MAY 14

2026

Thursday: first day on the new phone system. On the old system, we had a microphone mute in the software and in Windows itself, the latter of which I could trigger using a button on my headset cord. Sometimes you'd try to unmute yourself, only to realize that you'd unmuted at the wrong level and your caller still couldn't hear you. Under the new phone system, a call coming in automatically unmutes the headset at the Windows level, meaning that if I'm talking myself through the solution to a puzzling Accounting scenario, my caller may hear account-related details before I register that a call has come in. I prefer the old situation.

Otherwise, the workday went alright. High call volume, in part because people were reaching my team when they were trying to reach Groups Sales and Service. On my breaks, I watched Grinding Gear play through the 7.5 MSQ.

Before my shift started, I did more outline work. I'm probably spending too much time thinking about the overarching story for future potential novels, and I should just start on the first one already, but I need endings to be strong, and that requires proper planning. I also realized what the title of my memoir should be, if that ever seems like something worth pursuing. I have nearly finished the Honey Nut Cheerios, so I've got another two boxes of cereal to go before I can try messing with my breakfast routine.

Speaking of messing with routines: Julie had a work dinner and an opportunity to hang out with friends tonight, so she advised she wouldn't be home after work until much later. I grabbed my exercise mat and went through a 30 minute beginner/intermediate Pilates routine, after which I also did the first of a set of 30 daily Pilates exercises put out by the Shed on instagram, though I'll stick to doing these weekly, most likely. This one was "the hundred," which I interpreted to mean that I should do 100 pulses with my arms. That might have been an incorrect assumption on my part, though.

While these daily website updates are great for record-keeping, I'm not sure they're helping my episodic memory. To diversify my practices, I posted a memory of Monday night Step classes on facebook, and I would like to try to make a regular routine of that, as well. It turns out that posting daily updates, even if they're just cat photos or random videos, leads to a pretty steady uptick in social media engagement. I need to be vigilant about my phone use, since I'm not ready to start nuking my apps.

For dinner, I reheated my share of the scalloped potatoes and ate them while watching the latest Community reaction from that Diegesis channel. I did the dishes afterward, taking a break to do some breathing and vocal exercises. (Ten minutes of low humming is a long time, but I'm remembering the wisdom of tumblr: the time will pass anyway. The earthworm does not conncern itself with distance, only with the earth immediately around itself.) When Julie got home, we talked about the roach she'd seen and killed earlier, so we'll probably swap out the traps this weekend. I treated the cats, posted this update, and went to bed.

2025

Wednesday: think I might be a little behind where I want to be at work. It felt like I spent the whole day treading water. During my breaks, I've been watching basically nothing but Apollo's Blue Prince streams, as I'm still farther along than he was in those videos. After my shift, Julie made that "pasta with sausage and cabbage" meal, minus the pasta. I laid on the bed such that the blanket formed a tent, and John spent a while camped out underneath. Once the food was ready, we came out to the living room to watch more Strangers with Candy while eating. I played some Hearthstone, in which the "Embers of the World Tree" miniset has introduced a degenerate format around imbue hunter one-turn kills. Since I bought the miniset in gold, I've exhausted my stockpile of currency, but it should build up again pretty quickly.

2024

Tuesday: after posting my update last night, I made major progress on Moondrop Isle, which is good since I want to be feature-complete within the next 48 hours. My work shift was uneventful by comparison; I got all my calls out of the way for the week, and I redoubled my efforts on my projects to ensure they're caught up. After work, the ongoing situation with our sink meant that Julie wanted to just order food, and she was interested in trying the Korean/Mexican place again. Last time, we'd gotten the sampler, but I decided to try a specific taco trio. I found the process of eating them pretty unwieldy. Neither the tacos themselves nor the pico de gallo for the nachos stood out as something I really want to try again, so next time, I should see how their cheesesteak or other sandwiches perform. After eating, I fell asleep for a few hours, and now that I've posted this update, I resume my work on the game.

2023

Sunday: we took the subway up to city hall and walked over to Kook Burger & Bar for lunch. The burger tasted so good, I couldn't help but save some of the sauce for later by spilling it on my jeans. Our next stop on the day's itinerary was a trip to the Mütter Museum of medical oddities. Julie figured I'd never be willing to go myself, but I wanted to make the most of our shared weekends while we still had them.

Julie recently reminsiced about my visit to her anatomy lab in which the students performing the dissections would introduce friends and family members to their body donors. Enough time has passed that I felt like I'd handled the occasion well. Our trip through the Mütter Museum suggested that I'd been overconfident in that recollection. It didn't matter that the portrayals of skin conditions were wax models; I still found that display case ghastly.

Rather than dwell on the exhibits, I focused on the more neutral informational placards and on people-watching. Somebody on my Tumblr dashboard used to reblog "Tokyo street snaps" and other fashion content, and we saw multiple outfits that would have fit right in.

After stopping by the souvenir shop, we walked back home, and I played a bit of the new Zelda before making that goulash recipe. I spent most of my effort trying to progress into the northwest corner of the map, which the game calls the Akkala region.