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Aaaaaand tadaaaa. I have finished reading 25 books for the year, I hit my goal. But I won't stop there. I still have so many more to read. The 25th book was th #3 book of Warrior cats. It is a great read, engaging and fun. The description of cats in the book are spot on enough that my mind has an easy time imagining what each cat looks like. I am offically on vacation and looking forward to having two weeks off of work. I won't be around to really update my website until later this month. I plan to take some pictures of Europe and post them when I get back. Maybe imbed them into the journal page.... hmm. I think another tab on the home page would be a bit much. So yeah maybe I'll come back after the trip and document each day of vacation with pictures.

Today was a good day, I always feel like Mondays go by fast. I am just refreshed from a weekend with my love. I have been reading just as much, I finished the second deluxe volume of Berserk. That manga kicks ass. I have also been deep into Pokemon Champions, figuring out some fun strats has been a highlight. I think I am currently on like a 5 battle win-streak. Once the team I am using starts to fail against higher ranks I will make more combos. Looking forward to it, just learning as I go. Mega Delphox is SICK, my glass cannon. But anyway, I haven't given much thought to the question I had posed last week. I do feel like just writing it out made me feel better. I did feel a hint of 'am I doing enough here' guilt and even more so just questioning of how to spend free time. No reason for me to be ashamed or guilty that I want to live my life the way I want to. That's the way it should be and I feel like I have a lot of time in life but I also don't. I just have to flow with my seasons like the four we experience on Earth. Well, I am off now to read and play more Pokemon Champions.

I have been reading a lot. My most recent book I finished was The Book of Hope which the author discusses the idea of hope with Jane Gooddall. RIP Queen, you were a real one. This book definitely gave me some hope, more so in my close life. I still feel like the entire world is going to shit, but at the very least I think it has helped to frame my feelings and thoughts when it comes to the direct/small world around me. This book lead me to ponder the idea and question of "what is a life well lived". A very deep philosophical question to ask myself but one worth doing so. To tackle the question, I will first need to idetify what I believe is a good life. I would consider a good life one that is meaningful to oneself maybe. I do believe that life for the most part is meaningless in the grand scheme. But those I love and surround myself with mean a lot to me. And I to them. So having many close loving relationships can add meaning. But I do think there is a deeper personal self love that is essential to even feel the love of others. So strong personal relationships would help to lead to a good life.

Fostering good relationships with people is a large part of living a good life. I think I may make this into a philosophical questions tab on my website if I feel like it. Because I will only touch upon one more aspect of this question here. I think another aspect of a life well lived to me currently is being present with myself during alone time. Ah yes, sweet alone time. Well I am not ever alone if you count Tootsie teehee. :) I have been trying to have my alone time habits match up to my quest to live a good life. It is part of the reason I have been filling my alone time with reading. Reading definintely aligns with a life well lived to me. I have been quite lucky as most of what I read has felt fulfilling and worth my time. Sometimes constantly trying to align values and free time is daunting. I have to remember that even if something isn't quote on quote "adding value" that it is still worth it if I am enjoying it. And then the second aspect is enjoying it guilt-free.

This past week was one of the busier ones I've had in a while, just in terms of shit I had to get done and plans I made. Monday was for sending off taxes paperwork, Tuesday was the typical post work climbs, Wednesday was dr appointment and Magic at the card store. Thursday was a recovery day amd then Friday and Saturday were city travels. It was a great time I enjoyed both outings but today I am exhausted. Made it through the work day but I was fading around 3pm. I plan to add a section to my website about my Pokemon grinds, I have a few of them now. Working on soft resetting my pokemon fire red version to get a shiny charmander. It's a bit easier than my Pokemon Home Pokedex grind. That has consumed most of my pokemon play time. I typially switch between games depending on how I'm feeling. In my new Pokemon dedicated tab I'll keep track with screenshots.I believe it was last week that Pokemon ZA was integrated with Pokemon Home so that has been more of the focus for me currently (besides the shiny hunt for charmander that I started last night). On a side note, I have been reading the Warrior Cat book and it is so adorable. It has accurate information about cats too which I appreciate. I definintely missed out by not reading these as a kid. I guess my book time went to reading manga in middle school instead.

Crazy two in a row posts after a small hiatus. I have been feeling pretty good recently, I do thank and relate it to the better weather. It has been warming up here and it doesn't get late so fast. It is a nice switch up from the shitty feeling I had for a good portion of the month of March. Just stomach pains and weird bloating. I guess medicine has helped so it is just stomach/bile related... I have been on my typical reading grind, I plan to try and read some of the Warrior Cats series, I think I missed out on having it as a part of my childhood and I do want to see what it is about. See if it stands. Keeping on my workout routine and eating well. Easter is coming up, mostly indifferent about. I like my typical weekend plans. OMG I have a calendar of birds on my desk and I learned about a bird called a Great Potoo! What the HECK! Looks fake, like a Creepy pasta bird. WILD! I love nature, so cool. Look it up of you've never seen one.

I am back. Although the month of March is one of the longer ones it looks like I will only have two journal entries. I want to start off by talking about the second season of Frieren. I loved it in its entirety. At first, I was upset about the fact that the whole season is only 10 episodes. And the episodes of Frieren go by so fast I was definitely worried as to how this season would play out. Also considering it had a different back-end creation team since the one guy was burnt out. But MAN! Methode scene was S I C K. And the fleshing out of the storyline of Genau was great, it was unexpected since I'm not caught up to that point in the manga. The everything was just so great. I definitely enjoyed the seaon half more so than the first but of course every good story needs a lead up. As I'm not caught up on the manga, I think they chose to end it where they did due to the contant of the next arc. It just so happened that what they wanted to cover before the next arc spanned 10 episodes. I'm not mad. BUT now i have to wait AN ENTIRE YEAR AND A HALF for more!!!!!! No way dude. I love this anime so much. The hero of the south! HELLO???? SO HANDSOME EVEN WITH STACHE GO OFF KING. I have very strong feelings. The omniscence and later sacrifice in battle. What a total BADASS. I think I have decided to read the manga in the meantime, I own 1-6, I'll probably try to collect the entire series with time... adult money, adult job. I deserve this happiness. Incredible anime/manga/storytelling. Following my previous post I also have finished the book I was working on for the majority of February and half of March, The Will of the Many. Great stuff, I have so many books to read but I will absolutely get around to reading the second book. I have some time as the final book is set to release 2027, so I will hopefully be reading or be done with the second book before that time. First will be Dune and a few others in line. I also finished season 3 of Twin Peaks. So many masterpieces in my life. David Lynch my god you are a devilish mastermind. I feel like there is an incredible amount of material that went right over my head. Understandably so. That show (especially season three) is SO THICK! I could for sure watch it five times and find something new everytime. Lastly, I will add that I have been on my Pokemon grindddd. All switch games ones currently as I am attempting to finish all the pokedexes for each game in Pokemon Home. It takes A LOT of work. Pokemon Violet was relatively easy as it was my most played game and I have completed the Pokedex to get the shiny charm. It was my main shiny hunting game so that one only took a few days. I have started played Pokemon Shield which I hadn't even beaten yet. So I did that and now on the Pokedex grind.The 30th anniversary celebration got me hype, and also it is keeping my mind occupied from thinking about getting a Switch 2, teehee. New Wind and Waves game will be my reason to finally purchase.

Well... half of March is gone already. I have no idea where it went considering my last jounral entry ws over two weeks ago. One thing I did do these past two weeks was attend an alumni event at Stony Brook for the WISE program. It was in the Union which is a brand new building to me. From my time there, it seems WISE has changed a lot and now falls more into the honors programs. I was blessed to spend almost two hours with the now director of WISE. She is dope, we had some great conversation. It had been much too long of a time, I became signifcantly detected from there after Covid and graduation. But it was good to be back. Besides that, I have been on my typical normal BS. I've been reading and playing Pokemon in my free time. Spending time with Tootie and wokring out/rock climbing. I feel like I have a pretty good balance. Spending my time how I want to with a trend towards solo endeavours after a day of touching grass and seeing people. I definitely want to put some more time into this website. OH and hopefully more birdwatching! The weather still hasnt been as nice consistently as I would like it for that type of excursion but we are getting there. I plan to find some good places to set up my hammock and read a book amongst the trees/wildlife. I also am waiting for the warmer weather to start up the raised garden bed again. Mom and I typically grow eggplants, tomatoes and peppers. Mayve we will do cucumbers too. They take up a lot of room and the bed is an 8' x 4'. We will see but I look forward to it.

Happy last day of February, yesterday was the Pokemon 30 year celebration so I have been on a Pokemon grind. I fell for the hype and bought Leaf Green and Fire Red. Their direct confimred a future port to connect to Pokemon Home. I started olaying Leaf Green, I may try to soft start reset my Fire Red game until I get a shiny starter. I have been really enjoying all the Pokemon games. I pulled out Pokemon Shield and Lets Go Eevee the other night and I actually didn't beat Shield teehee. So I beat the champion and now I defintely want to catch the legendaries. Nintendo also confirmed Gen 10 with the starters and ummm.... I NEED Pombon. It was confirmed for sometime in 2027 so that gives me all of 2026 to wait on a limited release Switch. Which is possible but I guess less likely with all the chip shortages if those happen to continue. Besides that my week has been overall relaxed, I ran about 1.7 mi on the treadmill yesterday, I really should run outside once the weather warms up. It seems like it has started to warm up so I will hopefully be able to do some birding soon. I like think we started a war with Iran. I'm not really sure as I have been blind for the most part to the news. I have been fully engaged in nerd shit to keep my own sanity.

Last week for the most part just flew by. Sam got his wisdom teeth removed and has been recovering well. I out of nowhere got some sort of stomach bug on Friday night but it has resolved itself after some rest. Sunday into yesterday we got a mega storm which dumped 18" of snow. I had to take the day off of work yesterday, there was no way I could've left the house. I've been spending a bunch of my free time reading, currently about 35% into a pretty thick (600 page) fantasy novel. I did start a new-old game Alan Wake, a recommendation from a friend. It's a good story! Combat is clunky at best, cool concept overall. I think it's a 2007 game so for that age it has aged pretty well. I will do my best to finish it. Always is satisfying to finish a game, considering how few percentage wise I have finished. My plan for the week is to mostly take it easy after all the shoveling from yesterday. I would like to work on some nerd pokemon stuff and poting some pokemon to Pokemon Home. They are coming out with versions of Pokemon Fire Red and Leaf Green for the Switch but have removed the announcement that connectivity to Home will be coming later. They say "likely" but a girl can be skeptical. I think I will wait to buy them until that feature is avaliable. To be fair, I still want to fully play through Pokemon Y on my homebrew 3DS and transfer all those Pokemon to Home.

We are so back. I had an excellent weekend on the mountain. Skiing was like riding a bicycle. Over a decade later and it only took me about 15 minutes to feel comfortable again. I didn't get a chance to go down any black diamonds but I did about three or four different intermediate (blue) trails. As we usually do, Sam and I tried a few different coffee spots. One of the spots, Sam got a hot apple cider that was perfect after our few hours of skiing. The other two were in Saugerties on Sunday on our way back down from Hunter Mtn. I took my new car, first road trip (besides the one time I took her to Brooklyn, this was the first trip off of the island). It was very much needed. A little getaway that went perfect. Traffic on the way up and back down was insanely minimal for a holiday weekend. On a side note, I have been using VIM as my text editor for everything which has been getting beter day by day. Soon, I will be playing around with markdown (.md) files to see if it makes my entry time quicker. I have gotten relatively good with html, I think Sam will need to help me a bit more when it comes to adding the new text file type to my repertoire.

I am have been on a reading tear the past month, mostly audiobooks but I did just pick up the paperback of The Will of the Many by James Islington that I am enjoying enough to own. She thick so I plan to work through it in about a months time. I have been forcing myself to use VIM and I am starting to get a good handle on its features! (at least the ones I need for this website) A big win for learning. Looking forward to Valentine's Day weekend, will be spending it upstate with Sam to go skiing. Is it like riding a bicycle? To be determined, I have skiied a few times as a kid but not as an adult. My next blog post will definitely include the experience. Otherwise the week was good. Big touching grass day (without actually touching grass) on Sunday which included rock climbing and pickleball. Many activites. Also watched Fire Walk with Me and wow.... that was like half a season of Twin Peaks in itself. There was and still is so much to digest! It gave me significant appreciation for Laura Palmer, girl had a fucked up time before her death.

Doing another journal entry early since my last one ended up being relatively short. I will be making a new tab on my website dedicated to my cat. She is incredibly lovely and deserving. I mainly want to cover the recent issue of her neutrophil counts. The bloodwork at the vet appointment has indicated for the second time that her neutrophil counts are below the acceptable level. Overall healthy and active. Acting totally normal the past year. But enough of that here. It is not an immediate problem but one I will want to solve for her long term health. The past weekend was good, I indulged in my favorite all you can eat cuisine, KBBQ and woke up the next morning with extra energy for the rock climbing gym. I had taken a small hiatus to let me muscles repair and I ended up climbing way better and harder than expected. Sunday is my favorite day of the week, ended up getting Georgios and spending the evening with Sam. He organized all my files in neocities and I love it. I had no idea how much I would be fleshing out on this website so fast so now things are way more manageable. More content for my site is in the works. I'm hoping to do a bit more work on the CSS side of the website.

Wow, what a week. I would like to start off with the fact that I am typing this in VIM instead of the neocities text editor! Yippeee! Learning!There is definitely much to learn but I have most of the basics at this point. My personal week went well, I played some indoor pickleball for the first time with Kelly. Felt good to be back and get that cardio in. I got to use a new paddle I got for Christmas and it rocks. Been mildly sick and been taking it easy the past few nights. I think I've gotten 9-10 hours of sleep the past three nights. Now to the other bad shit... Another death by ICE, this time a VA ICU nurse. No one can ever tell me that what transpired was okay. It wasn't, our cities being occupied is the scariest thing that could be happening right now. I felt better after watching a few of Anderson Cooper's interviews, it is nice to see people coming together but it would be nice to be over something a lot less doomsday.

I would like to add that journaling last week helped with the incessant internal thoughts. I have for my own sanity and happiness been ignoring the world and news this week and for the forseeable future. I heard they are handing out so called "federal immunity" and my brain just shut down. Anyway! I saw a good friend from elementary school this past week. Always a pleasure the handful of times I see him throughout the year. i have started playing Umamusume, a mobile anime horse racing game. It's better than expected and has gotten me on the treadmill the few times I have played it for an extended time. Makes the walking go pretty quick. In other good news, i bought a laptop off of my friend to mess around with Linux distros (this one is currently on Fedora) and it is going well enough. Had a hiccup at install with wifi but nothing that a quick search didn't fix. I always find it funny how my brain whenever I try something new immediately yearns for the old. I laugh when I notice it.

It has been a week since Renee Good was killed in Minneapolis and it hasn't left my mind. I've thought about it everyday since. Putting aside blame around the direct situation, what have we become? I guess there were hints of it (and it has always been) but it is just so blatant with this administration. They hate anyone who stands in their way. She was not a domestic terrorist and she did not deserve to die. She was a mother, a sister, a friend. She could have been any of those to me. She could have been me. In those thirty seconds, that ICE office was her judge, jury and executioner for no apparent crime. The thought of ICE from the beginning was always extremely scary. This administration is giving incompetent idiots jobs and guns without a background check. And now federal immunity for anything they do.... I shouldn't be surprised considering January 6th was a "day of peace" and all the "patriots" were pardoned after attacking police officers. There is no accountability anymore. I am not afraid of immigrants, they are not what we need to fear.