Friday, June 15, 2018

2nd of Tammuz

Yesterday was Rosh Chodesh Tammuz, or the beginning of the month of Tammuz. It's a women's holiday. Also a moon based holiday, since we have a lunar calendar. All of the days/holidays start at night, and new months are supposed to correspond with the new moon. I don't think there are any big holidays in Tammuz. I could be blanking on them, though.

Got a response back from the congregation we used to be members of. The admin said they'll add a note to the weekly newsletter. Yay! They'll get a chance to see it. The other congregation hasn't responded yet. Hopefully they'll put it in their newsletter, too. Had very few responses to the AVEN thread. At least, some people have seen it on there, too. I was going to post in other forums and possibly in old online blogs/journals, but decided to give it a bit of a break. Might do that on Sunday. I don't know. 

I'm planning to go back to writing Alliance 3 on Monday. I have many more ideas, and I'm itching to continue. I have other book ideas, but I think I should finish this one before I start another. 

Finished leveling up all of the Basics 2 for German. There was a lot to that one. It was good to go over more of the basics. I was getting a bit rusty with what this one covered. I'm able to pick up more patterns than I did when I started. Plus, they've been repeating a lot with each level in each 'unit'. Apparently, most things that are plural have the feminine the or die (dee). So, the women would be: die Frau (dee Frow), the boys: die Jungen (dee Yung-en), the children: die kinder (dee kindehr), etc. It covered the words for 'are' well, too. Seid (Zyet) seems to only be used with ihr (eer) or you. (You are... would be ihr seid...) Sind (Zint) is used for everything else. Interesting. For the more advanced units I wasn't paying much attention to these things. The first Phrases unit will be next. I find those usually are fun. Maybe the other levels will be different for that one.

Read more of the manga, Hajimete no Aku or My First Devil. I don't like that they paint Jiro as naive or an idiot, because he doesn't think about romance or care. Seems arophobic. It seems to me that he might actually be aro. It's not his fault many of the girls have a romantic thing for him. It's like his family is trying to push amatonormativity on him. I also don't like the aspect that Jiro and Kyouko are both cousins. His side of the family is really pushing for them to get together. The 'slice of life' stuff has been humorous, though. I find it odd that Jiro is supposed to be evil, but he says that they have to be kind to civilians. The 'good' people in the story seem a lot more evil. 

I only got to the cat stuff and laundry for cleaning today. Hopefully I can get to more of my bathroom next week. Rosie wanted me to keep grooming her with the mitt after my arm tired out. I started to walk away and she tried to reach out to me. She has claws, but I think she forgets sometimes. She followed me for a while, too. Seemingly hoping to be groomed more. 

I finally broke through the 800th episode mark for One Piece last night. Yay! I've got 40 more to go in order to catch up to current episodes. I've gone through about 18 years worth of it in about 2 years. (Usually, there are 4 episodes a month.) I skipped the fillers, but there hasn't been many. It won't take me long to catch up. I like it a lot. There are some unique elements to it, some homages to other anime/books, and most of the characters are lovable.  The only thing I haven't liked is that the opening and recap take about 6 minutes. So, you end up with roughly 15-17 minutes per episode. I usually skip that beginning stuff. It doesn't seem long enough.

The current arc I'm on has to do with Big Mom. She's one of the pirate emperors. She loves sweets. So much she's turned her country into various islands that are sweets or snacks based. There's a chocolate one where everything is made of out of chocolate. There are even juice rivers. She lives on Whole Cake Island, and it's cake based. There seems to be a lot of Alice in Wonderland nods with the Seducing Forest right next to her castle. There's even a white rabbit, and a mirror devil fruit eater who can travel and trap people in mirrors. Her mirror dimension is trippy, too. One of Big Mom's ex-husbands looks a bit like Humpty-Dumpty from Alice in Wonderland. (He somehow reminded me of something from Monty Python, as well.) One of the enemies that's giving Luffy a hard time ate the biscuit devil fruit, and can make armored biscuit soldiers. Some of it reminds me of Disney stuff, especially when Big Mom sang a few times. Big Mom has had around 150 children with many different fathers. Maybe that's why she's always hungry? Germa, Sanji's father, has had about 66 children. Sanji's the 3rd son. San means 3. Most of Germa's children are men. The only exception, I think, has been Reiji. Rei means zero. His family abused him horribly in the past. No wonder he never brought them up. The Straw Hats' (Luffy's crew) plan was to rescue Sanji, and get a rubbing from Big Mom's poneglyph. Poneglyphs are big stone blocks that have ancient writing on it. The one she has might have partial directions to Raftel where One Piece supposedly is at or near. Robin, a member of the Straw Hats, is one of the few that can decipher them. She's not with Luffy at the moment, thus why they're trying to get a rubbing from it. She also has been deciphering them to learn about the 100-year gap that the government doesn't want people to know. That entire history has been erased except for these blocks. I think Luffy, along with the members that went with him, are actually going to have to battle Big Mom. They didn't want to fight anyone. She's one of the most powerful characters.

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