23rd of Tammuz 5777

Last night, I went back to being more strict about keeping to my set calorie range. I've noticed when I don't care, I sometimes go below the minimum for the day. I'm surprised, because you'd think I'd eat much more calories than my max that way. Occasionally, I do this way, but not as often. My range is 1200-1600 calories a day. I usually split this into 4 or 5 meals. It's like a big game to me. You're only allowed a certain amount of calories, but you have to use a certain amount at minimum. Makes it fun. I think this has helped me lose the most weight in the past. Although, the colitis helped a lot with that, too. I'm apparently losing weight again already, but I find this to be my 'healthy' range. I also try to factor in the nutrition I need. For one thing, I actually need more protein than the norm, but it can be a challenge if I eat this way. It's challenging normally, too. I use My Fitness Pal's app to know the calories and nutrition as I go throughout the day. A great tool this way. 

I finished watching Seikaisuru Kado or the Right Answer: Kado. I liked most of it. Very thought provoking. I didn't really like where they went with it, and the finale wasn't great. The whole thing was essentially about negotiating with an alien. He was obsessed with learning about humans, and gathering as much info as he can in general. He gave 'gifts' to the humans. Many people didn't think he had ulterior motives with them. He just gave it to them to 'advance' humanity. The problem is, he really wanted to advance humans so much that they could go back to his dimension with him. He was so lonely. Apparently, his kind were the ones that created humans and basically all dimensions/universes. There are very few of them. He referred to those universes as cocoons. Only one out of an infinite number was able to create beings that had a thirst for knowledge (in a nutshell). Those beings were us, and he referred to us as a gold thread of that cocoon. Very interesting concepts. When Shindo refused to go with him to his dimension, he said he'd take him and humanity by force. He became crazy at some point. Making numerous copies of Shindo, but realizing none of them could ever replace the original. He tried to kill the original a few times. I didn't really like that they made Saraka, who seemed to be a minor character for a while, into being another one of those aliens. She was basically undercover until then. After that, it seemed they veered away from the negotiation stuff, which made it unique and interesting. Instead, the main alien and Shindo ended up fighting, and both died. I think there was definitely a way around Shindo dying. They certainly made you feel for that alien. So, I'm a bit conflicted with this one. 

Wrote more of the memoir. I thought I had lost the whole chapter last time. Luckily, I was able to recover it. I think I'm close to finishing this chapter, now. It'll probably be one of the shortest chapters. As I was writing this one, I had many memories of my mom's food. I might make one of those dishes soon. That was spaghetti, garlic and tomato-based pasta sauce, garbanzo beans, and Normandy vegetables (frozen medley of cauliflower, broccoli, and sliced yellow and regular carrots). Sometimes she'd use another bean and/or vegetable.  She'd mix all these together. She'd make enough of this to feed an army. We'd add parmesan to it on the plate. I liked it a lot. Haven't had it in years, and it's really simple. Somewhat healthy, with being full of vegetables and protein. 

Youtube: 

Kuroshitsuji:


Fairy Tail:




Mob Psycho 100:

Bleach:

National Cherry Cheesecake Day!

I used to hate cheesecake, until I had some with a topping while I was at a Jewish summer camp. Fell in love with it afterwards. I think it had strawberries on top. Cherries are awesome with it, too! Fruit in general usually goes well with it. I think when it's plain, it's too rich of a taste for me. There needs to be something that cuts through it. A few months ago, I remember having a black cherry (they were baked in, not as a topping) and chocolate cheesecake from Safeway, and it was one of the best I've had. I think their cheesecake is supplied by the Cheesecake Factory, so that would make sense. They know their stuff. 

Wow! This is the 900th post to this blog. That's a milestone. I want to post more often, like I used to. This month seems to be the best, in terms of posts this year. 

Sweet Endless Terror is now available in print on Amazon! Yay! It's now linked up with its ebook version. It wasn't for a while. Here's the direct link to it: Sweet Endless Terror. This version isn't quite available to all the global marketplaces yet. I noticed it's in the UK and German one. They did say it might take up to 72 hours to fully be distributed globally. This doesn't take into account their distributors within those marketplaces. So, it'll take a while. I did spread the info about it to several places today. So, maybe people will be interested that way. 

For some reason, I was feeling really down Friday night. Some of my friends are into Snapchat, and I decided to download it and checked it out. Many of the pics my friends have shown have been cute and funny. Why not add a little humor when you're feeling down. Perusing the filters was interesting. I did take a pic with, I think, a bunny with ears down. Some sort of animal, anyways. It had big droopy ears, made my eyes bigger, added a pink nose with whiskers, added more blush to my face, and hearts were floating around. My shirt was crooked, but oh well. I thought it was funny looking, and probably the best one for my face. I don't know. I posted it on fb, and I don't think anyone reacted to it. I've had a couple of people on Instagram like it. Again, not many. It must have fallen under the radar with people. It's rare for me to not have anyone at least like something like that. Now that I think about it, with almost everything I posted Friday night through Saturday (which wasn't much), had no reaction. Weird.

When I posted a reminder yesterday for the local ace group on fb, I got 3 quick likes. Interesting. I hardly ever get reactions to my reminders. It might be that those 3 people will be available, and are interested? That'd be cool. It's an unusual one, considering it's the 5th Saturday. For the local trans group, they have the 5th Wednesday as social/potluck/movie sort of thing. There has only been one other member that's shown up to the local ace group meetings so far. So, I wouldn't do anything 'special' for this one. Not sure what we could do at a cafe that would be different. 

I've tried some of the new anime this season, and quite a few felt like duds. A couple of them I thought would be great if they didn't have just 5 or 10-minute episodes. (Normally with most anime, without the op and ed theme songs, episodes are about 20 minutes.) I can't really get into those. Apparently, a lot of people were complaining that so many shows are that short this season. I wonder why they are? I ended up keeping only 5 of the 'new' anime. 

Uchouten Kazoku or The Eccentric Family's season 2 started. It's just about as weird, interesting, and funny as it was during the 1st season. They do 'weird' right in this series. It seems even darker this time. Although, last time the humans wanted to eat the tanuki. One of the brothers, who has been stuck in a well as a frog for years and can't transform back, might finally be able to get out and return to normal. He was recently given a special medicine that might help. He seems to be the wisest of the brothers, yet something is keeping him down there. I think during the 1st season, they mentioned it might be a mental thing for him. The son of the tengu that Yasaburo takes care of has returned to town. He's very into English things, teatime, dressing in Western clothes, having certain furniture, etc. He doesn't approve of his father. It seems if everything isn't perfect or he doesn't get his way, he snaps and becomes violent. He's extremely polite the rest of the time. Seems really dangerous.

Seikaisuru Kado or Kado: The Right Answer, has been very interesting. The animation's a little weird, but the rest of it has kept me from dropping it. It seems like, what I like to call, a very cerebral show. It's constantly making you think. It's basically about an alien that arrives in a cube, that immediately engulfs an airplane as it lands on Earth. The passengers and crew are going to be stuck inside this cube for a month. Apparently, it takes that long to amass enough energy for that many people to be pushed out. The cube is called Kado. The alien's, Yaha-kui, main objective is to advance mankind. He didn't plan on absorbing the plane in his cube. One of the passengers just so happens to be a well-known negotiator, named Shindo. Yaha-kui is only taking him outside of the cube to help him communicate with the Japanese government. He tried communicating with that negotiator at the beginning telepathically, but all Shindo 'heard' was loud screaming. So, Yaha-kui, learned the basics of how to talk by putting a smartphone in a mini cube and analyzing it briefly. He apparently can make small cubes appear anywhere he wants. He also was first shown naked. I don't think that human form is actually what he looks like. He just uses it so humans won't be afraid, and to appear more 'normal'. Anyways, he recently showed that one of the ways he wants to advance humans, is by using little balls or wam that have an infinite amount of energy. Like batteries, but they never run out of juice. It'll be interesting to see what the government does with them. He wants them to share the wam with the rest of the world. I wonder if there are other things he wants to give humans? He seems very peaceful, but what if he changes his mind or gets pissed off somehow? Or, what if the wam are really something else?

Kabukibu has been interesting, too. I didn't think I'd like it, but it's growing on me. It's about a kabuki school club. At the moment, they're having difficulty getting members to join. I've noticed that they seem to be breaking gender norms/roles, which I think is pretty cool. One of the members used to really be into dance. At some point, he dropped it, thinking it wasn't 'manly' enough. He forced himself to be hyper-masculine (trying to be tough, into weightlifting, etc.), and wasn't happy. After some talking to, he broke down, and showed his feminine side. He finally agreed to join. They're also going over the history of it. It's thought of as an all-male production, but was actually started by a woman. She acted as both genders on stage. Another member that finally gave in to joining is a woman. She has a very masculine look, and is often mistaken as a man. She's also into sports and things that are considered more 'masculine'. One of the clubs she's apart of already is drama, and she's into acting. She wasn't sure if it was ok to join, because most people think only men can do it. She thought the story of the first kabuki actor was cool, and joined after that. The one that wanted to start the club the most has never acted nor danced, but seems to be obsessed with it. The other member that's helping him recruit others is very quiet. Still not sure about his interest in it.

Re:Creators has been better than expected, too. It's about characters from anime/video games/books/etc. that suddenly appear in the real world. They call the real world the Land of the G-ds. They know their creators live in that world. One of them, I think, might be planning to gather all the 'characters', and have them kill their creators. She's attacking everyone, though. I think she might actually be the main character's (from our world) 'creation'. He just doesn't recognize her. He draws in his free time, and one of the incomplete drawings looked a lot like that character. Still don't really know. He's just helping a couple of those characters at the moment. The first character he met, just found her creator and interacted with him. They think their creators can help put them back in their worlds somehow. Also, many of these characters have powers, but when they use them in the real world, they follow this world's physics. So, something that might not have hurt people in their world, might kill them in this world. 

Boruto has been decent. Again, I'm mainly watching it to see what happened to the characters from Naruto. Who got together, if they had kids who are they, what are they up to now, etc. After seeing that stuff, I'll probably drop it. It's interesting that the next generation seems to be more talented. However, a lot of it is kind of recycled stuff. The first few minutes of the first episode, showed a much older Boruto fighting someone. It seemed like Konoha was deserted, and Boruto ended up being a rogue ninja. That does sound like it'll be a different 'thing', but it's a while into the future. How many episodes will it take to get to that point? Are they thinking of making this really long like Naruto? I don't know. 

Almost done with Saiki Kusuo no Psi Nan, or the Disastrous Life of Saiki Kusuo. I've really liked this one. Although, they talk super fast. It's apparently going to have a 2nd season soon. So, that'll be nice. 

Almost finished with Handa-kun, too. I'm conflicted with this one. There's a lot of misunderstandings, and even if there weren't, it still seems like his classmates are cruel to him at times. He's paranoid of everyone, and thinks everyone hates him. The only person he trusts is a childhood friend, but I think he's the worst one towards him. He essentially created this complex that Handa has, and thinks it's funny. (Although, there have been moments where he felt horrible about it.) To everyone else, Handa is the most popular, some worship him, he has his own fan club, and people think he says amazing uplifting things. In reality, he's constantly trying to figure out ways that'll keep people from bullying him (in his mind), and people will leave him alone. He's not trying to sound profound or anything. This is apparently a prequel to another series, Barakamon, where he has an opposite personality. Or, that's how some have described it. They say it's better, too. I might watch that one in the future.