The month-long holidays for February are: Celebration of Chocolate Month, National Canned Food Month, National Cherry Month, National Potato Lovers Month, Barley Month, National African American History Month, National Women Inventors Month. Some are for important causes, some are to make you appreciate things you may take for granted, and some are just for fun.
For my Jewish calendar, the main pic's of a Torah crown, gilded in silver, made in 1837. It has a lot of bells, and a vine-like design. The other pic's of a wooden tzedakah (basically charity) box, made in 1900. This one has sculpted birds on the sides.
For my elements calendar, it's bismuth this time. Kind of made me gag that they shaped some of it into a heart for the main pic. It's the active ingredient in Pepto-Bismol. Apparently, 57% of it in a bottle is bismuth. Both elements to the left (lead) and right (polonium) of it are toxic. Despite this, bismuth, as far as they know, is nontoxic. It's considered the very last stable element in the periodic table. However, recently it was discovered that bismuth has no stable isotopes, either. They show it forming crystals, 30 lb ingots of pure bismuth which is how they're sold commercially, and a multimetallic chain containing a link cast from 99.99% pure bismuth.
I'll try to stay more on top of posting than I have been. Apparently, missed a week. I've been feeling really awful off and on, and distracted by things like snow. It snowed Sunday afternoon until the next morning. They said there would be more later on Monday but there wasn't. It was a lot for us. We're not used to that much snow. Certainly not in February. It's also been cold enough that the snow isn't completely melting away. On Monday, the highs were in the mid-20's (F), and felt like 9 degrees. The strong winds made it worse. Again, all this isn't our norm. According to the forecast, there's a lot more snow coming Friday and Saturday. They predict 4" on Friday, and 2" for Sunday. That's a lot more than we got recently. Why can't it be more spaced out? I have my eye appointment on Thursday, so it'll be good before it snows again.
I made an appointment to see a new gastro. She's an MD, which is already a plus for me. They said I can't make an appointment for a colonoscopy until after I see her. I got a reminder in December (I think?) to get another one soon. The last one was in January of 2017. The one before that, which was my first, was at the end of July 2015. The receptionist said that it was definitely time. IBD patients are encouraged to get one at least every 2 years. So, I'm going to have the 3rd soon. It just might be sometime at the end of March or April. My appointment's in the beginning of March. I don't think I'm in remission anymore, and haven't been at least since this past summer. I hope they let me have the Miralax/Gatorade prep. That worked a lot better than the Golytely stuff. That's the only thing I really hate about it. The prep. It can be difficult to go on a completely liquid diet for a couple of days, too. Maybe she'll have insight on what to do about scarring, at least. I think that's given me the most pain. Although, I don't really know what it's like now. So, there might be something different, and/or if the disease is active, the focus will be different. We'll see. I might need to stop Lialda, because I'm not sure it's doing anything. Haven't been monitoring it, and haven't had any related blood tests in about a year. If I do stop it, it was my last choice before starting a biologic. Biologics are either taken through an infusion or self-administered through shots to the gut. I'm really nervous about those, but especially the shots.
I realized LingoDeer only let's you have one free 'lesson' for each language in their 'free' app. (Doesn't really seem free to me.) I like that I was able to go into detail with the alphabet and one lesson, but I'm disappointed. I went back to Duolingo's Korean course. It seems better than the last time I tried it. Then again, I had a better intro to the alphabet this time. It seems like a shorter course than the other language courses. I'm doing it a little different this time. After finishing the 1st level of the 1st unit, I did one part of the next, and then started the next level of the 1st, and kept going back and forth for each part of a lesson. Each lesson can have anywhere from 4 to 20 (I think) parts to it. Once I finished the 1st level of the 2nd unit, I did a part of the 1st unit, then a part of the next level of the 2nd, then the first part of the 3rd, and went all the way back to the 1st again. Eventually, I'll level out (there are 5 levels to each unit) of units, so I won't always be going back to them. This way I'll be able to review it and have some new stuff in the mix. It'll take longer, too. I'm almost finished with level 1 of Basics 1, and the 1st unit, which is Alphabet, is up to level 3. There are 3 Alphabet units. It seems to be going faster than I thought. I hope they updated it to have speaking exercises. Haven't encountered them yet, but if they do have them, maybe it's after the first checkpoint? This section is about the very basics. I have been repeating and sometimes saying what the native speaker says at the same time. It helps a little.
Started drawing Shadow's clothes. I want to add folds and such to make it 'act' like fabric. So far, I'm not happy with the results. I've just starting experimenting with that, though. He's not wearing anything fancy. Just a shirt, jeans, and sneakers. It shouldn't take me long with this part. Eventually, I'll ink over everything, then color it in.
Managed to practice my clarinet today. Haven't in about a week because of that weird respiratory thing I'm still going through. I'm still coughing stuff up, have a hard time breathing normally let alone controlling it for playing, still sneezing a lot, nose is stuffed up, and more. I shouldn't still feel this way...Anyways, it makes it more difficult to play a woodwind instrument. Played all of my Duke Ellington book, and a little of the Gershwin one. Sounded better than I thought I would, but had to take way to many 'breaks' to catch my breath. It actually hurt. I did it for a short time, too. I might do it for the same amount of time tomorrow, if I can. Edited about a page worth of Alliance.
Recently, someone on AVEN (Asexual Visibility and Education Network) posted a thread demanding people 'enlighten' her on the 'issues of gender'. I thought she genuinely wanted to know about what she was asking in the 1st post. She wanted to know what gender identity is, what gender dysphoria is, what does it mean to be trans, how can someone have dysphoria if they're agender, and more. She claimed she was also asking this stuff because she wanted to confront her transphobic brother. Seems like a worthy thing. Especially if a cis person does it. She wouldn't listen to a single person on there about the gender identity part. A lot of them went in a roundabout way, so I thought maybe she needed it to be simpler. I also answered the other things in the 1st post and gave her my experience and perspective. We went back and forth on gender identity for a while. Eventually, she said: "I can't accept something I don't understand!" At this moment, I really felt like she was hung up on terf rhetoric. I couldn't quite tell if she was actually a terf herself, trolling, or just really not wanting to listen to others. I told her it comes off as saying: "I don't want to understand something I didn't accept in the first place!" I also said there are many things in this world that people should/have to accept, even if they don't understand it. She came back with claiming not to know what terf rhetoric was, and she doesn't accept most things in life. That last part seemed especially troll-like. She said she doesn't know modern culture either. That seemed odd...For some reason, especially on an AVEN forum, and in the gender subforum. That's a positive place where many trans people are active. The whole 'discussion' felt nasty afterwards. I let her have the last post, and it proved that she was at least a troll. People agreed with me. I've blocked her now. I think I'll still be able to see if there have been other responses and reactions to my posts in that thread. I looked at all the threads she started, and they seemed to just be there to get a rise out of people. A lot of demanding of things to be explained, too. In one thread she used the awful 'Abrahaimic religions' term that gets pushed around. It lumps 3 very different religions together. Plus, in Judaism, our focus is more on Moses, not Abraham, if we're talking about people. Neither of the other 2 focus on Abraham either. I'm glad someone told her to stop using it and said why.
Mob Psycho 100 II's most current episode was epic! They know how to do crazy battle scenes. Black Clover probably should be taking notes. The art seems to change a lot normally in MP. However, this seemed to really push things and do it well. For the first time, Mob got in touch with his positive feelings. Before, his negative feelings were feeding his psychic powers. He seems stronger with the positive ones. We don't know what his ??? power is like now. As he feels things his power goes up a certain percentage. (The 100 in the title is for 100%.) ??? is when he's over his supposed limit, extremely powerful, tends to be unaware of his actions, and turns into something that doesn't seem human. We still don't know much about it. This show just keeps getting better.
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