Better write another one of these before I push it off...

Unsurprisingly, it's much more of a challenge to spend a full day on Rhythm Quest, even when in theory the day is scheduled out for it.  The tough part about it is that it's not like I didn't do good work today, just that the time was spent on other things.  What I think this means is that I'm going to have to do my best to chunk out the Rhythm Quest work into very small pieces whenever possible -- this will make it easier to squeeze in at other times -- and then do whatever I can to make sure that I am actually setting aside entire afternoons (or nights...) to work on larger tasks like trying to start on that next level.

Instead today I cooked both meals (as usual) and actually put a bunch of work into putting the second chicken coop together, which involved lugging all of the pieces up to the backyard where the other one is, and then starting to do the assembly itself.  It's about halfway done now, so I decided to call it quits so I can try to move it into place tomorrow and see if the doorways can actually connect well, then maybe I can see about assembling the rest of it, and putting down some more hardware cloth.  Chickies are doing well in the meantime, they are getting along slightly better, though there is still some bullying.  Shockingly, Black Chicky seems to have given up on brooding very quickly this time.  Maybe because of the cold...?

Speaking of the cold, it certainly has gotten a lot cooler here recently.  The new place does get quite cold (although I guess the old place was cold too), I've previously been leaving the heater vent in my room closed but maybe it's time to open it during the day at the very least (and maybe close it at night).

One Hour Compo was today -- initially I was thinking of doing some more work towards the current soundtrack commission that I've got on my plate, but the image theme came up and I thought it would be nice to do a nice downtempo chillhop track.  I ended up with this song titled "infinite night sky" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBR1VtSPY_U), which I was quite happy with.  I don't think I've got enough experience with this type of music that I can be confident to write one the entire way without stopping and fumbling on something or another (pad sounds are a tough one for this genre), but on the other hand, I feel like I've really started to find my voice in it.  That's been a pleasant surprise to discover.  I don't think I could have told you exactly what my brand of chill music would have been before, but now that I'm listening to it, it sort of makes sense.  I use similar structures from a lot of my other music -- using layers that play throughout, while switching up others.  Slowly building up to a section that speaks louder than the others, than pulling back and returning back to the beginning.  It's still my writing, just, slower and everything is more washed out by reverb and vinyl processing.

It's cool to go back to my previous work (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA53w3Fonek for example) and see how far I've progressed and developed this sound.  You could say the same about my other styles too, of course, but I think this one is more apparent since it was developed in isolation, yet much more quickly since I already had such a solid foundation to build upon.

My Pokemon Unite group fizzled out and stopped playing (to nobody's surprise), so it's back to solo queuing for the most part for me.  Well, I'm no stranger to sticking to something after everybody else has left, so that's just fine.

I took a stab at the next Casear 3 mission (Carthago) and eventually admitted defeat after a somewhat-successful start.  The main problem I ran into was food distribution, which is always a finicky thing -- and tricky in this map since you have scarce farmland to work with, and have to supplement it with fishing.  I also got stomped by the military invasions later in the mission -- I'm going to have to actually import iron/weapons and train some legionnaires in order to stop them, no more just being lazy and trying to kite all day with javelin auxiliaries anymore.

I should have already known this before, but food distribution really is key to everything in laying out housing blocks.  Especially since it's very difficult for the market ladies to "do the right thing" when it comes to fetching food from granaries, I think it was a mistake how I haphazardly let some of my housing blocks be connected to the same food supplies, and wasn't strict on isolating different food types.  For my next go-around I'll need to try and avoid intermingling fruit / fish, and separate the food distribution wherever possible.  Maybe even build a grand temple to reduce food consumption.  It somehow seems to be a lot more difficult to get food to an entire housing block than I remembered before, but maybe my memory is wrong or I just need to experiment more with my market placements, or stockpile more food before starting to distribute it.

I got a chance to just vibe and dance for a bit at an event last week, that was nice!  I was pleasantly surprised by my movement not being as rusty as I expected despite not really have practiced at all in recent times.  Ah, speaking of dance stuff, it looks like I will be hopping down to DJ at Friday Night Waltz next week on the 11th.  I'll be competing with Fall Ball (I guess my fault for not penciling down the date after the initial email), so it might be a quieter night, but I'll be bringing good music as always, so come stop by if you're so inclined.

Progress on the Christmas letters continues slowly and steadily (as with most things in my life) -- 17 of those are done now, so I'd say I'm like a good half of the way there.

Somewhat surprisingly (?), my recently chronic cough (gerd related?) has gotten better this week, probably in no small part due to eating a bit lighter and more healthy.  I was (probably to the chagrin of my care team) initially supposed to have a spicy-food week, but due to various factors it seems like I've been eating relatively "nice" instead in terms of foods that might be better for acid -- porridge, some premade refridgerated pizza, brussels sprouts, seafood pasta, chicken and broccoli.  I've tried to ease back on the citrus juice a bit as well for the week, along with elevating a bit more while sleeping.  I didn't actually expect to notice a marked difference, but I have, so that's actually quite encouraging.