What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

I spent the last two days getting everything much more organized. I had a question about what some of the side characters in the story that I am writing with Joel did with their time, and ended up spending a day and a half reorganizing our reference info so that I had an answer. The same thing with what many characters looked like. ChatGPT doesn't always work super well as a replacement for online character generators, so I decided to use DALL-E, which comes with my fancy ChatGPT upgrade, to generate images for the characters. I discovered quickly that it tends to make pictures of white people. If I wanted a person of color, I had to specifically ask for it. Sometimes, even if I asked for people with darker skin colors, it wouldn't give them to me. It also tends to make women very very skinny and men very muscular. (One trick to get it to be less awful is to start a new "thread", as you get more accurate results that way. If you want a woman with dark skin or is not skinny, definitely start a new thread. Also, if you want someone to have dark skin and the program refuses to give it to you, tell the program that they are African. I find this annoying, as the character isn't from Earth, so they aren't African, but that doesn't matter.)

With time passing and seasons changing, I've been feeling stressed about the garden. I need to get seeds planted, so that was the other think I worked on a lot. It helped. Yesterday, I planted some Portuguese collard greens and tomatoes inside in little cardboard pots. I had planned on planting the other seeds (okra, melon, and kohlrabi) outside today, but instead I decided to wait until the marigold and calendula seeds I ordered show up in the next few days. I think that when I am in Lisbon, I'll try to hit a store where I can buy some mixed wildflower seeds (not ones that have red flowers, though, because I think the contrast is too much for me, and thus I don't like them). If I had though of that earlier, I could have ordered them when I ordered the marigold and calendula seeds, but I didn't think about it until later. Anyway, the goal of having those seeds is that I can put them in all the other garden-y spaces to keep me from wanting to have something growing in there for a while. All that thinking about where to plant stuff really make me think about where I am going to put all the plants that produce vines that I want to grow. I want melons, cucumbers, zucchini, chayote, and winter squash. All of those work well when they climb a trellis, but where the heck would I put all these trellises?!? We are changing our plans a bit to accommodate this, but I think it will still work. I'm glad I made the effort to get this more organized.

I told the people at the writing group that I would write and share with them this (ridiculous) story idea that I came up with recently. It requires a fair amount of prep, though, so I've been working on that.

Joel now has food poisoning, and my IBS is still acting up. It is a queasy night for us. However, I have come up with an additional plan for coping with the house situation. Since Joel said that he wants to be in charge of getting the housing lawyer, I am not going to think about the house until he has done that. It seems to be helping.

In other news, I'm planning on going to see my family in NJ in July, and the plan is to try and take the train to see friends during that time. Or, I suppose, they could take the train down to see me at the beach. Either way, seeing friends in person seems like it would be quite nice.

Writing is going super well. I have once again almost made it through one chapter for each story that I'm working on. I just have one chapter that needs a few more words. After that, I might finish the journaling game that I was working on back in February, finish editing a story that is almost ready to be posted (Joel needs to look it over to see if it needs more murderous subtext), finish editing a chapter for one of my longer stories, start editing a chapter for yet another long story, and do the background work for a character or two for my Greek myth story that is still in the prep stages. Then, I can go back to writing new stuff. I really look forward to getting that short story posted. I haven't posted any new stories in quite a while. (And that reminds me that I should ask the person who helped me with the story if they are okay with me mentioning them in the credits.)

We had planned a nice little adventure, but there was a train strike today. So, we'll have to go a different day. However, that means that I was able to post the podcast, finish the chapter I was writing, do some work on the RPG one-shot, finish assembling the sewing pattern for another hoodie (which I don't desperately need, as it has gotten warm enough that I'm not freezing inside, but which I will still be glad to have), and make some progress on the date stuff on my story website.

Supposedly, at least one of our boxes has made it to Portugal from Russia. If we actually receive it, I will ask Sasha to send my fabric, the embroidery floss, the buttons, my paints, and a bunch of other sewing and craft stuff. That stuff is both expensive and kind of worthless to others, but I really want it. Of course, that implies that Sasha will take less than a year to send it, which may not be the case. We'll see.

The roleplaying game is on Sunday. I can't wait!! I am so looking forward to running it and getting it done. It should be fun.

Oh, and in fun news, I have weeded out some of my old computer desktop backgrounds that weren't sparking joy and am going to make a bunch more (because the 600 that I have aren't enough). I'm also rating music on rateyourmusic.com and making a list of favorite songs on Spotify in hopes of getting recommendations. I'm just doing one song a day, which isn't much, since this list is of 100 songs. However, trying to do more was resulting in me doing none. If I have to choose between none and one a day, I will go with the one a day.

Happily, we are back at home. The peace lily had wilted quite a bit, but I watered it. Now, it is nearly back to normal. Everything else is good. It is just excellent to be here. I am reminded, though, how much I need to work on my Portuguese language skills. The taxi driver was listening to news on the radio, and it was slow and clear (although I still didn't really understand it). They have podcasts, so I'm going to see how they are. I could also try translating one story a day. Now that we are back, I can get to work again on the things that I left off thinking about because of the trip. I'm pretty sure we can go to get all the checkups that we need now (there is a 3 month waiting period before you can use your medical insurance here). At the moment, I'm not thrilled about that. However, I'll deal with it. I know that seeing one doctor a week is way too much. I may go for one a month until I feel like I'm ready for more. I would like to finish up the work on the hutch too. The next step with that is finishing the artwork on the drawers and putting the pulls and stops on the cabinet doors. I got jasper pendants at the gem and mineral show to use as pulls to open to the cabinets, which I'm super happy about. After that, I have to get to work painting the closet boxes, since we went to Goodwill in the US, and now I have a lot more clothing and not enough storage for it.

Speaking of clothing, I need to contact Sasha to see if he can meet us someplace and bring some of our stuff. You can guess that this means that he still hasn't sent it.

The other day, I worked on getting all the events in my calendar/to do list database in iCal format. I also imported one event into my Google calendar to see the result. The notification on my phone was not all I had hoped. However, the calendar app gave me the option in the general settings of having a sound and vibration, so I should (hopefully) be able to get it to do that.

I've slacked off on writing because of all the travelling, so it is time to fix that. Tomorrow, I'll go to just the writers group (it is 1:30am now, so there is no way with this jet lag that I'm going to be up and feeling well for tai chi in the morning), so hopefully that will get me started.

Now, though, bed.

So, yesterday, I was worried about the interactive Prometheus story not working out, because Zeus is too much of a terrible rapist and all around asshole. I talked about it with Joel and with another friend, and they had good points about that perhaps not being the thing I should work on now. However, my friend suggested that I try a different myth to start out, and I really like this idea. I'm going to go with Perseus's adventures. I conveniently have Clash of the Titans (from 1981) to help me remember that no one else follows history exactly. Also, it has the right level of cheesy (a lot). I'm having a great time coming up with the characters that I'll use. Andromeda will definitely be black and will be male or female depending on the player's preference. I really love the idea of a male Andromedeus being so pretty that his mom brags about it to the point that the sea nymphs get pissed off and Poseidon steps in. I've figured out how to get Andromeda/Andromedeus more involved (rather than just getting married right at the end). I think that it would be fun to have different characters that can participate in the adventure depending on who you recruit. I'll have to see how that works out. Also, while I am not usually a fan of Joseph Campbell's hero's journey, I think that it might be just the thing in this context. Joel has also pointed out that Assassin's Creed: Odyssey has an exploration/education mode that will allow me to explore the Greek islands, so when I am writing, I can get a better view of what things are like. Yay!

Other than focusing a lot on writing, I worked a bit on web development again today. If I'm going to make a bra, I need to get on that, since there isn't all that much time to do it before we leave.

Did I mention that we got our residency cards? This means that returning to Portugal will be easier. Phew!

Today, like yesterday, was not terribly productive. I focused a lot on working on a website, which ate up most of my free time (where "free time" means time that I'm not resting while eating).

I am getting toward the end of one of my stories, and after much consideration, I've decided that my next one will be interactive fiction. I've been thinking of writing interactive fiction for a while, but last time I looked at it, I was a bit overwhelmed by the program that I would need to use. I've decided to start a bit slower and make a very very very simple story to start out with, so that I can learn to do the basic things that I want to do. Basically, Twine is a program that converts a graphical representation of a non-linear story into a webpage. When you think about how much a non-linear story is like a website, it makes total sense. I like that Twine helps you visualize how the different sections of your branching story connect and split and go back together again. The part I need to learn how to do is the part that handles variables, so that you can choose the gender, pronouns, and attributes, for example, of your character and have those choices be reflected in the story. I think I'll be getting to that part of the instruction manual soon. I don't plan on doing much that is very complicated (I think) right now, so I think that I can just work with those basic parts of Twine for the time being. Twine is available online, but I have downloaded the offline version. However, now I realize that I may need to use the web version, because otherwise I won't be able to work on it while travelling. Although I want something that I can use on my phone.... I'll figure it out.

I want to write an interactive story about Prometheus stealing fire back from the Gods. However, I want it to be more interesting and have more characters (and love interests) than I think are in the original story. So, there is going to need to be some work done on figuring out how to make it work. I'm looking for a level of accuracy that is about equivalent to Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (with Kevin Sorbo), so while I do need to have it make sense, use the correct characters, and follow the story line, I'm not going to try to duplicate anything from ancient Greece.

In other news, my ear seems to still be very very slowly improving.

In frustrating news, I had to break out the new vitamin C today, and it is just terrible. I am incredibly glad I didn't order a year's worth. It is pills, not capsules, and they are very difficult to swallow. Even my giant liver pills aren't this hard to swallow, and I used to regularly choke on those. Since I was already making gelatin this evening, I tried dipping the vitamin C pills in it, and that really helped a lot. So, I'm going to try tomorrow to see if I can treat the pills with gelatin and have them stay together for a while after that. I think maybe if I freeze them, they won't get too wet and fall apart, but maybe not. I'm so glad I ordered my regular vitamin C. Phew! (Update: this is a problem because I take ten of these pills a day.)

This morning, our tai chi lesson was held by a museum, so that it could be under a roof, since it has been very rainy here. True to our expectations, it absolutely poured. There were leaks in the house too, which I told the landlord about as soon as I got home. This week's class was taught by one of the students who was super nice. He had some good suggestions about my technique, plus he suggested that maybe massage or acupuncture would help with my walking. I'm willing to try, and since he goes to a massage and acupuncture school where they give low cost treatment, I've even got a place to try.

The writing group was also quite nice, as usual. I'm making progress on my stories a bit more, which is quite satisfying.

I think I may be starting to feel better. I _think_ that the magnesium was making me worse. It is supposed to help with glucose transport to muscles, but it may have done the opposite for me. I tried it once before without good results, so I think this is the last time. I was able to walk home from the store without Joel's help, so that is a good sign, at least.

I'm pretty sure that my body is also demanding more carbs. I've started eating banana in the morning, which is a nice addition to the foods I eat. I'm also going to try adding some winter squash to my lentil curry. Previously, my body wasn't happy with winter squash (probably too much carbs), but I'm hoping that, when mixed with a bunch of red lentils, spinach, and mushrooms, some winter squash will be okay. We'll see.

Finally, I'm making some progress on the code to handle security for user profiles (like the part where you choose who can see what data). Right now, it is only used in the travel database, but I'm making all common things like this into libraries, so that I can use them easily later. I'll be glad when this part is over, as it requires more brain functionality than I normally have, so I've been having to do it a very small bit at a time. My database to assist with story writing (especially interactive fiction) is going well. I'm in the middle of converting a character bio generator that I first wrote years ago, partially upgraded, and then abandoned, into a working, finished tool. If you are logged in, then you'll be able to use stored locations (since a high-gravity or low-gravity birthplace changes the height of the character, for example), characters, and other stuff with it, which will definitely be useful. Otherwise, it will still work, but without saving the data (instead, it will generate a page that you can save) or using any other saved data. I'm still in the very early stages of the whole thing, but I'm happy with how it is coming along.

Other than that, not too much is going on. I finished writing a short piece (which I may have mentioned previously), which I'm now editing. My longer works are all trundling along, including one story that is coming up on the end of the first section. Yay! In fact, the story that I write with Joel is also coming up on the end of the first section, although that still needs another chapter or two before they really get there (the lengths of these two "first sections" are vastly different). (The other long piece is in the middle of the second section.) As my proof of concept story for the story writing database, I'll be writing a kind of silly story about plumbing (since that was what I first used to explain it to my mom). I'm interested to see how it will work out, since the goal for this part is going to be to have the ability to change the "companion" character. After I get that working, I'll add in choices. Hopefully, it will be great fun.

I don't get a lot of feedback on the Mass Effect fanfic I write, although I do get occasional kudos (which on Archive of Our Own is similar to a "like"). I very rarely get feedback on my podcast, although recently a couple of friends told me that they were enjoying it. Very occasionally, I hear from a stranger, although that feedback has been (so far) all positive. Some writers get tons of feedback on their stories. In part, because some of them share the life problems they are having (I'm not saying this is bad), and in part, because there are some fantastic stories out there. However, it just occurred to me that what could be happening with those who consume my art is what happens with my pets: they become very independent. I don't raise lovey pets. I raise healthy, independent pets. Perhaps my listeners and readers are similarly independent. It could also be that since the story is quite long (126,000 words) and the podcast has a bunch of episodes (140), people are just consuming it without feeling the need to comment. We're going to be releasing the first three chapters of our D&D story in a couple of days. I'm interested to see what kind of feedback we'll get (since it isn't exclusively mine).