October Vibes

Pictured: This is Luna. This is what she does when it’s even remotely cold and/or too bright outside for her to nap. She can’t cover her face with her paws like the other cat because her precious tiny paws are just too small and too ineffective for face covering, thus the face plant.

We’re so close to chilly fall weather over here in Southern California, but not quite. October is such a tease over in these parts; Rampant commercialism always teases lovely sweater days and steamy apple cider laden mornings amidst falling leaves but in reality, we had like, one really really chilly weekend because of some freak storm and then it’s back up to oscillating between a pleasant 70-something and a not-so-pleasant 90-something degrees. Super awesome.

The official barometer and Fall determinator is that It’s not cool weather season yet until the tiny black cat starts sleeping on the bed again. Anyhoo, here’s a bunch of random stuff that I have enjoyed or have been up to within the past month or so.

  • At the beginning of this year, I had started regularly running. As in, running at least 3 to 4 times a week instead of the token once or twice a month run that I had done for the previous x years. It has paid off in dividends in stamina improvement and stuff like that. I can’t wait until the weather cools down a bit more so that I can go run outside more.
  • We also started going to the gym regularly again and getting hella back into weight lifting. In college I was big into lifting but that kind of dropped off after graduation. I really missed lifting and feel a bit silly that it took this long to pick it back up. Adding lifting to my exercise routine feels so much more balanced than running for like 30 to 60 minutes 3 to 5 days a week.
  • Busy busy this year with travel to various places for personal enjoyment and work. No Japan trip this year, but probably next year. I just got back from Europe and feel a little done with flying for now.
  • While we are on the topic of flying: On the flight over to Europe, I had the whole ass entire row to myself the entire time. I’ve never had that happen before. Glorious.
  • The Final Fantasy Tactics remaster is 😙🤌. It’s such a great game and I am really enjoying playing again, especially with the full voice over.
  • Also No Man’s Sky continues to be awesome, particularly with the latest Corvette updates.
  • I played the BALL x PIT demo for kind of a long time for a demo. I really want to purchase the full game, but I really want to finish FFT and some of the other games that I have in my backlog before diving into another roguelite.
  • I have an enormous backlog of games that I want to play, maybe I’ll get around to buying and playing them now that the days are getting shorter. I haven’t felt super compelled to sit in front of the computer or TV and game in a while, since it’s been nice out.
  • Oh also: October = ⚾️. Go Dodgers.

PS: I don’t think I ever posted my Japan pictures here from literally almost a year ago lol.

Techo Kaigi 2025

Hello. Meant to post this back in March as a general update to what planners I had decided on using for 2025 but then whoops, per usual kind of forgot that this blog exists and continued on with life.

This year I went back to the Traveler’s Notebook passport-sized planner; Specifically the weekly planner only. I had used both the weekly and monthly inserts previously, but never really got much use out of the monthly insert. I also use the weekly insert as a daily logging journal of sorts: Any future planning is written in pencil (so that I can easily erase and changes) and every day I will use the daily boxes to write a mini, couple of sentences at most journal entry. Basically just a brief of what I did, if we ate out, how far I ran, stuff like that.

I have two other blank inserts in the passport TN: One is for random doodling/common place notebook (almost full). The other is used for solo RPGing, world building, and various other creating writing projects. It’s easier to shove the passport sized TN in my purse. I’m actually using a fairly new TN, I picked this one up from the Starbucks Reserve Roastery when we had visited Japan last fall. We like wandering around the river area in Nakameguro and had never bothered visiting the Roastery during previous trips since it was stupid crowded and required a reservation. If you like coffee at all, I recommend visiting. It’s really neat inside and a great place to get a cup of coffee and a treat.

I completely dropped the Hobonichi Weeks. I really really love the form factor, portability, and layout of this planner but never really ended up using it as much as I thought I would. The idea was to use it for a combination of both work and personal planning since it’s thin and easy to shove in my work bag or bring to a meeting/conference. The problem is that work wise, it makes more sense for everything to be 100% digital as everything either lives in Outlook, OneNote, or at the very least, an iPad scribble that I can convert to text and send over.

My full sized Traveler’s Notebook continues to exist in it’s same form: I’ll swap notebook inserts out for general journaling, art things, Solo RPG projects, the sticker insert, travel journal, etc. It is, low key, also a great place just to store random ephemera that I want to glue into a journal entry as well as business trip receipts.

Happy 2025

I’ve been meaning to update this blog for the past 6 months, but never quite seem to get around to it as I feel like I am either busy, working on a personal project, or out and about. But this is, more-or-less, what I have been up to:

  • The stupid plants are still alive and thriving. More stupid plants were purchased recently-ish and have joined the stupid plant collective
  • We did a Japan trip this past November. I’ll get around to posting photos at some point. Biked the Shimanami Kaido which was an absolute S-Tier experience.
  • Techo Kaigi for 2025 has changed. I do actually intend to write an actual post on that.
  • I’ve gotten super into running and trail running this year. I can now casually do an easy 5k at lunch, quickly clean off, eat, and then go back to work/meeting/whatever without looking and feeling like ass afterwards. I’ve been trying to start a daily running habit on and off (mostly off) for years, and it’s never really stuck until now.
  • I really look forward to days getting longer and being able to hike more after work without having to shift my day earlier. I however, don’t look forward to it being hot AF.

Current games being played: Oscillating between my Sims 4 legacy family and No Man’s Sky.

My Stupid Plants

I had purchased this pachypodium saundersii years ago, pre-COVID during a local plant sale. She’s pretty hardy as she just lives on a table in the backyard in mostly full sun year round and hasn’t died off or suffered too much from overexposure of any kind (we live in a favorable succulent environment so overexposure isn’t too much of a concern, but it did rain quite a bit the last year or two and it can dip into almost freezing at night a few times in the Winter).

I had finally, years later, re-potted her into a container other than the ugly plastic one that it came in. I always see pictures of these with gorgeous thick caudexes. I have a feeling that I need to water her more, especially now when it is hot AF.

This is Bob the coffee plant. Bob lives outdoors on the porch. I would love for Bob to live in the house in a window or something, but I cannot trust the orange one not to eat the plants. One of the few plants that I own that regularly requires actual watering. The goal here is a long term one: Keep Bob alive, let him thrive, may be at some point down the line enjoy coffee beans; But I think for the time being, not dying is a good starting point.

Whistler 2024

We had the absolute pleasure of visiting Whistler earlier this summer to hike through old growth forests and mountain bike around lakes and down trails over a long weekend. The super long days and cool weather made it a perfect time of year to visit. We took the float plane up from Vancouver and were treated to fabulous views of snowcapped mountains.

(Pictures below the cut)

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My Techo Kaigi for 2024

I have seem the term, “techo kaigi” floating around various journaling and planning blogs, channels, and communities that I follow online. It is a Japanese term that translates to notebook/planner meeting and roughly refers to a self-reflective meeting that one has with themselves to review what planning systems did or did not work and why. I find it to be a good end-of-year and mid-year audit of personal organization and project systems. It’s also a good opportunity to review if any personal needs have changed to warrant something new being added or removed. And if we are all being perfectly honest, it is also an opportunity to treat myself to new stickers or something like that.

At one point in time I had tried containing all of my journaling and planning to one or two notebooks but I am terrible at journaling regularly in any capacity whatsoever and well, life is too short to only use a mere one or two notebooks anyway. So, I will take what I can get which usually means writing, drawing, or scribbling in any number of notebooks or digital devices whenever I feel like.

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New Customized Keyboard

About a half-year ago I had purchased a budget keyboard for work and personal use off of Amazon (an Epomaker RT100 for about $100); My 75% keyboard is great for personal use and light travel where I need a keyboard, but not so great for work-at-home because it really annoys me not having a numpad to use. The keyboard was great, up until the point where it wasn’t and the entire QWERTY row just died. Unfortunately, I was way outside of the return period so I took it as an opportunity and a sign to just upgrade to something that is a little bit better.

Brand: Keychron Q6 Pro
Switches: Gateron Pro Yellow
Keycaps: Pink Milk & Honey XDA profile PBT keycaps
Mods: 2x tempest tape mod, force break mod, poron case foam.

Technically, 88.88% Gateron Pro Yellows with exactly 8 Keychron banana switches because the RT100, the board I pulled the switches from, is a 96% and not full-size. At some point in the near future I will get new linear swit ches whenever it is that I figure out which ones I want.

The force break and tape mods get got rid of the metallic ping from the aluminum case.

Japan 2022

Totally meant to do a Japan Trip #3 picture dump literally a year ago, which is when these photos are from. Then again, I don’t think I ever did a proper photo dump of our second trip in 2019. Whoops.

We booked and planned this trip a month before we left. Japan had just opened up to tourism and the yen was like, 150 to the dollar. We wanted to take advantage of the low crowds and being generally antsy to go somewhere outside of the state.

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My Battlestation: July 2023

Obviously I need even more screens on my desk. Finally bought a laptop arm (rightmost side of desk) on Prime Day for my work laptop so that I don’t have to constantly shuffle the dice tower and whatever else is on the rightmost side of my desk whenever I join a meeting.

Not pictured: The canvas bag full of unorganized crafty/journaling things on the floor next to my desk and my GUNPLA backlog.

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Luna the Cat B&W

I think this may be my new favorite Luna photo. I still haven’t posted our Japan 2022 photos anywhere. You would think that after around 7 months I would have finally cleared my Lightroom editing and posting backlog, but sadly that isn’t the case.