National Pancake Day!

Pancakes can be so diverse. One of the most interesting ones I’ve made was German spinach with hollandaise sauce. It was from an old German book. Really good, but I hadn’t thought too much about savory pancakes. (The regular kind, not something like latkes.) I love the cinnamon roll pancakes from Elmer’s. Combining both of those makes it fun. I remember my mom occasionally making pancakes with different things added each time. One time it was blueberries, another bananas and chocolate, another jam, etc. Made it interesting. She used Bisquik as the batter base. Made it easy. 

Got through the Accusative unit, and halfway through the V.Pres 1 unit for Russian. Again, still no speaking exercises. Went over more forms of certain words. They haven’t been introducing too many new words for the last couple of units. I suppose they want us to get a firm grasp of the forms and sentence structure first. It seems like they have a lot more grammar rules, although they’re a lot more blunt with things. 

Read more of Choujin Gakuen or Supernatural School. The group made it into The World’s Strongest Committee’s hidden lair. It seems like a paradise for supernaturals, but it’s the opposite. In order to live there, they must defeat higher ranked supernaturals who specialize in the same ‘genre’. If you can’t beat them you’re sent to a school further underground where they torture and train you harshly. If you don’t die from the treatment, they’ll send you back up and the cycle starts again. If you make it passed rank 12, you get to permanently live on the main floor. It’s how their leader maintains ‘order’. The group was easily detected, and over 50 residents chased them. Some of those supernaturals were severely injured by their own people. Somehow, Adam scooped up all the injured people and the group wheeled them to an abandoned building to treat them. Eventually, he turned all of them into friends. He might end up with an army by the time they reach the headquarters. The group’s main aim is to find Yoshino and have her join them. Adam decided to add that he’ll break all the rules of that ‘paradise’. Seems like he’s already doing that. 

I inked the larger and more detailed drawing of the Dark Healer’s facial tattoos. Didn’t get to scanning, editing, posting his head, the assassin, and those tattoos. 

Instead, I wanted to do a few more things for my computer. I tried to defrag, but it said I didn’t need to. By the way, it stayed on for much longer yesterday. Roughly 15 hours. It shut down sometime during 3-5am. I woke up at 3 and then 5. (Had a hard time sleeping.) It was on at 3, but off by 5. Also, it doesn’t really turn off. It suddenly goes into standby mode. I don’t have that enabled, and I might try to just tap a key on my keyboard next time to see what it’ll do. Still, it’s not supposed to do that. It seems like it’s getting better. I decided to try to run a ‘check disc’ again. It’s still running that. (It’s been several hours already.) That means there really is an issue. It doesn’t usually take long. When it finds errors, it’ll fix them itself. Hopefully, it doesn’t suddenly decide to ‘standby’ in the meantime. I didn’t get to editing/reading Alliance because of this.  

I also noticed that Tasha has found a new hiding spot in my room. Right next to the surge protector that has lots of wires coming out it. The computer is plugged into that. It’s right under the left side of my desk, so there’s a bit of an overhang for her. It must be warm down there. I have a feeling her being there might have affected it, too. She may have been moving the wires around. I decided to put a thick book in that spot (not touching any wires), so she can’t sleep there anymore. She looked hurt when she found the book there. I also scooted the desk a little further from the wall so it wasn’t right up against the plug for the surge protector. I moved the plug to another outlet, too. I used an air duster on the outlet, plug, wires, surge protector, the fans of my computer, and other parts near those in the back. Hopefully, all this will help. 

Practiced my clarinet for an hour. Mostly played klezmer tunes, but also did a few Mozart pieces. Wasn’t too bad today. I’m noticing that I’ve been thinking too hard about things, and making more mistakes because of it. I just need to relax with it. I think at some point I’m going to make audio recordings of what I play and post them to Youtube. I hate seeing myself in vids. This will not only help me improve by hearing and critiquing myself, but also others can tell me what they think. Although, I know there are a lot of trolls on there. It could be just for myself...I remember we were told to record ourselves a couple of times back in high school, and it did help. Somehow it seemed different than hearing my own voice. 

For cleaning, I did the cats’ stuff, swept my bathroom’s floor, and poured liquid plumber down the tub’s drain. I consider using Rosie’s grooming mitt as cleaning, too. She’s been really bad about cleaning around the base of her tail and butt. Seems to be getting worse. I can only do so much with the mitt. My bathroom’s floor gets dirty quickly. It’s a combo of my long hair and the cats tracking litter in. When I wash my hair, all the loose hair from the previous 3 days comes out. Most of it congregates around the drain, where I can just reach over and grab what’s there with tissues; and on the edge of the tub. The tub’s edge is easy, too. However, a good amount ends up on the floor and it piles up each time. I’m always amazed at how much litter shows up, too. Both cats like to relax in there, and sometimes want to stay in there when I use it for anything. The drain to the tub seemed a bit clogged. There wasn’t much liquid plumber left, but I think it helped. I wanted to do more, but that stuff took a while. I’ll get to more next time.

National White Chocolate Day!

This holiday was on Saturday. White chocolate seems to be its own thing to me. Not really chocolate. It's good in a lot of things, and adds an interesting flavor. 

Today's the second day of Sukkot, which lasts for 8 days. It's a harvest festival. We didn't put up a sukkah this year, and haven't in many years. I didn't want to. It's not nice enough out there to enjoy it. I do have good memories of sitting in the one we used to put up on the backyard patio, and inviting people over for dinners out there. Most of the guests weren't Jewish. Mainly neighbors. 

It's been a while since my last post...Hopefully, I can finally get back to posting on a regular basis. I was going to post yesterday, but my desktop suddenly shut itself off. It's always a little weird after being off for so long. Usually works its kinks out on its own. Just in case, I ran a disk scan (I think it's actually 'check disk'), and let it repair itself if it found any errors. However, it shut off all 3 times that I tried before it was finished. At least, it got through more of it each time. I ran a cleaning scan through CCLeaner, and fixed errors in the registry with it. Usually this helps with most problems it has. I might run other scans and defrag later. We'll see how this goes for now.

Recently got 4 new cool weather shirts. Most of my other shirts have holes, are frayed, or are worn out. Still haven't gone through them to at least get rid of 4, since these replace them. I think there's only one that's fine, and it's one of my oldest shirts. I got it in high school. It's warm, fuzzy, and long. Comfy. Also, it's gotten really big on me. Odd. I found out that I'm now on the cusp of medium and large in the regular 'women's' or misses section. That's quite a bit smaller than I used to be. 3 of the ones I found were L's, since I thought it'd be nicer to be a bit roomier than slightly tight. The last one is an XL, since it seemed to run a little smaller, but I also wanted it even roomier than the others. All 4 came from the same section, and there were a lot of options there. I thought 4 was plenty. All of them were 50% off, too. Perfect time to get new ones.

Recently, I posted something in an IBD group. Someone responded with referring to me as a chick. I said I'm not a chick. He said it wasn't derogatory. First, even if I was a woman, many women are offended when people call them that. Especially if a man said it. It might (and I stress on the might) be acceptable to use it with someone who's in their teens or early 20's. I'm quite a bit older, and he thought I was roughly the same age as him. He's 35, so it's not like he thought I was that age. Plus, to say it's not derogatory and no one should be offended by it...comes off as being entitled and childish. I tried to be as polite as possible with him, and said I'm not a woman or a man. I'm agender, and I know I'd get some hate for that. I was trying to go about it without saying I was. Anyways, he went on a long tirade about how biologically speaking there are only men and women, nothing else. Saying it was basic science. He also suggested therapy to help with my gender 'confusion'. Way to be with promoting conversion therapy. Wahoo! He said he just wanted to empathize and help me, but all I did was attack him. I'm sorry my existence seems like an attack on you. The cherry on top of this last comment was the "I hope you have a great day, ma'am!" part at the end. Making such a point to misgender me... He said not to respond to his comment. At that point, I decided to block him. I later saw an admin of that group post a somewhat cryptic message: "I got rid of him." I'm assuming they're referring to this guy. This was the first time online that I've actually corrected people. I think I'm going to do this in the future. It's easy online. They could throw a bunch of insults or apologize nicely. With the ones hurling insults, I could easily just block them. If this were in person, I wouldn't have bothered correcting him. I'm more nervous for my safety offline. 

I'm starting to get used to my new iPhone. The recent update has been better. I used to play escape games on my desktop, and recently thought about and how I miss them. They're usually full of interesting puzzles. So, I decided to find some in the app store. There was one that was AR based. It seemed 'real' this way. However, the game kept crashing, sucked battery life, and it didn't look that great. Trying some of Haiku's escape games has been a lot better. The first one was a murder mystery set at a manor. I like when they throw in a mystery/detective angle into it. The horror ones are interesting, too. That one was actually very short, and I figured it out in about a couple of hours altogether. The 2nd one that I'm on has been a lot longer with more rooms. The puzzles seem more intricate. You're a shapeshifter and a hunter of supernaturals has captured you. You have to figure out a way out of his mansion. If you touch an animal, you can transform into that form. So far it's only been a raven and cat. There was a hellhound, but they wouldn't let me touch them. With the cat, you can see remnants of ghosts and their items. There has only been one ghost so far, and I figured out how he died already. Maybe there will be another? Very interesting series of games.

Started doing push-ups yesterday in addition to my sit-ups. So, now I'm doing 20 sit-ups twice a day, and 5 push-ups twice a day. I'll add 5 every time each week. I haven't done push-ups in a very long time. Should be interesting to see if I can keep that up, too. Rosie really didn't like me doing them yesterday. She bit my feet hard at some point. I kicked her out of reflex, and she looked terrified. I didn't want to do that, and certainly didn't want to scare her. 

Been keeping up with studying Russian. Some of it's really coming back to me. I think what made me think of it as a puzzle was more because the sentence structure changes often. Also for someone to have something, you have to enclose the word for that person (ex: you, I, we, etc.) with 2 words, then put the thing they have at the end. Some words change depending on the tense. Like, the word for cat changes depending on if the sentence is negative, interrogative, past, etc. The plural version changes, too. Not to mention that some words are written/pronounced differently depending on the speaker's gender. It's a crazy but interesting language. So far I haven't encountered any speaking exercises for this one. I'm curious to see how my pronunciation of it is now. Maybe eventually they'll have it. 

Read more of Code Breaker yesterday. I'm not really liking this one. I'll probably drop it, and pick a new one next time. 

Managed to get to some more editing of Alliance yesterday. It's interesting reading the beginning of it all again. There are more mistakes than I thought. Hopefully, it won't take me long to get through it.

Finished drawing and inked the Dark Healer's head. Also, figured out a bigger more detailed version of his facial tattoos. They look cool to me. I might ink those larger versions next time. Might post that, his head, and his assassin to dA then, too.

Practiced my clarinet for an hour yesterday. Mostly played Irish tunes, and got to one Klezmer tune. I'm trying to break some of my bad habits with the Irish ones. For some reason, I have quite a bit only with those. Maybe because I haven't been playing them as often? 

Finished Satsuriku no Tenshi or Angels of Slaughter recently. It technically isn't the end, but they're making the last 4 episodes a special next month. It's at an odd point to do that. I've really liked this show so far. It is based on a horror escape game. Everyone in it is really twisted. The most twisted one might be Rachel. I'm still thinking that maybe she's imagining all of it. We still don't know much about her, besides her witnessing her parents' murder and it's implied that she sewed them together with thread afterwards. There must be something more, because after Zack found out the whole truth, he seemed unusually shocked. The viewers didn't get to see or hear everything that he did at the end.

Finished Kujira (Whale- I'm shortening the name, since it's long) last night. I started it about a year ago, then dropped it because there seemed to be better anime at the time. This one was very slow at the beginning. The concept seemed pretty original and the animation was interesting. The only reason I went back to it was 1. I had finished an anime from this season, and 2. I was very curious about how it was going to end. It didn't seem to have an ending. The plot was vague at times, too. It was just ok. I probably would not watch another season if it came out. 

Boku no (My) Hero Academia's 3rd season will end this week, I think. It doesn't feel like it's ending. They're about to introduce and fight against 3 powerful upperclassmen at their school. Doesn't sound like the way to end it. Plus, new villains have appeared, and they haven't really been introduced yet. I'm sure there will be another season, but there's been no word on when that will be. 

I think people who are into American superhero comics would get a kick out of this show. The creator even mentioned that he loves those and was influenced by them. Heck, All Might's (who at the beginning was the #1 hero) uniform looks kind of like Captain America's and all his attack names are based on states. Like, Delaware Smash. It reminds me most of X-Men. Only think 80% of the world are 'mutants' (have quirks in their world), and 20% supposedly have no powers and are 'average'. With that, people hold those with quirks in higher regard than those that don't have them. In X-Men, it seems the opposite. A lot of the quirks seem to be well thought out. Bakugo's quirk is essentially that he has explosive sweat. He sweats nitroglycerin and can detonate at will. The more he sweats, the bigger the explosion. He's one of the most powerful characters. It's interesting that quirks can depend on what type of quirks their parents have. Bakugo's mother can secrete glycerin from her skin. His father's palms can secrete oxidizing sweat. The main character, Deku (who Bakugo used to bully and is now a rival), was told as a little kid that he didn't have a quirk and was devastated. He later gained a quirk from All Might as his successor, called One For All. It gives him superhuman strength, speed, agility, and power. It seems to me like he has some sort of wind power. He used to injure himself every time he used it. Also, unlike All Might, green lightning comes off of him when he uses it. He's very intelligent and can strategize better than even some of the pro heroes. I think he actually did have a quirk beforehand. (That intelligence might be part of it.) From what we know, both his parents have quirks. His mother can attract small objects around her, like a weak form of telekinesis. (Not all the women in this have weak quirks...Not all the men have strong ones, either.) We know very little of his dad, but he apparently can breathe fire. That'd be an interesting combo. Maybe it's just been dormant, or the doctor he saw as a kid lied to him. The villains are interesting, too.

Youtube:

Boku no Hero Academia:
This one seems like a perfect tribute to Deku aka Midoriya:

Tribute to one of the main villains (Dabi from the vid above is also a villain that works for him), Shigaraki:

Tribute to Bakugo:

Mixed AMVs (I haven't seen Attack on Titan, and only a little of Hunter x Hunter. These are well done, though):


Satsuriku no Tenshi: