Today my roommate celebrated her birthday, and I'm gonna be real, I was a little bit scared because she invited a lot of people, and I was worried it might be a little much for me, and because we live in the same small flat, it's not really like I would be able to isolate myself very well. However, only a few people ended up showing, and honestly I really enjoyed it. It wasn't really all that much of a party, more like a game night. So thats what we ended up doing, we had some snacks and played some games, it was rather chill and I'd totally do it again!
Tomorrow I'm gonna go to a Pokémon TCG league cup that's a 1,5h car ride away from here. And it starts at 10am, so I really gotta get up early to pick up my friends, which is probably going to be hard for me. But I really wanna go, I haven't been to any TCG events since the rotation killed my Miraidon deck. Tomorrow I plan on playing Charizard. I'm not proud of it, but I'm not gonna pay hundereds of Euro for iron hands just so I can keep playing an electric type deck that doesn't even perform significantly better than much cheaper alternatives. And since I've warmed up to Charizard on TCG Live, it's probably gonna be my best shot to score some points tomorrow!
My therapist says he hasn't seen me in such a bad shape for a long time
Yeah... I really would like to start writing more entries again, but I am always afraid of doing nothing but whining about the same problems just because the problems are big and won't go away for much longer than I always hope for. A thing that I might do is just focus on smaller things again. I've kinda navigated this blog into a retrospective on every day on my life. I try to write about everything that has happened since the last time I wrote a blog entry. But it doesn't have to be that. I can just leave out shit if I don't like it, and make shorter blog entries about just small things that happened that I enjoyed.
For example, yesterday I played Mario Party 7 with some friends and it was really fun. Personally I actually prefer Mario Party 8, since I find the stupid motion control mini games really fun, and both Koopa's Tycoon Town and Shy Guys Perplex Express are some of my favorite Mario Party boards to ever exist. Windmillville is also great though, and since for some reason not everyone has a Wii sensor bar set up literally all the time like I do, we resorted to playing a gamecube game instead. I lost by 9 coins due to bonus stars, but I still had a great time. And we all know that I had the best strategic play, I'll be content with that for now.
Kurisu is the only girl I know that can have fun with a dungeon master for 12 HOURS!
Man, yesterday I had my longest DnD session yet and it was really fun! I'm still pretty much caught up in the hype of it, but as it is with pen and paper game sessions, at least those that aren't recorded and made public, there aren't a lot of people to fangirl about it with. Now, I neither feel like explaining the entire history of this campaign that has been going for like half a year at this point, nor do I want to bore you with contextless info regarding the latest session, however I want to tell you that the beauty of it lies within the fact that we already met up earlier than usually to have more time, and when the time came to pack up and leave for the last bus we were still in the middle of a battle. So we decided that we might as well finish it off and walk home afterwards, it's just round about 7km after all. But if we already walk anyways, we can just do that whenever, right? So why not tie it up in a bow with a little roleplaying. So we went to the tavern, where the DMs self-insert was waiting for us, and we ended up roleplaying as our drunk characters while simultaniously drinking together irl, and suddenly it was 5am and the first bus came around. That's when I went home.
Spending time with friends is really nice. Which is why I am really happy that I am also slowly getting back to my reguarly scheduled tandem-meetups. Tomorrow I'm meeting with a friend, the exchange student I helped out last month. Since he now finally has a home internet-connection, we can go to mostly just meeting for fun, which is really nice.
I just uh... gotta start preparing some shit for the next semester, because that is kinda starting soon and I don't really have any idea where all of my time went. Also there's still money things to sort out, but I'll work on that. I won't go to bed before having written at least three emails.
Hey friends, this is Kurisu with an irreguarly scheduled blog post to let you all know that I am in fact alive! I just had to be dead a little bit to save humanity from original sin, but now I'm back and everything is fine, actually.
For real though I'm doing alright. I had a few days this month where I had almost written a blog entry, but either because of time, or out of a dumb feeling of guilt I ended up not doing that. I translated an interview for a friend this month and it kinda felt bad to take the time to write for this website, but not to work on the translation, even though it's two totally different things and they surely wouldn't have minded anyways, even if they had read this blog.
Apart from that I also worked for another job (the one as the driver), which sadly doesn't pay as well as I need it to because I don't get enough hours, but it did help stabilize my situation a little bit. I should apply for another job though. And I also totally should look into university shit for the next semester... honestly there is still a lot of work to do. Like, until I'm back in some kind of spot where I can simply do things and have a daily life that isn't just one gigantic transitional period. I'll get there though. I have to, right?
Oh, I also started dating someone which has been nice. She might even read this, I haven't given her the url to my blog yet but I did show her the website. Maybe she'll check it out, if not then probably later, so hi!
What I haven't told her, is that this is basically the first time I'm doing this. All my relationships up until now were long distance, which meant we mostly got to know each other online and only met once we were already fairly close. I also never really met with people I got to know on dating apps. (Exept for mirdo who I met while having my profile open to men out of pure boredom and he kinda got me into the local Pokémon TCG scene, which was cool, so shoutout to him) This time we basically got to know each other on the first date and are still going. It's very different from what I'm used to, but we both have a good time and that makes me very happy.
So yeah, I'm still ganbaring. Happy Easter to those who celebrate! (I don't, I lack the money to visit my family right now)
I'm making progress. Not only am I still spending most of my time with friends, meaning I actually go outside and do stuff and don't spend all my time depressed at home, I got a bunch of cool stuff done!
I went to see my psychiatrist so I can continue my therapy and get new ADHD meds, started looking over a kid, meaning I get some weekly pocket money which is certainly appreciated. I also had a new Japanese exchange student put in my care whom I helped to get settled here, and we quickly became friends which is nice.
Today I had a trial shift at that catering service I wanna deliver for. I can really see myself work there for at least two days a week, if not three. And if I do, I can actually earn more money than I spend. I haven't had that in years, so I'm a little exited.
Oh, I also went on a small hike, a little over 5km according to my phone. The weather was really nice so I wanted to take a few pictures of sunset with the analog camera I got last month. If I like them I might build a project gallery for them next to the funtography gallery. But we'll see about that. First I gotta get done with this role of film, and I should do it soon. The cherry blossoms started blooming and--
Wait. I'm leaving this in. Writing about cherry blossoms made me remember something really important: I missed my first anniversary!!!!
I started this blog last March when I had COVID for the first time after going to a Zebrahead concert! Man that's wild to think about. When I started this project I honestly wasn't sure if I would be able to maintain it, but it really did become a regular thing. I'm sometimes still self-concious about wherever people actually read all of this. I know I have people who check-in (semi-)reguarly, but most of them admit to me they aren't reading every post, so sometimes there might just be one that no one reads. But I just have to keep in mind that I am mostly doing this for myself. This is my diary. Where I write about my life to remind myself of the cool stuff that recently happened so I can fully appreciate it. I think my therapist is also in favor of this. So yeah, to another year!
PS: I just want to finish the tangent about the cherry blossoms. So they started blooming really early this year and I want to take photos, but not with the monochrome film I'm using right now. So I kinda just wanna get done with this roll now but I don't want to waste it either, so I'll just have to have my camera with me a lot and try really hard to find enough subjects before I do 花見 (hanami) with my friends.
I feel a little bad for not writing more over the past few days. I did a lot of fun stuff with friends that's worth writing about. DnD, cooking with friends, yesterday I helped a friend moving because I'm the one with the car. The car, right. My car also got towed away, because I forgot I parked it at the river. When flood came they had to save it from drowning, which is nice that they did that, but for one my rear mirror was broken when I came to pick it up, and for two I don't really have any money to be paying a towing service this month, which is a huge problem. I have no money in general right now. Like none at all. I took too long to find another job, which is mostly because I thought I was gonna be working at a hotel this month but we know how that went.
So yeah, this month I'm living completely on overdraft, while I hopefully pick up work as a driver again. Then I can get my monetary issues sorted and then surely the constant existential dread will be less severe and I will be able to work on uni again.
Until then I will just continue to spend all my time with friends and not think about reality too much. Maybe that's why I didn't write blog posts... it makes me reflect on my life, which I've been avoiding. But soon life will be incredible again, surely. I just gotta believe!
Today I finally got closure on that job that I was promised. "We haven't heard from you, so we gave it to someone else."
I literally called five times and went there in person again to try and find out what was up. Everytime I got told they would reach out to me. If they hadn't I would've called way more. Either way, they never did. I have no idea if this is just the pinnacle of incompetence regarding communication, or maybe they just were too chicken to tell me they didn't want me for the job for whatever reason. Either way I'm kinda pissed, but also relieved because I can finally divert resources to a job someone actually wants me to do.
I also went to karaoke again. For the last time at that specific place probably, since my friend has to go back to Japan and this was his farewell party. I really hope I can see him again sooner than later, but that requires me to fly to Japan... which requires me to buy plane tickets. So I need a job. I'll try to send out some emails tomorrow, maybe I can work something out. Karaoke would also be easier to do in Japan.
So, last week started out kinda shitty. I didn't write the exam and because of that my university life is kinda fucked. I have to give up on my student loan, get a job and find a new minor so I can actually progress towards graduation. All these problems are still very much present, but my mood is a lot better than it was last week.
Since the semester ended, we had two DnD sessions this week, which already was pretty fun by itself, but on top of that I had a Skyblock-LAN session with my friend quaka on Tuesday, and Juna (another friend of mine) came over for the weekend, and we had a really good time too. We played Pikmin 3 bingo battle, a lot of 3DS, went to play some pinball and watched Blackberry and the Scott Pilgrim anime. Actual couch coop is just so much fun, and I think the internet kinda tries to have us forget that. I hope I'll always have friends willing to come over and play the games I like with me in person, my mom would call it pathetic, but I think it is hard to have more fun socializing than sitting in a room together and playing something on the big screen. (Sadly though I don't have a big screen, I have a PC monitor that my consoles are also connected to).
Today Juna and I also went to meet with a bunch of my friends from Japan, and together we had a gyōza party. It's become a tradition at this point, when a Japanese exchange student I'm friends with goes home, we all meet up and make gyōza together. It's tasty, easy, and just something that works perfect if you have a bunch of people working together. I would never make fresh gyōza by myself, that would be so much busy work, but this way it's really fun and easy.
Now I feel tired (Watching anime till 3am while having to be at a cooking party at 11am took its toll), but also pretty damn refreshed. And I really hope that next week I can channel this feeling into sorting some things out.
So when I have too much on my plate and start to hear the impending breakdown coming, what I often end up doing is disregard everything that would be sensible to do and distract myself instead. Think of it as trying to learn for your exam, but you're procrastinating and clean your flat instead, except I procrastinate my entire life and read all 10 volumes of 先輩はおとこのこ (Senpai wa otoko no ko) instead. On one hand I feel good about it, because a good romance will just allow you to feel a huge array of emotions that will just let you feel alive again, but on the other hand... yeah my problems won't be getting smaller like this... I should listen to my therapist and try the plan thing again. Even if I just get some problems sorted out, it would already help and make me hopefully feel slightly less existential dread which will paralyze me less and I might feel less aimless. Which is a weird thing, because I am for example, aware that I have an exam tomorrow, I know what I need to do and I know how I need to prioritize my problems, and yet I just won't take the first step. That plan will be my first step now, and I'm gonna do it right away.
Remember when I was going on about the cool new job I got as a nightguard? Yeah, I'm increasingly sure I don't actually have it after all. Like, they didn't tell me I don't have the job, they just told me they would reach out to me and then didn't. So I called them again. And they told me they would get back to me. And they didn't. And then two more times. I am not a fan of this system. If you don't wanna hire me then tell me so I can go on and look for something else. And if you do want to hire me... then what the fuck are you doing? Please just let me work!
But hey, just because I'm jobless that doesn't mean I don't have tons of work. After the semester is coming to a close, and I gotta punch all that book knowledge that I am chronically bad at remembering into my brain for like two days only to then forget everything all over again. Yeah, I have to do that... which obviously doesn't mean I actually manage to do that.
A friend of mine and I were playing Splatoon 1 the other day, just for nostalgias sake, and we started a bet on who will have the higher rank once the Nintendo Network goes down. This means I've been trying to play some ranked matches. Focus on that trying. It's really hard to get full lobbies, especially without cheaters. It's a little better during weekends apparently, but not by much, but it can be fun when it works out, and also it is just sooooo good to see my Splatoon 1 inkling in her Ika Musume gear again. I'm really gonna miss this game, so I wanna try to get as much as I can out of it before it comes to that. I even incorporated my WiiU into my setup again! Keeping the Gamepad charged! Things I haven't done since 2018.
I also learned about flexboxes. Yeah. This entire site was coded without them until today. Which is why I really hated css and never wanted to have to do anything that requires me working on layout shenanigens. But today I did it! I added a box for buttons right on my home page! It always felt a little empty compared to what I've seen on other sites I quite like, so I thought it would be a good idea to put it there in order to make things a little more lively. Now what's left is to completely rework the media log, finish my shrines, archive last years blog posts... and then rework the entire website to run on slightly less shitty code. But don't expect that anytime soon, I still want to at least try to get some shit for uni done.
The end of the semester is near. Sleep is no more.
So today I started working on a presentation that is Tuesday. I've known about it the whole semester. And if I say today, I mean today. I didn't plan for anything else this Sunday to focus on exactly this presentation, but I didn't actually do anything until midnight. And now it's 4am and I read like one encyclopedia entry and wrote less than this blog entry. And now I am dead tired and have to stop, which really sucks. But well, I'll just skip out on my other class tomorrow and do it then. And then do the same as today except I might not go to bed tomorrow ever because I have no choice if I want to get this done.
But hey, there's fun news also. I went on my first actual Pokémon TCG tournament! I got two wins and that didn't get me anything but I am still proud because it was my first time and while my deck isn't the worst, there are a lot of popular cards and deck gimmicks that I didn't know yet (and there probably still are more), and sometimes it's really helpful to know which cards not to play. So I actually have hopes that I will be able to improve if I just keep it up! Now to bed though.
I've got a job! At least I'm pretty sure. I still gotta go there for a trial shift but I think I will be able to handle that. And I think the job might be nice! I'm gonna be night guard at a hotel, which naturally means shifts from 9pm-5am, but I think I will be able to handle that. More importantly: I am allowed to read, watch stuff, work on uni-stuff or literally whatever I want as long as I stay awake and make a decent impression on the guests. Now, I haven't found out what this means for video games, but honestly I don't see why not. And thinking about all the PSX games I wanted to check out, I promptly decided to hack my vita. Which I will do some time later, when my SD2Vita arrived.
Which reminds me of the other modding stuff I got! There is so much, first I got myself a GBxCart RW, a gameboy cart flasher that will not only allow me to back up ROMs and save files from original hardware, but it will finally give me an easy way to access my Gameboy Camera photos. Sadly this also means that my future photos will look a bit different which will probably annoy me, and they will certainly have a different resolution. I still gotta figure out what this means for my gallery.
Other than that I got a fancy ribbon cable that will make my picoboot mod a lot fancier, and the stuff I've wanted for my GBA SP for literal ages, namely a new battery, an IPS screen and a USB-C charging jack. Just gotta find some time to go to the makerspace and install all of it.
I'm also thinking about buying a new laptop. Possibly a Macbook even! I think that would be really helpful at work, for uni-work as well as for working on this website on the go. (My new job for example) The tablet I'm currently using on the go was just a cheap way to have something compact for on campus zoom sessions at the time. I'm actually still surprised how well it holds up for a 100€ tablet, it's just that it's just inconvient enough for me to be like "Nah I won't work here, I'll do it at home at my desktop" and then I never work at my desktop. But this surely is gonna help, right? ...Right?
Okay, so I've been back at uni for a week now. And I thought I was gonna have infinite time because I don't have to work anymore. But actually with my social life being somewhat intact right now... even without work, I have plenty of stuff to do that cause me to not really be able to spend as much time to work on the website as I would have liked. But hey, I have a good time and that is also nice. I watched The Boy and The Heron, I had my weekly DnD session and my Splatoon scrim, I had a friend over for Smash today, and tomorrow I'm gonna go to a Pokémon TCG meetup. Oh right, Sunday I wanna try out my new pizza stone. I got a stone that you just put on your kettle grill and then it is basically supposed to function as a stone oven. Which I hope it will, because I am sick of not so nice pizza from my kitchen oven that can only do puny 250°C!
Oh, another great thing that happened today: I finally got the chance to go to a Japanese tea party as part of a university workshop. I couldn't do that back when I was in Japan because people there didn't ignore COVID yet. But it was really great. I might reach out to the instructer to do it again, even though that won't be as cheap as the workshop. I would love to enjoy tea with other people more often generally. Like, not just having people over and drinking tea while gaming or watching a movie, but really letting the tea be the main event, it really helps me focus. I wish I had space for two or three tatami mats somewhere.
No, I'm not above this stupid joke only because most people won't get it. It's kind of an established thing with my Senpai that I hold dear to me.
But seriously: Happy New Years!
I hope you had a good time while the new year came along. Personally, I was with a bunch of friends, great food, and a foosball table. At one point I
could even take the aux chord and only a few people complained sometimes!
Also: Even though I usually don't have new years resolutions, this year there is something just because it happened to come to me between the years.
I've been reading experience boost, the webcomic that I still need to add to my media log but haven't because updating this site is still annoying right
now, and it really made me wanna try and get back into an MMO again. I always kinda wanted to have one MMO that I can say I played at the end of my path
to become a video game connaisseur. And I think if I start now, that should be Final Fantasy 14. So once I am back home and have some time, I'll try
to get back into it. I also decided to play Tokimeki Memorial sometime next year. And also a gazillion other games of course. I wanna see just how far I
can get. With movies and shows too. And manga. In fact I just read the 13 available chapters of the Bocchi the Rock spin-off manga centering around Hiroi
Kikuri, and I am determined to do more. With books I'm gonna stick with what I started last year though, that is more than enough backlog.
Oh right, I had an idea to make the media log look nicer. You know how the pokedex looks in scarlet and violet? Maybe kinda like that. That can't be THAT
hard to code, right? Right?
