3rd of Av 5777

Rosh Chodesh Av was on the 24th. There's only 2 holidays during this month. One is a fast day and considered one of the saddest days. I might go into it more on or around that day. The other one is supposed to be one of the happiest days. 

A few days ago, I was selling a bunch of stuff I had accumulated on Gaia. I really needed to clean up my inventory, and it's a great way to make gold. I like to use their 'dumpster dive' to not only find interesting stuff, but to sell expensive things I don't want. It's kind of a 2-for-1 thing. A lot of that stuff people actually buy real money for, but you can get it for free (if you're lucky) or a gold amount on the market that has other users selling stuff. If you know the system, it's great. I always sell stuff just a little less than the lowest price it's being sold at. It helps a lot. I've been selling things pretty quickly, and have made about 6 billion gold in that amount of time. 

Anyways, someone pm'd me asking if I could lower the price of something by a lot. Not only do I try to go lower than the market is selling them, but I usually have the option as buy only. Once it is listed, I can't change the price. It's fixed. People can choose the options of bid, timed bid, barter, barter among their friends, etc. Those are more fluid. Plus, with lowering it by so far, I'd cheapen myself. It sold while I was asleep anyways. 

She later pm'd me asking to be my friend. Saying we had a lot in common. I thought: sure, I might as well. I don't really know them, and it'd be nice to have another friend on there. The first post of hers was super long. It looked like a wall of text. Me being someone who wants to get to know others more tried to respond with as much as I could. I either write very little or a lot, depending on who I'm talking to. With every post, hers seemed to get longer. I felt I don't have time for that sort of stuff. She also repeated herself word for word several times. Almost like she was copying and pasting. That seemed suspicious in itself.

She said she was 18, and joined Gaia when she was 10. Gaia doesn't let anyone join unless they're 13+. A lot of the stuff can be too much for kids younger than that. Even then, some of the items can be very mature. I've been surprised sometimes. She said she loved my blog, even though she just found me. Yes, my blog is listed on my profile, but she couldn't have had the time to read much of it. She went on and on about her depression. Don't get me wrong. I understand and am cool with talking about it, but at some point you should talk about something else...Also, bringing G-d into it felt strange.

I later looked at her profile. The background had warnings about 3rd party viewers or something. She had a HUGE wishlist. Took up about half of her profile. There wasn't much info on her. Oh, I think I tried to check her profile before we were friends, but only friends could see it. There wasn't really anything to hide...I looked at her forum posts, and noticed she was posting every single day for several hours at a time, and every minute during that in a giveaway thread. You can't post every minute on there. There's a time limit between posts that you can't post a thing until it's up. It's like 5 minutes each time. It's supposed to keep spammers away. Plus, that seems weird to me. I understand trying to get items that way, but that's overkill.

I think she was fishing for info from me. I only told her things I'm willing to share with most people. Not like I gave her my address. I'm glad I stopped responding after I realized, and blocked her. If she's reading this, and it was a real account, I'm sorry. It just seemed too fishy for me. Reading/writing that much every time, for a conversation, was a bit much. So, hopefully, I wont get an angry comment. At least, I'll be the only one who sees it (I have it set to moderate comments before publishing), and I can block her on here if need be.

Lately, I've been getting a lot of likes/follows for my Alliance fb page. That's been really cool. A couple are from the Philippines, one's British (they actually liked Sweet Endless Terror, too), one's from South Africa, and I think another one's Nigerian. All these in the last couple of weeks. Sounds like they're from all over. Makes it more interesting. 

I tried to make a meetup group for the local ace group. I went through the whole process of setting up an account for myself, then looked into making one. Apparently, it costs each month to make your own group on there. I could somewhat understand if we already had several members that were regulars offline, and we were taking dues or donations. The offline group hasn't been active, so there's no money for this sort of thing. That's kind of why I wanted to make a group on there in the first place. To get more members...I'll look into other sites that are similar but free in the future. I'm disappointed with meetup now.

I've kept up with writing both the sequel to Alliance and the memoir. I'm doing both each day now. I think I'm writing them about twice as fast as before this way. Makes me happy. Although, this means I essentially have to think twice as much while I write, too. Thinking about it while typing is the same as before, but then I have to think about the other one sooner. I'm trying to take a break between them, so I don't burn out. 

Recently, it seemed Netflix had completely wiped my list off. That list that is really long, but full of interesting international stuff. So, I decided to redownload it. It wouldn't except the password I had. A couple of days later, I tried it again with a slightly different password and got in. All of the things on my list were still there. Yay! I've decided that I might treat myself with a show of some sort after I finish writing for the day. Most recent ones I've started have been a Belgian detective show called The Break, and another Singaporean detective show called Against the Tide. Both have been surprisingly good. 

The Against the Tide one is about a famous mystery/fictional crime author. He's fascinated with psychology and studied a little of it in college. Apparently, in the current case, a murderer is copying everything from one of his books. There's also a psychologist who's helping with the case. Her client was killed. She seems like she's a main character. She finds criminals interesting, and tries to find out why they act the way they do. There are actual detectives, too. Ones a huge fan of the author, and the other seems like a real jerk. I hope they change that in the future. It loosely reminds me of Castle. I feel his look has a similar vibe to it, too. 

The Break seems to be about a detective who goes to extremes to get answers. No one else seemed to be into the current case. (Except for his partner.) They kept labeling it a suicide. One of the characters has a ton of Nazi memorabilia. He might be the culprit. They also keep flashing to the future where he's talking to a therapist, and he seems to be involuntarily stuck there. Something big happened. 

Finished watching Uchouten Kazoku 2 or The Eccentric Family 2. I ended up not liking Benten as much as before. She always had a dangerous side. She turned out to be bitchy, too. And, not in a good way. Yasaburou, one of the main tanuki brothers, was going to be cooked into a hotpot. Same thing happened to their father. He ended up being saved, and the humans in the Friday club that held that dinner annually, will most likely never be able to do it again. Yasaburou finally agreed to marrying Kaisei. She looks much younger than him. It seems a little weird that way. The only thing that kept him from agreeing was every time he'd see her, he'd transform from his human form back to his original tanuki form. In their culture, they say if this happens they're made for each other. He has an extreme case of it, though. It's usually not every time. The grandma was so cute. She was just a giant white ball of fluffy fur with a head that almost disappeared. She seemed to always be tired, and would take frequent naps. I think she lived in the forest. 

Youtube:

Kuroshitsuji (these are either just making fun of it in a lighthearted way, or making some already funny scenes even funnier):
Gintama:

National Hot Dog Day!

Yay for hot dogs! I like beef Polish sausage hot dogs the most. Unless they say it's beef, I won't eat hot dogs while I'm out at a picnic or something. I like to put ketchup, honey mustard, and relish on mine usually. Sometimes I'll use BBQ sauce instead of ketchup and mustard. Makes it more 'bold' tasting. I also love chili cheese dogs. Today's the last day of Tammuz. Tomorrow's the start of Av or Rosh Chodesh Av. 

Had another person request to join the local ace group. This time it's someone who's apparently older than me with 4 kids. According to her profile, I think it said she's 44. Very interesting. Recently getting a 15 year old, and now a 44 year old. I like that. Makes it more diverse age-wise. So, now we're up to 16 members. Wahoo! I plan to make a Meetup group, too. It'll be the same thing, but more people might see that. I hope we get more than just me at the next meeting on Saturday. It'll actually feel like a group.

Still moving along with writing the sequel to Alliance and the memoir. Almost up to 55 pages for the memoir, and close to 45 for the sequel. Thinking about them in paperback form, it's basically twice as much for both. That's not bad. Not sure how long either of these will be. I actually wrote some more of the sequel today, even though I had planned to make Sunday an edit day. 

I think I'm going to change how I've been writing these. I might write both for each day, instead of switching them every other day. So before, I'd write as much as I could for the memoir one day, as much as I could for the sequel the next, and so on. This time I'll write as much as I can for one, and then later in the day write what I can for the other. I might progress much faster for both. Especially because some days I didn't get to one, so I had more time with the other. That's probably one of the reasons why the memoir is so much further ahead. I'm thinking about worrying about the editing and fleshing out stuff more after I'm done writing them. It might take less time this way. I don't know. We'll see how this goes. 

A few days ago was the 20th anniversary of One Piece. That's when the manga started. The anime started a couple of years later. It's one of the most popular manga/anime series. I recently hit the 300th episode mark. Although, I've been skipping the 'filler' episodes. Currently, the anime is close to 800 episodes. So, I still have a ways to go. I actually like it. I didn't think I would. It feels like it was influenced by Gulliver's Travels, the Odyssey, and various stories of legendary pirates. Pirates like Blackbeard, who they actually refer to. It's very interesting. Each island has had a different culture and weather. It still makes it even better that the mangaka (the creator) said during an interview that Luffy is aro ace. Luffy is the main character. The mangaka said he's not sexually or romantically interested in anyone. He only cares about food and adventure. He thinks of his crew/friends as family. That's pretty awesome representation to me. He's smarter than he seems, too.

Yesterday, a cashier at Safeway turned to me and asked: "How are you, babe?" This was odd. I can understand things like hun and sweetie. However, a stranger calling me babe...Usually people say that to babies or partners. I call Rosie babe or babes sometimes, but that's because she's my fur baby. Maybe really close relatives do it, too. So, it felt like they were either infantilizing me or sexualizing me. Either way, it's not good. On top of this, it was really warm, and the elderly lady behind me was so close I could smell her perfume and breath. Neither were very pleasant. I couldn't move from where I was. Lovely, just lovely.

I've kept up with being within my calorie range. I usually have Saturday as an anything goes type of day. I don't track it then. I wouldn't necessarily call it a cheat day. That makes it sound negative. I do remember reading something a while back that people need at least one day where they can treat themselves each week. It's healthier, and still helps people lose weight if that's what they want. I did that, and that's still keeping to my 'plan'. I don't think I actually went over, though. I've been averaging in the high 1300s. I'm trying to shoot for the 1400 mark, because it's right in the middle of the range. I think since I started this back up, I've only hit that once. I guess I don't normally eat much. 

I played my clarinet once last week. I hope to get back into it soon. I noticed it has been so long that my mouth muscles hurt afterwards. They seemed to stop working at a certain point. It's difficult to play then, because it doesn't create a perfect seal or embouchure. The air just leaks out. Also, there are certain movements with the mouth that are hard to do if you can't move your muscles. It's kind of sad. I could only play for about 30 minutes before it hurt too much to play. Not used to that. I did get to play some klezmer, so that was a nice plus. Didn't sound too bad, as well.