~ 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.

~ Snooooooow~! The city got about 10 cm of snow overnight, which is a little weird for this early in December, but eh, it's Canada, so you take it as it comes.

The problem is that it was wet heavy snow, and the weight of it caused broken tree branches and knocked-out power lines all over the city. I was without lights for about an hour. Fortunately I anticipated that and charged my 3DS, so I just lay in bed and played video games until the lights and heat came back.

Of course, then I had the joy of clearing heavy wet snow off the front steps, and the whole back porch. The driveway can stay covered for now, though. I don't have a car, nobody comes to visit, and it's just not worth busting my back over at this very moment.

~ Finished reading Sylvia Sprunk Wrigley's Domnall and the Borrowed Child. I thought it was a novel, but at under 100 pages, it's actually a novella. Interesting look at fairy lore, and it was a nice diversion.

I've moved on now to Daniel Polansky's The Builders. I've heard some good things about this book, and I have a feeling I'm going to enjoy it. (I wouldn't be reading it if I didn't think it was at least possibly enjoyable!)

~ My Internet connection did cooperate long enough for me to get my latest bookmark listed on my Etsy store.

~ Had stomach problems before I tried to sleep, which, combined with more exertion than I'm used to lately (shoveling so much wet snow off the back porch), had me reduced to shaking uncontrollably and being unable to get warm. The shaking didn't actually stop until I'd fallen asleep (at least, that's when my awareness of it stopped), and it took 3 heavy blankets to even start to warm me up despite not actually feeling that cold. Probably lousy hydration and low blood sugars to boot, but knowing the probably cause of it doesn't make it any less terrible to go through.

~ I finished reading Delilah S Dawson's Servants of the Storm. Pretty good book, and I love the way it had me doubting reality by the end. Similar to but didn't go as far as Ilsa J Bick's White Space and The Dickens Mirror.

~ I spent some time organizing my list of review novels that I've received over the years. I keep a huge list in a spreadsheet, with title and author and publication date, which was very helpful in figuring out what to read when so that I could get reviews out on time. But not doing formal reviews much anymore has left me with a load of books and no idea what to read next, nor any particular guidelines I feel that I should follow. But weirdly what I can tell is whether I'm in the mood for something short or long, so I've taken the time to go through large chunks of the list and make a notation of the number of pages in the book. Between that and the other data I've collected (plus GoodReads if I'm curious as to whether a certain plot might fit my mood), I hope it'll be a bit easier to settle on reading material without as much deliberation.

~ A local grocery store had sampler trays of baked treats on for 50% off, so I bought one. $4 got me 12 pieces of various brownies, all about palm-sized, and they're so tasty! And bad foods are so much easier to justify when they're half price!

~ 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!

~ It was a pretty relaxing weekend. I slept a lot, which was both good and bad, I guess, but I liked it. It passed too quickly, as weekends are wont to do, but it was still pretty good.

~ I finished reading Django Wexler's The Forbidden Library and started on Delilah S Dawson's Servants of the Storm, which is wonderfully creepy and I'm loving it so far!

~ I tried candied smoked salmon for the first time, which is a bit too sweet to eat on its own, but when it's between two thin slices of potato-chive focaccia, it's freaking amazing! Not something I would go out of my way to buy again, I think, unless it's on the amazing BOGO sale I got it on this week, but I'm glad I took a chance on it and tried it while I could.

~ I went to view a house for rent that looked like it would be perfect for what I needed. Same price as where I'm currently staying, 3 bedrooms (or from my perspective, a bedroom, a spare bedroom, and an office), 2 bathrooms, great location that could help save me money in cabs by being so close to major grocery stores that I could walk much more easily, attached garage, fenced-in back yard. It seemed amazing!

Then I got there and it was... less than amazing.

First off, the fenced-in back yard had a large chunk of fence missing. The garage roof leaked badly, and around light fixtures. The stove's range hood was missing. The walls and windows hadn't been properly cleaned since the previous tenants left, nor the floors from other viewings, so it looked very much like cleaning up someone else's mess would be part of the new tenant's move-in chores. The 3rd bedroom was in a finished basement, which also would have been wonderful for potential future heat waves because it would be cooled down there than upstairs, but it was hard to actually see anything because there was no power running to the building and the woman showing it to me (or more accurately, letting me wander through at it my leisure while she stood at the doorway playing with her cell phone) didn't know about that and didn't bring a light source, so I tried to get what info I could by the light of my cell phone camera. But that did reveal to me that some rooms downstairs were missing wall and/or ceiling panels.

I could understand a place like that being rented for $650 a month, with all those problems, but $800? Hell no! I could understand $700 if the fence and garage roof were fixed, but that's still not $800.

But the biggest nail in the coffin was that the house was up for sale, which means that even if the landlord was willing to drop the rent to $650 a month in light of all the damage done to the place, I might still find myself in the exact same situation I'm trying to move to avoid in the first place.

So that turned into a bit of a wasted hour on Saturday. It was interesting seeing another house to possibly rent, I admit, but nothing came of it.

Back to the drawing board where that's concerned, I guess.

~ I'm at the 47k mark in NaNo! I'm hoping to be finished this weekend. I could probably finish tomorrow, since 3k days aren't that difficult for me when I get really into a scene, but I can't say for sure. Still, I don't expect to be scrambling for words at the very last minute on Monday, at least.

~ My landlord has been making noises about selling the house lately. He's offered to give me first purchase chance, which is nice, except that I can't afford it because I have no downpayment saved up in order to qualify for any kind of mortgage.

And him putting the house on the market will result in 2 things happening. 1) People will come to see the house during the day, which is when I sleep, so I'll have to disrupt my sleep schedule. 2) If they want me to leave the house during the showing, there's a chance 1 of my cats will escape because 5 cats are hard to keep an eye on when you're not used to it. And even if none of them escape, they'll still be disturbed by strangers tromping through what they consider their space, and I don't want to do that to them.

So I spent tonight looking for other houses or apartments to rent. It's tough, because even places that say they're pet-friendly are only friendly to a certain point. Like, they'll let you have a cat or a small dog, but 5 cats is too many, no matter how clean and quiet and well-behaved they are.

But there were 7 places within the city that are affordable and might consider renting to me. I sent emails tonight for more details, explaining about the cats right away, so if they don't want to rent to me I won't waste my time in seeing the property and discussing anything else with them. But I've got my fingers crossed. I don't want to move again, but I want strangers in my space even less, so it might really be better to move soon and just not deal with all the crap of current landlords trying to sell the house.

And if I can find a place with lower rent than I'm currently paying, then that's even better!

~ Vacuumed the stair carpets and swept the downstairs floor. Did laundry. Clipped coupons (which I can apparently sell batches of on EBay; isn't that weird?). General adult stuff. Why can't the adult stuff do itself, anyway?

~ Speaking of adulting, I'm reasonably certain that at least some of the water in the basement is coming from outside. I thought at first it was a leaking water tank, but this past week we had some torrential rain, and now the basement's flooded with water again, and it has more dirt in it than just sitting in the basement for 1 week max would account for. So even if some of it is a leaky hot water tank, most likely a bunch of it is still coming in from a leak in the foundation.

Which not much can be done about unless the landlord's willing to put in some major repair work. Which he may have to do if he wants any chance of selling the house for even a halfway decent price in this area's housing market. Which will result in yet more inconvenience and disruption to my schedule, terror to the cats, possibly an unsafe place to live, I don't know.

So yes, after finding that out for near certainty, I really really hope someone replies positively to my inquiries about renting a different house, and that I can arrange to move in within a few months. Then the landlord can do whatever he wants to this place.

~ We out in the morning and did a fairly major grocery shop, since supplies were getting low. My favourite chore, hurray, which was actually a pretty welcome break after doing all those other things last night. I think I ended up saving about as much as I spent, since I only bought one thing that wasn't on sale!

~ I ranked high enough on the last challenge battle in Pokemon Shuffle to get a Manectite! I'm really glad I'm getting to the point where I'm strong enough to stand a decent chance when these challenges come up.

~ I started embroidering a Christmas present for my grandmother. It's a simple thing, really, and it shouldn't take me longer than a few days to get it all ready and mailed off. Money being tight at the moment, I thought she might understand and appreciate something I made myself, and something that she might be able to use.

I'll try and remember to post pictures once I'm done.

~ It finished raining and instead there was snow on the ground in the morning. Just a little, barely an inch, but it looked beautiful. Apparently last winter didn't make me as snow-phobic as I first thought!

~ While I was asleep I left a slow cooker chicken and bean stew to heat. I haven't had any yet, but it sure smells good!

~ I finished my rewatch of Victorian Farm and have moved on to Edwardian Farm. I do love these historical recreation shows. Especially the ones that are done by experts and not just random people in an attempt to create a unique reality show (and all the associated annoyance and drama or reality shows).

~ A friend and I have started to read the Twilight saga together, as a sort of "share my pain" project and so that when people tell us that we can't badmouth the books because we've never read them, we can say that we have indeed, and that they're still pretty bad.

Really, though, we're a quart of the way through the book and nothing's happened except for a load of banal conversation about nothing, Bella being simultaneously pretensious and self-deprecating, and Edward saying a lot that amounts to, "Come with me. ...You should stay away from me. We're going here together... but I'm too dangerous to be around, for absolutely no reason that you can fathom. Want to hang out with me? WELL YOU SHOULDN'T!"

I'm honestly not sure how this managed to attract an agent, because there's absolutely nothing in the standard excerpt length that would lead me to believe the book is about anything but an unhappy girl trying to cope with general life while being ignored by attractive people. You don't even get to that whole "Edward saving Bella from a car accident" bit until after chapter 3, and that's usually the limit most agents will give anything, if they're feeling generous.

Yes, it went on to make lots of money and launched the YA reading careers of a million teens, but I don't know how, because it isn't a very good book, and there were plenty of better ones already on the shelves at the time.

~ At least I've finished Arrows of the Queen. That took some of the bad literary taste out of my mouth.

~ I did play more Final Fantasy X this weekend, which was nice because I neglected it all last week. Made it through the temple at Macalania, laughed maniacally over winning the battle with Seymour, then spent most of the night level-building on Bikanel Island, because the desert is vast and full of monsters that actually give me a bit of a challenge. So that was plenty of fun.

I have the Airship now, which I think is an event that every long-time Final Fantasy player waits for in every game.

~ I got quite a bit of housework done this weekend, too! The dishes are all done, laundry mostly folded and put away, the kettle cleaned and descaled, and I made beef strips and rice one day and then chicken fajitas the next, both of which were delicious!

And let's not forget the tasty pumpkin cinnamon rolls!

I'm glad I managed to be so productive and get so much done!

~ I'm finally and properly caught up with my wordcount goal for NaNoWriMo! It took a few 3k+ nights, but I got there, and now I can just work at a normal pace for the rest of the month, provided I don't take any more days off.

Then it'll just be a matter of continuing to write until I actually properly finish something. Which for me is a lot harder than writing 1.6k words a day.

~ I spent most of last night either reading, or clicking around on freebie sites to see if there were any good samples that I could request. I used to love doing that, years ago. I got a lot of free samples then, usually of food or drink mixes, and it was nice to be able to try new things without any real investment on my part.

Now, though, I'm more likely to review the samples on Amazon than I am to just try it and never think of it again, which I've noticed lately has led to a whole load of offers for more free products. It's a never-ending cycle. I may not be formally reviewing books anymore, but it seems a lot of knock-off and tech companies want me to help boost their products by writing reviews.

And really, I'm not opposed to doing that, so long as the product's good and it's something I'll actually use. If a product is good, I like to be able to endorse it.

I don't want product reviews to take over my life, though. But there's less chance of that happening when the products aren't books. Books take a lot of time to read, and a good review usually consists of at least 5-7 paragraphs, so between writing and reading, book reviews can take up a lot of time. Small product reviews are comparatively simple. These wristbands that fit a FitBit Flex? Very comfortable, good variety of colours, work just like the official ones do only for half the price. Boom, review's done. (I flesh it out a little more than that, of course, but my point is it takes less time to test out a small product than it does to read a book.)

~ It snowed again last night. Normally I like the snow, and I get giddy and excited when the first real snowfall of the season happens, but all I can think now is how terrible the weather was last winter, with frequent blizzards and snowdrifts higher than my head and the daily work of clearing a path from the door to the road. It's not supposed to be as hard a winter this time, but I'm still a bit afraid of it.

~ I wrote over 3000 words yesterday. I think it's safe to say that I'm catching up to where I ought to be with NaNo!

~ My package from Amazon arrived today! I'm happy that all 12 bottles of ponzu arrived safely!

...If anyone's wondering why I ordered 12 bottles of ponzu at once, it's because I had a code for $10 off any order over $40, and the 12 together came to just under $40, which was actually the best deal. There were single bottles sold, but the code was only good for products sold and shipped directly by Amazon, and the 12-pack was the cheapest option they had. And none of the grocery stores around here stock ponzu anymore, so it was a choice between ordering a bunch from Amazon, or spending $18 on bus fare to another city, disrupting my sleep schedule, and having to stay there for an entire day in the hope that their Asian market had some instead. Ordering online was by far the better option!

~ I've been very tempted to make 2016 an SMT year, and dedicate that year to playing all the SMT games I own. My biggest problem with this plan? I have so many, and they're often really hard games!

Let's see, as a quick tally, I have Persona (the original PSX game, and the rerelease for the PSP), Persona 2: Innocent Sin, Persona 3 (the original PS2 game, the FES rerelease, and the PSP rerelase), and Persona 4. And Persona Q. I have SMT: Nocturne, SMT: Strange Journey, and SMT IV. I have Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers, and Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha vs The Soulless Army. I have both Digital Devil Saga games. I have Devil Survivor (the original DS release and the 3DS rerelease) and Devil Survivor 2.

If I played 1 game a month, and only stuck to playing 1 version of each game (not playing all 3 different versions of Persona 3 that I own, I mean), I still wouldn't have enough time to beat them in a single year. And that schedule also ignores that fact that Persona 5 and SMT IV: Final are coming out next year, too. I'd need to finish a game every 28 days to play all the games that I own from the series, not including any new ones that come out.

...I wonder if I could stick to that schedule. Or at least, I wonder how many I could play through in a year, if I mostly only played that series.

~ Another of my embroidered bookmarks sold, which makes me very happy! I love knowing that I can make things that people actually want.

~ Finished rewatching all of Tales From the Green Valley. There need to be more historical recreation shows. Preferably involving Ruth Goodman. (Going to watch all Farm series now, because I enjoy them so much!)