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bag-chips · 4 years

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Dog in the archives!! But..... what if they find the dog again?? Dog in the... house??

Married Jon and Martin get a house with the spare funds Elias just so happened to leave to them oh how nice of him. Jon starts training to be a teacher. Martin starts writing poetry full time, working part-time at both a local library and nursery. Now they have the disposable income and time to get a pet, so they pop over to the animal kennel to find a new best mate. But!! As they walk down the corridor of the kennel, Jon’s eye powers start going off like crazy. The spaniel was the very same spaniel that raided the archives on the first day. Despite Jon’s objections, they adopt her and name her Tess.

Off we go with the self indulgent dog sketches lads (with very inconsistent Tess designs yeah babey)

1) The discovery of that damn spaniel. Once Martin finds out, he insists they adopt her. It’s fate he says. She brought us together he says. But Jon’s not so sure. Yeah the dog may be like five years older, but he argues the ‘Archive Raid’ highlights behavioural issues, and that he won’t be there half the time to look after it. And all the walking we’d have to do! And anyway... I was kinda hoping for a cat, he quietly mumbles. But puppy eyes from both his adoring husband and arch enemy dog soon makes him give in.

Side note - Jon takes a good while to close to the dog. He never had one as a kid, and has always been a cat person. Plus he kinda has negative association with it, with her reminding Jon of his poor treatment of Martin in the early days. And on a basic fundamental level... he’s jealous of all the fuss the dog gets. There are so many moments where Martin and Jon will be cuddling and Tess will come abounding, wriggling in between them with nothing but kisses and love to give. Jon will get pouty and mumble something like ‘wait your turn next time’ or ‘it’s was my turn to hug him’ mergh. Eventually he comes to love her, to the point of spoiling her.

2) Tess design! Based on a Welsh Springer Spaniel. About 5/6 years old. She’s been a stray for most of her life. Probably a Christmas present that the original owners couldn’t handle after a year due to her excitable personality. Immediately recognises Martin when he walks past in the kennel, drawing the initial attention of the couple.

3) Messy ugly drawing of Martin post signing adoption papers. He’s very happy.

4) I fucking adore how Jon talks to The Admiral. Once he gets comfortable around Tess, he will find himself having full conversations with her, especially when Martin is busy or out. He’s still training to be a teacher at this point.

5) Play date with the wives! Post-Apolcapyse, Daisy can’t turn into her monstrous Hunt form. But - that doesn’t mean she doesn’t act like a big dumb dog sometimes. Daisy and Tess are best mates, and love to play fight in the local park (much to the amusement of everyone else). Basira will occasionally tell her off for playing too rough since, you know, she used to be able to rip people apart never mind a small spaniel.

Gonna have a comic out with Tess and Martin our soonish?? Also sketches for a stupid AU I’ve devised in my head?? Maybe even another animatic if you’re feeling cheeky enough ;)

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charlies-crashcourses · 4 years

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college crash course #3: deadlines and daily tasks, aka getting shit done on time

I hate online courses. I just do. Everyone else in my life loves them and scrambles for the chance to stay home in their pjs as they do their work. My brain, however, cannot for the life of me remember to complete tasks with no outside input, and so every single class I’ve gotten a low grade on in my college career has been an online class, without fail. I need structure to thrive, as do most adhd people (especially those in college) and so

What’s the solution here? What works best?

I have a couple strategies for this that work in tandem, so here they are

Strategy 1: Daily Task Sheets

on my desk I have at least 12 different types of sticky notes for different uses. Nothing so intense as color coding or organizing that way, I mean one for little positivity reminders and a smaller one for words I like and want to include in my writing and another larger one for little sketches to do as I work, etc etc.

One of these stacks of sticky notes is large and neon and used specifically for daily task lists. I have an app for larger scale lists and things that need to be done in general, but every day before I start working I sit down at my desk, pull off one of my big sticky notes, and write down a checklist of everything I need to do today (or, on the weekends, everything that needs doing before Monday).

I break these tasks down to chunks that are palatable for me, ie right now I have one task that reads “300-400p Existence” aka my quick notation for having to read 100 pages of a novel for class, and another separate task that says “400-500p Existence” because seeing 300-500 would make it Too Big and my brain would throw a tantrum and not do it.

I also put down tasks that will literally take me three seconds, like checking to see if I have unexpected homework for a class that rarely has actual work to do, or replying to an email from someone. Any task that needs doing goes on the list.

(I do this for a couple reasons, actually. One is because if I don’t write it down, I won’t remember it and it won’t get done, but the more important reason is that the more items I see checked off, the more I’ve gotten done and the better my brain will cooperate because see? we’re being productive! and my brain responds with that sweet sweet dopamine.)

When I’m checking stuff off (and this is the important part) I don’t just put a checkmark and move on. At a quick glance, then, it looks like nothing is done, because the boxes are all still mostly empty. I completely fill in each box, and sometimes when it’s going really slow I liberally cross off every item as I finish them so I can’t see the words anymore at all so I know I did stuff. The easier it is to see and process how much I’ve done, the better.

(it’s also important that it’s a sticky note, as well, because regular pieces of paper are Extra Things that will get lost, sticky notes can move and stay with me if i have to go somewhere else to go print something, for example. I can just peel it off my desk, stick it on my laptop, and go)

Strategy 2: Storing and Collecting Tasks

so Charlie, you might ask, how the heck do you know what needs to be done each day? How do you remember these tasks to do? Well this strategy is actually thanks to Ryan, my guy in student disability services. He showed me this app that I’m about to show y’all to make your lives a million times easier.

but first, let me explain. When making my daily task sticky notes, there’s no way I’d be able to remember everything I have to do on the top of my head, right? So really when I first sit down I open my laptop, check on my phone real quick how many emails I need to respond to (but don’t respond yet) and open up my college’s online system Canvas to make sure I don’t have any new announcements, not checking anything else yet. Then I grab my phone and open up my shiny new app: IKE

its a productivity app based on the Eisenhower model of task orientation, splitting up tasks into four categories: Important and Urgent, Important but Not Urgent, Urgent but Not Important, and Not Important or Urgent. You can rename these categories as you choose (they choose to name them, in order, Focus, Goals, Fit In, and Backburner, but I’ve changed them to Do Now, Soonish, 5 Min Tasks, and kept Backburner, but you do you)

Now you can choose to completely forego the IKE model and just use it as four different lists of things, but IKE also has a solution for that which is different lists as well as different categories within these lists. So the four categories above apply to all the different lists, which it displays in a cute four square style that tells you how many tasks are there, but doesn’t tell you what they are until you open the category, and has a quick task adding feature where you drag a circle from the center of the four corners into whichever list you’re going for and make the task right then. But for the lists they’re all separate and can all be different colors depending on what they’re for, that’s all up to you.

Now how does this seemingly complex system work for you, Charlie, who’s brain has the max processing power of a four year old on speed most days? you may ask

well it actually makes it super easy to put everything in, and if I put a task in the wrong spot I can move it easily, plus I can add due dates if I want, or a million reminders at all times of day if I want, but the main deal is that it’s a holding place for everything I need to do. When writing my daily list, I check my Do Now category first in all my lists (I have one for Uni, one for my student org I run, and one for any extra tasks that need done) and write all those in. Then I go to the 5 Min Tasks category of only the Uni and Extra tasks lists and add those in, and then I’m good for the day and I can start it all

As for getting the tasks in there, I paid the extra one time 99cent charge to get the widget for my home screen on my phone, and whenever I hear someone ask me to do something, I shove the task in there. My mom asks me off handedly to do the dishes? I throw it in with a reminder every half hour until I complete it. Someone asks me to send some emails? throw them in the 5 min category and tell it to remind me when I get to my computer (because it can do that, too, location based reminders for when you arrive or leave somewhere, which is great for reminding myself to pick something up on my way home from uni)

Strategy 3: Accountability

I don’t live alone, I never have, so part of my strategy as well is to have people I live with hold me accountable. Not in like a “you’re my minder now, hover over my desk to make sure I work” kind of way, but in a way that I tell someone who will be around what I have to do that day in a casual way - me and my roommates used to run through everything after we were all home from class, me and my mom tell our days to each other each morning since we both have trouble keeping on task - then when someone sees me doing something not on my list they ask me about it, which reminds me of what I need to be doing.

for example, if I mention to my sister that I need to read, send emails, and write a paper today, then if she sees me watching tv or on my phone she’ll ask me what’s up, did I finish my shit yet? which then spurs my brain into “fuck, I got off track, time to jump back in” mode.

If you live alone, the best way to do this is to make a post about being busy or texting someone that you have a lot of stuff to do, then if they see you on social media or if you get stuck in a conversation with them, they’ll call you out.

ADHD brains need constant call outs because we can’t tell when we’ve gone off track and followed tangents because our brain just wants dopamine and doesn’t care where it comes from, so it won’t question it once it gets what it wants, whereever that comes from.

so - tl;dr I shove any task I get into an app (if you’re not an app person, just make notes on your phone or put it in your calendar or voice recordings or whatever works best for your brain that you’ll remember to check) and unload all the tasks onto a smaller more streamlined daily task list that I write and check off each day, and make sure there’s someone that knows what I’m not supposed to be doing so they’ll call me out when I get off task for too long.

Now go forth and get shit accomplished! I believe in you!

#charlie's college crash course #adhd studying #adhd studyblr #adhd tips #college study tips

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ghostmoor · 4 years

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New Eggshells is coming SOONish I have clean sketches for all of the remaining panels now and I re-wrote the stuff I wanted to re-write

In completely unrelated news, I think I’m gonna like... shelf Beta Stratagem for now. It’s still a story I like and think is important and I want to tell it but my heart’s just not in it rn. I’m way more into the Moroverse and I’m more invested in those characters and what they have going on. so. I will probably keep drawing Beta Stratagem stuff but it won’t be a fully-fledged comic for... a while

(Also I wanna use Tumblr more again. hello. I use Twitter more often for thought dumping but it’s not conducive to writing big think posts or exposition stuff)

#talks

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luthienliveblogslately-blog · 6 years

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Milestone write-up!

Since the story seems to be closing one story-arc and moving on to another, I feel this is a good place to take stock, summarize what we know and make some more or less educated guesses at what might happen in future. It got a bit away from me (”a bit” lol), so here’s a read more for your convenience.

Players on the board

Last we left off, shit had decidedly hit the fan. We got painful confirmation that the elves successfully assassinated King Harrow, but they in turn had a painful price to pay. From what we can tell, Runaan is the only survivor, and he has been captured by Soren and Claudia. Claudia thinks he might come in “useful”, whatever that may mean. Might be they’ll interrogate him for information about Xadia, might be that Claudia has some more nefarious, magical things planned. She might ask him about Rayla and the egg, but it’s not like he can tell her anything that she doesn’t already know, aka Rayla and the boys have the egg and they plan to return it and use it to restore peace. Maybe, if they keep talking for long enough, he might actually get her to see that the egg really is just a yet to hatch baby dragon and therefore a sentient being in need of protection, and not just a powerful magical weapon to be used by whoever sees fit. If Runaan manages to escape or communicate with other elves, our heroes will have some real problems. He clearly sees Rayla as a traitor and seeks to punish her for the perceived crimes she committed, and there’s still that pesky magical bounty on Ezrans’s head…

It’s hard to say what Claudia and Soren will do next. I think it depends very much on if Viren is sticking around the castle or not, and what his plans are. As to what his plans might be… god knows. Just how much does he want the egg back? Is he willing to go after it himself, or will he maybe send Soren? How much does Soren know about all this anyway? Five bucks says he had no idea about anything tbh. You know what still hasn’t been opened yet btw? The fucking letter. It’s still in Viren’s study. If it really has a contingency plan like “Callum becomes prince regent until Ezran is old enough to rule” I get the feeling Viren might pull some GoT-style shenanigans and try to put himself on the throne. At this point there isn’t really anything I wouldn’t put past him. In any case though the kingdom might be thrown into serious chaos for a while. After all: the King is Dead, long live the…. wait, who now? The crown prince is missing? The step-prince is missing, too? Well, guess it’s time for some good old-fashioned power grabbing!

And then there’s our three four protagonists. We don’t know where the kingdom of Katolis is exactly, but in any case they have a long journey ahead. They will have to stick to the woods for most of it and avoid towns I think. Rayla can’t be seen by humans, the egg can’t be seen either, and Viren might try and put a bounty on all of them anyway, so the boys might not be save either. I trust Rayla will be able to get the foods from the woods though, so that should be alright. And then eventually they’ll reach the Breach and have to make their away across it and around however many standing armies manning the border from both sides. Yikes. Though we have no idea how far they’ll go in three remaining episodes. There are after all at least 5 more potential seasons in store for us, so there’s a good chance they won’t even remotely come close to the Breach in this one. What I’m really worried about is Rayla keeping the truth about Harrow from the boys. While it breaks my heart just thinking about them having to mourn their dad, I’m worried about Callum lashing out at Rayla in his grief. We already had a scene when he found out about the assassination plot and subsequently flipped out at Ez out of fear, and Ez hadn’t even really done anything. How much worse will that reaction be if she’s been lying to them for several days, even if it was just to spare them the pain? It might damage his trust in her, Callum might even try and make them split up and continue without her. Sounds like a really bad idea, but people do stupid things when they’re angry and sad.

Other unresolved plot points

WHAT DOES THE FUCKING LETTER SAY

What’s up with the Mirror? For that matter, why is the mirror fishy enough to be covered up but not fishy enough to be hidden in the Lair of Dead Things?

What’s with the picture Harrow looked at last time we saw him alive? It’s gotta be something, right? Why would they make the camera zoom in on it lying face down on the bed otherwise? Just have Harrow put it away and then forget it exists, don’t give it an extra shot!

Pip! Is he still alive? D:

Callum still has the Storm Stone, but he might have to get his hands on a book or find himself a teacher to learn some new spells probably?

WHAT DO THE BLACK EYES DO? DO THEY EVEN DO ANYTHING OR ARE THEY JUST FOR CREEPY EFFECT?

Viren’s staff! Just cool historical artifact or actually relevant to the plot?

Shameless Tin-hatting aka Foreshadowing Fucking Everywhere aka Miscellaneous Shit I Noticed While re-watching ep 1-3

Callum’s drawing of a Dragon roasting a Marshmallow Monster -> this show’s version of the Cookie Cat jingle? Possibly depicting Viren’s inevitable demise?

Not foreshadowing, but I realized when the Narrator says “on the eve of last Winter’s Turn” in the opening what is meant with “last” is just most recent, as in “last month” or “last Christmas”. So it probably was some solstice type date after all. Makes sense with it now being spring.

People keep pointing out how shit Bait is at hiding. I’m afraid at some point they’ll have to hide from something REALLY BAD and Bait will get them found. :/ Really, Bait being called Bait just seems super unfortunate in general.

You know how Rayla says “My Heart for Xadia” during the ritual? Yeah, I’m getting the feeling Rayla will be instrumental in getting Ezran out of the magical contract, possibly in a super heroic way by just doing what her heart tells her to and saving the day, or possibly just… by dying in his stead. Oh god I feel like I jinxed her. :(

You know how Callum was like “You’re so lucky, you get to learn magic!” and Claudia was like “You get to learn sword fighting!” and then Callum was like “I’d switch places in a second!”? Well, he’s doing magic now, so…. the little disaster bi that is myself is praying for Claudia in armor with a big-ass sword being a BAMF. ´

Anybody else who really wants to know what is under that OTHER, BIGGER tarp in the Lair of Dead Things? Because I really wanna know. I bet Ezran knows already.

Harrow said about the letter that “[Callum will] understand in time.” What makes me think there’s more in there than just his last will, possibly it’s also his last confession. What terrible shit has he done over the years of his reign, how much of it did Viren have his fingers in and how much of it can Viren use against him post-mortem? And how will the boys react when they get confronted with their dad’s uglier side, possibly via what the elves or even some direct victims have to say about him?

I’d really like to have a look at that book Callum is carrying everywhere. I figure it’s his sketch book and not relevant to anything, but it might still be fun to get to see some pages anyway.

Stuff that I got spoilered on because there’s too many tags to block :(

I saw some pics of the Dragon Prince after hatching! D: I’m sorry, it feels like I robbed myself of an awesome surprise and you of a genuine reaction. :( I didn’t look very closely, I just saw that he was adorable and had roughly the same color scheme as his dad. Which leads me to some more tin hatting: What with Thunder being called that and also breathing lightning, I’d like to propose that the Storm Stone still has a big role to play after all, other than just providing Callum with a magical source he can carry around.

I saw General Amaya of the Standing Battalion being name dropped in a text post. I scrolled too fast to see any context, but considering who she is I guess we’ll get her as an upcoming character in some capacity.

I know that the elf making the MAGIC TREES amulets gets another ending slide at some point, and that people are theorizing he and Runaan are a Thing. I’m not a super big fan of Runaan at this moment in time so I couldn’t give less of a shit about his love life tbh, and as much as I like to ship things I usually need a bit more than literally two pictures to get me going, so. I dunno, don’t expect much from me on that front until more material comes out in later seasons I guess. Like… if there isn’t enough for people to make emotional gif sets out of, can you even really call it a ship?

Netflix tried to push Chapter 4 on me when I went to re-watch the others. I got it shut down quickly enough, but I still saw the title. I think it was… Bloodthirsty? Bloodlust? Either way I think either Runaan is gonna have a REALLY bad time very soonish or our protagonists will have to run REALLY fast from people trying to catch them. Maybe both.

#the dragon prince #tdp liveblog #drapri liveblog #rambling review

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canaryatlaw · 7 years

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Okay, so today was fine although relatively uneventful being that I just stayed in my apartment and studied. It was also raining all day and we all know how much I deplore rain so I had no motivation to do anything, even if I had a reason to. I kind of went in and out of sleep as I do for a while before actually getting up around 1:43 or so. Ate breakfast, then tried to get down to studying. I told myself, and all of you (see: last night's day post) that I was gonna focus on my paper this weekend and then crim pro Monday and Tuesday but then my weird writing anxiety kicked in and I felt overwhelmed at the prospect of writing so instead I read case briefs. That is, all the case briefs of all the cases we read this year (or were supposed to read), both my version and the quimbee versions. I wasn't bothering to focus too much on case names since I know she doesn't care if we have those, be I feel like it'll be easier for me to get the right holding down if I have the case name, so we'll probably revisit that point. I almost fell asleep in the middle of my books again, but I made myself get back up and work because I clearly wasn't particular sleep deprived at the moment, so I don't really know what to do with that urge. After that I took a short break and made some of the roasted nectarine oatmeal I've been making (roasted probably isn't the correct technical term for it, but it makes it sound fancy AF so I'm going with it) and then when I got back I actually buckled down and worked on my paper, and then I remembered oh yeah, my writing anxiety is complete bullshit and writing actually comes really easy to me. Imagine that!! So I wrote for a while, up until 9 o clock, and I'm around 21 pages, somewhere over 7,000 words I think. Calling it the 40 page paper is inaccurate, because 40 is just the number he said he would absolutely stop reading after. It's formatted with a series of questions (21, to be exact), most of which have a word limit attached to them that you can't go over. The longest is like 1,500 words I think which isn't really all that long, but it adds up with the many other sections. Right now I definitely have the bulk of the paper written, I just have to go back in and fill in the things like the budget (which I'm still dreading) and staff, as well as fix the fundraising section because lol what's government funding for nonprofits under this administration?? Sigh. I'm feeling better about it though. I was able to throw in a mention to an article I had read years ago and kept track of because I found it extraordinary, because I was talking about our lobbying agenda and how it would affect legislators. So I started talking about how 10 years ago in Florida their DCF changed their goals around and started a "family preservation" initiative, by which they slashed services and cut the number of kids in care in half (if you tend to get squeamish, I would stop reading here). Well, guess what happens when you don't take kids from abusive parents or return them too soon? Kids die. A hell of a lot of kids die. 477, at least, in a 5 year period- and those are just the ones whose families had previously contact with the system- meaning the system was aware of the family and allowing the child to live with them. The kicker here is that they majorly underreported these numbers to the legislators, so they never saw the depth of the problem and agreed to the cuts in finding. Cue a perfect opportunity for lobbying to have taken place and bring this to their attention, and how many lives could've been saved? (I've held onto that article for about 3 years now because, honestly, it haunts me. It haunts me to know that every single one of those child's deaths were preventable, but they happened because someone wasn't doing their job. And that's the burden you have on you working in child welfare system. If you don't do your job, children die. 477 lives as a result of not doing their jobs will always haunt me in all the work I do in the system.) But yeah, I felt like that was a good opportunity to work that in. I stopped at 9, and went to watch this week's Blindspot, which was somewhat bizarre but still enjoyable. I returned to the menu of recordings only to realize I had once again just missed Training Day airing live because I never know when any of my damn shows are on, so I went to watch that one and it was possibly even more bizarre than Blindspot was, and honestly rather creepy. It was a good episode though I suppose. After that I debated started Riverdale but decided against it because I wanted to get to bed soonish, but that backfired because as I looked for some neutral program to have on as background noise as I finished my internet stuffs, I found Saturday night live instead and well, of course I had to keep watching that, and it was amazing. It was a rerun, from sometime around the inauguration, so probably January, and Aziz Ansari was hosting and he's fucking hilarious so that was fun. It once again made me think of how much I would love a life where I could practice law during the week and then be on Saturday night live on the weekends, lol. I don't want to sound vain but like, I feel like my best acting is done in sketch comedy like that and tbh I'm fucking hilarious when I want to be, and I know I could be sooooo good on that show, lol. Ah well. It's clearly a pipe dream, but I can dream at least. And yeah, I basically got ready for bed after that. Oh, I should tell you guys about the Amazon prime now saga. So I'd wanted to hang some of the string lights I'd gotten from target in my room, but for some reason these were battery operated, and I didn't have any AA's. I was also running out of command hooks that I use to hold them up, so I figured I could order those off amazon prime now just for fun, and ended up throwing in a candy thermometer because I still want to make caramels at some point and our current one doesn't work very well, in order to meet the order minimum. So it's like delivery between 6 and 8. Cool. So I write in the instructions, as always, call or text when you get here and I'll meet you at the side door. Since I have a rear apartment, I don't have any access through the front door. So a little after 6 my phone rings and the person says they're here, and I ask "are you at the side door?" And they said yes so I said I'd be right down. Well surprise surprise, I get down there and guess who's not at the side door and is in fact nowhere in sight?? So I try to call him back but it won't let me, so then I have to go through the app to call him back, but it just rings indefinitely, and while it's doing so I get the notification that my package was delivered. Um, the fuck? It clearly was not. I'm guessing he left it on the front porch which wouldn't be that big of a deal but if you remember from earlier it's storming like crazy outside, so there's no way in hell I'm going to get it now, since I have no internal access to the porch. This is especially weird I think because when I was ordering they emphasized that someone had to be there to receive the order, but he clearly just left it on the porch with nobody. So I guess I'll find out sometime tomorrow if it is actually on the porch, but it's supposed to rain tomorrow too. I didn't see any way to like, report problems with your order or whatever, but I did change his tip because I'm not fucking tipping you when you pull shit like that. So yeah, it obviously wasn't a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but it was a bit of an annoyance. So there we have it. Tomorrow should be interesting, after the last church service, during which I'll be serving in the nursery, we're basically packing up the church and moving it to the elementary school up the block that we'll be meeting at for the next month while the renovations get completed at our church. Then later that day we have a babies team meeting at one of the leaders houses, but I don't know how the timeline of all these things are gonna work out, so I'm not gonna like, come all the way home just have to go back down shortly after, so I'm prepared to stay downtown for most of the day, and hopefully I can get some work done at some point. Should be a good time. Okay, that's all for now. Goodnight darlings. Sweet dreams.

#daily journal #April 2017

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