Light timers have been great. I feel having the ones in my bedroom work like a daylight alarm has been very helpful, and as you said, you never come home to a dark house, which is helpful if you’ve got arms full of groceries or such.

Also the smart thermostat in conjunction with smart outlets lets me turn on the room fans and AC when I’m on my way home.

Even having the ability to change color temp is nice so you can have harsh bright white if you need to see something you’re working on, but the majority of the time you can have nice warm or soft light.

Ah, good, I was tempted to say a little more but held back. Lots of great stuff ahead if you havent seen it yet!

No, I was not aware of any extras.

I may be misremembering on the pacing. I do remember liking season 2 more, though at first when I saw they were going to magic school I was worried what direction things were going to go in, but I really enjoyed Chise making friends and Elias’s attempts and the accompanying adventure. The school felt like a real place, not just an excuse to do magic things.

I’ve seen some comments here saying they didn’t when Frieren took a diversion to magic school, and I felt the same at first again, but I think they did enough unique things with it as well.

I like the collar and bow! It looks very modern while still having some age of knights and damsels in high towers charm.

It’s a little slow and unevenly paced, but overall I do solidly enjoy it. There are some really great characters and arcs and I especially loved Elias trying to make friends. My girlfriend absolutely loves this show as well, so it’s something everyone can watch and enjoy I think.

anon does not judge Drag negatively for having different preferences. anon understands why a dragon person may not enjoy the second half. anon also approves of the kitty. anon and drag find common ground.

I powered through as I kept hearing everyone recommend this. It felt pointless because I didn’t get watching a cooking show about stuff you could never eat because it isn’t real.

The comments I read said it took a tonal shift when they finally got back to the red dragon. It’s about halfway through, which took me weeks to get to.

The second half is awesome! If this is what it was like all along, it would have been amazing. The first half gives you nothing to expect what the second half is, which makes it feel more intense, but I still feel is kinda terrible pacing.

I want more now because the characters really are good, which is probably why they used that first half the way they did, but it was tough before seeing where it was going. Frieren had a much better buildup before it really started getting serious for example.

Wow, this guy’s voting record and the bill’s he’s sponsored read exactly how you’d imagine too.

He was in the Air Force 30 years, was a commercial pilot, and a cop, and none of those jobs ever seemed to manage to teach him to manage the mildest level of stress, judging by his past news stories. What a delicate individual.

I’ve been on a kick lately from my music studies. I got assigned some bossa nova to learn, so I listened to a bunch, and then since I love reading and researching, I started looking into the origins and evolution of things.

I also listen to some podcasts about social issues, and that gets me interested in all sorts of things, so I dive into history of slavery and systematic racism to learn what I wasn’t taught in school.

In my current job and the last, I’m also pretty much the only white employee, so I try to inform myself on things so I don’t say any stupid redneck stuff.

Mainly, I just want to be less ignorant whenever possible…

Lol she might possibly be an upgrade!

Good heavens, I’d hate to see which co-worker I’d get paired with! That’s some type of Russian Roulette! 🤣🤢

We had a new group in from another regional site come for training.

It turned out the one was actively also a prostitute. She was freely distributing her social media, showing people videos of herself, and asking us where the secluded parts of the campus were so she could do her thing with some of the scientists.

She didn’t do very much actual work, or at least not what she was supposed to be doing there. I give her credit for seeming to be very proud of her side gig. She seemed to really enjoy it. I think she just eventually stopped coming in after they went back to their own site, so maybe she did find herself a scientist.

Definitely the wildest person I’ve ever worked with.

I started donating to the local animal rescue. None of them get any public funding whatsoever, so all the money is going to the animals’ care.

They’re pretty open with what it costs to take care of the various animals, and I feel it’s a critical job they do.

Haven’t gotten any spam so far either, so that is respectful.

I only started using Reddit regularly when I learned of the third party apps, so when they killed that, this is the thing all the other quitters were talking about.

Tried out a few apps and instances. It seemed very slow and quiet, but much nicer as far as the personalities. Was just a lurker at Reddit, so I had nothing to leave behind, so I stayed here.

It’s not quite as nice now as during the mass migration, but I’ve found a nice niche for myself here and I participate much more often than I ever would have at Reddit. There’s a decent audience now, but still enough room to find your own voice and to build the type of community you want.

Rye crisps are the best part of snack mix to me!

I got to see the guy who played the shakuhachi for The Ghost of Tsushima.

He said that it had pretty much been forgotten until it started to get interest from outside of Japan and now there is worldwide interest again. People had to go back and figure out the old music notation and melodies and translate them into something modern musicians could read.

Fall semester for piano lessons starts today. I’ve been bummed out lately, and learning gives me a place to direct my frustrated energy.

I’ve done a lot of independent learning in the 3 week break, such as playing with software synthesizers and learning some of the new scales a bit better and using them in improvisations.

We just started a book of scale modes before break, and my new song book is of Bartok, who explores many unique and discordant harmonies, so there will be a ton of new concepts for me coming up.

If your issues are pressure related, I found this guide of exercises to relax your writing grip and to avoid pressing too hard.

It’s written for teaching children, but that just makes it super easy to understand. It looks to have some very good ideas.

The Jetstream is the way to go for an all purpose pen.

A lot of the others I mentioned edge it out in smoothness or line quality, but they’re water based ink pens, so anything that might get wet, or anything like a label or tape that isn’t absorbent like paper will need a ballpoint like the Jetstream.

Thankfully the Jetstream is as good as a ballpoint gets while still being inexpensive. Comes in a ton of styles, and refills are available if you want to toss one in your favorite pen body.

It may sound silly, but don’t be afraid to practice your writing.

I tried fountain pens for a bit (too fussy for me) and to get practice at it and get my cursive skills back up, I would copy the Duolingo I was doing at the time. That way I got to practice writing and language at the same time. You can always just copy articles or books or whatever.

You could practice copying font styles too if you want something special. If your writing stinks, steal someone else’s! 😁