13 January 2023 - Today has been an odd day

I couldn’t get settled today. I’m not sure why, whether it’s because it’s Friday the 13th or what, but everything has been a bit . . . bitty.

I was drafting at work, which requires more concentration than stats (for me, at least), so trying to continue the K-pop end-of-year list was out of the question. I decided to listen to an audiobook, which would normally be achievable while writing, but after 2 chapters, I realised I hadn’t actually heard a word of it and had no idea what was going on. I gave up and put on one of my (many) EXO playlists, as they make the perfect background for anything (I think I now know why they always end up at the top of my listening stats).

Once work was finished, I caught up with a couple of K-pop-related Twitch live streams. I was going to multi-task again, as I found one of those rating templates that someone made for EXO songs and I thought I could do it while watching.

However, first, the colour scheme was all wrong. Who puts red at the top and green at the bottom? My brain does not accept that my favourite songs go under red. I did fiddle around with it to change the order, but then realised that while the person who made the template had very kindly made a little picture for each track, of the album they came from, the writing on a lot of them was almost indistinguishable (to my old eyes) without increasing the page so much that I couldn’t drag them to anything but the bottom tier and then move them up after. This soon became really annoying, so I gave up. One day (that eternally mythical ‘one day’) I will make a list of all the EXO tracks and rate them, but it’s not going to be today.

As I can’t settle to anything much, I decided to have a horror evening. First up, was the last two episodes of Island Season 1. I’ve just checked, and the first of the 6 episodes of S2 will drop on Friday 24th February - I can’t wait, as I’ve really enjoyed the first part, and it can only get darker from here on in.

Next up is Barbarian, which I’ve been meaning to watch for ages. Then? Who knows. 🤷‍♀️

One of the things I did today, was to take a photo of the rather fabulous nebula and stars pattern on my ceiling, provided by a little dinosaur egg light/speaker that I bought from Amazon as a Christmas present for myself. Between that, and the fairy lights on my Christmas plant (a present from my line manager for Christmas 2021) it’s been feeling very colourful and festive, despite Christmas now being long gone (or at least it seems that way). I’ve been waiting for the fairy light batteries to give up the ghost, as they’ve been on the verge of it for days, but they’re clinging on for dear life – I even left them on last night as all but the green and blue lights had gone out, but even now they’re still twinkling away merrily.

 

How the plant has survived and even thrived is a mystery to me, as the yellow rose plant he bought me this year (does he not know I live in a tiny flat with no room for plants and shit?) is almost dead already. I’m not sure how I killed it, but as I have no heating the lounge is generally about 15 degrees C at the moment, and I think maybe that’s too cold for roses. Either that or I overwatered it, but I haven’t given it that much, because I generally forget.

I’m also posting a picture of the steamed smoked salmon salad I made for dinner last night, as proof that I did actually make it. I think we all know how lazy I am, particularly where cooking is concerned, and as it was almost 10pm by the time I’d finished writing the blog (and yet, somehow I still didn’t manage to get it published until just before midnight – but I did manage it!) normally I would have not bothered or would have ordered a takeaway or something. But the body really wanted salad badly, so it got it.

Finally, I need to thank FTIsland for providing the soundtrack while I wrote this. Even now, I find it hard to give up Unthinkable, and the rest of 2021's Lock Up is excellent too.  

Tomorrow is the weekend. I wonder what excitement it will bring?