Personal Digest Saturday: October 31 – November 6

Life news this week:

• What a week! Saturday was HALLOWEEN. But it was a little disappointing since I didn't get to have a party this year due to Covid and then I suspected there would not be many kids trick-or-treating to cheer me up. Nevertheless, I baked some really delicious pumpkin muffins and dressed up as Pearl from Steven Universe (the last of the main Crystal Gems I have not cosplayed as), and later I set myself up in the garage with my computer to hang out and watch for trick-or-treaters (with candy placed a safe distance from my desk). I got ONE trick-or-treater, but I had fun with my costume and got a bunch of stuff done sitting out there. I got my writing webcomic done too.
  
  
• Sunday I woke up disoriented because of Daylight Saving's and made pretty good use of the day. Did my late blogging, did my laundry and trash, and started an eating experiment to see if it would make a difference. I cleaned up a bunch of my outdated writing-related places on the Internet so I could add in the fact that MY SHORT STORY GOT PUBLISHED TODAY. My story "Everyone's Gay in Space" went out to subscribers, with a later release being scheduled. I also was reading a novel I wrote a while back and I finished rereading what was written. I want to write more of it. Got a terribly silly message on OKCupid.
  
  
• Monday I got up early and had only a few things to do--did some corrections on data entry and filled out some forms for a proposal. Did some more updates for my pages to reflect my story publishing. Posted some recipes. Hung out with my friends after work on Discord and played games with them. Mom also came over with some food and gave me a bunch of tomatoes. She stayed for a little while but not that long. I gave her some of my muffins and candy. And my short story was released as its own e-book with its own cover! Never had a cover done for a short story before, wow. And it'll be in an anthology that comes out February 2021.
  
  
• Tuesday was ELECTION DAY! I had already voted by mail but my mom had to take her ballot in and drop it off because she procrastinated returning it. Had a lot of small fires to put out at work. I figured there was nothing really to worry about with the election since there'd be no news for days, but I didn't want Trump to win so the early slant in his favor made me a little nervous. I used some of the tomatoes my mom gave me to make tomato soup from scratch for the first time! It came out a little thin but yummy.
  
  
• Wednesday I awoke early again and several states with an early Trump lead had given way to the Democrats. Throughout the day it seemed like it became settled that Biden was expected to overtake Trump, and that kinda dominated the day. I spent the work day working on utility stuff, updates on a client list, and a report. After work I got to catch up with Tony (my yard maintenance person) and then Jeaux took me to the store. We ate burgers and fries and watched the last three episodes of the second season of Umbrella Academy. We were both kinda looking at election news throughout the night.
  
  
• Thursday there weren't any huge tasks at the office so I got to spend the whole time working on my client list. Then in the evening I took some walks, played a Steven Universe music game I haven't played with in a while called Soundtrack Attack, and talked to Victor on the phone. (He fell asleep so I hung up.) I did some more drawing and election checking, but nothing had been called. The Internet broke late at night because of some bizarre clash of fandom news and world news. I think Tumblr basically melted. It's funny.
  
  
• Friday I expected a busy day at work but it wasn't that busy because my plans weren't ready to go out to utilities so I just focused on reports and timesheets and tweaking some resumes. Talked to Meggie after work while taking walks and drawing my comic. I went to sleep after posting my stuff and we still didn't have decisive news about the President.

Interviews, Articles, Mentions:

• My short story "Everyone's Gay in Space" is listed as a new title on the LGBT New Releases on Rainbow Crate.

New Reviews of My Book:

• Charlotte gave it a five-star review on Goodreads.

Food Plan Update:

• My plan asked me to try an experiment (didn't matter what) where I change something about my diet and make a prediction as to how it will go, and then supposedly I will develop skills to be able to refine my understanding of what works for me. I decided to try three meals a day instead of smaller meals with snacks, and anticipated that doing so might help me cut out late-night snacking and lose pounds faster. Weirdly a) I hated it because I like snacks and don't like feeling out of sorts with what my body wants (don't really want larger meals, really like noshing in between), but b) I DID actually lose more weight this week than I ever have in a single week before (1.5 pounds). Not sure if that's good? But I didn't like the process so I won't keep doing it. I'm back to smaller meals and snacks. :)
  
  
• I changed my pedometer thingie and it turned out I'd been working way harder than I needed to to get to 10,000 steps a day (the old one registered steps with less consistency than it should have), so now that I'm using a different tracking app, the stats might look better here. I guess I'll just post them and see if it's worth doing?

Click it to blow up if it expands into the sidebar.

Reading progress:

• Finished Reading: Nothing this week.

• Currently reading: Asexual Erotics by Ela Przybylo. I'm on page 138.

New singing performances:

This week's karaoke song is "A Whole New World" from Aladdin. A duet with Joseph1974!



Stuff Drawn:

Webcomic Negative One Issue 0808: "Something Bad."






New videos: 

None this week.

New photos:

My favorite images from Halloween featuring my Pearl costume, pumpkin muffins, and my trick-or-treat setup:

Me looking determined on Election Day

: 

My homemade tomato soup with basil!

And check out these images the artists for After Dinner Conversation made for the magazine I'm in, the anthology I'll be in when it comes out next year, and the story I wrote:

Social Media Counts:

YouTube subscribers: 5,297 for swankivy (4 new), 669 for JulieSondra (no change), 17 for v & V Vids (no change), 105 for Not-So-Giant Women (no change). Twitter followers: 941 for swankivy (lost 3), 1,361 for JulieSondra (2 new). Facebook: 298 friends for swankivy (no change, wow I didn't lose anyone during the election stuff), 628 likes for JulieSondra (lost 2), 73 likes for Negative One (2 new), 223 likes for So You Write (3 new), 84 likes for Not-So-Giant-Women (no change). Tumblr followers: 2,480 (lost 1). Instagram followers: 209 (2 new).