Recent Updates
2/12/2025 | Life keeps on being busy, but I'm still trying to make more time for my fun stuff including Dryad Glen. =3 Slovene learning is going slowly (as all language learning does at the beginning), and my QPR and I are playing our first session of D&D later today~ My writing for GYWO is behind, but it's still encouraging me to write more, and it feels good to be shaking off the creative dust!
WE ALSO FINALLY BEAT VEILGUARD! owo I'm still mulling over my thoughts on the game, but overall I had a good time playing it. I enjoyed the characters and the environments and lots of little lore details. I do have a fair few criticisms, but they come from a place of love, and I'll have a more in-depth write up on my Dragon Age shrine once the dust has settled. (And I'll probably have some fanfiction to write as I get into the nitty gritty of it lol.)
I don't think I've mentioned here, but my partner's gaming PC has been having issues since Christmas, and I've literally been losing sleep over it. ^^; I finally caved and took it to a repair shop a week ago, and turns out the CPU is shot because there was a bug with some of Intel's 13th/14th gen processors (which I didn't realize when we bought it last year). There is a fix out, you just have to update your BIOS, which I did in the process of troubleshooting, but the damage had already been done. Unfortunately, the company we bought his PC from is unwilling to extend the warranty and has shoddy turn around times. I'm still going to try getting a replacement from that company, but I'm just having the repair shop replace it. Best case senario though, I'll have an extra CPU so I can start piecing together parts to build a PC of my own! (I mostly game on my laptop who is a champ, but gets very hot even with a cooling pad. >.>;;) Worst case, my partner's PC will be fixed in a couple weeks, and I'll be pulling out my call center knowlege to make formal complaints to the original company.
Otherwise, trying to make more plans so we have things to look forward to. Want to talk to my partner about going home to see my folks in the spring for my birthday. We were able to get tickets to see Nine Inch Nails on their tour this summer which I'm so pumped about! There's a balloon festival east of us at the end of the month that I'd like to go to, but it'll depend on the snow/ice driving conditions. (I grew up hot air ballooning, so they hold a special place in my heart!) Just... trying not to drown in the winter sads and overwhelm with the state of the world a little bit at a time. I hope you're all doing as well as you can be and that you're staying warm!
1/29/2025 | Happy belated new years all! I can't believe it's already the end of January. US politics are also in chaos, but I've been trying to focus really hard on what is within my control so that I can keep the anxiety spiralling to a minimum. (Idk if it's working, but anything is worth a shot right now.) I've also been journalling a little more and trying to reach out to friends so that I'm not just endlessly ruminating on things.
Stress aside, it's been a busy start to the year! My mom, who reconnected with our extended family in Slovenia two years ago, and decided to start learning Slovene this year and she asked me if I wanted to join her. I'm really out of practice with language learning (despite still knowing a little Spanish, Italian, and Japanese), but I thought it would be a fun thing to do with her. =3 There aren't a lot of resources for Slovene out there, but I'll probably start a page here when I have a little collection of links to share. (If on the slim chance you're also learning Slovene, I'd be happy to have some other folks to practice with!)
I'm also still moving along on my crochet sweater. I just have to finish the last cuff, sew up the seams, and block her, and then she will be wearable! I've been a little unfocused for crochet, but I think it's because I'm out of "do the same thing with tiny modifications" territory and into "read the directions closely". But hopefully!!! This weekend!!!
On a whim I also joined Get Your Words Out for 2025 with their tiniest wordcount pledge (75,000). I used to be a fairly prolific writer of fanfic (that I never shared, lol) and original fiction (mostly short stories and poetry), but I realized at the end of fall that I was really missing it! I'd wanted something to encourage me to write again (self-motivation is hard), but 200ish words a day didn't seem like such an insane task. I'm still figuring out where to make time in my day to write, especially when I can't be at my laptop, and I'm already behind, but just keeping track of what I have been doing has been strangely encouraging in contrast to other tracking options I've tried.
Slightly related in that I'll be needing to do a little more writing for it, my QPP asked if we could play D&D together! >=) He's only played once, and I've been playing since I was 10 but have never gotten to DM, so we're gonna play around with a smol campaign just the two of us. I'm also jazzed because I sold him on my favourite campaign setting, Eberron, which I've only gotten to play in a little bit, and this is a great excuse to recycle some of my old D&D characters who I never got to play with long term but invested so much love into. I guess it might be time to really commit to making some OC pages here too!