So I was right in the middle of my long entry on the 20th, and...then the power went out. Apparently, there was an accident, car caused a line to go down somehow. I don't have a clue how it happened, but it inconvenienced me.

Not too big a deal, since I was nearing the point of stopping for dance prep anyway, but I still woulda preferred to have finished that entry first. Oh, well.

During dance, I worked a lot on the traitor arc, and realized that--in spite of Ruby's absence meaning that Sally and Gary are both focal characters--the character dominating during the arc is actually Hannah. We get to see inside her head a lot, see her be more serious, and today I saw her actually be more tough than normal, doing some hard training, which is out of character for her.

Really want to get back to Red Hood Rider, now, which means, without further ado, resuming work on my blog.

Well, I'm a procrastinator. I've got three hours of practical work time (because I need to start preparing to leave at six) to do over a month of blogging.

I should be able to manage the task, once my computer recognizes that, yes, I DO have a valid internet connection. I am SO close to getting it done, and I KNOW I'm on the right track to sorting my life out.

I even set a timer to get up earlier. It...didn't do much GOOD, since I was in the mindset, "but I don't wanna blog...", or eat for that matter, which lost me four hours. (Well, three plus standard morning routine time...which WOULD have been in the actual morning had I done it immediately, mind you!)

That, however, can be attributed to my force of will needing time to build up, my willpower to DO the task finally exceeding the desire not to.

...It helps that I have maintained strong enough willpower to have a motivator: mafia right now is a borderline addiction of mine. It always has been, but my mind is obsessing over my games, which builds in a desire to constantly check back on them. With the number that I'm in, no matter the time of day, there's usually at least one with new content.

Now, that's something I'm learning to moderate. I'm becoming more strict about visiting once or twice a day. But when I have yet to do my first visit for the day, the urge to check is REALLY strong...and I have forbidden myself from doing so before blogging.

Thus, strong motivation to get my blog back up.

So, while the habits I'm building might not be the healthiest, they're healthiER, and I'll take that. Step by step, I'm getting closer to having my life be mine.

It won't be long before I can start writing again, and doing Red Hood Rider again. New month coming up, new life.

I know there will be hurdles slowing me down. Always are. Heck, just looking at me right now is proof enough of that, two months without a blog update!

But I can do this.

I KNOW I can.

So without further ado...gonna start writing the blog now.

So I wrote not one, but TWO complete, proper, actual songs today, and both were trans-focused. I'll see if I can post them when my blog's back up and running. (Which...won't be happening today, I know, cutting it close.) At this rate, I'd have a full album! Probably would, if I compiled them all together.

Also, that sickness I thought I may have?
Well, it was gone this morning, but oddly enough, came back this evening during dance...
...And is gone right now again. I'm gonna take it easy and rest tonight, but I'll probably be fine.

So...my blog's not up to date.
In my defense...when I said that it would be, that was before I had agreed to work today, which necessitated me going to bed early enough to get sleep for the whole day. (It didn't work; I was dead tired even with extra coffee, and this by 2 PM! I was there until 7:30, mind you.)

On the bright side, I got started! I only got a few days up, but hey, that's a few days of blogging that were previously not up in spite of writing, so...success. I also am up-to-date on my emails, plural, as in, both accounts! (Well, my Yahoo still has 9,000+, but is no longer 9,999+ and all recent emails, as in, the last two months, are read and/or properly organized.)

Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut...still got a LOT of work to do, and now I also have a greater need for sleep to ensure I don't get sick! (There was something kinda there for a brief while.)

Well, I lost my bracelet...again. I haven't the slightest clue HOW I lost it. I had it Saturday. I don't have it today. That means it disappeared between the two days. It's in my house, somewhere, as a result, but...I don't know where.

Kinda sucks, but I DO have a backup. Just wasn't planning on using it so soon.

Anyway, today I'm going to try and get my blog back up running. I know I've said this before, but I'm actually serious.

This will be slightly hindered by the fact that my internet is slow as a rock, but as I type this, I'm waiting for the 2016 calendar to load; I've neglected thusfar to mention dates on my blog posts, except the written ones. So, I'm trying to figure out what days I wrote messages.

This, for instance, is Monday, March 28th, but until just now I wouldn't have any way of knowing that.

Wish me luck!

Update to the above: so I DO have entries for every day day except one (the tenth of February, I think?). I'm not positive about the exact chronology. For instance, I have written in my hard-written notes entries for the second, third and forth, but that would leave no entry for the first (unless the previous typed entry was on the first and there was no entry on leap day), and looking later in the notes and tracing backwards, it doesn't line up that way, so I think my watch may be to blame for that inconsistency and that I DID write once every day.

I'll see how well it works in a sec. This may take some time to do, though.


Update to the update: still waiting for weebly to load. This, for once, is not a weebly problem. It's a my-computer-is-acting-like-a-dinosaur problem. I'm not going to be able to blog with a connection like this, so I'm going to try and restart my computer, to see if that helps. Be back in a bit with a further update.


Post-reboot update: well, so far, computer does seem to be faster, remains to be seen by how much, though, since Firefox isn't up and running quite yet. Memory's lower (which is good), CPU seems reasonable.

Now I'm just waiting for the tabs to load as much as can be loaded in 'work offline' mode, and then turn that off, updating what needs to be updated.

Will take a few minutes, but so far, everything's looking better.


Status update, hopefully the last before the blog is up and running: Firefox seems to be running much more smoothly, but now it IS weebly being a pain. See, weebly has this annoying and stupid habit of having a TON of plugins. Literally EVERY single plugin needs to be working perfectly in order for me to blog. If ANY is disabled, I can't blog, and there's always AT LEAST one plugin which refuses to cooperate.

In this case, shockwave flash is being incredibly stubborn, MASSIVELY delaying me, but I THINK it finally has cleared up.

Time to get to work!


Hopes-crushed quick update: Weebly's still slow. My computer's definitely faster than before. I can tell. It's on weebly's end, pretty sure. Something about weebly and my computer.

But I'm making progress, slowly.

I'll be taking a break after the 5-at-five which is coming up shortly, and that will probably take me 'til supper which will probably take me into Jeopardy which will lead into Dancing with the Stars which will lead to Castle which will lead to me probably spending a lot of time on the desktop, meaning I'm not gonna finish now.

But I'll finish TODAY, no matter how long it takes. Got two months' worth of blogging to update.

It WILL happen.


Side-note: something you might have noticed is that, whenever I'm posting blogs from the past, I title them by their written date, e.g. today would be titled "March 28th, 2016" and may still end up being titled that way, depending.

This is because before I learned how to change the posted dates (which now, I can do), that was the only way of knowing when said entry was written. But it also is what a blog entry will be called by default if you don't enter a title.

I discovered it WAY back in 2014 when I first started this blog. Yet what I didn't know was the exact format; I was guessing. For instance, I entered "February 8th, 2016" because that's what I thought it was. And I entered "February 9th, 2016", yet it's displaying as "February 09th, 2016". My theory is that it's not saving my title, and defaulting to the default for the listed date (which I now know how to manipulate into the proper date), thus, the extra 0.

Funny how that goes.

Anyway, back to work.

So today was Easter. It's a ton of fun, but I can't really describe it that well. Family traditions are special that way. So starting with yesterday: we always dye our eggs the night before. My brother moved out years ago, and doesn't bother to come over a day early to do the job, so nowadays, his eggs are dyed for him by my sisters.

To separate his eggs from mine, they have as of the last few years developed cues to clue him in. In this year, his eggs all except one had an arrow on them. Each arrow pointed to the next egg. He, of course, had suggested we dye his eggs white...so the last egg had, dyed on it, spelled out, "white".

My eggs actually had a break from tradition this year. Normally, I go two each of blue, orange, and green, my signature colors which at a time were my first, second, and third favorite colors. This year, there was no orange. So, I decided to go for red instead. The reds didn't quite get as well done as I'd have liked, but oh well.

My greens both got slightly damaged, and my blues turned out...interesting. One was a nice blue, the second one. The first one I mistakenly had placed in pink (thinking it was orange), and when I realized my error, swapped it to the blue. This ended up creating a REALLY beautiful, ethereal-night-sky-like egg as a result.

My sisters did their normal fancy designs, using different techniques. The traditional methodical-duct-tape and also experimenting with wax and scraping off and other such tricks.

This, the night before. Then, come today, my brother arrived at 11, and that's when I was woken up. The eggs were already hidden by my sisters at this point (my older sister does my younger sister and me, my younger sister does my older sister and my brother; they try to be as evil as possible to each other and each progressive year seem to think more and more alike), but since my brother was arriving with some of our candy, our easter baskets could not be hidden until he arrived.

That took a little over half an hour, with us beginning the hunt at about 11:45.

It took us 3 hours and 42 minutes to finish the hunt. (And another 30 or so seconds to stop our timer, which was counting up, acting as a makeshift stopwatch to record the time.) We usually set some ground rules. Certain areas are off-limits, but we have what is basically "the loop": the hallway of our house connects to the bathroom which connects to the laundry room which connects to the pantry which connects to the kitchen which connects to the dining room which connects to the living room which contains the entrance to our house and also connects to the hallway.

For eggs, I usually request a "below the neck, above the knees" rule, but only half of my eggs actually followed that rule this year. A very common strategy of us is to shadow someone likely to find our eggs for us when they're searching for their own, a tactic which is most effective, but has its limits. My sisters both hid eggs for me and my brother in the wreath (an old Christmas decoration that never got taken down), and also hid our baskets in the EXACT same spot.

While there was only one dummy egg this year (in the refrigerator), my older sister placed four false baskets containing items: a jar of chocolate with an egg ("chocolate eggs"), a peanut butter can (tub? jar? not sure what you call the typical container of it) with a cup ("peanut butter cup"), a jar of chocolate with some text (forget what it said) (post-writing edit: it said 'bunny', as in, "chocolate bunny", obviously), and a jar of jelly with text saying 'beans' (Jellybeans). One of my younger sister's eggs (the second-to-last she found in fact) was hidden inside of the egg in that false basket. (Did I mention they try to be as evil as possible to each other? Yeah, that's no joke.)

The last egg of hers was actually MY suggestion, surprisingly enough: one of our salt shakers is JUST big enough to hide an egg, and because we always wrap eggs in paper towels, it was white in an object that's supposed to look white, so it took her a while to finish. (She was the second-to-last to finish.) My older sister's last egg was taped to the top of the inside of the laundry machine. Another egg was inside of the stove. (Evil! No joke, evil!)

My last egg was ironically positioned in the EXACT same spot as an egg from last year, being near our movies and taped to the underside of one of our kitchen's counters. (The one we have filled with all our plastic/paper silverware/plates and bowls.) It's a nice hunt, challenging but I think this year not frustrating.

That might have been due to exhaustion, though: my feet got tired, so I sat down a lot, and when other people also got tired, it led to many people sitting around, doing nothing, waiting, because they were too tired. But it was neither too hard nor too easy, though as per the norm, as the hunt got longer, hints came up more frequently.

If you're wondering, yes, all those hiding places are written down. We learned we needed to do that years ago when SOMEONE couldn't remember the last egg's hiding place. I don't know what my younger sister does, but my older sister writes her notes on locations in Elvish, which she is, of course, the only member of the family fluent in. (She's a linguist. As in, literally graduated college with a degree in Classics, that being Latin and Greek, with a minor in Finnish, who is learning Japanese in her spare time for FUN. Of course she knows the various different forms of Elvish. And all other Middle Earth languages for that matter.)

Anyway, after the hunt, it was too soon for supper, so we watched The Lone Ranger, at my suggestion. Was a good film, I had no problem with it, but that MIGHT just be my lack of knowledge (except the vaguest of vague details) about the whole franchise. (I'm pretty sure it started on the radio and had a TV show, and is sometimes tied in with Green Hornet especially in fanon, but that's about all I really know.)

Then, I got to spend the rest of my day in a ComicFury hangout, largely watching a friend play games, which they screenshared so I could see. Spent the majority of the hangout muted since family night was still technically going at that point, but once both my younger sister and brother had left, I decided to unmute it. Still largely used the old version's chat (really, whose stupid decision was it to remove the chat from the new version?) because I don't speak up so well, but it was nice all the same.

Fairly good day.

There's SO much I feel like I'm not describing in the day, so many things lost to time, little traditions and quirks not found anywhere else, but not much I can really do beyond what I already have.

Anyway, this is my entry for tonight.

If I want to get a March update for my blog, I need to do so tomorrow.

It'll probably be unbearably slow, though, since my computer is slow and my internet's even slower. (A reboot may or may not help, I honestly don't know. Sometimes it does, sometimes it makes it worse by forcing me to reload everything.)

I'll manage, though. Always do!

So today in my blog-that-never-updates, I felt like doing a Rubyverse ramble. More specifically, I felt like talking about the Earth element, one of the only elements I haven't talked about in great lengths.

Now, this ramble probably won't be as in-depth as my ones on the other elements (since right now, I'm mainly stalling for time, waiting for my mom to get off the desktop), but I still want to cover the wide variety of subjects Earth has to offer.

Of course, not all of this gets featured in Red Hood Rider. While the elemental rider of Earth is akin to the actual AVATAR of Earth in strength (at least, Sally is: canonically, the current generation of Riders is the ONLY generation of Riders who can fight the elemental avatars in a duel to a draw; all other generations either mutually back off after a day or concede defeat), this does not mean the rider will actually USE every ability at their disposal.

...That generally applies for all the riders for that matter. They're virtually gods in theory power-level wise. I'm not sure if I ever posted, or even wrote up, this tidbit, but somewhere along the line, there proved to be a slight need for an explanation in their abilities.

Namely: I decided from the get-go that the Elemental Riders' base powers were set in stone: they could not suddenly develop a new power out of nowhere. All they could do is learn to use their existing powers in newer, more creative ways, which continuously become more and more imaginative with abusing wording and loopholes, e.g. taking something meant as a metaphor and using it literally, or using something that was meant literally as a metaphor and then applying that metaphor to a new concept.

Then I created the concept of magical fatigue and even had riders be limited by it: Ruby's powers shut down because of it, and Vili's growth runs into the problem of it, for a start. So, my solution was as such: Riders gain new powers as they learn to be creative, often inspired by seeing other powers. (For instance, if someone else uses a really cool technique, then they'll try to figure out a way to replicate it with their own powers, which requires different rules.) As such, their basic powers never change...

...HOWEVER, while their basic power never changes, they cannot instantly use god-like powers because of magical fatigue. They have a limit to what they can do, off of their storage of magical energy and ability to draw in magical energy. This limit DOES grow with experience, training, practice, time, and age: in other words, the older and more experienced the Rider, the higher their magical fatigue limit becomes, effectively allowing them to do more. So, that godlike ability which they couldn't use before, they can maybe use later...especially the more in-tune they get with their powers.

All that said: even at the peak of their powers, they're not going to imagine every POSSIBLE application of them (heck, even I can't and I know more about these elements than anyone else!), and even if they could, it's not like they necessarily have a plot-relevant usage.

So on that note: Earth is by far one of the strongest, most versatile elements. Every element except darkness and ice have ties to life, which includes earth. (Light has ties to life in the spiritual sense. Water has ties to life in the practical sense. Fire has ties to life in the metaphorical sense. Air and Energy serve as vessels for life, with Earth being life in a physical sense.) This gives Earth users the strength and harmony of their surroundings. Earth is also such a large element, covering so many things, that it is often subdivided into four separate elements, something unique to it and it alone as an element.

In this case: Nature, Rock/Stone, earth (as in, generic ground, like soil, sand, etc.), and Metal, with Metal being the hardest form of Earth to master and Nature being the most diverse. (Nature itself can be subdivided into 'plant', 'living', and 'other', with other covering things like gasses, acid, poison, and the like.)

Because of its many areas, Earth has a great many number of subjects tied to it. It is, along with Energy, THE defining element of Endurance, both physical and mental. It is associated with being tough, honest, kind, yet also blunt. It is up there with Water in healing abilities, especially regenerative, and can cover that subject from multiple angles, including how to shut down an existing regenerative factor. (Something it is second only to Darkness in ability to do.)

This is why Sally is virtually impossible to defeat: her stubborn refusal to accept defeat allows her to survive any encounter, requiring the utmost of extreme circumstances to so much as STUN her. Her particular fighting style emphasizes the power of the Earth, drawing largely from the subjects associated with Rocks, the core strength of destructive power, but she does incorporate some of the smoother, softer elements of Nature into her fighting, via her threads. She also can use her talents to help herself or other Riders, via her mastery of these things. For instance, she's a master chef, able to cook up any meal to its ideal state, and is great at figuring out solutions to peoples' problems.

It should also be noted that Earth covers 'magma' as well: it's VERY unusual to see an earth-user be able to manipulate magma, even rarer than it is to see them manipulate Metal (most who manipulate Metal are trained in using that specific sub-element rather than being generic Earth users), since it is something more commonly associated with Fire.

Fire users can ALSO manipulate magma, for that matter, but Earth users can too. It's just liquid, molten, hot earth, after all, and is closely tied TO metal for that matter. (Because metal is just refined stone, and stone is part of the earth, and when metal is melted, in its molten state...it's still metal, still earth, in spite of being fiery.)

Soyeah, that (along with it also having shared control of Gravity) is a basic rundown of Earth as an element. Told you it wouldn't be AS in-depth as most examples, because I'm really making broad, open statements here deliberately. The idea is for people to see the elements as really, really flexible, but still following set guidelines.

They can't do anything, but can do almost anything if the user is clever enough to figure out how, and has the necessary strength to pull their intended feat off. (Basically: while every user of an element has the capacity to, in THEORY, use any aspect of the element, in practice, nobody can master EVERY aspect of the element. Most can't even become proficient in the element as a whole. They just become very good at making it do what they want it to.)

So...today was a good day. Not a PRODUCTIVE day, mind you, but it was a GOOD day. Why? I got to hang out with CF friends in a google chat hangout, for a lengthy period of time. (Even had both my audio and camera on the entire time, and spoke to them.)

Now...to do this, I did sacrifice some things. Namely, the end session song of the day was Of Monsters And Men, but once I heard what song it was, I decided that knowing what it was (since I had heard that end session before; they...have a LOT of repeats) was good enough, and that for this particular time, I could listen to people in the hangout instead.

The same applied for the 5 at five. I didn't get to hear any of them, either, because I was listening to my friends, conversing with them. (Meaning, I also missed out on Andrew W.'s Party Hard, Manley's Friday tradition.)

Still worth it.

The hangout was still going when I had to leave, though, because, unfortunately, family night meant I had to leave. Apparently, it's not too uncommon a thing, though, actually: of the ten or so people I saw there (not at the same time, over the length of the full chat), a good seven or so had some family event going on, most of which they had to leave for soon.

I suppose it does make sense, with Easter coming up and all.

...Speaking of which...I really, really, REALLY need to figure out if The Y is open on Sundays. If it is...well, I have to work. I'm hoping it's not, I THINK it's not, but if it is...really impacts our plans.

Early research suggests it is closed, but I'll need to ask my boss about it.

Probably best to do that first thing tomorrow, given how late it is right now.

I'm really getting frustrated at myself. I have nobody but myself to blame, but I keep on getting distracted from doing the things I would care to do, and building bad habits: late to bed (it's 5 AM), waking up late, just all-around very mad at myself right now.

I'm failing to make any sort of progress. I feel like I'm regressing, even.

No true entry today, got side-tracked.
6:45 am, need sleep.