areolas

I love this apartment I've lived in since 2018 very much. It's cute, spacious, and all things considered still reasonably priced for the area. The only thing about it is NO AIR CONDITIONING. Summer is miserable. I'm just sweaty all the time. We have window ACs for the bedrooms at night and a standing unit that by limits of plugs and windows has to be in the dining room pointing toward us. It works to at least cut down on the humidity, but barely cools down the house at any kind of significance. Can't even sit with my legs crossed cause my knees get sweaty, my headphones at my computer make my ears and head sweaty, everything is freakin sweaty.

Our long weekend has come to an end :(((((( back to working 2x a week and class 3x a week :((((( Even the fall semester won't bring relief. I love how I'm acting like I'm doing sooooo much when from 2016-2020 fully I worked 5x a week 8:30-5 with very little exception lmao. Now I have to go on campus 8:30-4:30 twice a week & the other days this summer it's like, two hours. But it IS HARD and I WILL COMPLAIN thank you very much. It's my god given right to complain and who am I to turn away from that.

Anyway I did not beat HZD like I planned to, the DLC was a lot bigger than I expected, but I'm getting close.
Worked on my crochet skirt I've been putting together periodically for.... a while now lol. It's for Ren Faire & I really hope to be able to wear it this year. I'm almost to the point now where I would be stopping if I were making it mini skirt length, but I'm not so..... still a lot to go



It's looking pretty good I think! The pineapple pattern is pretty clear and the size of them is gradually increasing. The next steps are a bigger hook and bigger pineapples. I think it'll be pretty once it's all done with.

Also bought this cat bed pattern this weekend & ordered a green/teal/blue gradient yarn to make it with. It calls for a bulky yarn which only came in an amount that I think can make like, 2 of these beds easily though, so fennec might be getting more than one. We'll see! I want to finish the sweater I left off on as well & start the next. It's nice to have something to skip to when I get sick of this skirt again

Back to work tomorrow :( I'm not looking forward to it. With only doing that one day last week I did my best, but I'm not looking forward to the impatient emails I'll have about the stuff I didn't get around to.

Oh yeah! We played dnd this weekend too, two weekends in a row if you can believe it! We're getting very close to being done with Curse of Strahd. Something I never ever thought would happen. It's getting late though, so I'll write about that later

basically didn't get anything done yesterday i wanted to get done. I just about hit post and immediately after was hit with period and cramps. There went that day. I basically sat around feeling nauseous and bloated instead.

Here's some final images of the blanket: the border, which I love! And it being put to some good use.



So tonight I'm studying instead, since I skipped it last night. Didn't do any of the dnd prep I wanted to either.

I just had some decent GF pizza for dinner & I'm ready to start I GUESS.

The bank situation is basically wrapped up. Opened a new account and opened a savings account finally too. Now that I have that, I gotta put together an actual monthly budget plan - how much fun money I'm allowed to keep in checkings + bills estimate. I have also get used to seeing two (low) amounts rather than one (slightly less low) total and not panic that I'm broke lol. I'll be less broke soon, I had a CT scan and dr appts several months ago that cost me 700 got dang buckies that I have two payments on my plan left to go. I'll be blessedly free once those are done with.

I have a summer course I need to take at the undergrad level this summer, which at least that will only cost ~$100 bc we get a better deal per undergrad credit than we do for grad credits. Even with a significant discount grad school is expensive as hell god. it's what I want though.

I bought an over the door hanging shelf + rack so we have a place for bags bc rn they just sit on the floor or couch & I'm very sick of it. I'm gonna put that together THEN I'll study..... i prommy....

Today was supposed to be my birthday dinner out at my parents house. We had to cancel last weekend bc the weather was too bad and icy, and today when we got in the car to leave it had been clearly rifled through by someone. Nothing was missing though? tony had cash (four $1 bills so not much) but also gift cards, and none of that stuff was taken, but his registration was taken?? It's very weird, but I'm glad it wasn't anything worse, plus he doesn't really keep anything very valuable in there anyway at least.

But then on the way out the engine was misfiring, so we had to stop at autozone so he could change out all his spark plugs out in the cold rain. It wasn't related to the break in though, he says last weekend he had the feeling he was going to need to change them out, turns out he was right.

So we're trying again next weekend, third time's a charm hopefully!

Yesterday was dnd day, curse of strahd more. and it went really well! I prepped two specific locations they were planning to go to and we didn't end up making it to either one lmao. they instead had a cookout by a lake where they invited a bunch of werewolves they made friends with & then went by this camp that had some closely guarded elves to break one out who they need to help & who may prove to be an ally. A random unplanned heist! They rolled really well though, surprisingly lol and they polymorphed their elf friend into a rat and just casually carried him out, easy as. Lucky for them, bc one bad roll could have really backfired so badly lmao and had a whole camp of people against them.

The two unengaged players are still unengaged and continue to further cement their not being invited back for future games status. We always plan our playing days in advance and it's always a Saturday, generally always in the same time slot. & suddenly on thursday they were like, of we forgot dnd was this weekend & bought movie tickets, can we start at 4 instead of 2? Which, fine, we've all done this. It's just how they consistently view dnd as like, the least important plan & if anything else comes up it's the first to go. But whatever, we reschedule.
then on saturday I'm working to plan & get everything put together & just after 2 one of them messages to be like "actually we're on our way home now can we start at 2:30". I want to know what they think I'm doing all day lmao just like, sitting idle waiting for them to appear so they can start doing this thing? Of course I told them no, we rescheduled and I've been planning for 4, but I can do a little bit earlier. If they were better players/people to play with I could be more flexible, but they're so consistently inconsiderate like that that I can't be bothered. I'm not some plan to be changed around at a whim based on your day. I'm a person who is putting a lot of work into making a world with characters and stories for you & you can't even bother to put in minimum effort

crochet continues! Here's what a box of 180 squares looks like, and I'm starting to piece it together too

This is what I've been doing since Christmas with the yarn I got then




In putting them all together now I'm realizing that like, every color is the same size square except the light yellow which is like, maybe 1/4" bigger. I don't want to redo all those though so idk... I'm gonna I guess just try to make do with how it is. If it looks too wack and crazy I guess I'll have no choice. 22 squares left before I start to find out

I bought a sweater pattern from my parents for my birthday & some yarn for that too, but the colors that came in were entirely not what was shown on the stupid listing. I'm trying to return them but my request didn't get any kind of response yet. I hope they take it bc....I don't want it for anything else either.

Plus I have quilts I need to finish and quilts I need to start.... like what I need laying around is more blankets lmao

Just finished up concluding my second paper of the two and with it being due tomorrow I'm gonna take the night & look at it tomorrow morning at work with some refreshed eyes before just turning it in. He's a very tough grader so idk what to expect, but if I get a B it is what it is. I specifically aimed to not care in grad school about grades as much as I did in undergrad, you still get the masters at the end either way! and I've never once had anyone ask or care about my undergrad GPA! I know it doesn't really make a difference.

BUT it also just turns out that so far I've gotten only As in my classes and it's really easy to get into a mindset of wanting to maintain that. I'm okay about reminding myself though I think. I'm doing this because I want to above all else, and because I really love linguistics.

i'm just glad to have another semester out of the way, I'm officially halfway done with my full program now!!

Anyway, I stressedly made this while I was writing this paper and I got it done so fast as a result.

It's a little plastic shopping bag holder/dispenser with a ponytail holder at the bottom. I think I'm gonna try some kind of granny square bag or sweater next. I want to keep making things but I don't need more things. There's always room for more sweaters though! Thing is I also don't tend to buy the expensive good yarn either... idk! I just wanna keep making. maybe now the semester is over I can get back into my quilt wips

it's finals season again babey and I'm swimming in the depths of it so bad.

It's only 2 term papers and 2 presentations to go along with them, but when you write at the pace I do it's real agony. Thankfully the topics I'm working on are genuinely super interesting. I loved the reading & researching portion lol it's the digesting and writing about them comprehensively part I'm struggling with.

My first presentation is tomorrow, talking about nonbinary/gender neutral approach to language that has been developing in France. I just want to rush ahead to it now and get it out of the way. My second presentation (next week) isn't actually part of my grade, it's just a chance to discuss with my class what I've found in my research, so I'm way less concerned about it. After that it's just about writing and writing.

After Dec 12th I'm FREE. I can go back to playing video games & get to work on some bigger crafty projects I want to work on. I'm so excited to be done omg. I have written out some week by week writing goals so I can be sure I'm keeping up with everything. With some carefully planned breaks so I don't turn into the shining.

Thankfully my period seems to be arriving today and not tomorrow on presentation day. Here's hoping I won't spend my presentation hours agonizing.

Anyway here's an update of what my little christmas lights are looking like:

they are really laughably NOT remotely the same size as each other bc of different yarns but that's alright