot of fun to do and then go back and read (who'd have thought?)

i have been playing tears of the kingdom recently, but not as much as i thought i would! i'm taking it slow. i've done the rito quest and a couple of geoglyphs (unfortunately not in the intended order, which may have spoiled things a little) and have been exploring the surface and sky islands, but really that's about it - i'm claustrophobic and afraid of the dark so haven't really been into the depths, but what i have seen is really beautiful so i think i will give it a go soon. (i saw a really good post about the new life - i love how the depths are so lush! and i remember one of my first thoughts on the sky islands was 'this game has to be a goldmine for the lichen enjoyers' lol)

sadly, i was spoiled on (what i assume is) one of the 'Big Twists' near the end. it doesn't bother me much; i'm sure it'll still be impactful! but i know where the master sword is now :)

i also watched trigun stampede (really fucking good) and am like 2 episodes from the end of sangfielle..... listening to actual plays with cool games is not good for me, guy who compulsively buys ttrpgs and never gets a chance to play them, but god it's so interesting. the friends at the table soundtracks are all SO good too (after hearing the marielda soundtrack, i might even be persuaded to listen to hieron)

and i did get through my final exam - it sucked, but it's done! i have a bunch more work to do (and yeah, i updated this site instead of doing it) but it sure is a weight off my back.

still no recipes uploaded though. i will do it eventually. they should give me psychic powers so i can do it with my mind

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revised¹ for friday's (final!) exam at work today because the equipment i need at work is broken as fuck. rip babygirl. there are so many equations to memorise good lord

↑ me when im in physchem or whatever idk

anyway in my lunch break i decided i would start trying to write a conversion chart between cups and grams, with the intention of including both measurements when i start putting up recipes (and a future goal of writing a script to toggle between them), but actually it turns out volume measurements are SUCH bullshit.

like this mostly started because sometimes it's convenient to measure fluids like oil, water, sugar, flour etc in volume instead of getting scales out, but why would you use cups to measure BUTTER that's so impractical. and i know it's all dependent on material density but what do you MEAN 1 cup of brown sugar can be anywhere from 180-220 g. AND apparently uk cups and us cups are not the same????

so now i am not doing it. i'm one of very likely few people who will use this so I'll put cup measurements when i feel like it; and aside from that, you will just have to get a weighing scale.

¹technically not revised, as i had not "vised" the material in the first place. it's fine bc oobh i got plany off time

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i baked a BUNCH of stuff yesterday. scones, victoria sponge, and these banana square things. (i'll put the recipes up eventually.) not for the coronation (#notmyking etc) but the holiday was a nice excuse. everything was soooo tasty btw :)

i've been revising for exams the last week. it's literally not even that bad and i think i'll do okay but i'm about 3 weeks behind on the course material (😳) and i have so many other things i want to do.

like, it's splatfest. and i want to start writing again. and i haven't skated in months and months for health reasons and i still haven't been back even though i'm like 70% fine now, so i should make an effort with that. and i started trying to build a dice tower out of cardboard (the third iteration, this time one that folds up), which i'm nowhere near finished, but it's been so long since i started that i'm kind of bored of it and want to change the design again. and i've been wanting to float the idea of a games night (with a dozen different games i can't pick between) with the discord gang for literal months (though if i'm totally honest, i know that the likelihood of that happening would be low even if i didn't have exams, but whatever).

and besides all that, the day of my last exam is the day that tears of the kingdom comes out. so nothing on that list is likely to get done any time soon.

there are literally just too many cool things to do and not enough time to do them in. i should have time-stop powers fr

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i've been in hyperfocus fucking about with this site's code and collecting links and stuff for the pages for like 4 hours or something. and now my internet is down, so i'm writing this ♥

i'm not a huge fan of how aesthetics have become. like. i don't know i'm not on tiktok. but i did see a bunch of 'y2k-core' things recently and it did kind of made me nostalgic. that retro-futurism, bubbly, chrome-y, early 2000s look is so much. I MISS PHONE CHARMS.

anyway my playlist for the aforementioned fucking-about has been mostly that kind of era game soundtracks (e.g. jsr, sonic rush, a bunch of 2 mello albums) and truly i don't know what they did to all that music but it goes hard. the soundtracks for splatoon 2 and 3 also hit the same vibe for me.

i can't stress enough how much the sonic rush soundtrack goes mental. i don't think i ever beat the game though. i had it as a kid and then got a cartridge of it last year for a couple quid off ebay and promptly got stuck on zone 2. :(

^me doing so so badly at kids video games in my 20s. it's reigen because i couldnt find the original img. come to think of it i never finished watching mp100 either

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