happy new year!!!!!! i've been kind of dormant on this ol website of mine for the past month or so, because the holidays and also bc i didn't have a computer at home (see my first entry, where i talk about only being able to update on my work computer lol) BUT i've been doing a lot of updating and stuff because i FINALLY got myself a laptop for home!!!!! so i have a computer at last that i can use to program stuff at home i mean i'm still writing this at work but shhhh don't worry about it

anyway here's some stuff that's been going on with me lately:

• organizing a whole ass house is a LOT of work!!! like really, it's kind of silly how much work it is to own a house. not to mention we have mice in the basement and our pipes keep freezing bc our main water pipe is in the cold room (idk who thought that was a good idea tbh it's real frusterating)
• we're hosting my wife's parents elderly dog for the next little while. They're going to be in Trinidad and Tobago for a month, so he's staying at ours and he is just the sweetest big boy in the world, but he struggles getting around on our hardwood floors so we have to pick up some cheap mats and rugs to help him out while he's staying here lol
• we just came back from a trip to Ottawa to spend Ukrainian christmas with family, and we got to see my wee baby niece. She's so sweet and it was so nice to spend some time with her and the rest of the family! now I've gotta get everything unpacked tho (×_×;）
• we also gotta take all the christmas stuff down!! which is like :( but also i find it's nice to signal the end of holiday mode and the begning of the new year. idk i really like the new year, i love the feeling of a fresh start

well i think that's everything i've got going on right now, except for news about what's going down with my site. the thing is, my work computer monitor is HUGE. like, unneccesarily big. it's kind of silly. but my laptop screen is, necessarily, much smaller. and looking at my site on that screen, i realized there were a bunch of things that looked like SHIT on a smaller screen, which SUCKED. my site looked so good on my big screen!! but most people probably don't have a screen this big lmao. anyway, i've been going through and cleaning up my code so my site looks much better no matter what screen size it's viewed on. which like, it's actually making a lot of stuff better in general, so i'm not complaining. it was a shakeup i needed to make some good improvements. but the reason i'm so interested in making these small improvements is because I signed up to be part of Petra Pixel's indie web contest! i'm really excited, not necessarily because I think i'm going to win or anything, but because it'll be fun to check out all the sites that are participating and have some more people check out my site too! so i'm trying to clean things up, like tidying the house when you have guests coming over lol. I mean, i'm not making any huge updates, but I did want to make things look a little nicer.

oh! i've also been working on my first shrine page, which has been taking AGES because i'm VERY serious about it lmao I'm not going to spoil what the shrine is for (i mean if you follow my site on neocities you might have already seen it in the activity feed, but shhh) BUT it is something i've been obsessed with for a LONG time, and i just need to finish some of it up. I'm SO proud of how the page has turned out, and I definitley want it to be up before Petra Pixel's contest starts in Febuary.

aaahhhhh anyway i think that's all from me for now. I hope everyone's 2025 has started off soft and yall have a great year full of good things coming your way♥

heyyyy how're yall doing lol? I've been doing not bad. i'm very excited for Petra Pixel's indie web contest which is starting soon. I wonder if anyone checking out my site for that will make it this far? maybe, I think i'll have put up an update on my rss feed about this journal entry.

ANYWAY i've been working more on my grimoire pages, and I hope that i can get them more sorted and at least set up before the contest starts. i've also been working on a page about visible mending, and that one will need pictures, and i'm terrible at remembering to take pictures of my mends, especially before and after. ah well, just another reason to remember to do that more! I have a whole ton of clothes that I need to mend, so this is a great motivator.

an even better motivator tbh is that I've started doing free mending for people in my community. aprox. every other week I'm going to my friend's bookstore and setting up a little booth where people can bring me their things that need mending and I'll fix their clothes for free. I love it, i've met some really cool people and got to do some fun mends. I really genuinly enjoy mending clothes and I think it's a great way to cut back on the huge issue of textile waste. But that whole thing has been keeping me busy!

work is also going to be keeping me busy, especially really soon. at my library we do placements for students at the local college, and i'm going to be the supervisor for two of them at the same time. which is like.... a lot. but yknow, i'm going to make it work as best as i can. I hope that it doesn't get too crazy, I mean I have a lot of cool coworkers who i know will be supportive if i need help but god, there's a whole lotta shit going to go on here at the library.

also, we've been living in the new house for like.... three months? and i have a whole lot of stuff still to do. I mean, I try to do a little every day and that's definitley helping things come together gradually, but i'm an impatient person lol i hate things happening gradually. Here are three things that I want to get done before my birthday (in march):

• paint the dining room and hang up art
• finish setting up the office
• organize the craft room enough to bring in the tabe i bought for it

there's a whole lot of other stuff that needs doing, like organizing the hallway closet, take all the stuff we want to get rid of to donations, organize the basement and finish sorting the craft room. and that's just the inside stuff, which is why i want to get as much as i can done before my birthday. because around then is when the snow will probably start to melt and the sun will be up longer so i'll have to be doing yard work. Which, i'm not gonna lie, I'm really excited to be able to do yardwork. but that means I won't be able to spend as much time setting up the inside. so, probably by April, which is still kinda winter here tbh, i'll want to be able to start doing the yardwork. that's gonna include cleaning the yard, bc the previous owners let it really go to shit, taking down the huge red pop up shed, setting up raised garden beds, plant flower beds and herb gardens, put together a backyard compost bin and yard waste heap. speaking of, i think i'm going to do some reading about starting a compost bin now, so i'll be done now. those are all my updates, i'll chat more with yall later.