![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Life: Pokemon, Social Butterfly-ing, and Biking
Time for ye olde weekly DW update, as is the way. I've been doing a lot of social stuff in the past two weeks so this will still be more-or-less broken down by subject, it's just that some of the subjects will be [day + activity] because that's how things have been going.
Social stuff first, then other miscellaneous stuff, because that seems as sensible as anything.
Sage Weekend Visit (4/5-4/7): Friend Sage came to visit two weekends ago, showing up Friday afternoon and leaving Sunday afternoon and it was really nice seeing Sage. I cleaned up and meal planned and bought lots of groceries and it was just a good, chill time watching anime and eating nice things and hanging out. We went for a walk to my lake on Saturday and marathonned all of Tsurune before and after that outing, and then we watched about ten episodes of Run with the Wind on Sunday.
I love sports anime sooooo much but I haven't felt like watching anime by myself, so it was nice to finally catch up on the recent sports series that have been airing while having someone to yell to about them. I really liked their setup as being about a very individual sport but where the characters are participating as a team and where there's a lot of focus on what it means to be a team and how that can be meaningful and helpful to the individuals having that bonding experience.
And I love Haiji, ohhhhhh my god I adore Haiji he is Absolutely Perfect for me as a character, I'm soooooo. Fucking mad running anime played me this way, thanks running anime.
Anyway, I've seen Sage like once a year for the past... Technically four years, because in 2016 I came up to Rehoboth beach and saw Sage in Delaware, and it's honestly so nice that even if we don't see each other OFTEN, we do see each other CONSISTENTLY. And we don't really need a shared fandom to be friends, we just talk about life and work and whatever media we've been casually consuming, it's warm and good.
Sakura Matsuri (4/13): As previously mentioned, I invited my sister to come stay with me last weekend so we could go to the Sakura Matsuri and participate in the pokemon go community day together. She drove mom's car down to my house Friday night and we set out to do things bright and early Saturday morning. Usually my sister keeps really late hours but I actually got her to bed early Friday and Saturday nights, so we were uncommonly functional people last weekend, haha.
For the Sakura Matsuri portion of events, we got to the festival around 11am or so, browsed stalls for an hour, then headed to the stage where the Okinawa cultural performance was being held. We stuck around for the swordplay for the stage demonstration that happened afterward; I'd been vaguely interested in it but hadn't realized they would script a little play for their performance as a vehicle to demonstrate the swordwork. It was ridiculous and fun and I'm glad we stayed.
After that we wandered through food purgatory but all of the lines were ATROCIOUS and I did not want any of that street food badly enough to endure what was probably an hour wait. All I wanted was okonomiyaki and gelato!! Both of which I could get elsewhere, so. Pass. We went to the 10tecomai yosakoi dance performance, did a little more shopping, and emerged from the festival area by about 2:30pm so we could eat food somewhere air conditioned and not mobbed before community day started. I bought a new purse and a tiny jade bonsai tree and was very satisfied with my Sakura Matsuri experience.
We went to Teaism for lunch (where I got the okonomiyaki I'd wanted) and to the one gelato place I like for dessert several hours later, and in between we just walked around constantly for three straight hours catching many, many bagon, It Was Incredible.
Neither of us had ever done community day somewhere like DC before (I had never done a community day at all, considering how long it's been since I've played this game). In DC it is FUCKING WILD, virtually every pokestop for as far as the eye can see had a lure slapped on it and because there are so many landmarks and things in DC there are sooooo many pokestops all packed into the same area. And there were tons of other people playing. You could always identify the pokego players because they're the ones holding phones which are trailing a charging cord to wherever they've tucked their battery brick. I did the same fucking thing, I Was Prepared.
We stayed at the gelato place for an hour culling our bagon and evolving the winners, I went on a desperate bathroom quest because THE GELATO PLACE HAS NO PUBLIC RESTROOM, WHAT THE FUCK, and then we metro'd home. We were sooooo tired when we got back that we just, reheated leftovers for dinner and flopped around watching Nailed It on netflix for a few hours and then went the fuck to sleep.
Katie & Michael Visit (4/14): Sis left around 11am on Sunday and at noon my friend Katie grabbed me so I could hang out with her and her husband for the afternoon. They have a two and a half year old boy and it was just... A really chill time sitting around playing games and hanging out with the kiddo and spending some time outside on their deck coloring with chalk and enjoying the weather. I am somehow one of their son's favorite people so he's always really excited when I visit... It's cute. Katie made tacos for dinner and we watched TV while we ate and it was just. Really excellent relaxing like that after my busy day in DC.
Rhythm Games: We're doing this one as a catch-all for my arcade games and my mobage, because I am a menace this way.
On the Monday before last, I had a doctor's appointment nearish Marley Station mall, which has an arcade with a jubeat machine. So after my appointment and a nice Italian lunch with my mom, I swung by the mall and played ten rounds of jubeat and basically gave myself a hold song training boot camp. I've always avoided the songs in jubeat with holds because I found the way they're represented to be REALLY HARD to read. But now that I'm playing nines well, I can read the hold songs and decided to try my hand at them.
It was! Really fun!! I'm pretty bad at reading what's happening when multiple holds appear at once, and at knowing how to touch a hold so that my hands can reach the other notes happening while you're holding it, but the only way to get better at that is to practice!! I started with sixes and moved up through sevens and eights, just playing every hold song in the vocaloid and touhou music categories. And then for my last song I played one of my favorite Gumi songs, which is a 9.6 difficulty rating with holds and I BARELY PASSED IT BUT I DID! PASS!!
And then on the subject of rhythm mobage, I'm still playing Show by Rock. I chilled out a lot because I've been throwing myself at pokemon, but I've been pretty chill the entire time I've had this new account, honestly? I appreciate a lot that this is a game I can play once or twice a day and get whatever exclusive card is being offered in whatever current event. I wasn't expecting to play much when Sage was visiting but it was honestly really easy to play while talking with Sage, so I did get decently far in the last bingo event. I didn't get to 300k points for the UR ticket but... It's fine. There will be more UR tickets.
I want the hypmic rhythm game to launch soooooo badly, please oh my god, please release this thing before I lose interest in hypmic. I don't care about anyone ELSE but I really do want an actually new-to-me game to play and there's so much stuff on the horizon (there's also this Disney villains rhythm game and another pseudo-historical fantasy rhythm game slated for release sometime this year iirc) but none of it is HAPPENING NOW. Please I want a new taptap.
Media Consumption: I figured I'd throw in a catch-all for media stuff this time around, because I've been watching some TV and reading some books.
Besides Tsurune and Run with the Wind, I watched the new season of The Santa Clarita Diet on netflix, and I've been binging How to Get Away with Murder. The last thing I think I mentioned but it is... Really interesting in that I'm very INTERESTED in all of the characters, I find them compelling and want to see how their troubles play out, but by mid-season-two where I'm at every single one of them has done bad enough things that I don't think I can say I LIKE anyone. Except for Oliver, who is perfect. And The Santa Clarita Diet continues to be REALLY GREAT, it's such a heartwarming show for a series about eating people and literally the only piece of zombie media I will ever love.
On the subject of literature, I started reading Children of Blood and Bone after finishing The Poppy War, and it's good, but it just... Wasn't what I wanted to be reading Right Now. I thought I was reading way less because I started playing pokemon go again and was devoting my usual commute reading time to pokemon instead, but like... I do read at other times. I wasn't reading because I hadn't picked a book that was grabbing me hard in that exact moment.
So I started reading The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet instead, and that grabbed me HARD. It is exactly the sort of kooky, warm, well-developed space opera that I love and I adored everything about it, I tore through this book SO FAST. The entire cast is great and the worldbuilding is wonderful and I really enjoyed finding out more about not just the characters but also the different species of aliens and the social structures that exist in its world.
My library finally gave me In an Absent Dream after about three months of having it on hold and it's so unfortunate because I dooooo want to read that really badly, but I want to read the sequel to the Becky Chambers book (A Closed and Common Orbit) EVEN MORE? So I've begun that and I'm not very far in but it's a good time so far, as I expected after enjoying the first book so much.
Biking and Pokemon Go: I've already talked about pokemon go but not about BIKING and pokemon go, which is cleeeeeearly an entirely different subject all on its own.
I was telling Indi sometime last week that it isn't even that pokemon go gets me to bike when I otherwise wouldn't, I LOVE biking and have been SUPER PUMPED about all the good weather for the past two or three weeks. It's that playing pokemon go while biking means I stay out longer and try to do more. I stop a lot and bike more slowly so I can spin pokestops and catch stuff, but two Sundays ago I ended up biking almost eighteen miles and didn't go home until my phone battery was dying and it was starting to get dark.
I love being out in nature and seeing the beautiful scenery on the bike trails, but I've ridden on most of the trails near me a lot and playing pokego while doing it makes it new and exciting again. I'm pumped to see what new pokemon are in all the nests (it was totodile, chikorita, and piplup along the trail to the waterfront and nests turned over yesterday, totodile are now jynx; I'm excited to see what the other nests turn into) and am pumped to see what pokego landmarks exist along the trails that I HADN'T explored in 2016 when I was first playing.
Yesterday I started to follow the trail up to the college and while I didn't have time to go all the way to the end of the trail -- biking after work gives me a limited window -- it was really nice having the pokego map up while I was riding, haha. I've only gone that way once and it's a little bit confusing how the trail crosses itself and the main road by the university so it was cute having pokego guide me.
The next time I have a whole day to bike I reeeeeally want to do the parts of the Anacostia trail that I've only done once (because round trip it's about 28 miles) or not at all (because I couldn't figure out where the trail continued past the waterfront to go down to the aquatic gardens). I want to bike through the aquatic gardens soooooo badly, all the pictures on google are BEAUTIFUL. I'm so excited for biking! And pokemon!!
Odds and Ends: I gave myself a catch-all at the end here to talk about anything that wasn't neatly categorized but who even knows what that consists of. I'm going to visit my dad tomorrow so I can make sure I know how to park his car, and then maybe I'll fiiiiiinally be able to take the Maryland licensing test. I want to bike this weekend but it's supposed to be really rainy so good luck to me with that. Yrin has been in Japan and even if he can still text me pretty much as frequently as normal, my dumb little lizard brain is still periodically going "we miss Yrin! Yrin is gone and we're sad!!" I'm glad he's having a nice trip, though, the photos have been lovely.
My friends I was going to stay with for colossalcon can't make it any more and gave away their hotel room, so I'm probably not doing colossalcon. I could try and find a different room for me and Em but I just... Don't know if I want to. My room group was a big part of the draw, even if Em and I had other plans, too. Maybe Em will come and visit me in DC instead, that would be nice. In any event, when Yrin is back from Japan I'll have to sort out all my upcoming social plans.
I feel like the level of enthusiasm and energy I was at the last time I wrote an entry like this has gone down, in part because it's like... Most areas of my life are good but there's still this one big yawning void of stress and I can't do a lot about it. My good feelings outweigh that and I'm grateful for that, but I wish I could just... Be entirely zen and happy. Maybe one day.
In any event, life is good, pokemon go has taken over everything, and I adore all of my friends. Thank you for reading. ♥
Social stuff first, then other miscellaneous stuff, because that seems as sensible as anything.
Sage Weekend Visit (4/5-4/7): Friend Sage came to visit two weekends ago, showing up Friday afternoon and leaving Sunday afternoon and it was really nice seeing Sage. I cleaned up and meal planned and bought lots of groceries and it was just a good, chill time watching anime and eating nice things and hanging out. We went for a walk to my lake on Saturday and marathonned all of Tsurune before and after that outing, and then we watched about ten episodes of Run with the Wind on Sunday.
I love sports anime sooooo much but I haven't felt like watching anime by myself, so it was nice to finally catch up on the recent sports series that have been airing while having someone to yell to about them. I really liked their setup as being about a very individual sport but where the characters are participating as a team and where there's a lot of focus on what it means to be a team and how that can be meaningful and helpful to the individuals having that bonding experience.
And I love Haiji, ohhhhhh my god I adore Haiji he is Absolutely Perfect for me as a character, I'm soooooo. Fucking mad running anime played me this way, thanks running anime.
Anyway, I've seen Sage like once a year for the past... Technically four years, because in 2016 I came up to Rehoboth beach and saw Sage in Delaware, and it's honestly so nice that even if we don't see each other OFTEN, we do see each other CONSISTENTLY. And we don't really need a shared fandom to be friends, we just talk about life and work and whatever media we've been casually consuming, it's warm and good.
Sakura Matsuri (4/13): As previously mentioned, I invited my sister to come stay with me last weekend so we could go to the Sakura Matsuri and participate in the pokemon go community day together. She drove mom's car down to my house Friday night and we set out to do things bright and early Saturday morning. Usually my sister keeps really late hours but I actually got her to bed early Friday and Saturday nights, so we were uncommonly functional people last weekend, haha.
For the Sakura Matsuri portion of events, we got to the festival around 11am or so, browsed stalls for an hour, then headed to the stage where the Okinawa cultural performance was being held. We stuck around for the swordplay for the stage demonstration that happened afterward; I'd been vaguely interested in it but hadn't realized they would script a little play for their performance as a vehicle to demonstrate the swordwork. It was ridiculous and fun and I'm glad we stayed.
After that we wandered through food purgatory but all of the lines were ATROCIOUS and I did not want any of that street food badly enough to endure what was probably an hour wait. All I wanted was okonomiyaki and gelato!! Both of which I could get elsewhere, so. Pass. We went to the 10tecomai yosakoi dance performance, did a little more shopping, and emerged from the festival area by about 2:30pm so we could eat food somewhere air conditioned and not mobbed before community day started. I bought a new purse and a tiny jade bonsai tree and was very satisfied with my Sakura Matsuri experience.
We went to Teaism for lunch (where I got the okonomiyaki I'd wanted) and to the one gelato place I like for dessert several hours later, and in between we just walked around constantly for three straight hours catching many, many bagon, It Was Incredible.
Neither of us had ever done community day somewhere like DC before (I had never done a community day at all, considering how long it's been since I've played this game). In DC it is FUCKING WILD, virtually every pokestop for as far as the eye can see had a lure slapped on it and because there are so many landmarks and things in DC there are sooooo many pokestops all packed into the same area. And there were tons of other people playing. You could always identify the pokego players because they're the ones holding phones which are trailing a charging cord to wherever they've tucked their battery brick. I did the same fucking thing, I Was Prepared.
We stayed at the gelato place for an hour culling our bagon and evolving the winners, I went on a desperate bathroom quest because THE GELATO PLACE HAS NO PUBLIC RESTROOM, WHAT THE FUCK, and then we metro'd home. We were sooooo tired when we got back that we just, reheated leftovers for dinner and flopped around watching Nailed It on netflix for a few hours and then went the fuck to sleep.
Katie & Michael Visit (4/14): Sis left around 11am on Sunday and at noon my friend Katie grabbed me so I could hang out with her and her husband for the afternoon. They have a two and a half year old boy and it was just... A really chill time sitting around playing games and hanging out with the kiddo and spending some time outside on their deck coloring with chalk and enjoying the weather. I am somehow one of their son's favorite people so he's always really excited when I visit... It's cute. Katie made tacos for dinner and we watched TV while we ate and it was just. Really excellent relaxing like that after my busy day in DC.
Rhythm Games: We're doing this one as a catch-all for my arcade games and my mobage, because I am a menace this way.
On the Monday before last, I had a doctor's appointment nearish Marley Station mall, which has an arcade with a jubeat machine. So after my appointment and a nice Italian lunch with my mom, I swung by the mall and played ten rounds of jubeat and basically gave myself a hold song training boot camp. I've always avoided the songs in jubeat with holds because I found the way they're represented to be REALLY HARD to read. But now that I'm playing nines well, I can read the hold songs and decided to try my hand at them.
It was! Really fun!! I'm pretty bad at reading what's happening when multiple holds appear at once, and at knowing how to touch a hold so that my hands can reach the other notes happening while you're holding it, but the only way to get better at that is to practice!! I started with sixes and moved up through sevens and eights, just playing every hold song in the vocaloid and touhou music categories. And then for my last song I played one of my favorite Gumi songs, which is a 9.6 difficulty rating with holds and I BARELY PASSED IT BUT I DID! PASS!!
And then on the subject of rhythm mobage, I'm still playing Show by Rock. I chilled out a lot because I've been throwing myself at pokemon, but I've been pretty chill the entire time I've had this new account, honestly? I appreciate a lot that this is a game I can play once or twice a day and get whatever exclusive card is being offered in whatever current event. I wasn't expecting to play much when Sage was visiting but it was honestly really easy to play while talking with Sage, so I did get decently far in the last bingo event. I didn't get to 300k points for the UR ticket but... It's fine. There will be more UR tickets.
I want the hypmic rhythm game to launch soooooo badly, please oh my god, please release this thing before I lose interest in hypmic. I don't care about anyone ELSE but I really do want an actually new-to-me game to play and there's so much stuff on the horizon (there's also this Disney villains rhythm game and another pseudo-historical fantasy rhythm game slated for release sometime this year iirc) but none of it is HAPPENING NOW. Please I want a new taptap.
Media Consumption: I figured I'd throw in a catch-all for media stuff this time around, because I've been watching some TV and reading some books.
Besides Tsurune and Run with the Wind, I watched the new season of The Santa Clarita Diet on netflix, and I've been binging How to Get Away with Murder. The last thing I think I mentioned but it is... Really interesting in that I'm very INTERESTED in all of the characters, I find them compelling and want to see how their troubles play out, but by mid-season-two where I'm at every single one of them has done bad enough things that I don't think I can say I LIKE anyone. Except for Oliver, who is perfect. And The Santa Clarita Diet continues to be REALLY GREAT, it's such a heartwarming show for a series about eating people and literally the only piece of zombie media I will ever love.
On the subject of literature, I started reading Children of Blood and Bone after finishing The Poppy War, and it's good, but it just... Wasn't what I wanted to be reading Right Now. I thought I was reading way less because I started playing pokemon go again and was devoting my usual commute reading time to pokemon instead, but like... I do read at other times. I wasn't reading because I hadn't picked a book that was grabbing me hard in that exact moment.
So I started reading The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet instead, and that grabbed me HARD. It is exactly the sort of kooky, warm, well-developed space opera that I love and I adored everything about it, I tore through this book SO FAST. The entire cast is great and the worldbuilding is wonderful and I really enjoyed finding out more about not just the characters but also the different species of aliens and the social structures that exist in its world.
My library finally gave me In an Absent Dream after about three months of having it on hold and it's so unfortunate because I dooooo want to read that really badly, but I want to read the sequel to the Becky Chambers book (A Closed and Common Orbit) EVEN MORE? So I've begun that and I'm not very far in but it's a good time so far, as I expected after enjoying the first book so much.
Biking and Pokemon Go: I've already talked about pokemon go but not about BIKING and pokemon go, which is cleeeeeearly an entirely different subject all on its own.
I was telling Indi sometime last week that it isn't even that pokemon go gets me to bike when I otherwise wouldn't, I LOVE biking and have been SUPER PUMPED about all the good weather for the past two or three weeks. It's that playing pokemon go while biking means I stay out longer and try to do more. I stop a lot and bike more slowly so I can spin pokestops and catch stuff, but two Sundays ago I ended up biking almost eighteen miles and didn't go home until my phone battery was dying and it was starting to get dark.
I love being out in nature and seeing the beautiful scenery on the bike trails, but I've ridden on most of the trails near me a lot and playing pokego while doing it makes it new and exciting again. I'm pumped to see what new pokemon are in all the nests (it was totodile, chikorita, and piplup along the trail to the waterfront and nests turned over yesterday, totodile are now jynx; I'm excited to see what the other nests turn into) and am pumped to see what pokego landmarks exist along the trails that I HADN'T explored in 2016 when I was first playing.
Yesterday I started to follow the trail up to the college and while I didn't have time to go all the way to the end of the trail -- biking after work gives me a limited window -- it was really nice having the pokego map up while I was riding, haha. I've only gone that way once and it's a little bit confusing how the trail crosses itself and the main road by the university so it was cute having pokego guide me.
The next time I have a whole day to bike I reeeeeally want to do the parts of the Anacostia trail that I've only done once (because round trip it's about 28 miles) or not at all (because I couldn't figure out where the trail continued past the waterfront to go down to the aquatic gardens). I want to bike through the aquatic gardens soooooo badly, all the pictures on google are BEAUTIFUL. I'm so excited for biking! And pokemon!!
Odds and Ends: I gave myself a catch-all at the end here to talk about anything that wasn't neatly categorized but who even knows what that consists of. I'm going to visit my dad tomorrow so I can make sure I know how to park his car, and then maybe I'll fiiiiiinally be able to take the Maryland licensing test. I want to bike this weekend but it's supposed to be really rainy so good luck to me with that. Yrin has been in Japan and even if he can still text me pretty much as frequently as normal, my dumb little lizard brain is still periodically going "we miss Yrin! Yrin is gone and we're sad!!" I'm glad he's having a nice trip, though, the photos have been lovely.
My friends I was going to stay with for colossalcon can't make it any more and gave away their hotel room, so I'm probably not doing colossalcon. I could try and find a different room for me and Em but I just... Don't know if I want to. My room group was a big part of the draw, even if Em and I had other plans, too. Maybe Em will come and visit me in DC instead, that would be nice. In any event, when Yrin is back from Japan I'll have to sort out all my upcoming social plans.
I feel like the level of enthusiasm and energy I was at the last time I wrote an entry like this has gone down, in part because it's like... Most areas of my life are good but there's still this one big yawning void of stress and I can't do a lot about it. My good feelings outweigh that and I'm grateful for that, but I wish I could just... Be entirely zen and happy. Maybe one day.
In any event, life is good, pokemon go has taken over everything, and I adore all of my friends. Thank you for reading. ♥
no subject