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2024 - Week 14

Arts & Crafts

I found myself overbooked again, so I bailed on the queer craft night. I quite enjoy it as a respite from the busyness of the week usually, but in this particular week, I felt like I needed to reclaim an evening. I ended up knitting anyway while watching women's hockey. I finished my PWHL infinity scarf. It needs to be blocked and such before I can wear it around.

I've begun a new knitting project. I'm working on some stuffed toys.

Dating & Sex

The Lez Go Singles event was on Friday. Honestly, I wasn't getting my hopes up too high. I've went to a lot of events like Speed Dating and not met the right women for me. Often, they wanted to use me to get connected in the artistic community, had nothing in common, were polyamorous, or were way too young.

We played some games like This and That, a bingo card where we had to talk to people grouped with us for a round, hot potato with the DJ who I know from softball, and a general ice breaker question round that was my first round. People began getting into the games more than the trying to get to know other people partway through.

Several friends were rooting for me to meet a special someone. I might have. Time will tell on that.

Decluttering & Minimalism

With my arm still being a pain in the a**, I have been doing mostly chores and sorting through some smaller things like pieces of clothing I don't like. I swapped my mini rice cooker that couldn't deal with basmati rice for a hot pot that could deal with more types of foods. I had been wanting a hot pot for a while. This one can cook ramen or rice in the bottom while steaming dumplings or veggies in the top. I can also use it to stirfry veggies to later add into a soup.

Gaming & Streaming

Diablo IV was a bust. It was laggy and hung, so I got halfway through A Case of Distrust instead. 

In Stardew Valley I'm trying to get a fish smoker together. This is partly for a quest, but also to move more fish and make money as I suspect I will need to expand the house soon enough.

On Sunday, I played some Minecraft and built myself in our server's Founder's area: 

Also on Sunday, I played Shadows of Brimstone with friends. This was what I had before the town was unfortunately destroyed by some kind of tornado. Thankfully, I had a chance to heal and stock up on bandages before catastophe struck.

Later, I had more items:

The poor Faithful Dog that we found earlier hanging out with cultists, ran ahead and didn't survive this:

He was the bestest doggo.

Lifestyle & Sports

Tuesday held a massage and the last night of Getting Started League. I'd be seeing some in the Gordie Perry bonspiel at the end of April, but others it would be four months until I would see them again. A tasty shawarma banquet was had. 

I was very sore the next day, but I had a little more mobility, so the massage helped. Just in time to be able to hug my Dino friends. More on that in the music section.

Day two after the massage had me feeling a little less sore. I really have to get better at telling the students to lighten up. Their instructor worked on me a bit to show a technique and she knew the exact right pressure and movements to use. 

The IIHF World Women's Hockey Championships began this week. I enjoyed watching all the PWHL Ottawa players play for their home countries.

Music

I was fortunate to be able to see Danielle Allard perform this week and it happened to coincide with a lovely musician friend being in town from California. I had hoped to introduce the two, but my friend's dinner and her tummy weren't in agreement. Despite the sudden winter storm in April, it was important to get out because it would be one of the few in-person performances Dani planned to do for the year. She's got a lot going on between working on 5 studio albums and her day job plus streaming on Twitch and building her community.

As to my own adventures in music, I've always struggled to figure out what genre I want to create in because my tastes are quite varied with the exception of country because I can't stand most of it outside of Dolly Parton. This uncertainty has made it immensely difficult to stick to learning one instrument enough to be decent in it and remember things like chords. Anyway, as I feel like I'll probably be playing some kind of alternative, indie, folk type music, I think I can finally just focus on my tenor ukulele for now. The bonus of that is that it is ultra portable.

Writing

With it being not only the beginning of a new month this week, but a new quarter, I put more time in my schedule for writing. I had several films and documentaries to watch as part of my continued research into backgrounds of different characters and how those may play into my novels. They also might not given that I've set everything in the future and I might want to have a more hopeful outlook going on that what we currently experience. I finished most of them, renewed one, then the library automatically renewed the others the day they were due instead of letting me return them. I didn't know they do that.

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