Little Viking.

Ah, lent.  We meet again.

This year I've given up the following:

• Facebook.
• Giving in to crankiness (inspired by a good friend of mine)
• Sugar - excepting home-baked goods.
  I made the exception on account of the amount of soaked oatmeal I eat because I turn it into muffins.  That being said, I only use 1/4 of the sugar the recipe calls for anyway.
  I know it's still a cop out.
• Picking my face.
  It's a bad habit...
• Video games, vicariously.
  Hubby gave up video games and I'm playing them a lot less to try and help him.

I enjoy lent, is that weird?
It's a good time for me to get my ass back in gear.  Especially this year, seeing as I've gone soft on myself after having the wee one.  Really, since the last trimester.
I was really good about not eating sugary crap until I got to the last month of pregnancy.  I would say things like, "one muffin is okay," or, "I'll treat myself."
That kind of an attitude snowballs pretty quickly, so now I suck at not eating sugar.

At any rate.
Lent is the one thing I did more seriously before converting.  When I first learned about lent in middle school I was told it lasted until Easter.  I never bothered to do the math and figure out that Sundays are technically not included in the allotted 40 days, I just chose something to give up and I abstained from the chosen thing/behaviour until Easter.
This is another reason that hubby calls me his little Viking; I can be kind of stubborn about it.
I've grown lax since converting, but I still prefer to not partake in whatever it was I gave up until Easter including Sundays and Feast days.

~~~

On a random note:
I tried making coconut milk recently.  Totally not worth the time and effort.  And if you buy the tinned coconut when it's on sale making your own isn't even cheaper.
It took me a whole day to just shred one.  Maybe the milk will taste phenomenal.  I'll let you know when I actually get it made.
Hopefully in the next day or so.

The Root of the Evil End.

I was trying to figure out why it's so hard for me to keep a schedule on this blog.  It's certainly not because I don't have the time to write, that is just an excuse I use because I'm loading my time into other things...like staring at facebook urging it to entertain me when I log off of World of Warcraft (WoW) at night.  That last sentence explains exactly how good I am at wasting my time.
So, then, why am I so suck-tastic at posting new entries regularly?

After some thought, and a lot of staring at a blank "new post" box it struck me that the reason I don't write more frequently is because I don't feel like I have anything to say.
I feel a lot like a youtuber I sort of follow whose channel is called Crabstickz:

He mentions in this video that there's sort of a pressure to making new content on youtube, which is sort of how I feel about this blog.  Namely the bit about there already being other awesome youtubers (bloggers) out there, so why post?

The whole problem is I started this blog with a purpose.  I knew, when I started it, that I wasn't going to be in convert instructions forever.  There would come a day that I would actually be Catholic and that day would mean finding things to post about relating to actual life.
The assumption was that life would be amazingly different.

Life as a convert is not really all that different.  I view the world differently and I process things differently, but in terms of actual day-to-day life nothing exciting really happens.  I spend a lot of my time cleaning (a lot, like every day of my life except Sunday - hubby made a rule that I'm not allowed to clean on Sundays, lol), a lot of time chasing down a puppy, and the majority of my time caring for the wee one.  Let it be noted that I am not complaining.  All of that being said, my time for reflection and having revelations about things is a bit limited.
Only because I choose to limit it.
If I have thirty minutes to myself I spend it cleaning, or online in some fashion.  Wasting it away on facebook or youtube...or WoW.  I could choose to spend that time drawing, or crafting, or writing.  Or otherwise being generally productive.

Anyway, the whole point is that I don't post because I don't feel like I have anything to say, and/or I feel like no one is interested in my random/stupid musings.

Maybe I'll try to start posting anyways.  I've been talking to hubs about making a schedule for us, like, so many hours for family time, cleaning, etc.  So maybe I'll schedule some writing time for myself.

I'd like to try and wean myself off of facebook and youtube, and the interwebs in general because I have this crazy idea that it won't be around forever and that I should get used to not having it.
I dunno where that came from but it's here, prodding at the back of my mind...making me feel like a crazy person.

Yep.

Time Sinks and Money Pits.

Hubby and I play video games; sometimes too much.  We were playing one called League of Legends (LoL) which is free to play, but you can purchase points with which you can get things like skins for the character (champion) you like to play, or buy a champion outright if you're too impatient to collect the different points you earn for playing games.  Have I lost you yet?  I'm not very good at explaining things.
Anyhow, in theory you can play this game for a nominal fee of nothing (except your time).  That is if you don't want any of the skins or you have the patience to save up your second set of points for champion purchases.  In reality, we sometimes ended up spending $50 to $100 a month on this game.  What happened is we fell victim to impatience.

So now, we're playing World of Warcraft (WoW).  The expansion - Mists of Pandaria - was just released in September and let me just say that it's pretty awesome.  Let me also say that I'm trying really hard not to start off on a nerdy rambling of everything I like about this game.
I've been playing WoW off and on since 2005/6.  I started with what is now called "Vanilla WoW."  Then came Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm, and now Mists of Pandaria.
With each expansion Blizzard (the company who produces this game) added and took away (nerfed) things.
This expansion, something called "Battle Pets" has been introduced.  This is essentially Pokémon with the non-combat pets that exist in the world.  This feature alone is a force to be reckoned with for me: I loved the Pokémon games when I was a kid, and I'm sure if I picked up my Nintendo DS again and loaded up whatever the new Pokémon game is called, I could still spend hours on it.
Instead, I spend hours trying to level my non-combat pets in WoW so I can go battle the next "boss."

What this means is that not only is WoW a time sink, it's also a money pit.  Whereas you can theoretically play LoL for free, there is no such thing as free WoW because WoW is a pay to play game.  For $15 a month you can have an active account (there are other payment plans as well).  It's kind of like our substitution for cable television.  It could be argued which is better than the other.

Anyway, the main point of this is that the reason I haven't been posting is because I've been sinking my time and money into this game.  And now we have a two month old puppy, so I don't expect to have any time for WoW, or blogging.

Because we decided our baby was too easy.

I'm Alive!...I Swear...

Happy Monday everyone!  I'm sorry I've been dead for longer than I anticipated, it takes a bit to recover from two full workweeks and a weekend of work when you're pregnant.  Also, I've been busy with house sitting, dog walking, and visiting my parents in Grand Junction.

Alright, first thing's first: Comic Con.  It was pretty fun.  I ended up losing money, but that's alright.  Now I know what to do for next year.
The majority of my business was commissions, and I got a couple of interesting ones.  It was a lot of fun to draw other people's random musings.  I think that was the best part, really, just sitting at the table and drawing.

Walking the dogs we were watching made me really want a dog, but I think it's best to wait until Baby arrives to go looking at the Dumb Friends League for a pooch.  I don't particularly want a puppy (sooo much work), so I'd rather not take the risk that an adult dog would not react to a small person in a friendly manner.

Grand Junction was a nice break from the routine.  It's nice to wake up and have someone else already cooking breakfast once in a while.  Not that I don't like to cook breakfast (because I do, cooking for hubby is pretty awesome), it's just pleasant to have a break from it.

After spending all this time away from home, it's good to be back.
I may have shot myself in the foot though.  On the drive home I was thinking I'd boot up The Sims and recreate our house to give me a visual aid with arranging furniture and the bathroom remodel we're sort of planning.  What ended up happening was I created two sims that looked somewhat like hubby and I and played for three hours...
They have a baby boy and they're preggo again.
I'm a little hopeless.  I had forgotten how addicting that game is.