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Tried a new fountain pen ink today. Not sure if I like it! It's lighter than I expected. Wearingeul's "Tom Sawyer"; I was expecting a dark swampy green, but it's kind of a medium grassy green. Not too light to read, but much lighter than I thought it would be. Anyway, I'm having fun working through all of the samples I bought.

Only a few more days until my scheduled vacation. Very excited about it.

- Went to the library to work on fic
- Picked up some books & library challenge prize
- Got lunch downtown
- Went to a yoga class
- Got a haircut
- Took some stuff over to mom's
- Did a final edit of the Liet/Pru fic and sent it to beta
- Worked on more fic
- Took some stuff to the thrift store
- Finished reading a book

Random thoughts:
* The library challenge prize was a little excessive (there was a lot of stuff in that bag, and some of it ended up in the bag that I took to the thrift store) but it did include a complete set of Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad series, and that's pretty cool.

* So happy that I'm almost done with this FTH fic

* Got the hairstylist to chop off ~6 inches of hair. That might have been a little bit short, but on the upside it won't get in the way during judo class anymore.

Feeling really blah lately. Not sure if it's due to change in the weather or what. I'm just really tired and ugh.

Or it could be that I had last week off, and this week I had to work, and that's all it is.

The package that I was waiting for came in, so I'm really happy about that.

WELL today was kind of a mess.

We got a last-minute complex request toward the end of the day that we scrambled to work on and will finish in the morning. It also has a very good chance of being cancelled. I did just enough OT for me to miss my bus and then I had to stand in the rain waiting for the next one.

Also had a tricky situation in which a client called us with a complaint, I contacted the vendor to check, and the conclusion we all came to was "the client is lying". So I had to find a tactful way to tell that to the person handling that client. (Fortunately, they saw where I was coming from). We don't get a lot of issues like this, but when they do happen it's always kind of stressful.

AND ALSO. I received a notice of a questionable charge to my credit card (personal, not work). SO, I had to call the company to deal with all that, and now it's locked and they're going to send me a new card. Did I mention that I'll be traveling out of province in two weeks? Fortunately, I have a debit card that I can use if it doesn't arrive in time, but uh... this was not as planned.

Also, the contract for the paid instructor at our judo club has ended, and he's going back to Japan. The club is going back to volunteer-only instruction now. Found out yesterday. I'm not entirely surprised - it's very expensive to maintain both the club space and a paid instructor - but the short notice is unexpected. Though probably it was a subject of board discussions for a while. Anyway, I did appreciate that he focused so much on technique, but overall this probably won't affect me much, though I expect there will be times when classes are cancelled due to lack of instructor availability. But we'll see.

...Can we like, rewind things to last week, maybe? I just ain't feelin' it, yo.

AHH my Penablers order came in today!! I ordered a bunch of ink samples. They're very sizeable samples, so I definitely have a lot to play with here.

One of the inks I ordered is Wearingeul's "The Count of Monte Cristo" - it has glitter in it. I'm going to be sure to only use that with a broad nib, because the glitter can be an issue. All of the other inks I bought are more of a standard type and as far as I know relatively well-behaved.

I'm going to flush out my W&B broad pen (it was due for an ink refill/change anyway) and give it a shot tonight.

I also put in an order with Buchan stationery for the Sailor PGS I've had my eyes on since January. It finally shipped today and I am going to be a bundle of nerves until it arrives. I'm still not sure which of the new inks I'll put in it. Several of the inks I ordered are Pilot Iroshizuku, and from what I remember hearing, Japanese inks do well with Japanese pens. SO I'll try one of those inks in the Sailor pen first.

( List of the new inks )

Ahh, I just remembered that I had intended to post the recipe for the lemon cake that I made the other day. So, here it is. As I mentioned previously, I thought this one was nice but not impressive; my family loved it, though.

( Madeira Cake )

Yesterday:
- Went for a massage
- Did some errands
- Worked on fic, sent revisions to beta reader
- Got my final hepatitis immunization

Today:
- Went to have coffee with Bea
- Went to judo

Coffee with Bea was nice. When we set up the meetup, she mentioned that she isn't able to go to Pride events any more. Which would explain why I haven't been seeing her at them. This would be the second time she's been banned from them. She was banned for a while, then unbanned, and has now been banned again. It doesn't surprise me, but I did wonder. But I didn't ask, and she didn't bring it up.

Planning to work on more fic tomorrow.

My coworker came back from his medical leave in the middle of last week. So, after discussing with him, I decided to take the whole of this week off, to make up for my cancelled vacation.

It's not quite the same as what I had originally planned. Different vibe, and different stuff going on. But that's okay. I'm going to try to focus on fun things, at the very least (rather than focus on doing extra chores or other things that I "should" do. Though there will be some of that).

I spent most of today trying out a new recipe for a fancy lemon cake. Two layers, decorated with glaze and candied lemons; the remaining lemon-flavoured syrup from making the candied lemons is also used to soak the cake layers before adding the glaze. My parents thought it was great, but I'm unsure - I didn't think the taste was proportional to the amount of work/time/cleanup that went into it. If I'm going to spend all day on a cake, it had better damn well be a fucking awesome cake. Could be that I was just tired from making it and having a hard time being objective, though. (Will share the recipe later, anyway.)