Celebration, sorta.

Watched the new Producers.

Family night's actively ongoing, so getting a blog post going is a bit difficult, sorry.

Ironically, I think that me working out less two days ago actually was worse for me. It's not like we do much stretching in that class, and we also don't do cooldowns. It's a consistent workout throughout, so by normal logic, working out less should mean I get sore less. But I actually think working out to the extent I do is healthy, and that by doing less, my body's recovery is somehow slowed.

Ah, well. Anyway, for other news on today, I arrived an hour early to work, which left me with nothing productive to do. It did, however, remind me of my Juggler story. Last you knew, I believe, I had introduced an eighth member. Well, this is new to you, but old for me, but I soon after developed a ninth member, whose power is generating an anti-magic field...who is VERY fast, agile, and nimble...and even though he brings his opponents down to human level, he maintains a supernaturally-strong right fist. (A Certain Magical Index did call, wanting their protagonist back, I know. Never claimed it was an original idea, but it WAS an idea that popped into my head all the same.)

Well, this is relevant now, because as of today, I just created the tenth, by encountering something I've never seen before: a green hairpin. (Well, half-green, half-white, itself a color I don't see.) So I figured, maybe that's unusual in-universe, too. But what would this character actually do?

Well, I decided that the person would have mastery of the eight elements that exceeded Juggler's. Or, to plagiarize (quite blatantly at that) from Batman... "You simply adapted to the eight elements, one by one. I, on the other hand, was born with them."

He proves this by absorbing the attack, then shooting it back strengthened even further. How does Juggler win? Well, after surviving the reflected attack, by being a stereotypical shonen protagonist: "Ever since I encountered *8th guy*, I knew, eventually, I would somehow encounter opponents even stronger than him. I didn't get a chance when fighting *9th guy*, but I fully realize that people see me as a god. So I thought, 'maybe it's time to start fighting like one'."

Thus, he debuts an attack called...what else?...Ten Commandments. It's basically a souped-up version of Seven Sins, isolating the two fighters on an extradimensional plane, where every possible destiny of both combatants, along with every possible destiny of everyone they could possibly interact with, plays out over the course of their lives, and it even spans post-mortem, to show consequences lasting longer than their lives. In this state, they experience everything, locking wills and do battle at a pure, basic level driven by their beliefs off of what they see and feel.

I thought it was a neat idea, at the least.

Still some pain, but not as much today.
What my day's mostly been for today is writing.
Not writing for my novel.
Not writing for my comic.

Writing for my game.
Hours of it.
Yes, hours.
For obvious reasons, I can't share the exact amount, but if what I've currently got is any indication for what the final word count will be, the flavor I'll have written when totaled up will be novelette length. You know, over 7,500 words? I mean...keep in mind. Novellas are 17,500, an extra 10,000. Novels are 40,000. (Which is why NaNoWriMo sets a goal of 50,000 by default.)

So when I say it's gonna be novelette length.

What I'm saying is that I'm writing almost 1/5th of a full-blown novel, and just about half of a full-blown novella. You know, the books you can spend an entire night reading, depending on how fast a reader you are. Those? Yeah, those. That's basically at the level where I'm writing things.

It's awesome, it's just...extremely time-consuming, and I REALLY hope it's worth the time spent.

So, at the end of sparring, something happened to my foot. I say 'something', because it's one of those things where nobody really knows what it could be. No obvious swelling, and no discoloration, but a clear pain existing. This pain usually comes in when trying to fully extend my foot (you know, the position for a round-house kick, what you would do to tip-toe), or when doing a twisting motion. I can support weight on it and be fine, though putting all of my weight on it makes me nervous.

The source of the pain seems to be just below the ankle, but just above the foot, in neither. It might be a tendon injury of some sort, but we really don't have a clue what it is. Took me out of commission for the day, though, had to limp home, and now my foot is elevated with an ice pack applied, standard 20 on, 20 off.

Injuries suck. I don't think this is the first time I've had this injury, either; it may have cropped up before, several times in fact. But it was notable enough that I couldn't hide it like I normally would. Oh, well. Gives me a convenient excuse to do nothing.

I kinda...lost interest in keeping doing what I was doing, so...not sure what I'll do. Not Jeopardy (there isn't any this week, thanks to politics), but it makes sense my interest waned at about that time: it's when I would normally start doing something else anyway.

So, what now?
Not sure.
Nap, maybe, but who knows?

Might get in the mood for something ~productive~.

We'll have to see.

Something I've periodically done throughout my blog is given you insight into my daily, or even weekly, routine, and I thought I'd give that another go. This will change come August, thanks to a new lifeguarding schedule, but for the time being...

Mondays: my counseling appointments are every-other week. This is an 'other', so on those days, I get up whenever I wake up. On days I have a counseling appointment, I get up anywhere from 10, to 12, depending on whether I plan on taking a shower or not. Whether I take a shower or not (today, I did not) is entirely dependent on my mood, my mental scheduling (that is, if something disrupts the order, kiss the shower goodbye), and how badly I want to take it (that is, my willpower based off of my body telling me it needs to be washed--it does that after like 4 days, so if it's been 7-14......).

I am supposed to leave at 1:20 to make it on time. I often leave at 1:40. But that's mainly because I take 'a quick peak' (it never is) at mafia (logged off, I'm not stupid enough to log on), and then and only then, after doing that, do I brush my hair, shave, and brush my teeth. (Always in that order.) Sometimes skipping the teeth, but not often anymore, since punctuality is less important than dental hygiene.

The appointment's at 2, but I often arrive 5-10 minutes late. (See also: leaving 20 minutes late.) It's supposed to get done at 3, though that largely depends on what we talk about. Regardless, I get home at about 3:30. What I do then depends on computer availability.

Mom on desktop?
Take a nap.

Mom not on desktop?
Snatch the desktop.

Keep on it, and at around 4:50, put on headphones and bring up a window to play the livestream of The End (107.7, KNDD, the radio station I listen to), as to catch the 5 at 5. At this point, my day merges with the days like today, in that I'll stay on the computer. What I do is dependent on my mood.There's always some mafia involved (albeit decreasingly each week, rather deliberately on my part), but I can't spend all my time on mafia.

Rather, I could, but I don't. (Sometimes to the detriment of the games, though that can be debatable.) I browse through webcomics somewhat, for instance. Rain is on a hiatus for the moment (the author is about to have surgery, as in, the surgery), but I've still got daily or weekly checks on Paranatural, Awkward Zombie, Dragon Mango, and Rusty and Co. (Incidentally, all of them have risen to be tops on my new tab list, along with Kongregate, Quicktopic, and the livestream link for The End, with TVTropes at a distant 9th currently unlisted.)

And then, I keep doing this, until I think of something else to do.
Uh, yeah, that's about it.

For reference: it's currently 4:43 as of me typing this sentence. My family's all home, so strictly speaking, I could leave the computer now (our dog's long-gone from my lap), but I'm kind-of invested in this whole "getting text form of blog" thing done, so I think I'll stay. (Probably won't get it all done, but oh well.)

I go to bed...whenever I feel like it. Anywhere from just past midnight (I have to play Tuesday's badge of the day, and Dawn of Dragons), to past 5 am.

Tuesdays, currently, are me waking up at whatever time I wake up. I leave for Tae Kwon Do at any time between 4 and 4:45 (preferably, 4:20ish), since I no longer have a 4:20 end session to catch. (I think them playing it at whatever time they feel like is an improvement; I heard an acoustic track last night, for instance.) This lasts until 7:30, meaning I get home at about 8, give or take 10 minutes.

At which time, computer check: mom on desktop, nap. Mom not on desktop, claim it for myself. The rest of the night plays out like Monday does.

Wednesdays are currently identical to Mondays in structure, just with the timing of the event moved from 'after breakfast' to 'after supper': every-other week. I wake up at whatever time. I get on the computer at nearest available moment. Headphones on by 4:50. (Usually earlier, to avoid triggering my misophonia, because my dad will be home and start eating.) Get off the computer at 5:30ish, and eat myself.

If event week, leave for it. Rendezvous with my sister at 6ish, then onto whatever summer event our square dance club has planned. (This week, it's a movie, which we're not going to unless 1, we know what it is, and 2, it's something we actually want to watch.)

If not event week...back on the computer if possible. If not (my mom's every bit the opportunist I am)...nap until available.

For the first time in the week, I do not stay up late. I aim for a bed time of around 11, meaning I do not play Thursday's badge of the day.

This is, of course, because I have my Sunday schedule of work: getting up at 6, leaving at 7, to be there at 7:30. Work lasts until 1, so I get home at 1:30. Sometimes I nap, sometimes I don't. I do get computer time in more often than I don't, but at 6:15ish, I begin to get ready to eat, because ideally by 6:30, I've left for round dancing on all weeks except the 2nd of the month. (Most of the time.)

This gets me home late, at around 10:15, and I aim for a 2-3 am bedtime, because I have to get up at 9:30 for work on Friday.

Which is currently a living hell, it being summer camp and all that, but I can't disclose details about it. Instead, I can tell you I get done at 4, get home at 4:30, and because Fridays are family night, I immediately have a lot of work to do online since I won't otherwise get a chance to do much.

Bedtime is...really, really late, anywhere from 4 am to 7:30 am, meaning on Saturdays, I always wake up well into the afternoon, and spend my time, at first available opportunity, on the computer. As of recently, Saturdays seem to be Jeopardy-catchup-day and also Chuck-day, which sometimes bleeds into Sundays too (my family, save me, seems to go on a walk almost every week, alternating between walk on Saturday or walk on Sunday, with the episodes being on whichever day the walk was not; this week, the walk was on Sunday), but otherwise, this lasts until 11:30.

Cue anime, until 2:30 am. This gives me half an hour to fall asleep, so that I get approximately 3 hours of sleep for Sunday. I typically take a 20 minute nap, which I can afford, and then another 10 minutes, leaving at 7:10. This does make me arrive 5 minutes later than ideal (technically, I can arrive as late as 7:45, but it's a hilariously bad idea to wait that long), because if I arrive at 7:30 I can get all the work done but any later than that is a rush job, but the most frequent Sunday front desk opener, much to my chagrin, usually comes at 7:40, give or take 5 minutes, meaning I can afford to be there at that time because I'll still arrive before they do.

Work gets done at 1, I usually take a nap, and then, get on the computer, putting headphones on by at least 7:50, for Locals Only. (I prefer eating at about 7:30, ideally, though I can wait until 10 if I miss my window.)

I then typically spend the rest of the night on the computer, and that's the week.
...It's, uh...

...Healthier than it sounds?
I really am​ making progress in life, honest.

Well, I'm through December, of 2014.
So I decided to see what would come of my input into a personality insights machine.

This was the result:
You are guarded and somewhat indirect.
You are unconcerned with art: you are less concerned with artistic or creative activities than most people who participated in our surveys. You are intermittent: you have a hard time sticking with difficult tasks for a long period of time. And you are independent: you have a strong desire to have time to yourself.
Your choices are driven by a desire for efficiency.
You consider helping others to guide a large part of what you do: you think it is important to take care of the people around you. You are relatively unconcerned with taking pleasure in life: you prefer activities with a purpose greater than just personal enjoyment.

The taunting continues.
Further stats?
Personality
*% = percentile
Emotional range 
90%
Self-consciousness
92%
Fiery
87%
Susceptible to stress
84%
Melancholy
77%
Prone to worry
75%
Impulsiveness
65%
Openness 
56%
Authority-challenging
82%
Emotionality
62%
Intellect
56%
Imagination
41%
Adventurousness
29%
Artistic interests
2%
Agreeableness 
41%
Sympathy
93%
Uncompromising
54%
Cooperation
53%
Modesty
37%
Trust
36%
Altruism
21%
Conscientiousness 
20%
Orderliness
79%
Cautiousness
59%
Self-efficacy
48%
Achievement striving
29%
Dutifulness
29%
Self-discipline
6%
Introversion/Extraversion 
16%
Assertiveness
28%
Cheerfulness
23%
Activity level
21%
Excitement-seeking
20%
Outgoing
11%
Gregariousness7%

Consumer Needs
*% = percentile
Practicality
90%
Harmony
89%
Love
82%
Challenge
50%
Liberty
48%
Curiosity
45%
Closeness
40%
Stability
37%
Excitement
33%
Structure
32%
Ideal
15%
Self-expression
7%

Values
*% = percentile
Helping others
92%
Stimulation
54%
Achievement
38%
Tradition
23%
Taking pleasure in life
14%

I'll give you an update when I get to next year.
​And then, after the final results, give you what they say each stat means.

(Which, by the way, is one of my favorite songs from Super Crazy Guitar Maniac Deluxe 4.)
So I'm going through my blog right now, from the beginning, and making a raw text dump of it. Currently only into late November, 2014, near the beginning of my blog. Now, I'm not actually reading most of my entries, god no, that'd take forever, how the hell do you archive bingers (who I know I do occasionally get) do it I don't know.

But I do, as part of that, at least get some inspirations going. There are parts of my life that I used to talk about in my blog, that I don't currently talk about as much. Vice-versa too, obviously, but I figure that if I really want to get the most mileage out of my blog, I can do both. One of the things I noticed I talked about back then was my game obsessions, which...don't exist in the same capacity as they used to, but are still around.

In this case, back then it was Heroes of the Realm as the MMO I was playing on Kongregate. A few other games popped up from time to time, but I eventually abandoned them all. All, except for one which has come up since then. That game is Dawn of the Dragons. And I recently learned, by looking at my bookmarks on my laptop (I never could play the game on my laptop, which meant I bookmarked the game back then without even knowing I could play it! Was kinda amusing when I randomly checked my bookmarks, saw the TVTropes page I had bookmarked and was like, "Hey...wait a sec. Isn't that......it is!"), that game has a TVTropes page.

One which I haven't read, but probably will at some point, when I remember to do so. So that's something I should talk about at some point. I'm a player. I belong to a guild which isn't on Kongregate, in spite of being a Kongregate player, but that's okay. I'm either in the 400s or the 500s level-wise (forget which), and pretty competent all-around.

I do make derp mistakes every once and a while, and my equipment probably isn't fully optimized. For instance, I've been wearing the same Bookkeeper's goggles/armor for like 200 levels purely because of their bonuses, and using the same offhand item I've had since practically day one. (A scepter, I think?) Then again, that's only for my default setting; for my PVP equipment, I've loaded myself up nicely, though I need to research whether defense actually means anything in PVP to have the best possible optimization. (If defense means nothing, I can make one or two substitutions, but if defense does mean something, my current equipment is probably best; it's only been a short while since I last checked what equipment I actually HAVE.)

I'm pretty good at picking fights in the arena. PVP fights I often lose, but I lose against players I can afford to lose to, and whenever I win, I can then keep fighting them until I run out of my 100 tickets, which makes up for DAYS worth of losses. In the colosseum, I almost never lose, and the few times I do, well, I've got someone who generally does enough damage to a player that the standard player can only take a few hits before all of their HP is gone, so that is a very good deterrent. (My worst nightmare is when I lose against someone who does hundreds of damage against me, since that means they can kill me over...and over...and over again. Thankfully, almost never happens.)

I've got a fairly decent army, too, though right now, I'm content to wait for an opponent to attack me and have them lose. (I recently went on a spree of random attacks, because I was close to leveling up, and being able to purchase the boost to the orc invader. I got it, but I picked a lot of fights that I lost as a result, so there's still some people farming me right now and I'd rather just take the losses and wait to pounce.)

In quests, I'm currently on 9.7, or thereabouts, on the standard difficulty setting. Some places I've fully conquered, even on nightmare difficulty, others I've conquered as close to there as I can, mostly the extra areas that are not numbered. When it comes to the numbered areas on harder difficulties, I'm putting that off until I've conquered all the normal quests, unless I see strong incentive to defeat someone on a higher difficulty.

For my guild, I do go on occasional adventures, and am fairly competent there, often being in the top honor-spenders and boss-damage dealers. I have something like 550 honor, so I can contribute quite a lot. Most of the campaigns our guild goes on, I have most or maybe even all the prizes from, at least the frequent ones (Magma, Bastion of Blood, maybe one or two others), but I still participate in them. I have shifted slightly back to trying some guild raids though, because those? Those, I know give me prizes I mostly don't have!

Ran outta things I could think to talk about (other than maybe how I like to engage in the five personal raids every day, will often clear most of the normals, and even medium size raids if I don't have a world raid) for that game, but there's another counterpart I want to talk about.

Back in the day, I was playing an idle game, Clicker Heroes, was it? Well, now...it's The Perfect Tower. I've been there since almost day one. Not quite, I came in at like day five or so? Some time around...late March I think? I was definitely playing by April. Butyeah, in that game, I've reached Tier 5, did so a long time ago. Factory's fully upgraded, though I'm saving up for 1e7 gems to get the next level there. Most statistics, except for challenges (which I mostly neglected) and as of recently Cubos (who is far too expensive to fight for basically no reward currently), are maxed out. I'm at tier 7 or so? Enemies get purple hearts, and that's my current max.

For research, I've got everything maxed except damage and HP, you know, the upgrades which take days to complete. I'm working on Damage LXXXIII, and the next HP is LXXXIV, which will be the first upgrade to go into the thousands for green cubes.

What else? Hmm...for purple cubes, I've maxed the restart penalty (by which, I mean, it's 0), and the other purchases are all in the 1e4 range except for one which is in the 1e5 range. I'd have to check to see. I've got 2e13 orange cubes, and my blueprint is maxed so I could level it up at any point, though I'm deliberately choosing not to. Right now, I'm mostly waiting for my factory to produce enough purples for me to purchase extra purple-gems, or whatever the temple resource is called, because that's still a whole heck of a lot a better investment than actually fighting Cubos is. Once was enough, burning through almost all my saved-up resources...and I'd been stockpiling resources for months at that point. Months, with a fully-maxed factory the entire time.

There were times that I was at the top of the leaderboard, and for good reason. So if fighting Cubos made me lose all of that, all for one little purple gem, when it takes 25 purple gems to buy the cheapest thing actually worth buying? Yeah, not doing that.

I suppose I can share my current statistics from my standard insane round I'm doing. Right now, on an infinite loop, I've been leaving the game up (even though there's a memory leak), and as of this second, I'm on 279900 wave-wise (tier 4), earned 1.63 e12 oranges, am earning 2.58e8 oranges per minute, or 4.3e6 oranges per second, collected 2.31e5 gems total, 36.49 gems per minute, and the rest are probably identical to any player who has everything in their current blueprint maxed.

So, right now, I do have that goal of reaching 1e7 gems, but also the goal of getting enough purple gems to buy all the permanent upgrades there, since I figure that's probably what the endgame of the, well, game, is. Aside from getting to a higher tier, which at this point I don't see doing much good.

Butyeah, with this distraction done, gonna continue compiling the text of my blog, and if I see anything else which gives me inspiration, I'll talk about it.

Of course I am. I'm cutting back on a drug known as mafia, after having already gone cold turkey on comics. With games already dealt with, for the most part, there's an awful lot I'm not doing right now, so that of course means there's plenty of time which I should be using productively.

For a start, I'm blogging right now, which isn't exactly productive per se, but is a nice thing to do all the same. I'm thinking that I'll view my emails after a solid week or two of having neglected that duty. That'd be the responsible thing to do.

I could also spend this time writing or drawing, but I feel like if I tried, it would be forcing it. Plus, that would require moving to my room, whereas right now, I'm at my desktop with a scared little dog on my lap.

...See, right now, we're in the middle of a thunderstorm. It was so violent that it woke me up because the house was shaking tremendously. I got back to sleep, but it still wasn't fully gone when I woke back up. All the same, our poor toy fox terrier doesn't exactly like the thunder, for obvious reasons, and what he hates even more is being alone, so I took pity on him and invited him up.

And...dang it...he's just so...so...comfortable. So I don't have the heart to disturb him.

Meaning, at least until someone else comes home (I'm by myself right now), I'm kinda stuck here.

So, I'll need to get creative.

GRAH!

I've been so distracted that I haven't been getting the badge of the days from Kongregate!
What this means is, that I missed the chance to get this week's shiny companion, ruining my chance of getting the special reward for getting every shiny in a year! AHG! I hate it when this happens. It happened two years ago, once, but I actually got that award last year! But this year, can't! Because of a stupid oversight, over half way through the year. >:(