an indeterminate number of things

[extemporanea]

• Struggling a bit with what I think is a sinus problem, still doing that irritating thing where I randomly wake up in the morning with a pounding headache and nausea, and pretty much lose the day. New exciting symptom: my ears are ringing. More or less perpetually. It sounds like a distant, frenetic cricket, speeded up, and possibly mechanical. I am very tired and glandular and headachy.
  
• On the upside, I have also randomly discovered that I am one of the small minority of people who can deliberately flex a weird muscle in their inner ear to make a sort of low rumbling sound. It's very odd. I do it by slightly tensing the hinge of my jaw and, strangely enough, the edges of my tongue. Bodies are odd. Mine particularly.
  
• I have found a replacement for Stardew Valley, which I have played repeatedly until all meaning ls lost. My Time At Portia seems to have been constructed by systematically mining Zelda, Stardew, the Fallout 4 building mechanism, Minecraft, Yonder, and probably others I do not ken, for their cute and enjoyable features, and then cobbling them together into a sort of small-town cartoon post-apocalypse. I am not enamoured of the character design, which is unwontedly stereotypical and a bit grotesque, and I don't think the writing is quite as strong as Stardew, but it's a thoroughly enjoyable and immersive playing experience, and hits all my "systematically building things" buttons with fair enough accuracy that I am finding it difficult to stop playing in order to go to bed, despite my frankly ridiculous levels of exhaustion.
  
• Winter has hit! it bucketed with rain all Sunday night and into the morning, causing Cape Town traffic to instantly seize up, as is its rainy-weather wont, and the cats to gravitate either to me or the new fluffy blanket on the bed, of which they seem to approve. You can tell that the weather is getting colder because they have buried their status-jockeying differences to almost, but not quite, cuddle.
  
  
  
  
  Jyn has done that kitty-growing thing where I blinked and suddenly she was larger, burlier and very clearly adult when a moment ago she was slim and teenaged. The status-jockeying is clearly because Pandora's grasp on the Top Cat position is shaky and doomed. You can tell from Jyn's expression, which is faintly smug.
  
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