9th of Elul

For Duolingo's Dutch course, I finished the School and Relative Pronouns units today. Next will be Weather. I'm surprised to still be in the Sapphire League, despite only being active for 1 or 2 days last week. Hopefully, I can get to doing it every day again. 

Managed to get back to drawing Junko. I realized her torso was too elongated, even though I was following a guideline. I had to shorten everything below her waist a little. She's looking a lot better now. I'll make her legs look more anatomically correct next, or at least more proportional. I'll refine the rest of her a bit more, too. Then, I'll add her clothes. 

Edited more of Alliance. Made it well into chapter 5. Went through 8 pages of the ebook, and 11 of the print. I think that's the most I've done in a day. Wahoo!

I practiced my clarinet today. Haven't played it in roughly 7 months. Mainly because of my health. It felt so good just to get back to it. Played much better than expected. I'm not breathing as well as I used to, both my arms are still in a lot of constant pain, and my pinkies are very stiff (making it difficult to play the alternative keys...). All of this makes it more difficult. I was happy to do 40 minutes of it. My target normally is an hour. I went through a little of the advanced classical solo pieces, a jazz book, and Irish tunes. I was nervous about starting with an advanced book, but it wasn't too bad. Hopefully I can get to practicing every day during the week again.

Another aspect that made it a bit more difficult was the new sores in my mouth. I've had this thread-like one inside the left corner of my lip for a while. Had a weird clear blister inside my right cheek. It was scary looking, but disappeared the next day. Last night I found a much scarier looking one on my lower inner lip near that thread-like one. It's wide, black, occasionally has a little white on top, and the edges look weird. I've never had something like that. I only noticed it last night because I accidentally bit down on it. Just wanted to make sure it wasn't hard enough to draw blood. It feels weird. Most of the time it's not painful, just feels like there's a sticky glob of some sort. After having snack today, I noticed there's another sore on the other side of my mouth. This one seems more normal, but thick. So, it feels like there's a piece of food stuck there. Really annoying. I didn't have mouth sores in the past as extraintestinal symptoms of my colitis. I think it's related to that 'new' unknown thing I've been having symptoms of since February. We know it's another autoimmune disease (specifically rheumatic related). I still think it's scleroderma, but I don't know if it's common for patients who have that to have mouth sores.

I decided to drop Possession. It's a Korean supernatural detective show. I was halfway through, but it was getting too painful story-wise to watch. Plus, it's a pretty lengthy show (16 episodes, each about 1 hr and 15 min), and I didn't want to push through that. I'm thinking of watching Darr Sabko Lagta Hai or Everybody Feels Fear on Netflix next. It's an Indian (in Hindi) anthology horror show. It sounds very interesting. Kind of sounds similar to Goodnight DJ. 

Tried out another flavor of Betty Crocker's Mug Treats: chocolate chip cookie with chocolate frosting. It really was like a huge cookie in a mug. This one cooked for about 10 seconds less than the cinnamon roll one. Used milk again instead of water. It was great. I don't think it really needed the frosting, though. It's packed with sugar and calories, and I think omitting the frosting would take a lot of that away. I could use the frosting for something else in the future. I've decided to only have it Friday nights (the start of Shabbos), since it's a treat night where calories don't matter as much. There are 4 to a pack, so it'll last a while. Also, have a big thing of rainbow chip cookies from Safeway. I think there are 12 to a pack of that. This way I have roughly 2 weeks worth of desserts for myself. That's not counting occasionally getting desserts at restaurants, or even if I want to try the tea cookies my parent got. Or, if I need a break from the mug cookies on a Friday night. I like that I'm covered on that for a while. 

I made pumpkin spice pancakes yesterday for lunch. The mix was from World Market. It was new, and since I like their banana caramel one, I thought I'd give it a shot. Plus, all their pancake mixes are cheap. It was ok. It smelled great, but had a very mild spice taste. They used real pumpkin, but I couldn't really taste it. It probably would have been better with powdered sugar and/or syrup. Didn't have syrup at the time, though. I still have quite a bit of the banana one. Maybe I could combine them for a serving next time. Sounds like they would taste great together. I'm glad I tried it. Hope to try their other flavors in the future. Some of them seem really creative. I have to at least get through the banana one first. Also, tried the pumpkin spice yogurt pretzels from World Market. They were amazing! I'm saving them for snacks during the weekend, which are my treat days. They have a lot of sugar. Not bad on calories, at least. 

I searched for some new apps this weekend, as well. Found some Jewish ones, more color by number ones, and a game. Still using a small fraction of my iPhone storage space. The game is called Cat Cafe. You get to own your own cat cafe with cats you adopt, orders to fill from customers, cleaning it, getting thank you notes from customers, toys, decorating it, and more. Both the cats and customers are so cute! They say the cats are based on real shelter cats in New Zealand. Interesting side to it. 

With the Jewish ones, I found a daily Torah study app from Chabbad. It's really fascinating. I can try to study a little of it everyday. They have a calendar where you can tap on that day and get the lessons for it. You can look into other days this way, too. The lessons are on Rashi's commentary, psalms, Tanya, thoughts on holidays/time of year or parsha (Torah portion), a daily mitzvah, and one other thing. Quite a lot packed into it. 

Redownloaded Jewish.tv. It's also through Chabbad. Full of videos for studying, documentaries, cooking, music, and more. I only got rid of it before because my old phone had ran out of space. 

The last Jewish app is one that I also had on my old phone. It's called Sefaria. It's a really vast and valuable resource. They have the Tanach, Mishnah, Talmud, Midrash, Halachah, Kabbalah, Tanaitic, texts on philosophy, liturgy, Musar, and so much more. It's like having a huge library of Jewish texts on my phone. You could even download whatever you want to go through offline. I'm still surprised it's free. They've managed to keep it up through donations alone.

Oh, I also got Yelp. I was using Foursquare for a while, so I decided to try this, too. Swarm, which I still use, is part of Foursquare. I can try it out. Might be better.