But me being an idiot I didn't so.
I should tell you about things going on since there are some real life announcements it'd be best to inform people of, but. Too tired right now will do tomorrow.

The good news is, before I went to dance, my feet were actually beginning to feel better! I actually felt like maybe my body was beginning to recover, to rejuvenate, to heal itself. The, uh. The bad news is that it alllllllll came back essentially the moment I started actually doing the strenuous activity of dancing.

...The worse news is that the same pain in my left foot (and to a lesser extent right food) is now also in my right knee. It's just one problem after another with me. I'm beginning to feel like an old lady. Knee injury? Ankle injury? We're talking the type of thing you see old people complaining about.

The pain type for my left foot (which remains the worse) is weird. One moment, I feel like my muscles are all cramped up, as if you were curling it up into a ball. Or squeezing something into a fist--compact, beyond the natural. Tight. Squished.

The next moment, I feel like something is stretched like a rubber band to the point of breaking. Overextended, about to tear. It's like there's a soreness there that artificially shrinks my natural range of movement--only, instead of shrinking the movements, I can make them and then it feels like I'm pulling too much.

During some times, I feel like there's a force pushing down on the foot and applying pressure--like a dull blunt object, a large rock or maybe a fist or something to that effect, something heavy yet also not sharp. And yet, at other times, I feel like instead of it being a dull blunt object, it's a pointed sharp object. Not many many pins/needles of really freakin sharp pain. But more like one large ax-like or pick-like pressure, in that it is a combination of the dull/blunt and the sharp, stabbing yet not piercing.

I also have occasional overheating in the ankle, where it feels like there's a burning. It's not that I can't pin the type of pain down. It's more like my ankle has decided to experience every type of pain, often multiple types at once. Mostly it does feel like fatigue of some kind though. It's the same area I've talked about:

From the ankle to the ring-foot. When I was first having it, it was mostly near the ring-foot. Now it's mostly at the ankle. When I run my fingers across my foot, though, I can't identify any source of pain at all. There's no tender spots. There's no point where if I push hard, if I press, I get a funny feedback sensation. Okay. That's not quite true. I've identified some points where I feel something.

If you were to call the bones in the foot the same as in the hand, the pinkie-knuckle and ring-knuckle bones at the base of those toes have one spot between the two which responds to my massage. (No surprise there, as that's one of the key points I've identified.) Surprisingly, though, there's a lesser pain in the gap between the ring-knuckle and the middle-knuckle. And I'm largely writing this as I'm feeling it if you couldn't tell, so I just discovered that runs up through the middle-knuckle/index-knuckle. And even to some extent, index-knuckle to big-toe-knuckle.

At about the same point. The base where each toe meets the other, and that's extending forward to at least midway through the foot. But while that pain is existent on all points, it's worse on the first point, the point I've most identified. I've also identified another key bone which is hurting. I have a high-arch foot. On the outside of said high arch, at the peak of the arch, there's a bone. That bone is hurting a lot. It can be a little hard for me to locate, but when I do feel it I can tell that it is hurting whereas other bones nearby aren't.

I'm not quite sure it's even a bone, it just felt hard so I'm calling it one. I also identified something similar which is almost directly below the ankle bone (no surprise there as that's where I can visibly feel pain). It's something which is hard to consistently pinpoint (as in, it'll take me like two or three tries to find the bone-or-whatever-it-is, but once I do I absolutely know I've found it), especially since pivoting my foot up and down tends to shift this thing's position. 

If I'm looking at foot anatomy charts correctly (and I'm probably not), this might be the Talus or Cuboid area, for that particular point. But that'd be assuming a bone is the problem. Tendons, ligaments, muscles...it could be any number of things, the point is both feet hurt in similar areas still. And now my right knee is also hurting. As of right this second it's not but it was so bad during dance that I was having difficulty dancing.

​Why do bodies have to suck so hard?

To be expected after essentially two hours of solo-workout, but ow was this overkill. My legs and my abs are essentially melted. My back and arms are mostly fine albeit with some residual soreness, but dang. When I say I am sore. I mean that I can't stand up straight sore, I literally have to hunch.

It's not that it's too painful to stand up straight. (I mean it is, but that's not the problem.) It's that it is literally physically impossible. As in I am sending the command to do so to my body and my body refuses to obey. And even using my hands to manually shift my body into that position, I can only stretch things out so far before the physical resistance of my body becomes too great for them to push further.

So I am sore, sore. That means it was a good workout though! I've...mostly wasted today. I did some art for the first time today (the Ruby image I've been working on), but whatever genius techniques I was going to implement, I've forgotten and can't track down. (This might be a time where having obsessive self-admitted-somewhat-stalkerish girlfriends can be of use since I'm sure that even if I told them not to track it down they would anyway. Just for the record, I neither consider it stalking nor would I ask them to try.)

Ah well. It's still going along somewhat-nicely. I've got ideas, just different ones most likely. What I'm really hoping to do here above all else is to preserve the lineart from the original. This means using an airbrush and using a small (very small) size which can be expanded as if making multiple pencil strokes. (There may be an actual brush for this; I say airbrush but assume I mean 'tool which can function in a way not giving a solid line'.)

I also want to have really competent lighting/shading going on. It's easy for me to screw that up and usually I'm just randomly throwing it on. I don't think that I can manage to implement a full realistic look. First I'd have to track down a lighting tutorial. Then I'd have to modify their techniques if they use specific program ones I can't replicate. Then I'd actually have to apply it to my own image, since I wouldn't be copying them; I'd be making my own stuff up. So I don't think I can do that.

What I might be able to do is, because my art is at least partially animesque (among other stylistic influences at least), implement some standard lighting effects which are reasonably easy to do. They largely involve just applying the same color in a lighter/darker shade to an area of the hair, to give some greater contrast. I'll play around with it a bit to see if I can pull that off, though I'm not quite to that point yet.

Hmm...anything else? Not really that I can think of. Today has largely been a waste. Aside from spending time with my lovelies. <3

I owe one from yesterday, I owe one from Saturday...geez I'm bad at this blogging thing. It's already pretty late, too, so I am at danger of not saying anything even though I have stuff to say for today, too. Basically, let's start with the bad news: my feet are still hurting.

...Yes, I said feet. Not foot. My left foot remains far, far, far worse with a pain which may be getting worse rather than better (hard to tell for sure), but the same exact pain in the same exact location has existed for a while on the right side as well, just more subtly so.

I don't know at what point I should go from hoping it'll heal on its own to going to the doctor, because let's face it: there's absolutely no middle ground between the two. Either it's something that will go away on its own, or it's something that my loved ones will (especially when they know) insist on a doctor visit for. I really don't know what it could possibly be though. If it's an injury you'd expect the injury to heal, to get better on its own without me needing to do anything.

However, at the same time. While the injury gets worse. It also gets more consistent. And with consistency comes ability to manage it. I kinda sorta tune it out, as it were--because I've become accustomed to the pain, the pain becomes dulled by virtue of me simply...having to bear with it at all times.

So it's not the end of the world. It didn't really do much for tae kwon do today, though that's no surprise since there basically wasn't tae kwon do today. There was one student for each of the classes, and no students for sparring, leaving me a lot of time to work out.

​It was good focus work and I did get a lot done, though when it came time to practice forms, I fudged even some basic ones--not because of a lack of practice, mind you, I just kinda screwed up and knew I had screwed them up so my instructor talked to me about them.

Also, my gear I ordered came in. Three of the items were what I ordered!

...The problem is, the two which weren't, were the two I was most looking forward to having. Instead of the hoodie I got a tanktop. And while I got the correct T-shirt, it was in the wrong color (red). I want to be able to wear it under my tae kwon do uniform and I'm not sure I can wear red under my uniform so it very specifically needed to not be that color and I am pretty sure this is something they screwed up on, not me.

Ah well. 3/5 aint bad.

I also was rather proud of myself--said two items? I managed to (after having unfolded them) refold them to be incredibly compact, and not messy-compact. Actually looking semi-professionally folded! Probably similarly to how they originally had been, even! How I managed that feat, pure sheer dumb luck I'd say. I took guesses based off of seams, wrinkles, and vague recollection of a Reader's Digest article. But they became compact enough to fit inside a mailbox of someone who I'm sure can at least confirm the nature of the situation.

​I'm pretty sure there's more, but that's about all I can think of for now. With that, I should go to sleep soonish.

I had my counseling appointment today so I might have some idea of how to start getting my focus back.
Of course, it's getting to the point where I should be sleeping (don't want to worry my girlfriends too much <3), so I suppose the details will have to wait until tomorrow.

​See you then!

It was fun, but it wasn't exactly the most successful of events. Initially, we had seven people show up--you need eight for a square. Undeterred, we ended up dancing with a ghost. Eventually, we had an eighth person show up, near the end of the event.

A problem existed from the dance aside from that. This dance was advertised as a finger potluck. The only one to bring anything was us--and it was vanilla cupcakes. I didn't eat before-hand because I expected there to be food there. (Also I kinda sorta ran out of time but that's a different problem altogether.) And yet. All which was there was essentially the pure sugar home-made vanilla cupcakes.

They tasted good! But you can only have so many before you begin to get sick to your stomach. That much sugar really begins to build up over time and I just couldn't do it. (Suffice to say...we have a lot of leftover cupcakes, especially since literally half of the people who did show up have special diets which limit their abilities to eat foods like what we brought.)

At the very end we did get something extra though!

...Chocolate ice cream.

...It's at this point I am sure no doubt I am going to be yelled at since that's been basically my meal for the day. About a dozen vanilla cupcakes, and about two bowls' worth of chocolate ice cream. (To be honest I'm not that hungry but I'm not looking forward to being scolded more than that so yes in spite of me feeling full I'll have no choice but to find a meal to eat tonight.)

One thing which was commented on was how hot everyone was--universally (except my sister who always wears long-sleeved clothing), everyone was in short sleeves. And people were commenting that it was weird that I was able to stand having slacks on since everyone except me and my sister had shorts on as well.

Because when I say it was hot...well. Square dancing is an intense physical activity. Even in an air-conditioned room (we're talking, air conditioned to the 60s), people tend to sweat. You wouldn't think so. But it's true. You basically can't square dance without ending up sweaty and hot.

...In a room which is air conditioned.

...It was at least 83 if not higher (not really air conditioned) in the hall we were dancing. And we were doing something which can make you sweat in the 60s. Yet surprisingly. I actually felt okay? I couldn't find a mirror so I couldn't see my skin to confirm, yet. I quite literally felt like I was the only one not sweating. Everyone else's skin was visibly (as in, in the light you could see) filled with sweat, especially obvious when touching their forearms, but also in their faces.

...As far as I can tell. I didn't sweat. And I wasn't dehydrated so it's not like I couldn't sweat. (I mean I required hydration throughout the night, but that was refilling what my body uses up on its own.) I just don't think I did. I never felt like I was sweating and usually I can feel when I'm sweating. I felt it this morning at work and didn't feel it this afternoon at dance.

Furthermore. I just actually didn't feel hot. I don't know why I didn't. Super-powered genetics. (My dad's got incredible heat tolerance and incredibly bad intolerance to the cold; my grandfather also has this. Yet these can be attributed to nurture, as both were raised in southeastern Oregon/northern California where temperatures would always be higher than up here, and I lack that environment in my background so for me it can't be nurture.)

Maybe my absolute lack of meat on my bones. (No fat = no warmth = gets cold easily but also doesn't get warm so easily because my body isn't producing an excess of heat; I need to take it in from the environment essentially.) One of the blessings of my status, as it were.

Whatever the cause, I just wasn't hot--I was warm. I preferred it being cooler and it felt nice to get things that were cool to the touch especially the ice cream which worked wonders on cooling internal temperature. But I never really was in a position where the environment made me feel uncomfortable, and yet I felt like I might have been alone in this factor.

There's probably more, but I didn't exactly have a notepad to record my thoughts in, so this is as good as I can give you right now. I've likely only got minutes before a certain someone realizes I've been working on a second blog entry, reads it, realizes what I've eaten, and chastises me so by the time they read this I'm hoping to have placated their concerns by having found something. <3

...So I decided that, in conjunction with me dancing later tonight, meant it'd be best to skip out on doing my normal Sunday workout. I don't want to agitate this injury, especially if it's a recurring one. Better safe than sorry, and all that. Plus, working out would totally negate my shower from yesterday and I don't want to do that.

...At least. That's my official story, and I'm sticking to it dang it. Unofficially, though...off the record, the real reason is that I got a preview into my future. Namely, me not being able to have the heart to part with the cuddling status quo. (I've come close already!) In the future, this will be because of a person or two (<3), but in this instance I just couldn't find it in me to part ways with an adorably cute kitten, mewling in a way just begging to be there.

She wasn't alone. My dog jumped onto my lap at the earliest opportunity. This isn't unusual. I mean. I still have trouble getting up, but it's more in maneuvering my body so that when I get up, he remains undisturbed, allowing him to sleep peacefully in bliss. (Whereas with a kitten she guilt trips you.) But normally, kitty + doggy + lap = mutually exclusive combo. If kitty first, terrified dog; if dog first, indignant kitty: "How DARE you sit there"; "How DARE you let him steal what's MINE".

...But today she apparently really wanted to cuddle so she didn't mind the dog at all. (And the dog was tired/lonely/content enough that he flat-out didn't notice/care she hopped on literally right beside him.) She was initially grooming, so I thought she'd leave not long after...but then she surprised me by curling up into a ball and staying. When I first began an attempt to leave, my shift in body position triggered her trill, and she rolled to be positioned belly up.

I gave her a belly rub for as long as I thought appropriate, then a chin rub, also as long as I could. I expected her to leave not long after that--she didn't. She stayed, and stretched out, elongating her body and exposing everything all at once. I petted her with broad strokes some more, expecting my affection would eventually drive her away. She simply rolled over onto the other side, as if to say "Now do me on this side too!". And I did, because apparently I am a sucker and couldn't resist.

At this point, I gave up on leaving early and did what I could to enjoy my forced extra nap time, since there was just no way I could justify anything except leaving for work at literally the last possible moment for disrupting this absolutely gorgeous moment with a beautiful little creature. And sadly, I did indeed have to force a parting even against my desires to warmly cuddle, since I did need to leave.

...From my (admittedly only limited) experience, I'm preeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetty dang sure. That you can basically directly substitute my kitty for a person and the description would otherwise word-for-word be identical, or even maybe worse, with extra descriptors and less time sleeping (and yet, more..."sleeping") involved. I'm borderline laughing (okay I'm outright laughing) at the thought just because of how true it rings. (Admit it you know it is. <3) So I found the experience amusing to say the least. (Also adorable and very much something I didn't regret.)

...Now no-one outside my blog readers (which at this point wouldn't surprise me to learn are comprised entirely of two people--and I'd be absolutely fine with that <3--but I write on here with at least the theory of me having more) must know the truth, that I'm a wimp emotionally instead of physically.

...Okay, so. I'm kinda both admittedly. My cover story isn't exactly a lie. I'm choosing not to roam-guard today as I usually would, as to preserve some semblance of my foot's ability to function. Instead of moving during down-time, I intend to largely slack off.

Now! I'm a chronic worker. Even if I weren't, then I've already pushed boundaries at work to their limit for my "laziness" in doing certain tasks. So between the two, I'll still be standing a lot. It's just that I won't pace or come out of our rest area unless absolutely necessary. That's the plan at least!

Speaking of which, I still owe you a story ramble, but I feel like this is enough of one for now. I leave for dance some time after work. I don't know the exact timing, but my PLAN at the very least is come home, type this blog entry up and post it, change, nap, then leave.

...Then again I have plans which never quite seem to survive contact with the day, so we'll see I suppose.

Well this being a Sunday, with time at work, of course I cook up extra stuff.
For the Villain Song setting, I thought of the words which inspire the villain to pursue the hero:

"The greatest threat you now face
Is not one new to this day
It has grown so steadily
Existing past, future, and presently.

A hopebringer of the kingdom slain,
Your greatest fear, an unbroken chain.
If no counter's found then know:
You'll have met your equal."

This comes from an oracle he consults daily with a request worded as to not create self-fulfilling prophecies.

But upon receiving this one, I get to display perhaps the strongest source of scornful deadpan delivery in the whole script. (And this is basically how the villain talks full-time. Remember, mixture of Scar and Jafar with a dash of Rasputin in him too.) His response?

"How conveniently ambiguous." (An alternative line is "How delightfully convenient", but I think I like the other one more overall.)

To be fair. The oracle is himself no slouch, since in response to that, he goes,
"Why of course. It's how we stay in business, sir. We guarantee a 100% accuracy reading."

Butstill. I think that even in text without me speaking it and without the accompanying facial expressions, you can get a fair idea of the tone I imagine for the villain of that story. 

That wasn't all, either.
I thought of a few things for Hannah/Aeris in Red Hood Rider, as well.
Basically, an opponent faces her believing she's weak, but finds that in spite of having seen her fight before and having counters to literally every move she's ever shown at that stage (which would be quite the list), she still continues to playfully dance around them.

She then sets up a "Three questions" game.

"Did you know about the riders' passive inability to kill?" (Yes.)
"Why is it that the nicest of us was gifted the element of air?" (She then says in a very Hannah-like way, "This is a hard one so I probably shouldn't tell you the answer is because I'm the only rider candidate who can't violate that prime directive with the powers of air.")
(Cue the Oh Crap look on her opponent as the realization begins to sink in, because the implication there is that any person less nice than Hannah would be unable to keep the powers of air in check from killing opponents and thus air must fall to someone of that personality.)
"Why do you think I appear so weak?" (She then gleefully gives the answer away accidentally, via, "Anything you can do, I can do better~".)

And it's at this point Sally watching on the sidelines has this bit of dialog.

"You know, I'm kinda ashamed it's taken me this long to realize what Aegis Shield stands for. Like most, I just assumed it meant shielding others from her opponents' harm. But it's real meaning is shielding her opponents from her own power."

(Related to this, Hannah's initial release phrase--the things that all Riders start out with but gradually fade out with time--is "Blessed be the cursed, All is forgiven. At my hand, none shall perish." The initial assumption is that she'd be blessing those with the misfortune of having suffered at the hands of her opponents, and that there's now nothing to fear because she's there to protect them, a fairly cliched protecting-the-innocent spiel. But the real meaning of that line is that she is granting a blessing on her opponents, and that she is swearing she won't kill them with her power.)

Hannah might be an airhead, but she's also quite deliberately one of the first riders competent villains aim to take out, and for good reason. Aside from genre-savviness of quirky = ability to mess with things through pure chaos, she's actually just one of the strongest of the cast throughout the entire story in spite of her powers not really evolving that much. (Well, they do, just subtly so rather than overtly so.)

The reason for this is simple enough.
All eight elements are loosely equivalent in power. None is inherently stronger than another. Higher-level users of any element are akin to gods and able to use basically powers usually thought of as exclusive to another element. It's just in how creative the users are, combined with what limitations they actually have (or rather, don't have). So it's not like she's inherently better than any of the cast.

What makes her so consistently one of the strongest though is that of the eight elements, by far the easiest to make powerful is Air. So while all the elements are equally strong, equally versatile, and equally able to do things...air is simply more, as it were..."user friendly".

It's easier to make strong because air is the definition of simplicity. It's easy to use, easy to master, has many basic functions and is incredibly easy to expand those basic functions one at a time. And yet, air is also one of the easiest elements to access story-breaker abilities in. Think pinpoint gravity control: making a series of gravity points which are essentially akin to black holes, sucking in all surrounding matter. Now think about being able to make those within a person and the messy results thereof. Air has access not only to that fundamental force of the universe, but at least one other (I'd have to track down my notes on whether it's the Strong Force or the Weak Force), with the potential to maybe even have access to more than that.

Think about an opponent who can bend, manipulate, even break multiple fundamental forces of the universe. And you get into the realm of just the basic easier-accessed-abilities of air. And Hannah, the elemental rider of air, can combine these all with the element of Light for an even extra boost.

So there's good reason for this. She's the nicest because only the nicest can keep air from being too strong. And she appears Strong As She Needs To Be, because it's the only way to hold back. An aspect of air is that they have this kind of access with ease, but also the randomness to not be able to keep it consistent. Essentially, when there is a need for a new rider of air, it will always seek out someone who holds both these quantities:

An innate goodness in them beyond even the normal for a rider, combined with an innate inability to keep consistent constant focus, such that when the power manifests, it focuses only as much as necessary for the task, and will never give too much.

...But it's past midnight and I have work tomorrow which means that I can only give you the cliffnotes version.
It involves a world where everyone is in some way special, but not in the borderline-cliched "everyone except one person has a superpower" way. 

Basically the setting has disablers, enablers, and empowered, and is modern technology aside from some more futuristic gadgetry which is slowly but surely spreading, a fairly typical superhero world. But with a twist. I can explain the dynamics more precisely, but I should do so after sleeping.

I'm not exactly tired right now (in fact I'm rather awake), but I'm also not going to neglect the fact that I do in fact need sleep for work tomorrow, so. I'll have to save it for tomorrow. (For that matter I owe you like at least one if not two full story ideas I wrote out but never typed up on here.)

I'll say the reason I haven't been here is due to having anime night, a special variant on family night in which my parents are gone for the full night (and thus, no chance of us being caught), so my brother visits and us three watch anime. We finished the 12 made episodes of Saga of Tanya the Evil, then we watched the 8 dubbed episodes available of season 2 of Attack on Titan.

I have to say that Attack on Titan is the kind of series where you know every major spoiler, ever big twist, in advance, even if you're trying not to. Literally years ago I knew the twists within those 8 episodes--up to and including one of said twists (the first of the titan reveals) being something I knew before I knew anything else about Attack on Titan. (Okay, so. Admittedly. I knew said twist thanks to a mafia game about Attack on Titan which was literally the first I had heard of the show. Butstill.)

That doesn't really diminish how awesome I found the reveal though!

But anyway.

Should be going to bed.
Wish I could give you all more. <3
Tomorrow has work then dance, so I might be busy then. Ah well.

I don't really have much to say today. I've kinda sorta felt like I've already blogged my heart out today (my fault I kinda did a rambled already earlier today and it feels hard to duplicate), so right now I don't know what to talk about. We have family night going on technically but that's nothing surprising.

Last week for Father's Day we finished Sherlock, that's a detail I didn't mention before. Tonight it was Mission Impossible, the original film, we basically watched those over the course of time in the worst possible order. What was it, 4-2-3-5-1? Something like that, it was chaotic and messy and random.

Now they're just doing the normal talking and I'm tired, which isn't surprising given my day which is a bit of a story in of itself. Basically I was woken up after having not gotten much sleep and got less coffee than normal, even though these were both things which were half-fixed.

But. That's the main thing on my mind right now. I'm a little bit concerned that I'm messing up on documentation for games I'm modding--it's not that I can't keep up. I can. I'm worried I'm not keeping up accurately, in that I am making small mistakes which snowball into bigger messes, but with luck, nothing beyond salvage especially since these extras I provide are things most don't.

Funnily enough I do most manually than basically anyone could do with a program, too. I do it not for me. I gain nothing from modding that much. I do it for the players and I just really want to help them, to give them assistance, to be there and give them a good game. Which also means I'm rather alarmed at how much I don't see activity; I question if maybe I am at fault for it, since with summer I'd expect an increase in posts yet I've seen the opposite.

Yet beyond games where I play mother. I just. I love people. I want to help them. I want to be a part of their lives. There are certain individuals who I love more than the rest of the world. And I never want to lose them. Yet in that sense I have the Prince-from-Princess Tutu-like sense of "love the whole world but especially a special person (or two)".

Because my feelings there are different, deeper. I just like people. Yet these people aren't just like. <3

Specific foot this time rather than more than one. My left one has a problem. I don't know the toe-name counterparts so I'm going to describe using terms from the left hand. There's a really strong pain from approximately the ring finger knuckle which runs through the "hand" (foot), down to the "wrist" (ankle), and this pain is in the middle-surface level in that it feels between everything.

​So round dancing tonight was in that sense sucking. It was a pleasant night of dancing except being in writhing agony tends to dampen the mood so there's only so much you can enjoy an activity like that. I suppose I can say that "given the injury/situation, it was as good as could be", but the injury did impact my performance and notably my enjoyment. (It's hard to dance well when your thoughts are, "Ow. Ow. Ow. Let's try doing this to stop the pain. Wait, is this actually working? It is! I'm no-ow! Spoke too soon. Ow.")

This is something which has been here for days but which only became a problem today.
It's also if memory serves me a recurring problem; I seem to recall I've had this exact injury hindering me in the past but I don't remember it ever getting treated/fixed. Something we'll have to look into.

And yes, for those keeping track.
I did eat.

Four pieces of pizza for dinner before dance.
Ice cream and Rice Crispies after dance.

​I'd probably have more to say if I wasn't at the point of collapsing from exhaustion.