Sleep Tracking 3-3-21, Duolingo, CAH, L4D, etc. in Whey and Sonic Screwdrivers.

Time in bed: 11:25 pm to 8 am. Time asleep: ~ 7 hours.

Had a mere .5 mg of melatonin. Nothing else.

Seven hours is good. Just the normal rousing in the middle of the night. Just taking a little bit longer to fall back asleep than when I was younger. I may drop this titling if my sleep levels out to “normal”. Though, I will continue to annotate in my carbon journal.

I’m finding myself preferring this style of writing “the day that was” rather than “livestreaming”. Or livewriting. I do have a carbon journal, you know. I find that when I overannotate in my journal. Like, every hour or three. “Ate this.” “Took a walk” “Took a shower” “Saw a cat” “Washed the dishes” with everything down to the minute. What can I say, I’m a record-keeper. I find the act of constantly annotating takes me out of the moment.

Paralysis by analysis.

(Though, I am forever annoyed when someone writes something and does not annotate the date/time. Finding a slip of paper and feeling WIFE, WHEN DID YOU WRITE THIS. [She’s a writer, too.] If I’m writing a letter, I sometimes start and stop. So, I annotate the time I continued writing. Lets you compare where you were when the writing happened. I’ve had a writing correspondence with most of my long-distance partners. Not to mention friends. Should have them all in a box somewhere.

Oh, and all the love letters Wifey sent me while we were “courting”, I have kept separately. <3

Reminded of a letter from an old flame. She was writing on a bus. Location matters. But she also annotated the time. I don’t recall the time offhand, but it adds a lot of context for what her surroundings are. Morning, afternoon, and evening on a bus are all difference experiences.)

But yeah, let me see what I remember from The Day That Was. I recall doing a LOT of duolingo. I seem to go on a week streak, then “forget” or otherwise lose interest. Them come back. When I binge on Duolingo, it’s for at least an hour. Not really planned. I just see those points and SPEAK SPANISH, RECEIVE REWARD. And, of course, I see the graph, and then I feel “BUT I MUUUUUST BEAT YESTERDAY.” And I’m doing more and more.

You see where I’m going. Then I feel “I don’t waaaannnaaaa.”

Though, maybe I could postulate that taking a break lets it ferment, and coming back at intervals allows material to be processed into long-term memory. Whereas marathoning might not. I don’t know about anybody else, I generally don’t go straight through modules. Easy to remember words when you just saw them a minute ago. Not as easy when it has been a day or week.

Vocabulary was the bane of learning spanish in high school/college. Conjugation is easy. It’s very methodical and mathematical in spanish. Oh sure, there are exceptions, but whatever, all languages have them. English can easily be called “The language where all the rules are made up and none of it makes sense.” It doesn’t make dollars, either.

I like starting with a practice session. Then a reading story or two. (I haven’t been doing them, so they’re painfully easy.) Then I start at the bottommost module that I can access. Then I work my way upwards, one lesson per module, until my eyes blur over or I get bored. This way, each lesson gets easier and easier, and reinforces what I should have previously learned.

Also, to challenge myself, I never use the ‘word bank’. What can I say, I pride myself in my spelling. You will never know how often I use google/dictionary.com (when writing). Screw autocomplete or spellcheck - I can CATCH my spelling errors (most of the time). I can just look at an english word and feel “this isn’t correct.” So if I’m learning vocabulary in a different language, I should certainly know how it is spelled. Or, at the very least, feel when there is a spelling error.

(Anyone else sometimes type out a completely wrong word in a sentence, but spell it correctly? That’s why I reread myself at least twice. Chrome can’t catch that. I do it more than I care to admit.)

Oh, and chrome has that little squiggly red line under english and spanish. Oh, I know they should be capitalized because they are Proper Nouns. Well, welcome to the New Wild West of the Information Superhighway. We format as we please as a means to express ourselves, bitches. ENGLISH AIN’T SO PRAPAAAH NOW.

Gosh, that was a tangent. (Or elaboration? Thought thread taken to is conclusion?)

Anyway, I believe I got lost in social media for a time. Typical me trying to find a pun in everything. Oh, I’ve rubbed some the wrong way at times, but I generally know “Huh. Yeah. Not a time for a joke on this one. SCROLL.” Or sometime I go the opposite route and answer complete truth/honesty to a rhetorical question or something meant as a joke.

I do this in Cards Against Humanity.

See, the dickjokes will only get you so far in the laugh-department. Ditto Telestrations.

I’m not a good at drawing, which makes interpreting my artwork hysterical. Actual artists are the worst to play with, as they are too obvious and take too long. (I’m looking at you, Liz, even though you’ll never wander to this website. Meanwhile, Airk has the most beautiful stick-figures.) Fear me when I don’t know what someone has drawn, so I write “Existentialism.”

I’ve gotten some.... interesting drawing interpretations of Existentialism.

Back to Cards Against Humanity. Okay, this example isn’t exactly a truthbomb. But I can assure you that nobody was laughing. NOBODY was laughing. More… groaning.

Black Card: What’s that smell?

The bidding white cards were your typical jokes. I really forget what they were. I know some cards in the deck are akin to “pooping back and forth” and other ridiculousness.

I do know my winning card.

“Auschwitz”

Yeah.

It’s not funny at all. But there’s an iota of truth, and that’s why it won.

Gosh, I can’t think of any other examples. Been so long since I played.

Let’s.... move away from that.

Somewhere in my social mediaing, I noticed my mood dropping. My theory is what a friend has coined “toxic positivity”. I can NOT stand posts “MY KID SHITS ICE CREAM AND VOMITS SPRINKLES.” “ALWAYS STAY POSITIVE AND BE HAPPY FOR THE SMALL THINGS IN LIFE.” Okay, great, you are happy, or this is your way of compensating for the eventual heat death of the universe. Cool?

I won’t take away from your happiness. I’ll just scroll on, or simply not click.

So, sensing my decline in mood, I decided I should kill some zombies. Left4Dead is very cathartic. An “older” game by DEZ KIDS standards, but still very fun. I still don’t have every map memorized, but I know the style of the game well enough to check every room for spare zombies. Never know when the hoard will attack.

I have online grouped in the past, when I was really playing a lot. Some groups would specifically stick together, watching each other’s back. Especially at the end-level climax, deciding collectively where to make a stand. And some other groups, there’s that one IDIOT who is just trying to rambo through.

Oh, believe me, when I first-first played Left4Dead, I went in DOOM2 style. QUICKLY learned my lesson and slowed down. The random spawning nature of the zombies means it’s never quiiite the same game twice. Won’t forget a recent time there was a witch. I didn’t realize she was right by a gas station on a certain level. As I always tended to, I blew up the gas station. WHICH BLEW UP THE WITCH.

Should have gotten a hidden achievement for that. : D

Oh, this is from yesterday:

Color me slightly amused, slightly “gosh, glad we haven’t gotten THAT bad.” Though, if it were up to those maskless morons, that’s exactly where we would be.

Hrm. Think I’ll go BONE UP on Español. ¿Entiendes, gringo?

Last updated March 04, 2021