Normally, I repost my post on Superb Owl on Superbowl Sunday. I was busy curling and then it was Dino Sunday. Friends of Danielle Allard gather together virtually on Sundays after her usual stream and we play games or watch movies on Discord. It's something I look forward to every week as it's a time to fit in some relaxation and her community is lovely.
Lately, I've been quite busy. I've made some key progress in my declutter. The more I get done with that, the more my mind can focus on my creative projects. I've figured out what I need to do in order to fix Sparker and truly get it ready to query potential publishers. I have a lot of work ahead on Sparker, but now I know what I was too stressed out to think about before. The declutter will hopefully be complete in time for a friend's visit in March.
Last week I went to a speed dating event hosted by Ding Dong Dating and I had a really good time. Later this week, I'm meeting up with one of the women for a longer date. I'm looking forward to it, but I've learned not to get my hopes too high. I did speed dating a good way to meet a number of single women I don't already know, but I found it a bit difficult to present all that I am to someone in a couple of minutes and learn enough about them to really judge a fit. I know there are studies that say you can get enough information in 7-30 seconds about someone, but I also know that people can be having an off day or are just less skilled at certain situations as well. And there are loads of articles about how to overcome a bad first impression for a reason.
I am hoping to make even more progress on my declutter this week. And I've started a course on Procreate. I got a new pen for my iPad that is much closer to the Apple Pencil and was well rated. The one I first tried had an extra bit on the end that it needs for tilt recognition, which gets in the way for drawing. You can see that bit if you look closely, though it blends into the pants I was wearing. My new one is blue and I love that.
Also planned for this week is a book discussion for a friend's podcast. I'll be providing the link once it has been uploaded to the interwebs. We are reading The Night Circus and it's not my favourite book by any means. More on that to come in the discussion. Suffice it to say that I have 4 hours left on the audiobook and I'm not excited.
Back to curling. How did we do for our first match of round 3? It was a hard fought tie with one of the fun teams, so everyone had to buy their own drinks. One of their members was in the training session with me at the beginning of the season. Their team briefly moved up a division and they are happy to be back in this one.
My muscles are feeling it after the match. We're trying to get more ends in and that means extra sweeping and running. This bodes well for my fitness efforts despite how sore and tired I was after. I've noticed that it's starting to get a bit harder to grasp my love handles, so my body composition is beginning to change despite the scale sometimes giving the opposite impression. This is why it's important to look at more than the numbers.
Speaking of numbers, I was glad the rating system at speed dating was yes or no. I'd do more movie reviews if I wasn't expected to give them a number that is practically meaningless because of its subjectivity. A rant for another day.
I plan to get heavily into my writing once my house is ready for my friend's visit. I've been reducing some of my social outings for both of these things to be possible. I'll soon have room in my living room to fit in more exercise as well. Work has been a lot since around November, so I'm looking forward to the upcoming long weekend.