Personal Digest Saturday: July 15 – July 21

Life news this week:

• Saturday I got up early, had breakfast, and got dressed/packed for Metrocon. Jeaux picked me up and dropped me at the con, and we met up later. The panel he wanted to go to didn't materialize for us, so we just walked around looking at costumes and shopping in the dealer room. (He bought a poster. I bought some earrings.) I was wearing a Stevonnie costume and he was Dippy Fresh. We attended a panel about inclusivity and then a panel about disability inclusion, and then we took a break from our wigs and our walking by sitting down at American Social for burgers. (Mine was an Impossible Burger.) Then we went back to the con and got really tired. After we decided to call it quits, we walked back to his garage and he drove me home. I got comfy and went to bed after posting my weekly update blog and coordinating with Jeaux to share all our photos.
  
  
• Sunday I sent Katelyn a birthday present (she is 25!! what!!) and spent the day cleaning up a little and talking to my friend Sarah on the phone. I did laundry, took a nap, recorded a video for my asexuality channel, and posted my photo gallery from the convention.
  
  
• Monday had no letters to send so I spent the day dealing with teaming and finishing my data entry. My toe was bothering me so I made a doctor's appointment, and also scheduled the water technicians to look at my non-working chlorine pump. The pest control guy came and helped me identify a bug I'd seen (uh-oh. It was a termite). I did a few walks and played games with my friends, and then I sent a Polo to Steve and went to bed.
  
  
• Tuesday I was busy with teaming arrangements and accounting stuff for my boss. Kari was supposed to visit but her car broke down so I didn't get to have my pal visit. Very sad. So after work I went to Mom's instead and started collecting clothes from her closet to give to an upcoming donation pickup from the Red Cross. I got through a bunch of her closet and also cleaned out most of her dresser and two nighttables, and organized some of her stuff for figuring out later. Her roommate came home later and we talked about some of his arrangements too. I took my mom's prescription medications home to drop them off at a medication dropoff. Then since it took me a couple trips to get the stuff into the house, I left the door open and THREE BIRDS FLEW INTO MY HOUSE and I had to figure out how to get them out and then clean up where they pooped all over. Weird night.
  
  
• Wednesday I went to the foot doctor and was very happy to find they just recommend I soak it and use an antibiotic cream. I do not want to have any more minor surgeries on it. At work I did some make-up reports that I'd gotten behind on with all my time off. Then I ripped all the labels off my mom's prescriptions and put them in a bag. Also talked with Tony and discussed arrangements to continue taking care of Mom's lawn. Jeaux was very late so we started our errands late. We dropped off the medicine, ate at Beef O'Brady's, grocery shopped, and came home to watch weird videos, the new episodes of the next season of What We Do in the Shadows, and the movie Nimona (which we liked).
  
  
• Thursday I had a weird day. Drew a bunch of my webcomic and wrote a storyboard for my writing webcomic, and did some Polos and worked on Not-So-Giant Women. Also put away laundry and cleaned up the bathroom, the game room, and the kitchen a little.
  
  
• Friday I had to make reports and go to an internal strategy meeting where we decided to be ambitious and go for a couple projects that will be a lot of effort upfront. I gathered some crash data for them and invited our teaming partners. I processed my webcomic and worked on the rest of Not-So-Giant Women. Did another Polo for my sister.

Interviews, Articles, Mentions:

• Avik Chakraborty recommends my book as a resource in a Medium post called Navigating the Spectrum: Understanding Asexuality and Aromanticism.

New Reviews:

• Claire gave The Invisible Orientation a four-star review on Goodreads.

Health Plan Update:

• Weight stuff: I have only been sporadically keeping track, so there's not much to report with this given my incomplete stats! But from what I did get: High weight: 120.8 Low weight: 119.7.
  
• Nutrition stuff: I feel pretty well fed and am paying some attention to my greens again. Hooray for spinach smoothies, potatoes with veggies, avocado and Tofurky sandwiches, and yogurt with green grapes. Still consistently taking the vitamins.
  
• Activity stuff: I met my walking goal every day this week except Tuesday--apparently all the work I did at my mom's house didn't really translate into steps, and I JUST barely missed it. My low day was Tuesday at 9,467 steps, and my high day was Saturday (of course, the convention) at 17,516 steps.

Books Read: 

• Finished Reading: None.
  
  
• Currently Reading: Be Gay, Do Comics by Matt Bors. I'm on page 52.

New singing performances:

This week's karaoke song is "Basket Case" by Green Day.

Stuff drawn:

Webcomic Negative One Issue 0949: "The Decider." 

Videos Made:

Letters to an Asexual #105 (The importance of support systems, and how they can fail): This is #105 of a series in which I read correspondence between me and people who have questions, comments, or--more often--misconceptions about asexuality. This video has no direct correspondence but outlines a pattern of misconceptions and invalidation that I experienced throughout my life.

New photos:

There is a Metrocon 2023 album that has all the costumes, but here are my faves:

And then this is the bird that got in my house:

Social Media Counts: 

YouTube subscribers: 5,437 for swankivy (lost 4), 678 for JulieSondra (no change), 17 for v & V Vids (no change), 181 for Not-So-Giant Women (no change), 71 for Tides of Time Band (lost 1). Twitter followers: 863 for swankivy (no change), 3,897 for JulieSondra (no change). Facebook: 296 friends for swankivy (no change), 647 likes for JulieSondra (1 new), 82 followers for Negative One (no change), 244 likes for So You Write (2 new), 95 followers for Not-So-Giant-Women (no change). Tumblr followers: 2,433 (lost 1). Instagram followers: 256 (1 new).