Adrian

Played a bit further in DemiKids: Dark. I collected enough Dredogs to fuse into a Leogard, and enough Skeltos to get Lich, and finally got my player level to the point where I could fuse all the Jack Frost I'd been saving into King Icy. I'm about to go into Limbo Prison, and I think I'm decently prepared for it, what with King Icy being level 33 and Lich and Leogard are levels 27 and 28 respectively, and Gale's not that high a level buy his stats are comparable to everyone else's.

I swear, rank-increased demons are the only way to get through this game comfortably. I can get a few demons from any given area and fuse them into something a couple of levels higher than anything else around, but that advantage disappears as soon as I walk into a new area, where the demons also go up in level. Nothing gains experience in this game, and the only way to get stronger is by fusion. A difference of only a couple of levels means constantly healing and using up MP. Increased-rank demons (demons who can be fused together enough times that they turn into a completely different demon) are usually 8-10 levels above everything else in the area where the base demon can be found, and by the time they start to be less useful, there've been a couple of areas where there are new demons that can changed in the same way. So it takes an age to get enough of the right demon, but it ends up being the only way you don't spend all your time struggling in the game.

Plus the added bonus of all those battles giving you more money, I suppose. I definitely have way more money than I need at this point, since I wandered around for so long to find all the Skeltos and Dredogs.

---

I find myself really missing the old days of fandom. I miss the days when I felt like I could randomly stumble across a community of like-minded individuals who, even if they wouldn't share the same love of the same fandom, would at least understand when I talked about the weirdly appealing dynamics of the crack-pairing on my mind, or trying to puzzle out how this theory worked in that universe, and so on.

That's not to say that such fandom doesn't exist now. It's just that I don't know where it is, or else everyone's talking about stuff I haven't seen or played yet, and I feel uncomfortable breaking into such conversations. As it is, I'm still playing old GBA games and craving a Digimon rewatch and wondering if anyone even ships Auron/Braska/Jecht anymore.

I guess part of missing those days isn't just missing the fandom aspects. I also miss finding people into similar fandoms and reading about the other cool stuff they have going on in their lives. I learned so much. I felt like even if they didn't know me, I knew a bit about them, so it was almost like having friends. It's something I'm not really sure I know how to recapture.

Some of this nostalgia I know has come from watching Watashi ga Motete Dou Sunda (Kiss Him, Not Me), and the way Serinuma acts is like a scaled-up version of how I used to be. Excited over new character merchandise, considering purchasing doujinshi (even though I couldn't read Japanese...), attempting to draw so that I could draw my favourite characters, happy to find someone to be a fan with. I miss it. It's silly, but I miss it.

---

The landlord is coming by tomorrow to change the filters in the oil tank. Which will require me to interrupt my sleep patterns, because I sleep during the day and he, like a normal person, sleeps at night. Not really looking forward to that, because it also means spending a bunch of tonight cleaning up (the kitchen table is messy, the stairs need to be vacuumed, etc), but at least he doesn't come by very often anymore, since realising that I'm not some twit who's incapable of, say, vacuuming out the filters of a heater I don't even use. (He originally wanted to come by once a month to clean those filters, despite me preferring oil heat because the heat pump only heats about half of one floor of the house due to its placement, but once he wrapped his head around the idea that I could vacuum the stupid things myself, and then just did so, he stopped thinking he needed to come by so often.)

There's a hard rain coming down right now, icy and cold, and just hearing it hit the windows makes me want to crawl under a heated blanket and not come out until spring. The temperature is below freezing, too, so probably this is all going to turn to horribly icy slush underfoot, and I don't have winter boots yet, so even going out to get some will be an ordeal.

Not to mention that trying to walk over and through icy terrain with a cane isn't fun even on good days. The cane helps me balance, but it's not going to save me if both it and my feet slip out from under me.

I wish I could just stay inside until winter ends. Have my groceries delivered, have a job that I can do without having to leave the front door, generally be comfortable and not have to worry about getting cold and wet (which usually means I get sick), or risk falling (which is bad for obvious reasons) or any number of things that winter makes inconvenient.

I know, I'm griping like a curmudgeon. I'm an adult; I'm allowed.

---

I've been having fun browsing through a number of pages on The Cutting Room Floor, a website that goes into detail about a number of dummied-out content or localization/translation changes in video games. A lot of it is stuff I already knew, at least for games I'm familiar with, but looking at random games yields some interesting stuff now and again, and I'm often curious about behind-the-scenes aspects of things I do. This nicely satisfies some of my curiosity.

---

I'm almost three quarters through Closer to the Chest. I've been neglected it a bit these past few days, I really ought to have finished it by now, but apparently I'm just in a bit of a lazy mood. Maybe I'll settle down with it and finish it tonight. It's okay, but as I mentioned earlier, the unsubtle moralizing is irritating compared to what the author used to be able to convey in earlier books.

---

I've had the weirdest urge to rewatch Digimon Adventure lately. The subbed versions, not the dubbed ones. And of course Netflix has removed that version, as has the Funimation website. So I pretty much have no way of actually watching the things I want to watch. And this irritates me.

Doubly so because by the time I can find copies to watch, the urge will probably have passed because it went unfulfilled for long enough.

Holy crap, it's been a while since I updated this. Not surprising, since I often start blogs and then drop them because things like Facebook make talking about my life pretty convenient. But there's still something so nice about personal blogs, so eh, may as well return to this.

Though sadly, not much has really happened in my life since I stopped updating. Still unemployed, still on Social Assistance, still doing the same old stuff I was doing before.

...This entry got boring quickly...

---

In the middle of reading Mercedes Lackey's Closer to the Chest. It's okay so far, about the same quality I've come to expect from her recent Valdemar novels, which is to say that the moralizing has gotten extremely unsubtle compared to her earlier works. It's always a shame to see a beloved author's books go so far downhill, though that being said, it's not like they've declined so far that I won't read them. I just don't get the same enjoyment from them that I once did, and I find the blatant moralizing to be very annoying, but I'll still read them as quick comfort reads, so I suppose that says something.

---

Came down with a cold yesterday. Sore throat and very inflamed sinuses today. I blame the snowstorm yesterday. I know that really isn't the cause, since whatever I caught must have had time to incubate, but lousy weather usually tips my immunity over the edge and lets things flourish where otherwise I might be able to resist, so probably the storm at least had the effect of making it worse.

Plus today there's a pervading chill that's keeping snow on the ground, and that's not helping matters.

---

A total of 9 items showed up for review today, which is probably the most I've ever gotten at one time. A few require only minimal testing, so I was able to get 2 reviews done tonight, and I'll probably be able to do another 2 tomorrow, too. So that's good. Really, I'll probably be able to get reviews written for them all by the end of the week.

Of course, I know there's more stuff coming, but still. I want to be able to keep somewhat on top of things, and 2 reviews a night isn't that taxing.

If only I could find a way to make money doing this. I saw somebody earlier today say she once had a reviewing gig that paid $10 per review, which doesn't sound like much, but if I got everything I received today reviewed by the end of the week, that would be $90 in my pocket, at that rate. And right now, that would be a fantastic boost to my bank account.

Finished reading Andrew Lynch's Demi Heroes, as planned, and just a few moments ago I also finished Kyra Halland's Beneath the Canyons. It was okay, but nothing special.

I also started Robert Jordan's The Fires of Heaven, since I'm doing a massive Wheel of Time reread. Well, partially a re-read, since I think I only read to the end of the seventh book when I read them the first time, and now the series has finished and there are so many more books to it, so soon enough I'll be reaching material I haven't seen before. As it is, it's been long enough since I first read it that many of the events have been forgotten, so it's half like reading the books for the first time anyway.

And for my third trick book, I've started re-reading Ferrett Steinmetz's The Flux, since the third book in the series is being released soon and I want to catch up so that I can fully enjoy it when it's out.

---

My health hasn't been that great for the past few days. I've been feeling tired, run-down, and probably most of that is because I actually did far more than normal last week. 2 doctor's appointments, a visit to the hospital for bloodwork, the pharmacy for more medications, the farmer's market because there's a wonderful stall that sells sweets every Saturday, and one of the days on which I didn't do much was preceded by insomnia. Plus I don't have as much energy as most people, due to ongoing health problems, so even though that may seem like a mild week, for me it was hard, and I'm still recovering.

Unfortunately, the world doesn't stand still while I recover, which means today I have to get some groceries and mow the lawn, or else risk the wrath of my landlord if he drives by and sees it full of dandelions. And later this week I have another appointment with the doctor, for another B12 injection.

And at some point, hopefully, the people from social services will call me back and arrange an initial appointment, so there's a possibility that this week might also have that in store for me.

I'd love to spend a few days sleeping well and doing little but resting and recovering from all this running around. Who knows how likely I am to get that, though.

---

I love that the weather has been turning chilly at night and in the mornings lately. The days are still pretty warm, sometimes too warm when the humidity really gets going, but the nights are refreshing, and it feels good to be able to drink tea without overheating or to bury myself under comfortable blankets without sweating to death!

---

Toasted cheese buns for a snack, and then souvlaki in the morning. I'm already looking forward to delicious chicken on skewers!

---

[Edit] - Only an hour after posting this, it started raining pretty heavily, so I guess I'm not going to be mowing the lawn today after all! I'll still have to do it, but it seems a lot easier to handle, knowing I only have to do two things now instead of three.

1. Go to the Wikipedia home page and click random article. That is your band's name.
2. Click random article again; that is your album name.
3. Click random article 15 more times; those are the tracks on your album.

Band name: Tourism in Chad

Album name: Sadiq Khan Zand

Tracks:
1 - Arifwala Tehsil
2 - Ann Chamberlin
3 - Love Behind the Melody
4 - List of Airports in Jordan
5 - Émile Aillaud
6 - Dustin Tynes
7 - Gamla Turingevägen Inscriptions
8 - Jonathan Cape
9 - List of County Routes in Suffolk County, New York (1–25)
10 - Szürketaxi FC
11 - Gallinuloides
12 - Maidenbower
13 - Rumpler C.IV
14 - Dollie & Me
15 - Last Orders

My band seems to be largely interested in the Middle East, and also does a lot of biographical songs