The Fandrogyne

~ 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 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).

~ Did 3 loads of laundry last night, all of them blankets. Because not much feels nicer than fresh clean blankets when the weather's turning chillier every day.

~ I caught Tornadus in Pokemon Shuffle!

~ Played more Final Fantasy X. I made it through Kilika temple, but apparently my brain was too fuzzy to remember how to use the Destruction Sphere properly, so I had to skip that hidden treasure. Oh well, I wasn't aiming for a perfect game this playthrough anyway, so it doesn't bother me that much, but I'm still a little bit disappointed in myself for forgetting the right way of completing that temple puzzle.

I would have played longer, but I know the whole blitzball tournament in Luca is coming up, and I really hate that game so much, and I didn't feel like tackling it tonight. That'll be a headache for tonight instead, I'm sure.

~ And because I'm still in part of the game that contains loads of cut scenes and FMVs, I have time to do a little more embroidery while still playing the game. Double productivity for the win!

~ I didn't get any writing done last night! Not one word! But I'm not that worried, since on a normal day I can usually write 2000-3000 words without much difficulty, so long as I get into the scene I'm writing, so it shouldn't be much trouble to bring myself back to goal.

~ I'm having ridiculous problems with my Internet connection again. My desktop, which is what I use for most things, is far enough away from the router that it needs a signal boosting adapter to pick up a signal. Only as time goes on, that signal gets less and less reliable. Sometimes it drops entirely, but most of the time I suspect I'm getting close to dial-up speeds, which makes doing just about anything online extremely difficult.

I can't move the desktop, because there's nowhere else that it will really fit that's closer to the router.

I do have a laptop, which is okay in a pinch, but it's not the greatest and was bluescreening a lot before I got the desktop in the first place. And I'm not someone who uses a laptop as a laptop, exactly. I prefer putting it on a stable surface and essentially using it like a very lightweight desktop computer. But again, where it's close enough to the router to pick up a signal, there's no suitable surface, so I'm stuck using it intermittently and uncomfortably for important things before giving up and just resigning myself to another night with sporadic slow Internet connections.

So I'm really not enjoying that part of life. I'm not sure why the problem's gotten so much worse lately. It could be that the adapter is low quality and is just slowly crapping out, which is pathetic given that I only bought it a few months ago. It could be the router itself putting out worse signal strength, which I can only tell at a distance. It could be the fact that it's getting colder and I don't know, maybe wifi and cold don't mix.

But until I figure it out, I'm a mostly offline person. Post journal updates, send a few emails, update a couple of other things, but mostly exist in a disconnected state.

I suppose that's not too bad, since it does give me plenty of excuse to not be at everyone's beck and call so much, and to take more time for myself. "Sorry, can't hang around online and chat all night, my Internet connection is lousy!"

~ I played the demo version of Yo-Kai Watch. It seems like an okay 'mon game. Kind of cheesy, and like any 'mon game you can't help but compare it to Pokemon, but it seems decent. Fairly engaging battles, if also very simple, but you have to keep an eye on a lot of different aspects so there's that challenge to it. I'd probably consider buying a full copy if it weren't so expensive.

(Because I don't currently have enough games on my backlog that need playing, I guess.)

~ To combat both insomnia and my annoying cold, I took NyQuil before bed. And slept for 10 hours. And feel much better. I think I can safely say that was a "two birds with one stone" situation.

The fact that it was raining probably helped me sleep better, too, since I like the sound of the rain on the windows and roof as I'm drifting off to sleep.

~ The eye on my embroidery needle broke, and I can't find any other needles right now, so embroidery has been put on hold for a little bit. I'll be going out in the morning to buy more, though, so I won't have to wait long. Which is nice, because I was making decent progress on my project and I want to keep working on it.