Personal Digest Saturday (but posted on Sunday!): July 17 – July 23

Life news this week:

• Saturday I talked to my mom for a couple hours and then went back to planning a podcast. Then I got my blogging done and did a check-in at work but I still didn't have the documents I needed to work on a proposal we were trying to knock out. I made some zucchini and mushrooms for pasta and ate that delicious dinner. Did some editing on a podcast and then recorded a new one with Daria (for episodes 69 and 70). I was really tired afterwards so I went to bed.
  
  
• Sunday I hung around the house because my mom yet again didn't want me to come over. My boss dropped by in the early morning to get something notarized and we were able to work on our proposal. I spent some time on it and got everything edited and ready. Other than that I did my chores and some karaoke recordings and also put together prizes for the convention panel I'm running. Also practiced ukulele.
  
  
• Monday I went back to work--headed in early to work on data entry and upcoming project reports. Also had to go to meetings. Recorded some Polos and practiced ukulele. After work I played games with my pals and I also stubbed my toe really hard on the bathroom door. (I might have a broken toe! Youch.) I had to put ice on it and put it up at night. Practiced ukulele some more.
  
  
• Tuesday was a more relaxed day and I was able to focus on utility projects at work. And we found out we got selected on a project where we're a subconsultant so that's exciting! Practiced some songs and even did a recording in cosplay of the song "Stronger Than You" (a classic!). I ate the rest of my zucchini in a weird meal with yogurt. My toe was a little better.
  
  
• Wednesday I worked on a lot of different projects at work, and I practiced a lot of ukulele songs too. My toe felt better but looked worse! Weird. Jeaux and I ate at Burger 21 and got some prints made for our panel, and after that we watched Owl House and Colbert and some silliness. I put together some ukulele chords for my reference so I could have them all in one place. ;)
  
  
• Thursday I did more ukulele playing and planned my convention outfits. Had to do some work on the data entry stuff at work and wrote up some notes for utilities. Did an application and worked on the uke page. Victor called relatively early for him and we talked and I got my comic done while we were still on the phone.
  
  
• Friday I worked a half day because of the convention. I had to go to two meetings early and got some of my stuff together while listening in on the meetings. I also got my comic posted and managed to get out of the house around noon. Took a Lyft to the convention and was dressed like Pearl from Steven Universe! Wandered around looking at cosplayers and enjoyed it. Jeaux got there later with a surprise costume--he likes to do costumes within costumes, so he was Pearl pretending to be Steven. What a silly person. We went to a show tune singalong and had some food. He was kind enough to drive me home. I was super tired when I got home!

Interviews, Articles, Mentions: 

• I'm mentioned in this Quora discussion as a known public personality who identifies as asexual.

New Reviews:

• Kate gave The Invisible Orientation a three-star review on Goodreads.

Health Plan Update:

• Weight stuff: Pretty happy with how the week went. I've been much more responsible with my eating habits and actively making better choices, and am seeing results (though they're not that significant). High weight: 113.5 pounds. Low weight: 112.6.
  
• Nutrition stuff: I'm very pleased with this week's choices! I have declared a decision to eat something green every day, and was able to keep to that every single day this week. (Primarily by eating spinach smoothies, but some other green stuff too, like zucchini and avocado). I also made some very good choices about snacking this week and I'm happy.
  
• Activity stuff: Did very well with my walking almost every day this week despite possibly breaking my toe on Monday! I came in low on Sunday, though--I worked a half day so I was in my chair more than usual, and forgot to compensate for it. My low day was Sunday at 7,904 steps, and my high day was Friday at 18,074 steps.

Reading progress:

• Finished Reading: Nothing this week. 

• Currently reading: Six Characters in Search of an Author and Other Plays by Luigi Pirandello. I'm on page 90.

New singing performances:

This week's karaoke song is "Your Love" by the Outfield.

Ukulele cover of "Stronger Than You" from Steven Universe.

Stuff Drawn:

Webcomic Negative One Issue 0845: "Forward or Back." 

New videos:

None this week.

New photos:

Click through for larger images:

A smoothie:

Pillows from my Steven Universe pillow collection:

 

My weird dinner with zucchini, yogurt, and horseradish sauce: 

 

 Photos from Friday's convention day, with me as Pearl (you can see the whole convention album at my Metrocon 2021 Gallery, but these are my favorites):

Social Media Counts:

YouTube subscribers: 5,310 for swankivy (3 new), 671 for JulieSondra (no change), 17 for v & V Vids (no change), 128 for Not-So-Giant Women (1 new). Twitter followers: 928 for swankivy (no change), 1,927 for JulieSondra (6 new). Facebook: 301 friends for swankivy (1 new, re-added an old friend who had deleted his account but came back), 630 likes for JulieSondra (lost 1), 79 likes for Negative One (no change), 228 likes for So You Write (1 new), 86 likes for Not-So-Giant-Women (no change). Tumblr followers: 2,460 (lost 2). Instagram followers: 234 (2 new).

Personal Digest Saturday: July 10 – July 16

Life news this week:

• Saturday I got my blogging done in the morning and wasn't as hungry as I wanted to be when Fen came over. They went to the water and got to see manatees! And when we hung out we had some fruit and cheese and then later when we were hungry enough we made enchiladas at home. Then we hung out and talked (mostly our hanging out is talking and talking, haha), and ended up also watching cartoons. We got the mid-season finale of Season 1 of Steven Universe and it's great. Finally after some more chatting they had to go back to the hotel.
  
  
• Sunday I got up early and tried to arrange going to my mom's but she didn't want me to come. I ended up just playing my ukulele, buying gifts for others, and doing my chores, plus karaoke fun.
  
  
• Monday I got up early for work but the meeting we were supposed to have was canceled. I wrangled some supporting documents for a letter due that day and worked on data entry for my project that was due that day. I did some more ukulele practice, talked to someone online about getting some toys I want, and sent Polos to my peeps.
  
  
• Tuesday was a little frustrating. I had to do some more data cleanup and then unexpectedly had to make report graphics when I was busy with some other stuff so I didn't even get to touch my proposals. After work I met up with Fen again and we ate at Joe's Diner and hung out at my place just talking and taking a walk. Always so good to see them and too bad it's so rare.
  
  
• Wednesday I had more graphics and research to do and then finally I got to work on my proposal stuff. I busted out the formatting and sent it in for review but I still had to wait to do the language edit. After work Jeaux took me to 4 Rivers and we went grocery shopping and home. We watched Colbert and Owl House and laughed at hilarious videos. Then we did some planning for our upcoming panel before he went home.
  
  
• Thursday work got really busy with all the proposal stuff. I did some Polos. Fen called me about some interesting opportunities! After work I took a short nap and then talked to Victor. Took some walks and got some drawing done.
  
  
• Friday was Katelyn's birthday. Happy birthday Katie! I went to work and got buried with proposal stuff all day. I took a break to go to the pool store to get chlorine for my water system. (With Jeaux because he's great.) Then back to work. Did the rest of my comic and then went BACK to work. Still have more work to do over the weekend. Boo.

Interviews, Articles, Mentions: 

• A French person receives a bunch of books, including the French edition of my book, in this video (starting at timestamp about 10:45). You can see from their video that it's got a bunch of color illustrations in it that aren't in the US version!

New Reviews:

• Jessa Franco gave The Invisible Orientation a three-star review on Goodreads.

Health Plan Update:

• Weight stuff: Continuing to deal with some instability here! Probably just because of frequent "special" meals lately in addition to some unhealthy eating habits (putting off eating for too long because I'm busy, followed by eating too much). I'm making an effort to reign this in now. High weight: 115.6 pounds. Low weight: 112.6.
  
• Nutrition stuff: I'm getting plenty of protein, so there's that! Not enough vegetables this week. I ate restaurant food three times in one week, though all three times included vegetables (cucumber sushi on Friday, cucumber salad on Tuesday, fried okra on Wednesday). Just really haven't been putting enough veggies into my diet except for beans. Looking to do better!
  
• Activity stuff: Did very well with my walking except I again didn't quite make it on Friday! Maybe I can try to do better earlier in the day and it will balance out? My low day was Friday at 9,321 steps, and my high day was Thursday at 20,023 steps.

Reading progress:

• Finished Reading: Nothing this week. 

• Currently reading: Six Characters in Search of an Author and Other Plays by Luigi Pirandello. I'm on page 90.

New singing performances:

This week's karaoke song is "Have You Ever Seen the Rain" by Creedence Clearwater Revival.

Ukulele cover of "Lapis Lazuli" from Steven Universe.

Ukulele cover of "Wailing Stone" from Steven Universe.

Stuff Drawn:

Webcomic Negative One Issue 0844: "Behind Her Back." 

New videos:

None this week.

New photos:

Fen and me!

Social Media Counts:

YouTube subscribers: 5,307 for swankivy (7 new), 671 for JulieSondra (1 new), 17 for v & V Vids (no change), 127 for Not-So-Giant Women (1 new). Twitter followers: 928 for swankivy (lost 1), 1,921 for JulieSondra (2 new). Facebook: 300 friends for swankivy (no change), 631 likes for JulieSondra (no change), 79 likes for Negative One (no change), 227 likes for So You Write (no change), 86 likes for Not-So-Giant-Women (no change). Tumblr followers: 2,462 (no change). Instagram followers: 232 (no change).

Personal Digest Saturday: July 3 – July 9

Life news this week:

• Saturday was a nice day. I found out Katelyn passed the NCLEX and she is now a nurse, so congrats Katie! Got blogging done in bits throughout the day and listened to the podcast I was featured on. Spent the day just grinding down my e-mail inbox trying to get it to a reasonable level and responding to various things on Reddit and Twitter. Sent some Polos to friends and family.
  
  
• Sunday I took my time in the morning, which was nice. Got a lot done--managed to get my previously over 1300 e-mails inbox down to under 100. I got approved for a Metrocon panel so it looks like I'm going! Jeaux said he'd help, so it looks like we're doing this again. (I did a panel in 2019 and it was an absolute blast.) I recorded two ukulele covers of Steven Universe songs, did laundry, did karaoke, and worked on my novel In Bloom for the first time in forever.
  
  
• Monday we had the day off for Independence Day, so I spent it doing some more e-mail excavation and dealing with some messed up subtitles on old videos. And I did more writing! Finally finished a chapter that I left in progress for many months. Did a Polo for Meg and I played games with my friends.
  
  
• Tuesday there was a hurricane. It was raining all day because of Hurricane Elsa, though I was still able to get a morning walk in before it started. I got a featured post on Steven Universe Amino for one of my cover songs. And I worked on an epic mail to my friend Cara. (But didn't finish it.) I wasted too much time besides that, but at least I did the dishes.
  
  
• Wednesday the hurricane was gone. My lawn guy even came! I had to do some data entry and some work on a proposal. And I finally got those minutes sent out from a meeting a couple weeks ago. (I needed the project manager's approval.) Had a quick chat with my agent about some stuff. Didn't get enough stuff done before Jeaux showed up. We went shopping and ate at IHOP. Then we watched two episodes of Owl House and took a walk.
  
  
• Thursday was good, I was able to get some Polos out and put my plants back outside post-hurricane. After I knocked out some proposal stuff at work, I wrote some comics and practiced my ukulele. Victor called in the evening like usual and we had another nice long talk (woohoo, two weeks in a row!). Finished all my comic drawings.
  
  
• Friday I had a lot to get done and managed to do it! I cleaned up some junk around the house and got a bunch of data entered and preparations done for upcoming marketing efforts at work. Then in the evening my friend Fen came over and we ate some appetizers, hung out and talked, and then ordered sushi and watched cartoons. The best!

New Reviews:

• Lila gave The Invisible Orientation a two-star review on Goodreads.
  
• Candies gave The Invisible Orientation a five-star review on Goodreads (in French).
  
• Sabina gave The Invisible Orientation a three-star review on Goodreads.

Health Plan Update:

• Weight stuff: Little bit of backsliding here and I will need to do better so I don't go back to old habits I don't want to repeat. High weight: 114.5 pounds. Low weight: 112.6.
  
• Nutrition stuff: I'm actually getting a lot of good diversity in my diet again, switching up my breakfast and making sure to get that spinach in, but there have been a lot of nighttime snacking events that I'm not doing great with, plus now that special events and visits are allowed again I sometimes go overboard. I feel like I should focus on healthier/less extensive snacks instead of trying to cut out snacking, because special events are just gonna happen and I don't want to feel like I'm not allowed to enjoy them.
  
• Activity stuff: I don't have an accurate read on my counts this week because my counter froze all of the last three days. I am pretty sure I only fell short on one day, but I'll never know because it froze on Thursday and I didn't know. I legit didn't make it on Friday because I had a friend over and didn't make sure to get the steps in before they arrived. I will guess my low day was Friday at 8,158 steps, and my high day was Monday at 14,802 steps (but it was actually probably Thursday because it usually is; it's just that's the day it froze).

Reading progress:

• Finished Reading: Nothing this week. 

• Currently reading: Six Characters in Search of an Author and Other Plays by Luigi Pirandello. I'm on page 66.

New singing performances:

This week's karaoke song is "Don't Start Now" by Dua Lipa.

Ukulele cover of "Comet" from Steven Universe.

Ukulele cover of "Destiny" from Steven Universe.

Stuff Drawn:

Webcomic Negative One Issue 0843: "Crowd-Pleaser." 

New videos:

None this week.

New photos:

None this week.

Social Media Counts:

YouTube subscribers: 5,300 for swankivy (6 new), 670 for JulieSondra (no change), 17 for v & V Vids (no change), 126 for Not-So-Giant Women (no change). Twitter followers: 929 for swankivy (1 new), 1,919 for JulieSondra (86 new). Facebook: 300 friends for swankivy (lost 1, do not know who dumped me), 631 likes for JulieSondra (lost 1), 79 likes for Negative One (1 new), 227 likes for So You Write (1 new), 86 likes for Not-So-Giant-Women (no change). Tumblr followers: 2,462 (1 new). Instagram followers: 232 (no change).

Personal Digest Saturday: June 26 – July 2

Life news this week:

• Saturday I did some Polos and cleaned up the kitchen in the morning, and then my friend Dare came over and we had a great hangout. We ate some grilled cheese sandwiches and made chocolate crinkle cookies together. Mostly it was just an excuse to catch up. They brought me sour candy as a gift. Wow! After they left I got my blogging done and that was about it.
  
  
• Sunday I slept late because I needed it I guess! Chatted with my friend Brent and ate candy. Did laundry and deleted a bunch of old e-mail. Talked to Mom on the phone and helped her with some stuff. Didn't really do much else besides make a bunch of Polos and read blogs.
  
  
• Monday was meetings, data entry, and letter editing at work. Also I posted a picture of my shirts on Reddit to see if anyone would like them and the picture got a lot of attention and questions. Had a lovely time with my friends playing games after work and made more Polos for the gals.
  
  
• Tuesday wasn't super demanding at work so I did more data entry and downloaded some documents for our records. Talked to Mom about some delivery frustrations. After work I took a long nap which messed up my sleep schedule. I played on Reddit, made Polos, posted on Amino, and did the processing on my latest video, Letters to an Asexual #81, and my latest comic, So You Write #121.
  
  
• Wednesday I did some more data entry and organized small things at work. And I did some Polos and finished the processing of my comic and my video, and posted them both. Jeaux and I decided we wanted to watch In the Heights which is long so we got our food to go from Moe's. Sadly it wasn't very good, which was our first bad experience at Moe's! But we liked the movie and had a good night.
  
  
• Thursday I spent the day finishing some data entry and doing project management reports. After work I had a great chat with Victor and it lasted until about 1 in the morning while I drew my comics.
  
  
• Friday work was a little bit grindy but I got through fine. Got some upcoming project reports done and some organization and proposal work done. Did some more Polos for my gals and crossed my fingers for Katelyn taking the NCLEX. Worked on my comic and published it before staying up too late.

Interviews, Articles, Mentions:

• Redditors discuss a rebuttal to a common argument listed in my book and discuss terminology.
Graying Rainbows interviewed me on their podcast about queer issues later in life. I talk about asexuality in this lovely interview.

New Reviews:

• Becky gave The Invisible Orientation a four-star review on Goodreads.
  
• Caitlin gave The Invisible Orientation a five-star review on Goodreads.
  
• CambriasCorner gave The Invisible Orientation a three-star review on Goodreads.
  
• Katie gave The Invisible Orientation a four-star review on Goodreads.
  
• Ingrid gave The Invisible Orientation a two-star review on Goodreads (in French).

Health Plan Update:

• Weight stuff: Getting back into the groove I think! I haven't really seen much of a difference on the scale but I'm going back to my more controlled, better eating habits. High weight: 113.5 pounds. Low weight: 111.4.
  
• Nutrition stuff: Except for eating up all the candy Dare gave me, I actually ate pretty well when it comes to nutrition. I ate a variety of soy products and included beans, spinach, and fruit in my diet this week in reasonable amounts. Probably just need to have a week without so much sugar now.
  
• Activity stuff: I'm back to getting 10K every day again, finally. (Well, except that technically I came in low on Saturday--by 200 steps, so it doesn't really count.) I'm really making an effort to get the steps in earlier and it's making a difference. My low day was Saturday at 9,800 steps, and my high day was Thursday at 18,830 steps.

Reading progress:

• Finished Reading: Nothing this week. 

• Currently reading: Six Characters in Search of an Author and Other Plays by Luigi Pirandello. I'm on page 57.

New singing performances:

This week's karaoke song is "Seven Nation Army" by the White Stripes.

Stuff Drawn:

Webcomic So You Write Issue 121: "No Hate But...." 

Webcomic Negative One Issue 0842: "This Much Sillier." 

New videos:

New photos:

Dare and me with Crinkle Cookies we made

Social Media Counts:

YouTube subscribers: 5,294 for swankivy (no change), 670 for JulieSondra (no change), 17 for v & V Vids (no change), 126 for Not-So-Giant Women (no change). Twitter followers: 928 for swankivy (no change), 1,833 for JulieSondra (21 new). Facebook: 301 friends for swankivy (no change), 632 likes for JulieSondra (lost 1), 78 likes for Negative One (1 new), 226 likes for So You Write (lost 2), 86 likes for Not-So-Giant-Women (no change). Tumblr followers: 2,461 (no change). Instagram followers: 232 (no change).