The Fandrogyne

~ I made potato soup in the slow cooker, using this recipe. I didn't have any Russet potatoes, so I used 7 small yellow potatoes instead, and I think that works out to about the same amount, if I remember the size of Russet potatoes properly.

However, a friend wanted to go to a coffeeshop breakfast with me in the morning, so I ended up having a delicious chicken pesto sandwich and chai instead of potato soup. Which I'm definitely not complaining about. The soup was just as good when I woke up tonight!

~ I pretended to be a responsible adult and I emptied the recycling bin and took the bags down to the basement to await pickup day. I also siphoned more of the leak from the basement, because that problem's not going away any time soon, but I need to keep up with it or else water gets absolutely everywhere and it's a royal pain to just be in the basement, let alone do anything there.

~ I wrote 1 full review and 2 mini-reviews, all for books/novellas. The 1 big one has already gone live and have been cross-posted to GoodReads and Amazon, and the 2 smaller ones will lie in wait until the end of the month.

~ Speaking of books, I finished reading Daniel Polansky's novella, The Builders. It was pretty good. Think Redwall, but with guns and where nearly everyone dies at the end.

Now I'm settling in for a reread of Catherynne Valente's Fairyland books, because I seem to be in the mood for short-and-sweet books right now. (Probably has a lot to do with the fact that the end of the year is approaching and I want to achieve my reading goals for 2015.)

~ I went out for a walk before bed (mostly to mail my grandmother's Christmas present and letter) and discovered a pawn shop relatively nearby, with a second floor almost entirely devoted to video games. My bank account is already wincing in anticipation of how much money I'm likely to spend there at points in the future, since I saw a few games that I want (though I'm trying to use my money for holiday gifts for others, not holiday gifts for me). But it's been a long time since I've been in a store that sells second-hand PSX games, so even just being in there makes me feel good and makes me want to spend hours and hours gaming again!

~ December's Skoshbox arrived this morning, and I had fun trying out a little bit of everything before I went to sleep. Expect reviews and commentary later.

~ I finished another double-sided embroidered bookmark, which didn't turn out quite the way I'd envisioned, but I still like it. Playing with grey-on-grey embroidery can still end up looking good, sometimes.

(I want to list it for sale in my Etsy store, but currently the Internet is being really slow again, so that may not happen for a while. Sigh.)

I then ended up with a bunch of other designs that I want to try out, so I think it's time to settle back with some scrap fabric and see how well I can transfer what's in my head to something solid in the real world. With luck, it might even be something that doesn't look like butt!

~ I made yakimeshi again last night, only instead of using beef like I did last time, I used chicken, about twice the amount of fresh garlic that the original recipe called for, and some chopped green onions. Very tasty! But honestly, if you give me food that involves garlic, some sort of meat, and ponzu for flavour, I'm probably always going to say it's tasty.

~ Woke up to snow! Lots of snow! Not as much as if it was February 2015, mind you, but enough snow to be notable. It seems like a very good night to stay inside, drink lots of tea, and alternate between doing something artistic and reading a lot.

Shame I can't do those things simultaneously.

~ I made salmon and rice last night, and oh, it was so good! I love getting fresh salmon fillets, pan-frying them shredding the fish into small pieces, and then eating it mixed with white rice. The fish oils give everything a fantastic buttery flavour, and I always go back for seconds. And one of the grocery stores I go to often has 50% off various fish fillets on Friday mornings (they have a lot of marked-down products on Friday mornings, actually), so it's definitely worth getting delicious salmon then.

Shame I was working on more of a budget than usual last week, or I might have splurged on trying swordfish, and buying a tuna steak, both of which were also 50% off. Oh well. There'll be other times.

~ I also made strawberry cream cheese brownies, which were absolutely amazing! The chocolate flavour overpowered the strawberry a bit, but the cream cheese gave it a nice zing that I really like. I'll definitely be making more of those in the future!

~ Experimented with another couple of drag king makeup tutorials, which might have turned out better had the mascara I used for the facial hair not been quite so waterproof. When I messed up, it was difficult to correct, so it didn't turn out very well in the end.

Plus I had to scrub my face almost raw just to get the makeup off, which wasn't the most fun. I think I removed actual hair with that facecloth!

~ I won NaNo! And impressively, the official wordcount was only 8 words shy of what Open Office told me I had written, so apparently I didn't use nearly as much hyphenation as in previous years. But either way, I've finished, and I'm happy.

Oh, I didn't finish an actual story from beginning to end. I have 3 partly-finished stories in the file. But I did write over 50,000 words this month, and that's all I needed for a NaNoWriMo win, so I'm still counting it as a victory.

I want to do the same thing in December. Aiming for 50k words a month might not be a bad idea, really, at least until I finish something and can move on to the editing stage.

~ I tried playing Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure, just to see what it was like, and I suspect it's going to be a really addictive video game. It's an action RPG, somewhat childish but still fun, and best of all my computer actually plays it without crashing! (Touch wood!) I don't want to get too into it at the moment, because I still have other video games on the go and I don't want to neglect them for a load of new things, but at least when I do decide to spend more time playing it, I'll end up having some good fun with it!

~ For supper I made pork chops stuffed with apples and brown sugar (okay, technically they came pre-stuffed, but I still cooked them!), boiled potatoes, and carrots. With After Eight ice cream for dessert. This is the high life, folks!

~ I also made a trip to the library, where I got out Delilah S Dawson's Servants of the Storm. Looking forward to reading that, once I finish Django Wexler's The Forbidden Library.

~ I wrote more than I expected to last night and got a bit ahead of the curve for NaNo. I already have tomorrow's wordcount met, so anything I write over the next 24 hours is a happy bonus!

Of course, every year I've done NaNo in the past, the word count feature of my word processing program always tells me I have more words than the NaNo verification feature, so I have to write about 2000 words more than the site suggests just so I can actually be declared a winner by their counter. So maybe this is less "getting ahead" and more "writing enough that they'll figure I did it right from the beginning anyway."

~ I made a really tasty pear crumble with some pears that I got on sale a little while ago. They were starting to go a little soft, so I needed to use them up soon, and what better way to beat back the rainy weather lately than with a hot pear crumble?

It was so delicious, too! I used this recipe, only I omitted the apples and optional nuts. Really simple, and a great way to use up fruit that's about to go off, I think.

I also made slow-cooker barbecue chicken while I slept. I know I've said it before, but I really do love that slow cooker for it's ability to cook things while I sleep, without worry of leaving the stove or oven on the whole time. It's so wonderfully convenient, and it's great to be able to wake up to a hot meal that I don't have to do any additional work for.

~ I started reading Django Wexler's The Forbidden Library, a book that's been sitting on my shelves for far too long now. It's a mid-grade book, but usually isn't my thing, but I like Wexler's writing and I like the synopsis, and I do like libraries, so I thought it was about time I picked it up and read it. (There are so many books I can say that about right now...)
The Wheel of Time Companion waiting on my front porch. Now, I've made it pretty clear since ceasing my formal book reviews that any books that show up unexpectedly are books that I will consider gifts, and given that I think most of my publishing contacts have acknowledge that I've ceased book reviewing, it's fairly safe to say that they're not expecting a review from me in this case.

Though it's definitely worth giving a shoutout to the amazing people at Tor who sent it in the first place, and who sent along loads of other wonderful books during the time I was reviewing. I still feel amazingly privileged to have met so many of them, and to still stay in touch with them.

~ I plan to spend tonight catching up on the dozen or so emails that I've let slide over a few weeks, see if any new jobs are available that I haven't applied for yet, and to generally get computer stuff done that has been languishing. That will involve using my laptop in an uncomfortable way, because the Internet connection on my desktop is still lousy, but I'll manage.

~ I had a satisfying but unproductive night and day, which is okay by me because those kinds of nights are usually pretty relaxing.

~ I got a bit more writing done, and even though I'm still behind after leaving everything alone for that many days, I'm catching up, and the difference isn't insurmountable. I also signed up for the NaNoWriMo site, not for the community aspect or the wordcounter or anything, but mostly for the discount I'd get on Scrivener when I meet the 50k word goal at the end of the month.

~ I read more of Courtney Schafer's The Labyrinth of Flame, which I'm not reading as quickly as I normally would because I keep getting distracted by things like writing and playing video games. But I'm almost three quarters through, and if I make sure to take the time tonight, I ought to finish it and the heap the author with praise, because she's wonderful and writes wonderful books and ought to be told that more often.

(Can't tell I'm a big fan, can you?)

~ I used my slow cooker to make a pot of oatmeal while I slept, because the days are getting colder and sometimes it's hard to get out of bed when I know that it's cold outside the blankets. But knowing I have to get up because food is ready, especially hot food, makes it a lot easier.

I like my oatmeal a lot thicker than it turned out, so next time I'll add less liquid, but it still tasted okay, and was nice and warm, and that's the important thing.

~ I took a trip to the library and got out a couple of books tonight, because Tuesdays are the one night of the week the library's open late enough that I can go without having to get up really early. One book on money-saving tips, and the other on making trickle income online, combined with getting freebies to supplement budgets. Most of the info I suspect I'll already know, but even if there are a few tricks in there that I haven't already done to help cut my costs and expenses, I'll be glad to hear of them.

~ Went out to meet a friend the morning, to get help getting giant bags of cat litter home, and while I was out we stopped by the Granville Street Diner to give their food a try. Despite hearing reviews from locals like, "The food's not that great," or, "Don't bother going there," I found it a pretty good place. The food wasn't spectacular or anything, but it was exactly what I was hoping for, and the hot hamburger I had was really close to hot hamburgers served by a restaurant that I miss because it's back in the city I moved here from. I haven't had one in almost a year, and it wasn't exactly the same, but it was close enough to be comparable, so I was pretty happy with it.

The service was extremely fast, and I haven't yet found another restaurant that serves bottomless mugs of tea, coffee, or hot chocolate for only $2. So in all, a good restaurant when you want cheap tasty food but want something a bit more substantial than fast food.

~ Had a dream that I came out to my parents as transgender, and despite knowing I've told them such before in real life (though mostly that I don't identify with my physical/assigned sex), in the dream, they freaked out. Maybe because I'd made the decision to start living with a male appearance and was working toward that in a much more serious way than they'd ever seen, I don't know, but they were both extremely unhappy, talking about how they'd lost a daughter and were really upset and didn't know how to handle it.

I can get people not knowing how to handle it when someone comes out to them, because it's a mental readjustment you have to make, but even in the dream the whole "I've lost a daughter" bit stung, because they haven't had a daughter since I was in my early teens and decided that nope, I don't like being female, even though I'd never heard the word transgender at that point. I even remember one time, out shopping with my mother, when she made some comment about me having grown up so well but to her I'll always be her little girl, and I turned around in the middle of the mall and said to her that I am not a little girl. And I think she took it to mean that I was embarrassed by her and that I'm a grown person and not a kid, but even that hurt because only 2 days before that I'd talked to her about why I hated being female and the assumptions people made about me when they saw female attributes. It felt like she was trying to shove me back into some parent-approved box that I had just finished telling her I don't fit in.

So it's not like my parents haven't heard some of my trans issues. But I don't think they remember them very well, because we barely see each other anyway and conversations are so far apart and my issues aren't central to either of their lives. In the dream, I tried to tell them that getting so wailingly upset and making the announcement all about them was derailing and offensive, because I was being brave trying to be honest with them about a big part of my identity and struggles and they're now making it all about how hard it is to be them, having a kid with those struggles.

I have no idea why I had this dream, but wow, do I ever feel uncomfortable about the next time I talk to either of them...

~ But in happier news, I got a lot more Final Fantasy X played last night! I got through the horrible Blitzball game in Luca, and it only took me 4 resets before I actually won the tournament. I know winning isn't essential to the game progressing, but it just feels wrong to let Wakka's last game be a failure instead of a victory. I won, 1-0, and I consider even a single goal to be a good thing because I am absolutely terrible at that minigame!

I stopped playing right before the Chocobo Eater boss battle, and did a bit of level-grinding right before that so I'd be in decent condition when I fight later.

~ I did get some writing done, though I'm not caught up to where I should be by NaNo standards. Closer than before, though. I'm a bit less than a day behind now, instead of two days, so it won't take me much effort to catch back up. I just need to sit down and actually write, instead of getting distracted by fun video games.

~ I seem to be at that stage of having a cold where I'm useless as a human being, much less an adult. I just want to curl up in bed with an endless mug of tea and some books, and not come out until I feel better. Unfortunately, my body seems to also be conspiring against that plan, because I'm still going through stress-related insomnia, which makes my restless legs act up, so lying in bed isn't the most comfortably thing because of pain.

Thanks, Obody.

~ Did some reading last night, watched a couple of YouTube videos, and just generally tried to rest and relax. Can't say that I accomplished much, but it's probably better that way, if I'm feeling so cruddy.

~ I did catch Ho-Oh in Pokemon Shuffle, though. I had to use a whole load of money on Great Balls to do it, because the battle was seriously annoying and I didn't want to keep doing it over and over again and hoping for the best with a low catch percentage, but I did catch it, and now I can spend half a billion battles trying to recoup some of that money I just blew.

~ Technically finished all my responsibility reading for the month! This makes me so very happy, and it's like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I still have to write up a final review, and I do want to read T Frohock's Without Light or Guide and review that on Friday morning, but after that, I consider myself free to read or not read however and whatever I want to.

That may not sound like such a big thing to most people, but when you've been running a relatively popular book review blog for almost 6 years, you start to feel the pressure of always having to provide regular content, always having to clear off the review copy pile (which never ends, and that's a blessing-curse of the best-worst kind), and so many books get left by the wayside because you don't have time or energy. I get to step back as of November first, and I think that's the right move for me because it feels like a lightening rather than a pure loss.

~ I made garlic beef yakimeshi for supper. It didn't turn out as flavourful as I'd hoped, probably because I lacked both mirin and any greens to add to the mix, but it was still tasty. Next time I think I'll add more garlic, and probably some chopped green onions, and I think that will help make it taste a lot better.

~ I made a turkey chili last night. I didn't have as many of the usual vegetables that I typically put in a chili, so it's mostly beans and tomatoes and meat, but it's still tasty, and after a weekend of not eating anything that resembles healthy food, I think my body was craving something with even a small amount of vegetables.

It wasn't as good as the usual chili I make, but it was pretty good anyway, especially with garlic naan.

~ I played Final Fantasy VII to distract myself. Got Vincent in my party, and started heading through Mount Nibel. For some reason I've always loved level-grinding in this area. I'm not sure why. Maybe because this is the area you see in the story Cloud tells in Kalm, when you see Sephiroth be awesome and have level 3 spells, so it feels like the kind of area that can make you strong. Either way, I've never minded spending a while getting lost on the twisty paths, because the battles are good and I get quite a bit of experience.

~ Caught both Celebi and Lugia in Pokemon Shuffle. Now I have almost 2 weeks to work on catching Ho-Oh before that event disappears. Fingers crossed that I can get strong enough, because so far it's a tough battle and I haven't managed to defeat it once, let alone catch it.

~ Fully caught up on Once Upon A Time now, right up to this week's episode. I have my theories about what's going on, but I can't tell if that's because I'm so used to the way the show pulls twists and turns all over the place and I'm getting used to thinking how the writers think, or if I'm just falling for the hints of misdirection. Or if I'm just hoping something will happen even though it never will. I guess I'll have to wait and see, really. At least now that I'm caught up, even when I don't have TV anymore I can watch the most recent episode on the CTV website, so I can stay caught up instead of waiting for this season to appear on Netflix.

~ As always, grocery shopping on Friday morning was fun. I took advantage of a few sales and came home with plenty of toilet paper, some ground pork, ground turkey, simmering steaks... Most of what I buy at grocery stores now is meat, because vegetables are so cheap at the 2 farmers markets, so it's better to just get meat when there are good sales and get vegetables elsewhere even when they're at regular prices.

Unless there are some good fruits or vegetables on the markdown rack. Last time I got 5 ears of corn for $1.49, which is a good price for this time of year. Most of the stuff there isn't much good unless you're going to use it within a day, maybe 2, but sometimes I can find some amazing deals on markdown produce.

~ One of the grocery stores I went to has a walk-in medical clinic, so even though I was tired and had groceries to take care of and just wanted to come home and go to bed, I sat there for an hour and a half until I got an appointment. Got a prescription for my asthma meds, filled them the next morning, and yay, I have things that let me breathe properly once again! Expensive, but I prefer oxygen to money most days anyway.

Sadly, my meds are more expensive here than they were in the last province I lived. By about $30. Which is very unfortunate, since it's not like I'm going to stop needing them any time soon, so that's an extra expense on top of the regular expense and bleh, why do I have to be unhealthy, anyway>

I also got this year's flu shot while I was there, which was cheaper than it was in the other province, but not by enough to offset the increased cost of the asthma meds. To offset the cost, the pharmacy would have to have paid me $10 to get the flu shot. They were usually around $20, before. But even then, I never paid, because my asthma entitled me to a free flu shot each year. (Pre-existing lung conditions occasionally have minor perks.) But that same allowance isn't given by this province, so I went from paying nothing to now paying $12, on top of paying $30 more for my regular meds.

But hopefully the vaccine will help keep me from getting as sick this winter, and my regular meds will do the rest to keep my lungs in decent working order. I hate that they cost so much, but I do like not being sick.

~ I earned enough points doing surveys to get a $10 payout! I have plans for this $10. Not huge plans, because it's only $10, but I'm going to have a little bit of fun with it. Money I earn from surveys like that is my fun money, money that doesn't need to go elsewhere, so I'm pretty happy earning little bits here and there to help me buy a video game or craft supplies every once in a while.

~ I finally splurged and bought a microwave, too, which, even though it was expensive (though it was still the cheapest microwave there), will help me make sure I eat more leftovers. Leftovers are a pain to reheat without something convenient like a microwave, so sometimes I just wouldn't go through the hassle, and some food would go to waste. No longer! So even if it was an expense, I think it will save money in the long run.

~ I've been having so many problems with my Internet connection lately. Sometimes it works wonderfully, high speeds and everything... for about 10-15 minutes. Sometimes less. And when it stops working, I'm left with no Internet connection for at least half an hour. I'm not sure if it's the router in the living room, or the signal booster on my computer, or something else entirely. I can't find anything on virus or malware scans, which means that "something else" isn't too likely, but that still leaves me with two options that I can't do much about. Other devices do work when they're closer to the router, but also sometimes they don't, and the router needs to be reset, so in the end I just have no idea.

I suppose I should try to see it as a mixed blessing. A sporadic Internet connection means less opportunity to get distracted by online stuff when I ought to be doing other things. The Internet's great for a lot, but it's also great for killing certain kinds of productivity, and really, sometimes I do need an excuse to step away and do other things. Not necessarily step away from my computer, because there's plenty of work I can do on it without needing the Internet, but step away from YouTube and Facebook and other distractions that I really need less of in my life.

Still. That doesn't make the lousy connection any less frustrating to deal with.