The sidequests for this past week were to make my bed, create a meal or snack using only the ingredients in my fridge and pantry, and watch a video of someone painting or creating something.
One of the times I cleaned the house, I opted for washing all the blankets in the house, including the bed’s blankets and sheets and pillowcases. Once they were all washed, the bed was nicely made. Doesn’t really last long, of couse.
I also really badly wanted cinnamon rolls. A few weeks ago I had decided to make some but unfortunately I must have killed the yeast, so it didn’t rise at all and they were inedible. I had one last packet of yeast though, and really wanted good cinnamon rolls, so I tried again this past week, and they came out as they more usually do – delicious. It was nice after the disappointing batch.
During the summer, a coworker of my boyfriend’s offloaded a whole bunch of paint supplies to us. It looked like she was really into the flow/spin art thing for awhile and has a lot of partially remaining bottles of acrylics and some floetrol left over. I’ve been watching the occasional video of those because it seems like it might be interesting to mess with a bit. We’ll see though.
The sidequests for this week included drawing or painting something that reminds me of my favorite person, washing all the towels in my home, and singing my favorite song out loud.
Coincidentally, at the beginning of the week one of my favorite people asked for a painting. I typically don’t do requests, but because I had just drawn the sidequest, I figured I could make an exception. The post from yesterday of the smoking cat was his request.
I didn’t want to wash all of the towels in the house, because most of them had literally just been washed by someone else and I didn’t want to make it seem like I was somehow weirdly particular about it. I did however decide to do a deep clean of the kitchen (which would have been perfect for the previous week’s sidequest, but eh). So I did wash all of the kitchen towels, which mostly haven’t been touched in awhile and probably could use the freshening up.
The song was a little harder to decide – as I mentioned before, my favorite song is usually shifting. I don’t have a current stand out favorite that I could belt out at the top of my lungs. So I semi-cheated on this too by singing a lot with a variety of songs that came up on shuffle while I cleaned.
I liked them enough to put them on my phone, after all.
As a funny little coincidence while I post this: I turn 40 this week, and have hit week 40 in my sidequests.
I decided to tackle two weeks worth of sidequests this week. They incldued taking a walk, going out to see a movie or watching a favorite at home, stretching for 10 minutes, practicing mindfulness or a meditation exercise, cleaning a room in my home, and trying a new restaurant or recipe.
I stayed fairly busy through the weekend. Our town has an International Festival annually this time of year so I went to go check that out, and counted that toward my walk. I was planning to eat at a new pizza place in town for the new restaurant, but they were closed on Sundays, which is when my friends and I had arranged to have lunch. Instead, we decided to try the Junction Remix. The Junction is a Korean restaurant that is a local favorite and has been around for years. Junction Remix is their new location on the other side of town that also serves as a breakfast/brunch spot. They have the usual brunch favorites of pancakes and waffles, but also serve the Junction’s original bulgogi recipe and a few fusion foods that looked interesting. I really wanted to try their breakfast kimbap as soon as I saw it on the menu, because my mom makes her Americanized kimbap very similarly. My mom uses hotdogs, carrots, and eggs in hers – theirs had spam for the meat instead, and included spinach and radish. It was very good.
Sunday was also National Coffee Day, so after lunch, my friend and I went to Starbucks and got ourselves some drinks.
As mentioned before, I clean every week, so I cleaned every room in the house pretty good this weekend. I also washed all the blankets and bought some clips to hold the fitted sheet in place because it always pops off lately. So that was an easy task to complete for me as well.
After the day of lunching/coffeeing with friends, and cleaning, I had to attend a work meeting. I came home and relaxed by decided to watch the original 1986 Day of the Dead. I love zombie movies, and I revisit that entire series quite often.
For the stretching, I did some basic physical activity that I felt counted, and for the meditation I used the Headspace app again. Admittedly, I haven’t used it much through this year, so I needed to get a bit more out of the subscription.
And in doing all of that I completed two weeks worth of sidequests and made up for my earlier indicretion! Now to stay on top of it through the rest of the year!
Owing to a sickly cat, only did the one week’s worth of sidequests this week. They included staying off social media for a day, making a fictional character with a backstory. and telling someone I love them even if they already know.
Within the realm of sickeningly sweet, having a boyfriend made the last one easy. Done and done! And done again.
Staying off social media seemed initially easy to me but was a bit hard for a few reasons. Telling myself not to mindlessly scroll/browse wasn’t too bad, but the first day I tried the sidequest, I also looked up the menu for a local coffee shop that just opened, and their menu was on Facebook. If that was the only way to access it, did that count against me staying off social media? I wasn’t sure so I decided to try again the next day.
The next day, I received some links from a few friends, and clicked on them without really thinking about the source. The sources were posts on social media websites. So did that count against the sidequest as well?
At that point I decided that two minor infractions across two separate days wasn’t too bad. After all, I hadn’t opened anything purposely thinking to myself that I was going to scroll through posts on social media in general.
So that leaves the fictional character with a backstory. I’m sure the purpose of the card is the make one up on the spot, but I was thinking about characters I have created in the past. The main character of a story I used to work on in high school has gone through a few different names – at first her name was Nezumi, then it shifted to Panya when I grew out of centering so many of my stories around Japanese culture due to my anime/manga influences. She is a spunky, energetic, and fun loving half-elven teenage girl with shoulder length green hair and green eyes. She is a skilled martial artist, having been taught by her father who was part of the warrior caste.
In this particular world, elves belong to an isolationist society that looks down on other cultures. They’re so strict in their control of their society that intermingling with the other races is illegal, and half-elves are targeted by the assassin caste. Panya’s mother was a young human actress who was very outspoken about the restrictions of the Elven government, which is how she met Panya’s father. After Panya is born, an assassin is assigned to her family – her mother was killed when she was still a toddler, and her father died when she was a kid/preteen. He managed to kill the assassin assigned to them when he died, so the assassin’s daughter (roughly of an age with Panya) is forced to take up his unfinished assignment.
So at the beginning of the story she is somewhat of a vagabond who finally finds a place where she decides to stay – despite the fact her assassin will catch up. The backstory is kind of tragic, but she is very upbeat despite that, and a bit of a “trickster” spirit. I used to draw her all the time, so none of these images are recent.
mehryment 