Sports

I’m married now! We had a wonderful ceremony and reception. My wife worked so hard on everything to make it absolutely amazing! I put in a lot of work as well of course, but she really owned the event. The planning and lead up activities pretty much consumed our entire existence this year. Now I’m trying to remember how to relax. Miniatures With the wedding prep going on, I haven’t done much hobby stuff at all, but I did manage to play a couple of rounds of Space Station Zero.

“Never trust anything that can think for itself, if you can’t tell where it keeps its brain.” - Arthur Weasley1 In the age of AI this quote pops into my head unbidden, but before it was so directly applicable, I started using a reworded version: Never trust anything if you can’t tell where it gets its funding. This is a different way of thinking of the warning “you’re not the customer, you’re the product.

The world is impressively messy right now. I must admit that I’ve mostly turned inward. My focus over the last few months has been on a project that I don’t really want to talk about until I have something to show. Hopefully the first small piece will be ready to present soon. I’ve enjoyed over a year of taking the bus to work now. The difference between busing and driving is incredible.

I just closed all 228 of my open mobile tabs. I went through each and every one first, putting the ones worth saving in appropriate places in my notes, TODO lists, to read lists, and wish lists. My open tabs had become a sort of an awkward unstructured TODO list of their own. I had tabs open for things I wanted to buy, articles I wanted to read, websites people had shown me on Discord, articles that bloggers had referenced.

As winter comes to a close I’m prepping for a busy April. We’ve got multiple trips out of town planned. The Columbus Crew season is in full swing. The weather is nice enough that I can start working in the garage again! I’ve got a library hold placed on Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act that should be ready soon and I’ve been working my way through my first read of Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way.

I’ve been struggling a lot with my identity lately. The eternity of 2020 has done a lot to push mortality into the minds of everyone. But I also feel that I’ve been experiencing a heightened push in that regard from other angles as well. We watched Breaking the Rules, which was really not very good, but did make me think. Then I got the kidney stone over the holidays, which, while not life threatening, kind of put my life on pause for a month.

This weekend was huge! I feel like the year is really getting started :) On Friday my girlfriend and I went to The Arnold Fitness Expo. We took the bus because I like to take the bus to the convention center. Unfortunately it was raining quite hard and we got soaked getting to the bus stop. Despite never really drying out, we had a great time! The highlight of the event was getting to see a bunch of World Chase Tag matches live.

My girlfriend and I went to Ohayocon this weekend. It was great! Really good to be back at a con after so much time. This was our first con since the lockdown. We decided to ease our way in and did Saturday only. We attended panels on zine making, slice of life anime, and traveling to Japan. The slice of life anime panel gave me a kick in the pants to start watching Super Cub and reconsider Kaguya-sama (although calling this slice of life is a stretch).

Haibane Renmei is an anime I return to again and again. There’s an idea introduced in the first few episodes that resonates with me far outside the bounds of the show: The main characters are restricted to only own items that are used. I never finished the show. So I never learned why this limitation is placed on the Haibane. The more important thing for me is that this limitation sounds like an interesting guideline for myself.

I got my covid vaccine booster on Friday. Pretty much lost Saturday due to side effects, but as of today I’m feeling much better! Destiny 2 I’ve been playing catch up on the season content and a lot of Crucible (the PVP mode). I definitely think the new skill based matchmaking has helped make the experience better for me. I’m pretty bad, but I’m no longer consistently getting blown out every game.