First(ish) Snow!

It technically flurried last Thursday, and I woke up at 8:30 AM to a dusting on Saturday (then woke up for real with it all melted), but today, it actually snowed and laid all day. I was driven to work by my dad, and it was the right call, since two people did come in, including one rental. We didn't get the facility plowed (the new (never used before) plow guy said it probably wasn't worth it), but in the end, it was pretty cloudy and dark most of the day, so I ended up shoveling a lot of ice a few times between around 1 pm and 3:30. Thankfully, it was probably ice atop snow, since it wasn't difficult to shovel and broke apart easily.

Man, that First(ish) Snow...

For being maybe 1-2 inches, that first snow sure left a mark, due to it turning into rain afterwards, then getting below freezing. I was driven to work on December 2, and did take 3+ trips out to shovel slush that had turned to ice out of the way before it froze even further, mainly around the entry pad. But then the next day, I drove to work, and in the afternoon, I did check and salt the hill a bit, seeing there was still a lot of ice, but even that wasn't enough at 4. I tried and couldn't get up the hill, my wheels spinning. I tried twice, before giving up and letting gravity slowly make me descend, still in drive. Abby and her people saw, and by the time I finally reversed and moved out of the way, she was telling a guy to put biodegradable cat litter on the hill. I also got a lot more salt and salted further too, then waited. They left around 4:30, and I finally left at 4:40 or so, and thankfully, I could make it up the hill this time. Even the next day, the ice on my side was still not gone, and the other side was still very icy (we worried less about that, so long as the path to turn out was fine.

Even today, on the 6th, it wasn't perfect, though it was much better by that point. It's simply been too cold (low 20s), and the sun doesn't hit the hill as long as it could, due to trees being in the way.

Christmas Specials

I watched two Christmas specials with my mom today: thePaw Patrol Christmas episode (new to this year, apparently), and Arthur Christmas. The reason for taping Paw Patrol was to get a better idea of the show and characters her Sunday School kids were into (they apparently have a toy and everything at the Sunday School). It was amusing hearing my mom tell me the names of the dogs; the kids told her about them. I thought the message was expected but bad: this dog was super excited for a new drill, and the lesson was supposed to be that giving is better than receiving, but by him sacrificing his drill for the sake of other kids' presents... he got an even better version of the drill, that was Santa's own version of the drill. If I were a bratty kid, I'd just think that means if I give something up, I'll be rewarded with something even better; that's not a good message. I do get that they have to have some sort of satisfaction at the end, but I wish it was maybe more related to feeling good/benefitting from "selflessly" saving the other kids' presents than just "you sacrificed your drill... so here's an even better verison of it!" Make it more personal and not the drill, darn it. Have some kids give him something special to them as thanks, instead of it just being Santa.

Arthur Christmas, on the other hand, is a fantastic movie, and probably one of the best Christmas movies out there. It's creative, has great characters, hits on the humor, and even has some fun designs. I've only watched the movie once, and that was a year or two after it first came out in 2011. It was nice to revisit it.

I also caught the very end of Scrooge, which my mom said was very dark. It's rated so-so, but I do kind of wish I came downstairs to watch stuff with her earlier. Alas, I was upstairs probably working on my D&D spreadsheet.

More site stuff

Over the last two days, I decided I wanted to make my own D&D page here, mostly to reminisce in the future, but also because I'm obsessed with making sheets. This is the first page where, outside of the "dossier" sidebar I use on most pages, I made all of the CSS from scratch (still looking up a bunch of things). I saved this page on Internet Archive, for posterity: [link]. His icon doesn't work (maybe because it's from Toyhou.se?), but otherwise, it's accurate.

Reminiscing about site stuff...

In general, over these past few months, I've started to feel a lot more comfortable with CSS. There's still a lot I don't know, but aside frome some hiccups like forgetting about things tied to other things, and not knowing which features don't work where (sometimes align won't work in specific combinations), I feel like I can do most basic tasks with just a few minutes of trial and error, which is a major step up from initially, where everything felt so complicated and intimidating.

Initially, when I saw all these various .codes and #stuff I thought "Oh shoot, look at all these weird niche codes I have to learn," and it made me fear messing with things, but now I realize those are just custom-named properties. I'm still not comfortable with #things, and I forget what they're even called, but I do know they're meant for when there's only one version of that thing on the page, while .things are used when there can be multiple instances. I've just used all .things for now, but I should start using #things. ...Maybe I should also relearn what these two things are actually called.

I went from fearing CSS to loving it; it's so nice to make one thing work, then tell a bunch of other things in the HTML "Hey, use this thing," and then BOOM, they're all changed, instantly. Variable colors are so nice, too, so I 'm glad the original template I used for most of these pages utilized that, since otherwise, I'm not sure if I would've known it existed (maybe I would've looked it up; I look a lot of stuff up).

I was initially averse to downloading a coding program, because I'm not good at learning new programs, but I'm so glad I did. Seeing edits in realtime on Visual Code Studio is so much better than having to save and hard refresh a page to see if something looks okay. It's also less laggy and has a suggestion feature which is super nice, be it adding my own past-created variables, or just listing very common choices for specific CSS (like if I do "display:" it'll list "block, contents, flex," etc.). Speaking of which, I'm still not very good with the different "displays," but I've been using a lot of grids recently. I love grids.

New to yesterday, I finally started fiddling with @media to try to make things look better on phone/small screens. It's still pretty intimidating compared to the other stuff, but it doesn't seem too bad. It's just redoing the same things, with different parameters, to fit a smaller screen. Not too bad, especially with real-time updates to make sure it's working. "Grid-template-columns: auto;" is a godsend, I think, making things that were formally multiple columns turn into one? I also learned about minmax yesterday, which is so nice.

Will I dare look into Javascript, to truly take things to the next level? That'd be great, but I think I'll hold off for now, since I'm still not fully comfortable with CSS. I did look into a very basic guide last month, but not enough to really do anything. It was mainly working with the Console, which was neat, and great for debugging, but not going to help with the actual function of a website.

I have no plans for it currently, but maybe I should better personalize my website with my new CSS knowledge, before jumping into scary javascript.

Speaking of which, here's an archive of my barebones homepage, to potentially reminisce about years later: [link] Once again, Toyhou.se images don't work, and for some reason, the sidebar doesn't work, but it gets the basics, at least. (The sidebar worked for Teo's page, though. It's a different sidebar, but they should be similar. Hm.)

Early Christmas

We had Christmas on my mom's side of the family early, so one family could go to Disney for a week longer. As such, I was happy that, as of last week, Geist was put on hold for the holidays, so I didn't have to wake up at 7:50, play, then immediately go on a 1 hour 45 minute car ride and be at someone else's house all day.

It was nice visiting M&M's house again; I think it's been over five years, given I wasn't able to attend the two graduation parties. Their two trees were very pretty. They did a White Elephant, which I didn't partake in (too stressful), but I did bring an $18 tin of Belgium cookies I bought for this at BJ's a few weeks ago, when going shopping with my mom. It made me feel like at least I was contributing something. I don't think the cookies went much (though some were taken), but more for me. I had six of them, myself (not all at once).

Uncle M got a (bluetooth?) microphone for Christmas pre-White Elephant (I think as a joke, since he kept the microphone with him at some event?), so he was using that during the game, which was amusing. I watched, mainly from the floor above, where it was much easier to see most people (since there were a lot of people standing, and I'm short). It was nice to watch. I wish I were more social, but hopefully they're okay with me just watching and enjoying. I prefer being an observer of things in general.

I also did some more website stuff when there, namely making Zane's Geist sheet, using Visual Code Studio. I got it mostly done there.

We stayed until around 7:30, then left, getting home past 9.

On a completely different note, I think I have permanent Tinitus now. It's thankfully usually not noticeable (I have to think about it), but whenever I do think "Do I still have it?," yup, there it is. It's a shame, not so much because it's a detrimental condition, but more just because it's a sign of the deterioration of the body as one grows older. Little by little, more and more things break down, and while very minor, this is one of them. There's no going back. Presumably (given this has been since Friday or so), I'll have this for the rest of my life. The one exception is if this is caused by TMJ; then maybe it'll go away, but while I blame a lot of temporary head things on my jaw, checking the symptoms one has when it's TMJ-caused, I have almost none of them (just a few "maybe"s and a lot of "no"s).

Ow

I slipped in the tub when I had one foot in, then banged my other leg into the side of the tub. It stung way more than I should it would, since I don't feel like I hit it that hard, but man, I was cringing in pain for probably a solid minute before I even tried to move it much. No surprise, a big bump formed over the next few hours, sizing probably around an inch across and two inches down. BIG BRUISE. I didn't put ice on it, but I did sleep with it propped up, since I saw having it above the heart was best. Regrettably, in such an odd sleeping position, I didn't sleep well at all. I can't even tell how much sleep I got, since I woke up so often, and a lot of my sleep was half-asleep, me being aware of my leg and its various positions (I still tossed and turned, so sometimes, I'd move it somewhat off my pillow mass.

On the bright side, while I am tired, I'm not dead tired. Maybe I got 4-5 hours of sleep. I don't know. I woke up at 8:30 to the garage door and couldn't fall back asleep, but maybe between 3 and 8:30 I slept semi-okay (still half-asleep multiple times, though).

Waking up (now December 16th), it still hasn't bruised, but I wonder how bad it'll look in time...

December 20: Christmas at Home

I got to leave work around noon (it was more like 12:20), for our Christmas celebration with the nuclear family. My middle sister and her husband were already there when I arrived. I believe we opened "non-Santa" presents around 3:00, took a break (maybe 30 minutes to an hour), then opened the rest. Lots of candy and stuff, as usual, along with a French cut Legere reed I'd get on Monday (it was my fault it's late; I didn't get around to sending a link until Thursday or so). It was too late to watch a long movie with the whole family, so we watched the Shrek Christmas special. It was okay, but I side mostly with Shrek, despite the story treating him at least partially at fault.

December 21-22: Home Alone

My parents went out to visit my dad's parents on Monday, so I was home alone for today. As usual, I was downstairs instead of in my room, and watched some True Crime on Netflix on TV, as well as half of Squid Game: The Challenge Season 2. It's not a good show, but for being gameshow slop, it's better than critics claim. I actually enjoyed some of the games, even if they weren't groundbreaking. "Catch" was probably my favorite, since it had some actual strategy with who you put where, because as people throw and catch, the throw distance between them and the next person get farther and farther apart. Simple, but effective, as a game like this should be. Slides and Ladders had a nice layout, if nothing else, and I suppose was a good idea for a "childrend's game" for this show (though I wonder if it was "Slides and Ladders" due to copyright? I always heard it being Chutes and Ladders. One lady was really whiny and annoying in this game, and sadly, she'd later go to win the whole thing. Oh well. At least the Poker Player who was already a millionaire didn't win.

December 24: Christmas Eve

We had literal leftovers for Christmas Eve, so that was funny. My sister and mom went to church (at 5 PM), and I tried and failed to nap, because I'm always so darn tired, especially when I know I have a day off the next day? It's odd. We watched a show or two after that. I think it was Frosty and maybe something else, but I don't remember.

December 25: Actual Christmas

Hurray, day off, though due to going to bed even earlier than usual (around 1:20, I think), I woke up at 10:20 or so and felt it was best to not go to sleep for another 2-3 hours.

We the two frozen pizzas (one Spincch and another Pesto) for dinner, and watched Home Alone on regular television, live, which is crazy, but was nice. Ah, the old days... Inconvenient, but so nostalgic. We watched the second half of Toy Story on another channel (I guess) after that, and then my dad put Elf on, from Hulu or something. Good times. I haven't seen that movie for a while. After that, we watched Rudolf, and then a second, old Rudolf my sister found on YouTube.

December 26: Wintery Mix

The day after Christmas had a bad weather warning, starting around 1 PM, so I was quite positive I was returning home early today, and I did. I initially planned on leaving at 12:30, but when nothing had happened yet, and the forecast had changed from 70% at 1 to 45%, I stayed until around 1:10 or so, when the sound of icy precipitation caught me off guard. I immediately left. Thankfully, the roads weren't bad at all, but it was definitely freezing rain or something, because my windshield could not wipe it off. On the bright side, it had stopped precipitating for a bit, so I didn't have to use my wipers much.