mistressofmuses: Image of nebulae in the colors of the bi pride flag: pink, purple, and blue (Default)
This is what I got done last night:





I got the pencil lines painted over. The color I chose is about a 50-50ish mix of "pewter" and "carbon black", to mimic the color of the lead between stained glass pieces. It's a lot of tiny lines! I'll likely go over these a second time at the end, once the colored sections are done.

Verdict on the longer fine-tipped brush that I was using? Mixed. It did hold more paint, but even quite thinned, the paint didn't "flow" well through the brush? The paint higher up the brush would just stay there in a droplet about halfway up, not coming down into the tip, unless I used so much pressure it lost the fine line (at which point it would blob out, and I'd have to stop to clean it off.) Not sure why that was as much of an issue as it was. It's not one of the ultra-nice (expensive! so expensive!) sable brushes or whatnot, but is a mid-quality brand. It's a brand new brush, so not at all worn, and I made sure it was clean, so not getting caught on anything coating the bristles or anything. Possibly it's just because I am using cheap craft paints, which can have uneven pigmentation, but I did thin them, and the paint that was going onto the model didn't have any gritty or goopy bits. Ah well. I may go back to a shorter brush.

Going to hopefully work on colors for an hour or so tonight!

-

Spent my weekend with Taylor. We finally finished all of the "A Realm Reborn" base game for Final Fantasy XIV. We'd finished the main quest line a while ago, but there are two additional "parts" after that serving as a sort of epilogue/segue into the later expansions, plus they wanted to do some of the "optional" side material, either because it's fun or because it's only technically optional, but leaves gaps in the lore if you skip it.

The writing quality definitely started to climb as the game went on, and I appreciate that it did sort of... explore some consequences of things that were initially played straight. (Hey, maybe building your own extrajudicial militia force that answers to no one is... not a great idea, even if it's dressed up as "putting together a force to support your good intentions to help the kingdom!")

We also got through the first part of the "Heavensward" expansion, which is quite good so far. (I definitely appreciate that monsterfucking is a canon plot point. Get it, Shiva!)

(Lots of Realm Reborn feels fairly generic fantasy RPG, but I will say that watching the documentary on how they did this full reboot of the game from the ground up really makes me appreciate it more, haha. The original incarnation of the game was *rough* from all accounts, and having to support it while also rapidly trying to just build a new game from scratch [but good this time!] in secret was quite a thing to have to do, haha.)

We also finished watching Bodies, which I quite enjoyed, and I think Taylor did too. We did our usual insufferable mutual bit about comparing it to comp titles in a snotty film snob voice. "We *get* it, you watched The Prestige, Predestination, and Cloud Atlas, and you played AI: The Somnium Files. Wow, how original. *eyeroll*"
mistressofmuses: Image of nebulae in the colors of the bi pride flag: pink, purple, and blue (Default)
Welp, now Alex has the crud.

Definitely the same thing I have - started with a sore throat yesterday, fairly mild cough beginning, feels way worse today. He asked how I've tolerated being sick for as long as I have, because he's on day two and ready to die. Vindicating to hear that I wasn't *just* being a huge baby, but I wish he didn't have to experience the suck first-hand.

We thought he'd escaped! He had two days of feeling minorly unwell back when I was in the worst of it, and we hoped that was him successfully fighting it off. Apparently not! Whatever virus this is, it seems to have a pretty long incubation time. I'm on day 16 (18, if you count the two days of just fatigue. Since Alex has been complaining for a few days of how he feels like he's just exhausted and unable to get enough rest, I think that likely IS an early symptom.) But around a two-week incubation lines up with the timing if I caught it from my coworker, too.

I had a couple days of feeling better on Sunday and Monday, but am feeling worse again today. Again, about the trajectory I was told to expect from my coworker, who said it's a pretty constant better-worse fluctuation with a general upward trend. He's had it for about a month now.

For me, the sore throat is the worst it's been for a few days, and the cough is a little more persistent than it was yesterday. Poor rest on my mom's loveseat for two nights and the kink it gave me in my neck probably aren't helping. :P

-

I did go over to Taylor's to hang out on Sunday night and Monday, since they'd taken Monday off. We played more Final Fantasy XIV, making it through part 5 of A Realm Reborn and the Crystal Tower sidequest raids (which I'm told became pretty plot-mandatory in one of the expansions. Likely so, considering how much fanart of that catboy I've seen, lmao.) We also started watching Bodies and hit the halfway point. (I watched it while sick, about the only thing I did that week, and enjoyed it! I'm hoping they like it.)

Hit the grocery store today in order to stock up on more sick supplies for Alex. Realized after getting home that I'd left all my meds - including the px ones - at my mom's. I'll go get them after work tomorrow, and just go with the OTC stuff tonight.
mistressofmuses: Image of nebulae in the colors of the bi pride flag: pink, purple, and blue (Default)
My work day on Christmas Eve was just as slow as expected. I finished up with my actual work within about an hour and a half, and then spent the rest of the day just watching through training videos. Those aren't due until the end of next month, but now I've only got one more to do.

After the half day, my mom came to pick me up. We headed back to her house to hang out.

We made some of our family's traditional holiday cookies: molasses cookies and butter cookies.

Pics of both: )

We did get a bit of a white Christmas - it snowed a fairly good amount on Christmas Eve. Not as badly around us as it did out on the plains to the east, but still enough to stick. Fortunately the roads around us didn't get too bad.

Taylor and I finished up the Final Fantasy XIV raid we'd started last time ("The Binding Coils of Bahamut.") I definitely see what they meant about this being kind of a weird one to have be optional... because it really does feel extremely plot-relevant, despite a sort of "and now we must never speak of this to anyone" conclusion.

Then we watched the last three episodes of The Fall of the House of Usher. Not quite a typical holiday vibe, but I guess it falls under the "stories of ghosts terrorizing rich people" heading, lol.

Christmas Day was also nice. I was gifted a ton of books (as I'd asked for, haha.) My TBR list is definitely crying, and I have GOT to figure out how to make more time and space for reading. They also got a bunch of books from me. I'm pretty sure that's about 90% of what all our gift-giving is: just... swapping books around, lol.

Alex slept in, but came over to join us around 1:00 or so.


Cy was criminally cozy on my mom's loveseat. (He wrapped himself in the blanket, by nosing under where it was draped over the back of the seat.) The cushion cover is on there solely to protect my mom's furniture from our dogs' stomping on it.


And here's Bella standing on the loveseat. (The books on the table there are all the ones Taylor got, ha.) Ignore Bella's butt glowing in the sun.

We hung around for a couple hours, and then headed home. There Alex and I exchanged our gifts. I got a couple more books, a very large set of lots of colors of gel pen, and like... a thousand cute animal stickers, haha. Also a very cute "fruit bat" squish plush (it's a bat... that looks like an orange. I love it!) Also some candy and very cozy looking socks. I got him model stuff, some brushes for pastelling, a kitchen gadget with some various blades for chopping and slicing, and a new wallet. Also candy and some silly tiny plastic crabs.

After that, he was ambushed by a nap, so we delayed our Christmas movie watching. After he woke up, we made a pizza and then watched Christmas Vacation and our always holiday classic: Christams [sic] Twister.


Amazing as always.

I was dozing off after that one, so we put our other holiday movies on hold. (I'm mildly surprised - Alex doesn't usually want to stretch it into more than one day, ha.)

Today we watched A Christmas Story and Muppet Christmas Carol. Tomorrow will be It's a Wonderful Life. That covers most of our personal holiday classics, ha.

Very glad today was a normal day off for me, but then that I also took tomorrow off. I feel like I *should* have the week between Christmas and New Years off to just do... nothing. Or nothing beyond recovering from a big holiday and doing whatever I want to in order to prep for the new year. But alas, it's hard to take that string of time off from work, since there are a LOT of people who want it off, and a lot that's hard to get coverage for. Oh well - a three and a half day weekend is still nice.
mistressofmuses: Image of nebulae in the colors of the bi pride flag: pink, purple, and blue (Default)
We went on a really lovely hike today, enjoying this unseasonably warm day. It was beautiful, and I'm really glad we got to go be outside for a few hours. (There will be pictures later, but I haven't sorted through them yet.)

That does mean that I didn't succeed in any of the catching up I needed to do, but I think getting outside and moving around was the better thing to do! I wish I had another day off - I feel a bit more energized and like I *could* tackle that stuff I've fallen behind on... but now it's time to go back to my workweek where I have no time or energy. Bleh.

-

We finished watching The Fall of the House of Usher, and I really enjoyed it. I'm hoping to rewatch it with Taylor - I think they'd like it, too.

-

Took the dogs to the pet store yesterday and wound up getting them too much stuff. Spoiled monsters.

Bella is up to 41 lbs though, which is great! That's about the weight we were hoping to get her to. She fluctuated in the mid-30s when we got her from the shelter before we figured out her dietary problems. Because of her knees we were told *not* to let her gain any weight, and I understand the concern, but... her ribs were still prominent at that weight, and her hip bones stuck out enough that they caused discomfort for her when she'd sit, or if people pet her there. So while we don't want her much heavier than this, she's looking and moving SO much better now. She's also put on a lot of muscle - she actually has the beginnings of a butt, lol, plus her shoulders and chest are getting stronger. She looks like a proper beefy pitbull (just still small)! I am still just really blown away by how much better she looks now as compared to when we got her.

Cy has unfortunately dropped quite a bit of weight. We've upped his food intake, and his energy levels have been great the last few days, but it's upsetting how much muscle he's lost. He still seems to be doing okay otherwise, but just isn't holding weight well.

-

I've got two major things to catch up on: writing the AUgust oneshots, and catching up on my habit tracking. I think the biggest issue I've been having is that both are hovering over me, and then I can't decide which to do, so I wind up doing neither. I feel like catching up on the tracking means I'm neglecting writing, but every day that I DON'T catch up on tracking is another day I have to try and reconstruct from memory. Both tasks feel like they grow to an even less-manageable size every day I fail to do them, and the indecision about which to tackle has been paralyzing me.

Sure, these are annoying minor problems to be griping about this way, but this is one of those probable-ADHD things that I HATE struggling with, because I CAN see that it's a stupid thing to be so stuck on, and it's not like any of this is high-stakes, but it is SO EXTREMELY FRUSTRATING.

-

NaNoWriMo is coming up distressingly fast, and I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do for it, if anything. I feel like I'll regret it if I don't even give it a go, but I also worry about trying to tackle it without a chance to do any preparatory work, and considering how badly I've dragged on the AU fics, I don't think I'll have a chance to do anything else this month.

I'm aware that I've been battling burnout for months - for most of this year, really, though I've actually written a lot more than I'd anticipated I would this year so far. Even so, it's been in spurts, broken up with a lot of frustrating stretches of near-zero writing because I just *can't.* I don't like that feeling, and unfortunately I know that a lot of times NaNo leaves me feeling that way if I push too hard to make wordcount.

Buuuuut, I also really WANT to get excited about a project, and NaNo can be a great source of hype and enthusiasm, even if I'm not doing any of the social aspects of it. I want to write something that's just... shamelessly iddy and do my best to have FUN writing something. Not that other things haven't been fun, just... I really want to lean into writing something tailor-made as brain candy for me, lol. Then again, writing something intended to be pure id-fic for myself is a little revealing, ha, and makes me reluctant to say overmuch about it. (But I'm leaning toward a fantasy werewolf poly romance thing that I accidentally got invested in some ideas for, lol.)
mistressofmuses: Image of nebulae in the colors of the bi pride flag: pink, purple, and blue (Default)
It was really nice to spend time with Taylor today. Mostly we just did stuff over voice chat on Discord, though we also saw each other in person for a little while at a park.

A lot of what we do when we hang out is media stuff - we read stuff to each other, watch shows, listen to podcasts, and Taylor plays through games I don't have the consoles/time/skill to play. While we could do some of that on our own and just talk or text about it, that isn't the same as doing it together.

So today we did all of the above, but doing our best to emulate as much "together-in-person" as we could.
- We finished reading Network Effect, the most recent Murderbot book, over voice chat.
- We watched one more episode of The Umbrella Academy by counting down before hitting play and then chatting over voice.
- We got together for a couple hours at one of the local parks, taking a walk around on this unseasonably (almost 60 degrees!) warm day, and sitting on a bench and talking, before heading back to our respective homes.
- We listened to three more episodes of The Magnus Archives while text chatting.
- Using Discord's screen share Taylor streamed themself playing Okami for an hour or so.

It's not the same as actually being in-person, but it was still nice to spend the day doing stuff together.
mistressofmuses: A man is seated, facing a broken fence. The image is dark, with bright points of candlelight in the background. (horror)


Review of Episode 3.

Sorry I got so behind again.

I may temporarily go to a M/W/F schedule for posting. I'm watching both Bates Motel and Hannibal, and if I want to review both while keeping a twice-weekly update, then I'm a) never going to catch up to current episodes, and b) won't be able to review anything else while both seasons are in progress. After one of the shows ends its season, I'll probably go back to a Tuesday/Friday posting schedule.

This is still assuming I can keep to ANY kind of schedule. So... HA.
mistressofmuses: A man is seated, facing a broken fence. The image is dark, with bright points of candlelight in the background. (horror)


I liked this episode a little more than the first one.

I was aiming for (and started doing) a Monday/Thursday schedule for posting, but I think Tuesday/Friday may be more doable for me. We go out on Sunday and Wednesday nights, and generally I'm not up early enough the following mornings to get a post posted.

mistressofmuses: A man is seated, facing a broken fence. The image is dark, with bright points of candlelight in the background. (horror)

So A&E has a new show called "Bates Motel," which is a contemporary prequel to Psycho. It's... okay so far.

I meant to post yesterday, but forgot. :P

mistressofmuses: Image of nebulae in the colors of the bi pride flag: pink, purple, and blue (Default)
I remember what I was going to post about yesterday!

This time, let's just guess what the commercial was selling, okay? I admit that these are not presented in the chronological order from within the infomercial, but if it's in quotation marks it's as close as I can remember to what they really said about it at some point. (I was writing these down as we went.) GUESS THE CONTEXT!

First, you'll want to note that this product is "quick and easy and hot!" and comes with "multiple attachments"! It also has a "swiveling head." The (male) host/demonstrator also proudly shows off that "If you notice, I've got a red tip right here!" Also of interest may be the optional attachments, including the "slimline wand" and the "comfort cradle."
One of the key benefits is that it "requires less rubbing!" and works on "both light and dark wood," and in fact, it works on "most hard surfaces." It can achieve "deep penetration" but is also suitable for very "delicate surfaces." In addition to requiring less rubbing, it also requires "just one touch" to "get going."
Obviously, you'll want to clean up anything that may have "dribbled down the side." But you'll see, as the host points out, "there's the mess, right on the rag!"
A satisfied female customer points out that she loves it, because it's "so easy to maneuver! I don't have to struggle with it!"
And of course, "if you think that's good, just wait until you see it in the shower!"

WHAT WOULD YOU REASONABLY BELIEVE THEY WERE SELLING?

Also, I slept until 2:30 today. I are an adult.
mistressofmuses: White icon with black text reading "Buggre Alle This For A Larke." (buggre)
The NutriBullet will make it so you're ready to go again in seconds! And this is after it's pulverized your nuts and done something with vibrations! Also, they keep mentioning how it cures low sex drive! (It's a blender that they desperately want you to believe is not a blender.) It'll cure every disease known to man by liquefying your food! Because people can't digest solid food! And the fact that they're telling people to replace meals with kale smoothies has nothing to do with the fact they claim they've had health benefits: nope, it's all because the food has been pulverized. Because cell walls.

You can buy a DVD called Ballistic Backsides! (Which I assume is trying to cash in on the "what the fuck, I thought I was buying porn!" demographic. But instead, it's a workout DVD!) It's by someone famous that I've never heard of, but would have to pay $1500 to work out with in person! She turns overweight moms into fitness models! Somehow working down to next to 0% body fat still allows you to have D-cup boobs! So that whole fitness model thing is definitely because of the workout, not anything to do with the plastic surgery! And also nothing to do with the hair extensions, professional makeup, and photoshopped pictures! But some guy said he sweats like a pig when he does the workouts, so I should be very excited! I love pig sweat! Also, a girl is very happy that her boyfriend loves her again now that she's a model!

There's some tooth-whitening product with an active ingredient that sounds suspiciously like Cowpox! (It was Calprex, but seriously.) And this will make you pretty enough to deserve attention from other people, I guess!

Also, you should buy a special oven thing, because your only other option was to cook chicken and such in the microwave, and microwaved poultry sucks! But cooking in a regular oven is SO HARD!

The wee hours of the morning were very informative, okay?

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