JUN 06

2025

Friday: I was well-positioned to have a fantastic day. I spent the morning taking calls, since I had a doctor's appointment in the afternoon, and Julie took Pigs to the vet for a check-up. With her return, we now have confirmation that both Isabel and John are healthy, and my own confirmation along those lines came with my trip to the specialist. My I don't need to return until I have symptoms that warrant further investigation. The subway trips that bookended my outing necessitated a walk through warm summer streets, and when I got back home, I had my usual salad for a late lunch.

After work, Julie had made sausage and rice casserole with cheese for dinner, and while I was expecting to watch TV, she suggested we do our own things tonight, and we'll watch TV tomorrow. I would have liked to either finish Deltarune Chapter 3, or play more Occult Crescent in FFXIV, or start working on my summer Interactive Fiction project properly, but I got distracted by Hearthstone nonsense. I also wanted to double-check something on last month's Latchkey Trivia music playlist on Spotify only to discover some girl had mistakenly used my email address to set up her Spotify account, so I spent an hour getting it detached from her profile so she'd be able to reset it next time she tries to log on. I also spent a bunch of time checking out Adam Cadre's Hot 100 before I started thinking about old anime like The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzuimiya and Azumanga Daioh! and getting choked up about the unceasing march of time and the fragility of flesh. That seemed like an opportune moment to update my website.

2024

Thursday: though I woke up pretty early, I let myself snooze until 11. Construction continued on the corner outside, but since I was parked at the end of a cross street further down the road, I didn't have to delay my errands. I started with lunch at Subway; since I've been having such unfortunate meal experiences lately, I wanted something simple and predictable. I had a small collection of groceries to pick up at Acme, after which I came back home, once again parking somewhere I wouldn't be blocked from leaving to pick up Julie tomorrow.

After getting my supplies put away, I vacuumed the bedrooms and used Julie's carpet-scraper to ball up a couple of veritable tumbleweeds of cat hair that had accumulated. For dinner, I tried ordering the pepperoni and cheese stromboli from Stogie Joe's for delivery, which is how I learned that they only bother to slice it up for you if you're eating in the restaurant. I ate while putting together some notes for another interactive fiction game I'm planning, and on the other screen, I continued watching Lauren's Undertale Yellow stream on Twitch, since she came back for the first time in over a month. I enjoyed it more than I was expecting; the story's approaching its climax, the art and animation is high quality, and the music is phenomenal.

After the stream ended, I started another programming project; this one involved transcribing the first of 16 audio recordings into a spreadsheet. Despite working for around two hours, I only got through 27 minutes of audio. Since these recordings add up to more than 24 hours of audio, it looks like I've got well over 48 hours of work of unpaid work ahead of me. (It is a little bit rewarding just to see the pages of color-coded notes produced by my labor. When I recorded the audio in the first place, it seemed like a ridiculous indulgence. At one point, I asked aloud: "Am I ever even going to listen to what I am saying, right now?" "Yes," it turns out.)

At various points throughout the day, John wanted attention, so I tried to play with him or give him affection more than just handing out treats. Julie's LEGO set came in the mail, and he's been quite excited to hide behind the box, which made for a great place to swat at a dangled string. Later, I spent some time lying on the rug with that soft red blanket, and he'd knead it for a while before settling by my leg to lie down, himself.

My last task for the day was to do the dishes, since a number of storage lids had dried tuna and other sauced treats that needed to be cleaned off of them. I also disassembled the water fountain and washed it so that I can change out the filters again. While I washed, I watched Preach's Endwalker playthrough as he wrapped up the story in the penultimate zone. It probably kept me up too late, since it's now almost 4 AM. Tomorrow, I need to get a couple of bell peppers and some Sour Skittles before picking Julie up at the airport.

2023

Tuesday: got a slow start thanks to my late night on Monday, but fortunately I had the day off so we could go to a baseball game, Tigers vs Phillies. I wanted to pick up lunch from someplace nearby before Julie got home from work, but I couldn't get out the door in time, so I just finished my half of the pasta before we left. We met up with Phil & Kate, as well as Phil's friend with her kids at the game. (Phillies got a run during one of the first couple of innings, and nobody scored again for the rest of the game.) The smog was pretty pronounced throughout the game. After coming back home, I played more Zelda, finally extricating myself from the underground to finish the Dueling Peaks Stable quest and resume my survey of the eastern half of the skies, which I've nearly completed. I had wanted to get to bed earlier, but Orange Juice was crying in the hallway for an hour at 4 AM for somebody to come out to the living room so she could knead on a floor pillow, and I guess I went out there and fell asleep on the floor.

2022

I played Magic 2014 today on Steam. I was at CHESM, and for whatever reason I couldn't do what I really wanted to do, so I just fired this game up instead on a whim. I don't remember the exact circumstances. Oh, and Carl got me Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, so I tried that for a while.