greetings thatoddhaystack shareholders. the snacks for this week are turtle chips from the local asian mart because I bought them on sale and demolished an entire bag without blinking. so I need other people to eat them or else I Will.
feb was generally a pretty good month for me! I did have kind of a rocky start. with a brief health scare in my immediate circle and then a week Full Of Events which kinda drained my energy. I was able to Lock In tho. and I got a lot done. and had a brief vacation at the end of the month even!!
february events
katsucon
katsucon was this month! and this time I lobbyconned for two days rather than just the one. there was a jojo’s bizarre adventure photoshoot on saturday and then a vocaloid shoot on sunday. I was hot pants for the jojo’s photoshoot and it was soooo so great to see all the steel ball run cosplayers… I had fun chatting with everyone and taking pictures and goofing around!! the person who put together the meet put together a video of the group and lowkey I felt actually Cool in cosplay seeing myself in the vid :+). the vocaloid photoshoot was a lot smaller but still just as cozy. we got the gazebo which was nice! I also managed to get a badge ribbon this year without having a badge which felt pretty nice haha. shout out to the adachi rei at the voca photoshoot for that
katsucon was a lot less crowded this year at least in the public areas. and after the fact I heard it was because they were a closed con this year as opposed to letting people without a badge loiter in the common areas. which like. lol. lmao. I gallivanted about in the hotel space for probably a total of 8 hrs and the only block I encountered was one door to the outside where a person was like. do u have a badge. and I said no. and then they directed me to registration and I said thank you politely and then walked around to the front of the hotel that wasn’t blocked. maybe I am just soooo cute and trustworthy that con security assumed I was where I was supposed to be.
I’m gonna take a sidebar to say. I really don’t think katsucon can be a truly closed con while it is in the gaylord. the problem is that there are a multitude of reasons for a person to be in the hotel other than the con. they could have a room unrelated to katsu. they could have a reservation at the hotel’s spa or restaurant. katsucon doesn’t have the manpower to have multiple people at every door to check for all of those things. they had the gazebo cordoned off and a security guard stationed at the entrance to the gazebo checking badges. except 12 feet away from the guard there was a gap in the ropes and I was just able to. walk in. it kind of felt like security theater.
orlando
I had a brief trip to orlando at the end of the month. I got to watch iron lung again with one of my FL friends which was really nice because I got to go full Hyperfixation Mode and yap about it for like two hours afterwards while we were waiting for our dinner reservation to pop and it was soooo freeing. I forget sometimes that even in my own home I tend to hold myself back on. my mentally ill tendencies. eg mainly my fidgeting and echolalia so it was nice to Not have to do that for a weekend. since I feel comfortable enough with my FL friends to be mentally ill.
Anyways. I had one day at universal orlando mardi gras and one day at scaradise (tampa based horror convention). I wasn’t super impressed with the food this time around except for a king cake cider that was on tap that actually tasted like king cake and pastelón fritters that kinda blew my mind. I never knew that plantains and ground beef would go so well together…. I had fun watching the parade and the tribute store was really cool… I finally got to see the horror makeup show this time around and it was soooooo fun I love practical effects.
sunday! was scaradise day! I had my sights set on getting an autograph from matthew lillard but spoiler alert that never happened because his line was full all sunday with people who had been waiting for him on saturday. which kind of puts a bad taste in my mouth for going to scaradise again next year but that’s a bridge to cross later… I did really enjoy walking around the con as herbert west though. I picked up an iron lung pendant, a ghost (the band) keychain, and a higher fidelity herbert west syringe prop since the one I made is kind of dinky. my friend and I watched a panel with the black phone actors and then a scream 30th anniversary panel with david arquette, matthew lillard, and skeet ulrich.
the contrast between the two panels was really funny. with the black phone actors they had a panel moderator ask questions to the actors for the first chunk of the panel and then took questions from the audience. with the scream panel matthew lillard was basically like. we’ve been doing this a while. we like to take audience questions from the start. go my skeet. and then sent skeet ulrich into the crowd to pick questions. like here are these guys who make 12 times more than I will make in my entire life. and they were just. Normal Dudes. and everyone was normal (genuinely). david arquette sitting politely on the stage the entire time that matthew and skeet ran the panel was very funny also.
february projects
idk what was in the water in feb but I hashtag locked in pretty hard. probably the most important thing I did was continue to work on unnamed horror bl vn. started working on character sprites and also had a few people look over the first draft of my script and make edits. I haven’t finished reading through the edits yet purely because my brain cannot handle re-reading my own writing more than like 30 minutes at a time. there’s a reason I barely edit my fic lmaooooo. but I want my vn script to be better than my typical first draft fics.
other than VN work, I knocked off a few things that have been on my list for a while. transfered my sharex guide to the ukagaka wiki. moved my XIV mods from the glamour dresser to heliosphere. finished archiving my goatlings profile. and I had the energy to finish not one but TWO oc profiles. mostly because it was a pair of ocs who Will Not Be Seperated. plus and minus, a familar and the necromancer who summoned them… I also obviously wrote a blog post for feb and got ahead on tuesday draws (albiet briefly since I’ve now finished posting everything I had queued…)
bingo checkin
time for a quick update on my 2026 bingo. there are multiple things on this screenshot that I completed in march so far so I will just talk about the squares I completed in feb.
also! patch notes for the bingo! I refined my goals related to spanish and toki pona language learning to be one small stepping stone instead of the much more vague goal of “start studying x again.” I want to read a spanish graded reader and finish a playlist of toki pona comprehensible input videos. I also added a little checkbox for when I redeem a “reward” (which I am determining to be a small treat under $10 per box checked) because I knew I would forget if I had rewards banked otherwise. also on the backend I added an entry to track when I completed things because I think that would be nice to see.
fill out five pages on the ukagaka wiki: I tackled a handful of pages for the a listers wiki project in feb. most of them were quote unquote easier pages like balloons where the main pain point is taking screenshots, but It Counts. and it’s not like I’m gonna stop with just five pages. I have made it more of a backseat priority in march, though
donate blood: actually kind of shocked I knocked this goal out early in the year. turns out if you just plan to Do The Thing sometimes that’s the main push you need. I did have to schedule two appointments because I got rejected from my first one for having too high a heart rate (as I expected…) but I managed to chill out enough on my second appointment that I was cleared to donate. I did get kind of lightheaded afterwards and had to lie down and drink some apple juice afterwards but the thing that matters is. I Did It. I also scheduled an appointment for april so I am hoping to make it a habit!
finish a video game: I read through a handful of ophanimkei’s visual novels that have been on my to play list for a while. I generally enjoyed all of them but a special shoutout goes to glow of honeydew that was absolutely gutting in the best of ways. I can’t say too much about it without going into spoilers but if you have an hour and a desire to be hurt by a visual novel I highly recommend it.
february faves
iron lung
maybe its cheating to say iron lung again but genuinely I was hyperfixated on it for a full month. and even now i am still thinking about it. it was only moved to the backburner by re9. and I anticipate that once it comes out on digital the fixation will be reignited. I still do think that objectively it is a 7/10 movie. the vita enjoyment level increases with each rewatch though. I keep noticing more and more things each time I watch it. long live weird indie horror.
cheese sticks
I am very much a white person motivated by cheese lmaoooo. I started buying cheese sticks and other single serving cheese snacks relatively recently because my idea is that I will motivate myself to get up in the morning by having a piece of cheese with my breakfast. and I’m also telling myself that it’s extra Protein and that’s Good.
bluffman
cw flashing lights
of courseeeee I have to shill the newest nilfruits. who do you think I am. very exciting to see another song in the hifi club universe!! bakui’s mv fucking rulesss as per usual and the sharp color palette is sooo fun. out of all of nilfruits’ mv artists I think bakui is the one who excels at depicting Motion the most. every post in the mv is so dynamic and visually interesting… I really love the vocals too! I didn’t realize kaji yuki had lent his voice to a vocal synth… nilfruits da world….
march plans
writing this I am a decent way into march already, and you can see things checked off in the bingo that I didn’t yet talk about, so suffice to say I am mostly continuing my february momentum into march. I am going to continue a lot of what I’ve been working on. oc profile(s), vn work, ukgk wiki work. march is more chill in the events area on purpose since I know I can flirt dangerously close to burnout. but also the weather is getting nicer, so I might go on some sidequests I’ve been thinking about since there were six inches of ice on the ground… it all depends!
I do want to knock out some more bingo card squares and I have done so already but I am also gunning to set up my pi-hole this month so I can finally be free from ads on my household network…
other than that I am purposefully trying to make march be a Less Intense month for me so that I don’t catapult myself into burnout again because I have no sense of what is Too Much for me.
also maybe I’ll build my pc this month?? finally??? I still need to research linux distros and dualbooting.
etc jam 2026 is this month and I will do. something for that. what yet I am not sure but there will be Something. ghost masquerade 8 was announced at the beginning of this month with submission open until may. I want to also submit Something to that. what I will submit is to be seen…
see you all next month!!! the weather is getting warmer (at least in the northern hemisphere) and the days are getting longer and the fresh air and sunshine has me feeling better at least in that respect.