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+ Had to overnight petsit my brother's neurotic hunting dog. That's always an Experience. ;V Nothing like being jolted awake at midnight by howling because someone heard a car pass by outside... (He's a good boy, but man, I am not a dog person.)

+ Went to do advance voting. Not feeling optimistic. The only local campaigning I've seen was for varieties of conservative - Regular Conservative, Double Conservative, and Extra-Spicy Wingnut Conservative. There were other options on the ballot, but I sure haven't heard a peep out of any of them. Business as usual, then. (Ugh.)

+ Did some geocaching today, and unlike my past three attempts, I actually managed to find the damn thing this time. Hooray! I was starting to think I'm totally hopeless at this. ;p Since I'm going along with the Wonders of the World in-game challenge, I have to be more selective about which caches I look for, so that I'll be able to get the correct stamps. I have a strong preference for urban geocaches, but this thing has led to some bushwacking instead. It's a very different experience.

+ I've finished listening to The Magnus Archives. Still processing. Entry will follow once I've sorted out my impressions of Season 5. (Hopefully.) Aside from that, I'm trying to figure out where I want to go from here! Re-listen to TMA? Pick up Night Vale again? Something different altogether? Who knows!

That feeling when you find yourself extremely into the Distortion, and you feel weird and confused about it (which is such a Spiral mood that it's pretty fitting, all things considered).

Char's fanart of Hetalia Ro as the Distortion was my first actual exposure to The Magnus Archives in any real sense, and ever since then I've latched onto every mention of Spiral-esque things in the canon. And yeah, partly it's "I'm going to be drawn to anything that relates to the very specific thing that brought me here in the first place". BUT THEN....

( MAG 101 )

☆ Signups to offer fanwork in the Fandom Trumps Hate multifandom charity auction are open from now until Jan 31. Details + signup form here. I'll be offering two fic slots + 1 slot for quick 'n dirty beta reading (2020 taught me that offering 3 fic slots is an act of pure hubris. ;p). Are any of you thinking of signing up this year?

☆ Recently finished listening to s2 of The Magnus Archives. Still having a good time, even if the non-statement part of it is starting to grow more plot than I originally signed up for. I'm still very interested in where everything is going, so we'll see how this turns out. Listened to the beginning of S3 a few days ago, and good gods, "A Guest for Mister Spider" unsettled me so much that I'm still thinking about it days later. Anyway, I'm still trying to avoid spoilers for the rest of everything, which is becoming a bit of a challenge, considering the fandom is currently very active. (I can't tell if the response to recent episodes is excitement, a fandom meltdown, or both.)

☆ Black Kirin recently released a new short album, 庚子 Gengzi. At first I expected more black metal, but no - it's some of their previous works redone in traditional Chinese folk music style, as they did with 箫韶 Xiao Shao! NICE. Unlike Xiao Shao, which is pure instrumental, Gengzi has vocals. They're kind of screamy/growly in some places, but surprisingly, that works pretty well. Not really sure how I would rank this album in relation to their previous work, but I do think it's very good. Black Kirin is one of those bands that I admire a lot for their talent and artistry, even if their music isn't always to my taste. (Their metal works aren't really my subgenre of choice.)

Jesus murphy, the drivers in this city. For fuck's sake, if you're going to ride my ass, at least buy me dinner first.

Woke up to snow dusting everywhere. Again. It was dry snow, so I went out for a run before breakfast anyway, but needless to say I was not pleased. It's so fucking cold! Going to have to resort to wearing two layers of gloves, maybe. Brrrr. Though even though some parts of this were awful, it was also... very refreshing!

Really going to need to find some alternatives for winter, though. The season's only just started, but I can already see that ice is going to be a problem.

Started listening to The Magnus Archives. I'm not much of a podcast person, but some people I know got into it recently, and well... eh, why not. I've only just finished ep 05, but so far, I'm loving it. Short creepy stories, whoo! Apparently the frame narrative gets more plot later on, but as long as it keeps the short creepy stories for the most part, I'm good. (Don't tell me.)

Today has been nice and productive. Yay!

☆ Worked on some driving today. Mum says I'm coming along rather well. That's good. But I do need more practice - especially the bane of my existence: Left turns at busy intersections where the lights don't have a left-advance. So much hate, ugh. But, I can work on that.

☆ I went for a run and I feel good. Yay! Leading up to it, I always feel like "Ugh, I don't want to do this". And even after it, I usually feel like "Ugh, I wanted to use that time for something else". ... But, it still feels good, so.

☆ Worked on some Norwegian today. I've been neglecting it for weeks. My grammar skills were nothing impressive before. Now they have seriously deteriorated. BUT... well, I'll take it one sentence at a time. Still going to be a while before this letter is finished - I love writing to my study partner, because she's so fun to talk to, but the downside of it is that the replies don't come quickly because 1. it's in Norwegian and 2. I get so chatty and the letters keep getting longer... whoops.

☆ Work is going well. I'm keeping up with things. Not sure what the state of the backlog will be before I leave, but I have a couple of weeks to put it all together. Concentration has been smooth sailing because I realized earlier this week that I have a ton of episodes of News From Lake Wobegon to catch up on, as I haven't listened to it in months, so I've been going through that. It's nice. There are a lot of things about those stories that I identify with - the people in that small town remind me a lot of my mother's side of the family. So, it's comforting. And sometimes a little painful when it hits close to home, but that can be good too. And there's such a comfortable atmosphere about it, the sort of atmosphere that I try to channel in my writing a lot of the time, so it's nice to get that from a different source than what I would usually turn to.

☆ Going to have to start working in the garden on the weekends, I think. I don't particularly want to - I actually don't enjoy it very much, and there are usually other things that I'd rather be doing - but mum has started putting things together, now that we probably won't get any more nights below 0C (probably). So, I should do some of it so that she doesn't have to. But I'll have to take a look - it's a big job because our garden is huge, but she's very particular about Things Getting Done Right, but of course if you offer help she'll refuse it, and she won't very well tell you what needs to be done if you ask what needs to be done, so. Uh. I guess I'll have to figure it out somehow.

So, as I've mentioned before, work has been nuts. I've been keeping myself a little bit more sane by listening to university lectures downloaded via itunesU. Turns out, it's a lot easier for me to concentrate on my stuff while I'm listening to them. But my job requires a lot of mind-numbing data entry, so I guess it isn't that surprising.

And more than anything else, it reminds me just how much I miss going to university lectures. It's something I always really, really enjoyed. Well, okay, most of my classes weren't lecture-based; they were discussion-based. This is because my university was small, and most of the literature classes were really small. But y'know what I mean.

I've been rotating through these:
-Ancient Greek History
-Epidemics in Western Society
-Early Imperial Russia
-France Since 1871

( And a bit about those )

Anyway. So, yeah, I'm really enjoying listening to these. And when I'm done with them I'll poke around and find some more to listen to. Both because I miss being able to go to lectures - and also because it's an easy way to learn a few things without having to read through a brick of a history book. ... Not that this kind of thing replaces books, of course, but sometimes it takes me ages to read 'em. And history books aren't very easy to get where I live unless you order them. (The cost! The time! UGH. But I think I've complained about the lack of variety that's readily available here before).

I'm also still listening to Welcome to Night Vale. It's not bad. I think that I mostly preferred the earlier episodes (I just finished ep 28 today) but I do plan to listen to the rest and form my judgment after I've finished what's available. I find myself very Not Interested in Cecil and Carlos's relationship so far. I like Cecil! I like Carlos! But Cecil's verbal flailing just makes me go "Can we please get back to the news already?!" ... Well, okay, I mostly just had that reaction in the date episode. Maybe I just prefer them together in small doses? Well, we'll see how the rest of the episodes play out. (Mostly, what I want to hear more about is wtf is going on with Dana and the Dog Park. But since ep 30 is titled after her, I'll probably find out something soon! No spoilers, please. :D )

I've also been listening to A Prairie Home Companion. Well, okay, just the News From Lake Wobegon segments that get put up for free on itunes. I've been really, really enjoying it, and I'm so happy that there's a huge backlog of segments for me to listen to because I'm completely in love with it. It's very funny and witty, and I keep coming across cultural aspects that I identify with/recognize from my own family. That's a little odd, since there is little cultural crossover - my family isn't from Minnesota, isn't of Scandinavian descent, isn't Lutheran - but there seem to be some things that are common to small northern towns in North America no matter what the details are. Maybe. ... Also I really love Pastor Liz as a character and if I weren't so terrible about getting good ideas for stories outside my main fandom, I would totally write canon-flavour fic about her.