A beta-reader, if you please!

I'm trying to get better at posting regularly in here, but it's January, so we'll see how long my New Year's resolutions will last...

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I made cake for the first time since I moved in — unfortunately, I used a cake mix, so that if the cake would fail, at least I wouldn’t have invested a lot of effort in making it. Well, the cake was perfect, but whatever additives were in the flour wreaked havoc with my gut. Lesson learned...

I also ordered some yarn and started knitting again, and omg it’s the best decision I’ve made in at least a decade! Knitting is soo restful for my poor, overstimulated brain! I don’t even need any noises in the background, like music or a show; just letting my mind drift while my hands are moving. This is already cutting down my screen time, and I caught a knitting fever, so I’ll probably be even less online in the future.

My cat got sick on the 28^th, so I had to take her to the vet, but it’s not clear what the problem is. She has lost considerable weight since our last visit two months ago, and there’s too much calcium in her blood (her bloodwork was completely normal two months ago). Ultrasound and x-ray was normal, so we have no idea what’s causing it. For the time being, she’s getting an anti-emetic, so she’s at least no longer throwing up, and eating normal again, but we're due for a checkup on Wednesday. Fingers crossed.

Aand I also set up my Bullet Journal, another measure to get me aways from screens more. All my to-do lists will go into the BuJo. I’m not talented at visual arts, so my hand lettering is pretty wonky, but still better than my doodles. Which is why I’m not going to post pictures of it anywhere, haha. As long as it works, I don’t care if it’s pretty.

Writing-wise, I’ve finally finished The Enemy, the third story of my second series for Planet of the Apes (TV), and the 15^th long story in that cycle. I’m still editing it, but it’ll land somewhere between 60K and 65K. I’ve also outlined the next story for it, and plan to start the first draft this week. Once that story is complete, I’ll have written 1/3 of series 2.

I’m honestly not sure if I’ll live long enough to finish series 3. Not that anybody would notice, heh.

I was alone, as usual, over the year change; I stayed up until 1AM for my dogs’ sake (and I also had a prime view of the fireworks from my kitchen window. My frugal self noted with satisfaction that I was enjoying a great spectacle without having to pay a penny for it), and I had a glass of sparkling wine, but otherwise, I didn’t feel celebratory... for the first time, I really felt like we were trying to beat back the darkness with all that light and noise... at least for a time. 2026 carries a feeling of dread, I can’t pinpoint a specific thing, though.

Vibes, man.

Anyway, I spent the remaining days of my vacation mostly on my couch (except for walking the dogs), and discovered that Gemini AI is great at tag identification. Tags have been my nemesis from day one; and while I’ll never use AI for anything creative (like brainstorming or, gods forbid, writing fic), identifying tropes and tags with it isn’t different from running a spell or grammar checker to me. YMMV, of course.

Today, it snowed — really heavy snowfall, too. It’s always like this up here on the coast: you have a much too warm winter until Christmas, and then, when all the bling and glitter of the season has been taken down, and it’s just dark all day and everyone is fed up with winter and impatiently waiting for spring: then you get all that snow that you don’t care for anymore. Argh.