Weekend
Saturday was Community Day in Pokemon Go. Actually, this entire weekend has been a kind of make-up session in case you missed any of the previous Community Days. As it happens, I missed all of the community days prior to August's, because I started playing at the end of July. So I had been keenly interested in getting in some extra Pokemon-hunting time. I have also finally made a dent in my oversupply of pokemon items. I had been at the point where I had to throw away normal pokeballs to make room to give and receive gifts. (My pokemon leveling strategy is highly dependent on giving and receiving gifts, so doing so is important to me outside of the actual contents of the gifts. Also, you often get things from gifts that I am not oversupplied with).
My usual Pokemon behavior is "just catch absolutely everything you see", so I've been doing a lot of that. But I've been most focused on catching Dratini, Larvitars, and Beldums. Dratini and Larvitar are because I hadn't gotten the most evolved form for either of those yet, and they are both good combat forms that I have often wished I had. Beldum's most evolved form is Metagross, and I got four Metagrosses during the Community Day in October. But I only got one with Meteor Mash and I deeply regretted that, so I'm trying to make up for it now.
Anyway, all the critters are spawning all weekend long, but the hours for the Community Day bonuses (XP, Stardust, and hatch distance) were 1PM to 4PM on Saturday. So I went to the Plaza for those hours like I usually do. The weather report said "50 degrees and cloudy" when I left the house, so I wore a sweater and a light jacket. The actual weather was "45 degrees, drizzling, and windy". It was surprisingly unpleasant. I was sorely tempted to call it quits an hour in. But I stuck it out anyway. I got into five raids, including two for Cressalia, who I failed to catch. Fooey. I don't know if Cressalia will still be around for January's Community Day. I have not yet been motivated enough to try meeting up with the Discord Pokemon players for raiding outside of Community Days.
Because the Community Day spawns were still spawning, it didn't really feel like the event was over at 4PM. I went home anyway, to check on Lut. Lut wanted fast food for dinner, so I went back out for Arby's, and then stayed in the rest of the night because inside was warm and outside was not.
I watched episodes 11 and 12 of the new She-Ra. I am almost done with the entire season! This is the first show I have successfully watched by myself since I stopped watchng My Little Pony alone. (For the first four or five seasons, I watched some MLP on Youtube and the rest with Terrycloth when I visited him. Then Hasbro started telling Youtube to pull down any episodes posted and I gave up. Netflix has MLP now, so I might pick it up again, I dunno. I still watch Terry 's favorite episodes when I visit, but I haven't visited as often so the show developments feel much harder to follow.) Anyway, the new She-Ra is fun. A lot of my friends comment on the "lesbian subtext", but the thing that struck me more was the lack of heteronormativity. To be specific: like the original 80s show, the new She-Ra has one regular male cast member, Bow. Bow is not presented as a love interest, however. He has been Glimmer's best friend for years, and there's one episode where he goes with a different character to "Princess Prom". The B plot of this episode is "and Glimmer is really anxious and jealous over this". But there is nothing remotely romantic or sexual about her jealousy. Glimmer is afraid she and Bow will grow apart, or that Bow will leave her behind because he has made new friends and he will like them better. Absolutely no one says "yes, Glimmer, this is a reasonable concern and we will validate it because clearly You Love Him and you should feel threatened that He Loves Another and people can only love one person. So you need to Win Him Back, or Let Him Go."
No, the tenor of the B plot is "Glimmer is overreacting, and while her anxiety is understandable, it's normal for people to have multiple friends and it doesn't mean Bow won't like her anymore."
Some people discussing the show have said that Princess Prom proves there are canonical lesbian relationships because some of the background couples are FF pairs. But in fact, everyone at Princess Prom refers to their date as a "plus one", and most of the relationships the audience gets any insight into do not have any more romance to them than Bow and Glimmer's. Seahawk is the only character in the entire show to speak in an explicitly romantic fashion about anyone, and the object of his affections openly disdains him.
Regardless, I really liked the way the show handles Bow and Glimmer's friendship, and just the overall indifference to setting up an overt romance between anyone. The show's important relationships are those of family, friends, rivals, allies, and opponents. I love seeing these take precedence. I am not going to object to lesbian or straight romance in the show in the future, but I like the flavor of it as it stands.
Today, I wanted to go to Panera to eat breakfast and write. I asked Lut if he wanted me to bring him anything back, and he said no, so I drove happily away and had a nice breakfast and a frozen mocha and wrote 1200 words of The Twilight Etherium because I felt like it. I decided I'm allowed to write while I'm taking a break, if I feel like it. I'm just not allowed to feel bad if I don't write.
Wait, wait, why would I ever be allowed to feel bad for not writing? *eyes that last sentence suspiciously*
Apparently that's supposed to be more like "I'm not allowed to guilt myself into writing while on break."
*still kind of dubious about the value of this method of inducing productivity*
I left Panera around 10:30 to pick up Lut's meds and to check on Lut. He was awake and hungry when I got home, so we went out to Applebee's for lunch. Applebee's turned out to be out of their Triple Chocolate Meltdown dessert, which is sad because it's my favorite of their menu items. But lunch was fine.
After lunch, Lut took another nap and I snuck out to go to the mall to mall-walk for exercise and also Catch More Pokemons. I walked for about an hour, then sat with my laptop in the group of comfy chairs inside the mall's main entrance. I wrote most of this entry there, in between spinning stops and catching pokemon.
When I got home, Lut was awake again. We cuddled up and watched Ant-Man and the Wasp again. After the movie, he went to bed, and I walked across the street to sit in the hotel lobby by their pokestop and finish this entry. And write a few hundred more words of The Twilight Etherium. I will probably go home after my current lure runs out, since it's getting late. And evolve a bunch of pokemon so that I can get pokemon with all the limited-availability moves before I run out of Community Day weekend.
Altogether, I am happy with my weekend. It feels shorter than usual, because I spent so much of my Friday of in the car. But it's worth the drive to see Jenn. ❤️ I think some of my "the weekend feels short" is because next week is the first time in four weeks that I have to work four days in one week, instead of three. I really want to drop to three days a week as my actual schedule. I should just do it. It'll be a bit of a financial hit and probably mean that I will have to withdraw money from my retirement accounts early. But that's a doable thing if it turns out to be necessary. And the last few weeks have reinforced how much nicer it is to work three-day weeks instead of four.
This entry was originally posted at https://rowyn.dreamwidth.org/633555.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
My usual Pokemon behavior is "just catch absolutely everything you see", so I've been doing a lot of that. But I've been most focused on catching Dratini, Larvitars, and Beldums. Dratini and Larvitar are because I hadn't gotten the most evolved form for either of those yet, and they are both good combat forms that I have often wished I had. Beldum's most evolved form is Metagross, and I got four Metagrosses during the Community Day in October. But I only got one with Meteor Mash and I deeply regretted that, so I'm trying to make up for it now.
Anyway, all the critters are spawning all weekend long, but the hours for the Community Day bonuses (XP, Stardust, and hatch distance) were 1PM to 4PM on Saturday. So I went to the Plaza for those hours like I usually do. The weather report said "50 degrees and cloudy" when I left the house, so I wore a sweater and a light jacket. The actual weather was "45 degrees, drizzling, and windy". It was surprisingly unpleasant. I was sorely tempted to call it quits an hour in. But I stuck it out anyway. I got into five raids, including two for Cressalia, who I failed to catch. Fooey. I don't know if Cressalia will still be around for January's Community Day. I have not yet been motivated enough to try meeting up with the Discord Pokemon players for raiding outside of Community Days.
Because the Community Day spawns were still spawning, it didn't really feel like the event was over at 4PM. I went home anyway, to check on Lut. Lut wanted fast food for dinner, so I went back out for Arby's, and then stayed in the rest of the night because inside was warm and outside was not.
I watched episodes 11 and 12 of the new She-Ra. I am almost done with the entire season! This is the first show I have successfully watched by myself since I stopped watchng My Little Pony alone. (For the first four or five seasons, I watched some MLP on Youtube and the rest with Terrycloth when I visited him. Then Hasbro started telling Youtube to pull down any episodes posted and I gave up. Netflix has MLP now, so I might pick it up again, I dunno. I still watch Terry 's favorite episodes when I visit, but I haven't visited as often so the show developments feel much harder to follow.) Anyway, the new She-Ra is fun. A lot of my friends comment on the "lesbian subtext", but the thing that struck me more was the lack of heteronormativity. To be specific: like the original 80s show, the new She-Ra has one regular male cast member, Bow. Bow is not presented as a love interest, however. He has been Glimmer's best friend for years, and there's one episode where he goes with a different character to "Princess Prom". The B plot of this episode is "and Glimmer is really anxious and jealous over this". But there is nothing remotely romantic or sexual about her jealousy. Glimmer is afraid she and Bow will grow apart, or that Bow will leave her behind because he has made new friends and he will like them better. Absolutely no one says "yes, Glimmer, this is a reasonable concern and we will validate it because clearly You Love Him and you should feel threatened that He Loves Another and people can only love one person. So you need to Win Him Back, or Let Him Go."
No, the tenor of the B plot is "Glimmer is overreacting, and while her anxiety is understandable, it's normal for people to have multiple friends and it doesn't mean Bow won't like her anymore."
Some people discussing the show have said that Princess Prom proves there are canonical lesbian relationships because some of the background couples are FF pairs. But in fact, everyone at Princess Prom refers to their date as a "plus one", and most of the relationships the audience gets any insight into do not have any more romance to them than Bow and Glimmer's. Seahawk is the only character in the entire show to speak in an explicitly romantic fashion about anyone, and the object of his affections openly disdains him.
Regardless, I really liked the way the show handles Bow and Glimmer's friendship, and just the overall indifference to setting up an overt romance between anyone. The show's important relationships are those of family, friends, rivals, allies, and opponents. I love seeing these take precedence. I am not going to object to lesbian or straight romance in the show in the future, but I like the flavor of it as it stands.
Today, I wanted to go to Panera to eat breakfast and write. I asked Lut if he wanted me to bring him anything back, and he said no, so I drove happily away and had a nice breakfast and a frozen mocha and wrote 1200 words of The Twilight Etherium because I felt like it. I decided I'm allowed to write while I'm taking a break, if I feel like it. I'm just not allowed to feel bad if I don't write.
Wait, wait, why would I ever be allowed to feel bad for not writing? *eyes that last sentence suspiciously*
Apparently that's supposed to be more like "I'm not allowed to guilt myself into writing while on break."
*still kind of dubious about the value of this method of inducing productivity*
I left Panera around 10:30 to pick up Lut's meds and to check on Lut. He was awake and hungry when I got home, so we went out to Applebee's for lunch. Applebee's turned out to be out of their Triple Chocolate Meltdown dessert, which is sad because it's my favorite of their menu items. But lunch was fine.
After lunch, Lut took another nap and I snuck out to go to the mall to mall-walk for exercise and also Catch More Pokemons. I walked for about an hour, then sat with my laptop in the group of comfy chairs inside the mall's main entrance. I wrote most of this entry there, in between spinning stops and catching pokemon.
When I got home, Lut was awake again. We cuddled up and watched Ant-Man and the Wasp again. After the movie, he went to bed, and I walked across the street to sit in the hotel lobby by their pokestop and finish this entry. And write a few hundred more words of The Twilight Etherium. I will probably go home after my current lure runs out, since it's getting late. And evolve a bunch of pokemon so that I can get pokemon with all the limited-availability moves before I run out of Community Day weekend.
Altogether, I am happy with my weekend. It feels shorter than usual, because I spent so much of my Friday of in the car. But it's worth the drive to see Jenn. ❤️ I think some of my "the weekend feels short" is because next week is the first time in four weeks that I have to work four days in one week, instead of three. I really want to drop to three days a week as my actual schedule. I should just do it. It'll be a bit of a financial hit and probably mean that I will have to withdraw money from my retirement accounts early. But that's a doable thing if it turns out to be necessary. And the last few weeks have reinforced how much nicer it is to work three-day weeks instead of four.
This entry was originally posted at https://rowyn.dreamwidth.org/633555.html. Please comment there using OpenID.