7th of Tammuz

Been mostly keeping up with my walks and sit-ups. This is the 2nd week of doing the sit-ups, so I'm doing 10 of them 2x a day. It's starting to feel more substantial. I'm getting more used to the roughly 2-mile walks. I just have to plan when to go each day, because of the weather. On really warm/hot days it'll be a bit late in the day. If it's going to rain, I try to look at the forecast for when it's either dry or lightly raining. If it's going to rain all day, I do have a nice new umbrella, just would be nice to not need it. I've been meeting more of the neighbors this way, too. That's been nice. One of them recently got a smoker and has been smoking meats almost every day since around the 4th of July. It smells so good walking by it. On the 4th, as my parent and I walked past, they told us about it. They were smoking chicken that day. I almost thought he was offering it to us when it was done. That would have been awesome! 

I've decided to make at least 1 or 2 recipes from Pinterest a week. I keep finding great sounding ones. I didn't have the motivation to do them mainly because of my health stuff. Sometimes it was because I thought they might be too difficult. Despite searching for single serving recipes, most of the ones I've collected are for multiple servings. Although, maybe I should separate those from the others to see how many there actually are. 

Some pins have multiple recipes. Those have themes like casseroles, single serving dinners and/or desserts, slow cooker meals, etc. As it is right now, I've crammed everything into either my Mouthwatering Fare, Cheesy Goodness, Sweet Endings, and Refreshing Drinks collections. Probably need to split them further. Apparently, you can create collections within collections. That might be handy. I can have the main ones, then split them up. The Mouthwatering Fare is more for things that aren't cheese-based. Some of them might have a little, but it's not central. Some of the ones completely without it I might be able to share with my parent. (There are a lot.) She hates cheese. I love cheese. Thus the Cheesy Goodness collection. It'd be fun to create my own desserts, too. 

I'm surprised I found any non-alcoholic drink recipes. They sound really good. Some are Starbucks copycats, special tea lattes, milk drinks, different flavored hot chocolate, homemade root beer, ideas for making your own lemonades, and non-alcoholic versions of alcoholic drinks. The ideas for lemonades one has things like watermelon lemonade, strawberry lemonade, pomegranate lemonade, blackberry lemonade, lavender lemonade, etc. Sounds fun and perfect for summer. There are also lots of other pins that are similar that have ideas on making your own version of things like soups, ramen, butters, and flavored salt. I could put those in their own thing. They're like templates. I did the ramen one once, and it felt more 'real' or authentic, but it also felt personalized. I like that sort of thing.

I decided to start with the most recent one I pinned in my Cheesy Goodness collection, which is Spinach Tomato Tortellini. I'm also going to print each recipe out that I try so I can keep track. It's easier to read than on my phone, and I might want to make it again. If it's not a good one, I can toss it and maybe drop the pin from my collections. 

This one called for plain tortellini. I got a spinach and cheese bag of them. It really seemed to fit. It was nice to have herbs in it. (It had basil, oregano, and thyme.) Not used to using thyme, though. There was 3 cups of spinach, and they wanted me to chop it up. It's pretty easy to do, but it was a lot. It was the only thing I needed to cut, so that was a plus. I didn't know there was a petite version of canned diced tomatoes. Another interesting thing. I can see why it called for it. I wasn't sure if it needed the juice or not, since they didn't say. I added it and it seems it was perfect that way. The heavy cream and flour were whisked together on the side, then eventually poured in with grated parmesan (used the real stuff) after cooking the other stuff a little while. With the heat still on and whisking it all, it thickened it up. More than I expected. Used quite a bit of garlic, but might have been even better with a little more. After the sauce thickened, they have you add the cooked tortellini and toss it in the sauce. I wasn't sure if the pan I was using was big enough at first. It was just right, though. 

It makes a lot. They say 4 servings, but those are way too huge for me. It's more like 8. The good thing about the ones that make so many servings is I can have them for my dinners and/or lunches for the week. Makes it so I don't have to make something more. I think it's healthier this way, too. A lot of homemade stuff can be packed with more nutrients than something from a box, can, or bag. Putting this in My Fitness Pal, it showed that it has a ton of protein, vitamins like vitamin A, calcium, iron, and more. The only downsides are it's slightly high in calories and fat. Another way to look at it is that they're not empty calories, at least. I was able to figure out the portions by putting it all in an empty tupperware container that was on a scale, weighing it at the same time, then dividing it. It was really heavy. Made it easy to figure out. I tried to give myself a full serving the 1st night, but realized it would have overfilled the bowl. I had a little less. Filling up half the bowl I was using with anything is usually a lot for me. Half a serving is plenty. Measured that out for lunch today, and it was enough to feel really satisfying. Also, it tastes better the longer it sits. Becomes more garlicky and I can taste the herbs more today. Seems like a complex and interesting dish.

I think the next dinner thing I'll make is a beef kielbasa, hash browns, garlic, and cheddar soup thing. It's very simple and a crockpot recipe. Just have to slice up the sausage and dump everything in the crockpot (it only has 5 ingredients, 5th being evaporated milk), wait a few hours, and then eat. Makes quite a lot of servings, but again, I can make multiple meals out of it throughout the week. 

I'm thinking of making blueberry scones that week, too. However, the recipe's not on Pinterest. I have a mix that has been sitting in the pantry for a while. Why not finally make it? I think I was nervous if it'll turn out. It sounds simple, though. Just need to add an egg, butter, and milk. Then, mix it up, drop them on a cookie sheet, possibly cut them into triangles (don't need to but they tell you how on the package), and bake them. That's another tasty thing to look forward to.

Finished editing Alliance. I might go back to the very beginning. Not sure. Soon, I'll start going through the sequel, Alliance: Dawn. I've been planning out how I want to draw the full-body of Junko. It's mainly been by collecting pics for ideas on it. I'll start actually drawing her soon. 

I've finished watching Gunjou no Magmel or Magmel of the Blue Sea. It was ok. Not the best. From looking at comments and reviews about it, I think some people were confused. They were expecting something not as cerebral or complex and more action oriented. Some said there was no plot, but they forget that it was mainly about exploring the dangerous and mysterious new continent, Magmel. Not really about the characters. Although, the main characters were developed and their backgrounds were introduced. The last couple of episodes were mainly about Zero, who's Inyou's assistant. So, that was a bit different. The rest of it kind of reminded me of what Kino's Travels 'theme' was. It wasn't necessarily about Kino, but on the places she explored. Makes the main characters mysterious, too. You don't know much about them, but you still feel something towards them. Another part of GnM was how brutally violent it was when they did fight with either the creatures, plants (there were a lot of carnivorous ones, and some could move), or humans. Similar to KT, as well that way. I don't think it was nearly as good as KT, though.

Finished the 2nd season of One Punch Man. They left it wide open for another season. I hate how Saitama doesn't seem to get much credit. When he fights, most of the time, not many people see it. His fights are often over in a few seconds, and he's growing more bored of them. He should be at number 1 in the rankings. Garou is an interesting character. Reminds me a little of Stain from My Hero Academia. He wasn't really evil or good. He thought both the heroes and villains were unfair with their approaches. He was dubbed Hero Hunter, because he'd pick fights with the heroes to see if he was better than them. He never killed them. Won most of the fights. He wanted to make himself into a monster without actually becoming one. He had a couple of brief encounters with Saitama. So brief, they didn't really see each other. Saitama tends to act on impulse, and the 1st time he immediately thought that Garou was a mugger. He punched him unconscious in a split second upon seeing him. After waking up, he vowed to meet that powerful hero in the future and surpass him. 2nd time, I think Saitama thought he was some random person threatening his friend King. He never looked at the news about the Hero Hunter. Maybe he'll actually meet him next season.

Finished Kenja no Mago or Wise Man's Grandchild. There were some good points to it, but I don't think I liked it. I wanted to. There were a few really odd ecchi moments that almost made me want to drop it. I liked the idea of Merlin adopting a baby he found and training him. He ended up surpassing Merlin early. Shin, the one who was adopted, actually was from our world but he died in a car crash and was reincarnated into that world. In their world, he was found in a carriage accident where his parents died. He was all alone. He doesn't have memories from his previous life, and none of his 'parents' in their world. It was also cool that Shin would think about scientific properties and not need to do an incantation for his magic. Made his magic more potent and faster. Also, made it so he could do anything he thought of. The romance thing wasn't really needed, and I don't know why, but I didn't really like Shin's love interest. She seemed 'off' somehow. The 'villain' was interesting. I don't think I'll watch a 2nd season, if there is one. 

Finished the 3rd season of Bungou Stray Dogs. It was good. Nice to see the leaders of both the detective agency and Port Mafia fight, and to know a little about their backgrounds and friendship. Apparently, the detectives, the Port Mafia, and the government are all working together to keep the peace. Interesting to see the man that's basically the boss of all 3 factions. He's supposedly the strongest, yet they said the only ability he had was to turn into a cat. There's something more behind him. No one knows much about him, including those leaders. Most of the time, he apparently acts like he's one of the members of the detective agency's (I don't think she's actually a detective, more like a secretary) cat. She said he usually disappears just before a big calamity. The villain for this season was really cool! No one truly knows how his ability works. He sends messages to his lackeys through playing certain classical pieces, so it's nearly impossible for the detectives to trace what those messages mean. He seems to never be around the people that follow him, which was another surprise for the detectives. They made him out to be slightly smarter than Dazai. He was a few steps ahead most of the season. However, Dazai did manage to outsmart him. I still don't know how they know each other. Maybe they'll cover that in future seasons. They left it open again for one. 

Tried to start watching the 2nd season of Dark on Netflix. I remembered that it seemed too convoluted by the end of the 1st season. They tried to make it more so with the 1st episode of this season. It was too much. I normally love cerebral or complex stories, but this was too out there even for me. It seemed there were too many plot holes, too. 

Started Ultraviolet on Netflix yesterday. It's a Polish mystery/detective show. Ultraviolet is an online forum for amateur detectives. They solve the cases that police won't touch. Very interesting. They seemed to work much faster than the police, too. In the first episode, the members never meet in person. Not sure if they will. The main character, Ola, was frustrated that the police dismissed a murder she witnessed as a suicide. She saw someone that was pushed over an overpass. So, she went online for help with the case. There's also a retired detective, Henryk, that is like a father figure to her; and a friend, Michal, who actually is a detective. They helped with the case, too. It's highly rated. I haven't watched too many Polish shows. Another interesting side to it. 

Finished reading the manga Mother Keeper a while ago. It was ok. Interesting concepts. Started reading Animal no Kuni or Animal Land yesterday. It's about a baby raised by tanuki (raccoon dogs) in a world without humans. I don't know if he was transported to that world or if he's the last surviving human. Before he was carried away by a river from his parents in a basket, they told him that he was a burden. This made him stop crying and give up on life. The tanuki found him, and managed to get him to cry and feel more alive. Their world is interesting. Looks like it'd be even better if it were an anime. The design of the tanuki's faces is really weird. Might take some getting used to.

21st of Adar I

Made it to level 3 of Basics 1 in Duolingo's Korean course. Almost to 4. These levels seem shorter than with the other units. They go over sentence structure and basic words like man, woman, boy, girl, bread, dog, cat, apple, home, etc. They also go over the word for is/am/are/etc., and it's negative form. They use it at the end of almost all of the sentences so far. 

Read more of Mother Keeper. It's been interesting so far. Syal, who is one of Eden's cyborgs, decided to go on her own to investigate something at the biggest black market outside Eden. She was apparently a slave before she turned into a cyborg. A slave that was sold at that same black market. The 'boss' there didn't recognize her. She broke the 1st rule of the market, which they haven't mentioned yet. It's probably not to ask questions. Ricalna remembered it and will most likely have to go save her. She's strong, but their leader is a cyborg, too. 

Inked the rest of Shadow. Next, I'm thinking of scanning, editing it in Photoshop, and either coloring it in Photoshop or printing it off and doing it with colored pencils. Either way, it'll be 'cleaner'. I didn't practice my clarinet yesterday or today, because I wanted my hands to relax more. They don't hurt as much as they did a few days ago, but I don't want to aggravate them at the moment. Hopefully, I'll get back to doing it soon. Plus, I still have something respiratory-wise going on. Harder to play with that. Edited a few more pages of Alliance. Made it to chapter 14 today. There are 20. Still quite a bit more, but I'm getting there.

Mob Psycho 100 II was intense last night. Most of the episode seemed really light-hearted, and Shigeo was growing more as a character. He was getting ready for a school marathon for most of it. He wanted to be in the top 10 to impress the girl he likes, Tsubomi. He normally is in the bottom 10. I've never really liked Tsubomi. She's his childhood friend, but they don't interact much. She doesn't think of him as a love interest, either. It seems like she's pretentious. Anyways, he did his best and was doing much better than usual, then suddenly he passed out. It was too much for him. After waking up in the nurse's office, he walked home alone. When he got there, his home was on fire. He ran inside to see if his family was inside and save them. The very last scene showed charred bodies reaching out to him, and he changed to his ??? form. Ekubo tried to tell him to close his eyes, but he didn't get through to him. I have a feeling those bodies aren't his family's. They were made to look like that, though. I think the person that set it on fire kidnapped them. He suddenly showed up at their door. He was the main villain at the end of last season, but had a very short time on-screen. The main characters didn't really meet him, except for Ritsu (Shigeo's brother). 

Not much happened with Radiant. One of the inquisitors (a captain) named Dragunov, who's actually a good guy, is going to be punished for what happened in Rumble Town. His crew were starving, and they were trying to come up with a way of finding more food for most of the episode. They had given the people of Rumble Town the rest of what they had. Eventually, one of the town's they helped a while ago, felt they had to repay them and gave them a lot of food. With the knowledge that they'll be fed, he left for his 'punishment'. Not sure what that will be. Seth and his friends found out the price of coffee went up because of Rumble Town being destroyed. It's a major trading point. They tend to hang out at a cafe in Artemis. (Atemis is the only place sorcerers can live in peace.) I guess since the creator is French, coffee is a big thing in it. There's even a coffee monster that lives in the sewers that Doc's friends with. Since the cafe ran out of coffee beans and the monster was dying, Seth and Melie went crazy searching for more of them. Eventually they did find them, but it added more to their already huge debt. It seems there's only one more episode. An odd time to end it. Not much is going on and doesn't feel like it's close to ending. The number of episodes is weird, too. 21, when normally it's about 24 for something like this. 12 for seasonal ones. Looking at it again, there's going to be another season. Yay!

National Puzzle Day!

I love puzzles! Interesting that there's a day devoted to them. They're fun mental workouts. I like pretty much any type. 

I finally made an appointment to see a gender therapist yesterday. I'm even more nervous and excited about it now. Not exactly sure why I felt so hesitant. The interesting thing is I was told that this therapist, Tom Freeman, is located in Silverdale. He's actually only available at his Poulsbo location right now. Works out for me more this way. The building is really close to home. About a 5-10 minute car ride. It might be a little too convenient, since it's in the same small plaza that has Kachai Thai Kitchen. Tempting to go to the Thai place after therapy...It's a good one. This first appointment isn't until Feb 14th. I wasn't expecting it to be on Valentine's Day. It's not that long of a wait until then. This is with the one that I talked about last time that seemed the most promising. With this appointment, it feels like I'm actually starting to medically transition. Hopefully, he'll work out.

Recently, I came across a thread on AVEN about someone demanding that people enlighten her on 'gender issues'. She had a disclaimer that she may come across as offensive, but she's really trying to learn. (Supposedly...) She also wanted to confront her brother on his transphobia. She had weird ideas of what it means to be trans, gender identity, gender dysphoria, etc. People were responding with really long detailed posts about it. She had even longer posts. That seemed weird. Why not keep things shorter? She had confused gender identity with expression, and later on said she just couldn't grasp the concept of gender itself. Reading the responses on that, made me think she was either very obtuse, moving 'goal posts', or the way others were talking about it went over her head. She seemed to think gender was only cultural, and being non-binary was purposely bucking the system. Being non-binary is not a political or fashion statement. I told her it's not just cultural. There are many sides to it.  

With dysphoria, she had the idea that we're trapped in the wrong body. Many people think this, but that's not exactly it. There are things that either shouldn't be there or you're missing things; to put it more simply. It makes people feel distressed, thus the 'dysphoria' part. We're not 'trapped' in our own bodies. Someone said it's kind of like we have birth defects. She has sensory issues, and said she can understand the idea of being trapped that way. No, it's not the same...She thought in order to be trans, we had to have dysphoria. She couldn't understand why we'd want to change our bodies, especially if gender and sex are different. There was a lot more on this, and seemed like a lot to unpack. Being trans just means you have a different gender than the one that was assigned to you at birth. No mention of dysphoria or transitioning. Not everyone has dysphoria. However, I do think some of the people that say they don't have it, might not realize that's what they're experiencing. Took me a while to realize that. She didn't seem to know about social dysphoria, which is another important aspect that often can be forgotten when speaking about it in general. I told her that I have both physical and social dysphoria. I went into more detail about what it's like for me. I also said while sex and gender are different, we still use gendered labels to refer to sex: male and female. It'd probably be better to say something like uterus owner, prostate owner, etc. They're just asking about our reproductive organs when they ask what our sex is. Probably why it's inappropriate to ask unless it's relevant medically. I also brought up that most people don't know their chromosomes, so using it as 'science' to back up a claim that there are only 2 'sexes' (they often referred to it as gender), is laughable. They exclude intersex people this way, too. While I thought my post was slightly longer than my usual, it was dwarfed by how long the others were. I tried to be to the point, but using myself and my own experiences to explain it to her. No one has replied after my post. One person liked it. She's awfully quiet now. 

I started a new language yesterday: Korean or Hangul. I was thinking about Yiddish, but found out how bad Mango is. (At least, their 'free' version.) I'm using LingoDeer now for Korean. LingoDeer used to just have Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. Now, it also has Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, and Vietnamese. A while back, I tried Duolingo's Korean course. I got about halfway through the first lesson, and realized that I had to have some sort of knowledge already in the language. They hadn't worked out the kinks in that course yet, too. I didn't look more into it and just picked a different language. LingoDeer has been great for an absolute beginner. I still feel like I don't have the alphabet down yet, but I'm slowly getting there. This is only the 2nd day. I tested out of the intro section already. That was on the alphabet. It's not counted as the first 'unit' of the course. It's like a get-your-feet-wet unit. They went into a lot of detail. Their 'letters' are really consonants and vowels put together, and there are 3 different orders those can go in. For the letter han, it's written like h-a and n on the bottom. I don't have the Korean keyboard enabled on here. (I might in the future.) Another one could be a vowel, like i, by itself. It's interesting, but seems like there are a lot of layers. Started the first 'official' unit. I'm actually doing better than I thought. It's on nationality. Hangug salam are Korean people. Migug salam are American people. It was things like that. They show you how to write it, sentence structure, record your voice to compare to the native speaker, match the letter/word with either the meaning or pronunciation, in depth grammar/pronunciation notes, and more. It's also interesting that they actually use spaces between words. That's different compared to Chinese and Japanese. The only issue I have is it doesn't correct you on pronunciation. Sure, you can check your own voice like I mentioned, but it's not the same. So, I've decided at some point, I'll switch to Duo's Korean course and use both that and Lingodeer. Duo's course should be better at this point, and it most likely has speaking exercises now. Since I had a more thorough intro to the alphabet, I'll be able to go through Duo's easier and with more of an understanding. It'll be interesting to go through both, too. I might get even more of an understanding of it than I would if it was just one or the other. It might take me longer with this language. We'll see.

Today, I started reading Mother Keeper. I think I like it so far...The art seems to be in an old style. It ran from 2005 until 2014. (Pretty long.) It's not as old as it seems, but maybe older than a lot of what I've read recently. The concept is interesting. There are 2 types of people in their world: those within Eden and those outside. It's like a domed city. Everything outside is like a wasteland. Eden makes it even worse as its massive exhaust is pumping outside. Only 1/3 of the world's population is allowed to live in Eden. Basically the rich and powerful. Meanwhile, people outside are suffering and dying sooner. Several rebel groups have formed from outside. The main character was apart of one of those. They had planned to destroy Eden's main CPU. If they had, Eden would cease as a 'paradise' to the few. He was killed (this happened early, so it's not really a spoiler), and turned into a cyborg. His appearance changed. The scientist there has complete control of him. They want him to help with the security of Eden. So, he's forced to help the enemy...The CPU is actually a cyborg that looks like a little girl. He had a hard time getting himself to kill her when he was given the option to, since she seemed so innocent. 

Scanned the drawing of Shadow so far. It's just in case to see how it was before I add his clothes. I realized his hands are smaller than they probably should be. Not sure if I'll change that. At least, I practiced drawing them. He does look better than previous full-bodied drawings of characters. Should be interesting to see it when its done. I plan to color him in, too. 

Managed to practice my clarinet today. I don't think I did yesterday or the day before. I've been feeling pretty awful again. Also, coughing up a lot of weird stuff. That's not a good combo for an instrument you blow into. Anyways, I finished playing through the Clarinet Solo book. I'll get to at least Duke Ellington next. 

Edited a couple more pages of Alliance, too. Down to 298 pages in the print version. Meaning, it's 2 pages less. Yay!