The Winter Court of the Insane, Philosophical Ladybug

Christmas was basically very nice. I did manage to capture the feel of a Christmas from my childhood, which I had so desperately longed to do. It made me very happy. I also discovered cutting many dolls and figures out of their packaging can really hurt the thumb. My skin is dry and it cracked a lot there.

One of my favorite gifts is the Encanto doll set I've been wanting for a year! I was so thrilled Azalea542 got it for me! I have them set up on a metal tray right near my bed. They can stand on their own, which is so cool. I also got the Bruno and Dolores dolls so I'd have all the released dolls. I hope they will make the other characters too.

Another lovely gift was a gift card from Ladyamberjo so I could get Sylveon. I was sick of missing out on the Eevee family plushies at Build-a-Bear and I wanted to grab her since she's a favorite. That outing was a time. Almost everything that could go wrong on that outing did. Thankfully, we managed to return with Sylveon or it would have all been pointless. It started precipitating. I objected. Dad insisted we keep going, for some reason. We had to stop and get something from my sister. We had to get gas and had a hard time getting the locked gas cap off. We got stuck in a ditch for which there was no warning sign posted. People were very kind and helped us get out, but it took an hour or more. When we finally got to the mall, some mysterious thing had gone wrong and the store was temporarily closed?! I waited a bit, left in discouragement, then tried calling before leaving the parking lot. They were open again, so I went back for Sylveon. There was already a line forming, so I had to wait a bit more. Driving home was a nightmare as the precipitation continued. But at last we made it!

I got some more Eevees and watched The Rings of Power. I loved it and named Eevees Merry and Pippin. ThickerThanLove sent me the Lord of the Rings bear from Build-a-Bear, squeee! He looks like Frodo, with brown curly fur and blue eyes. I need something to name Sam next.

I am still furious at Nintendo cutting off eShop access to 3DS and 2DS tomorrow. I spent most of this past week looking for things to snap up. There was a big sale on Capcom games, for some awesome reason. I got Mega Man Legacy Collection. Mega Man games are hard. I can't jump on the bad guys and they swarm me really fast. I can't blast them all. I'm really happy to have the games, though. I'll figure it out. I was disappointed I couldn't seem to find anything else. I already got most of the awesome stuff I could afford in the months prior. Then I finally thought to look up Phoenix Wright. Those games were also on sale, for an incredible $2.99 each! Even the trilogy set! After spending much more than I really intended or wanted to (especially on DLC), I have many Phoenix games. I wasn't going to get Apollo Justice, but NinetalesUK finally convinced me I should. If I happen to take to him and the other characters from his games, I probably would be upset to not have the first game with them. I am notorious for balking at things and then loving them when I finally try them. For $2.99, I figured I'd better get it.

I got Investigations for the iPhone, since that was the only way to get it. (Yes, I have an iPhone.) But apparently I will only get the first case and have to drop a lot more to get the rest. I don't know when that will be, since I've already spent a lot. I'm enjoying the first case. Miles is still my favorite; playing as him is wonderful.

I still wish someone could use Radley's sprites from Over the Nexus to make a video game with him. I wish I could do that. I have no skills and would have to learn.

I got my dad's HP laptop working again and downloaded Steam onto it. Then I got The Disney Afternoon Collection, which was on sale for $5. I have always wanted to play those games. Darkwing is hard like Mega Man. The Chip and Dale games are the easiest. I am enjoying them all, even though I'm having trouble getting very far in them. I'll figure it out.

I had plans to get the Leafeon plush at Build-a-Bear, even though I'd have to do the online bundle with unnecessary clothes. I still want to try to make it work even after needing to snap up all that Nintendo stuff before it's gone. I have tried for days to convince my brain it is foolish. My brain will not listen. It's the only way to get him. I'm hoping I can re-sell the clothes, at least the sleeper. I might like the cape enough to keep it, but the onesie seems very silly. I don't want to cover up all that beautiful fur. If he hasn't sold out yet, I plan to order him tonight. He will make a lovely Easter gift. I'm tired of missing out on the Build-a-Bears. I wish I'd got him and Glaceon when they were briefly in physical stores last year, and Umbreon when he was online again briefly.

Some family members wanted me and Dad to get on their Verizon phone plan with them and we'd get iPhones. Mine was free! It's 13. The camera is glorious and I've taken videos of the kitty. The space is also glorious. I have 128GB! And there's not a lot of bloatware. It looks like I can delete whatever I want to, too. I like using the iPhone as a gaming device, mostly. I see both pros and cons of it. It's much harder to type on; if I need to correct a mistake, I can't even go right to the mistake. I have to erase the whole word! There's no headphone jack. Clearing caches is much harder. Apparently I'm supposed to hit offload app, but the description sounded much more complicated than a simple clearing of the cache. It sounded like I would have to redownload the app any time I clicked offload! Some of those apps are big. I don't have time to keep redownloading them! I got my dad's Motorola Android phone since he didn't need it anymore. It has 64GB, which is also good. I like to use it for most other Internet activities since Google devices are easier to manage in a lot of ways. Two of my tablets have been dying a lot, leaving me with the Amazon Fire tablet and these phones. I am happy to have them all.

I found someone called ZakuraRain who will do beautiful pictures for only $3, $6 if it's colored! They call them doodles, but they're definitely higher quality than mere doodles. I've got four pictures from them so far.

Fanfiction writing is slow at times, but still going on. I'm writing some enjoyable Kalin and Radley stories. Sometimes inspiration flows.

I also finally put the collars and lapels on the Kalin and Radley plushies' coat and jacket. I need to take pictures. I was going to get silver snaps for Radley, but I couldn't find the right kind and then I wondered if even the lightweight duster kind would weigh the light material down a lot.

Now I can't remember if it was Friday or Saturday, but it was a very cloudy day with fall temperatures all day long. It was wonderful. And Build-A-Bear sent an email showing their Halloween plushies this year, which really put me in a Fall/Halloween mood. They have an absolutely gorgeous purple and pink swirled bat called Starry Night Bat. I will most likely get her on my birthday. I'll have a birthday coupon and there's a little bit left on a gift card, so I won't have to pay full-price. I also have the urge to name her Cassiopeia, which would certainly fit with her official name. But I feel slightly guilty to name her that, as I'm going to have a mutant bat in a Halloween Turtles fic named that, and she probably won't be a very nice lady. But I like the name, so there's no reason why the plushie would have to be considered the same character, even if she shares the name. I named the first bat Milly, shortly after I named a character that in a Perry fanfic who also ends up being a darker character (to my memory). They're definitely not the same character, especially since the Perry one is a human, LOL.

Last night on the news the weathergirl said that the temperatures are mostly going to be out of the summer heat levels now. I am so happy! This summer has been too, too hot. I hate summer heat. I am so beyond ready for Fall.

I'm listening to my Halloween playlist for the first time this season. I usually start Halloweening around September 13th. Plenty of time to enjoy spooky TV episodes!

I hope I'm going to be able to find a wig that will work for playing Baxter. You'd think it would be easy, but I'm starting to get a little worried after only seeing one that would work for season 1 (which seems to have promptly sold out within a week). I really want season 2. No luck online either, unless I'm using the wrong search terms. I've tried "wild brown wig," "brown mad scientist wig," and a couple of other terms. There is one that turned up that could be interesting, but it's way too dark of a brown.

I also finally have an Amazon gift card and am debating what to get with it. I figure whatever it is will be a birthday purchase, so if I decide I need to get something now while prices are low, I might try to save it for my birthday before opening it, etc. So far the thing I'm most excited about seems to be the entire Indigo arc of Pokemon for $28. I saw that last night and decided that if I still was more excited by it than anything else the next day, I should probably get it. I still feel the same, although I'm slightly debating and wondering if I should wait a little longer, because sometimes I get really excited about the thought of something for a couple of days and then something else pops up and I realize that's what I want most. I really love the Indigo episodes, though, and I wanted that set as soon as it came out, but couldn't afford it then. So I'm thinking I won't change my mind on this.

As silly as it sounds, I worry slightly that if I get it, I'll end up deciding I want to write for Pokemon and I'll abandon my Turtles fics. I really love my Turtles fics and want to keep writing them right now. But I highly doubt I'd shift to getting plunnied for Pokemon, as I rarely have before. I've had the same concerns about getting the other DuckTales and TaleSpin sets I need, but most shows I like I don't write for. It's unusual when I do get plunnied, especially as seriously as I have for the Turtles. I worried like this when I got the Knight Rider set too, but I didn't have any problems there. In fact, it helped inspire some of the fics, like the OMNUS one and the amnesia incident in the freeze fic.

Sometimes other people's plunnies inspire me too, as after being told of a plunnie, I got springboarded to a very different idea and I've been going to town with the resulting fic, which I started before the last one was done. I've been writing it all out of order. I just did a proofread and added some more content, so now I'll want to wait and do another proofread before I decide if it's done. I love when the stories churn out that fast. This one will dig more into how the recent amnesia/mind-control incident affected Michelangelo. I kind of think the next one after this will be a funny one, maybe the one based on the DuckTales episode The Money Vanishes, but we'll see.

I also put Lieutenant Schrank in the current story (that is, the most recent one I actually put up). He briefly appeared, unnamed, in The Rat King's Revenge, which is referenced in this one. He has a longer scene in this one. I needed a policeman and I decided, eh, what the heck.