~belacqua@TTBP



28 august 2025

If I never have to pack again I could die happy.



27 august 2025

Today I spent about four hours peeling garlic cloves on a whim. I'm little afraid that I might never be able to get the smell of garlic out of my hands, but at the very least, I am well prepared to deal with any unexpected vampiric encounters, haha.

I also spent about a hour in bed just resting, which was really quite lovely- cozied up beneath the blankets, laying down, and just consciously soaking in the moment, the soft sensations of blankets and pillows and bedsheets, cozied up to restore up some mana, due to unexpectedly using past my assortment of spell slots, as my writing partner put it.

I spent a good chunk of time writing in my journal today, and I'll probably end up filling out my diary before the end of August. Maybe it's not such a bad thing to bring in a slightly lived in diary to campus- I'm already tired, but looking forward to it all. I've missed the structure of academia. And I'll be excited to be able to cozy up in a quiet corner on campus away from all of the big city hustle and bustle late at night, to sit, slow down, and watch the world spin past me.

My birthday is coming up, and I'm excited. I always love my birthdays. They are, after all- a celebration of the fact that out of all of the impossible circumstances and coincidences of fate that coincided into your existence: that you made it, against all odds: a riotous celebration of the joy that is your existence, in the here and now, as you are, and as you will be. Another whole year. Another spin around the planet. Isn't that marvellous? Isn't that a miracle? What a gift, life is. The endurance to persist, the grace to roll with the punches: to live, is to leave doors open, to read more of the story unwinding up ahead of yourself: and your birthday is a happy little day all about you, and no other. An early happy birthday to you, future me. I hope you have a good cake and a quiet moment to yourself during it.



26 august 2025

I've been having such a great time puttering around town. Some wonderful late night chatting with a few other townies, (Nebula, owl, and dozens), about everything from mountain ranges, weather, climate change, what people were studying, indie TTRPG systems and solo journalling games- plus, plenty of wrangling around CSS/HTML in a way that made me really happy and proud of myself.

I wouldn't really consider myself someone who is primarily a coder, but there's something deeply satisfying about being able to take a floaty concept in your brain and turn it into reality: even if you know the underpinning is quite simple, it always makes me excited and happy when I figure out how to do something new: like re-sizing status.cafe RSS feeds to make them fit adorably into the tiny box on my Neocities site, or figuring out a workaround with an 'invisible' sidebar to 'float' the feed beside my main content, (tables resize a bit funky, but I'm thrilled that everything works great on my laptop, and is functional, if not the ideal viewing experience on mobile.) Very proud of cobbling it all together from scratch.

Recently also got a haircut- just a bit of a trim for split ends and smoothing it all out, since the academic term is right around the corner, and I'm pretty pleased with how that came out. Some last minute shopping for essentials, and it looks like I'll be driving down right on Labour Day, which is annoying in terms of my schedule for unpacking and such, but still leaves me with a day to unload the essentials and also find my classes, set up my school ID and transit pass, all that good stuff.

I've been waking up with the sun, lately. It's pretty nice, waking up bathed in warm, radiant sunlight- not too hot yet, because the fierce heat hasn't settled in, (and August is losing its bite, as the weather turns autumnal- soon, I'll have an excuse to break out my green beanie, which is a brand new addon, I'm considering adding a handmade patch onto it of some sort), which suits me just fine- I adore cold, snowy weather. One of the things I'm most looking forward to in the winter term is taking a seat on a bench on campus, late at night- when the air is inky blue, and the warm orange glow of the streetlights bounces off the heaps of crystalline snow, and everything just has an inner glow, the world muffled and silent from the blanketing snow as thick, fluffy Hallmark snowflakes swoosh by in soft eddies and curls of wind. Gorgeous. One of my favourite experiences of downtown- alongside the way the neon streetsigns and car lights reflect on grey, wet pavement: how there isn't a true, deep darkness out on the main streets: the lights are always on, and the city always feels alive. Plus, it's a fun excuse to use my Hello Kitty umbrella, which is brand new, pink, and adorable.

Quite proud of myself for all the tinkering around with coding I've done as of late. Had fun suggesting some indie TTRPG games to other townies- Butterfly Court, Of Moon and Leaf, Tangled Blessings: all such fun games, and a good time with newcomers and experienced hands alike.

Coming to the end of my summer journal. I've been thinking about copying down some of my favourite poems from my webshrine into the front of it, as a way to break it in for the term with something special, and to be able to carry around a little piece of soothing comfort in the form of my favourite poems in the front. Sounds rather romantic. If you don't romanticize your life, who will?



25 august 2025

I was very excited to see that my application for the town had been processed- and promptly spent most of my evening puttering around with setting up my homepage here.

Still getting a handle on how to use the terminal- there's a lot of clumsy ending and restarting the session, and futzing around to pull up new options- all good fun!

I dropped an introduction post over on the town's board, (after figuring out how to zoom through posts, yippee!) and my good ol' reliable table HTML element never fails for when you desperately want to add an adorable kitty picture onto your front page alongside a little 'about me' blurb, as I can't quite figure out how to add multiple pages. The nav element has also been putting in the work so far. I'm glad to say that my time puttering around with pure HTML/CSS on Neocities while waiting for my invitation has paid off! It's looking pretty snazzy, for a one page wonder.

I'm up later than I have been, as of late- too caught up in the excitement of learning the ropes. I also had a bunch of the delicious homemade matcha sugar cookies, and a matching, super milky matcha tea this evening, so perhaps that has something to do with it. The rain is heavy and cooling, as August wanes- I can't wait for autumn to come. With it, will be much cooler weather- and an excuse to break out my brand new green beanie, while strutting around downtown in my no-nonsense black leather boots.

I spent some time fiddling around with Inky, this evening, and managed to make the interface pink- and figure out how the Inkberry companion works for previewing the CSS changes. Still wrangling the concept of the Weave around in my head again, but I managed to set a few global variables, and I think I've gotten the hand of the general structure. I'm thinking haunted houses. My writing partner took a lovely early Sunday off, and we're batting around a few cute PBP TTRPG replies at the moment- a fluffy scene babysitting a silly, sweet toddler hanging out with her uncle while playing scavenger hunt, and a fluffy romantic scene between two vampires looking after their pet kittens.

I'm pretty sleepy. It's a marvel where all the time goes. In about a week, classes start- and I'm hoping to maybe use this as a way to capture some of my thoughts and side quests during graduate school. The big city calls- and I've so dearly missed the neon lights. Moving's exhausting, but hey- a new story awaits.