2024 - Week 2

Arts & Crafts

I'm making progress on Lez Scarf. I'll probably donate or sell it when it's done as I don't want it for myself. I just thought it was a neat project idea.

I made progress on a fairy kit on the weekend on stream. Working with styrofoam was a messy endeavour, but I wanted to add levels to it rather than just do what is on the box. I'm also painting some of the objects as I want it to have a bit more character than mostly beige/grey and brown offers. The path won't be straight and boring either.

Decluttering & Minimalism

The first part of the week through to Wednesday was a lot of decluttering. I often long for a return to when I owned virtually nothing. Anyway, I brought another big bag to donation. 

There was extra decluttering and cleaning as we had pest control treatments on Wednesday. I was annoyed at the whole thing because I was working on my declutter methodically and had to put all the things that are normally in my kitchen and bathroom anywhere else in a short amount of time.

Things I can't find after all this include my hammer and my cheese graters. I had a bin that I put things like my cheese graters in, but apparently not the actual cheese graters!

I thought I was getting somewhere, but now my home feels more disorganized than ever :(

DIY

Plumbing was added to my life this week when my p-trap's stopper piece partially disintegrated or something. It fell out of the pipe and was too rusted to put it back in. At least I got all my dishes caught up before this happened, I suppose. A new stopper was bought and luckily this didn't turn into an unplanned reno. After clearing some debris from the inner threads on the p-trap, I was able to put the new stopper in. Good thing I'm one of those handy lesbians.

Fitness & Budo

My arms were very sore after curling on Sunday. They were normal muscle sore, at least. There's only one position left that regularly causes me a bit of pain and it's only if I try to do the Y:

It's time to get back to strengthening. I planned to already get back to that, but I had to shift my timeline for the condo stuff. I'm going to start regularly using my rowing machine and doing Ring Fit on Switch since winter has actually arrived.

GSL curling was cancelled due to the winter storm. Given all the other stuff I had been doing, I was too sore for it anyway. I wasn't worried about missing out on curling because the weekend held two curling days in a row.

RR curling day one had us on Sheet 1 where the rocks have a habit of curling towards the outer wall, which makes things extra difficult. It's hard to get enough ice to actually hit the target as a beginner.

RR curling day two had my team on sheet 3. We lost, but fun was had. A number of shots were maddeningly close. A couple of us stuck around for trivia night and we came in third place for that. Trivia was more fun than I thought it would be. We were on a team of five and that increased the likelihood someone would have the answers.

Gaming & Streaming

I'm STILL working through Diablo IV. I thought I would be done the campaign by now. I probably would've been had I not gotten distracted with side quests. Alas, I did. I'd play more and just get it done, but I committed myself to doing the campaign on stream. 

I played some Dragon Age: Inquisition. It's nice to have some off stream games to play. I'm not too into it yet. It's not hooking me for some reason and I don't know why.

I did my first Makers & Crafting stream. I want to tweak my camera set up for sure. 

I also joined friends in Minecraft: Origins this weekend. It's a vanilla version of Minecraft that uses resource packs in creative ways to add blocks. There's an archaeology component that I'm looking forward to getting into once basic survival is less of a problem.

Health & Wellness

I talk about a breakthrough in my food issues in this post. TL/DR, I figured out it's added food colourings that has been making me ill. I'm happy to have pizza in my life again! I pretty much just go with companies who have excellent ingredients lists like Pizza Hut, Dominos, and Poppa John.

It's a mentally and emotionally hard time of the year for me. My parents were married in the 1960s on January 11th. We lost mom two years ago during the winter storm on January 17th. Add Blue Monday to that and January is not a favourite month of mine. I'm looking forward to it ending.

Language Learning

I quit Duolingo this week. They have decided to fire all of their translation staff and replace them with AI. I rather hated the app anyway. I hated spending entire weeks on learning the same sentence repeatedly. I also need to learn the foundation before being expected to know something. They would skip some things then expect me to know it because they changed the curriculum randomly. A friend said they add things to a lesson you've already done, but then don't go back and fill in that gap before testing you on it.

Anyway, I'm trying a few out before I decide what to do with this. And perhaps I'll take a break and renew my efforts in a couple of months. There has been a lot going on and I could use the time for other goals right now like writing, music, fitness, and decluttering.

Movies

On Sunday, after curling, I saw Big Shark with friends. That's the new film from Tommy Wiseau of The Room. Several of my friends enjoyed it. I found some parts funny, but it was painful at a lot of others. I'm more of a Nic Cage Willy's Wonderland level bad movie fan.

I think the interesting thing about Tommy's movies is that we get these glimpses into his worldview. How he sees how friendships happen with other men involves things like playing catch, basketball, and wrestling. How he sees romantic relationships is really dysfunctional. Every woman is terrible. They cheat, abuse, and use the men. It may be safe to say that Tommy is divorced. Not much is concretely known about him. Once in a while he says something somewhat profound like:

“If a lot of people love each other, the world would be a better place to live.”

— Tommy Wiseau

We got a group photo with Greg Sestero at Mayfair Theatre.

The older, bearded friend, absolutely hated it. As I said, I found some funny moments, but I'm not in a hurry to see it again. OK, maybe at least once only because the version we saw wasn't a final cut. Hopefully they make quite a few improvements. I could do with less of the cowboy song, fewer party scenes that have no plot relevance, and more music. Then it might be more of a normal b-movie level bad.

I also saw The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. I enjoyed it. The story elements are solid, so are the acting, and the music. I can't recall if I ever actually read the books or if I've only seen the movies. I should remedy that at some point.

PWHL

I was super sad that the Ottawa away game vs Boston was postponed due to the weather, but I get it. 

Given that I stream on Mondays now and all the extra work I had to do around my condo, it was kind of OK. 

I decided to watch some archived CWHL to catch up on some of the women's hockey I had missed out on all these years. I don't know why I never thought there had to be women's hockey happening somewhere outside of the Olympics, but I didn't. And it's not like anyone I know talked about it ever. Even people who have lately told me they love it. Everyone just talked about the NHL. Anyway, I watched the 2016-2017 All-Star Game. I wasn't surprised that the team that had Poulin on it won.

I enjoyed the New York vs Montreal game. Poulin scored and there were a number of good plays. I wish I had seen a bit more of the Toronto vs Minnesota game. I quite like seeing Minnesota play. I feel like I should love Toronto more because they have a lot of players who are originally from Ottawa. Anyway, it's currently the only game I haven't seen and it's only because I couldn't find the archived game.

Reading

I'm still working on The Chatelaine by Kate Heartfield who is a local author. My copy is from the before Harper Collins days when she was first published by ChiZine, which was rocked by scandal. I'm so glad she got picked up by a serious publisher as her writing is top level.

These days, I'm more into reading queer books. I may read something by Ivan Coyote next as they are a very cool human. I've spent a lot of my life on heterocentric stories and feel like I missed out on books that actually represent me, so I'm catching up.

Writing

It took me a lot of time on Tuesday, but I got more organized on my writing projects and have a progress report now:

Perhaps I should add some colour to that next time.

Grim Ties was super messed up. But while I was organizing it, I thought more about what to do with it when I eventually want to get back to it. I tend to work on one novel and one screenplay at a time. I'll add notes or scenes to another project if they pop into my head, but seriously working on more than two isn't super productive for me.