15 August 2025. Woke up late today, and shaved which took some more time. Had some oatmeal with eggs, oyster mushroom, and kimchi, though I burned the eggs a little (sigh). Used my Hadio Switch for coffee for the first time in forever, and it came out decent (the other batch of beans I got from Trader Joe's, organic apparently, just isn't as interesting or versatile as the other beans). Spent the afternoon finishing my reading of Shade's poem and reviewing Kinbote's foreword. By this point I had more or less understood the story, but it was still nice seeing the evidence come together, phrase by phrase. I have to tell you it's a damn bit more satisfying to figure out than House of Leaves, where my understanding is more to the framing and pseudodiegesis of the novel and characters itself, than any one narrative; the tragedy of Pale Fire is clearer, the madness more anchored to a specific diagnosis like schizophrenia. Early evening I spent some time cleaning out my fountain pens. It only took 7 years, but I "get" the Lamy Safari now! (It's like a testing pen, rather than a longform like my 2 Platinum Preppy pens, both converted to eyedropper style.) Mom made some shrimp and tofu veggie stir fry, and baked some marinated beef in the air fryer. YUM... Spent a good hour on the late evening adding to Helios for the first time in forever. Can you believe it takes just a single good book to get the brain juices flowing? If I had known how fluid this spirit of annotating is, I'd read more books. Well, I'm telling on myself now.
"[Growing up] is hard and nobody understands." // https://www.homestuck.com/story/2391