real life

A 3763-post collection

If I don't do anything today...

I know the reason why. It's called Kingdom and it's a 2-D side-scroller RTS adventure game.

The graphics are heavily pixelated, but there is detail and wonder in that, all the same. The parallax happening when you go exploring is so beautiful, it's been the cause of my monarch's death many a time.

I've already learned not to upgrade stuff during a red moon. That's when all the nastards come out.

The three things you need to balance are archers, builders, and farmers. Having a healthy cadre of archers can help defend from the demon equivalent of a zerg rush, and builders can fix the walls while that's happening. But the real boon is farmers. Farmers are where the money is at. And you need money to do literally everything in this game.

Archers are the cheapest, and the easiest source of gold during early play. They're essential during a red moon demonfest. So recruiting every day is essential. Even if you have to save up to buy more bows.

I'm currently playing as a king to see if gender selection is an element in easy versus hard mode. I've had a tough time as the default queen [which might be why so many hardcore gamer guys hate it] and it took me a couple of goes to figure out how to change my monarch's appearance.

Oh, and it's a good idea to have a lot of coin before dark. If the walls break, the demons would rather take your gold than your crown. And once you lose the crown... you've lost everything.

And the subtitle of the game, "Nothing lasts" is super appropriate because I have yet to last 25 days.

Hints and tips are welcome, of course.

Hark, hark, the dogs... don't bark?

I had a curious incident of the dogs in the neighbourhood, this morning. Like in the Sherlock Holmes adventure Silver Blaze, they did not bark.

Not a single hound decided to greet me this morning. And I'm very used to the local canine population reacting like I'm Bobby The Serial Killer whenever I toddle by their particular patch of fence.

On one hand, it means that my neighbours around two blocks don't curse my existence or the goddamn cheerful "Good Morning!" I

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Ugh it's muggy

The storm last night wasn't that amazing for us. Nor did it give us any respite from the humidity. Even though it's currently 28 degrees [84 Fahrenheit], it's that bloody humid that perspiration is literally dripping off me.

This is the exact kind of weather that has me skipping meals because I feel too awful to eat anything. Or has me snorking down ice cream by the bucket load because it's just too hot to think of eating anything else.

Pre-hydrating seems

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Ermagerb...

Cosplaying when you can't fucking sew is expensive. When I have the free time, I am going to have to get myself some lessons on sewing and drafting.

I just spent almost $180 on a dress from HelloCosplay. It's a very nice dress, too. I still haven't got the corset because the sizing chart doesn't match the sizes when you order one 9_9

At least the prices are better than the potential angst of ordering from a place like FanPlusFriend.

I

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Argledy blargledy.... Wwaaaaaahhhhh...

We have ONE MONTH to get everything together for WWC5 and I'm already panicking. Beloved has agreed to help me with the heart and I have the sinking suspicion that we will be making the dress because NOBODY sells gothic lolita togs anywhere near me. At least none that I can go to and try on.

There's one place that will make a dress for me, but it involves ordering and I have no idea if it's going to take less than

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Brace yourselves

I finally finished 2015's year of Instants [now currently in the editing stage, coming out soon to a Smashwords near you] and I begin on this year's Leap Year of Instants because it's a leap year this year.

Which means a whole new brace of serial numbers and some confusion to new readers. It's OK. The numbering system is mostly for me. And they're a fairly unique identifier so there's no such thing as two stories with the same title and number.

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Ffffffffffffffffff...

Not just a noise of frustration, dear readers, but also a recurrant problem I have encountered with the running of this site. And it's a weird one.

This publishing system has trouble with F words. And not the F word you might be expecting.

Just take a look. This is what my editor sees:

[Image shows correct text with the proper spelling of a certain typo in the published version.]

And this is what happens when the exact same text gets published:

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Hectic!

Swimming Sunday was cancelled because Real Life interfered. Beloved's dad got whisked to hospital because of a blood circulation thing [he's fine now BTW]. Because my default state in an emergency is to man the phones, I did not want to leave the house.

Because Beloved thought I'd somehow go swimming anyway [WAT?] they decided to NOT FIRKIN CALL WITH ANY GD NEWS.

We've been in a serious relationship since the late 90's, folks. And Still, neither of us knows how the

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Day four of pre-hydration

OK so yesterday, I didn't weigh myself and I had what some might call some bad choices for my meals.

Pre-hydration - drinking about half a litre of water before meals - seems to work its best when one can do so before every meal.

I skipped out on lunch's water, yesterday, and it kinda shows.

I'm back up above the 95 kilo mark. BUT, I'm not back up to my previous level of stagnation, so that has to be something. I

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Putting myself out there

Inkitt has a semi-regular fanfic contest and, just recently, they've lowered the minimum word count to 2K. And I happen to have lots of 2K or greater count fanfics lying about.

What I lack is time to translate them.

But I'm doing some of that today.

You can check me out at http://www.inkitt.com if you so wish. I have a feeling all my entered fanfics will vanish soon, so search for me by the name of CM Weller.

Beloved

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Stupid diet tip that gets results [at least for me]

Beloved gave me a diet tip the other day: Drink two glasses of water before eating any meal.

I immediately thought: This is bullshit. I'm going to try it and prove that it's bullshit.

There's no way that two glasses of water [roughly half a litre if you're going with a 250ml glass] would do anything beneficial towards losing weight whilst upkeeping health. I know for a fact that many diet plans (coughcoughatkinscoughcough) are focussed exclusively on losing weight rather than maintaining

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I'M GOING TO TUCSON!!!

:@ YYYEEEEEAAAAAAHHHHH! :@

Be best beloved darling dearest spouse had some frequent flyer points that were about to expire and decided to cash them in on a round trip to the States so I can go to the Wild Wild West Con in Tucson, Arizona, and see [IMO] the BEST BAND IN THE WORLD.

I honestly thought I'd have to wait a decade before I saw them in person. Minimum of five years, assuming they got as insanely popular as they deserve and actually

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That wasn't too horrible...

Shoes, socks and jocks for my little darlings managed to slide barely underneath $200, this time. Which means I have roughly $200 to focus on nommables for their lunchboxes, dinners for us, and the inevitable restocking of tissues.

And thanks to the brand new freezer, we have a lot of space for all kinds of nommables. Which means we might just have a chance of getting that dead sheep that we've been gassing about since firkin NOVEMBER.

I still have to re-stock

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Payday at last!

THIS time it's actually payday. We will have moneys with which to buy stuff.

And it will all be going on shoes, socks and jocks. Huzzah.

Well. Some of it will be going on essentials to put in our NEW FRIDGE (yay) that is costing us $25/week in payment installments (boo).

I swear, if I start making regular money from my writing [You know, besides the roughly $2.20 I make from my sales of The Amity Incident] I would pretty

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Stuff and Nonse

Urgledy burgledy things are going gonzo. I neglected to mention that our fridge is actually deceased. It wasn't the seals. We need a new fridge.

And to pay for it, Beloved is using an installment plan of $50 per fortnight for eighteen months.

Mayhem really wants to spend some free fritter money on art supplies, and I know just the dollar shop to get the most value out of his cash.

BUT we have to wait for the fridge, which is arriving

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