Month: October 2025

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.