greetings thatoddhaystack shareholders. I genuinely thought that I wrote an update post in september… but I didn't. and then I didn't write one for october. and now we are halfway into november. maybe I should start putting it into my calendar each month to sit down and write the updates. maybe.
edit: I started writing this midway through november which is why I had the line about being midway through november and now we are Squarely in december. girl helpppp.
september
september was kind of a crazy busy month for me where I went to a lot of places but didn’t get much done project wise, boowhomp. I went to a local zoo with my sister and while it feels like they’re still building it out for the most part, I did get to feed a deer in their little outdoor safari portion which healed something in me. the zoo has an experience where you can feed a fawn, which I did not do this time because it was expensive, but someday… I think that would truly fix me.
I went and saw kurtis connor’s tour! my sister is a big fan and went to his last tour and said that she would have me come along next time. I had fun! I do watch his videos on a fairly regular basis but I’m not supremely in touch with his comedy side of things LOL. it was all good though. I saw beetlejuice beetlejuice in theaters and it was…. very okay. like, fun in the moment but I don’t want to think too hard about it because then it falls apart. beetlejuice fumbled a real baddie tho. I would not have fumbled dolores. mark my words
later in the month my mom made her annual trip from new york to visit for her birthday :-) and as per usual on trips with her we crammed a lot of stuff in. we went to a renaissance festival, where I ate a lot of food and bought some more jewelry and a piece of tigers eye that I promptly lost the next week and am still kinda mad about LOL. they have a crystal shop there where you can get a grabbag of rocks and wash the sand off them and I always like getting a big ol chunk of amethyst in the most expensive grabbag. lovely. no notes. we went to a local farm and rode on the hayride and walked through a corn maze. and picked up some pumpkins to deco our house with.
I went to an event at work which normally I don’t blog about those because it’s like. some free snacks. some chatting. something to brighten up my office day but nothing Too too exciting. except this time around they were serving whole legit burgers with a fry bar and cocktails and ice cream. like, I had a legit dinner there for free which is crazy to me. I also ended up winning a raffle they had for tickets to a show which is like the first time I’ve won a raffle in a long while, if not in my entire life. aside from I guess like, raffles on pet sites? which IDK if you count those or not. shrug emoji.
I saw the substance in september which like, damn do I need to write a full length review of it at some point because I think it’s legitimately my favorite movie of 2024, and in like the top five movies I’ve ever watched. watching it in a theater was the way to go because it just POPPED so much with the sound design and colors and the batshit third act and just. it was peam. I need to watch it again. the last [major] event I had in september was going to see saw the musical with my sister! I had seen it back in january with my mom when it was running in new york, and it was still just as good as then. maybe even better, because I could emotionally prepare myself for shit like lawrence gordon doing a full number with a blow up doll LMAO. my sister wore a white shirt on purpose so she could get squibbed and have it as a souvenir. no notes, again, saw the musical is so funny if you’re a fan of the franchise. this is my yaoi story.
this was something that happened thru the past few months but I finished my piece for the etches on the screen zine in september! it’s my first ever zine, and is available NOW for a cool $free.99 on itchio. please check it out to view my piece along with all the other talented artists and writers (and an animator!) that I had the joy of working with. listen I gotta shill myself a little bit.
october
wow! october! a special month for many reasons!! spooky month!! birthday month!! I did try to cram as much as I could during the month as per usual but I think going to HHN in the middle of the month took most of my energy (which isn’t a bad thing!!!) so I spent the latter half of the month a lot more lowkey than the first half.
in the beginning to the month I went to a haunt!! probably the biggest one I’ve been to outside of HHN; there were two areas you could walk through with one being upwards of a mile long, one blindfolded area that I didn’t end up doing, and numerous food stands and other one off things like ziplines you could do. in haunts I love being the leader of the group because I. don’t get jumpscared by scare actors jumping out at me instead I usually just wave at them and go hi!!! hi!!! which I did a lot at the haunt. the set deco for the haunts was amazing and I wish I could have seen it in the light and without the copious amounts of fog to really appreciate all the details. I had some fun banter with some of the scare actors, and ended up doing the zipline which was probably the scariest moment of the night for me LOL. one thing that I didn’t expect when I went to this haunt was how HOT and HUMID it was because of the large amounts of fog machines they had. it was probably around 60 degrees farenheit in the parking lot and easily felt like 80 degrees in the haunt, so if I go back in the future I will dress lighter, because while I was wearing layers and could adjust, I didn’t expect that drastic of a temperature difference. for the celsius users, that was going from around 15 degrees to 27. but aside from that I had a blast and would definitely go again next year! maybe even do the blind haunt…
the Main Event of october was flying down to Florida for a weekend to go to universal orlando studios Halloween horror nights!!! and also to see my florida friends as well… I didn't dress up this year for HHN but I did make stickers to hand out to people doing bracelet trades!! which was really fun. but man. I had a trial getting down to florida in the first place. so as per usual in october a hurricane was headed to florida and was supposed to be still Very Much In Florida during the time I had initially scheduled my flight (8am thursday morning) so it got canceled and I rebooked my flight for 1pm. fine. no worries. I can deal with that. except also then the 1pm flight got canceled and I had to rebook for Five Pee Em. still not great. but I can swing it. except then the 5pm flight also got canceled and I had to scramble for a seat on the last flight out that day which was at like 10:30pm. meaning I would be landing in FL at like 1 am. girl help. this was all happening like, wed night through thursday day where I spent 4 hours with one eye on my work laptop and one eye on the hurricane tracker. but the 10:30 pm flight held and my dear friends graciously picked me up from the airport at the wee hours of the night and I was finally able to crash at the hotel in FL very early friday.
we went to halloween horror nights both friday and sunday night, with me flying back home monday afternoon/evening. we shelled out for express passes for friday so we could hit all 10 houses and the show and the scarezones, and the sunday was a little more laid back since we only hit half as many houses. my favorite food of the event was easily the ghostbusters korean corn dog that had cheese and hotdog skewered together and battered and deep fried with Fritos on the outside iirc. absolutely indulgent and delicious. I had one both nights we went. my favorite house this year was the insidious house which surprised me. like, I thought the movies were middling to piss poor so I didn't have high expectations for the house based on the movies, but it was Long and it had lots of scares and even if I myself don't jump at scares and just like. frantically stim at them I am a horrible gremlin who feeds off of other people in the group getting scared LMAO. the scare zones were uhm…. kind of disappointing this year. like I enjoyed the torture faire one the most because I felt like it had the most like. little set up stages/scenes for actors to walk around on and interact with guests. but it's no vamp 69. also they had one scare zone that was just ppl with chainsaws like come on man you used to have Roaming Chainsaw Guys and now you've just sequestered them all to one area for this year. disappointed. the show was fantastic but also I'm in the camp of I will watch nightmare fuel shows forever because I will never stop being enthralled by people doing cool fire stunts and acrobatics. nightmare fuel forever!!!
the rest of the FL trip outside of HHN was great too!! ate lots of good food, went to hot pot/kbbq, watched over the garden wall for the first time and was Changed by it. saw transformers one with my friends and really enjoyed it!! also got to check out the dreamworks section of universal parks for the first time ever which was exciting because it's been under construction the last few visits I've been. I hope this years slightly underwhelming HHN was just a result of the universal creative team being more focused on epic universe (which is their new park that is being constructed) and that next year’s hhn brings back the wow factor in full. don't get me wrong I still had a lot of fun but I felt like I saw where they were cutting corners….
the rest of october i didn't do that much Lmao. I went to a few restaurants for my birthdayyyy including checking out the pikmin collab at kura sushi. honestly, the red pikmin crunch roll was my favorite out of the three collab menu items. I did go and see saw in theaters for it's 20th anniversary event (which coincidentally landed on my actual birthday) and even tho I was like 20-30 minutes late because traffic i did enjoy what I got to see in theaters!! it's a classic for a reason…
on halloween proper I dressed up in my ghostface outfit with my sparkle mask and handed out candy for a while, and then drove to a local house that had insanely detailed pumpkins on display. I wish I had gone to more haunts during spooky month but unfortunately I just didn't plan ahead enough to stake out places I wanted to go and I got sick and was fighting a cold for the latter half of the month which made me want to do nothing but rest. there's always next year…
november
november, compared to my past two months, has been much more a time of rest. due to both internal and external factors very early on in the month I retreated from social media entirely and tried to put more energy into offline habits that would make me feel more fulfilled than my endless scrolling of instagram reels or my twitter feed. as of now, aside from the previous week where I was sick again and had little energy to do anything But scroll through social media, going on twitter or tumblr or instagram has been vastly unappealing to me. don't get me wrong, I still find myself getting sucked into scrolling through dumbass reels but it's a lot less often than before.
I baked a lot in November, making a loaf of bread, muffins from the FFXIV cookbook, monkey bread, and gochujang-caramel cookies. I also picked up crocheting as a new hobby, and have made a few things so far, including a blueberry shaped pouch and a pair of gloves I made with a skein I pilfered from my stepmom’s yarn stash. currently, I am working on a shawl that I intend to use an entire skein of this multicolored brown/green/black yarn for.
I went to a handful of local restaurants, including a cidery I discovered while heading to a farmers market that was a fair bit of a drive away. I did have fun that day, taking a couple hours to drive to a new place and just walk around and poke my head into a couple of small town shops. I went to a cocktail making class hosted by my office and ended up drinking a bit too much and needing to rest in my car for an hour to sober up before driving home LOL. I also attended a cooking class held at a restaurant near my office where I ate the most magical arancini I've ever had (and I later made an attempt at recreating them at home for dinner with a recipe the restaurant gave us).
it was my sister's birthday in November, and we went out to dinner and had a small family celebration. we went and saw a drag christmas show which was very bougie if only because the tickets to the show were free (as I had won them at the work event back in september). we had our own comfy seats and a great view of the show and a person who was waiting on us so we didn't have to go to the bar to get drinks. we also went and saw a christmas lights display that a local park sets up for people to drive through every year.
thanksgiving was fairly quiet, as I was dealing with a nasty cold and spent pretty much the entire day sleeping and then eventually I drove to my dad's house where I ate thanksgiving dinner and crocheted until I went home and slept more.
I ended up joining a horror book club that meets virtually, so I was able to get some social interaction in without needing to leave my house while I was still feeling yucky.
project updates and on to december
looking back at my last entry, I have made a decent amount of progress on things! I did end up finishing aughost, which was a challenge during the month of august to write 100 pieces of dialogue for your ukagaka(s) based off of single word prompts that were posted daily. it uh. took me a lot longer than just the month of august to finish the prompt list but I did it!! and it was hard because creative writing is hard for me but I did it. I ended up splitting the prompts between three ghosts, one being a WIP ghost of my oc maroth, an angel banished from heaven who now wanders the outskirts of the edge of the world. the other two were lunar leporidae, one of my ghost jam ghosts this year, and a secret WIP ghost that I had intended to make for ghost masquerade this year, but that project fell through since as per usual I bit off more than I could chew. i did add all of the aughost dialogue to lunar since he's already published but I do also want to update him again soon because I realized my shell artist sent me an updated file for his shell art post-jam that I. never implemented. and I ended up writing a few extra pieces of dialogue for him past the aughost ones that I could add as well.
I did end up finishing my etches on the screen zine piece as mentioned earlier, and I did end up finally updating all of my FFXIV mods to dawntrail, along with making a new, quick-ish mod for a SFW version of the nymph body mostly meant as a stopgap until the body’s creators add an official SFW patch. and they are taking their time with that… I have not worked more on my contribution for seibetsu smoothie, mainly because the rest of my team has been quiet/working on other projects so I figured it was a lesser priority at the moment.
I also havent added much to my website, which I think is deceiving considering that my neocities profile shows me updating my site at least once a week, but I personally don't consider adding new entries to my logs/art pages to be a significant update like adding a new page. I have kind of put my website on the back burner for the time being because I'm not particularly drawn to making any of my ideas for new pages right now, and there are other short term goals that I could complete faster that are more compelling. Not to say I won't work on my website at all in December; aside from the semi-regular art and games/book/movie log pages I do intend on updating my sandalphon shrine, since it's been six-ish months since I posted it and I haven't kept up with it… I got my hands on two of my White Whale pieces of sandalphon merch I keep meaning to photograph and add to the shrine (along with numerous other pieces of merch I forgot to add on my first pass). as well as updating the “news feed” on that part of my site since I kind of totally forgot about it.
for december, I'm focusing right now on some projects for christmas (I joined the rpgmaker secret santa again this year, as well as needing to make a piece for my mom for Christmas), and some of the shorter term goals that I've had on my list for months and just. haven't finished. one of them is making this update post! so that's something I can check off once I finish writing and formatting it. I also still intend to write a roundup post (or two) going over all the entries submitted for ghost jam 2024 to give a little bit of a spotlight to all the hard work of the devs. I still need to finish cleaning up my astray cosplay that I made for mikuexpo back in may… it should really just take a day or two max to take in the shirt and skirt and finish cleaning up stray threads from the skirt but I've not done it yet…
I am very very close to finishing (re)writing all of the long form oc profiles I have posted on toyhouse; I think I only have like one or two OCS still privated? theres like 20 I haven't added yet but the majority of those will have very little writing I need to do and instead be more art heavy templates. I don't think I will finish posting all of my khore project (my main OC universe) profiles this month if only because all of the three remaining guys need art on top of writing for their profiles but once those are done I am hoping I can get the rest of my OCs up on toyhouse relatively quickly. and then copy them over onto my site to have a fun little database of my blorbos.
still picking away at my language studies… I have recently reached out to a friend who is also studying japanese to be an accountability buddy of sorts and that's been working better than just relying on my own willpower to open wanikani. still only working on my wanikani reviews, but I've worked my way to having a review pile of ~1200-1400 on a given day instead of ~2200. which like, I'm trying to do 100 reviews/30 minutes a day (whichever is longer) so I just need to get consistent with it to keep whittling down the pile. spanish and toki pona are on the backburner until I get to working on my anki reviews.
I think that mostly covers my december plans. attention all bitches: survive (Christmas) and then continue to keep picking at things I've been picking at for a few months. and finally get around to finishing my cosplay so I can put it away and stop having it out on my desk. keep working on crotchet stuff (it's really a nice meditative thing to do when I'm watching a movie or listening to a podcast…) I won't promise to be back here in a month to update but I would like to get consistent with these type of posts. eventually! probably. stay safe and stay warm if it’s winter where you are.