I woke up later than desired today, but I’m still reeling from the monthly blood bath so I say it doesn’t count. I made myself a sandwich I’ve been timing to make in the shortest amount of time. I’ve been fixated on it for two weeks now.

[Skip to the next bracket pair if you don’t want to read me talk about how I make a sandwich]

First I turn on the air fryer at 200 degrees for 5 minutes, nothing in it. Take out the cutting board and slice a few millimetres off of a tomato. I take out two slices of bread, put a bunch of rocket leaves first, then a slice of cheese, then tomatoes, then Kewpie mayo, then the bagel seasoning from Trader Joe’s on top of that, then the thinnest slice of ham, then the bread.

At this point I start heating my stainless steel pot, which I’m trying to master cooking with without burning eggs. I quickly crack an egg and add a tablespoon of yogurt and whisk them then season them. The air fryer beeps, I toss the sandwich inside (literally, it’s hot, there’s no way to place it in gently) and set it for another 5 minutes.

Sometimes when I get bored waiting for 4 minutes at 7 or 5 minutes at 6 (stove temps), I’d splash the pot with the tiniest bit of water to see the mercury-like Leidenfrost effect, then once I see it, I dump whatever water’s still in there, spray the pot floor with rapeseed oil, then fry the egg.

By this time the top of my sandwich is done toasting. I use a spatula to return it to my now dry cutting board, then I remove the top slice to get the fried egg in, return the top slice, then turn off everything.

I like that only one side of my sandwich is wicked toasted, so that I can still feel it integrate when I press down, because really, a thick sandwich defeats the purpose of its sandwich-ness.

Not yet finished. At this point it will still be too hot to consume. I start the coffee maker, which takes about 5 minutes to brew. During that, I do my calf raises, recommended by my PT last Monday, and I do it during brewing because he said if I finish the routine in less than 6 minutes then I’m doing it too fast. The coffee finishes brewing at 5, but the last drops come in at around 6. So everything comes together.

After that, I eat. Everything happens in less than half an hour, and it keeps me grounded for the morning, when my real enemy is how far my mind can go before it starts thinking of something that will make me sad.

[Ok, done with sandwich talk]

I am horrified that I just wrote about my entire sandwich routine for no apparent reason but you gotta roll with me on this. I just learned yesterday that there are things from my childhood that comfort me that don’t really serve me well to fight or try to forget. Habits, my point is, maybe. Habits are good.

Something about yesterday’s good day (despite being in pain) made me think about how regularly I used to blog in the early 2000’s. That made me nostalgic for old-school blogs and how you can just check in with how a stranger spent their day, comment anonymously, and go about your way. So that tangent brought me to two things: one, I wanted to start following personal blogs (instead of on platforms), and two, I wanted to change my blog theme to something more basic and blocky, something more reminiscent of that era.

For the first, I was delighted to find that I’d already asked and answered this question before. Here’s a link to Ye Olde Blogroll, a human-curated list of personal blogs. It’s one gem after another, and these are people who are still blogging to this day, and not that hyperlinked madness you see on monetized blogs these days (those blogs have their place, but they’re not what I’m looking for right now). It’s like these guys never left the 2000’s and I’m all for it! I want back in!

For the second, ah well, that descended into madness a few hours ago. All I wanted, really, was a super basic theme, that I can edit the CSS of to customize stuff from button appearances, to tag colors and image borders and sidebar widgets. WordPress themes have become so unnecessarily bloated and yet somehow everything still looks the same brand of confusing. Even with the one I’ve been switching out with this one (this one’s Author, the other one’s Shamrock, both of which are considered basic themes), wouldn’t fucking allow an easy way to change my image borders, or change the comment reply title to something more me. Everything’s so needlessly complicated I struggle to understand how people can say it’s easier than ever to have a blog these days.

I guess you kind of feel some control over customization when you’re a bit constrained by elements that you know should be there in a blog (like a side bar, or a top menu). When everything’s open to interpretation it’s just, just please give me 10 fucking themes to choose from, not 75,000. I almost cried in frustration because I know HTML, I know CSS, and yes, I know how to ask whatever AI is out there that can help me, but when I don’t see that instant update of an attribute I think I’m editing, then what the hell am I even editing? Why is the CSS even open to editing at all? I built a website from scratch in the 2010’s ON NOTEPAD, are you kidding me?

Anyway, yeah, I’m still not a fan of what the blog looks like. But at least it looks more Blogger-era than Astra or GeneratePress corporate splashiness. What I really want is something louder and blockier and maybe a bit more colorful. Think Multiply (yes, Multiply, remember them?) I’m telling you, I like boxes, except when it’s something to put me in.

On the side I rewatched The Three-Body Problem to recall just how much of it was from the first book. It seems by the time they talk about the Wallfacer they’re already in the second book territory. I also watched Sakamoto Days which I don’t really like the art style of, and some of Freiren, but my hormones wouldn’t really let me focus on anything for too long.

Finally, because I was procrastinating writing the second scene in the novella I’m overhauling, I went ahead and resubmitted two of my stories that were rejected in February. I’m still getting the hang of knowing who to submit my work to, but joining and participating in a giant writer’s group has helped heaps. In January I joined in something called Weekend Warrior, which is basically writing one piece of flash a week and critiquing around 10 others, for five weeks. So now I quite suddenly have four pieces I can add to the submission grinder. What a joy.

So yeah, I liked today. I hope yours was even better.