I wrote in my last post that this past week would be a week to "take it easy if possible", but that turned out to be not possible, as the work stuff extended until midweek and even a little beyond, having to put out fires and such.  As such the remainder of my time was mostly just focused on making sure that I was still rested and sane, but of course, part of maintaining my mental health also means trying to make forward progress on the rest of my work too.

Thankfully I seem to be in a better place as of now.  Though as you know, there are always just gonna be times when you just ain't doing so well, and that happens regardless of how well you are doing in general.

I've got one day of work left in the year -- theoretically should be pretty light and just trying to close up stuff and jot down some things for when we are back in action (?).

Even more isolated now than usual, as my quarantine pod has divided in 2 for the coming holiday season as numbers continue to rise here, blahblahblah.  I've honestly been a little too busy these past two weeks to really feel the full impact of that (whatever it may be), so we'll see how that ends up turning out over the next few days I guess.

Christmas is sneaking up quite quickly, and I'm extremely grateful to my past self right now for having taken care of all of the xmas stuff early.  I have only one or two remaining deliveries to make if any.  Hard to believe that it is already the week of already, but I guess time flies when you don't really have much time for anything, haha.

I've almost finished up the current music soundtrack commission that I've been working on, which is nice.  The latest assignment involved making 5 different versions of the same track for crossfading into each other, which was an interesting and fun exercise.

My employer offered up to two free "Kynd kits" as part of a volunteer day initiative and I ordered both a teacher appreciation kit as well as an essential worker kit.  This was...supposed to be done a few weeks ago, but at the time I was just too busy to really do anything about it.  There's not really a specific deadline or anything for it anyways, so I decided to just wait on it.  The kits themselves are an OK concept, but the contents themselves are...a little bland and drab, so I'm replacing some of the stuff in there with my own personalized materials.  I mean, it makes sense that they would provide a =plain= envelope and paper to write on, but wouldn't it be more personal to receive some messages on hand-picked stationery?

The teacher appreciation kit contained a mug that you were supposed to design using oil-based paint pens, so I spent some time brainstorming a design -- pretty happy with what I came up with!  That is definitely the most meaningful item out of all of the stuff in both kits, I feel like.  Now I'm a little curious as to what other people ended up making, if anything.

I am hoping to give that kit to one of my former teachers, but I seem to be unable to contact them at this time, so I'll have to try again next year.  Well, it's not like there's any rush or anything.  In the meantime I can try to write some notes and such for the essential worker kit and give that out to someone who works at the grocery store I go to or something.

After many days of wanting to do an ALTTPR run yet not finding the time, I finally got around to doing another one, and it sucked, lol.  Pretty much an all-dungeons-required seed, I wasn't super on point in terms of routing at certain points, and worst of all my controller started to crap out in the middle of it leading to some egregious execution errors (I opened it up later to fix it).

Been getting back into Dead Cells a bit lately, thanks to a friend picking up the game.  There have been quite a number of changes since I last played, and lots of new content as well.  I cleared 2BC and am just working on collecting more blueprints and stuff as I prepare to tackle the 3BC difficulty (newgame+++).

Have been continuing to go through with my Animorphs reread, especially during these weeks when I have been running into a little of anxiety -- reading is always a nice bedtime activity to help with those sorts of moods.  I'm now on book 27 and the past few books have been an interesting swing of ups and downs.  20-22 is the David trilogy and definitely one of the most intense parts of the entire series.  Then 23 is a very well-written Tobias book, probably also a highlight for sure.  But 24 is a weird "filler" episode with the Helmacrons, then 25 is the first book that has a ghostwriter helping, and it shows, as the quality of this book is not really quite up to snuff.  But book 26 we get back on track with a nice story about the group dealing with the Howlers/Crayak, and then book 27 is a fine Rachel book that sheds some more light into her relationship with Tobias.

Damn, what a strong relationship.  I honestly am really glad that I'm rereading these books over 10 years older, as the last time I was...in high school, I think?  Not only having perspective from having it be a second read-through, but also just having experienced relationships firsthand and having a better understanding of life and people in general, makes me appreciate some of these things a lot more.  Tobias's struggles in book 23 for example -- I don't think they really hit me with the same resonance when I was in high school, but I really appreciate the way that book is written now, there are some very powerful moments.  And yeah, Rachel/Tobias, damn.

Other things...I felt like watching something, so I decided to start going through Princess Tutu again.  It's been a while and I forgot a lot about what happened, so I don't mind watching it once more.

The new Melee documentary came out but I haven't watched it yet.  Hopefully it won't be like the first one where I only watched it like 7 years after it came out, haha, but I mean...it IS me, so who knows.

Speaking of which, I had a random itching to play the new SSX game....and when I say "new" I mean the one from 2012, lol.  It's gotten mixed reviews, so I'm a bit hesitant, but maybe if I can pick it up for cheap, it might not be bad to just try out just for fun.

Let's see...what else is there?  Cooking I guess?  We put together some nice chicken liver/gizzard hummus with pita bread, which was pretty satisfying.  I definitely have homemade ramen under my belt as a dish now, though the one ingredient that is still troublesome is the noodles.  I know sun noodle makes really good noodles and I try to just use those, but at nijiya they are usually out of just the plain noodle packs, which means they only have the ones that also include a sauce/soup base (which I don't need and just costs extra).  Maybe at some point I will need to start making my own noodles, haha.  But until then I just keep my eyes peeled for those sun noodle packs so I can buy in bulk and freeze.  Not sure if there any other good fresh ramen noodles available here?

I miss Kiki, as always.  But she does not miss me.