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Ahh today I have to go out, me and my boyfriend are meeting up with his uni buddies. They're really excited to see me which is cool I guess. We're going to some hamburger place. I hope my newly found distaste for beef doesn't ruin the experience. I'm so glad my boyfriend hates social interactions as much as I do, so we don't do things like these too often. God bless. Yesterday I made some nice food. I don't think I ever talked about it here but I genuinely never cooked much before. Back at home I'd have this massive cooking anxiety because my parents (especially my dad) would always loom over me the moment I'd enter the kitchen. It's why I literally never cooked anything. The moment I start heating up water even, he's there looking at me in an almost ridiculing way, looking to criticize me. Hell once, I was making coffee (!!!) which admittedly is not something I do often as I'm more of a tea person. But anyway, I was making turkish coffee in a specific way where you first put the coffee in cold water in the cezve and then you heat it up but don't let it boil. It's a legit way of making coffee and me and my friends even talked about it (why am I justifying myself lmao). Anyway, people here usually put the coffee when the water is hot and then they mix it, my dad being one of those people. But the trick for this coffee is to not mix it, and let the coffee fall down while it's heating up. Anyway! He saw me doing this and immediately started criticzing me and questioning what I'm doing. It upsets me so much. My mom had to defend me lmao. It's just annoying to have every action of yours picked apart. And usually I'm all for learning and being critiqued but something about the kitchen makes me into a rabid beast that just wants to be left alone. I dont even let my mom help me, who I love so much and I know she'd do a great job of instructing me and helping me. The reason for that is different though, while she doesn't make me feel ridiculed, she makes me feel vastly inferior in skill and I'm scared of disappointing her even though I know cooking together with her would make her immensely happy. I just can't bring myself to it. It's weird, in the kitchen I'm truly a different person. I do enjoy baking together with her, especially gingerbread cookies. It's always a fun time. Speaking of baking, I made these brownies. Thanks kalechips for the recipe! I actually just made the brownies part because I was way too lazy to go to the store for the pecans (it's already almost 30 degrees here during the day...), but now that I figured out the browny part I'll make them fully next time. They turned out really nice even though I didn't have an appropriate baking pan for it (didn't think about that lol). The dough was thick enough to stand on its own in this large cake baking pan I had. Sometimes I forget I don't have all the necessary cooking supplies since we just moved here. Next time I'll just make double the amount. All in all though they turned out tasty but there's just this one thing I have a problem with, unrelated to the recipe. I encountered this when I made pancakes too. Both of these things tasted a tad.. soapy? And when I made the pancakes I thought, holy shit, I must have not washed the dishes properly or something. But I did, and I made sure to wash them extra good this time too so I'm starting to think it's the flour maybe? Or even the eggs? God knows, but it tastes ever so slightly soapy. I googled it a bit and I only got results from people talking about almond flour tasting soapy, but I'm pretty sure this isn't almond flour. Strange! Maybe something about the wheat here is different, and it's a taste I'm not used to. Truly after a few brownies I lost the soapy taste so it's probably that. Anyway, time to go get ready, before we meet up with my bfs friends (at 8:30 pm) I want to go to this huge mall. Alone!! Exciting... I need to look if they have any Birkenstocks on sale because me and my mom are buying my sister a pair for her birthday.
Days are passing by just too fast. I had SO many things going through my head that I have to write down and now I just blanked out. We bought a little induction heater. Getting used to it is kind of annoying, it heats up fast which is great but the heat settings make no sense. Medium seems like high to me lol. At least I made a really nice stir fry yesterday and I'll probably have enough for 3 days with the amount I made hell yeah. I'm back to playing sims 4 again and downloading ungodly amounts of cc. I really need to clean up my mod folder, there's too much shit in there. We also made pancakes. Took us around 4 failed ones - 2 completely obliterated and 2 pancakes that were too thick to get the gist of it. I think the pan is not shallow enough and the pancakes end up being too thick, idk. I never had this problem at home. The later ones turned out alright though. On friday we went to a really popular mall in the area and it's full of these little.. anime shops? It's weird how full of weebs this place is. Anyway I bought some stickers for my laptop because why not. They didn't really have a great selection of series to choose from, it's mostly post 2014 stuff and I felt so old when I looked at that little corner with tons of stickers sorted in their respective baskets. But also, zoomers really seem to love Soul Eater. It was my first anime (that I didn't watch on tv as a kid) and out of all things I didn't really expect it to have such a big resurgence in popularity among teens. I tried rewatching it recently and I really found the amount of fanservice a tad too much. To think that I watched it with my mom... Soul eater has a gnc ~nonbinary~ character though so I know that's why all the woke zoomies love it, despite the fanservice. Generally, from what I see on zoomer adjacent spaces, teens really have questionable taste in anime that usually goes against what they stand for, politically. They're going to scream "don't fetishize gay men!!! disgusting fujos!!!!!" but then they'll watch some braindead coomer shit like kakegurui where female characters are creaming themselves on screen at least 3 times an episode. Stuff like that, I see it a lot. Another funny thing in that shop, you know which character is the most popular when they're missing from the stickers basket. In the Mob Psycho basket I couldn't find a single Reigen sticker, in the Soul Eater one there was no Crona or Death the Kid. I wonder how often they restock those.
In more normie related news, I finally finished The Office. Don't read if you don't want spoilers btw lmao. I remember mentioning here I started watching it, ah I found it, I started watching it in November. Took us a while to finish it. Anyway they really ramped up the emotional part in the last season, to the point where it was a bit annoying. 9 seasons later I still didn't really care about Jim and Pam. Idk, they're just so boring. The forced drama with the crew member? It went nowhere. I'm glad my girl Angela got a good ending. She was the most entertaining character to me. Even though Michael as a character got on my nerves it's kind of weird he only had two very quiet and peaceful sentences in the last episode after being gone for what, 2 seasons? Kind of disappointing really. Oh and Andy, he was my most hated character when he first appeared. And he kind of stayed that way until the end of the show. I don't know, it seems like nobody knew what to do with his character. When he was just starting out as manager he was even a little likeable, but then it went to shit when he went on that long ass trip after he just got back with Erin??? It's just so nonsensical. And how he became more "stern" towards everyone else but not himself? Something strange was going on with him as a character and I didn't really like it. He went through most abrupt changes as a person which almost comes across as him being the main character at times. Everyone else kiiind of stayed a constant. Anyway, the show was enjoyable and fun, I'm not the one to care too much about the dramatic parts apart from few characters. The first three seasons were indeed the best, but the remainder wasn't so bad either. At the point where the comedy gets worse you're kind of emotionally attached to some of the characters so it kind of makes up for it... sneaky.
Also, I want to write about my weird digestive problems ever since I moved here. I'm not sure if it's birth control or what but I don't have an appetite for red meat anymore. So fucking weird?? Thinking of beef just makes me go :| and I don't want to try it at all. All I eat is chicken and fish. We went to some nice barbecue place with really tasty meat and while I could recognise it as good meat I just didn't have an appetite for it. I used to be the biggest meat eater, I feel like I'm turning into some soon to be vegan diet mom lmao. TMI: poop? Also, instead of pooping once a day I poop every other day two times in the morning. Weird!!! I hate when my stomach is unpredictable like this, I'm always scared to try different foods from what I'm used to out of fear of having diarrhea or just an upset stomach, which seems to be happening an awful lot lately. Also, I can't stand cilantro. If we happen to eat out everything has fucking cilantro and turmeric in it aHHHH STOP. I miss parsley. Which is why I'm so happy to have an induction heater and a little toaster oven. Eating out is like playing russian roulette where the food either tastes like food, or like cilantro lmao. I didn't think I'd be the type to go "cilantro eww" but I guess I am. Disappointed by my palate!!! Wish I could just gobble it all up.
Another weird issue, my skin is breaking out!! I'm on the week of birth control when I'm supposed to get my period and while it's normal for me to get a pimple or two, I got like a whole ass cluster on two spots and it looks horrible. I'm seriously thinking of never taking bc pills again and talking about alternatives with my gynecologist. Can't wait for that non-hormonal perfect male bc to come out already. Of course men will get the pill with no side effects :). I might just look into getting a copper IUD...
Since I'm writing this entry over two days, another thing has happened. Our apartment is split into two and we got a neighbour in the other one now. He seems to be a youngish guy (I couldn't see his face because I had no glasses on). I hope we won't be an annoyance to him.
In the process of working on my new layout and testing the diary. I'm the type that works on it in vsc and then uploads it all at once though, so nobody will see it until it's totally or at least mostly finished. I'm changing most of the sites, except for the videogame one which is so drastically different, I'll really have to revamp it totally. I want my website to be js free. Also my about me page is staying, because I really love it from an aesthetic standpoint. Web design wise, it could be better. It totally breaks on phone because I was messing around with the vh and vw units and I didn't fully understand them. I'm not one to obsess over accesibility, which I know is "bad" when it comes to the basic web design principles, but I think that when it comes to web design as a personal hobby on a website you don't really intend on making famous it's okay to be a little selfish and lazy haha. Still, I like to have some basic readability, and worst case you can always switch on desktop mode on phones, I always do that. Phones suck anyway, and they kind of ruined web design. I guess you could say I am a bit bitter.
These past few days I've spent countless hours on archived geocities pages, I probably went through more than 500 pages. Of course I went through the weeby ones, and I love seeing the most popular anime of a certain online era. Some totally fall off the popularity list like Fushigi Yugi and City Hunter while some stay as household names to this day like Sailor Moon and Evangelion. I love all the Candy Candy dedicated pages. But seriously though, there's too much Sailor Moon, I'm impressed it still holds up so well and little zoomies love their sailor moon aesthetic pics as much as anyone else.
Yesterday me and my boyfriend went to his work friends wedding. He's not a close friend or anything but he was invited. It was a huge wedding, and the second wedding I ever went to. When I was a kid my mom never took me to her friends weddings because she knew I'd be bored. And boy was she right. I really hate weddings. They're so boring. I think weddings are nice only for the most immediate family and friends, everyone else is just there to eat food. And eat food we did. The food was tasty but the loud music and being asked to dance every 5 minutes by my bf's other work colleagues balanced it out. Neither me or my boyfriend dance, nor are we well versed in this.. don't know how to call it, ceremonial part of life? It's like both of us don't belong to our cultures. I'm glad I met someone like that because I'm tired of always having to explain myself. I don't remember if I talked about this before but when you're kind of strange some people will swear up and down to you how they "don't fit in" and they totally don't like anything normies do and they're so different in order to make you feel at ease? I'm not sure what it is. I had this happen more than once, so I know it's not an isolated incident. I remember drinking in high school with a group of people, one of them being this girl in a different grade I didn't know that well. We talked about music we listened to, and I mentioned how I'm always embarrassed at these kind of ocassions when everyone is drinking because I literally know z e r o turbofolk songs and it makes me feel out of place when everyone is happy, drunk and singing. She said "omg me too!!! I HATE turbofolk SO MUCH!!! everyone listens to it and I feel like such a weirdo for not liking it...", 10 minutes later she's literally dancing on the table, screaming her lungs out on every song lol. And honestly here, people that are a part of any subculture, they can dress however and act however, they truly will know turbofolk and always crank out the classics when enough alcohol has been drunk. I guess it's kind of a bonding experience, it's kind of a cultural thing, and it brings everyone together. But I feel like I'm the only one that sticks to my principles, no matter how autistic this sounds. When I say I don't enjoy this kind of music, I truly don't. I don't know the lyrics, I'm not interested. So I'm always anxious about appearing as this pompous killjoy asshole at any kind of gathering. LUCKILY I have an extensive knowledge of ex-yu rock and -some- local "trash" (basically just.. pop party hits lol) music as we call it so I can at least kind of sing along when everyones shitfaced. But still, more often than not the music will be turbofolk. Well this took an unexpected turn lol. Anyway, it's why I'm really glad about my best friend, because she's honest with me. She's spent her life being more social than me and she doesn't ever act like she has to tiptoe? around me being more of an autist and I truly appreciate it. When talking about this topic of turbofolk she didn't hesitate to say she knows a couple of songs, but dislikes the most. And it was true! Her whole group of friends truly loves 3-4 pretty entertaining songs and that's it lmao. I hate when people lie about small shit like this.
I'm on a bit of a writing binge, mostly because I didn't write a lot last week or two but also because this new layout kind of put me into creative mode.
First things first, I overexfoliated. A bit embarrassing, really. I never thought I'd make a mistake like that because I'm pretty meticulous about my skincare routine but there, it happened. I decided to try out glycolic acid. For a year already I had it on my to try list. I bought it on a whim after hearing Inkey List's version was good, and I used it. Used it... 3 or 4 nights in a row. I started feeling a little irritated on the 3rd night but I used it again for good measure. Now I've got flaming red cheeks, and I feel so dumb. I guess the back of the box kind of tricked me as it says to use in a PM routine, but not how often. When I googled it, it said to absolutely use it only couple of times a week and not every night. Ah, I feel dumb for not googling that before my first use. Especially because I read it before (a longer while ago) but just ignored it. Live and learn. I just hope I didn't ruin my moisture barrier, but on the brightside my face feels less greasy.
The uni friend (the one who really loves his job) who ghosted my whole friend group including me has appeared again. He apologized for not being in contact with us, and that he was really depressed and on the verge of suicide. Because I check up on his twitter every once in a while, I know life hasn't been the kindest to him, his dog died. It's devastating to lose a pet you've had your whole life. Still, despite his sincerity, a mean part of me doesn't really trust him. He is always very sincere in his wording and I don't know, full of empty promises. I feel as if I've burnt myself so I find it hard to trust him again. I am looking forward to seeing him again this summer, if it happens. He's a fun guy after all. That said, I finally figured out who his style of writing in English reminds me of. Contrapoints lmao. Just in general he writes in this woke chill verbose millennial way. I admire his english skills and I'd say he's definitely got me beat there because his brain just seems to find appropriate words better in our native language as well. But oh man, this realization is a bit of an ick.
I made some roasted chicken today. It was pretty similar in taste to my moms cooking, but I added a bit of rosemary. Rosemary always makes me feel like I'm eating food at my countries seaside, and it's a herb my mom doesn't use much. Still, I always compare if my cooking tastes similar to hers because it makes me feel most at home. If the food tastes like mom's food = no upset stomach. It's been working so far, I also made Macedonian style baked beans using her recipe.
I'll start making the book page now. I wanted to add all sorts of dressup sites to the "random sites" page and tell a bit about each of them.
I'm annoyed by my frequent use of "also" and "just". I often think to myself it's the easiest way to clock me by on various anonymous sites. I try to mask my writing style, but I think I slip up too often. A bit paranoid I know.
I am super happy about making a book page. The longest part was speed reviewing 6 books I read since November. Well those weren't the only 6 books, I also read the whole of Harry Potter, but I think I'll add that in just one row. Not today though because my writing juices are DRY.
I think the soap tasting flour saga has been resolved! I decided to make bread with the leftover flour and I followed some simple recipe. Frankly, it asked for too much water and I feel like the dough didn't rise that well and it was too sticky. I used to be a pro with bread making in high school because of our, let's call it internship, but I totally forgot the ratios :(. Also we forgot to buy a scale so I have to wing it. Anyway, the bread ended up looking quite nice in the end so I'm happy with that, but I wish it was a bit more fluffier! I was so excited to try it that I couldn't wait until it cooled down. I tried it and... soap. Oh god the soap. This time I was determined to find out why, since now I know for sure it's the flour. Searching for a few minutes, I found out that storage matters a lot when it comes to flour. After all it's stored in thin paper containers and it's a powder so it absorbs smells REALLY easily. It must've been next to some detergent or soap in the warehouse before being put on a shelf in the store. Really disappointing. I feel like I won't be buying flour in that store anymore. I'm not a big fan of that grocery store anyway, because they're so lacking in everything. Anyway, the bread tastes like soap, extremely so, but you can't feel it that much when you eat it along with the meal, or with nutella on it so it's not that terrible I guess. I hate to be the one to waste food so I'll eat as much of it as I can. I'm also just a tad disappointed with this toaster oven. It takes long to bake things in it, everything takes 20 minutes longer than it should. Also I have no way of knowing when it's finished preheating. Currently I'm baking some potatoes for the first time in it, and they've been at it for almost an hour and half, still not soft enough, which prompted me to write in the diary to kill some time. The induction heater is amazing on the other hand. You can't have everything! I've been rereading some of my old writings and stuff, I really liked the "The Shut-in Newlywed" review, I really went all out there huh. I wrote it quite nicely too (nice meaning by my standards which are on the floor), sometimes I'm impressed with myself. Currently, I'm a housewife, kind of. I don't hate is as much as I thought I would, and besides if you know you always have a way out I think it's an alright way to live. You just need to be prepared in case something happens. Have enough for a plane ticket, in my case. Of course I love my boyfriend insanely so, and trust him just as much, but being dependant on someone so much is never that good. People can do a 180, and you'd never expect it. So far, so good in my case at least.
This ended on a paranoid note lol.
Nevermind it didn't, because I have to write one thing that confuses me. I have a problem with images, when I set their width to idk, 300, and originally their width was 500 they look incredibly janky and I'm not sure why. Never had that problem before until now. Writing this here so I don't forget to find a solution lmao.