*Brushes off dirt and picks off cobwebs*
This season at the anime club I attend we’re watching both Zombie Land Saga and Shiki, two series in which (and sorry for for this very basic spoiler of both shows) the existence of the undead is integral to the plot of the story. I can’t help but feel a little bit of empathy for these reanimated characters, because for the past couple of months I’ve also kind of felt like I’ve been shuffling around with creaking bones and and a jumbled-up mind.
This weekend would have been the weekend that I attended CONvergence 2022, a local media convention that takes place in my area every Summer and which I really look forward to every year, but unfortunately my spouse tested positive for COVID a couple of days beforehand so we both ended up spending the weekend at home. While we assumed we’d end up getting hit with it at some point – because we’re under 50 we didn’t qualify for this most recent round of boosters and my previous booster was back in October 2021 – it kind of sucks that it picked this weekend to make its appearance. Luckily we’re both basically fine; I actually haven’t tested positive at all this entire time, and hubby seems a lot better today as I’m writing this, but we’ve isolated from one-another in the house just to be safe. Not being able to hang out together as normal has probably been the most frustrating aspect of the entire situation, honestly.
The unexpected free time did give me a chance to catch up on some anime writing, though admittedly I probably could have done a bit more if I hadn’t also been trying to make progress on a couple of knitting and crochet projects as well. Having multiple plates spinning at once is just how I operate the best, though. I’m essentially done with seasonal first impressions – late as usual, but at least they’re done now. I’m still trying to decide whether or not to touch on some of the short form series from this season, especially since one of them runs a quarter hour per episode which is a length I’ve usually reviewed in the past. I suppose I’ll see what I have the time and motivation to deal with.
I’m lucky enough to be able to own a home rather than rent, but of course that situation brings with it a lot of unpredictability. Case-in-point; before we bought this house, one of the conditions was that the seller replace the underground sewer drain leading from the house out into the street. This is a common issue with houses of this age – the old pipe deteriorates and collapses, leading to really fun things like sewage backing up into the basement. In any case, they agreed to do that before we took ownership of the house. Unfortunately the people they hired to do that job seem to have been a really slap-dash outfit. Their work wrecked part of our front walkway which they refused to fix for several weeks, and when they finally did they just use some cement sealing material which lasted for about a month. Annoying but we’ll get it figured out at some point. The bigger issue, which we found out this past weekend, was that when they tied the new PVC part of the main drain pipe into the existing cast-iron waste stack, they both mis-measured the angle slightly and used an incorrect connector, not to mention incorrectly bracing the cast-iron (it was basically resting on top of the PVC). End result – water dripping out of the gap between the two which had slowly worked its way open over the two years we’ve lived here.
My spouse and I are fine – there was no major damage because luckily I noticed in time, but we did have to shell out some $$$ to get it remediated properly. Kind of the high point of the whole ordeal is that we also got our ancient hot water heater replaced, so at least we’ll have nice hot water (rather than aggressively lukewarm water) once winter rolls around.
Good morning/afternoon, all. This past week has certainly been an exercise in dealing with stress, although I’m happy to say I think I’ve come out the other side feeling at least a little bit better than before.
Most of the stress had to do with a big audit at work – something that occurs annually but which requires a lot of preparations on top of our regular job responsibilities. The other bits and pieces arose from a situation in another organization I’m a part of, which mostly boiled down to a reorganization of responsibilities and nailing down those details. Nothing that can’t be dealt with, but also something I didn’t realize I’d have to deal with.
Hi everyone. Wow, it’s definitely bee quite the week in my world. Not only because we’ve been in the prep phase for a big upcoming thing at work, but also because there’s been a lot of other things going on in my world that have left me with a lot of uncertainty, and that’s never fun to have to deal with (don’t worry, I’m personally fine; it has to do with some of the other activities I’m involved with). Luckily I’m still able to distract myself with anime.
I’ve been trying to make a little bit more of an effort to stay caught up on episodes of things I’ve found interesting, so I’ll probably talk about those viewings in these posts unless I feel like they warrant their own for some reason.
It’s nice to be back to writing again. I used to get so ashamed after taking breaks from writing that it would become more and more difficult to come back to it. It becomes sort of a self-defeating process and I’m nothing if not self-defeating. In any case, I’m trying to be better about working through my personal writing blocks nowadays. Things aren’t perfect, but they’re better.
I think part of the issue is that my time has been very divided lately. Not only do I want to watch anime and write about it, but I also want to knit and crochet (things that help me handle my anxiety). I also have to deal with a lot more things at work than I have in the past, and with some minor medical stuff tossed on top it’s just… a lot. I think the key for me is just being able to indulge in different pleasurable activities as I’m able and not get too caught up in non-constructive thinking about it.
Hi, Everyone! I’m back after some days of very little activity. I live in the upper Midwest USA, and we’ve hit that point in the year where it just feels like endless cold with no reprieve, and I’m finding myself emotionally exhausted with very little drive to do anything. Now that I’m in the middle of a three day weekend (the last one for a few months now), I’m feeling a little more like I can devote some mental energy to my hobbies. I spent some time finishing up that knitting project I mentioned in my previous weekly touch-base, so I’m ready to move onto something a little bit more challenging.
With my journey through fiber arts, I’ve found that it’s helpful to maintain my interest if I’m learning something new each time. In this most recent case, it was learning to use very basic short rows (a shaping technique in which the knitter doesn’t knit all the way across a row before turning the other direction). My brain craves novelty and variety, and knitting the same scarves and hats back when I was just learning (more than a decade ago) meant that it was almost a given I was going to get bored. This time around I’m realizing that there’s just so many new things I can learn to make, and it’s helping to keep me interested in the longer term.
Hi everyone, it’s that time again – time to wish that I’d written more over the past week. To be honest, I did have quite a bit of other stuff to take care of this week, because we’re getting to the point in the convention cycle for the anime convention I’m a part of where schedules are actually being put together. We spent a good portion of the day yesterday scheduling our panel submissions, which is always a major task – we not only take into account the time restrictions people have when submitting their prospective panels, but we also have to try to predict how popular they might be (so they get into an appropriately-sized panel room) and not schedule too many similar things up against one-another. It’s a lot of work, but it’s also one of my favorite things to do as part of being convention staff, so I suppose it all works out!
I’ve also been doing a lot of knitting and crocheting lately – two things that can be very variable in how mentally taxing they are. I’m working on a shawl currently that has a lot of striping and back-and-forth patterning that must be observed, so it’s not exactly the mindless task that some knitting can be.
I’m still chipping away at a couple of longer-form reviews at the moment, as well as finishing off the last couple of first impressions that are left to do. With that said, going forward I’m going to be putting in some work freshening up the panel material I’ll be putting on for Anime Detour mid-March, so I expect in addition to some reduced work here I may come up with some more ideas for the future.
Another week, another little bit of anime writing. I’m a little disappointed I didn’t get around to more episodes this week; I was hoping to get finished with them before the end of the month, but now I’m not sure that’s likely to happen. All the same, the delay is for kind of a positive reason – we’ve finally gotten in the majority of the furniture we were looking for to put in our upstairs living room, allowing us to move our other furniture downstairs to create a basement entertainment area. And for people who aren’t experienced in moving a lot of furniture around, well… it can be very exhausting.
Somewhat related to recent experiences, I’d like to take this opportunity to remind folks of how I handle comments at this blog. You can read the details in the site’s FAQ, but the major points are that there are several terms I’ve designated (which I’m not going to share) that immediately send comments into moderation. I also don’t publicize comments that are hostile toward myself or other commenters, or which argue in bad-faith or try to mischaracterize points that I or other commenters are attempting to make. Take that as you will.
This past week was a very busy and productive week for me, here at the blog. I had a couple of days off, so I managed to plow through quite a few first impressions in a relatively short amount of time. However, I realized quickly that that sort of productivity comes with a price – burnout. I spent so much time in my chair writing that I didn’t use my time away from work to actually… not work. Rookie error! So now I’m planning to try to come in for a softer landing by spacing the remaining reviews out a little bit more. My goal is to be done with these prior to the end of January, which, with not very many left to write up, should be do-able.
I got around to a wide variety of episodes last week, which was definitely helpful. I used some of the very basic research I typically do before watching something to try to space out series with similar genres or stories (rather than just doing them all in general order of release like I typically tend to do). I think that made the process much more pleasant.
Check out the links below to see if there’s anything you’ve missed, and thanks as always for reading!