greetings thatoddhaystack shareholders. for this month’s meeting I bought chocolate chip cookies and sprite with ice. I reassessed the budget for the end of the year and had a bit than I expected so I was able to get a beverage this time. please don't forget to sign in on the sign-in sheet.
yurppp after I said I would switch to writing these every other month instead of every month. I’m back. one month later. for whatever reason during the last week of november I was really itching to write a monthly blog post for november. I think it's because even though I didn’t do that much event wise I made good progress on a lot of projects and I want to document that somewhere other than a personal thread in a discord server… so that I can easily look back and tell myself “look I did things!!” when my memory eventually goes fuzzy and I feel like I was just an immobile slug for the latter few months of the year.
november projects
so! speaking of november projects. I did tackle my usual monthlies of keeping up with vgperson highlights, reading a book (three books in fact), and posting an oc profile. another small oc profile this time, but I did have to make spot art for it so it was a bit more effort than just writing things in… I kept up with wanikani reviews and continued to tackle the kaniwani mountain. as of Right Now I am at 400 reviews, and maybe, Just Maybe, I will clear that mountain by the end of the year. of course then I have 600+ “new” lessons to add to the review pile but I havent quite figured out how to tackle them, since doing 100 new cards per day will balloon the amount of reviews I have to do in the short term. and I’m a bit tired now of flashcard reviews and am itching to broaden my reach just a bit… I also submitted several job applications in november because while I am currently employed I Really Really Really want a different job.
the biggest project I had in november was tackling the list of redlinks on the ukagaka wiki! for those unaware, redlinks are links that were placed on pages, but didn't actually have a page attached to them. sort of like “click here for more info” but then you click it and it goes to a 404 page. the maintenance hub of the wiki has a helpful little table of all the redlinks on the wiki that is automatically populated, so it gave me a clear goal. see screenshot below. I was very nervous to edit the wiki at first because I didn't want to accidentally blow something up but I very slowly dipped my toes into wiki editing with some simpler pages and then Really picked up speed in november for whatever reason. I do not control the hyperfixation. but!! with the help of a few other editors the redlink list was slain!! and now everything on the wiki has at least a stub page with basic info. we are currently deciding what our next Big Wiki Project will be, but I am thinking about some small projects with my personal ukgk, like filling out all their pages or moving my screenshot sharex guide to the wiki.
I released an ukagaka in november as well. webworn weaver is an experimental writing ghost that sits in the corner of your desktop and has fragmentary, mysterious dialogue. I actually wrote most of the ghost a while ago and only in november did I draw a shell and put all the writing in a ghost… still! I am very please with how it turned out. and now I have one of my long time ukagaka ideas published and out in the world… you can download them here. content warning for spiders, insects in general, death, gore, body horror, unsettling imagery in general.
I have continued to pick at a first draft for a short horror visual novel. I think I wrote around 5,000 words in november? which is a lot for a person who doesn't consider themselves a writer. I didnt quite hit my goal of finishing the first draft by the end of the month, but I did get close! and am hoping to finish the draft and go through some editing passes this month. still keeping most of it under wraps currently, but maybe when I start actually putting stuff into a game engine I will start teasing it more LOL.
last few projects I worked on last month were an update post for my blog (duh), a birthday present for my sibling, and starting practicing coding again. blog post is self explanatory, but for my siblings present they wanted a piece of art of their girlfriend, that would be printed out and laminated so they could take her around places. I did have to rush a bit to finish it in time, but I did get it done in time. and I will not learn and will continue to push off art until the last possible second. no jk. unless?
as for coding, I started picking at problems on codingame because I feel like all of my knowledge that I gained in college has dribbled out of my ears and. that's not great. so I am trying again! to program. and the little problems on codingame feel like just enough difficulty for me to have to work my brain a little bit.
november events
while I worked a lot on personal projects in november, I didn't go to that many events in november. by design! I knew that my social batteries were drained in october so I needed some time to relax… I went with a friend to get crepes and other food and it was really yummy delicious… also oshikatsu as per usual.
for my siblings birthday, I made arancini!! since they really like it. but oh my god it took an entire day between making the risotto and chilling it and making the stuffed rice balls and breading and frying and. there's a reason that I don't make this recipe very often lol. we also had a small party for their bday which was nice because it wasnt too intense for a guy who wanted to be more introverted this month (me).
at the very end of the month I had a short trip to my mom in NYC for thanksgiving… quite literally two nights one day. where all I did that day was lay around and eat food and also saw wicked for good (which I didn't really like but I had fun seeing it with family). very chill!! lots of yummy food eaten. also had a brief thanksgiving dinner with my dad's side of the family. also more yummy food.
overall a pretty chill month events wise. I had some bad mental health days but I did also rest a lot… so I think I came out of november better than before even with the personal struggles I faced.
monthly favorites
cherry pop
this is the most quientissentially deco*27 song. by that I mean like this feels like if you distilled deco*27 music into its purest form it would be this song. and I say that with all the love in my heart. I do love deco’s more poppy songs and this is Very bubblegum pop. snappy, catchy, absolutely an earworm. had this on loop more than a few times during the month
chainsaw man - the movie: reze arc
it is almost a tie between mad god and chainsaw man for my favorite movie I watched in november… chainsaw man I saw in theaters and I splurged on the dbox seats so I had a very Immersive Experience vs mad god was just me sitting at home watching it on my laptop monitor. now about the movie itself. I had a blast!! bombastic (heh) animation paired with more sentimental character moments. I felt kind of lukewarm on reze prior to the movie but seeing her in motion and the complexities of her character on the big screen really moved me… also I really loved angel devil LMAO.
#my potion
when I went to epic universe in october I got the monocane mocktail that came in a souvenir flask. since then I have been making #potions in it. read: water and food dye/glitter/water flavorants. it has been adding a little bit of Whimsy to my every day life and I think that I do drink more water on days that I make myself a #potion.
cut/sew card swap
I mentioned this last entry, but the cosplay pattern company cut/sew hosted an inktober card swap recently that I sent a card to, and in november I got a card back! it’s a collaged piece with a very heartfelt message on the back. I was having a rough week when I got the card in the mail, and I did genuinely cry a little bit over it. the beauty of art…
december plans
so! for december! what is vita doing?! the simple answer is just “more of what I’ve been doing”. that is, continuing stuff I’ve been working on through december. I’m still going to be reviewing japanese with the hopes of figuring out a way to incorporate reading/listening to native material into it. honestly at this point it might be best just to go for the most baby step (1 page of a graded reader, 1 five minute podcast) and then hope I can snowball from there? we shall see…
still gonna be applying for jobs. still going to be fighting against myself to have a consistent sleep schedule. still gonna be picking at my horror vn with the hopes of getting most if not all of the writing work done this month. will continue to practice coding although I don’t have an end goal in mind so much as. Get Gud (again). the only one off project I really have for this month is crocheting a hat for miss harley (my mom’s cat) for christmas… my mom has been unsubtley dropping hints that she wants me to make a jester hat for harley ala harley quinn… I finally found a pattern that I can alter slightly to make that kind of hat, and I bought the materials for it, so now I just need to carve out time for it. I don’t imagine that a single cat hat will take me that long (famous last words).
oh, I guess I also plan to post another oc profile this month. no clue who though. maybe I’ll finally get around to the rewrite of my main ffxiv wol that I keep thinking I’ll do so I don’t need to draw new art for a profile this month. also gonna still be reading books for my book club, though I already finished one book and another one is a reread so it will be faster than reading it fresh.
I have some maybies I’m tossing around in my head. things that I probably won’t do this month but they are on my mind. one thing is a yearly review, which is a maybe item only because I’m not sure if I will do it at the end of december or beginning of january. or maybe start it in december and finish in january. also What my purpose for a yearly review is. I know I want to do one but I don’t know the contents type of thing. I want to investigate the program mate engine, which is something that several people in the english ukagaka server have talked about… I want to port the relink sandalphon model to it so I can have him on my desktop www… from my very brief research it is totally possible, I just need maybe a free day to work through all the kinks of exporting his model from the game and importing it to mate engine. I’ve been thinking about this project for a minute and I keep pushing it forward… but I still wanna do it someday!!
I’m also considering working on my ukagaka this month, either drawing shell art for another character whose writing is mostly done, or participating in the iyago lucky bag event. iyago (as far as I can tell) is a jpn ukagaka slang term that’s something along the lines of “annoying” or “nuisance”. previous ghosts in the event have included one that only speaks in garbled text with glitched out animations for its shell, a ghost that opens a japanese job search website and uninstalls itself, and a ghost that talks about how much it hates the user. that kind of feeling… I do have an idea for a ghost to make, but I don’t feel fully confident on it yet so I might put it on the backburner and return to the ghost idea next year for the event…
I feel pretty accomplished with what I completed in november, and I hope to continue that trend onwards! pulling back on my expectations for myself means I do more. who would have thought.