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2024 - Week 8

This week, I fought hard to make progress on my living areas. And I ran out of fucks a few times. I will eventually elaborate on that, I'm sure, but not right now. There will be more swearing in this post as it has been that kind of week.

Decluttering & Minimalism

This week is a big one for me on this front because I've been actioning my Living Room plans. I acquired display cases for my Funko POP dolls. 


I also began combining my two IKEA PS cabinets into one for all my media to live in. This had me off to Home Depot for a small cut off saw to remove the four legs on the one unit. This is a fairly common IKEA hack. There are even holes that can be used to screw or bolt them together for safety. The saw helped, though I still needed to use my manual one as I wasn't comfortable with the sparks and noise. I try not to be an asshole neighbour.


With the legs off, I needed a break for refueling as I hadn't eaten anything yet.

The next day, I got it joined together with some small bolts and got all my games and movies into it. It's great having it all grouped together. I love that I have used the same amount of floorspace and gained storage area.


I plan to do some sticker bombing on the doors on it with a variety of stickers, but that will be a future low key project I can do later. I'll need to order more stickers for it as there are four doors and I only have enough for maybe one door.

I also purchased a new TV bench unit for my TV, game systems, and entertainment equipment. My goal was to have something where it was easier for me to have all my game systems and such set up and I could do better cord management. Also, I didn't want to spend a lot on it. I had briefly thought about building something, but I found a reasonable TV bench for under $200 that is mostly black metal. It has a rustic brown top and basically matches my daybed couch. Things aren't all in place yet as the other display case seems to be missing its lighting piece. Please excuse the rest of the living room disaster displayed on the screen. I'm loving this much less cluttered TV area where most of my game systems are connected.


I have some further plans that involve buying two shelf-length pieces of wood. One will be to join my bookshelves for displaying the miniatures that I enjoy making on stream. The other will be to add a back to my daybed as I think that will make it more comfortable as a couch. I'm going to stain both as close in colour to the other wood on the daybed. That is a bunch of work that can't happen until the rest of my living room has a lot less clutter.

Unfortunately for me, after getting all of this done, my arm was quite angry with me. 

(Chosen) Family

After catching up with Dad briefly via the phone, I spent family day with a favourite queer couple playing a boardgame. I enjoy low key activities like that. We played Shadows of Brimstone, which is like old west meets cosmic horror with a D&D oneshot kind of vibe. My character was not doing physically or mentally well with the hell bats. I'm the one in the hat.


It's a pretty cool setting for a game and you can choose to level up to go on future adventures together too.

The following day would have been my mother's 81st birthday. I was a bit down. I sent my brother a picture I found of him and her together smiling. Since my mom hated having her picture taken, each one is much more precious.

Fitness & Budo

My team at Rainbow had a bye last Sunday and all the work I've been doing combined with a recent fall at TD Place had my arm injured, so there was no curling for me. My team played on Saturday and called it early.

I wanted to go to GSL curling this week, but I couldn't play, so I stayed home.

Gaming & Streaming

I've been failing at streaming lately after all the pest control nonsense having my home turned upside down. A lot of stuff has ended up in my crafting space and I'm annoyed by it. I ended up using my craft stream time for Stardew Valley as I didn't want to continue to bail entirely on streaming. I'm hoping to be ready to start the sticker bombing crafts on the 2nd.

Nightingale came out and I really wanted to play it right away, but it took a long time to download and patch, so I couldn't. Then work was in the way of it. I also needed to finish my living room work. I finally did get to play and I'm not in love with it yet. I'm supposed to buy something from a wandering trader who hasn't appeared yet. I saw a giant mystical stag one night, but that's it.

PWHL

It was so great to see Ottawa win a game after a 5-game losing streak. Hopefully, all of that is behind them and they continue being the awesome team that we all know they can be! I never stopped loving them, but I did wonder if they needed to change something up to get back to winning.

Unfortunately, the next game against the same team later in the week was a loss. A number of people are blaming the coach for it as they continue to play the same lines week after week. The lines that may have had them winning in the earlier part of the season, but don't seem to be effective anymore as the other teams have adjusted to them.

Writing

I didn't get much physical writing done that I recall. This week has been too much. Work was quite heavy as we're in the busy period. I did get some ideas for scene changes and additions and wrote them down. I've also looked at the chapters I haven't gotten to yet and there are a lot of areas where I can expand on things. There are also a lot of other changes ahead as I made some dumb choices that I will be fixing.

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