30th of Tishri

I apparently have another thing I should bring up next time I talk to my primary. I've noticed it in the past but ignored it thinking it wasn't a big deal. It's back with a vengeance this time, though. My right pinky finger is numb/tingly, and sometimes there are shocks of pain. Sometimes my other pinky finger feels the same way, just not as strongly. I think parts of both my ring fingers are affected, too. Just not all of it with those. Sometimes it feels like my pinky is gone, or like it's dead or something. It also affects how I grip with those fingers. I thought since it's just mainly a pinky that it wasn't a big deal. It's not all the time, either. Although, this time that 'feeling' is staying longer than usual. It might be Ulnar Nerve Entrapment aka Cubital Tunnel Syndrome. It's similar to Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, just deals with a different nerve. For this, it's a nerve that gets trapped in the elbow. It happens to people who bend their elbows for extended periods of time. Particularly those that sleep on their sides with a hand under their pillow. I tend to sleep like this. It's the most comfortable position for me. I usually try to sleep on my back with my arms out at my sides at the beginning. I always end up on either side with a hand under the pillow by the end. It's a subconscious thing...There aren't many times during the day where I have my arms out straight. Sometimes I 'feel' this numb thing after playing my clarinet. You can't play it without bending your elbows. I've read the only way to get rid of it is to talk to a hand specialist. Sometimes you just need physical therapy. I don't want to...

I also need to decide whether I want a new primary soon, and make an appointment. It's been too long (over a year), and there are things like this that I need to bring up. In addition to asking how to get the ball rolling for medical transition stuff. If only to talk about it with them. If they don't know anything, that's ok. I also haven't seen anyone for my colitis in over a year, and they say it needs to be closely monitored. (At least, once every 3 or 4 months.) Even while in remission. My 'GI' (she's not an MD, and is really an assistant to an MD that I don't have) recently messaged me saying she renewed my prescription for another year of Lialda. However, without seeing me or someone else for so long, she can't order more. So, I need to find someone at the very least before that year's up. She does want me to find an MD, and thinks they'll be able to help me more. I'm glad she actually sent me a message. My primary hasn't, yet she usually sends a paper letter as a reminder for my annual physical. That tells me quite a bit right there. Maybe she expected that I'd switch to someone else, yet she's still refilling my prescription for Lamotrigine. It's weird.

Recently someone posted in one of the IBD groups about how they couldn't take it anymore. Seemed suicidal. She kept saying she had had enough. None of the treatments were helping, and she doesn't want surgery. That was the last option. I was told almost as soon as I was diagnosed that many people with IBD become suicidal over time. Or, develop other mental health issues. It's a tough disease. The idea that it'll be with you for life, and most likely get worse over time, is a difficult pill to swallow as it is. Let alone going through so many different treatments, living with that pain (even if you're in remission, you may still be in pain, like I've been), not being able to keep anything down, constantly going to the bathroom, the fatigue, having malabsorption issues, etc. It's difficult to live with. Some have it more severe than others, and/or may have different symptoms. Again, it's more likely to worsen over time. Some people even refuse treatment altogether, and end up dying from complications. Heck, people can still die from complications even with treatment, although it takes longer and is rare. It's even more rare, but the treatments themselves could cause fatal complications. Most of the comments to her post were not good. Saying things like: "Been there, done that." "It'll get better. You're just having a bad day." "Think positive." That's not helpful. Sure, things might get better, but what if it doesn't for her? Some seemed dismissive. A couple of people posted about suicide hotlines, which was better. Some suggested she pm them. I think that was one of the best responses. She needed someone to talk to, and maybe even just to have someone listen. Someone who knows what having this is like, even if theirs isn't as severe. I didn't want to make it worse and didn't say anything. I'm sure the admins saw it at some point. Maybe they helped her out.

I played some of Fable: The Lost Chapters during the weekend. Haven't done so in so long...I think I only managed to play it on my laptop, which fried about a decade ago. I had to mess a little bit with the graphics. I like that they give you that option. The faces of the people in it looked scary at first, after tweaking it, they were a lot better. More normal. Everything else looks great, especially knowing how old it is. I had to essentially turn off the shadow quality. Still have faint shadows, at least. The shadows were a weird bright green beforehand. I also managed to change the resolution to what my computer is now, so it's full screen. That's 1920 x 1080. I didn't think it could go that high. It might go higher. The game itself runs so smoothly on my new computer. It's great. I realized why it has you start with a wasd config for the keyboard controls. It makes it a lot more fluid than the arrow one, oddly. I essentially only got to the point of almost the end of the 'tutorial' part. After joining the guild, passing the guild test, and the guild master is about to tell me about their home portal and getting around. That takes up a big chunk. It was fun, though. Next time, after the portal thing, I'll start really playing it and completing quests without it guiding me. I realized it starts you off with 'sexuality: unknown'. I didn't remember that he can end up being other things besides straight. Looked it up, and apparently he can. Technically, only 'unknown', straight, gay, or bi. That's still something. It changes if he marries other characters. I think I made him flirt with male npc's in the past, just to see what would happen. Never had him marry anyone, though. Apparently, he can have sex if he's married to his partner or he finds a prostitute. I didn't remember that...Not that I want that either. It's a complex and immersive world, so I guess there's a lot of possibilities. The expressions you can give him are funny, too. I like that there's quite a bit of humor mixed in with the seriousness. Like, you can become a chicken chaser with different titles the more you kick or punch chickens. It's rather dark...You can choose to be evil or good based on your deeds. Evil deeds are things like stealing, killing innocent npc's, farting in people's faces, etc. Good ones are helping others, watching stuff for them, beating up a bully, beating/killing villains (there's a difference in this), and more. Right now, I'm pretty neutral, but I'll probably end up being good. Maybe in the future I can play it again and make him as evil as possible. 

Managed to edit quite a bit of Alliance today. Finished the Questions unit, and started the People 1 one for Russian. I'm half thinking of dropping Russian, because of how awful Duolingo's course is. I'm remembering a lot of it, but I'm not sure how long I can overlook how glitchy it is. 

I think my next drawing 'project' will be drawing full bodies of my characters. Maybe different angles of their heads, too. I'm starting with Shadow, the main character. I'm trying to plan it out a bit more than I did with the heads. I've drawn a full body of him, but it was weird. I don't like his head's design from that heads thing recently. The hair wasn't right, face shape was weird, eyes were a little odd, etc. So, I'm saving pics I find to my phone that I can use as guides for parts of him. I found a chart of hairstyles a month or so ago. I also now have the 2 hairstyles I know that I merged together for how Shadow looks in my head. They're not exactly like his, but close. Also, found eye, mouth, and nose shape charts. Hopefully, I can get a better design using these as guides. I'll look for head shapes next. Might look for charts for other body parts, too. I want to improve, and haven't done many full-body drawings. I have a really old artist's anatomy book (I think it was my grandma's), but it's not the best. It helps sometimes, though. It's sad that every time I've drawn Shadow, I haven't liked his design. I should find something I'd like that's solid, considering he's the main character.

Practiced my clarinet. Played from the general solo book, jazz, Gershwin, Duke Ellington, and some pieces from the advanced classical solo book. I think I played better than last time. 

Started watching the last season of Fairy Tail. It's been about 2 1/2 years since its last season ended. A long time. I wasn't sure if they were actually going to make another one. It was like seeing old friends again. Natsu and Lucy are planning to gather the guild members again and rebuild the guild itself. The guild master is missing, and no one know's why he disbanded it. Natsu has become a lot stronger. We don't know about Lucy or Happy yet. Carla (people can't seem to agree on how to spell her name) can take on a human form now. She's an Exceed, who are essentially strong talking cats that can fly. (They hatch from eggs, too.) It was an interesting surprise. Wendy's apart of a different guild and they're trying to persuade her to quit and rejoin Fairy Tail at the moment. If she does, Carla will probably go with her. She's always with her, like Happy is with Natsu. Happy's another Exceed. Should be interesting to see how this season turns out. 

Finished the most recent season of Gintama. They told fans that it'd be the last season, but they really trolled us. In fact, they trolled viewers big time during the last half of the finale. At least they explained what the situation was for the series. The mangaka (creator of the manga) announced a while back that he was finishing it, but he still hasn't. He apparently is taking a hiatus? That's what I gathered. The anime staff said they had pretty much caught up and there wasn't enough material to adapt at the moment. They try to stay true to the manga. Over the years, I can tell the anime staff must be close to him. They seem to be fond of him in a very Gintama way. Joking about him a lot, but with some seriousness to it. Whenever he appears in the anime, he's portrayed as a gorilla and hardly ever talks. He usually writes them something like a letter or on a wall. He also comes in with a golden aura. Like, he's their G-d. Well, he essentially is to his characters. I think he does have a hand with some of the anime. Not sure when the next season will be. Not even sure if the mangaka really is ending the series. He loves to troll people and does it well.  

The last 4 episodes of Satsuriku no Tenshi are going to be available as specials. I watched the first of those. (It was the only one up so far. It'll probably be put out weekly like usual, which is odd considering how it came out this time.) It was pretty intense. Should be interesting to see how this one ends.

24th of Tishri

I've kept up with my sit-ups. Up to 25 of them twice a day this week. I decided to do my push-ups a little differently last night. I usually do 'normal' ones, but I don't think I had the best form for them. It had been a while since I did them on a regular basis. Plus, my muscles are really weak now, especially in my arms. Having malabsorption issues messes with it. I still occasionally have that. Certainly not as often as I did when I first started having symptoms of colitis. My muscles were slowly weakening beforehand, too. This just made it progress faster. So, I caved and decided to start with 5 of them twice a day again, only for more than a week. Also, doing them with my knees or the 'easier' way. It used to be how they told the girls to do them in PE, which was pretty sexist. Anyways, it's probably perfect for me right now, and to work my way up to the normal ones. So far, it feels like my form is close to what it should be with the knees. Felt right. The only thing I'm finding a little difficult is going down far enough. I'm getting there. 

I'm finding a lot of bugs with Duolingo's Russian course. The recordings are awful most of the time, and there have been cracks in the sound. There are still no speaking exercises. I don't want to start with another course on a different app, and it's mainly to see how much I can remember. It's still really disappointing. It seems they didn't put much effort into it. Certainly not as much as German. Maybe it'll improve as I go further? Hope so.

Read Choujin Gakuen or Supernatural Academy. It's getting even more interesting. The greatest swordsman in the World's Strongest Committee's base apparently knows Adam. She was going to kill him until she saw his face. She's infatuated with him. She's also Tarou's mother. She decided to help his group instead of killing them. She found Yoshino, and Yoshino agreed to joining Supernatural Academy. Yoshino gave Uluru her permanent residency card. Permanent residency cards are sought after in that town. It was a big deal to give up. The leader of the group tried to make Yoshino her blindly obedient puppet. Now she's finally deciding something for herself. Hagi is 'secretly' allowing her to leave. He says he's on no one's side, yet he works for the chairman...I feel kind of bad for him, too. His wife just divorced him because of his work, and he lost custody of his child. Pretty heavy. Even Adam and his group felt bad for him. The real reason there are such harsh rules at their base is because they're preparing to go up against some sort of powerful foe. Don't know much about it yet, other than another group just broke in. They mentioned something like the "day has come". And the chairman seemed much more agitated by them breaking in than Adam and co. 

Managed to edit/read more of Alliance. Word definitely has a different 'look' now. It's going to take some getting used to. At least it's not drastically different. Just enough to tell. Went through more than I did with the old computer. It might not take me long to go through the whole thing. Then, I'll go through Alliance: Dawn. Once I'm done with both I'll reupload it to Amazon, and publish it through Smashwords as well. Might go through Sweet Endless Terror at some point, too. 

Practiced my clarinet. Haven't done it for about a week. Mostly played Mozart pieces. Wasn't too bad. I think I need to relax more when I play.

Watched more of Hinterland on Netflix. I'm close to the end of the 2nd season. There's one more season. It's good, but there's a lot of staring, some long pauses, and lots of scenic shots. It looks amazing on my computer. I can see so many details that I couldn't on my phone. 

Watched Black Clover last night. Vangeance, who's the Golden Dawn's captain, virtually destroyed the Diamond Kingdom's invading mages. Yuno who's in the Golden Dawn's squad, took care of most of the rest. It ended with the possibility that Vangeance might be the spy. Yami (captain of the Black Bulls), obviously suspecting him, asked him to take his mask off. We haven't seen him without it. It'd be kind of sad if he was the one. Not sure what Yuno would do. Plus, Vangeance is one of the strongest mages in Clover Kingdom. There were new opening and ending themes this time. The animation was interesting, but the songs were just blah. 

Watched One Piece. It seemed like they've been really stretching out Luffy and Katakuri's fight. They were even getting annoyed with the fight. It was interesting that it was a rubber man vs a mochi man. Mochi can be very sticky, and he can stretch it far. With Luffy, he can stretch and heat himself up to become 'softer' and more fluid as well as tougher. Except for the stickiness, it was pretty close to Katakuri's abilities. He had a trident, unlike Luffy who doesn't usually use weapons. So, he had more of an advantage. He also has 'awakened' his ability like Doflamingo did. He can turn anything he touches into mochi. I wonder if Luffy will awaken his? That'd be interesting. Katakuri can also 'see' a few seconds into the future, but Luffy can sense what's coming. The episode ended with Luffy being smothered by several layers of mochi, and Katakuri walking away to start what he called his ritual. He knew if they had continued to fight Luffy would somehow upgrade, and he didn't want to sit around waiting for that to happen. (Somewhat rare for 'villains' in the story.) I think Luffy acted like he suffocated to death by it. He obviously didn't, and there was a cut scene showing part of him underneath it. The next episode will be about Katakuri's ritual. Supposedly, not even his family has witnessed or been with him for it. No one knows what he does for it. Luffy's probably going to interrupt him. It'd be the perfect time. I hope they end this part soon, though. 

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