Band to the Band Room, Friendsgiving, etc.

Back to the band room....once again...

Last Thursday I went back to go see the marching band kids at their last night rehearsal.  I've been trying to stop by every year (assuming I remember) for quite a few years now.  I don't quite remember how I felt the last time I visited, but I feel like nowadays my feelings towards it have been changing a bit.

I was a bit surprised at how positive everything felt -- I guess I do get to see them pretty much at the top of their game, so it makes sense, but visiting again this year, I felt a lot more....how do I say...."at ease"?  I haven't had one of those nightmares in a while now, so perhaps this is another step on my road towards coming to peace with that part of my life.

Seems that they really have a good group this year.  It's of course impossible to really judge as an outsider, but they seem to have their act together way more than we did, during that era when I was the head drum major because "I had to".  The isolation I felt contrasts so starkly with what I saw from this group.  Not claiming that I could have even connected with other people if I had the opportunity, but nevertheless, it really did strike me seeing them and thinking "wow, things are....so much better".  I guess I felt a slight bit of jealousy, but more just a sense of peace, knowing that this thing I loved is no longer a thing of suffering.

Friendsgiving dinner was a success!

We made a lot of yummy food, including sous vide bbq pork ribs and lamb riblets, furikake butter toast, brussels sprouts with shallots and bacon, corn, lamb flank steak, enoki mushrooms, ants climbing a tree, pumpkin pie, and apple crumble.

There were a few stressful moments including a point when I realized midway that I was using the wrong sous vide temperature, but despite the minor mishaps everything went AOK.  Woo~



I've been feeling better this week.  The past couple of weeks have been a bit busy, and slightly stressful at times -- moreover, they've just kind of been really draining socially, especially dance-wise, and I definitely hit multiple points where I just needed to stop and just not be around anyone for a bit.  That plus some anxiety and insecurity issues which were really bothering me throughout...

I'm basically back in business now, it feels like, which is great.  It was pretty cool hearing the rain pouring outside today actually, though the wind sounded pretty crazy.  Hopefully I don't get soaked tomorrow.

There's still work to do, of course -- I've got less than a week left to do my next Monthlies album cover, and then I'm doing some other pixel art commissions....plus making sure I get all the xmas stuff taken care of...yeah, you can bet there's never an idle moment in my life.



Randomly decided to play a bunch of ranked Puyo Puyo Tetris, which went well.  I'm at the point now where I can actually play the Puyo side pretty decently now, woo!  The Puyo vs Puyo matches actually are pretty fun, it's a nice race to see who can successfully build a nice chain first and trigger it successfully while being careful of early harassments.  The Puyo vs Tetris matchup still feels really strange though, I feel like I try to climb the wall and build a transition as fast as I can but sometimes it just gets covered up before I can trigger anything.  Climbing column 1 seems like it ought to be a good option as it means you can receive some garbage and be OK, but maybe GTR would be faster to set off?  Not really sure.  Somehow as long as you continue to just set off 3-chains it seems like you more or less do alright, so it's really testing my ability to improvise.  It's a weird matchup for sure.