Mostly Critical Role and D&D with some personal

God I could scream right now. I’m going to New Zealand next week with my choir and tonight was our last rehearsal. We were supposed to run every piece but instead we were given a brand new piece and macro tuned like 4 out of our 13 other pieces. And I say macro tuned because the shit that we continue to go over and over and over ad nauseam is in my opinion basic choral singing technique that people should already be doing. But since it’s not the entire choir going the people who are lazy with their singing can’t get away with it anymore. And it’s the same fucking people every time and every single rehearsal the director has had to narrow in on them and correct them. Meanwhile, I’m learning a completely different part and I need to sing it in context with the rest of the choir to lock it in and haven’t been able to fully do that. I can practice at home until I’m blue in the face but it doesn’t help until I have the other parts with me. Call me a bitch all you want but if I were the director I’d kick these people out of the choir because they clearly aren’t bothered with improving themselves.

I just found out that the choir I’m in is probably going to sing Considering Matthew Shepard next year and I am so happy I get to perform it again. I performed it 3 years ago with my college chamber choir and it’s such an intensely powerful piece of music. I think every choral singer should perform it at least once in their life.

So I started a new audiobook this today and imagine my surprise when I hear the name of a city pronounced exactly like my Eberron character’s name. And I go to look it up and it’s spelled exactly the same as well. I know it’s probably a coincidence, but it would be really funny if the author somehow saw a post that mentioned Quezira and said, “I like that, it’s mine now”.

I have finally finished my reread/relisten of the Throne of Glass series. Now that I’ve read every SJM book with enough memory still fresh I can confidently say that ToG is her best series in my opinion. I think it’s her most cohesive story and although I still love ACoTaR, I think ToG works better because it doesn’t get bogged down with romantasy elements. Mist and Fury is still my favorite individual book she has written however. Feysand forever has my heart. As for Crescent City… it’s not terrible. I just don’t find the villains compelling because I hate the trope of “omniscient villain that always knows the protagonists plans despite the level of absurdity it requires”. So when that is most of the plot I check out. Also I think by the time SJM started writing Crescent City she was too caught up in trying to weave all of her series together which ended up bogging the series down. Like the Feysand cameo was cool in ToG but once multi-world travel became a truly canon thing it was just too much. This is just my opinion as someone that has been reading SJMs books since 2013.

I’ve been rereading the Throne of Glass series and as I’m nearing the end of Heir of Fire I’m already tensing. Obviously I know what happens but I haven’t read this book in over a decade. I remember the visceral feeling of dread as Dorian and Chaol’s final chapters ended and I’m not looking forward to reliving that. Even though this time I don’t have to wait a year to see what happens.

Possible choir hot take: Water Night is my least favorite Eric Whitacre piece that I’ve sung. It’s a cool song to listen to, but as a singer it’s so boring. 90% of it, regardless of what part you are singing, is just singing the same note over and over. Yes I understand the irony of me saying this as a S1 when that’s just the life of altos. Trust me, I sang alto for half of high school. I understand. I think Whitacre has better pieces than Cluster Chords the Song.

God, I’m going to be so stressed out this week. My boss and team manager are on a business trip overseas which means I’m in charge of my department while they’re away. So on top of my normal workload, I have to make sure the entire team’s work queue is set up each morning, make sure that the operations steps after my area have work, continuing to train our new team member, and make sure everyone stays on task. Our new team member is especially prone to losing focus and kind of getting everyone else off task. To the point that if he doesn’t pull his shit together this week he might be done. He’s a nice guy but there are so many little things about him that add up to drive me up the wall that I’m low-key hoping he does something to justify me relaying that to my boss.

So excited, I think I just found another one of my unicorns for diamond painting. I’ve been trying to complete the ChrissaBug zodiac collection from Diamond Art Club(which is hard to do since by the time I got into the hobby all but two had been archived). I bought Sagittarius when it originally came out then caught Leo in a destash about a month ago. The last one of my must-haves from this collection is Virgo, which I never see in destash groups. Until tonight. I reached out and the seller is going to send the invoice tomorrow so hopefully in a few weeks I can officially add it to my collection.

I feel like such an asshole right now. There is a new person in my department at work. He is a very nice guy, but he is the exact type of AuDHD person that I can only stand to be around for short amounts of time. He has no self awareness and is constantly stimming in ways that are minor but very distracting for me. And since our team manager is often busy with other things right now I’ve been stuck with him shadowing over my shoulder. So I have to constantly hear finger popping and him tapping his fingers on his water bottle. Both of these are very triggering for my misophonia to the point that by the end of the day I’m exhausted just from tensing every time he makes noise. I had to ask him to stop popping his joints and while he’s gotten better he still subconsciously does it quite often. And I feel like if I ask him to stop tapping as well I’ll be an asshole. Because I get it. I stim and I often worry if I’m being annoying. And if he wasn’t shadowing me I’d probably be fine because I can just put headphones in and tune him out. But when he shadows I have to explain my process for our work.

It’s the end of an era. My first ever TTRPG campaign is officially finished and the book closes for Quezira. Now she turns her attention to the bureaucratic nightmare that is establishing a new branch of house Lyrandar. She’ll definitely be asking Aaren for a lot of help. And of course Esravesh, but she still doesn’t fully trust her. Mostly out of childhood trauma. Hopefully she can finally heal in that regard. Now I turn my attention towards the Myth-Speaker campaign we’re starting.

I’m rereading Shadow and Bone since I got the itch after finishing Six of Crows. I just got to the point where Alina runs into Mal at the palace and I forgot how much of an asshole he is. Like I knew I didn’t like him but I haven’t read this series in over a decade, not to mention the Netflix series making him slightly better. But I truly do not understand why Leigh Bardugo thought people would enjoy him as a love interest. I was always a Nikolai girl, and while I know he ends up with someone else in his duology I’ll always yearn for what could have been. At least they end up together in the show, even though it ends on a cliffhanger.

It’s hard to believe, but next week my Eberron campaign starts its final combat. What started as a 5e campaign I stumbled across on Reddit has grown into an amazing PF2E adventure and an amazing group of friends. Playing as Quezira has truly helped me grow into the person that I am today and it’s bittersweet that it’s ending now but I can’t wait to start the next campaign.