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Weird Question Department- did anyone send me something in the mail around the end of last month? There's a tracking number in the system that scanned once at a sorting center and then has never been seen again. Unfortunately, the system also only has the tracking number, no origin point, and no actual image of the label so we're not even sure whose it is. I can't think of anything unaccounted for! (Not the KS I thought it might be.)

Also mildly convinced there's something going on/I'm supposed to have done by tomorrow but also nothing comes to mind. I have a busy week next week, but this week is pretty open. But it's also Fat Tuesday and the Lunar New Year so perhaps my brain is trying to juggle those in.

Other than that, work last night wasn't ridiculous but I hadn't slept well, so I pretty much deflated early but slept decent. I did get runners checked for both Star Abyss kits so I'm just going to count the entire day as a win anyway, lol. I'll keep working on the Destiny Astray when I have the brain power, and I grabbed a battered KO GM to poke at otherwise.

This one's a doozy in terms of my post lengths so far aha

For anyone with access to my locked posts, you might have seen this post with some of the details I mention near the end, but it's a very different theme of discussion imo.

( Almost 1.5k words of discussion about crushes and questionable management of mental health )

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Uh, if this person or any of our mutual friends/acquaintances are reading this and can figure out who is who in this recounting, congrats? I wasn't trying to hide it in particular, but I'm also too cowardly to say this to y'all directly, this is so humiliating LMAO please don't bully me :kneelingpray:

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Birthday was the 13th! I'm officially 40! I do not think I have the maturity levels to be a 40 year old! I smoke too much weed and forget laundry in the wash and stay up too late just to regret it deeply in the morning. Shit's crazy. But as Guillermo del Toro said, "As a kid, I dreamed of having a house with secret passages and a room where it rained 24 hours a day. The point of being over 40 is to fulfill the desires you've been harboring since you were 7." So...idek what 7 year old me desired, but it was probably something to do with being happy, so that's what I'm aiming for.

cypher and I played Warhammer 40k: Kill Team today! They with their Plague Marines and me with my Hernkyn Yaegir team. It was a slow match at first but soon there was fierce battling. It ended up being 7 (me) to 10 (them). It was A LOT of fun and I think I learned some things. We're trying to get good enough that we can play in public, haha.

I heard of spikedluv's passing. It's always so surreal when someone in fandom dies. Like...we're not supposed to do that? I don't know. It's strange. We were not friends but we ran in shared fandom circles and she was such a presence on DW. My heart goes out to all who knew her. <3

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tbh i don't have a lot of progress to report, but i'm trying to keep myself accountable, so.

• websites: i opened my wip treasury layout and immediately closed it. the inspiration is not there, unfortunately. i'd like to take another stab at it this week, but, we'll see...
• writing: i... poked at but did not write any endwalker fic. i did manage to do some work on an original project, which was good, but it wasn't very much progress.
• video games: i'm nearly done chapter 6 of trails in the sky the 3rd. hoping to make solid progress on that this week.

so what have i been doing? too much ffxiv, per usual... i finished cálei's relic step (though i haven't gotten the relic itself yet due to lack of tomes, oops) and i'm working on reis still... i did bozja through CLL on an alt for glam this weekend, which was very productive. and other than that i've been working on leveling a different alt. in short: too many characters, too little time.

books: currently reading the stars undying, which is a sci fi take on caesar and cleopatra; i'm enjoying it but i haven't been reading it as much as i should. hopefully more of that this week too.

i would really like to finish trails in the sky the 3rd this week, though; i really shouldn't have that much more of it to go. here's hoping.

i'm in the middle of Music's Modern Muse: A Life of Winnaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac by Sylvia Kahan, which is fascinating so far. i'm really looking forward to doing a writeup on it once i'm done. tl;dr: it's a biography of this chick who was the Big Lesbian Money in the Parisian music scene during her lifetime; she personally commissioned a bunch of Composers You've Heard Of and had them debut at her salons and such.

and, yeah, as i said, a full writeup will come later, but rn i'm just noting something that struck me / gave me an unexpected Some Kinda Feeling, idk—

( this is probably all really banal to ppl who read more history and/or queer theory than me idk lol )

So Final Fantasy XIV has these fan fests every few years, right? I cannot afford to go to one, BUT they run a fan art contest alongside it.

I entered the contest two fan fests ago, with a very poor crocheted rendition of the Fat Cat minion. Looks like I don't have record of it on Ravelry. Needless to say, I was not at all surprised when I wasn't even a finalist, let alone a winner.

I entered the 2023 contest with a feverishly-knitted doll, and am STILL thrilled at being a finalist for it. For those that don't feel like clicking through to see the picture: the doll is wearing the Valentione dress that was so popular from several events ago.

It is now 2026, we're gearing up for another Fan Fest, which means the fan art contest is ON. Deadline is March 2nd.

I had a great idea for it, but there was NO way I could get it done in time, so even though I ordered yarn, I reluctantly put that idea to the side. Still gonna do it someday, but not when I'm under deadline.

I had another tentative idea for it, but it would have required lots and lots of counting, and fiber artists aren't that great at counting. Plus, that idea was big enough that I wasn't sure I'd have time to finish it, either.

So I fell back to my third idea, which is really one that I had last year but didn't do. Am working on it today, after not touching it for five days (yikes!).

Said in a discord:

12:21pm
so here I am, working on my fanfest entry. I am designing it myself and there's multiple pieces to it. I have proof of concept that two pieces fit correctly together, HUZZAH! but now I have to knit the other four pieces... aka, the fun part is done and now it's just work work work and blah. send me strength!

12:43 PM
it is a universal truth that knitters can't count to small digits. I was wrong, I do not have four pieces left, I have FIVE. and that's just on [redacted]. After this, I still need to do [redacted] and [redacted], oof

I have finished the first of the five pieces I have left on this portion. It took an hour. Each of the remaining four pieces will take about an hour each. And that's not including [redacted 1] and [redacted 2], which are both rather big portions themselves and will take time. I know how to do [redacted 1] already, and have ideas for [redacted 2], but the actual work of knitting is.... well, WORK.

I'm not sure I can finish before the deadline. But I am going to try. It will mean knitting most of the rest of the day, and touching it every day until deadline.

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