Today I started doing state-level assessments in school for reading and writing proficiency. I'm fairly confident that I did well, but I won't know until next week.
My favorite game, Dwarf Fortress, just got an update! Before today, I could only play Adventurer Mode by playing on version 0.47, but now I can play on the Steam version, with official graphics and a whole soundtrack! I will probably be playing this all day.
I just finished my solo for the solo festival today. I'd been practicing for a few months at this point, and I still screwed it up so bad... The judge told me I did really well with most technical aspects, but I needed to work on not shooting my chin up when hitting a high note.
My dad told me I could make some money by helping his friend clean her house, since her landlord told her that she needed to clean it up by Monday or she would get evicted. I don't know what I expected, but I went into that house to see the most disconcerting sty I should ever suffer to be in. There was a layer of trash everywhere, so I could barely even tell what the floor looked like, and the entire house smelled so rancid that I felt queasy standing on the front porch, since I could still smell it from out there. My dad did not know it was going to be like that, so he wasn't able to warn me, or I'd have brought a set of nitrile gloves. There were milk jugs, with milk still in them, just discarded on the floor! My dad and I filled up around five 55-gallon bags by ourselves, and we only cleaned the kitchen and bathroom... they still weren't clean when we had left. I'm not going back.
My wig came in for a cosplay I'm doing in June with some friends. I'm going to be Honoka from Live Love, even though I've never watched Live Love. I think she's cute, though, so it's okay.
Lately I've been thinking about my limbs... Ever since I was around 6 or 7, I've wanted to know what it feels like to be missing a limb. If I could pick a limb to discard, I think I'd either pick my left foot or my right hand, since my left foot tends to fall asleep anyway and my right hand is my non-dominant hand. I think I worried my friend when I told them this, and it's been a thing about me that I've kept secret for years, but it gnaws at me like an obsession. I so badly want to lose a limb. Does anyone else feel this way? I feel like I'm kind of crazy for thinking this, and it scares me.
I got a dress in the mail today! I ordered it a while ago, and I finally got it this afternoon! I feel so awesome wearing it, and all my friends that I showed agree that I look absolutely gorgeous. This is absolutely the highlight of my day.
I tried to bake hardtack last night... It turns out, the kitchen counter in my home is not actually food safe, and now I have a bunch of overcooked (I forgot to set the timer again when flipping the hardtack and putting them back in the oven), hard-to-chew, extra-thick saltine crackers that taste like vinyl. I'm very disappointed.
I've been thinking about PS3 games today. The first console I ever played on was a PS3, and I knew how to game before I knew how to read. In particular, I loved this game called Fat Princess, where you play a little soldier that tries to rescue a kidnapped princess from the enemy kingdom. It's a fairly cute game, and I'd recommend it, were it not a PS3 exclusive.
The weather's been quite strange where I am. Today marks the second day in a row where it's snowed and rained in the same day, within the hour, on and off again. I like the rain, but I don't like trudging around in half-melted snow sludge. Feel free to disagree, but do know that you are wrong if you do. (I mean no offense when saying this! I hope this opinion is found as uncontroversial.)
I got a second collar in the mail yesterday. My collection grows... this one is pink, like the one I already owned, but it is much looser, so it can be set more loosely on my somewhat thick neck. I intend to cut off some excess length, though, since it is honestly unnecessarily long. I'm thinking now that I should buy two blue collars and a white collar, so my neck can be a pride flag. Is this a stupid idea? Yes, but it'd be funny if they all fit on my neck together.
The Bic pen I've have in my backpack is growing on me. I really don't like Bic pens at all, but this one is serving me fairly well in want of another, better pen, one that hasn't run out of ink, as my pens have. I used to have a ton of pens in my backpack, but I seem to have... lost all of them? Anyways, the Bic pen is a souvenir from the University of Northern Iowa, and it's got purple ink in it.
Happy April Fool's Day! I hope you are all protecting yourself from the trickery and the treachery this wretched day is known for. I didn't even go to school today, not because I didn't want to deal with being out in public on this day (even though I decidedly do not), but rather because I had a dentist's appointment and my father called me out of school for the entire day.
Just read these, they're really good. Do heed the spoiler warnings, though.
I put up an inbox for reader mail! I know, connie08@email.com sounds like a burner name, and it is a burner, but I didn't really want to fuss about with trying to make another gmail account. This inbox will exclusively be used for this blog and, if I make other pages, those as well. I do take insults, but try not to be too mean, please.
My asymmetrical Howie-style labcoat came in the mail today, along with a pair of welding gloves. They're quite possibly the most comfortable gloves I have ever worn, and I've never felt cooler in any other outfit. The labcoat fits well, both to my body and to my personality.
I had a potluck with the members of one of the clubs I'm in today! I'm in JOI club, which stands for Junior Optimists International. We're basically a charity group. If you're wondering what I brought, I made chocolate chip cookies at home the previous night for bringing to the potluck. The eggs were all expired, so I had to substitute for carton egg whites, which I didn't bother to measure properly...
Today was the first day of the fourth term. Two of my classes were two term classes, so I'm taking them again this year. The only two changes are that my choir class moved from first block to fourth block and my first block is now Phys Ed. I quite passionately dislike Phys Ed, but I'll try to keep my whining to a minimum for your sakes.
I really like Neocities so far; everyone on here that I've talked to has been really nice to me. I'm considering setting up an email specifically for this blog so people can make comments and ask questions, but I'm also aware of the fact that anyone who actually wants to leave a comment can just do so on my... profile page thing. If I do set up an inbox, I'll leave the address on the home page. I'll probably do it sometime during the weekend, so keep an eye out if you actually intend to use that.
Tommorow is the first day of finals! I'm ready to get this term over with. Since I didn't have anything to do in third or fourth block, I got picked up early by my father and we went to the thrift store, but we didn't spot anything worth buying.
I watched Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog today! It was really interesting. I really liked Dr. Horrible's outfit, and I think I should dress as him for Halloween.
I'm not all that excited about this week. I have two finals to look forward to, and I've already finished the other two. After Wednesday, a new term will start, but I have two 2-term classes right now, and they're going to stay the same. Plus, I have choir for every term, so in reality only one of my classes is going to change.
In more exciting news, another person followed my page! User "federiefederi" (Federicts), thank you very much. Everyone else, please check out their page; I looked them up, and their whole thing is basically that they list a bunch of other pages for you to look at, so if you follow them, you're basically following a hundred other cool pages!
...I'm thinking a lot about how boring this blog must be to anyone else reading it. I don't really have much to say on a given day, and there's not really that much that's more boring than listening to some teenage girl from Iowa ranting about how boring her classes are every day. I'm sincerely sorry if you don't like this, it's really more of a diary for me than something to actually be read by other people unironically. I'll try to post more drawings to spice things up..
Sorry about my absence! I did my solo on Thursday, and finished my final for my psychology class on Friday. Now that it's Saturday, I can actually take the time and write down a post.
The songs I picked for my final were "Come Again! Sweet Love" by John Dowland and "Down by the Sally Gardens" as arranged by Herbert Hughes. I feel really awful about my performance because I accidentally said "with thee again, in sweetest sympathy" on the second verse when, in fact, I was supposed to say "in deadly pain and endless misery". I know I'll probably get a decent grade, but in all honesty, I wouldn't have passed myself for that performance.
In better news, my psychology final was only worth about 10 percent of my grade, and I already had an A, so it doesn't really matter how I did on that. In fact, I just skipped a bunch of entries (sound familiar?) because the entire thing was to be written on paper (I believe the total length requirement was about 20 paragraphs) and my wrist was cramping really bad. Sometimes I wish English was written from right to left, so I'd have an easier time just pulling my pen leftward instead of having to lift my hand and push rightward. Before you ask, yes, I know it would be easier to just wish I was right-handed so this didn't affect me, but I believe in lefty supremacy, so, like, screw you. (I don't mean that.)
Tomorrow I have to sing my solos as a final for my choir class... I know I can do it, I know I know the lyrics and the notes and the dynamics and all that, I'm just so terrified I'll screw it up somehow. I threw off my voice earlier today, and I'm just praying to the Flying Spaghetti Monster that it recovers overnight.
I discovered that there exists something similar to the game I was describing with fantasy UN, and it's actually an entire genre of RPGs called Free Kriegsspiel Rules, where the rules are determined not by reading a book, but simply through agreement between the referee and players on what should happen. For example, everyone knows what a rope does, so if a player tries to use a rope, they shouldn't need to check the rules and be restricted by the amount of uses listed in a rulebook for how rope can be used. I like this system.
Today I was supposed to go to anime club, but the teacher that hosts the club in his classroom wasn't present, so I passed the time by going to a different club, and we went outside and painted trees. I'll show you guys the tree I'm making when I'm done, but it'll take several weeks since they only meet on Tuesdays and I'll probably only go there when I'm not needed at anime club.
Funny enough, I'm actually vice president of anime club, because the president didn't think anyone else who would've been available to was responsible enough for the title. What worries me is the fact that I'm not even a big fan of anime...
I'm still working on that plan I had for a potential game, but I haven't had much time to focus on it, because I keep getting distracted by things that are more... instantly gratifying.
Today was the first day of school after spring break! I'm kind of sad that spring break is over, but I'm really happy to see all my friends again.
Incidentally, this means that finals week starts soon. I've had over a week to work on my final essay for my psychology class, and I started this morning... I'm sure it'll look great when I'm done!
I know this seems like a strange thing to think about, but it'd be so cool to be a vampire... just prowling around a big old castle, sleeping in a coffin, seducing unwitting travlers so I can exsanguinate them, what could possibly be a better life?
So sorry about missing yesterday! I got caught up in helping my mom move cardboard scraps to the recycling center, and I just plain forgot to write an entry.
I realized recently that I've never actually taken the time to look at my nose. It seems to curve downwards in the distance between my nostrils and tip, as opposed to going straight as I had always assumed it did.
The boy I said I had a crush on was flirting with me, and I thought he was just doing it jokingly to mess with me... but it turns out he actually likes me! I asked him if he was serious or not, and he told me outright that he was being serious because he didn't realize I was genuinely confused. So, I guess I have a boyfriend now!
I may be stupid. I got March 13th mixed up with April 13th. Next month is Homestuck day and Neil day. I feel really dumb right now.
Anyways, happy Pi day! Today we celebrate the ratio between a circle's circumference and its diameter, plus some other stuff I don't really know much about.
I hope you all had a happy Homestuck day! I, for one, didn't do all that much today, apart from sitting on my computer in bed and playing video games. Today was not just the anniversary of Homestuck, it was also the 18 year anniversary of "Neil banging out the tunes"!
Today my mom found out that all the work we put into fixing the belt on the dryer was for nothing because the heater had broken as well. She just gave up and decided to buy a new dryer. Frankly, I probably would've done the same a few days earlier than her, so I find the commitment commendable.
Have you heard of Toki Pona? It's a conlang with only 135 words, with words that act not only as equivalent to nouns, but verbs and adjectives as well, depending on the way it's used. For example, "pona" means words like "good" or "simple", but it also can be used for "improve" or "fix"! If I wanted to say "The language by Sonja Lang can improve talking for everyone", I might say "toki pi jan Sonja li ken pona e toki tawa jan ale"! So, if you don't speak Toki Pona yet, o kama sona!
I'm very excited about tomorrow! March 13th isn't just the anniversary of the start of Homestuck; it's also an anniversary of something else entirely, and you may already know what I'm talking about. I'll just tell you now, it's pretty banging.
I feel really sad that I missed Zach Weinersmith's Gentleman's Single Use Unlubricated Monocles before they went out of sale. I never would've been unprepared in a situation in which a monocle would be needed! Sadly, they are all gone now, and when I emailed Mr. Weinersmith, he told me that he did not intend to have more manufactured. If you don't know who Zach Weinersmith is, you should check out his webcomic, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. It's seriously super funny, and I've yet to find anything he's written that I was not absolutely in love with. Really, my habit of referencing random crap without caring whether it's obscure or not comes from his wonderful comics.
Today I helped my mom fix a clothes dryer. The belt had snapped, and the dryer model was so old that there weren't even tutorials on how to replace it online, but eventually we figured it out. I feel like both of us came out of it dumber, somehow.
There are an awful lot of special days in this particular week. Yesterday was Mario Day, and the 14th is Pi Day, and in just two days it's going to be the 15 year anniversary of the start of Homestuck, one of my favorite comics. What's better than Homestuck, however, is the comic that Hussie released before Homestuck, called Problem Sleuth. I've read it multiple times, I am obsessed with it. I cannot more strongly recommend any piece of media.
speaking of media, I was reminded today that I still need to start watching My Little Pony. Not only My Little Pony, either; in my life, I've only watched 2 videos released by Technoblade, and I only know one thing about the Dream Shared Minecraft Playthrough. That one thing is that Technoblade has a faction in the story called The Syndicate, and if there's a cooler name for a criminal group, I've yet to hear it. I really need to watch the whole series, just to find out what it is they do.
I think I should also mention that I've now been posting for a week! I have a good feeling about the many more weeks to come.
I thought I would be able to tell something interesting every day, but it's now occurring to me that my life might actually be fairly boring. If I skip a day, it's either because I didn't have anything interesting to say and didn't want to waste your time, or it's because I had a really busy day and that I'm going to tell you all about it tomorrow when I have more time.
I've been thinking a lot about Napoleon Dynamite lately. It's one of my favorite movies, there's just something special that I can't quite put into words. The climax of the movie in particular is moving. When I see Napoleon getting up on that stage and proving his talent, I can't help but cry, just a little. If you've not seen Napoleon Dynamite, I would recommend you watch it.
I'm listening to "The Mary Ellen Carter" by Stan Rogers! It's a very good song, like most of Stan Rogers' songs are.
Today was the first day of spring break! I'm spending this weekend at my mom's house, and I haven't really done much of note.I went to the store and got sourdough bread, though! I really like sourdough, it's my favorite kind of bread.
I've been up all night thinking up a third paragraph to write, it's almost 5:00 A.M. now. It reminds me of the fact that, during summer break, I'd almost always stay up until the sunrise and wake up in the afternoon. I like that schedule because I spend most of my day in the quiet hours where nobody else is around. I like to just be alone in the quiet, doing whatever I want to do that night, not worrying about anyone else noticing me.
Spring break is starting! I still have to work on my final project for my psychology class, but I think I'll be fine starting it later. I decided to make my final project about why video games use really big numbers for scores instead of single-digit numbers like in sports.
Today I didn't really do much of note. A friend at school keeps comparing me to a puppy because I always get really excited and jumpy when I see them in the hallway. It's probably also because I own a collar and I will follow and stay on command, but in all honesty, I like being called a puppy because puppies are cute and it makes me feel cute to be compared to one.
I had a very awkward morning... I confessed to a friend of mine that I had a crush on them, and they told me that they already knew, before I had even realized it myself. I thought they would be upset with me, but they didn't seem too mad.
After school today, I went to my little brother's concert, and I saw a student from my school on stage. He's in elementary school, and the concert was hosted at a different high school than the one I go to, so I was pretty shocked. When I was talking to my father about it, I kind of referred to him like he was a cult leader for something. I was just really excited to see someone I recognized.
Today's art is a picture I was given today by my friend. It's a portrait of me, and I think that it's really cute!
Here's a fun fact about rocks: Lapis lazuli is actually an ore of a mineral called lazulite, mixed in with trace amounts of pyrite and various non-precious stones. That's why a big rock of lapis lazuli has yellow flakes in it, those are little bits of pyrite.
My website got a follower today! It means the world to me to see that people are watching my site. Thank you very much, user "n-has-a-site". Here's to many more followers in the future, eh?
Today I picked up trash in front of my school. I talked to some friends of mine about potentially starting a sort of pseudo model NATO. The idea is, at the start of the game, players would create their own fictional country, complete with resources and towns. Then, every meeting, players could trade, fight, annex, and do whatever with other countries. If a country got absorbed by another, the country would become a team composing of both players that participated in the absorption. At the end of the year, countries would get prizes for stuff like whoever had the most players, the highest population, the most of a certain resource, the most land, whatever seems appropriate.
I like to play Minecraft with my friends sometimes, and one of my favorite things to do in minecraft is dig out an underground fortress. I'm very interested in colony management games like Dwarf Fortress, and this love comes out in minecraft when I build seperate forges, kitchens, kilns, and storage rooms. One of these days, I hope to get a breeding population of villagers and make my own underground colony.
Today I went to an arts and crafts club after school. The host of the club, one of the science teachers, let me take one of the pairs of earrings she had made and keep it for myself. The earrings have a teardrop-shaped blue bead and a metal pawprint dangling from them. I also made a bracelet with alternating blue and white beads, with a pink bead after each blue or white. I think it looks nice.
The Adventurer Mode update for Dwarf Fortress is releasing next month! Soon, I will be able to roam around the world I've created and slay beasts and other cool stuff like that. I'm a big fan of roguelikes, and this update will basically turn Dwarf Fortress into a roguelike. Yes, I know, I can just play classic mode, and I've been doing that, but I'd like to have some of the extra features that come with the Steam release of the game.
I've always been fascinated with blogs and journals and the like. Nobody knows a person quite as much as they know themself, so there's no better way to show the world who you are than to write down what you're thinking and publish it. I've never actually had a diary, because I never had the commitment to write something down every day, and I'd just give up after a day or two. Blogs, on the other hand, have a sort of sense of obligation, like you'd be disappointing some reader somewhere if you didn't update your page. I know it sounds strange to say this, but I kind of need to be obligated to do things. I need something preventing me from just lying down and doing nothing productive, even if I enjoy those productive things. I'm sure not many people will ever read this, but it helps me to write entries consistently if I think someone will read it.
Of course, don't expect me to write every single day. I have homework and hobbies and stuff, so I might miss a day sometimes (I'll be honest, it'll be fairly often...) and that just means I'll have more to say when I do write again!
What to say about today? I made a presentation with a classmate, I wrote the script and she made it look nice. I worked some more on my website, which I'm quite proud of! Honestly, it doesn't look too bad to me, but I think I'll change the color from white to something more calming to the eyes. I'm thinking light grey... If you're reading this in the future, you'll probably see whatever choice I went with.