Okay, yeah!  It's been a while...let's see where things are at.

 

The rest of my trip went okay!  I felt really exhausted toward the end, in like, every way -- honestly think a big part of it was the heat getting to me since I spent a little extra time outdoors.  It honestly felt super surreal coming back, the weather was a complete 180 and I came back home from sunny + dry to a dark, damp, foggy night.  I'm all settled back in now, but that first 24 hours or so was a little weird...

 

That tea place that I mentioned ended up redeeming itself -- the bai mu dan that I had the first time just was really....not it.  Rather than try their king's grade peony or whatever I actually just ended up going for their pressed white tea cakes and those fared much better for me, there were two that I ended up enjoying, I think maybe the last one wasn't as great but eh, I'll take it.  I had some good times there, including one afternoon where I just sat there and felt really productive. 

 

Ended up bringing a knife home, as I was hoping to.  Yeah, I...didn't really need another knife, but I wanted to have something nice to bring home, and I've been using it and enjoying it so far!  Not replacing my favorite knife, but it's nice to use and even made of the same powdered R2/SG2 steel, which I've had great impressions of so far.  Also ended up ordering myself a diamond sharpening stone, I'll have to see whether I like that one better or worse than the traditional water stone experience.  I think it's a little less meditative, but also like....less hassle, and potentially faster?  I'm afraid to use it on my more precious knives, but I'll have to just give it more experience and see what the difference is when I use the different stones.  I'm experimenting with some new techniques too. 

 

I promise you もう迷わない

強くなる…あなたに証すよ

逃げないで　向き合っていく

姿を見せてくれた　to heart

It's a song that I'm pretty sure Kiki sent to me a long long time ago.  I don't think I ever really associated it strongly with her though, it's just a song that I just kinda had and remembered.  Can't help but think of it a little differently now, though, I guess.

The mentor tournament has been continuing on -- the mentees are on week 5 now and there's only one week of mentoring left!  I coached two races this week -- both victories -- and I have two mentees signed up with me for next week as well.  One of the victories this time seemed like it was going to be a heartbreaker as a hardware issue caused us to lose 22 minutes (!) of progress, but somehow we managed to pull it all together and figure out what plays to make to keep us in it.  Definitely one for the books, sheesh, what a wild ride (was on restream, too...).  Sitting at 8-2 now in my mentor-coached races, which is...incredible actually, haha.

I'm continuing to do some additional work here and there on my ALTTPR site.  Currently doing some of the first few rooms in the GT climb (complicated rooms...).  Once we're at the end of the swiss rounds next week I am considering whether I want to put together a tips/tricks video covering common themes or areas of improvement that I've seen throughout various mentees, but...I'll have to see if I have time to edit that all together.

 

Ended up finally putting another Rhythm Quest release out, including a ton of minor improvements and restructuring that I've been doing over the past month(s).  As usual there are still other bugs and stuff related to the new functionality and changes that I'll need to go back to address.  The work just continues like this...

 

I think we have a date for JaSmix!  Assuming everything can go through, of course.  I'm planning to have the event on August 16th.  I actually could have one more workshop in my schedule, but I...don't think I'm up to the task of teaching it.  Maybe if I think of something fun and simple that I could do, but I just don't think I want to dedicate the bandwidth to it; may as well just let the others do their job and teach some cool stuff and I can just sit back and handle the rest of the night, do some privates, etc.  At this point I'll just be happy if the event goes through and runs smoothly.  It's a little too much to ask for me to also put in a workshop...

There's been a bunch of other life learnings too, I don't know if this is the right place or time to really detail them, but there's been stuff about attachment styles and how I work and stumbling blocks or blind spots that I have been carrying in certain situations and all that.  That stuff is still a work in progress, but then again, we all are, right?

 

I received the news that Andrea Gibson -- a poet whose works I'm acquainted with -- passed away recently.  Was a weird coincidence that I had just recorded a one hour compo piece where I had recited one of their poems.  I never knew them on a personal level and I had only ever attended one of their poetry readings, but they have some really cool works and every once in a long while when I'm not busy thinking that I should be digging into my past I end up reaching for some poetry and, them being one of the few poets whose works I'm acquainted with -- more often than not it's their work that I pull out of my friend's bookshelf and see whether I can glean any feelings from.  Like I said, I don't feel like I really =know= them, but they seemed to....I don't know, like, have lived a really special life?  Full of hardships I'm sure, but also full of strength, connection, crazy experiences and life lessons, and all of that.  I guess I don't want to assume too much, I mean on some level you have to think, somebody who wrote all these grand (or not even grand, just like, heartful?) words about their life experience, surely had to have lived such a full life.  But it's not just like, that their poems are all dramatic or whatever, it's more like...wow, this person went through some stuff, but not only that, they came out the other side, and they did even more.  I dunno.  I guess it just felt like this was a pretty cool person to exist. 

Going to be going back down south a bit this weekend, which should be good, since it's been so long.  Not sure if I'll stay an extra day and stop by Dancebreak or whatever (I've been so MIA at dance stuff...), but either way it should be good.  I'm planning to stop by Teance again finally tomorrow, really looking forward to hanging out there.  (actually reminded me to sign up for the next upcoming tea social...)

 

What else...it's getting toward the latter part of the month so it'll be time for me to start working on another pixel art piece soon.  Looking forward to that, hopefully it'll turn out okay?  I watched The Colors Within / Kimi no Iro, really enjoyed it!  Fun, joyful, kind of touching, not too heavyhanded, pretty, all things that I really appreciated.  Keyboard-wise, I had been using my usual two boards for awhile (and will probably go back to them), but the past couple of days I actually pulled out the Evo80 for a change of pace.  Variety is nice!

 

Chicky stuff continues to be interesting; the "training setting" is now off on the treadle feeder and I'm notttttttt 100% sure dumbchicky has managed to figure out how to get her food out of it, but I know at least white chicky has.  We're still having rodent issues; pretty sure the whole chicky food situation contributed quite a bit to it, but at least we're taking a bunch of the appropriate measures now, and we're learning more and more about how to keep everything safe.  Heh, just thinking about how if I ever have duckies again it'll just be even more learnings...guess the pet stuff never ends, really.

 

Been having this weiiiirddd funky combination of feeling like sometimes I'm super lazy and not really great about my normal rhythms, but also been being pretty productive at the same time?  It's a little weird, but I'm rolling with it for now.  Contrary to what you might think, I don't feel the need to always be on exactly the same rhythm as I normally am.  Progress is still progress, work is still work, fun is still fun.  I still manage best I can to take care of all the different things...