My Diary #238

Life

This week was a transitional one -- my legs were still aching from Saturday's walk through most of Sunday and Monday, work was very, very busy with the cleanup of old institutional accounts that we were-- are still doing, it was raining on and off for most of the week which was great weather for my mood but bad weather for going out much, and I didn't receive any packages or deliveries this week to show off.

Thanks for reading, see you next week!

Just kidding. But it didn't feel very long. I took this Friday and next Monday off of work in order to step away from work for a bit, as things were getting very raw. My boss suggested I take Thursday and Friday off, but Wednesday afternoon was the day we had that conversation and I still had plenty of things on the go (I'm not sure he realizes how busy the project has left us since he has so many projects he's juggling at once), so I said I'd do Friday and Monday instead. "Why not all three days!" he suggested. Oh, this was a sneaky plan to make me work through my burgeoning pile of banked vacation time, isn't it. Nice try. I like having the pile. I just took the two days in the end.

Having fallen dreadfully behind in the scanning process while working on my blog, and still having a big to-do pile from my trip still sitting on a mat in the middle of my living room, this will likely be the next project that I will work on -- I need to get through the Edmonton scanning backlog, the loose stuff I've received in the mail and from walking around that aren't part of events (the events stuff like UFest and the Canada-Wide Science Fair last week go into separate, individual bags for later processing), and I need to start to put a dent either in my events pile or in the pile I brought home from my trip.

I also need to figure out a good pipeline for my scan processing (i.e. what to name them, where to store them on my drives), and from there, figure out a low-friction upload path to the Internet Archive. I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I was thinking of using Gemini as part of this process, but after trying it out for a couple of documents and letting it sit for a while so I could ruminate over the results, I don't like it for "normal" uploads like things like ads, and even for more specialized uploads I end up rewriting most or all of the output. It does seem pretty good for looking up context that I might not be able to find on my own though, kind of like a superpowered Google search, or for describing an item that doesn't have a proper name or advising on what information I should or shouldn't include, and I do sometimes like its suggestions for names or tags, but I've not been impressed by its description-writing antics so I'll probably mostly do that myself, and even its OCR skills, extracting text from pictures, can be suspect at times, which is disappointing. Oh well. It will probably become more useful again when I get around to scanning some of my Japanese, Chinese, or Ukrainian documents though.

Now that all of my archival supplies are in, I've also started bagging and tagging stuff depending on how valuable/quirky/special in some way they are to me, out of the stuff that I want to keep. For example, all these things got sorted into the Keep pile and got the cheaper but still archival-grade polypropylene bags:

The first of many to go into little archival bags instead of the trash pile. Well, maybe not that fox one. The little sheets of papers in each one are cut up papers from a pile of 500 Staples sheets that I got from the University bookstore when I was dabbling in those Drawabox art tutorials last year. I still do want to go back to them when time permits, but for the time being, the archival mountain is too big. However, those papers turned out to be acid-free as well, and although I have some printer labels and stuff that I could stick on the bag, I decided that I'd rather be non-destructive and use things that I could slip INTO the bag instead, like I do for my bag of Tigey pictures as well, so that the bags themselves aren't forever stuck with a label that might not suit them for life. I mean, it is pride month and all. We should all be free to change our labels.

Talking about those Tigey pictures in their bag, I finally imported all those art commissions over to my polypropylene bags from the random art bags that they were residing in up until this week. All 14 of them are now resting in polypropylene bags inside my custom book sleeve, and each one contains an acid-free scrap of paper for their labels instead of using a random, folded, non-sticky memo sheet. I also used my Sakura Micron pens for the actual ink on the papers as that's one of the industry standard tools for the job (apparently, says Gemini).

I bought some plastic containers this week as I need a couple of them to replace some of my broken ones for when we move, and a couple more to hold scanned papers so I can separate them from the unscanned ones. These ones (local) are apparently specifically polypropylene too, which is what seems to be a good material for extremely long-term storage without the contents within yellowing out. They also have ridges for hanging document folders but I don't currently own any of those, I'm just going to use them to hold regular piles of things.

I also bought new slippers this week, replacing the ones that I had been wearing since I got home from Singapore two trips ago in June 2024. Those ones still work perfectly fine actually, but whenever my feet are wet and I wear those, a "sandy" layer of something or other appears between my feet and the slippers and that really annoys me. Gemini said something about exfoliation and that it's harmless, but I couldn't otherwise find a good solution for it (besides to dry my feet better), but I also didn't really like that they covered the toes anyway, so I replaced them with a cheap pair that was perched on a shelf in Safeway, during their monthly Customer Appreciation Day, so that they were an extra 15% off. The Singapore pair is still in the apartment, just relegated to occasional kitchen use now.

Talking about the kitchen, one area where I've found Gemini to be of great use is in modifying recipes, or rather telling me all the bad habits that I'm doing and what I should be doing instead. Over the last couple weeks, it's modified my soup preparation from "dump all ingredients into soup" to "first, pre-fry your pork a little to brown the outsides, then set them in a container and put them in the fridge. Then, put your ingredients in -- except the miso paste and the blanched veggies, and let that simmer for two hours or so. Then, assemble your bowl by adding a couple pieces of meat and a fishball, 2-3 tablespoons of water, a layer of veggies, microwave that for 60 seconds, add a bit of miso paste into the remaining water, then ladle your soup mix on top."

Yeah it takes extra steps, but having someone (something) able to tell me the correct recipe timing and steps with the exact ingredients, tools, and space I have on hand, while having the ability to tell it to adjust by combining a few steps to save on complexity cost, has been a godsend for producing so much nicer, well, soups in this case. I had no idea, for example, that putting miso paste in for the entire 2-3 hour stew boil was actually killing a lot of the bacteria culture in it that causes the taste, since it still did change the taste before. And I still have plenty of room for wiggle and experimentation, since I hate being constrained by recipes, while at the same time being able to bounce ideas off of the bot to make sure I'm not going too far afield.

Thanks to the rain (and a lot of cooking), I've not had to run the humidifier this week at all, since my hygrometer tells me that the humidity in the apartment has sat around a constant 35-50% range. The first set of filters for the Winix 5520 air purifier that arrived in July last year has worn out its filters, at least according to the air purifier itself. Gemini claims that this light that's flashing red will always flash red after a certain period of time no matter if the filter is still *actually* good or not, but nonetheless I should buy some replacement filters soon, I guess. I have left it running basically 24/7 over the past year, minus the periods where I went on holiday.

Ever since I came back from my holiday, I've been struggling to recall entries for the dream diary every morning. However, when I have remembered dreams they have been fairly long ones, and this week saw TWO really cool dreams that are likely at least 7.5/10 if not 8/10 dreams, the latter of which will qualify them for the highlight badge in my dream diary. When I eventually get around to importing the 2026 dreams. So like in 2030.

I went out twice this week, the first time being on Tuesday for groceries. On the way back home, I snapped this picture at Southgate Centre:

A Pride Month installation! Very cool. There's also a giant bear down in our apartment lobby:

I wonder if he's Pride Month-related in any way?

Saturday June 06

The second time I went out was on Saturday (yes, I did most of this blog on Friday again), and the reason for this was linked to one of the items in the polypropylene bags above. The item on the left side of the second picture was an Old Strathcona/Whyte Avenue walking map (local) made by the Edmonton Queer History Project, and I found out through research on the website (while uploading that walking map to the IA) that there was a Downtown version of the map (local) as well! But unlike the Old Strathcona one, which as it turns out has a handy-dandy list of places (local) (ooh, some of the locations have posters) that one could grab a copy from thanks to the really well-organized Old Strathcona Business Association, there was no such list for the downtown one.

So I emailed the Edmonton Queer History Project folks directly to ask where I could get a copy for myself, and was told that my best bet would be EVO, or Evolution Wonderlounge (local), a local gay bar on Jasper Avenue where the Edmonton Queer History Project's office was located. Great! I've never been to a bar, much less a gay bar, but this gave me a perfectly valid reason to go, so why not? It opened at 4:00 pm daily, and there was a scheduled break in the relentless week of downpours on Saturday, so that was the day that I planned to go. And while I certainly wasn't going to walk 40,000 steps again like last week, I figured I could just string together a few stops while I was traipsing around our western downtown/Jasper Avenue area as well.

For starters, I took the train over to the Bay/Enterprise Square LRT station. Never mind that The Bay, as an independent entity, doesn't exist any more. I picked up a couple of brochures while there and went to talk to a friendly security guard to ask if there was a physical map of the building, but no such luck. I then walked westwards, and hit my first formal stop on my grand tour, Wee Book Inn (local).

This is a second-hand bookstore in town, and they're also famous for having a cat at each location (and both current and past cats are listed on their website above), but if there was one at this location that day, they did not grace me with their presence. But I like stopping by these stores to specifically look for Choose Your Own Adventure style books, particularly from the Fighting Fantasy, Lone Wolf, and Fabled Lands series of books. These days they're almost sold out of them though, and when I've inquired before (at both branches) I've been told that they sell really fast nowadays when new stock does arrive. Interesting. This store actually had a couple of them still on sale though, but boy were they on sale.

I ogled those prices for a couple of seconds. I'm used to them costing $5 to $10 at Wee Book Inn in the distant past. And now they're $40? $60? $100?! I have a lot of those books, I'd be rich if I turned them all in. I turned right back around, and walked out of the store. Onwards!

My next stop was the Downtown Farmers' Market, which apparently runs every Saturday this year from May 16 to Oct 10.

The lineup apparently changes weekly, but the lineup this week (local) is forever captured in a local screenshot here. I went around to collect business cards from here, and came away with 12, along with a couple of other things like postcards and magnets. I also bought a jar of honey from this lady after chatting to her for a bit:

I had needed a jar of honey for some time and this stall, Maple Greenview Honey, were the only vendor here that sold honey. I chatted to the lady for a bit, refused a discount that she wanted to give me for not having a smaller jar of their unflavoured honey in stock (the discount would have been for a small jar of lemon honey), and bought a slightly larger jar of the unflavoured one instead. Hooray, I have honey for my tea again.

There was also an anti-coal mining petition that I signed. I had seen these booths set up last week at both UFest and the Grown-Up Book Fair, but did not want to sign up before reading up on it first (local). After I did, it seemed reasonable, so I signed it this week when I saw another booth. No idea how many signatures they have right now, but it looks like it ends in three days as of writing.

Lastly, as seen in the lineup webpage above, there was actually a guest artist on site this week -- Laurel Hawkswell. I did have Tigey with me, but I actually already had a caricature of Tigey from her from last June, almost exactly one year to the day, and she still had a bit of a queue waiting for her at 1:30 pm when I passed her (her official ending time was 2:00 pm), so I didn't stick around. I hadn't researched the vendor list before going so I had no idea that she would be there, and though I didn't even disturb her to say hi in the end, it was cool to see her again! In hindsight though, it would be nice to catch up with her (she did Tigey's 3rd ever physical caricature) and show her my entire bag. And all the other artists.

After that market fun, I continued on west towards another bookstore called Audreys Books (local). Unlike Wee Book Inn, they sell new books only (I believe), and I also like them a lot because they feature a lot of independent authors, 2SLGBTQIA+ books, book signings, and more. I just never really go to them much because I don't have space in my life for new books for the most part, but they play a very important role in Edmonton. And they're on the Downtown Queer History Map as a stop on the walking tour, so the email that I received back from the project team had mentioned to try here as well to see if they had any copies of the map still. If they did, I'd be able to go home before visiting EVO at 4:00 pm. Alas, they did not, but I did come away with a number of free and neat bookmarks at least!

Next door to Audreys was a restaurant called Commodore Restaurant (local), and while tossing ideas off of Gemini earlier in the day for lunch places, it had suggested this place, a Western-style diner with some Asian food influences (and owners) that has been around for a long time in the city. Food history is right up my alley, and I've been fond of diner-style places since my Japan experiences, so I decided to try it.

That's a picture of the owner of the store, David Gee (local), and I believe (but it's a little hard to tell) his daughter, Meagan (local), the latter of who served me in the end. More importantly, here's the classic clubhouse sandwich that I got, along with a side of fries:

It was very nice, and nicely priced at $14.50, though similar to last week, I was rather unhappy that I ordered tea for $2.50 (it was $2.00 last week) and got a Twinings English Breakfast tea bag in a small teapot. The server did offer to refill the teapot once I was done with it, but I always think it's a bad look when I order $2 of tea and get a teabag worth 22 cents (local) from a grocery store. That part was lame, but the ambience and the meal was great so I did tip them at the end.

After the meal, I still had an hour and a half or so before the bar would open, so I took a bit of a detour to the north and visited the Grant MacEwan University campus. This was a rather scenic walk, with sights like this:

The MacEwan campus buildings were semi-open but mostly deserted, with the odd student and security guard walking around. I was headed for the John L. Haar Library there though, which Gemini told me was still open and was essentially public to visit, and I really enjoyed what I found:

What a pretty library. I love libraries. Our UAlberta ones are no slouches either, but they're largely taller buildings with a smaller footprint on each floor, this one was a long, spacious building with two storeys. I particularly loved these tables:

Here's an exhibition called Bruce the Moose:

And here's a whole shelf of zines that I really, really liked:

This is so cool! Why doesn't the University of Alberta have something like this? I read a couple of these and liked them so much that I asked Gemini where I could go to buy a few of these, haha. It gave me some ideas that I might try next weekend.

Anyway, I picked up quite a lot of ephemera from MacEwan between the library, an unmanned welcome desk, and an office with a table of brochures outside of it that I found, but soon enough it was time to head out and towards the gay bar. I noticed on the way out that there were a LOT of caterpillars wandering around the pavements, and I asked Gemini about them.

I must have saw about 30-40 of them during my walk to EVO. There's apparently a cyclical outbreak (local) of these tent caterpillars right now, and eventually we'll have a bunch of moths in their place. Thankfully I didn't see any sort of numbers close to what the pictures show. No cosmic horror-esque writhing mass of caterpillars on the tree. Just a bunch of single ones wandering around. Their backs glinted like little metal balls in the sun.

I walked south and west from the campus and eventually reached the bar about 15 minutes later. It was still just 3:50 pm or so at the time, but I saw a guy ahead of me open the door and enter the building even though it was supposed to open at 4:00 pm, so I walked right up and tried the door anyway and it opened. The place looked neat:

Bars aren't my sort of place in the least though, so it was like stepping into a different world, but it was a neat new experience. The bartender in the first and third picture handwaved me over quizzically, so I walked up to him and explained that I was here for the map. He hmmed and went into a back room and came back with my prize a little later. Map get!

I did have a negative experience here at this EVO bar though, which was that a sign on the door CLEARLY said that people would be carded if they looked to be under 25 or so. And yet no one checked my ID. Security these days I swear. Even worse, when I was taking the train on the way back home a bit later on, someone offered me their seat! I only had my regular sling bag with me and wasn't tired (and thus likely wasn't *looking* tired), and obviously I look to be convincingly under 25, maybe even under 18, despite my grey hair, so I definitely don't want to understand why I was offered a seat. Grumble. The journey home was pleasant and uneventful though, with the exception of this photo session that I saw, that looked like a post-wedding photo session.

Games

The bulk of my gaming time this week went to Neverness to Everness (local). I had downloaded it a month ago but had bounced off of it at the time due to the blog project and other games. This week though, I gave it my full attention and quite like what I've seen -- open-world urban exploration in an Asian-inspired city, with lots of Japanese and Chinese vibes, mild horror stories involving anomalies that the main character is enlisted to help solve, lots of things to collect and upgrade, lots of minigames to play, and lots of funny and flashy cutscenes. I just wish that I had the ability to turn off the UI and take pictures without using the in-game screenshot tool, which adds a character frame around the pictures like can be seen in some of the shots below.

They also seem to have what seems like a fairly forgiving gacha system as gacha systems go, since my pity rolls on one banner carry forward over to the next banner instead of resetting and forcing me to start afresh every limited banner like basically all other gachas do. What this means is, I get the guaranteed featured character from the limited-time gacha banner in 90 rolls if I don't organically manage to roll her, but if I only am at 60/90 when the limited-time banner ends, I will be 60/90 towards the guaranteed featured character on the next limited-time banner that cycles in when the previous one cycles out, instead of starting back at 0/90. That's very nice.

Other than that, I didn't really feel like or play much else this week!

Plushie of the Week #231

This plushie's name, Hanepyon, as mentioned on this site (local), is a mix of the "Hane" in Haneda (Airport), and "Pyon", a cutesy sound that isn't so far from something like "boing!" in the English world. He's the mascot of Ota City, a district of Tokyo where I stayed for the last 4-5 days of my recent trip, and have many good memories from.

I first saw Hanepyon in an exhibition in Granduo Kamata on Mar 20 2026, and I even left a comment on that blog post saying that I took one of every brochure there to bring home for scanning but could not also bring the plushie home because he was inside a glass case at the exhibition. A couple of days later though, at the Ota City Tourist Information Center at the nearby Keikyu-Kamata Station on Mar 22 2026, I found the actual plushie on sale and gave one of them a permanent home. I also discovered around that time that the Tourist Information Center itself was closing down at the end of the month, so I'm not sure where Hanepyon can be bought anymore -- I'm sure there are other tourist info centers or similar places nearby that might sell him, but who knows for sure.

Anyway, the Hanepyon Nuigurumi (plushie) cost 2,700 JPY at the time, which translated to $23.56 CAD. He was the third-most expensive plushie I bought on the trip, behind the Snow Miku that will be featured next week, and the set of two Ohanami teddy bears from ANA that I featured six weeks ago.

Front:

Back:

Top:

And here's a picture that was taken back at the hotel room that March evening and posted in my travel blog:

That washbasin that he's holding feels like it's made of a papery material. It can sit a small duck, as the Funny-Looking Duck found out back at the hotel that same evening:

Or as Ducky found out a few minutes ago:

This plushie has two tags, and here's the front of Tag 1:

Tag 1 back:

Tag 2 front:

Tag 2 back:

Dreams

Jun 01 2026

• I left a house where I stayed with my parents in Canada, aand briefly went over to Japan, heading there to dig around in a big voxel cube field to look for resources.
• During one of my excursions, the wind picked up and it started raining as well, and I heard over my radio that there was a tornado and typhoon coming. I was near a rural neighbourhood, and made my way there, heading into an unlocked apartment and then kneeling down underneath the triangle of one of the two concrete staircases on the bottom level for safety.
• Two people from upstairs came down to join me, a University-aged guy and girl. I made small talk with them, particularly the girl, who asked where I was. I said Canada, and she asked if I was born there because my accent sounded weird. Nope, I said, I was born in Singapore. She ahh'd. They were exchange students here themselves, and this was not their first tornado/typhoon. She confirmed that this area we were now all crouching in was safe.
• The world became eerily silent as the eye of the storm passed above us. I heard a creaking sound and felt the house shudder as it got torn apart into three pieces and lifted into the air, but the ground floor room we were in held firm. The other two did not flinch and almost seemed eager at this. Our room spun in a slow circle as I felt us going up for several seconds, then hovering in midair for a couple of breathtaking seconds, and then started to float back down again.
• When the house landed back on the ground, the entire room turned into a large vehicle, with the guy in the front left driver's seat, the girl in the back left passenger seat, and me in the back right one. The top two-thirds of the apartment that I had taken refuge in was gone, but the last third was attached to the top of the vehicle.
• The girl told me that houses in Japan were built to be modular in this way, and that the three pieces of the house would eventually automatically make their way back to where it was built and reassemble itself. However, since we were in this one, the guy was going to manually drive us back, which would make for a faster journey.
• We sped along roads at first, but eventually took an offramp and flew up onto the thatch roofs of wooden houses as well, many of which looked beaten up by the storm. Each roof acted as a ramp to reach the next one, although there was sometimes scaffolding that our house knocked over as we drove up and over house to house.
• We were not the only house-vehicle to do so as well, as we were trailing one that was some distance ahead of us, so I knew it was safe. The guy joked that some of the minor damage we were causing would be indistinguishable from the storm. I learnt that this was perfectly legal to do after a storm like this and many of the house portions that were automatically coming back on their own were programmed to do this too, which ensured that they would not clog up the actual roads too much.
• Eventually we reached the location where the old apartment was, and I bid them farewell before taking a portal home. I later tried to show my parents and siblings some videos and photos that I had taken while I was in the car, but it couldn't capture the absurdity of having one-third of a building on top of a vehicle that was flying over rooftop ramps, so they were not very impressed at it overall.

Jun 03 2026

• I was attending a magical witch class at University, located in a two-storey cottage located next to the Telus Centre on campus. The class consisted of a plump, middle-aged woman as our teacher, and about ten or so students including me, none of whom looked older than 10 years old. Besides magic, we were also learning social graces and how to be prim and proper ladies and gentlemen.
• The class itself felt temporary, like it was a one-semester class or after-school class that we just started less than a week ago and we classmates were still trying to figure each other out. I did make a couple other friends there right away though, a young girl and young boy who sat next to me.
• I also stayed at an apartment or dormitory somewhere away from the school, and took a ghostly magical train driven by a stocky Asian man in a dark blue uniform to school every morning.
• I remember that there was a digital display high atop the wall of my room, just below the ceiling, that showed the number of steps that I had taken in both kilometers and miles in my entire life. Both numbers were 8 digits long and the larger of the two numbers started with a 6.
• I remember two vivid scenes in particular. The first was when I was in my room, there was a part of my room where the top part of an escalator ended, and in the distance there was the bottom part of an escalator, but there was a void in between. Dad and a man that I did not recognize were standing by that bottom part, looking to get to where I was.
• I used my magic to pull and extend the escalator to me, but the extended escalator ended up not connecting with the escalator part in my room, it was long enough but the angle was slightly off and ended up about half a step below where it was supposed to connect. The escalator could still be crossed, but it was a little wobbly. Nonetheless, the two men started crossing.
• The stranger arrived at the end of the escalator steps first as he walked part of the way up the moving escalator, and I reached out my hand for him to grab onto as he stepped up onto my top part of the escalator without issue. He then continued upon his way.
• Dad, who was a little bit behind him, soon arrived at the end of the escalator as well. I was more worried about this because Dad could not walk very well anymore, so he had just let the escalator carry him, and I wasn't sure he could navigate the short difference in height between where the wobbly extended escalator ended and my escalator end. But once he was close enough to do so, I reached out to him and grabbed on to his hand and just pulled him up with my grip.
• I then put Dad into a personal vehicle that looked like a round stool with wheels at the very bottom, and something like a stiff canvas bag rising up from the edges of the chair to hold the occupant in place and prevent them from falling off or slumping over. It had similar functionality to a wheelchair. Dad asked if we could take a picture of us two, using the room as a backdrop, to send to Jon and Kel, and I obliged.
• Somewhere around here chronologically, I also remember arguing with Kel about how much she was sleeping in every day once I woke her up from bed. I'm not sure how it fit in with everything else though.
• The other scene I remembered was in school. There was a seminar event going on in that Telus Centre this week that was related to either computers or card games, and there was an ongoing prize draw for people who attended the half-hour lecture seminar at lunchtime every day. I realized that since the two buildings were next to each other, there was a 10-15 minute window where I could potentially hop down there for the end of the seminar after our last class before recess, enter the draw, and then make it back.
• Our class on that first Monday ended a little bit late though, and once it ended, I quickly slipped on my mismatched pink and white socks, and then my white canvas slip-on shoes, and hurried out of the classroom and over to the building next door. But I saw to my disappointment that the seminar was already over, and there was a crowd of people outside the building, where an announcer was calling out people's names.
• I decided to stay and watch the ceremony to see what it looked like anyway though. She wasn't directly giving out prizes to the winners, but was noting down their names in order to send prizes to them later. It also seemed like registration was only needed once and that would carry forward from day to day, but entrants still had to attend the lecture to qualify for prizes on that day.
• She also announced a few other names unrelated to the prizes, for example people who had been selected to take part in office hours that day to have one-on-one help sessions with the lecturer. I remember hearing Johannes' name announced here.
• After watching this for a while, I received a phone call from someone whose voice I recognized to be that of a tall and thin woman who was an administrative assistant with the magical school. The call itself physically appeared next to me as something akin to a floating fuzzy screen, through which I could see her.
• She didn't sound angry, but she asked where I was and told me that I needed to return to the classroom immediately. I realized with a start that I had no idea when the next class was going to start and how much time had already passed, and I blurted out an apology and started running back, with the fuzzy screen following in tow.
• I sprinted away from the building and prize presentation back to our cottage next door, up the exterior steps that led directly onto the second level, and then through a kitchen where two assistant cooks bemusedly watched me fly by. I then stopped in the wooden corridor outside our classroom, just before the final left turn that would take me into the class itself. I took a moment to catch my breath so that I would stop panting, made sure my clothes were not disheveled, and with as much grace as I could muster, I turned the corner, an "I'm sorry I'm late" leaving my lips as I hoped the teacher wasn't too mad.
• "HAPPY BIRTHDAY", everyone suddenly yelled out at me, popping little confetti cones in my direction as I stood there in shock. Even the teacher, seated at her desk and chair in the corner of the room, had one, though it was comically small for her. Apparently the girl friend I had made had somehow found out that my birthday was today and had crafted those to surprise me, and everyone cheered and clapped as I embarrassedly mumbled a thank you.
• The cooks and admin assistant also came by from outside the door to wish me well, apparently everyone had been in on the plot except me. Even the conductor of the ghost train came by, although he was wearing a silken face mask to protect against germs.

Jun 06 2026

Dream 1

• There was a small school with a brick building that surrounded an inner courtyard and garden that I was visiting. The building was about three or four stories high. I had a limited ability to travel forwards and backwards in time a few years within the school to see the start and end of its operation period.
• While the school had a decent number of students and was quite vibrant near the start, I heard a male teacher bemoaning to a female one how the school rankings had dropped over the past six years when I travelled to near the end of its lifespan. I learnt that they fell out of the top 5 in the school rankings once the king's son transferred out of the school, and this hurt their enrolment a lot.
• Zixiang and Huihan were students here and I met them several times. Zixiang had a secret hideyhole that allowed him to survive the years, and he would likely be fine even after the school closed down. This hideyhole was a storeroom where he had placed a bed and collected a large number of items from around the school. There were many stacks of items everywhere and barely any place for someone to walk around the room.
• I visited it once and told him that I wasn't even going to ask if I could stay cause I knew the answer was no, since there was not enough room in there to add a second bed due to stuff lying everywhere. He nodded. I said that I'd liked my own hideyhole somewhere eventually but would concentrate on collecting one of every item in the game.

Dream 2

• I was visiting some friends at a third-floor apartment near a different school. These friends were a different group from my main one but were casually trying to recruit me, and as one of the problems I had with the original group was finding a place to stay at night after school, this group told me that I could crash at their place any day.
• The owner of the apartment said that if the door to this apartment was locked, then he also owned another apartment on an upper floor that was always unlocked and usually empty that I could try instead. Occasionally there were lots of people staying overnight though, including many non-humans.
• I was already tied to my friends at the original group for now and didn't want to change my primary friend group yet, but I nodded in thanks. We both knew that if I did join them it would still be months away in the future.
• I was building a score sheet for my main group of friends on a sheet of foolscap paper, this was structured similar to a sports table with a row for each person listing the total number of points that they had in some activity. Apparently my new group of friends also had a similar table for themselves already, and they showed it to me.
• Snippet: I was watching Nomakk struggle to play the opening sequence of LotRO on stream because the game looked too old and pixellated. I compared his graphics setting to my own and found out that he was missing a few options in it, so I told him to maybe restart the game and see if that would fix it and allow him to select a sharper resolution. I jokingly told him that if he said the game was too old, that would imply that I was too old too, and I would unsubscribe from his channel and leave.
• Later, I helped my new group of friends drag out a large, green trash dumpster from their place to the nearby neighbourhood trash dump area, which was another half-full dumpster of the exact same size.
• I emptied my dumpster, which was half-full of bags, into the central one while reading about how a glowing box product that people dumped their dung into and then tossed into the ocean was actually bad for the environment, as scientists who pulled a box out at the Antarctic found that it was glowing with radiation and killing the fish.
• At the dumpster, I also helped another woman who was pulling four green dumpsters and constantly complaining about having to dump so much trash at once. As we unloaded her dumpsters, I silently noted that she was just offloading all the same over-trashing issues to the garbage truck who would be by later.