Personal Digest Saturday (but posted on Sunday!): January 23 – January 29

Life news this week:

• Big news is my short story "Everyone's Gay in Space" got discussed on a podcast and is currently free to download at the time of this posting (during the promo, buying the free book counts as a purchase). Please take advantage of this, and read the story if you want to, give it a review, or give it some stars!
  
  
• Saturday I finished up my preparations for my podcast with Daria and took a break to listen to a podcast discussion of my short story "Everyone's Gay in Space". It got a little raunchy at one point but it was funny. I had the Apple Spinach Smoothie (yum). Spent the evening and into the wee hours catching up with Daria and discussing our assigned Steven Universe episodes. We had an intense time this time.
  
  
• Sunday I had a carrot juice smoothie and it was yucky. I spent the day mostly procrastinating on doing my blogging that I'd not gotten to the previous day. I did get it done, and did my laundry and chores and my singing. I also used up some glutinous rice flour making mochi cheese balls! I also made the poor choice to argue with some people about politics on the internet.
  
  
• Monday's smoothie was a chocolate cherry smoothie with avocado in it. It was pretty good. I had one of those days where I had to address a bunch of different issues with different people at work. I put out all the little fires and welcomed a new employee. I played games with my friends but Steve and Victor had to skip it. We had a lovely little time with just four of us. I found some oversized plush dolls for Steven Universe that I hadn't known existed and I bought them from a really cool eBay seller! I also took a survey on ace experiences that I encourage asexual-spectrum people to contribute to!
  
  
• Tuesday was the best smoothie yet! It was the sunflower smoothie, with sunflower butter. It tasted like drinking ice cream. The day was not as hectic as Monday but still busy--I spent most of the day checking a database and finding missing info for it. I worked late. After work I took a walk and made a sushi bowl (because I didn't have nori to wrap it in) so I could use up the cucumber I didn't like in smoothies. And I ate the other half of the avocado in sushi too, and added carrot. It was good. I also did some planning for my next Poop School.
  
  
• Wednesday at work I was overrun with more fires to put out. I worked on another database, requests for information, helping the new people, and reading a letter. My smoothie was refreshing: a ginger pear smoothie. After work I went to the store with Jeaux and we had some adventures looking for next week's weird smoothie ingredients. At home we had pot pies but made our own garlic butter for the garlic bread, which involved a lot of mincing garlic. Then we ate and loved our food and hung out watching political humor. I stayed up SUPER late texting people between naps.
  
  
• Thursday's smoothie was a "soymoothie." It had strong coffee, tofu, agave, and almond butter, among other things. Not bad--pretty close to being great. My short story "Everyone's Gay in Space" went on sale for FREE as a promo so I bugged people to check it out. Work involved more database stuff, editing a letter, and compiling information. I talked to Victor after work and drew a little bit of my comic. After he fell asleep I did some more work and chatted with friends.
  
  
• Friday I got up early to get all my work done, but I still couldn't finish everything. I was very involved with these reports I had to make to send out to the guys who help with marketing. I also had to set up utility meetings for next week on one of my projects and got bogged down with a flyer design and timesheets and a letter to edit. When I finally wrapped up, I had to scurry through my comic art and got it up at a reasonable time. I didn't have time for a smoothie earlier so I made a night smoothie and had a good time with it--a citrus smoothie with orange and banana plus protein powder and almond milk. Nom! I was super cold and had to go huddle in my bed.

Interviews, Articles, Mentions:

• My short story "Everyone's Gay in Space" was discussed extensively on the After Dinner Conversations podcast. A group talks about the story for a while and includes some chat about what it would be like to meet your clone, whether you'd want to, and philosophy about sexual orientation.
  
• My short story "Everyone's Gay in Space" is on a FREE Amazon promotion. Please download it free during the promo and it counts as a purchase. If you are so moved, please read it, rate it, and review it.

Food Plan Update:

• Really weird situation with my scale! I got a new low weight this week (106.5) but it seemed like it was dropping sharply for no apparent reason despite that I wasn't eating differently. My scale was also acting weird--sometimes still show 0.5 or 1.0 when I got off. Then suddenly on Wednesday it said I was 112 pounds which would mean I had gained 5.5 pounds overnight. I . . . yeah, think it was my scale buggin'. I ended the week back at my goal weight anyway (110).
  
• Did better with walking this week. Made my step goal four out of seven days--I seem to be struggling on the weekends, and was so busy at work on Friday and with my comic afterwards that I couldn't make the goal that day. I'm going to see what I can do to do better with this.
  
• The smoothies are great fun but I'm still trying all new recipes to see what I like. Unfortunately the more vegetable-heavy ones are the ones I didn't like. The fruity ones are good and I like spinach in the smoothies. I haven't really analyzed whether it's helping significantly with the nutrition goals.

Reading progress:

• Finished Reading: Nothing this week.

• Currently reading: The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor. I'm on page 121.

New singing performances:

This week's karaoke song is "I've Told Every Little Star" by Linda Scott.



Stuff Drawn:

Webcomic Negative One Issue 0820: "In Our Nature." 

New videos: 

Nothing this week.

New photos:

Apple Spinach Smoothie (very very good):

Carrot Smoothie (this was the one I disliked most so far):

Mochi cheese balls:

Chocolate Cherry Smoothie (pretty great):

Sunflower Smoothie (delicious, my favorite yet):

Ginger Pear Smoothie (pretty good, refreshing):

A photo Jeaux took of me while I was mincing garlic:

Coffee Soymoothie (liked it a lot but wasn't in love):

Citrus Splash Smoothie (very good, super yum):

Social Media Counts:

YouTube subscribers: 5,291 for swankivy (lost 3), 666 for JulieSondra (lost 1), 17 for v & V Vids (no change), 111 for Not-So-Giant Women (no change). Twitter followers: 935 for swankivy (lost 2), 1,362 for JulieSondra (lost 2). Facebook: 300 friends for swankivy (no change), 626 likes for JulieSondra (no change), 74 likes for Negative One (no change), 226 likes for So You Write (1 new), 86 likes for Not-So-Giant-Women (no change). Tumblr followers: 2,477 (no change). Instagram followers: 231 (lost 2).