We’re almost two weeks into 2024, and I haven’t crashed and/or burned yet; I’ll take it as a good sign.
I’m happy to say that the Fifth Ace Showcase has returned and is trucking on well so far; I actually had enough of a buffer that I could schedule the uploads for the whole week, which is not something I could say since the beginning of the series. I don’t know if I’ll be able to maintain the buffer at such a rate forever, the day job kind of puts a crimp in the already-slow colouring process, but considering how much I’ve been able to get done so far, I’m feeling optimistic. Issue #0 will be running all through January and February; we’ve already seen some familiar faces, we’ll be seeing a few more, but by the end of next week there will be a slew of new characters being introduced. They may or may not feature in the next upcoming stories, but if I waited to introduce them naturally, it would take years, and I don’t want to wait that long before showing them off. I’d rather whet your appetites for the wider universe by showing you what may be on the horizon rather than just telling you about it.
On the home front, we have more or less settled into our new residence quite well; all the essentials are in place, now it’s a matter of seeing how we can improve. A few natural decorations in the form of some pot plants wouldn’t go amiss out the front and back, maybe some astroturf, a few veggies and herbs growing out the back if we can manage it. The cats are getting acquainted with the area; Silver doesn’t go much further than the garden for fear of the sprinkler system, while Sparrow has already started taking his explorative expeditions beyond the perimeter fence. We were a little worried about him at first, and we still want to get a tracker tag for him just to be sure, but he went out early this morning and came back before I left for work, so he clearly knows where home base is. It’s just as well; if we tried to keep him exclusively inside for much longer he might have exploded; the little guy feels the need to roam down to his bones. Plus it means that even if I have to get up early to let him out, I can go back to bed and get an extra hour or two of sleep, which I’ve been needing for a while now.
Exercise is still being maintained; my routines would be the equivalent of a warm up to anyone else’s workout, but it’s not about bursting onto the scene and wearing out my body. So far, it’s something to get my heart rate up, and get me used to doing something in the morning; by the time the workouts start to ramp up, I’ll have gotten into the groove of being physically active before 6 a.m.; it’s all about routine building. I’m also going to be expanding my meal prep this weekend by finally making those homemade tortillas I was looking at last year; filling those with some ground beef mince, some black beans and a few onions and bell peppers… I’m making myself hungry just thinking about it, which is not hard to do, because most of my between-meal snacks have consisted of apples, lately; I need to crack out the popcorn again.
Other than that, life goes on. My fiance starts her new job next week; lucky her that she can roll out of bed and be right where she needs to be. I’m still hunting for a new job, fingers crossed that something comes along soon; in the meantime, I’ll just do what I can to keep us afloat. See you all back here next week, where I’ll hopefully have more stuff to talk about; journaling in the evenings has seriously cut down on how much I need to vent here.
Ciao for now.