Okay, so I’m mildly late to writing this up. There’s a few reasons, mostly because I got really busy and then I got mildly depressed. I didn’t want to write how the last month’s gone for me until I felt more myself because its simply been a (mostly) really good fucking month. I’ll save some of the things I was busy doing for the October Dal Report, just to keep everything I discuss to September. But there’s been a lot of things that’s happened this month that I want to talk about. Granted I.. don’t really remember the majority of the stuff that happened at the beginning of the month, but there’s only so much I can do about that.

Tetrio

I made one of my New Year’s resolutions this year to get a sub :45 sprint on Tetrio. Not only did I basically smash that pretty quickly in February, but I’ve steadily been whittling it down from my :44.847 time. And just a few weeks ago I managed a :40.480 sprint!! The grind from :45 to :40 has been insane and has taken several months. I’ve learned a lot about how I play Tetris and it’s been stuff I’ve been trying to keep in mind as I play so I can keep playing to my best ability. But before that, here’s a video of my run!

First of all, I’ve found that I play best when I use my laptop’s keyboard. Not sure if it’s because there’s less input delay, or because my fingers don’t have to move as far as they do with my mechanical keyboard, but there is a considerable difference. Reading what I just wrote probably sounds insane, but every teeny tiny fraction of a second counts when getting a low time. But my own hands and brain matter more than just hardware. You have to get into a very specific kind of headspace to do well in Tetris. I find that I play my very best when I don’t think about what it is I’m doing. After roughly a combined 300 hours of playing Tetris on different platforms, I know where pieces should go on a board. Whenever I second guess myself or make a last second decision it’s almost always the objectively incorrect one. Playing at these speeds I find that my best strategy is to just trust my instincts and restart when I don’t like the pieces I’m given. But not only that, I do my very best at playing when Tetris isn’t even my main focus. I’ve been playing during SotDL while listening to Kalyn GMing or the other player characters doing their own thing. Since these rounds are always less than a minute, It’s never a big deal if I zone out for 30 seconds.

I’ve been loving Tetris a lot this month! I haven’t been playing as much as I used to, not only because I’m spending 40 hours of my week out of the house now, but also because my wrists get tired more. My job is pretty physical so I’m constantly using my hands for typing or designing or threading needles. Taking breaks is just as important as keeping the rust off my skills.

Poppy Pt. 2

I saw Poppy in concert with Kumo 99 earlier this year for my birthday and it was one of the most amazing nights of my life. So when she announced that not only would she be expanding her tour for another leg, but that she’d be in Cincinnati I just had to go. The months leading up to the show I was so scared that I wouldn’t be able to make it. She announced this extra leg in April and I was still unemployed at that point submitting 30 job applications a day. Despite how much I wanted to, there was just no way I was going to be able to secure the tickets at that point.

And then the second I got the acceptance email for my current position, I bought those damn tickets!! Cass and I went together and I wish I could say it was another life changing night, but unfortunately it wasn’t. The venue was packed and people were overheating. I nearly got trapped at the front of the venue when I felt like I was going to pass out. I don’t think this was anyone’s fault really, it’s just a risk you take when you go to a sold out show. It was still fun though! The opening acts, MSPAINT and Dying Wish were fucking killer and I had a great time nearly breaking my glasses in the pit. But then I made the mistake of going to the bar for water and I couldn’t get back to the pit for the beginning of Poppy’s set. I got stuck near the wall, which is the absolute last place I want to be. I’m honestly still mad at myself, because during Dying Wish’s set I was right next to the fucking speakers but no I just HAD to get water and I COULDN’T have bought a bottle the second I walked in.. but whatever.

But I bought some cool merch! MS Paint if you’re reading this please fire whoever you had to sit at your merch table because I checked there three separate times and no one was there despite how badly I wanted to buy your merch.

Photo of a black T Shirt with a sketchy drawing of an angel with the text 'Dying Wish' in white. Photo of a grey T Shirt with a red anime drawing of a girl looking at the viewer. Text reading 'Poppy' in medieval style font is above it.

I highly recommend checking out Poppy (obviously I love her) but the opening acts deserve some love as well, Dying Wish has genuinely grown to one of my favorite artists right now. MSPAINT would also have that spot if they had released more than an EP. But I would recommend “Revenge In Carnage” by Dying Wish from their newest LP, “Flesh Stays Together” and “Surveillance” by MSPAINT. Dying Wish is a metalcore band that contains almost 99% screaming. The vocalist is fucking insane, I was genuinely shocked to learn they have a female lead! But in my defense, they have two male vocalists who help with screaming, so I kind of just assumed they had one very versatile male vocalist before I saw them live. MSPAINT is a punk rapping group and they’re sick as hell. Their vocalist performed like crazy live, he had a really good energy.

Mini Painting

Evan and Michaela have finally persuaded me to give mini painting a try. I haven’t kept up with it as much due to life getting a bit in the way, but I painted a few minis that I’m proud of! I’m still learning and figuring it out as I go so nothing too impressive yet. I’m planning on buying some darker washes soon so I can have nicer looking shadows without as much effort, as well as some other random colors as I go. I’m having fun just goofing around with paint. This scratches an itch that was previously only satiated by paint by numbers and coloring books, but doesn’t feel anywhere near as childish and embarrassing despite effectively being the same thing.

Image of a black tabaxi miniture with leather armor. Same black tabaxi miniture from behind.

Green ogre miniture with a club. Wizard woman in blue robes with a staff miniture.

Cass’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week

I think everyone who keeps up with this blog knows what happened, and even though this affected me it’s not totally my story to tell, so I’ll keep this section brief. But for about a week, Cass was in the hospital treating a skin infection near her eye. She’s all good now, finishing up the last of her antibiotics and has no pain or discomfort. But the week she was hospital and the days leading up to it were really bad. Her eye had swollen so much she couldn’t open it and she was constantly in pain. The infection itself wasn’t too bad, I mean it wasn’t good, but normally it wouldn’t have necessitated that long of a hospital stay. But the doctors were being cautious given its location to monitor it and make sure the infection doesn’t spread into her eye itself. Obviously that’s the smart decision, but at the risk of making this all about me (this is my blog after all) it made the entire process incredibly stressful for me. I hated seeing the love of my life barely conscious in a hospital gown surrounded by nurses. I hated having to leave the hospital at 8pm each night after getting there in the morning. I hated knowing how much pain she was in and how little anyone else around her could do.

Image of a tall building with windows. The shadow of a person is standing at the window looking down at the person taking the photo.

It’s all better now, she’s been back home for a few weeks and feels 100% again. But I hug her a little bit tighter now.

Oh Yeah, Bigger Fish Released!

I almost forgot! Cass and I’s Minecraft mod, There’s Always A Bigger Fish, has officially released! We’re still missing some features, the fishing minigame hasn’t been implemented and fish don’t have models yet, but once work stuff for me calms down (probably not until February lol) I want to begin making the textures. Here’s the Modrinth link!

https://modrinth.com/mod/always-a-bigger-fish

Conclusion?

This last month has been a bit all over the place. To get into some more detail on why this took me so long to write, it was a mix of things. My part time gig doing graphic design for an event hit a really big snag a few weeks ago. Basically due to a lot of miscommunication, I had to almost entirely start over all the progress I had made. I don’t want to go into too much detail on it because I’m frankly still really angry about it. But the experience of desperately sending emails to correct things while explaining why their decision was objectively wrong in every imaginable way and then being ignored was extremely frustrating. It put me in a really bad funk. I had to redo all the progress I’d made in the last two months, but in a shorter time frame to make an end product that I think reflects poorly on myself and the brand. But my bosses are happy so that’s all that matters. I want to keep this as a reoccurring position more than I want to be right, but the whole thing still sucked. Combined with Cass’s hospital stay, I was already so stressed I didn’t feel like a person anymore. But I’m okay now. It probably doesn’t super sound like it, but I’ll get into how I’m doing current day during the October Dal Report.

Anyway, here’s the photo dump and Guppy and a few new friends.

Photo of a tabby cat yawning while laying on a blanket.

Fisheye lense photo of an orange and white cat close to the camera.

Black and white tuxedo cat standing on some gravel rocks with trees in the background.