Summer Blog Post - #8

Five more days left in July. So only four weeks until university starts back up. Thirty-three days. Seven-hundred-twenty-nine hours. Forty-three-thousand-seven-hundred-forty minutes.

Some people might look at those numbers and keep stretching them out to make their summer vacation feel longer. I–on the other hand–can't wait for it start up again. My hopes are high for this term and I don't feel like anything will get worse than the second (24'-25') school year.

I'm sitting at my desk, my partner having just gone home after a morning of grocery shopping. I tried to play more Team Fortress 2, highly enjoying the immaculate vibes of the 2025 summer update. We got a friend who dipped out of the game for the last couple years to come back in and join us, and it feels like old times. I've put on a playlist of [adultswim] bumper music, and we just play. The only thing that'd make it all better is a cheap alcoholic drink to tie it all together.

Unfortunately the servers seem to be down right now, and I'm fighting the urge to take a big nap after eating a sizable lunch that I partially regret. I think the chicken would've done just fine, and no need for pasta to go with it. I at least got through an episode of Bobobo–bo Bo–bobo (2003)!

I opened up the blinds next to my desk to let some light into my room—watching the clouds turn grey and the sound of rain being amplified into my room through the air conditioner in the window. I think I hear thunder as well. The atmosphere of today really makes me feel sleepy. It makes it harder to think back on the week, but it does seem more clear now. I think it usually is clearer to me when my partner is around, as him just being in the same room as me makes me feel much better.

Last night we went out to dinner with an ex-coworker of mine, his wife, and our good friend who is also the vice president of my university anime club. It was a blast, and we talked a ton. Eventually it spiraled into three of them talking about Korean dramas and music, leaving me and my ex-coworker to talk about anything and everything. Still, I always feel like I messed up. I don't know how, but I always come out of those types of situations feeling simultaneously recharged in a social way, but also that I was too much for others. I'm sure that wasn't the case though.

Before that the week mostly consisted of my partner and I laying around the room. Watching some shows together, napping, reading, or doing our own things. I got him to finish the first season of Golden Kamuy (2018), then to start and finish the second season. He fell in love with the series, and now it seems to have jumped onto his new train of shows with grizzled sexy men. I can't tell if this is a win or not. LOL.

Speaking of anime, I went through and adjusted my ratings for almost everything I've watched and listed on my MyAnimeList. Most things moved down in ratings, as I gave everything a more fair score based on how I feel currently. All of my 10-ratings are still up there though. A few more things put onto my dropped list. A few more added to my plan to watch list. The usual.

I've started more shows, even though I shouldn't have. Now alongside eight Kamen Rider series and twenty-odd anime I've started To Heart (1999), Comic Party (2001), CITY The Animation (2025), GA: Geijutsuka Art Design Class (2009), and Oruchuban Ebichu (1999). We also started Sakamoto Days (2025), but It's just not that great. It follows the same path as most modern popular anime that I don't care for (i.e., Dandadan, Spy X Family, Jujutsu Kaisen, etc.). I don't know if I can see myself finishing it, but I'll try for now.

Something I noticed today when riding to the grocery store today was how I never really stopped to notice certain areas along the road. Certain areas where I always looked one way over the other, and how I never stopped to notice the greenery in other areas. It felt weird, as it's one of those things that I had driven past for twenty-six years, but only now acknowledged its existence. If those spaces were people, I wonder how they'd feel to final be noticed and thought about like this. Or if they had some kind of tracker for every time a pair of eyes actually laid upon it for longer than a second, how high would the counter go?

It makes me think of this tree, which I might never see again. It was a tree on a mountainside on the road to my paternal grandparent's house. As you got into the town, which is tucked many miles back into the mountains of Pennsylvania, everything is tucked into each other and cradled like a bowl—the edges formed by the mountains. On the side of one of them was this tree that stuck out above all the others. It's just a tree. I could also see it from my bedroom window in their house, or from the back porch, or the small kitchen window. It's just a tree. I would think on that tree often, and still wonder about it today. I can remember pointing it out to my grandmother, who had lived in that town since she was a child. The old two-room-schoolhouse she went to still there, although now rotten and abandoned (by this point in time, it's been torn down and made into a garden, and parking. 

Anyways, she never noticed that tree. I always wanted to go to it and look at it from the ground it came from. Maybe I'll force myself to. I'd also like to see where I live from the top of the mountain I stare at everyday from my own bedroom window. I want to see where I watched it, from where it watched over me. Same with this tree, tucked back in Monument, PA.

My grandmothers are both dead now. I have a single grandfather left on my mother's side of the family. This leaves me with no reason to go back to my paternal grandmother's house. I would want to keep it, as I was practically raised there. I liked that house a lot, so it felt sad cleaning it out after she died. It's a beautiful house, but it's just in a bad place. The town has turned into cheap rundown housing, the town overrun by obnoxious rednecks and those wanting to avoid social interaction. There's only maybe 20 houses in the town, the nicest street being the one my grandmother's house was on. If I lived there, I would feel kinda safe and comfortable inside only. 

I still want to see that tree one day. As well as swim in the old creek where I used to go all the time. It was at the base of a mountain, and had a massive rock in it that people would paint on or dive off of. Maybe sometime soon, but absolutely before I leave for Japan.

Yesterday I was laying in bed thinking about my bedroom walls again. I hate the color they are now, and deeply wish I never painted them over. I can't wait to own a home that I have full control over. Maybe more like "fool control," because I'd end up painting it several times over, I'm sure. Because of my need to move my room around when I feel like I need change in my life, I wonder if that will still apply when I live alone and finally feel comfortable. Will I feel in control and not want to move things around? Will it become a lot more rare than it is currently for me?

I wanted to continue the conversations my partner and I were having last night. We discussed some very taboo topics and our thoughts on them, finding out we are virtually the same on them. Who would've thought? With that we predicted and wondered about our future lives in Japan, reminded each other how much we care for one-another, and I tried to ask what they thought about my writings on here. At that point they could barely speak, only going as far to call them poetic. I wonder if that's really true? I always thought these were sloppy. I would like to pick up writing when I live alone, but I also want to pick up drawing and do a doujin of my own. Maybe even a full manga in the future.

I'm starting to feel warm. I also still feel a bit sleepy. Do I nap? Do I play Phantasy Star Online 2? Do I watch some anime in bed?

How about all three, but not in that order. I still want to play Team Fortress 2, so I'll most likely pick that up tonight after I wake back up. I hope the servers are fixed by then.