Author: Mary
Things and such.
Sidequests Week 38 and 39
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!
Sidequests Week 37
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.
Sidequest Week 36
Sidequests for this week included visiting a local attraction, hanging an inspirational poster or picture where I will see it often, and researching my name’s meaning.
This weekened I visited a Buc-ee’s gas station for the first time. Those tend to be treated more like a tourist attraction for Texas, and I have friends that love to go and buy lots of the merch and snacks. I primarily went for the snacks. The nearest one to me is the one in Denton, TX, which was still a good couple of hours away, but it was a fun experience at least.
The inspirational poster one was a bit hard for me. I ended up buying one, but gifting it to a friend.
She loves unicorns. It was actually something I had bought at Buc-ee’s. I know the goal was the hang something where I could see it, but I do have things that kind of count near my computer anyway. I have a cut out from a daily calendar of quotes that I was rather fond of and cut out to tape to the base of my computer monitor. It says, “Fear not for the future, weep not for the past.” – Percy Byshe Shelley.
I think most people have looked up their name’s meaning before so that was a fairly easy one for me. There are many different name meanings for Mary, depending on what you consider the root word to be, but the associations with “the sea” and “bitterness” are the most commonly found ones. It’s typically associated as a Biblical name. But also depending on the root, can mean “rebellious” or “beloved” or “wished for child” which are not meanings I had seen before.
These ones weren’t too bad. I’m thinking perhaps this next week I will try to do double to make up for the missed week. We’ll see – it depends on how chaotic things get for me.
Sidequests… oops!
I didn’t complete any sidequests this past week for once! Which means I will be running a little into the new year instead of evenly finishing out this year, or I will have to double up on sidequests for one week. I’ll decide how I want to handle that at a later point.
I’ve been ridiculously sick and mostly in bed through the latter half of last week though, so I feel like that is a decent’ish excuse?
mehryment 