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Date: January 31st, 2020.

Time of Writing: 10:39 PM.

Weather: Clear, warmish.

Mood: Tired.

Day Overview: Something magical happened today. It was in Japanese class when I was taking a quiz, an inauspicious time if there ever were one, but something was different this go around. As the teacher came by and collected the remainder of the quizzes at the end of the ten minute period (was probably shorter if I have to be honest), I was nowhere near done. To be honest, I had about six of the ten questions even partially answered. Learning an entire new alphabet (okay, technically a syllabary) is hard enough when it's English sized, but when it's 46 characters, you need more than a week and a half. Yoshimura-Sensei comes around and collects the tests at the end of the time limit, and I happen to see over someone's shoulder that they, too, have not finished. At least I'm not alone, I think. But then something peculiar happens. The person in front of me isn't done either. And the person one row up and two my left. I realize that there's a good chance that I'm sitting in the average of students in this class right now. If I'm struggling, I'm not alone. Nobody is the only one feeling a certain way.

I switched out of my Ideas class and into another Communications intro. I need to catch up on two weeks of work and buy an overpriced textbook, but I'll manage. I spent most of my day in my dorm room, just kind of sitting around, and then I went to a meeting for prospective field staff and drum majors in my marching band. A lot of people showed up, which decreases my chance of getting it, which is good. From my understanding there are several class sessions that teach you how to conduct and tell others how to march, and then you put in an application before spring break. Once you come back, you do an interview and some other stuff. It's hard to recall. I have a weird headache right now. I went to the hockey game on campus afterwards, we're number one in our conference - or we were before we lost 0-3 against the number two tonight. It was disheartening, to say the least.

Oh, and if you're wondering about last night's radio show, it went pretty swell, my guest couldn't make it so I held down the fort on my own, which was a little spooky and by the end of the show I was losing it a bit, but yeah overall I think it came out well. MUCH better than last week, although beginning the show is a little frantic still. Tune in next week for a theme I absolutely have not decided yet.

On My Mind:Please let this new class be good please.

Consumed:

• Have We Met by Destroyer: It feels kinda like stock Destroyer stuff. His lyricism has kind of worn its welcome on me, the rushy feeling of trying to slam as many syllables as possible in a line. The music is pretty exquisite and dreamy, better than his last album, Ken, but honestly not by very much. I'll probably wind up playing something from this on the show at some point. It's weird how relatively solid Destroyer's style has been in the past few years. It's not the most musically striking album, and the production isn't really anything special. I don't know what to feel about this one, I don't feel very much about this album. 6/10.
• Vampire: The Masquerade - 20th Anniversary Edition by Justin Achilli and others: Probably the most entertaining RPG book I've tried to read. I've attempted the Dungeons and Dragons 5E core books, I've tried a few other systems, and this is the only one that really appealed to me. I finished too late to get the lore bonus for my campaign, since session zero was last weekend and everyone already collected their bonus, but I think this was worth it regardless. Such an interesting setting. I hope the campaign I'm going to take part in is going to be this interesting. There are a few gripes I have though - the organization of the book can get very blocky, and while the illustrations help break that up, it doesn't change the fact that having this all in one thick volume makes looking at two relevant pieces of information at once basically impossible. The Sample Play section is pretty bad, too, but I get that it was trying to cover a wide breadth of possible things to do. 8/10 overall.

Produced: Nothing, at all, which is alright.

Other Thoughts: That concludes the first month of this blog. I've learned a lot this past month, both about my limits as a blogger, myself as a person, and just how to write html. The second half of the month was pretty dry on website updates, but once I get back into the groove of life I anticipate progress to accelerate considerably, provided I allow myself the time to get better. Thank you for reading!