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Did you know that a DVD case, placed label-up oriented across the width, fits perfectly in a comic book longbox? Until today I did not.

The problems with being an avid consumer of media are cost & storage. Over the decades I slowly accumulated a whole lot of books and DVDs and (more recently) Blu Ray discs and manga. What I have not accumulated is rooms in which to place shelving. Yesterday I looked around at the increasing piles of things that wouldn’t fit anywhere and decided it’s time for some archiving.

Books I don’t want to get rid of but know I won’t be reading again soon? In a box, out in the storage closet. Old comic books that were problematic-at-best when I bought them and have absolutely not held up well? Recycling. DVDs I don’t want to get rid of but I don’t need ready access to? Oh hey, look at that comic book longbox I just freed up.

I took the opportunity to get all the DVDs into Libib, thus completing the “shiny platter” portion of cataloguing my media library. (Discogs has the music, Libib has the video content and some of the manga. I haven’t decided if I’m going to fully bail from Goodreads yet so the books & manga sections are incomplete.)

Sure, there’s a “shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic” quality to all of this, but I feel better now that I’ve done something, so hey, whatever.

Now that we’re past the three month mark of this work-from-home stay-at-home wear-a-mask hope-for-survival situation, how am I doing?

Eh. In some ways I’m handling it better than at first. The routine is routine, and I really only get anxiety spikes when I have to go out and do grocery shopping, which is once a week or so. In some ways I’m falling apart, as I’m not getting nearly the walking-around exercise that I used to. (While I carpooled most days, a few times per week I could expect to need to take the train to or from work due to circumstances. Fifteen minutes of walking paired with ten minutes on the train, one direction or the other.) There’s also the fact that some parts of me may be falling apart more aggressively than others, which is why I’m going through the bewildering, frustrating process of lining up a doctor. Er, I’m sorry, that’s “primary care physician.”

George Carlin had things to say about taking simple terms and changing them into polysyllabic mush.

Let’s see… what else have I been up to? Mostly I’m trying to distract my brain with shiny things, which I shall recommend unto you:

• Reading: I picked up the new Martha Wells “Murderbot” story, Network Effect, which is every bit as good as the other Murderbot installments. I picked up Myke Cole’s Sixteenth Watch, a near-future military-sci-fi yarn with a stellar cast of characters I want to see more stories about, please and thank you. John Scalzi’s The Last Emperox wraps up its trilogy in grand & dramatic style complete with a couple of genuine surprises. Seanan McGuire’s Imaginary Numbers is another solid entry in the InCryptid line, picking up the story of Sarah Zellaby, who featured prominently in earlier installments and gets her own focused arc now. Dipping my toe further into the imported light novels scene, I bought the first installment of both My Next Life As A Villainess: All Routes Lead To Doom and Rascal Does Not Dream Of Bunny Girl Senpai due to my enjoyment of the anime shows they inspired.
• Gaming: I bought Fire Emblem: Three Houses for the Switch months ago and finally hunkered down to start playing. It’s good! Who knew? I bought the “early access” for Torchlight III which is… in early access, yeah. Hooboy. On mobile it’s mostly the Seven Deadly Sins: Grand Cross hero-collector “gacha” game, which is easily one of the best looking such titles yet. (I have… issues… with the source material but damn it makes for a great game scenario.)
• Watching: The aforementioned Next Life As A Villainess is a dorky, ridiculous, low-budget fluffy bit of anime and I love it to pieces. We’re working our way through the new Fruits Basket series as well, hoping COVID-related delays don’t ruin the prospect of finally getting a complete rendition of the story. I re-watched the Bunny Girl Senpai series after the boxed set arrived on my doorstep; it holds up to a repeat viewing just fine, and that convinced me to pre-order the movie Blu Ray (which just shipped). Speaking of movies on Blu Ray, I now own a couple of this years GKIDS releases, White Snake and Promare, both of which are gorgeous in their own ways. Most of the rest of my viewing time is taken up by documentary shows on CuriosityStream which is proving to be a well-spent few dollars per month. (There’s a New Zealand show with a bit of a Mythbusters flair called “Nigel Latta Blows Stuff Up” that I got a big kick out of.)
• Listening: Our household is on a huge Sawano Hiroyuki kick, with the common music library adding the latest 3-disc SawanoHiroyuki[nZk] collection boxed set as well as several soundtracks (Seven Deadly Sins, Promare, and so on). I’m also glad that the year started out with a solid Mono Inc album release, The Book of Fire, as well as a new Pet Shop Boys record worth owning, Hotspot. Now we just need that crowdfunded Assemblage 23 record to arrive…

So there you go, if nothing else I may have pointed you toward something entertaining to help get you through all of this.

Another month without posts, another month without making any progress on either of the hobbies I was working on.

Look, let’s just agree that trying to carry on with creative endeavors under these shelter-in-place conditions is a daunting challenge and leave it at that. Right now I’m just glad that I haven’t completely lost my mind. My big fear now is of a hellish summer, both in terms of the virus and in terms of heat. Ugh.

I hope you all get through this okay.

Forget all the things we were going to do, all there is now is what little we can do in the time and space we have.

The original plan, of course, was to get back to working on something to do with Blender 3D and the ducks. Then my computer started misbehaving, so I can’t trust it to do renders. Another plan was to get out and do more hiking. Then the stay-at-home order arrived (shortly after my employers issued a work-from-home order). And so on, and so on. At this point we’re simply glad that we stocked up on toilet paper before the hoarders took over the grocery stores.

I barely leave my room anymore. It’s where I work, has been for a couple of weeks now, and where I play, since listening to music and playing games and whatnot (such as my ailing machine permits) involves the computer that’s at a desk in my room. This is really adding insult to injury since I was stuck in my room back in February when I came down with a cold, then I was mostly stuck in my room during my birthday stay-cation.

Am I getting tired of these five walls? Oh yes, yes I am.

But the alternative is being reckless and getting myself sick, or worse, getting someone else sick. So here I remain, with a lovely view out my window of the apartment building across the parking lot.

I hope you’re all doing well, friends.