Don't let anyone take away what you know to be true

Every time I hear "ask" as a noun I still cringe, but fine...just, for the love of god, please do not use "solve" as a noun*.  We have a specific word for that already: "solution".  If this continues to propagate we are going to end up with phrases like "That was a great execute of your plan", "Your respond was inappropriate", and "I have an argue with that".  ...We are all going to sound like non-native speakers who don't know how to conjugate verbs... =(

While we're at it, I'd like to point out that calling an MtG sealed pool or a sealed tournament a "sealed" really weirds me out as well.  It's fine to call a booster draft "a draft" because draft is clearly the noun.  "sealed" is an adjective, as in "sealed deck", so it sounds really weird to say "Let's do a sealed."  It's even worse when you try to pluralize it: "I'm going to practice by opening up some sealeds."  But note that "Let's play sealed" sounds fine because "sealed" is still the adjective here -- you're just omitting the noun: "Let's play sealed (deck)".

*Notable exception can and should be made for speedcubing.

Words cannot express the amount of love I have for the uni-ball signo 0.38mm pen.  Accept no substitutes.  It is amazing.

It's been a pretty good time recently!

There's some super exciting stuff that I've been working on that I can't really talk about until later -- hoping it all works out!  Stay tuned for more, I guess. :)

Otherwise, things have been great!  I found some time for both letters and calligraphy this weekend, which was good, and also met up with a friend who was visiting from SF, which was really nice.  Made tomato soup for the second time, to pretty good success!

Also, random plug for "薔薇祭", a song off of A-zu-ra's amazing album "the bed of diverse flowers".  A-zu-ra's a musical friend of mine and this has always been my favorite track of his, off of my favorite album of his.  You can listen to it at https://a-zu-ra.bandcamp.com/track/--17.  The intro is spectacular in every way, and recently I've been really appreciating some of the development and countermelodies in the later parts of the track as well.  Recommended.

Another random note: I've got a huge surplus of physical album CDs for Celestial Melodies, so please get in touch with me if you're in the area and want one!

I guess I never wrote about Boogie by the Bay 2016 and the first Jammix back at Roble here, but they were both quite fun and good (this was two weekends ago).  Learned a lot at Boogie and had a bunch of awesome dances, especially some really amazing ones with a couple of girls who both lead and follow -- always fun switching back and forth.  Samantha Buckwalter and Kelly Casanova I think were teaching their lead-switching class again one of the days (didn't go because it would have been the 3rd time I had taken it).  I definitely feel like my WCS has gotten significantly better since last year, which is great!  Jammix was really surreal, but quite fun as well.  Had one or two quite good dances, and also waxed nostalgic about the past.  It was good to be back. :)

Lower back has been sore the past few days, so trying to make sure I can recover from that. =(  I hope it doesn't become a chronic thing -- usually I think it starts up because I do something silly like try to sit on the ground or against the wall for a while.  I'm really bad at sitting on the floor comfortably for longer periods of time, I realized.

I'd like to continue to try and make sure that I'm covering all the right bases in terms of time management in my day-to-day life; basically, ensuring that I'm prioritizing the right things.  I think the biggest obstacle continues to be the fact that sometimes I just don't have the focus or motivation to work on the things that I actually want, but of course it can also help to make sure that I'm saying "no" to the right things to ensure that I have enough space in my life.  If things go well, I feel like you should see me posting here slightly more often.  Traditions like these are important to me.

Besides the stuff I can't talk about, I think my next "things to work on" should be some overdue tweaks to Watch for Falling Rocks to get it ready for mobile release, and then getting back to music writing so I can make something to use as a Patreon song.

Hard to believe that Halloween is only a week away!  This is also around time for me to start working on Christmas letters for this year :)

The sand of time slips slowly through the gaps in my fingers and there's nothing I can do to stop it.  Only to try and make sure that I catch the grains that matter, even if it means tossing aside the rest.  Am I really doing what is most important to me in life?

Feeling very happy :)

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"Would artists abandon the art of painting, once the photo camera was invented? Would artists abandon sculpting once 3D printing became a thing? They wouldn't, but they would need to push the medium even further than before to remain impressive." -- Simon Stafsnes Andersen

There's nothing quite like waking up at 3 in the morning to write a letter to a friend.

I've been trying to make sure that I'm prioritizing things in my life properly, and most of all to make sure that I'm meeting my standards for how I want to be living my life, especially with regards to what I'm spending my time on and how emotionally and socially available I am.  Waking up in the middle of the night (after a long "nap") and writing this letter makes me feel like I'm myself again, in a good way.

Also, it's Fall now!!!  I'm ridiculously happy about this.  I woke up this morning not quite having had enough sleep and was feeling pretty groggy, but once I stepped outside I felt amazing.  Few things in this world energize me more than a beautiful cloudy morning.  Maybe it'll even rain sometime soon -- one can only hope.

Today was a surprisingly great start to the week!  Getting a massage at work definitely helped, but it wasn't just that either.  Felt like I was able to do the right things, feel accomplished enough, leave on time, and then I was also able to retrieve my present!  I had mistakenly delivered a present into someone's mail slot only to realize too late that my friend had changed addresses, so I wrote up a short handwritten note and they were actually so kind as to call me back and leave it out for me on the porch so that I could go and get it.  I mean, it wouldn't actually be the end of the world or anything if I had lost it forever, as I could replace the present and I have been good about taking photographs of all of my letters before sending them, so nothing lost for good, but I was still happy that that all worked out.  Now if only I could find the Cinnamoroll hairtie that I lost last week =(  Pretty sure it's gone forever and that it just slipped off as I was walking around outside somewhere, which made me super sad.

Got to play some Melee with Brett tonight -- I was feeling super on top of my game today msotly, and my tech-chasing was on point with both Fox and Marth.  Felt great!  I even seem to be somehow learning how to play Falcon somewhat, which is amazing because that's a character that I've always really struggled to get the hang of.

I'm starting off a Kaladesh sealed league at work!  Should be exciting to actually get my hands dirty with the format and see how vehicles, energy, and fabricate all end up actually playing out.  It's been a while since I've played any MtG, really, so I'm looking forward to trying to find the right build of my sealed pool.  Or, you know, maybe opening a masterpiece or something.  xD

Visited Yang up in SF the other day!  It was great; something I'll have to do more often! (as in more often than once a year lol)  We got to talking about socialization and connection and adult life and everything, which is part of the reason I was thinking about life priorities and making sure that I'm doing things the way that I want on a daily basis.

FFT has been going well!  I'm now significantly underleveled compared to the enemies in the story battles (sometimes as much as 10 levels lower) yet still kicking butt because my characters are pretty awesome.  My black mage/samurai with draw out/iado just walks up and absolutely destroys everybody, and I'm also in the middle of chapter 4 now and have picked up Cid, who not only is going to destroy a whole bunch of people by himself but also comes with the Excalibur which I handed off to Ramza to give him haste.  I actually turned Ramza into a Knight and am thinking to maybe (!???) make him into a Dark Knight.....but we'll see if that actually happens; it takes a lot of grinding to get there.  On the plus side, leveling as a knight is good for PA growth regardless, so nothing really lost there.

I've had a couple of story battles where I wanted to steal some things and I've gotten pretty good at taking control of a battle now.  Having Lavian, my dancer, as part of the team definitely helps out immensely, as she just uses the slowing dance to eventually grind the enemy team to a halt.  From there, it's just all about taking out the enemies without important gear and surviving while she does her thing.

My Celestial Melodies physical CD sold out at FNW!  I didn't expect to have so much interest in it, so that was super cool that people actually wanted my CD.  I didn't have any for the dance on Sunday, but I have a shipment of 33 more coming in, hopefully in time for Jammix this Friday =X

Hope to be writing here a little bit more often.  It always feels nice...and it reminds me of the past, in the best way.