I feel the heart of the giants.

yawn

Wed, 17 Jun 2026 14:25:34 GMT

Pet Behaviour Nightly Rating: Nico - C, Sunny - B (not bad!!!! we slept in until 6:30) and yesterday's chipotle pork burgers with avocado were A+++. I'd bought a can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce bc I see it come up in recipes from time to time but never in one I was actually making, so I bought a can a month ago just to have on hand in case I fell across a recipe again, and then I'd be READY. We used it in the pork burgers twice and the rest in chili - definitely will become a pantry staple :D

Kelly is off all day kissin dolls (aka first aid training) and I managed garbage day all by myself in the nick of time!

Have written 4k in four days, we'll see how day 5 goes today but I still don't want do anything else so seems like it'll be pretty good (RIP Spanish)

I have to work myself up to calling my drs office, ideally today, but I do not know if it will happen.

I really have nothing going on and I'm bored. I thought maybe something would spring to mind when posting but lol

PS the bacon poutine fifa chips just taste like saltier bbq, unimpressed

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ha

Mon, 15 Jun 2026 14:57:25 GMT

The go go go did not last. The entire last week was sluglife. Just tired, always. Things that happened:

(I have to get out my phone and see if there are photos, to jog my memory lol)

(Ok there are no photos except the loblaws deal of "if Canada wins we will give you two (2) chicken fingies!!!!" and a picture of two sad and lonely mid fingies. This cracked my shit up and my friend was like, "well, Canada tied, so does that mean you get 1??" Loblaws loves to do this giveaway shit from time to time and it is always insultingly cheap and never actually useful. I give you no benefit of the doubt, loblaws. None.)

- basically I've done nothing, but the last two days I've written like 3k. Which is insane. There has been much, much ranting and frothing about comics timelines (oh how deeply I hate war games). And done none Spanish, naturally. Hobbies: pick One

- we had a very thundering and raining day yesterday. Pansies are very pleased. I was very pleased about not having to water!

- we didn't even leave the house this weekend (though we sat out on the deck and enjoyed the storms a fair amount) so we have no good groceries!

- have some tiny bags of chips with weird soccer flavours, though, which I never would have bought bc I see a fifa logo and I get a rage (like the olympics rage, very similar) but Kelly knows (ofc) that I have food fomo and a deep love of weird flavours. I have only tried the steak chimichurri so far and they are pretty much the exact flavour of bret's côte de boeuf grillée (I miss bret's) crossed with the lay's Quick burger chips (which is to say: burned meat with a lil something), so I liked them but I only ate a handful and Liam ate the rest in the night (works for me lol)

- (parentheses)

But anyway, today I'm back at it. Got laundry and vacuuming to do, got podcasts to listen to. Got writing to keep tinkering with.

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Puttering

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 22:03:47 GMT

I have been staining tiny chunks of the deck railing, first as an experiment. We had a tester can the people who sold us the house left so we knew what colour to buy and it looks so good and is sooo easy. My tiny chunks are very rewarding, lol.

And I planted the rest of the flowers I had bought which were suffering in their little flats for weeks. Everything can grow grow grow now. A while back I planted dill, cucumber & holy basil in my click and grow and everything has been looking great except the basil, I thought they were duds but they're finally coming up now!

Also made oatmeal banana raisin muffins today (added the raisins bc L likes them), and they're very good.

I'm feeling very go go go lately, I hope it sticks a while.

There are TWO FLIES (at least?) in my house right now and the dog and I are DONE WITH THEM 😤

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General updates

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 15:23:10 GMT

There is a robin on my rail with an alive worm wriggling in its beak, gross. In more adorable news, earlier there was a juvenile robin on my rail with NO worm AND many many spots :D they're such cute babies.

Sunny is eating well now, her old food moistened (which before she would not touch, but now since chicken flavoured wet food is written off as drugged and suspicious, she is loving the half step toward normality) with fortiflora probiotics. And she's eating her steroid pill normally again, too.

She is, in general, pretty much normal, aside from the diet. Last night she even rattled the closet doors a bit at 3am like a nod to old times >>>>:(

Her mouth is adorable, from what I've seen (mouth is understandably off limits, ty), no fangs on the right side, but still both on the left. I don't know what else they're planning to take, but I know they're not done. It'll be a couple months yet.

Liam's dentistry came in 300$ cheaper than I was quoted \o/

He's signed up for the canadian dental plan \o/ (it was not terrible, the process, mostly just that it required his pc, his phone, his laptop, lolol, he kept having to go find more things - and his tax return, ofc. Hopefully he'll have coverage by his August apointment! And we'll have to remember to renew his application by June 1 of next year. Directly after taxes, I guess.

Kelly's in Montreal for a conference about his new job and working long hours and being social all day like he's back in Alert, lol. Poor guy. At least they sent him BY TRAIN! In business class! And fed him! I'm so jealous. He texted me from the train and said "the woman behind me is calling everyone she knows to tell them she's on a train," hahahaaa I would, ngl. Train!

Lauren and I finished watching Undercover Miss Hong and it was SO GOOD. It is not a romance (it had us afraid that it was, for a while), and it has a cast of wall to wall AMAZING characters ("And also Jungwoo is there," says Lauren LOLOL it's very true, he is the weak link fr (the character AND the actor, lol), but don't be afraid: not a romance). The villains were all so so so good. Heists! Friendship! We had many ships, too! I have millions to say about this drama but it's all spoilery. Really recommended.

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hmmm

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:35:26 GMT

Sunny was off her steroid while she was recovering but she's back on it today (and itchy) ;_;

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a second test

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:30:23 GMT

testing again

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cat update

Thu, 28 May 2026 12:43:25 GMT

Sunshine is recovering slowly. Her dental surgery was a lot and they only managed half of it. It was pretty bad :(

But yesterday she got her voice back and had a little bath. The day before that I was celebrating her using the litterbox, eating, drinking, and getting in and out of her tree! And she is eating her medicine in her wet food with no complaints (for now). So grateful because it is now her ONLY food option, due to allergies.

The dog is mega jealous of the cat's new wet food 4 life plan. He eats home cooked meals!! Literally his food is just human food with no salt or alliums. But hers is stinkier!!! Unfair!! ;_;

eta: sunny's tractor bandage :P

every little old lady loves a tractor

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ooof

Tue, 26 May 2026 13:48:25 GMT

The cat is at the dentist today. Her estimate is sitting at 2600$ before any cosmetic wart removal so she is gonna stay in her loveable swamp hag state :P everyone think good thoughts!

In other news, has anyone else's world been rocked by McCain no longer making frozen juice?? It was the cheapest way to buy juice with the least fucking plastic. ;_; and now, we've discovered that the finish dishwasher tabs are only being made in the pod type now, no little block of compressed powder! The pods fucking suck! I only had to pull a blanket out of the dryer with plastic pod shit dried on it once before I was like, no, these suck, actually, give me the powder back. Or the time they all stuck together into a giant jelly mass in the canister because humidity exists.

(We have the juice now (by which I mean liquid laundry soap - I heard it called laundry juice once in a reel and it became our vernacular), which is beside the point, because the washing machine in this house has a reservoir, which is very convenient.)

Anyway, Kelly found a different brand of powder diswasher tabs and was fighting with the wrapping on them, and then we realised that the wrapping is "dissolveable" .................I will use scissors, thanks. This dissolveable plastic is the worst. Compost bags are another one - we switched to the paper ones and haven't had a single problem with them.

This has been Old Lady Rants at Plastic, ig, and Doesn't Think About the Cat.

I'll think about this cat instead:

When you ask your cat for help to escape death but your death is actually very warm and cozy???? (This is Lightfall by Tim Probert and it is DELIGHTFUL.)

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LOL

Fri, 22 May 2026 14:54:47 GMT

The dentist's office called today because they'd accidentally made Liam a hygienist apppointment and not a dentist appointment this morning, lol. We ended up getting there before they could get ahold of us. So now he has a new appointment for June 2 (still way better than Sept 28!).. we went and bought snacks anyway, which we'd planned to do afterward because I needed tomatoes, and all he had to do was wake up early :D it worked out very well for him, if not his teeth :P

Kelly is working from home today and is in the front yard fighting a war against dandelions. We both love dandelions but the difference between our yard and the retirees' yards on either side of us is stark. :/

I started de-chaos-ing the office where my computer lives, but it is a big project. Sorting hobby supplies, figuring out storage, etc. Dreaming up a better desk situation, maybe. It's such a weird little dark room. I want it to be great but it has never quite been comfortable. Other than that, I have my daily Kdrama date at 3pm! We're watching Undercover Miss Hong & at 7 eps in, it is EXCELLENT. It takes place in 1997 and is a lot of fun. Wall to wall great characters & many shenanigans.

A funny bonus picture I forgot to share of Sunny

Her little stick legs under that floof! From after her bloodwork appointment on the 6th. They had to poke both legs! No wonder she went ballistic. She's usually calm as heck but not that time. Or, you know, I guess cause and effect could be reversed lolol. Either way, she walked it off and so did Christina, the technician /o\ sorry, Christina

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life update!

Thu, 21 May 2026 16:15:31 GMT

Hellooo, it's been hectic, I guess. Or I just haven't felt like writing. I have been stressed, which makes everything kind of go on hold.

The good stuff:

Been planting some herbs and flowers on the deck, but not too many because we have to refinish the deck (ughghghghhh). And I finally plugged in my click and grow (indoor garden) this morning, so that is fun, too. Kelly is growing grass in the front yard and it is FINALLY sprouting. Our yard looks like shit, lol. We haven't started tackling the garden bed.

Got L a dentist appointment for tomorrow morning! He has cavities that need filling but isn't on our health insurance anymore :( so we wanted to sign him up for the canadian dental insurance thing but he needed to have his own taxes filed & not as our dependent on Kelly's, so we did that and it took forever but we finally got them back and then found out the canadian dental insurance applications open in june ...FOR 2027. They had warned me at the dentist's office that it wasn't immediate coverage but they were like "it's a few weeks, I think" ..LOL. So. Gonna do that in June but in the meantime, he needs 1200$ worth of dentistry. 2026 is the year of dental bills, let's say. Cat, dog, Liam. At least mine has been covered (60%, anyway, for the crown).

Anyway it was funny because I was like welp, make the appointment, we need to get it done asap, and they were like "we can book him in for July" and I was like lolol that's his birthday, maybe the next date?? And the next date was Sept 28th. :P But we were pretty confident a cancellation would come up bc summer etc. Did not expect a call the very next day but we will take it! :D

Oh yeah, also the cat's dentistry got pushed back a week and switched to the vet that did Nico's dentistry. He's willing to roll with how her cleaning looks and do whatever's needed on the fly, whereas the other guy wanted to do a cleaning and then decide what to do and make an appointment to do it after. And I was like, yeah, I think we'll only put her under once, thanks. For longer, yeah, but it seems way less stressful. I hope it is the right choice. I don't think I mentioned it here but we got her pre-dental bloodwork back and we had paid for a special test of her heart function bc we had been told in the past that she has a murmur, so anaesthetic was a very scary option. But!!! Her tiny little chicken heart is functioning perfectly! It was such a relief to get that result back because I was worried if we got the opposite result back it would be like, well... what do we do now? I still have to get a pee sample out of her but she is very stubborn and I am very scatterbrained.

Hmm what else is good... I got an intoabar assignment and it is Steph Brown x William Boimler and at first I was like nooooooooooooooo but idk, they maybe have things to talk about. I'll have to rewatch some Lower Decks (not a hardship). All else fails, I want to get back into watercolour so I might just paint it.

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Memeing along a couple different memes

Tue, 05 May 2026 17:28:29 GMT

another 3weeks4dreamwidth meme via maevedarcy..!

Places

I'm filling this up at:
on my deck, in the wind (avoiding the loud vacuum)
Last place I went to:
the doctor's creepy office
Favorite place in your house:
lounge chair in front of the big sunny window, good view of all goings-on
Last place I cried at:
lounge chair above, pmsing a week ago or so
Last place I laughed at:
in bed last night
Where did you go on your last vacation?
we stopped and visited family on our roadtrip across Canada, but that was really a move, not a vacation - we didn't even get to stop for tourism on account of having a dog and a cat with us. Before that..... like five years ago?? LOL it feels like a minute ago. We rented a villa in rural Belgium with a pool in the basement because we had money from the government to burn and covid had ruined our more adventurous plans
What was your favorite thing about that place?
The pool, the cows down the road, eurovision 2021 (banger year)
What was your least favorite thing about that place?
overbearing airbnb cleaning rules
What's your favorite place in your city?
the park by the lake/river
What do you like about that place?
water! birds! snacks!

50 This or Thats - apologies, bc I have no idea who I stole this from :P

Bagels or donuts? Doughnuts
Bar soap or body wash? Soap
Being afraid or being embarrassed? Embarrassed, I guess. I'm great at handling it without making it someone else's problem, and not so much with fear.
Big bash or intimate gathering? I'm so antisocial that I'm kinda like eughhghghgh about both, haha. They both have their pros and cons. Gathering, I guess.
Board games or video games? Video games (not multiplayer)

Bridgerton or The Crown? Haven't seen either, not my thing.
Cardio or weights? Eughghghguhghg :P I've never given weights a fair shot but it has to be better, right? I hate sweating.
Carpet or hardwood? Hardwood. I love rugs, though.
Clue/Cluedo or Monopoly? EUghghghghghgh XD we bought Kelly a MtG version of Clue that was pretty fun though, actually. So, that, specifically.
Cook or do the dishes? Cook!

Damp socks or a pebble in your shoe? Pebble. Always kicking pebbles out of my sandals but if I'm wearing socks, I'm enduring socks, even dry.
Dragons or unicorns? Dragon unicorn
Family vacation or solo trip? Family
Fork or spoon? Spoon, specifically a rounded spoon
General admission or assigned seats? Assigned seats, love clarity

Give or receive? eughghghghhghh
Hot cocoa or hot cider? Mulled wine on offer? I like both about the same in that they're usually too sweet and I'd rather have a coffee
Iced tea or hot tea? hot
Italian food or Mexican food? neither a top pick for me
Long car ride or short plane trip? Car for privacy, short plane trips are annoying

Mountains or beach? the mountain comes right down to the beach ime: face left, face right
Movie candy or popcorn? popcorn
Musical theater or concert? tough, but theatre I GUESS
Nightlight or no light? NONE LIGHT
Ninja attack or pirate attack? pirates

Outer space or bottom of the ocean? space, grudgingly (I love air)
Painful truth or comforting lie? truth (at the doctor, he was like "I'm going to tell you something you don't want to hear--" and I was like "I want to hear!!!!!" always better to know)
Pancakes or waffles? waffles, gimme that cronch, pancakes are overrated
Passion or friendship? friendship
Phone call or text? text pls

Pizza or tacos? pizza but grudgingly. it's easier to eat
Play or concert? Play
Playlists or podcasts? Playlists
Puzzles or coloring books? puzzles
Rain or snow? you don't to shovel rain, as my dad would say
Ramen or pho? I have yet to try pho! My fave ramen is the jjajang one

River or lake? river! (ocean >>>>> river >> lake)
Roller coaster or Ferris wheel? I'm not sure I've been on a ferris wheel but at this point in my life I think I'd choose it
Roller skates or ice skates? Ice
Salt or pepper? separate the bffs??? (it's salt, and i LOVE love love pepper)

Singing in the shower or singing in the car? both good, but car is better
Skinny fries or thick cut? skinny = more cronch
Sneezing or coughing? what. sneezing, ig
Snowboarding or skateboarding? snowboarding seems less likely to make me bleed
Snowmen or sandcastles? not into either but I will choose sand, even tho rocky beach >>> sandy beach

Spicy or mild? a mild spicy. like, probably mild, because I'm a baby, but I can't imagine giving up my spicy foods ;_;
Street food or fine dining? street food, fuck restaurants
Subtitles or dubbed? dub in Spanish :D?
Wine or beer? wine, beer is nasty
Zoo or aquarium? Zoo, solely gambling on the likelihood of death humidity

Unrelated news!!

Two of my fave fandom things are doing signups currently, btw:
genprompt_bingo (ignore this opened like a month ago)
& intoabar! Very chill and fun projects, check em out!

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Memeing along

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 17:33:54 GMT

via maevedarcy & 3weeks4dreamwidth:

Movie I watched:
Hilda & the Mountain King
Series I finished:
Finishing True Beauty (kdrama) this afternoon!
Book I finished:
Sisters by Raina Telgemeier
Book I bought:
Miss Quinces by Kat Fajardo
Book I received as a gift:
no idea!

Food I ate:
A kitkat shaped like an F1 car
Meal I cooked:
Boursin pasta, very good
Drink I had:
a coffee with that FI kitkat

Song I listened to:
Strange Love by Halsey
Album I listened to:
Bad Bunny's DTMF in the car to get groceries
Playlist I listened to:
"Let's fuckin cry OK"
Concert I went to:
a fannish orchestra thing in probably 2017

Game I played:
2048 in the browser in a fit of nostalgia
Person I talked to:
Rachel, to set up a writing sprint
Person I texted:
my son, re: pizza

I'm doing really good at this writing sprint 😌🙂‍↕️

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Memeing along

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 13:30:02 GMT

A meme borrowed from 3weeks4dreamwidth (this post) - Put your mp3 player/phone/streaming collection on shuffle, and write down the first line of the first twenty songs. Post the poem that results.

This sounded fun to me and also like it would probably be crap but also make me lol - I'm not a poetry fan but ngl, I think it turned out coherent!! I cheated minimally 😇 I skipped a song I hated and also one that started with like, onomatopoeia :P

poetry (& english translation) inside

Me desperté pensando en to' lo que me hacía'
patrzę jak zegar odmierza mi czas
przebudź się - jesteś wolny, jesteś wolny, jesteś wolny
Got a secret, can you keep it?
nie umiem śnić

Ja idę ciągle swoją drogą
Je viens d'une ville où il n'y a plus de loi
I never thought I would put my freedom in your hands
nie mów że mnie znasz
otwieram jedną z ksiażek
I can feel it in my bones
Nie znam słowa
Skasowałam Poloneza obok kina w mur
Hej, ja przed Tobą się rozbieram
Jestem dziewczyną lat 47

And just like that it's over
Trochę deszczu
Powiedz mi, czy wszystko okey?
I just wanna go back, back to 1999
Tak niewiele sam o sobie wiem

& in English (this is just google translating for the most part, so buyer beware)--

I woke up thinking about everything you did to me
I watch the clock tick away
wake up - you are free, you are free, you are free
Got a secret, can you keep it?
I can't dream

I keep going my own way
I come from a city where there are no more laws
I never thought I would put my freedom in your hands
don't say you know me
I open one of the books
I can feel it in my bones
I don't know the word
I crashed a Polonez into a wall next to the cinema
Hey, I'm in front of you, undressing -
I'm a 47 year old girl.

And just like that it's over.
A little rain..
Tell me, is everything okay?
I just wanna go back, back to 1999 -
I know so little about myself.

It's not bad, right?? Nostalgic and a little self-destructive and with too many I's, but plausible! A little Gender, too?? (The narration switches gender & idk, I think it works.) Anyway, you can tell my Tidal account is heavily weighted to Polish music, lol. I've only had it 5 years or so.

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Ughhh

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 17:38:09 GMT

Very BRIGHT and SNOWY today, lol. Gross!!! I thought we had moved beyond this!

My spanish-doing has taken a major hit lately with my need to write rising....except, I haven't actually written, either. Mostly just staring at the doc while I think "I should be doing spanish," or doing spanish and thinking "what if my story was already written." Not very useful!!

And my attention span is pulled to the NASA livestream every other minute, anyway. Astronaut chatter <3

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march 2026 language update

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 17:29:30 GMT

748 hours! Two hours from the halfway point of the Dreaming Spanish roadmap :D

I don't know what the downswing in the middle of the month was because I didn't take notes, but it was definitely a combination of things: pet errands, dentistry (the blank day is definitely a dentistry recovery day), doing more writing, playing a new Stardew save & Supermarket Simulator, Kelly going on holidays, etc. Also, I took a month off ANKI (& therefore Polish).

Podcasts I listened to: Quiet talks with Mila (patreon), Dreaming Spanish, Español al Vuelo, Español desde el sur, WorldsAcross Advanced, and InterSpanish (this one is so much more enjoyable now than when last I listened to it, months ago. It's just one speaker reading a script but the topics are interesting). And Cráneo, a bit, a science podcast for kids.

TV: I continued on with the odd episode of the cartoons I'm watching but not a lot. I watched a Netflix cartoon about unicorn boarding school without knowing it was a sequel series (it didn't matter, and also, ftr, the unicorns got magical girl transformations; amazing)

YouTube: okay the funny thing is that at the end of every month I look at my stats and the top input sources are always dreaming spanish and spanish boost gaming. This month it was Noni. By a landslide. It's just that my supermarket simulator addiction is getting to dangerous levels, okay. He had twenty episodes and then did a new series (the game had changed a lot since he played it the first time). It's very goofy.

(#2 was Diegodoal (cooking videos/vlogs), #3 was Dreaming Spanish (not including the podcast, which I log separately), #4 was Unicorn Academy, and #5 & #6 are both books!

Also interesting: time spent reading beat out time spent listening - both still trailing far behind watching, of course.)

Some newer to me youtubers I enjoyed lately: Japatonic (Argentinian who is also Japanese, living in Japan culture vlog stuff), MrSalas (comprehensible input/language learning, but for spanish speakers), Jepllavador (Seoul vlog stuff), animalogices (animal science), arquitectomarceloseia8716 (house reno stuff), antoniouton (Mexican living in Sweden vlog stuff), UnMundoInmenso (geography) and BBCMundo (culture stuff, mostly)

Books I read:

Historias del Mar (interesting middle grades comic)
La hermanita de las niñeras #5 (lower grades comic)
Hilda y el trol (I don't know if this is middle or lower tbh, but it was very short)
Alérgica (middle grades comic)
¡Sonríe! (middle grades comic)
and a couple NatGeo Kids books (lower grades non-fiction).

I really enjoyed Alérgica! My favourite of the bunch. My running reading wordcount is 71500! Definitely hitting 100k in April, which will put me into my "level 2" of reading!

「 February 2026 | Index | April 2026 」

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Comics I read

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 18:22:12 GMT

Witch Hat Atelier 2 Coco is such a weenie :D I know I'm supposed to find her endearing but I'm mostly like "ooof poor roomie Agott," most of the time. And I need more Qifrey backstory or like, more worldbuilding, so I can stop thinking his small girl collection is pretty sus actually. Maybe I just don't know what kind of story this is (I actually really do not, but I'm enjoying it)

Witch Hat Atelier 3 and now the story wants me to find Qifrey sus so I am immediately "oh okay, he's probably legit and fine actually." We'll see, lol. I like whatshiscrap (silverwash boy) A LOT.

Allergic - what big feelings 12 year olds have!! This made me tearful twice, lol. It's about a girl who feels left out in her family (parents expecting a baby any minute, younger brothers are twins) who goes to adopt a puppy and finds out she's VERY allergic to all animals with fur or feathers. I really liked it.

Smile - I didn't know beforehand that this was autobiographical! Or that Raina Telgemeier is pretty much my age (I'm probably the age of her younger sister, I think), it was pretty fun to look back at that time period in comics form. (Dentistry/adolescence combo punch)

Mob Psycho 100 vol 5 - I never really know what's going on in these books but I'm always enjoying it. I didn't like that Mob was basically a side character in this one. I do not care about the other teens. I don't even care about his brother, tbqh. (Though I love how much Mob does.)

Found out Hoopla has "Bonus Borrows," a collection of titles you can borrow when you run out of borrows (my library only gives me 4 a month) - none are in Spanish, but I got a handful of things that seemed fun:

octopus pie vol 1 by Meredith Gran
Deadpool Classic vol 1 (a reread for me)
The Unbelievable Gwenpool vol 1 (issues 0-4)
Nancy Drew: the Palace of Wisdom (issues 1-5)

I went to look at the bonus borrows for April and couldn't find them, so maybe it was a one time thing. If so, that's disappointing, but I'll still enjoy my freebies.

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friday fivess

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 21:43:45 GMT

A couple friday fives, since I had another sitting on my desktop :O

and also a cow joke courtesy of my string cheese

So mean o_o

( username/dw history )

( and superstitions )

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a media update

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 14:31:50 GMT

I'm still living on youtube with a small amount of Netflix cartoons (Sailor Moon Crystal, Kamisama Kiss, Capitan Tsubasa). One day I will watch other things! Very excited about One Piece season 2 but we haven't started it yet because it's hard to both feel like watching an hour of tv late in the day (yawn, old people)

I started the Witch Hat Atelier manga, and I really loved the first one. It's so pretty! I have the second one but I haven't started it yet.

I started watching a different streamer play Supermarket Simulator a while back and ended up finally buying the game (lol) and it's pretty fun but omg does my computer hate it. How is it harder on my computer than the sims?? Very goofy. And then the week after I got influenced by youtube shorts and started a four corners farm in Stardew. I'm in winter y1 and the urge has died down again :P I'm free again (maybe)

Music (gasp) a new album by Kwiat Jabłoni (Przesilenie), with orchestra backing. I am such a sucker for an album with orchestra (last month was Rosalía's Lux, which I finally got around to). Also Lor also just put out a new album (pele-mele), so I'm excited about that, but I've only listened to it once so far. Anyway, this song opens the album--

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feb 2026 language update

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 18:15:18 GMT

This month was a dramatic fall in hours. ~59 in total, minus 3.5 for Polish (ouch) and 6hrs for reading.

( the usual graphs n junk )

Anyhoo, short month. March is already better :D

「 January 2026 | Index | March 2026 」

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friday five, fruits and veg, batman

Fri, 20 Feb 2026 15:14:46 GMT

I saw this friday five and thought, I can do that, and also I can tie it to my other post for one mega post, why not???

When did you last:

Scrounge for change (couch, ashtray, etc.) to make a purchase?

Been a while. If we are counting for quarters for laundry machines, maybe when we lived in Ottawa. Before that, laundry coins when we lived in Esquimalt, and before that probably college for vending machine lunch money. Every couple months I dig thru the junk drawer for a new cart quarter bc they seem to like wandering off!

Visit a dentist?

Earlier this month! I have to get a crown for an old root canal and a tiny filling but they're waiting for word from my insurance to do them at the same time.

Make a needed change to your life?

I feel like I have one of these coming soon. I hate change, lol. Maybe quitting instagram last year??? Though I've replaced with bluesky and now youtube shorts which are harder to avoid, so. Now I have to quit those too :P

Decide on a complete menu well in advance of the evening meal?

I do this often. Not every day or anything, but I'm the food guy here. There's some amount of winging it but not too much or it would be chicken fingies and your vegetable is ketchup every night. Also, my war with the grocery stores. When they try to claim the regular price is higher so the sale looks better?? I know your scams!! Anyway the point is that I have to plan meals around (actually good) sales, so the forward thinking is necessary.

Spend part of the day (other than daily hygiene) totally/mostly naked?

My soft soft clothing protects my skin from the TEXTURES of the world 🤢

Anyway, my in progress post was about how I was doing tier lists the other day because it's better than doomscrolling, and having a lot of fun. A lot of the food ones are turbo American though, so I went for straight fruits and veg.

( FRUIT AND VEG TIER LISTS, also Batman )

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media update

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 18:11:08 GMT

TV: finished season 1 of 1670 with Kelly but then got sidetracked before continuing with season 2, the part I actually haven't seen. Have to get back on track!

Finished Amphibia and misted up a bit. That was a good show & I enjoyed it. I liked having a ten years later glimpse ;-;

Finished Hilda and also enjoyed that! They crammed so much backstory into the last few episodes, wow. I would have loved to see more seasons! I liked that they grew. Physically, I mean, but also, yk, in other ways. My biggest complaint at the start of the show was that I couldn't stand David's baby voice, and I don't even know when it changed but now I'm like oh obviously it was intentional :D all season three he is constantly eating something because he's a 13yo boy now, lolol.

I'm midway through Way of the House Husband, which is very lulzy.

Books: I remember reading. Kinda. Sorta. (Trying to come up with a plan to bring back reading in English without feeling like I should be doing something else because there are many books I want to be reading!!)

Games: still playing ACNH, still annoyed it's still snowy >:/

Music: this bad bunny parody about Canadian winters made me lol :P

In other music news, a lot of recs for Mexican emo on reddit today, I am time traveling, here. I don't think I will stick it out but I am enjoying the trip :D

Writing: I wrote?????? LOL. It was fun. A lil idea that's going nowhere, but I enjoyed writing a few hundred words about it. Been a long time!!

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january 2026 language update

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 19:01:08 GMT

Did a little more than 82 hours in January - an adjustment month, as expected. Kelly got home, have to figure out a new schedule, had my tablet break which didn't help. And I'm reading now!

many graphs, much blather

The graph looks pretty predictable, imo. Pretty standard first half, little wobbly second half when Kelly got home.

Polish anki every day (still enjoying the onigiri add-on except that the non-restaurant options have so few recipes and they don't expand ;_;) but literally nothing else, lol. One day, Polish.

Also, it's funny how the added gameification of the onigiri add-on can make me work harder or slack off. Both!! At first it was like, oh I have to do extra cards so I get this recipe! And then when I changed my restaurant into a grocery store there were only like five or six recipes/specials so I got all ehhhhhhhhh about it. And then later when I changed it back, I was like. Well. I've done half my cards but already got the special (it demands different numbers of cards by rarity), why am I still doing cards? :P Oh well, at least it's cute.

Hit level 6 on the 9th (600hrs), hooray! The biggest chunk of input for January was the Languatalk podcast (16hrs), which is wild. It's never been a podcast before - it's only ever been dreaming spanish or spanish boost gaming, hah.

But when you look at the graph by input type, it all becomes clear:

You can see where my tablet died, on the 11th, and then I got deep into Languatalk podcast listening while I worked on sewing 3000 tails into the back of a granny square blanket before Kelly got home, so this was great accompaniment. Kelly got home the evening of the 15th, so only an hour of input on the 16th. The next couple weeks where I dithered about my computer options and read a bunch. Watched a couple things uncomfortably at my desk. Harder to listen to podcasts without feeling antisocial or alienating, haha. And then the last three days of the month after I got a new laptop. It's all so clear :P

Anyway, some learner content I enjoyed: on dreaming spanish - lots of videos about music - Michelle and Agustina talking about the Spanish-language greats, Jostin & Agus videos, Andrés' tour of Sevilla, Natalia's fave films series, Michelle's insane debates, and her series about job interviews which was incredible work by the team preforming the most unhinged applicants you could imagine. On Spanish Boost Gaming, I watched the Español al vuelo russian roulette crossover, the dad jokes video (insane), and his new "playing a chill sim game while doing an advanced podcast" thing. Watched some of silksong (SBG patreon) & quiet talks with mila (patreon podcast), a lot of Spanish Boost with Mila while crocheting, Languatalk, obvs. Nothing really new.

Some non-learner content I enjoyed: a little Luisito Comunica, Coreano Vlogs, some Pokemon, the end of Amphibia (YES, I CRIED), a random 40 minute bodyweight exercise video I was linked to.

And now, Part Two: All About Reading!

Level 5 is all about reading :D

La hermanita de las niñeras #1 - Farina/Martin - 3900 words
La hermanita de las niñeras #2 - Farina/Martin - 4100 words
La hermanita de las niñeras #3 - Farina/Martin - 3600 words
La hermanita de las niñeras #4 - Farina/Martin - 4500 words

I started with the Babysitters Little Sister comics from Hoopla. They are fine! Some better than others, lol. They're cute, mostly. Hoopla (or my library) will only give me four borrows a month, which is sad. I tried to scam more borrows with my older cards but they EXPIRED. Thank you, Ottawa, for giving up on in person renewals during covid and never going back!

Pangato #1 - Benton - 1800 words
Nate el Grande: Hola - Pierce - 11600 words
Buenas Noches, Planeta - Liniers - 200 words
El globo grande y mojado - Liniers - 300 words

After running out of hoopla borrows I hit the internet archive for the two Liniers books (a cartoonist from Argentina, they are beautiful but short books - I want to read his longer things!), and the Ottawa library for the other 2. Nate el Grande sucked, I hated it :P

I'm also reading picture books when I see them, but not counting/recording them. They're often harder than the comics, lol. Around 8 or so in January.

I was thinking about it, and I decided that I'm going to try and think about reading in dreaming spanish-esque levels up to 3,000,000 words, which seems like a nice goal. A lot of people talk about aiming for one million, then three million - so, right now I'm at level one and that feels correct 🥹

Level 2 - 100 000
Level 3 - 300 000
Level 4 - 600 000
Level 5 - 1 200 000
Level 6 - 2 000 000
Level 7 - 3 000 000

I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes and how I feel as I progress - what changes I see, level to level. Right now in level one it is exhausting, just like level 1 of DS. I started with children's comics because with comics you don't have all the verbs around narration, said, shouted, shrugged, sighed, all these descriptive things. Just dialogue, mostly. I tried to read a chapter book for children, one where there's like 5 pages a chapter, and it took me 40-45 minutes a chapter, and definitely decoding more without illustrations, etc. I get overwhelmed and try to switch to brute forcing it instead of reading slowly aloud in my head (voiced by a spanish speaker), which is better and easier, even though it feels soooo sloooooow. Idk how it feels so slow while also feeling like it's lunging to catch up to my listening, but it really did feel that way, especially in the beginning of the month!

I have to do some end of the month math now because I record reading time spent in lingotrack but it doesn't apply to dreaming spanish hours/levels, so basically in Spanish in January I did around 76 and a half hours, minus 12 and a half for reading (64 hours) - as expected, hours will go down to make room for reading :)

「 December 2025 | Index | February 2026 」

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media update

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 15:20:19 GMT

Gaaaames:

Been back in Animal Crossing: New Horizons for the 3.0 update! The hotel is just a less good version of the resort, lol. And they want me to craft? UGH :P I did all my rooms. I will say it is 🥹🥹🥹 so good 🥹 to see islanders that have moved away come to stay at the hotel and say hello 🥹

Did a slumber island visit with discord pals and it seemed pretty cool. Our host made a little study room where we can hang out and chill while learning but the switch doesn't like to just sit idle forever so some adjustments are needed. The same idea as that game "On Together" you can get on steam, hang out in a park or a library and body double while you're working. Basically already do that on discord pretty much every other day in voiceless voice chat (or on focumon)... I got it to try but I am having a really hard time figuring it out, lol. I hate keyboard/mouse controls in games (I immediately fell in the water). I should have thought this through lolol.

When you wake up from slumber island being disconnected you look so zonked 🤣 best sleep of my life

I think I'm already bored of ACNH tbh and it's the same problem I was having with New Leaf. They didn't need to add so much stuff. There's too many things to do and I end up feeling like I have to do them all and get overwhelmed. Why is there five games in my game. Yes, I realise this is a me problem :P

I have my switch set in Spanish for a discord challenge, and I will say that reading Animal Crossing is way harder than comics for 8 year olds. More frustrating than helpful, at this point! But anyway, this made me lol. Pigeon milk, anyone????

The 9 years with nintendo switch thing that they sent out: ( 2 images )

TV:

Since Kelly's been home we've been watching season 1 of 1670 with dinner (he's never seen it), it's a very silly fake documentary Polish comedy. This was on my goals for 2026 so knocking it out early :P

An overdue Kdrama review: Beautiful Gong Shim. This drama started out really strong!!! But then started to become the Dantae Show and we were like, well, I hope they get back to Shim soon, but Dantae is fun so, okay. They never got back to Shim. She became a side character and the Dantae Show got SO BIG. And it was tedious, too. And Dantae became mega un-fun. Every piece of the plot rolled out sooooo slowlyyyyyy. The pacing was insane, especially considering there were 20 eps, and in so many of them it seemed like nothing had really happened, just silly fakeouts.

Anyway, if I was the actor who played Gong Shim I would have been pissed, lol. Hired to be half of the main couple, character name in the title, and yet, she was an absolute afterthought after about halfway through. She loses all her abrasiveness, all her goals, and now she dreams of product design (and Dantae treating her like an actual adult he wants a relationship with, instead of the baby he keeps on the shelf). She seriously had no idea what was going on in the main plot 98% of the time. What could have been, etc etc.

I'm in the last season of Amphibia and really enjoying it. I liked the show a lot more while they were on earth, the opposite of Liam, haha. But then my tablet died and I don't really want to sit at my desk and watch it uncomfortably. We went out trying to find someone to fix my tablet and found out that generally only Apple can fix apple tablets because they're so thin and they have to go in thru the screen and 99.6% of the times the screen will shatter and add 400$ to your repair which the people do not want, lol. Anyway, there is an apple repair in the next town so we're going to see what they say. The cellphone repair guys in the mall said it was either the charging port or the battery connections. Alas.

Language stuff:

I keep meaning to post about this and then dithering but whatever, anyway. I spent a lot of 2025 learning Spanish through comprehensible input (dreaming spanish, with a minor in Polish, lol), and every month I looked back at how I'd spent the month. I wanted to be able to see a sense of how it was going, or that I was actually making progress. I locked them down as I went because, especially at the beginning of the year, I felt suuuuuper sensitive about it, with no idea if it would work, or how it would work. I really liked the idea of a comprehensible input based approach, but I really wasn't sure if it would work for me, not being a youtube-enjoyer. I was also afraid that I wouldn't even stick to it. That I'd flake out within the first few months. I am a great abandoner of hobbies, even though I always come back at some point.

Anyway, I've unlocked those posts now, and linked them in this index, if anyone is curious. You might have to be ME to find it interesting 🤔 Also made this small resource list in progress for general language learning things.

If anyone wants to learn Spanish and isn't on a time crunch (there are obviously faster ways), I think dreaming spanish is a great option (faq link). It has been, just, so SO fun. I spent an entire year just watching goofy videos every day while my brain did shit in the background like a baby with a shape sorter. That's so amazing, imo. Psyched to learn more this year!

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year in review byyyye 2025

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 17:26:20 GMT

I wasn't my usual fandom-adjacent self, but more fandom-absent in 2025, so I ended up taking out some of the usual questions that didn't really apply. My year was devoted to language learning (post coming on that sooooon), so I knew this was going to happen. Somehow, I still found a lot of shit to talk about, though :P

( an extra long media post! )

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birbs

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 16:32:09 GMT

I saw (what I think was) a sharp-shinned hawk in the tree the other day. What a petite little dude! I thought it was a mourning dove at first bc it was a mottled brown from what I could see, but something in me was like, "get the binoculars!" The tail twitching, I think. It reminded me of the long ass tails of the magpies in Belgium. Twitch, twitch, twitch. But yeah, in the binoculars, the big orange eyes and the tail striping, very very cute, but he zipped off a second later so I didn't have time to note details ;_; come back lil sharpie

Junco thru my filthy window <3

Honestly, I thought I had more to say when I opened up dw to post, but there's just nothing? Feeling kinda like going back to bed today. I think it's going to be a no-focus kind of day.

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