schneefink

Being on vacation is great. I get enough sleep, I can spend most of my day playing computer games, and I can (try to) ignore the news. It's Friday already and I feel like I'm just starting to relax a little. (I did also plan to do things like clean up etc. but I pretty much suspected that that wouldn't happen.)
Not constantly being stressed because of work has also allowed me to feel a lot more general anxiety about the pandemic, but I guess you can't have everything. I am SO SICK of this why is this STILL going on can it not FINALLY be over I don't know how much longer I can deal with this without, idk, doing much worse

Conveniently there was a sale on Steam and I got a whole bunch of new games. I've already played several hours of "Ori and the Blind Forest". It's so pretty! The music is nice, too.
I'm playing on easy mode and very grateful for that. In Hades, when I die I can have more story progression and upgrades and then try again. In Ori, when I die I just have to try again, and again, and again, and again… It does feel good to finally succeed at a difficult challenge after failing more than twenty times, but it can feel a bit frustrating until then. Right now I'm at a particularly tricky bit and I don't have any energy left for save spots, curses, so it'll probably take me a while yet.
(I'm also very glad for detailed walkthrough instructions online, I would have been lost without them several times. Especially in places where I think I just need to master a particular route to proceed, only to then read that this is an area I can only access later and I need to go in a completely different direction.)

I also managed to get DD into playing Hades :D In return, she is trying to get me to play Civilization V, but I watched her play it (mostly Civ VI) and even tried for two hours and while I can see how it's interesting, I don't think I have the patience or sufficient interest for it right now.
I'm so glad DD came back (about a week ago), it's so nice not to be alone at home anymore. Second thing she said when she came back: "I forgot you look different now!" I got my new glasses and shorter (chin-length) haircut shortly before she left in December, heh. I'm still very happy with my new look :)

I stayed in bed almost until noon today and it was fine. I went for a long run and didn't look at the time once. It's 6pm soon and I haven't done anything "productive" and I don't need to! It's so great, I think the last time I felt like that was maybe a year and a half ago. The most difficult decisions I'll have to make today are what to make for dinner, which book to read, and if we want to bake cookies or brownies.

It's December and it's going around, so let me know if there's anything in particular you'd like me to post about! (You can give me a date too but I make no guarantees.)

Requested so far:
- what I like best about The Untamed and/or my favorite characters/relationships
- my three favorite spots/places in Vienna
- thoughts on how I craft characters or how I approach writing them
- my biggest fandoms over the years
- my favorite parts of Discworld, and if I were going to write a Discworld crossover, what would it be
- is there something in specific I like about cdramas/donghuas/webnovels etc, as opposed to western media, and what's my favorite
- favorite dialect words/phrases/sayings
- top 3-5 places I'd like to visit after the pandemic
- Favourite TMA things: Eps, fanarts, fics, characters, fears, etc

Today I took a look at the Yuletide sign-up summary and was very excited to see that someone else requested my tiny bookfandom!! I thought nobody else had read that book!
aaand then twenty minutes later I realized that I accidentally looked at the page for 2019 instead and the sign-up I saw was my own. *facepalm*
I'm refreshing the app with my bookmarked fandoms often in the hopes of seeing new letters :) Meanwhile I haven't posted my own yet because I want to reread that other book in case I think of more prompts, but I'm planning to do that soon.

Starting this week I'm determined to get to the office early, leave on time, and then get some work for uni done. Today I mostly succeeded at that, and it felt good. There is definitely room for improvement, but I did better than I did in the past several weeks so it's a big step in the right direction. Now I just need to keep doing that, fingers crossed.

Pretty sure it's a rule that the most stressful times at work and uni always have to coincide. Fun. I'm massively behind on everything, online (comments and reviews etc) and offline, but it'll work out somehow.

I visited my grandparents & extended family for a few days, it was nice and we had luck with the weather and went hiking, and the timing was additionally lucky because with the rise in COVID-19 numbers right now I'm not sure I'd go.

We also had our first indoor choir practice again, following recommended safety guidelines: a big room, all chairs 2m apart and you have to wear a mask when you're not sitting down, and every 20 minutes there's a break with the windows open. I really enjoyed singing again, but at the same time I'm not sure if it's worth it. Choir singing has never been a high-risk hobby before.

I'm working more hours than usual, i.e. more than I'd like, but in general work has been less stressful than I feared, also because we got another deadline extension but also because I'm managing to be more relaxed about things: if I don't manage to make all of my deadlines, that's bad but also not only my fault because we just have too much to do, and of course I'm struggling to finish my list if I constantly get extra work assigned. Right now uni is also very important (so I should be doing more for that…) Still, it's difficult to leave earlier when I know how many extra hours my colleagues are putting in. Fortunately they're understanding (though every once in a while I worry if that's just to my face.)

Today had a weird moment when our cleaning lady asked me if I have a boyfriend (there's only two people in our office not in a relationship and the other is recently divorced, which comes with the side effect that some of my colleagues like to read my "love horoscope" to me), then if I ever had one, and then asked me if I'm a virgin. I was so baffled that it took me a moment to figure out how to mostly politely tell her that it's none of her business.

Aand now I'm just procrastinating again.

There are quite a few things I recently consumed I want to talk about (recent TMA episodes, recent Skyjacks episodes, Daevabad trilogy, Fatal Journey, The Old Guard...) but my wrists are acting up again so I don't want to type much. This is especially annoying right now because we are planning to go rafting on Saturday (my mother's birthday present), and I misplaced my wrist brace. Hopefully it'll go away quickly, and I'll still think about it later.
DD got a picnic blanket and if weather permits that's our plan for Sunday :) We are also currently trying to make a smoothie every day and while we didn't entirely succeed, 5/7 days is not bad and five more smoothies than we usually make so a clear win.

Overall, I think I'm coping okay with *gestures* everything. It helps that here in Austria the lockdown worked quite well, though I'm worried about what'll happen now that many restrictions have been lifted.

Things I'm having difficulties with: ( things I usually have difficulties with, just dialed up )

Things going relatively well:( some, fortunately including food )

I'm still working from home, and probably will through May, no idea what'll happen after that. I saw my family again, that was nice. This weekend my D&D group is planning to meet again for the first time in many weeks, at least some of us, but instead of our usual D&D session we'll meet for BBQ and boardgames on a terrace large enough we can keep our distance, which I'm sure will be weird.
…aaand now I'm just procrastinating on going to bed, again.

I have now listened to Tarantella-Coronatella about two dozen times, not sure if that's a good sign (but it might be good for my Russian, at least?)
And isis collected some coronavirus humor which I enjoy a lot. Sometimes I have to laugh about things.

DD and I have completely opposite reactions to the pandemic when it comes to food: DD currently wants to eat extra healthy, to the point of avoiding salt and oil and of course sugar, while I suddenly want meat and cheese, and of course chocolate and fruit etc.
I was planning to at least keep running regularly, but it snowed today (for about an hour but still, snow! we had twenty degrees a few days ago!) so I decided to be lazy.

I still haven't found time, or more accurately brainspace, to read any books. I keep distracting myself with mostly news, and some fic, and my ability to concentrate is, uh, has been better. Same with my ability to interact with people, and my study progress, and work. But the schedule on Friday seemed to work, we'll see. Overall I think I'm doing pretty well, considering! Thinking of all of you, I hope you're okay.

I cancelled on lunch at my parents' today, and my mom said she understood and then started crying because she's having a hard time for several reasons and she really looked forward to seeing me. Human connections are important, especially when you're not supposed to go out and meet people. Fortunately, the post office should still be open tomorrow.
ETA: Info changes almost hourly, but rules are getting much stricter. I haven't seen any recommendations not to send non-essential mail yet but it seems like just a matter of time. I'll try, but no promises.




I have no idea what kind of postcards will be available, but I'll do my best.


(also include the name you want me to address the card to.)

No lectures in February! I was wondering why it still felt like I don't have that much free time (apart from staying longer at work), and then I remembered that I read books and played games and had extra choir practices and did other stuff I couldn't have done the month before, that explains things. DD also told me to blame her, which at first I found silly, but having to do all the housework and shopping by myself because she can't does add up eventually.

Games I played:
( D&D campaign update )

For my birthday I got the boardgame Village Attacks from LB. ( Playing monsters ) I can't remember playing cooperative boardgames as a child, but I've tried several in the past few years and I enjoyed them a lot.

Books I read:
The Last Sun + The Hanged Man, K.D. Edwards
( No spoilers )

( Spoilers )

The Outside – Ada Hoffmann
( Barely any spoilers )

Because I went to Worldcon in Dublin, I can nominate books for this year's Hugo awards. The only thing I know for sure I'm going to nominate is "Children of Ruin" for best novel. I'm planning to only read books published last year until the end of March, there are several already on my list ("The Priory of the Orange Tree," "Fleet of Knives," "Deeplight" – I know several people rec'd "A Memory Called Empire" and "Gideon the Ninth" but I'm currently not in the mood for either.) I'm going on skiing vacation starting tomorrow, hopefully I'll have a lot of time to read.

This morning I was excited because Wednesday is a running day, this afternoon I was looking forward to it, this evening I thought that nah, I don't wanna have to get up and go outside and go running >.< Then I listened to "Go the Distance" from Hercules a few times and went anyway. :)

I'm staying longer at the office currently because I left early the last two weeks to have more time to study, so even though exams are over I still don't feel like I have time for much. Especially reading, and also commenting - how did I find so much time for that? I should be writing too, exchange fic and D&D session summaries, and there's a bunch of miscellaneous stuff to do... (Yes I could cut some of my "browse social media" time but I need at least some of that for my brain to settle down. Finding funny TMA posts on Tumblr, and sharing them with DD, is an excellent distraction from random anxiety.)

And I'm still sheltered from most of the stress at the office because I only started a few months ago, but I'll probably begin feeling it soon. It's still very interesting! At the moment for every thing I learn I realize that there are three other things I don't know and feel like I should, but that's probably normal. At least there's always plenty of chocolate. (My first workplace always had free fruit, the second one had apples, this one now always has chocolate and other sweets. It changes by the day if I prefer the first or the current option.)