It Has To Be A Pretty Dress! {Week 42}

Very unexpected stuff this week. Mostly a visitor who dropped in without warning. I don't know if this is my anti-social streak but one of my biggest pet-peeves is people showing up without warning. Even a message an hour or two ahead would have sufficed. I don't know... depends, I guess, because if we're deep in a friendship this rule no longer exists. Like, if Tom wants to show up whenever he totally can. But many other people... I guess I just appreciate a heads-up but maybe I'm being too picky. And also I lost many, many hours gaming this week. It's bad news for someone who already barely gets anything done.

On his throne.

On Monday I did a very serious room cleaning. I know I say I do that every week or two (as all people do, I would guess) but this one was serious. Things went into boxes and the like. Otherwise I did some more painterly art on the tablet to get a better grasp of it's unique features. Here's some simple thumbs I did for my SW5E PCs though, Jedi Master Kiyan Tansi and Jedi Padawan Maro Hari.

Kiyan.

Maro.

I made a grave mistake on Tuesday. So, last post I mentioned getting myself Dragon Age Origins on the 360 so that I'd have a Bioware game to play by myself when Mo didn't want to play KOTOR together. And he's played it before and he told me: wait, wait, wait... it's a very good game. I was, like, well, duh. Okay... but he insisted: it's a very, very, very good game. Whatever, man!

I need help...

I'm sorry to say it is indeed a very good game...I have lost hours... nay, days! In the short time I managed to do all the quests in Lothering and the Brecilian Forest I have become completely trapped within the world of Dragon Age... I sat down Tuesday evening for a short stint and before I knew it it was 4AM. My day, my sleep schedule, my life is ruined!

 I guess this is my life now!

And don't get me started on the characters... I was going in 100% sure to be romancing Leliana. And I like her a lot. But unfortunately you meet Alistair first and he said funny things to me and it was over! Fucking Bioware does it again... they imbue polygons with incredibly moving personalities. Apparently there is a way to meta-game the fuck out of everything where you technically end up with both of them as your partners/lovers but I couldn't do the whole breaking up/reconciling to either of them. Especially Alistair, he wouldn't understand. Look at how stupid he is! 

Don't mind the cursed gaming setup.

Earlier in the week my sister and her friend also went absolutely nuts with the Halloween decorations. She said she didn't want to do much and we ended up looking like Hot Topic. Nothing of note on Wednesday otherwise.

I bet you're terrified right now.

By the way, I've not mentioned this much on the blog but many may already know of the ongoing protests in France led by students. Obviously, I support completely (yeah, I don't give a fuck if they break windows or burn trash cans after how cops and their own faculty and the education boards treat them). My sister is in high school and has taken parts in walk-outs and honestly I should be participating as well and want to but there's issues... I'm not a French citizen, so participating is extra risky and also aid to talking points that conservatives are spreading that these protests are led by non-French people (total bullshit). I'm not gonna act like I'm doing the right thing, I am being kind of a pussy, but also I'm not just another European in France. I have an asylum seeker status and I do not want to lose it. The current centrist government is incredibly lax on upholding the law and human rights so I don't trust them to do right by anyone, especially non-French people. But if there's something I would say is that you should not fall for the smears the mainstream media is spreading about the students: they are highly organized and their demands are clear and incredibly reasonable.

I had a weird situation on Neocties on Thursday. A website that generates an exuberant amount of AI stuff followed me and was also apparently discussing me on their feed or something. Now, the recommended and my usual go to is block and move on. So I totally understand that I did not follow my own advice by doing the following but it just felt so, so egregious to me. Not only is it just AI slop but it was also NSFW and pornographic. I'm no puritan but AI porn is literally evil. It's the shit that makes CSAM and deepfake porn of real people, mostly women. AI generation is always so misogynistic in it's implementation, it really grosses me out. So instead of a block and ignore I left them a somewhat aggressive message to unfollow me. They whined on their feed that what they make is not slop which is total bullshit and delusion and that's where it ended. Not only is it slop, it's also not 'made' by anything: it's a recycling of existing works without permission. An offensively mediocre collage void of human thought, originality, or creativity. I'm not proud that I engaged with this, I really should have blocked and moved on, but it made me mad. 

My mum and some family friends left on a small two-day vacation so it was just the kids at home! Ah, yes, the 27 and 24 year old kids... Sometimes I think I should have more shame than I do but I can't juggle irrational fear, stress, and obsession with all that too.

On Friday a friend we haven't seen in a while visited. She stayed over for the night and told me of her woes. She recently broke up (sort of?) with a guy who's kind of a stalker and majorly controlling, like he won't let her talk to her friends kind of stuff. So I obviously said: dump his ass, never talk to him again. And she said 'yeah' but kind of halfheartedly. Straight girls... what are you doing? The options cannot be that thin. You are better than this.

On Saturday we dropped by the local recyclerie and I found three super cute tops. More on that you know where... before we left I already started up Dragon Age so after a super fast there-and-back from the recyclerie I somehow spent basically another 7+ hours submerged. This is becoming a problem... I did finally romance Alistair and the romance scene was painfully awkward and demented, just perfect! Our pixel touched...! My feet kicking, me giggling! ...I'm 27, by the way. 

Cat spheres.

On Sunday I sent out some more work applications. Also some kind of bizarre issue with France Travail that I need to solve. Did take some time for some important site stuff that I will likely reveal in the near future. Stay tuned.

This Week I'm Excited For...

Shamefully, to play way, way more Dragon Age Origins. And then I'm going to have to somehow physically restrain myself from playing Awakening or DA2 or Inquisition. I will have to put a stop to this!

Song Of The Week... 

Crystal Method's Starting Line is probably my favourite of their songs but High Roller is a close second. Much grimier and dirtier, it's got a crunch. Very cool song and album!

SCRIBDOON! {Week 41}

All caught up with the blog, oh yeah! Unless something horrible happens between me starting this blog post and ending it. I sure hope not... Anyway, had a pretty good week. Tom came over nearly every day so we could "work" and "apply for jobs" and "be productive". Lots of Star Wars stuff happening in my life these days. We're so back.

Had a regular busy morning on Monday, just getting tasks done when Tom texted me if he could come over and work at our place. The juju wasn't going at his and he's doing his internship applications right now. I set us up on the dining table and we got everything prepped and ready to go only to just talk shit for like 4 hours. Literally no work done on day one. Ah, there's always tomorrow!

Tom came over again in the early afternoon on Tuesday and this time some work was done. 'Some' is doing much heavy lifting here. I love co-working but I think the problem with only two people co-working situations means you just start chatting and having too much of a good time. We needed more people to passive-aggressively shame us into working. I did hype him up for like 40 minutes to make some calls: one went well and the other didn't even bother picking up. A storm was expected and it started absolutely pouring just as he left so he got totally drenched. But survived!

On Wednesday, Mo didn't have classes and Marta came back from school early. I take back what I said about needing more people when co-working, you actually need more and a specific kind of people because the chaos got even worse. Earlier in the day I ran into the lady who runs the hotel that's kind of having it rough recently. She was actually one of the recruiters at the work expo thing in May. I did get accepted for a trial run there but it was 2-weeks of non-paying internship-style work before they even hire you. At the time this seemed like a pretty shit deal and I was also busy with farm work so I said no... may have to crawl back and beg for that possible job, I guess.

On Thursday my period started so me and Tom were by the couch this time. I played around on the DS, mostly trying to finish the first Apollo Justice game and Tom was doing some autumn sale shopping on Steam. When he left me and Mo kept playing KOTOR. God, this game is so good...

Heating pad.

On Friday I was still couch-ridden but I was busy moving some new games to the 360. Got Mo his Ace Combats and PGR4. Resident Evil 5 for Marta and Yolanta to co-op. And Dragon Age Origins and Prototype for myself, I haven't played the bio-terrorism in many years and I was kinda missing it. And since me and Mo are playing KOTOR together I wanted a Bioware game to play by myself when he's busy so I picked something he already played. Tom was playing the recomp of Twilight Princess the entire time, totally locked in. 

Been debating whether I'm going to continue my original Starforged campaign or attempt a solo SW5E campaign this and next month. I got kind of stuck on the Starforged story because I was doing the world-building at the same time as the story so I was stumped often. However, the actual play of Starforged is great for someone who likes TTRPGs purely for the story stuff and uses the dice-rolling and stats as a mechanism to get out of a writing block. I know this may be blasphemous but the math of DnD is just so boring to me and I'm too stupid to understand it. However, I do really want to run a campaign set during the Clone Wars for myself (I made the characters but the world already exists) and the best option is the SW5E system. There's like basically no good actual plays for beginners to see the step-by-step rolls of the game though. Annoying. I'm just gonna play it my way, I guess.

On Saturday we spent a lot of time getting through KOTOR and we finally made it to Manaan. I do remember getting this far into the game but after that everything's fuzzy. In the evening a cover band was playing a bunch of 80s metal hits close to the center of town so we went to check it out. It was kind of empty at first but soon enough the crowd gathered and there was this middle-aged lady really fucking up the dance floor.

Local edgelords.

Sunday was uneventful, maybe a little stressful. You know when you get into bed and it's just you and the darkness and you realize that your life is falling apart? Mild stress.

So, for any journal and planner enthusiasts: here's my current set-up. I know, for someone who's anti-many-journals-at-a-time, that's a lot of journals! Well, most of those are not actually ones I carry with me and are purpose-specific. Actually most of them are not journals in the classic sense. So, from left to right:

For now.

1. Brown journal - my draftbook, basically a kind of common-place notebook where there is no order, no rhyme or reason, and no polish. If I have an idea or a question I just put it in there somewhere. 

2. Pink diary - this is my 5-year diary. It has a small slot to write about my day for each day of the year which is my preferred way of keeping track of what the fuck happened in my life. Otherwise I forget. 

3. Green planner - a weekly planner. I used to use this to plan project-related tasks but never finished the pages so I'm using this as my intermission planner until the end of December.

4. Purple notebook - this is my media log. I'm looking to get off Letterboxd which is my last online/digital media logger that I use. I've had enough.

Smudged!

5. Red notebook - my media recommendations book. Basically, if someone has rec'd me something or I found something I want to check out in some capacity, it goes here. I try to sort it out by category type too. There was a pretty neat video where I got the idea from, the creator uses it as an alternative to doom scrolling but for me it's more of a 'so I don't forget' type of thing. However, I do not write down YouTube videos because I don't care about YouTube.

Also, like most people who have seen bits and pieces of Galactic Racer this week, I've had Biddy Blas on the mind. I watched a few races from the story mode of the game and I've decided that I'm buying that shit on a sale. Scribdoon, bookie.  

This Week I'm Excited For...

To start my Clone Wars era SW5E solo campaign... in an actual journal! The setting is just after the Battle of Geonosis, meaning the clones and the Jedi are only beginning to cooperatively work for the Republic. It will follow a Kage Padawan called Maro Hari who recently lost her master in a brutal encounter with a mysterious Sith and her new master, an aloof Oktarian called Kiyan Tansi. 

Song Of The Week... 

Been finding some new under-appreciated music and ran into Brookville and their song Walking On Moonlight, a pretty unknown early 2000s trip-hop-y kind of band a bit like Ivy or Air. To me, anyway. Just very nice instrumentals, with a few orchestral bits in there too. 

{October 2026 Start}

I've got a few important things to get done this October, mostly projects, art stuff, and the endless search for employment. Also doing something fun, mostly RPG based: both solo journaling RPG and video game stuff!

To-Do... 

1. IN ORBIT CONT.

2. SNAIL MAIL

3. TF2 ANNIVERSARY

4. START SW5E CAMPAIGN 

5. JOB SEARCH CONT.

6. FINISH KOTOR

7. HALLOWEEN COSTUME 

Luckily, It's October {Week 40}

The end of a month, encroaching upon the end of the year, this is a weird time. This is also the last post with scans of my weekly planner layouts. I have completed all 13 months in the planner and this has been my most-used planner ever, though it had it's drawbacks too. More on the whole planner thing likely either in some of the next few posts or maybe closer to the end of the year when I'll be setting up a planner for 2027. Otherwise it's been a busy week, in a way. Some appointments and the such. Anyway, let's get into the blog.

Week 40.

Monday I was kind of sick so I binged season 4 of Buffy in my room, it's becoming more and more of a hoarder's enclave and I'm more than ready to move to the third floor already. On Tuesday I heard from a friend who recently finished her master's thesis which was awesome. 

Wednesday, we went to the house of some family friends' who are in the process of selling their house and have tasked us in doing a bit of cleaning up. Luckily for us this also entails keeping whatever they don't want that we like. Guys, free stuff. You know me and free stuff. Er, well this is actually bad news considering the hoarding issue... still, I picked up a bunch of things: some clothes, lots of hangers, a bedside table, small cabinet, lots of books, and then some. I'll probably actually take some pictures once I've moved into my new room and have decent space to get everything properly organized. 

On Thursday it was finally October. The long-awaited best time of the year! I spent most of the day going to (trying to, anyway) an ophthalmologist with Monique. I was under the impression that I was going there to get an appointment but Monique's plan was for me to share her appointment. Obviously, they said no at the desk, I have no idea what sneaky plans Monique was coming up with but they did not fly with the receptionist. She also refused to give me an appointment at all because I still don't have my Carte Vitale and they apparently don't accept temporary insurance documents. This is why I still can't see an optometrist and finally get new glasses. Annoying stuff...

Anyway, we went back to Monique's for lunch and I saw all her street cats, I was especially looking forward to see Chouchou and Scarface, who had to get one eye removed each due to severe infection. They looked great and since both have an eye left they are living normally. The cat population is totally out of control though so hopefully the newly founded cat association in our town can get them neutered soon. 

Spot the cat...

Scarface is in the middle.

That's Chouchou!

At home I baked a maple syrup banana cake, it's delicious and I highly recommend the recipe. No idea why my bananas turned purple though...

It was gone pretty fast.

On Friday I met up really early with Monique and the cat association founder (head?) Fabienne outside our local Intermarche to do some volunteering for the association. So, I imagined doing some manual labour for them but it turns out the task was actually standing at the entrance of the grocery store and convincing people either to donate or to buy cat food. I sucked at that. First of all, most people don't want to talk to you at all. There was one lady who agreed to donate and buy cat food without any convincing at all but most were dismissive or hostile. One rude lady said we shouldn't be doing this at all and should be caring about breast cancer awareness month instead. Like, we can care about more than one thing? And if she wants an Octobre Rose booth, go ahead and set one up. I'm just saying if getting people to care about something as uncontroversial as cats is this hard I have no idea how volunteers for Palestine do it. Not that being pro-Palestine should be controversial, but people treat it like it is.

There was an old man that walked in with the meanest face I ever saw. He didn't even say hi back when I tried to talk to him so I was like, alright, whatever. Rude guy, so what. Anyway, that guy comes back not with one, but four huge bags of good quality cat food! Never know who's thinking what, you know? 

I did leave after about 5-6 hours though because I was kind of useless. Once the third volunteer, Veronique arrived, her and Monique did all the talking and I was basically taking up space in this tiny ass passage. It also helped that Monique knows everyone... so people who may have not donated basically couldn't refuse her. Especially because she's volunteered for so many things, like relief efforts during the flood. Basically you just can't say no to her. I also bought some dry food for kittens and some wet food for adult cats and donated that. Then I went home.

Simona's beans...

Over the weekend I kept researching job stuff, McDonalds and all the other places I applied to have not reached back. This is a new low for me... I don't know why, maybe it's because I'm not a native French speaker, maybe because there's like no jobs here, I don't know. Looking into other stuff locally.

Packed away my planner! It was a great tool for me this year. I did realize that I don't like horizontal layouts for my daily planning, in the Weeks style. The day is just something that's vertical to me, I can't quite explain it but that's how it makes sense in my head. Despite that, this little planner had a great run, I actually used it consistently all year. It was also super cute. And the stickers on the back always made me smile, the Matt and Jay sticker Alice sent me is probably the best sticker I ever had.

Honestly I'm not sure if anyone really cares about notebooks and planners when reading the blog but sadly it's been one of my obsessions since I was like ten. I'm a big fan of finding, buying, AND using notebooks. I had a Notion period in my life but it did not last long. For my digital stuff, I've moved around all sorts of note-taking apps but they all kind of sucked. Until I found Joplin which I've been enjoying this year. Otherwise, I'm pure analog, baby. 

Good night, sweet prince.

It got very fat!

Goodbye Matt and Jay!

The year overlook.

I'll be using a temporary planner that still has some blank pages until the end of the year. Basically, I got a September-start planner a few years ago so I've been starting new planners around this time of the year usually. However, I'd like to move that a few months down so that I start a new planner like most people with the beginning of the new year in January. More on that in the future!

The end. For real this time.

So that's all for the week. Not the worst I've had, especially under the circumstances. Some things still bother me but I'm moving along regardless.

This Week I'm Excited For...

To keep a more casual planner starting next week until the end of December. Basically, while I enjoyed the planner I had this year, it was both a memory-keeping thing as well as a planner, so aesthetics factored into it's upkeep to a certain extent. I'm getting busier this time of year so I'll have a really messy planner for these months for a change.

Song Of The Week... 

One of my autumnal staples when it comes to albums is The Connells' Ring. It's just jangle-pop magic. Also no bad tracks at all. I've already recommended a bunch of songs from the album so instead of a favourite I'm gonna suggest one that I actually overlook sometimes. Mostly because there's just so many good songs on this album. Here's New Boy by The Connells.

{September 2026 End}

September ends, we're finally entering the pinnacle of autumn! Not that September is a bad month or anything, but I was annoyed that most of it was still kind of warm. It's also been a hard month in some ways so I guess I'm sort of happy to see something new. By the way, this is the last monthly spread in my current planner so there's gonna no more monthly scans. More on the planner situation in the next few posts.

Goals 

 1. Job search cont.

Did all I could but no responses. 

2. COTY26 Oct, Nov, Dec

Failed... 

3. Working on In Orbit Ch. 1

Progress! 

4. Titanfall 2 Anniv. sketch

No progress! 

5. Watch 20+ movies

Total fail! 

 

Best Of: September

 

Movies 

Actually a terrible movie month. I literally watched nothing. Almost no new movies, and even not that many re-watches. No particularly strong stand-outs. So I guess if I had to pick it would be Disconnected, the documentary about a couple of college students going computer-free in 2007 or so. It follows such a seemingly mundane challenge that makes for great subject matter. If you like really weird time-capsule type movies this is a pretty great watch and it can be found on the Internet Archive.

TV Shows

 

I've been back to watching Buffy after a long pause and managed to finish season 3 and 4 super fast. Gonna miss Oz. Going to watch Angel season 1 before continuing since that is supposed to be watched alongside Buffy. Even though I hate Angel! I'm so over the mediocre dudes Buffy falls in love with. Faith is right there! Er, was, anyway...

Games

I started KOTOR for the 50th time, this time with the intent to actually finish the game. It's not a boring game at all but for some reason I always struggle to get to the actual end. However, I'm at a part in my life where I'm much more invested in the Old Republic era (probably my second favourite Star Wars era, after the Clone Wars of course). My brother is chilling beside me as I get through the game because he won't play either KOTOR or Jade Empire because they are 'too old'. Blasphemy! Also, I'm almost done with the first Apollo game in the Ace Attorney series.

Books 

I read a bunch of manga and comics this month. Kuragehime was awesome but I'm still on volume 8. I did finish the short but excellent Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Promise. I used to avoid the Avatar comics because I thought there were so many but now that I actually checked the reading order it's not that intimidating! 

Music  

Didn't get to listen to much full albums this month but have been enjoying lots of drum and bass singles. I did listen to After's debut full-length album the day it was released this month. There were a bunch of songs that were instantly favourites, some I will have to listen to some more. I really like Take Me To Sunrise, Promise, Metal, Fitfully, Blind, Snowburn, and Fell Asleep In The Sun.  

Animation

Argh, didn't watch any cartoon shows or anime this month again. Soon!

Full Log: September 2026