Okay, so I dreamed that a friend of mine I hadn't seen in a while was getting married. Her fiance was a civil engineer (like me) who had suddenly decided that his dream was to make animated movies, so he was currently enrolled in the animation program at Sheridan College. I met this fiance and he turned out to be a real stand-up guy, who happened to look a bit like young discount Keanu Reeves. And I remember feeling just so relieved in the dream that my friend had someone to take care of her, and was gonna be ok, that I woke up feeling relaxed.

Then I got hit with the poshmark refund bamboozle though so that was the end of that.  

Krogoth and I are playing through a co-op campaign of Baldur's Gate 3 (incidentally, the reason I stopped writing last October). He's a human barbarian and I'm a half-elf bard. So far, he has: 
- gotten annoyed at Shadowheart for constantly missing with sacred flame
- been extremely put-off by Astarion 
- killed the two tieflings guarding Lae'zel 
- looted every vase and lit every candle in Wither's crypt
- ran right by the grove, figuring that he could "go back later after finishing exploration" 
- killed two cultists of the Absolute

Boys of Summer was playing over the intercom at No Frills and it was just an oddly moving experience. I'd been thinking about what, exactly, that I learned in high school that was still immediately useful me this year. And it was mostly things from that hiking trip that I hated at the time but built a lot of character. Bring two litres of water per person on a day trip, how to poop in the woods, how to dress for the outdoors. All things that will come in handy in April. 

Anyway, the great bathroom reno is nearly done, minus final cleanup and mirror installation. I might have Krogoth start a co-op game of Baldurs Gate 3 with me later, but I'm running out of excuses to avoid my WIP. 

But the sooner I address my WIP, the sooner I can get to the Babylon noir detective fic in the same fandom that I've been thinking about... 

They're real simple: 
- wrap up my D&D 5e game (this has gotten very out of hand, if I can finish up around summer that'd be nice) 
- Keep drawing with the inks I bought myself for Christmas
- recommence writing my WIP, which I stopped when I started playing Baldur's Gate 3, preferably before I: 
- Successfully go on the road trip I've planned to fulfill a 20-year dream; I've bought a guide book and mapped out everything and all but the midjourney 40-minute flight is booked!! Unfortunately I borked the timing so I will miss the eclipse... but there's still Iceland in 2026 :) 
- Successfully see Death Cab (already got the tickets and only overpaid a little bit!) 

I finally got around to watching the director's cut of Kingdom of Heaven, i.e. Orlando Bloom being mildly cool but being effortlessly outshone by the rest of the cast. It's not his fault - how's a depressed blacksmith supposed to stand toe-to-toe with Saladin, Sibylla, Liam Neeson, and Baldwin the Leper King? 

- I walked home from my meatspace RPG group on Friday night, getting back after midnight. I get why some women don't like to do it, but I guess I've always had a high tolerance for potentially getting axe-murdered on a side street. There's an unlit shortcut that crosses the train tracks and goes up a big hill behind the plaza. Climbing it in the dead of night felt like a minor spiritual experience. 
- I had McD's today. Condiments gotta be ordered separately and they don't have individual self-serve dispensers anymore. But as I was putting stale pepper on my ketchup - I realised, I didn't think of that combination myself. My parents didn't give it to me. Where did it come from?
- How do people grow up without keeping an eye on all the publicly available info on themselves?? But there I can't figure out how to delete my pinterest account because I haven't got a clue what the old password to my burner email was... 
- I went to a concert last Saturday. It was fantastic, I will definitely keep an eye out for other acts coming to Toronto. 

I have tickets - more accurately, one ticket - to see Delain and Visions of Atlantis. I debated getting one for Xandria/Battle Beast/Kamelot but that one is on a Tuesday. I know I'd enjoy it but .... it's on a Tuesday. 

Also, all booked up to go to the east coast in October. Finally! 

This is a playlist for my d&d character.



1. Northwest Passage: And through the night, behind the wheel, the mileage clicking west. Tris came from a community of caravan merchants. 

2. Gimme Shelter: Ooh, see the fire is sweepin' our streets today... gimme shelter, or I'm gonna fade away. A mad lich, Raven, raided her caravan with fireballs. Her parents and her younger sister were slain, leaving her the sole survivor. 
 
3. Winterbreak: You're wondering how to leave it here, and I haven't seen you since last winter break. Tris took shelter with the Order of the Silver Dragon, a chivalric society devoted to justice. There, she fell in love with another squire, Ella. It didn't last. 

4. Keep the Car Running: If some night I don't come home Please don't think I've left you alone... keep the car running. Tris didn't quite fit in with the Order after that. After a string of anger management issues, she decided to leave to seek her glory elsewhere, promising to return and receive her knighthood. She soon met up with a group of adventurers called the Last Resort, including Carric, Audra, Xavril, and Resha. 

5. Hand of Sorrow: The child without a name grew up to be the hand, to watch you, to shield you or kill on demand. After a few years of adventuring, Tris found that her sister, Mariel, had survived under the tutelage of the lich responsible for the caravan attack. Unfortunately, this happened while Mariel was leading a gang of pirates to raid a settlement. During the attack, Audra's sister was kidnapped. 

6. Storyteller: And all along she asked why love wasn't worth a fight - was it worth her fight? Eventually, the party made their way to the Ravenspire to rescue Audra's sister, and Tris reunited with Mariel. Mariel had read Tris's published novel recounting her adventures in the meantime, and had grown cynical in her training. But when it came down to it, Mariel sided with the party against Raven. However, this mission was not without price, and Xavril was lost. 
 
7. Numbers: Be careful who you're thinking will save you in the end - maybe we're all just waiting for one beautiful friend. Party tensions increased as the party ventured into the desert of Farrell to deal with Resha's wayward mentor, and then to the jungles of Syland attend Carric's sister's wedding. Carmilla and Fendrell, a pair of twins sharing a single body, also joined the party.  

8. Delete Forever: Lying so awake, things I can't escape - lately I just turn 'em into demons. Flew into the sun, fucking heroin - lately I just turn 'em into reasons and excuses. Tris turned to taking drugs to deal with Xavril's death and intraparty stress 

9. Stray Italian Greyhound: Oh no not now, please not now, I just settled into the glass half empty. Tris began to develop feelings for Carmilla: feelings that she just could not figure out how to deal with. The two of them went on a few dates. Eventually, the party managed to acquire a second body for Carmilla, temporarily losing Resha in the process. 

10. The (Shipped) Gold Standard: I wanna scream "I love you" from the top of my lungs, but I'm afraid that someone else will hear me You can only blame your problems on the world for so long before it all becomes the same old song. Tris's racial insecurities, drug issues, shock of losing party members, and lingering lich threat caught up with her. She rejected Carmilla, ran away from the party, and regretted it almost immediately afterwards. 

11. Calling the Rain: Heed, it's like calling the rain, it's like bearing in pain, like embracing life and decaying in death. Tensions on the continent of Suzoa came to a boil as the wizard Lady Zolera tried to gain control of the Arcane Well. Tris couldn't leave her party members behind to deal with that threat alone. She put aside her issues and returned to the party. Facing the Arcane Well, she had a realization that she wanted to survive and wash away the evil and corruption in the world and herself, and live life fully. 

12. For Me, This is Heaven: When the time we have now ends, when the big hand goes round again, can you still feel the butterflies? Can you still hear the last goodnight... If I don't let myself be happy now, then when? Tris took up Lady Zolera's newly vacated seat on the council and used her good publicity as a published author to correct the direction of the empire. Years later, she regained enough confidence to ask Carmilla if maybe she wanted to give things another try. And Carmilla said yes. 

The game ended on Saturday, and I'd had enough time between the DM's initial announcement in February and now to deal with my feelings. I'm happy with how it ended. Big fucking shoes to fill though. And also a little embarrassed about how deeply I cared. Like, this was the game where I would get intrusive thoughts at 2AM and be unable to sleep.

It was also the one where, like, I could not figure out how to talk to girls, specifically one girl, and was just kicking myself for weeks afterwards for mucking up the in-game relationship. The two characters got together in the end, though, several decades in the future and offscreen, kind of like Laura and Cassandra at the end of Wicked + Divine. And I was just so... gratified when I realized that, yeah, that was the case, my knight got a happy ending. 

I'll post the final playlist with a breakdown later because it won't make sense later without it. 

I think I'm going to the concert in September. 

We went from "window shopping is fun but we're not going to move," no mortgage approved, nothing, just having attended some open houses to look at neighbours' closets and stuff... to "holy shit" and accepted offer in 31 and a half hours. Why doesn't this train have brakes???

Utter insanity. We had the mortgage-paid-off celebration dinner only a few weeks ago and just installed a bunch of wall shelves...



Monday - 11:56 AM "Hey, look at this place, ha ha, isn't that literally the place that we thought would be funny to buy if its owner died or something..."
Rest of day: unable to nap on the bus due to thinking about it
Evening: call parents to ask for ticket off the crazy train, they don't give it to us. Call Justin's old real estate agent. Start moving moonies around.
Later at night: Can't sleep, reading Red Seas Under Red Skies until 3AM

Tuesday: 4PM - tour the other place,
5PM - make offer. Start signing forms. cancel d&d game due to stomachache
5:30PM - moonies finishes getting moved around
7:40PM - agent calls back, offer accepted

"You are beyond mad," said Locke after several moments of silent, furious thought. "Full-on barking madness is a state of rational bliss to which you may not aspire. Men living in gutters and drinking their own piss would shun your company. You are a prancing lunatic."

I was cleaning my desk today, but yesterday I did a quick reading. It didn't make sense to me until I moved the junk box back to the bedroom and came back to see a bunch of discord messages, re: the DM having not enough time and needed to tie up loose plot ends asap. So looking at this with the benefit of retrospect:

Past: 2 of cups reversed

Present: 8 of coins - skill development, getting gud
Future: moon, reversed - fear of the unknown
Influences: 10 of coins - mastery, achievement, stability, certainty, having it all and knowing it too
Outcome: the tower, lol


I don't even want to do a full analysis, but I'll leave the following notes for my future self:
- It's interesting that the Present/Future card is 8P and the moon, while Influences/Outcome is what could be considered a clearer, amped-up version of the first pair. Where the first pair merely precipitated a falling house of cards, the second reflects a collapsing castle, as if just to underline the meaning of the first three cards drawn.
- It wasn't a complete surprise when I drew the tower, even though I wasn't sure what I was reading for. Again, that might be the first three cards. What can be devastating is less so when you already knew it was coming months in advance (the moon)