is this an unecessary udpate? maybe. i just wanted to see how things will run with the new blog page haha. i really liked putting this page together for a specific idea, i think when i'm back, i'm going to re-do a lot of the themed pages so they are all unique. also if i dont yap about my travel anxiety i might actually die, so!

AGGG THIS IS IT. i go away today. i just came back from dropping hops off at the exotic vets to board while i'm away. i love how much they love him there, they know who he is before i've even told them my name. as much as i'd love to just keep him at home in his fancy tank, it takes a special kind of person to look after and handle my live roach colony and unfortunately that is nobody in my family.

everything packed and ready to go....i've been so nervous about this trip but could not tell you why!! i've done way bigger trips in the past - i went around europe when i was 19 for a month and had a great time with no nerves at all. something about this though...idk! i wonder if its because it's with two close friends and i'm worried being stuck together that long will cause problems. highly unlikely because i love them to death. i think i always have this thing before going away, the prospect of leaving my comfy little safety net of home behind for such a long time makes me kinda sad but once i actually get there, the prospect of new adventures overrides that. regardless!! i am packed. i have everything. i could not be more prepared. i even have a gifts list. what i dont have is things downloaded to my ipad, however, since the wifi at my place has been shot since it stormed over the weekend sooo that's something to do on the hotel wifi during my layover, i suppose.

i will be bringing my film camera with me since that's something i want to dedicate a page on the site too as well. i will probably do its own travel page for japan and then dig out my old scans of the last few times i used it and get a little page going! excited for the future of this site, it's been such a fun little journey cobbling it together :)

i'm finally home!!! i had such a fantastic trip, i enjoyed myself so much and it was such a well needed break from just...everything. it had been four years since i took a break from work prior to this.i still have a few days off this week which i'll be using to get some last minute bits and pieces done, but for the most part, i can just chill! we did so much while we were over there, i don't think i took a single day to just chill and do nothing. we spent about a week in tokyo, and 4 days in both osaka and kyoto. i have a much more detailed list of stuff i want to talk about, but the plan for that is to make it's own little page similar to my ticket stub scrapbook i keep. maybe i will just digitalize that? hmmmm

i am far too tired to sort that out today though - my flight home left haneda at 10pm, landed at 6:30am and then transfer straight to another plane and then an hour long train ride home. exhausting. i love travelling so much and i always never want to come home; there's always so much more to explore and experience, but man. the second i get home, i realise how much of a homebody i am. i miss my Stuff, yknow? my things. my knick knacks and houseplants. the next few days plans are to collect Hopscotch, get my film developed from the trip, possibly set up a film photography page here? not sure. it's certainly an amateur hobby and i barely know what i'm doing but i guess it would be nice to document the process. + finish the tv show i downloaded for the plane but never finished, catch up on the new fun games i've missed, etc etc. watch this space for a japan trip page! i have some ideas, just need the mental energy to excecute them :)

see what happens when i don't make myself write something once a week, is i simply do not write anything at all!!!

it has been non-stop busy this last few weeks since i returned home, with the introduction of a new vet into the clinic and my head nurse still away, i am pretty much the first person people are coming to with all sorts of things. i am very tired and very stressed and honestly, not that much more knowledgable than anyone else! and yet. i actually am going to be staying in this temp head nurse role for longer than i was supposed to be, which i want to be unhappy about but i think maybe i've bypassed all feelings and went straight to reluctant acceptance territory. this is my life now. i am all of lower management all at once.

despite this, this month has been exciting and full of good things actually! i have been eyeballing this wolf skull for sale that nobody has bought for months and months, and finally just decided to buy it and stop wistfully staring at it. super thrilled, it's such a cool thing to add into my collection. i did some bone upkeep this week because i noticed my cabinet was smelling a little greasy, and the culprit was my goat skull i have been hoping was not as greasy as i thought it was when i initially got it. it very much was, it spread so badly at the base of the skull, so i took that out to degrease at the beginning of the week. soooo much gunk came off that thing by the today, i think i'm going to make it a habit to just degrease any big skulls myself in general before i take display them. can't be too safe!

i also went to not one, but two whole concerts this week - mother mother, and twenty one pilots! devastated i missed hozier tickets (sold out 0.4 seconds after release) as he was also playing this week, but i still had so much fun at the two i did go to - it's nice to make my little teenage self's dreams come true. i really do want to somehow integrate the concerts i've been to into my music page when i eventually get around to creating it, just gotta figure out a way.

i went to both concerts on my own, which i usually do anyway, but i have to say that the mother mother crowd was the nicest concert crowd i have ever been in. i made friends in the line, everyone was so kind, i had a few people move aside for me in the pit because i am short and they were blocking my view. so much fun!!

i got home from this at like 12:30am and had to work the day after. AGONY. and then the night after was my 21p concert! i was seated for that one unfortunately - truly i hate seated tickets, it's no fun at all, but I bought them last minute and beggars can't be choosers i suppose! i had fun all the same though. i remember watching the blurryface tour on youtube in 2016 and wishing that was me soooo bad, i just wanted to see trees played live with all my heart, i'm so glad their routine for it has never changed. so much fun!!

everyone loves unsolicited concert pics right? everyone loves hearing predominantly me screaming into my phone over shaky footage, right?? i just want to share 'hayloft ii' specifically because i love the energy of the crowd so much, they opened with it and everyone went fucking bonkers + half of 'oh ana' because i got soooo close to the front

i solved a mystery! not a very good one, but a personal one.

here's the backstory: when i was a kid, i had a dance mat. i have very fond memories of this dance mat, i was obsessed with it. it was a plastic thing, plug-n-play tv game, and was so obviously a shitty knockoff ddr game. it also had pinball on it! you played by stomping on the bottom two arrows to control the paddles. i owned this in the early 2000's, i'm unsure of the exact time but it had to be prior to 2006 as i remember getting rid of it during a big move we had that year.

ANYWAY. there was one particular song on there that i was deeeeply in love with. it was called AFRICA. just that, no artists or anything. i think i liked it because it might have had pixel animals on the bottom of the screen during the song that i enjoyed, but also i just thought it was the best song. there were loads more, but i literally would only play the AFRICA song. this, of course, is an NES style 8-bit song that is just beeps and boops and barely sounds like a song, uncredited artist, found on a mystery bootleg ddr dance mat in the 2000s. i thought i'd never hear this song again. every so often, i'd hear the beginning of MGMT's Time To Pretend and would go holy shit, that sounds SO much like my mystery song! but alas. i couldn't find anything about it.

until this month. i was looking for old crt monitors on facebook marketplace and i saw someone selling a "retro dance mat 2003" and a photo of my childhood dance mat! never clicked so fast. i zoomed in on the photo looking for a brand name, but there was NOTHING. i started googling '2003 dance mats' and scrolling through a bunch of shitty ddr knockoffs before i spotted it: dance master (2003). it had a bootleg games wiki page that included a song list. my eyes were drawn to it immediately. number 5. africa.

obviously, first thing i did is go to youtube and looked up 'dance masters mat songs'. didn't find any at first, until this video, which immediately confirmed that this is what i was looking for. i recognised that intro screen so fast, so i swapped my search to 'dance masters 3 songs' and lo and behold: a playlist of all of the games songs, uploaded 3yrs ago.

AFRICA, it turns out, is a heavily modified bootleg rendition of AFRICA by Toto, which is actually one of my favourite songs today! it sure as hell doesn't sound like that's what it is, but it's very cool to know that some rendition of the song has been around and dearly beloved by me for literally as long as i can remember. the dance mat is easily amongst some of my earliest childhood memories.

now. allow me to share with you the shoddiest bootleg of AFRICA by toto that you likely will ever hear.

i'm going through a mild crisis, so i decided to start a fish tank.

i've had tanks in the past, but i have such a terrible habit of just buying everything in one go, shoving it in, and getting stuck with whatever was at the shop at the time, SO. i've been thinking about this for months, and i'm going to do a proper full planted tank. co2 system, biosoil, custom hardscape - the whole shebang. i bought the tank and substrate today, dug out some old sponge filters and a pump and heater. i'm very likely going to do cherry shrimp + a female betta, but that's not going to be for quite some time yet. anyway! biosoil base layer + sand substrate is what i've gone for - first time i've ever used sand, so i'm not sure how this'll work out. my personal preference for sponge filters is to gut the inside of them and shove an air stone in there instead, i find it just circulates everything better and makes such a nice little bubble column.

i spent most of the afternoon glueing together driftwood to make a decent shape to hide the filter system and allow for good plant growth. i really want to grow something out the top of the tank, a pothos or prayer plant or something, so i had to figure out a way to make some of the driftwood stick up over the tank rim. hardscaping is my least favourite part of the entire tank setup, and i struggled loads with this for hops' tank too. however! i managed in the end.

i'll only be able to chip away at this every few weeks, but thats okay! no rush to get it done as i don't have anything to put in it yet, and i really want to do it right. i'll probably just update this page as i go, i like being able to share progress pics :) today: substrate + hardscape!

alright so it's been roughly a week of cycling this thing. i'm lucky enough that i have a few established tanks in my household, so i have been speeding the process up a little by taking some plants and water from them. here's where we're currently at: i've got some anubias and java ferns in there, some floating plants for the top, and it's mostly within the parameters i wanted. i'm also trying to grow some pothos clippings in water so i can stick them in at some point!

yesterday i bought some shrimps! i wanted them in first so that a betta won't take them as a threat to an already established territory. this is my first time doing shrimps and i know in my heart that cherry shrimp are so much easier but...i can't do anything the easy way, unfortunately. also, cherry shrimp are so small. i don't want them to be opportunistically munched on by a fish, yk? so: i got crystal blacks! i love these little guys, they're so cute. so far, this is my only expense, which is a win! another week or two of these guys getting established + i may buy some plants when i get paid next week, and then i will go looking for bettas.