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Tamsin made a nice post for people to ask for/post cute/happy animal pictures etc and I was reminded that not everyone outside Australia has heard of tawny frogmouths, which are very cute weird muppety looking native birds. Another very cute local animal is the quokka, which looks like if a capybara was a jovial marsupial hobbit.

( Relatively mild discussion of emotional reactions to recent events which mentions suicide and transphobia as topics )

Cam and I both have a cold. A superstitious part of me feels like if I say "we're pretty sure it's not covid" we will both have a sudden turn and DIE, especially since it turned out our RAT tests were out of date and I can't get new ones til tomorrow. But the expired test was negative at least, and I like knowing that people know why I'm replying to emails etc even less than usual.

I think this is our first respiratory infection of any kind since the pandemic started, and man, that extra worry just adds an extra layer on top of the general unpleasantness of having a cold. I don't do as badly with colds as some people with cfs, and thus far this one is relatively mild, but it still sucks, and even after the symptoms clear I'm always knocked out for a bit. At least I don't have any plans coming up, I had once again vaguely pondered flopping outside Swancon if I was having an especially good day but I won't be having any of those for a while :/

I've seen people talk about their cats comforting them when they're sick but ours just sit at the opposite end of the room staring wide eyed with a mixture of fear and resentment every time we cough or sneeze.

The symptoms were so mild at first we didn't even realise it was a cold, which is mostly good, but does mean we missed the window for antivirals without even realising let alone deciding if we wanted to go that route. Ah well, this has been a reminder to have all that stuff better organised!

Currently hanging out in the mod making channels of the Stardew Valley discord waiting for version 1.6 to launch. It's a major update, affecting both the story and the underlying code.

I haven't felt this sort of group vibe of "Ooh what will the new content be" enthusiasm mixed with "oh god what will this break" trepidation and "But WHEN WILL IT UPDATE" uncertainty since waiting for Homestuck updates back in the day.

Players have nothing to worry about (except for mods maybe breaking), and mod makers had access to a coding alpha, but until we see the new story content a lot of us don't know exactly how much editing we're going to have to do to make our existing mods compatible with the new content.

But also, new content! Exciting!

It's like 5am in much of the US, many people have stayed up waiting for ConcernedApe (the creator and primary dev) to wake up in California and press the button. It's approaching 11pm here but I don't feel like going to sleep just yet.

The discord mods have been making increasingly unhinged posts in the bulletin board channel that THEY WILL PING US WHEN IT UPDATES. Apparently so many people joined the server at once that discord flagged it as suspicious lol. Meanwhile the 1.6 alpha channel is everyone waving goodbye before it gets archived.

And then of course once it DOES come out... hoo boy.

*bounces quietly*

I have finally achieved my goal, after many years: I ate a mooncake! It was a tiny goal but feels good to have achieved it.

I never ate them when I was younger on the assumption they would be as full of butter as most other Delicious Looking Asian Pastries, and by the time I discovered that they're traditional enough not to be made from dairy I wasn't in a position to easily get one (I could order large expensive boxes online, but I just wanted one). Even once I finally found a local Asian supermarket which delivers I kept forgetting to buy a mooncake during the limited time window.

This frustrated me, because (a) they sounded like something I'd enjoy and (b) it would feel nice to participate in such a big global celebration in my own small way.

AND THIS YEAR I DID IT. The moment people started talking about the mid-Autumn festival I got Cam to organise a joint order with me from the Asian supermarket.

Including a lotus paste mooncake with egg yolk! Which I just cut into pieces and ate some of! It was delicious :) I was dubious about having a whole egg yolk in the middle of a pastry but it worked pretty well, all salty and creamy.

They're supposed to be shared but Cam doesn't like lotus paste. So I shall share it with you all digitally. So an early happy Mid-Autumn Festival to all of you, including those of you for whom it is also actually mid-Spring. And happy Djilba to everyone else in the local Nyoongar country!

EDIT: For anyone else in Perth: Kai Supermarket, I know ubereats is evil but there's not a lot of local options.

isabel_lunnen/ isabelpsaroslunnen tagged me in a "getting to know you via five drinks" meme. So, off the top of my head, five drinks I have illustrative things to say about.
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I've started being able to (a) figure out and (b) tell people when I am having a Bad Words moment that makes it hard to express myself. It's really great! My natural tendency is to just sit there feeling paralysed and guilty and self conscious, having a simple script/phrase I can say without having to come up with something original really helps and half the time helps unblock me enough to think of words to express what I wanted to say in the first place, or at least a gesture towards it, with less worry that the other person will take any simpleness/curtness as rudeness or indifference etc.

I am having a moderately bad word day today, but not to the extent of being totally inarticulate, I just have to express myself more simply (at least it feels simpler in my head, I'm not sure how it comes across from the outside). It's very weird to know I don't always feel this way but still be unable to access the parts of my brain which add humourous/articulate flourishes etc. But I don't need those for this post.

I'm not even that fatigued today, just overwhelmed by a bunch of stressful things I have made the considered decision to avoid thinking about until I have had a few days without new stressful things.

Anyway. Hooray for self knowledge and expression, including expressing my inability to express myself.

(haa...ok, I was able to write this post without too much trouble, but thinking about tags is hurting my brain. This'll do)

I was going to make this a health filter post but since there's nothing super private/TMI and I've been so quiet lately, I might as well make it public since no better update is likely to come up any time soon.

( Meds, mods, moods )

I bought some cheap plain fabric from Homecraft Textiles in the end, I haven't made much with it yet but it seems good!

But as a result I subscribed to their newsletter and today got an email about a sale and new fabric patterns and oh no I forgot what craft supplies are like I am in so much trouble.

I am forbidding myself from buying any more fabric until I finish making something with the first lot, since I'm still finding my feet in terms of what I like. And by the time I do that they may have added even more pretty patterns.

(Look at these though! I wish I was up to making shirts)

I'm quite happy with how it looks right now. You can see my earlier experiments on the 'hair' tag.
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I got my second Pfizer shot on Saturday. The process was much the same, and a few days on the symptoms have only been a little worse, mostly just a sorer arm. And no sore throat so far! So I'm resting up and feeling good to have it done.

The title of this post is a reference to hotvickkrishna's great fork-based explanations for Covid Vaccines, which start with How the mRNA Vaccine 💉 works.