bits - kick my tail, imaginary time

had some reflective 'I should kick my own tail' thoughts today that I have several more small stories and books and I just haven't been able to drag myself to work on them but then I go and spend a few hours here and there in Minecraft building a huge empire that doesn't exist - which imaginary world is more productive? It is all 'imaginary time', like dreams, but a bit more tangible.

 

I have another Mikki story I had half-realized - and several others, and then a few more popped into my head today and I captured an iota of it... and yet I sit here staring at what I sent myself on my lunch break and saying 'Do I really want to work on that or do I want to go build a road to nowhere in the game' again...

 

Both past times can be done at midnight or 3 am...

only one of them will ever amount to something in my publish queue....

 

  

 

Mikki Mack - the quite pretty small grey cat with the glorious long fluffy tail 

 

I worked on a few simple illustrations and thoughts for that story.  And I thought about tomorrow, which is the Solstice.  I have to work tomorrow, and it will be early.  What if, instead of walking all the way up to the road and watching the first light and walking all the way back down, I made coffee and an egg and watched the red day lilies light up in the garden?  I think that would be good.  And Saturday will perhaps be a hard day, starting late at the post office and as long as it takes to get it done - and not a route I run often.  There won't be a lot of time the next few days to do much leisure / thought process.  Sunday I have not volunteered, though - and I hope it won't be a call in situation, so we can all go to the store.

 

bits, japanese forest village in Minetest

 

Not much, studying Finnish on both platforms, working at clearing a large area for a village in the Japanese forest in Minetest, which is difficult, as the trees are so close together and it is slow going to clear all the bits to make the leaves fall.  The one nice feature of the Japanese forest is that the leaves are good for fuel - and you get stacks and stacks of the leaves when you try to clear it out.  I've been burning the bricks and clay and making bread with the full stacks of leaves and not had to use much coal or wood for that.  Another nice feature is there is plenty of sashimi and racine to cook and eat that you naturally pick up along the way.

Plus, this is another of those long narrow islands, and leveling enough for several houses is a second challenge. It is in the other picture,  behind me here the land goes UP, and there are several deposits of interesting minerals but I will have to climb for them.  And behind the travertine brick house is a very deep deep cave, which I spent a good amount of time in pulling out that travertine and a few other minerals, lots of clay, and the blue granite which is the first I have ever found in this world.

 

 I had found grey granite, black granite, green granite, white granite and red granite but had only seen the blue in the resources guide.  
 

 

It is my birthday in a few days, although I have to work at the post office that day.

reminder : they opened up a new bookstore/cafe in town, but I am not sure when I could ever get to it.. at least they are open until 5 pm, so there is a chance. 

from here the land goes UP.  I've been to that little spot on the right there that is tallest, and there are three different minerals right there at the peak.  I came back down to empty my inventory and will have to go back up and get them - jade, serpentine and blue limestone.  There is also some sodalite down by the shore there that I didn't get a chance to mine out yet as it is beneath a layer of grey granite.

the bits and spelunking in Minetest

 

 

a sort of 'townhouse' in the middle of the jungle near the cave system

 

Another whole week went by, it doesn't seem like it was that much time... but we've been busy.   Esme made meatloaf last weekend, and it turned into lasagna spaghetti in the midweek, and we ate up all the leftovers.  I've made some ramen and stir fry as well, and used all of my sushi rice and adzuki beans taking bento boxes to lunch.   

I've been studying Spanish, French and Japanese - and actually got to use some of the Spanish at my job this week several times.  I still find it much harder to get my brain to switch into Spanish gear - even trying to remember thank you (so simple, you would think)  the German or the French gets in the way and I have this awkward pause where my brain is saying 'danke schon' and I am actually saying nothing until I can remember 'gracias'.  

 

Why is Spanish so hard for me?  I even remembered some Czech one day first (dekuji) instead of the Spanish - it's like having eight cards for everything you want to say and having to throw away the first four until you get to the right language.  It's not a problem exactly of too many languages - but that Spanish is that far down my 'queue'.  C'est la vie, que sera, right?  They say it climbs up that queue the more you actually have use for it.  We'll see.  

We're thinking still about getting a new outdoor shelter for the goat and cats (beyond the ones they already have, which are several), but haven't went down and looked at it in person yet.  I still have postal route tomorrow, and it is going to rain all day.  I've also had poison ivy on my arm for days and it is getting to be quite annoying.  I've been trying to get myself to sleep every night before I actually want to fall over, and have been waking up even a tad bit earlier in the mornings.

 

In Minetest, I've somehow wandered all the way from my northern almost tundra alpine climate area down to the south jungle again where the cocoa farm is.  I don't know why - I hung around the cocoa farm for a long time and built five more houses and roads in all directions, and the cocoa still did not grow.  And then, when I thought maybe I'd go and get tomatoes and papyrus and bring them all across the southern continent in a development sweep - I fell into a cavern in the jungle, and discovered an absolute rabbit warren of natural caves, full of clay and other minerals (no ores, though), and have been popping out of this entrance or that one like whack-a-mole for several days, bringing up hundreds and hundreds of blocks of moonstone, silver sand, limestones, amber, amethyst and more.  

Every time I think I've found all the little holes in the landscape where this cave comes to the surface - I find more - and I say 'Hey, I can see (name of site) from here.  I can see my house from here!'.  I made one true base for the cave system where it comes out into the ocean on the shore near another major jungle site - and I have been collecting up the resources there - and trying a different little building style as well.  After a bit longer, I will go off back to one of my cities across the ocean from this and see if I can pick up the tomatoes and papyrus. 

 

 with the papyrus and tomatoes (still growing)