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Ruber Rosis

Red Velvet

The worst year so far

Hello everyone!
It's been a while. I hope everyone is doing well! As you probably already read in the new update box: BALC has been split into two websites. We have A Random Blog as my blog and Linco as my link collection now. I didn't like how the link collection gained traffic for the blog and didn't want to bother too many people into reading my rambling here, so I seperated them. I hope you like the disgustingly cute new layout. Although it's not my favourite so far I think it turned out really pretty (my favourite one was the Asuna layout from 2021).

So what happened this year? My grandma became very sick in February. She had pneumonia which affected her heart and made her bedbound for months. We cared for her night and day until she passed away by the end of May. I always hoped that she would recover somehow since she was quite sick a few times before and always bounced back, but this time medications didn't help her anymore. There was nothing the doctors could have done due to her age and her weakened state. She has always had heart problems and this time her heart couldn't take it anymore. It's really painful that she left us. She was the most important family member in my life since she was always there for me, more than my parents ever were. We are still processing that we lost her. At night I often have dreams that she is still alive and since we lived in the same house I see her everywhere in my mind's eye. It will definitely take some time. I also didn't know how stressful the time after a family member has passed away can be. There was a lot we had to organize and sort out. We are quite exhausted after everything that has happened.

To deal with the grief I picked up gardening as a hobby, which keeps me quite busy. It used to be my grandma's hobby, so our garden is full of flowers and it would be sad to see them wither away. I also feel closer to her when I take care of her flowers and it feels really rewarding when everything looks neat and pretty. I tried planting my own flowers (pictures on the right) as well and so far there were only a few casualties. (^▿^ ') If anyone has any gardening tips I would really appreciate it. Besides that we are also panning to renovate the house in autumn this year or spring next year. Something else that keeps me busy are my cat's skin issues. The skin on his paw still hasn't fully healed, so we still see the vet 2-3 times a week. I really hope it will be healed by the end of the year. I'm planning to build him a cat room and it would be great if he doesn't have to wear a cone anymore so he can climb and play freely again.
Due to all the stress of this year I wasn't in the best health either. I had a really bad flu twice and my surgery wound from last September also hasn't really healed yet. I should probably see a doctor about that soon but so far I have been too exhausted to really care about it. There are a few other things that I need to get checked out too, so I will probably make some appointments for next year at latest.

I hope everyone else had a better year so far and wish you all a great day.

Greetings,
Ran
posted on Tuesday, 16th July 2024 - comment?

Unexpected surgery & mail issues

Sick kitty

Hello everyone!
After a long absence from my websites I'm finally back and blogging again. Let's jump right into what happened in the past months and why I was absent.
Lets begin way back after my last blog post in October last year. At that time we noticed some small spots where my cat was losing fur and his skin was red. We brought him to the vet and they told us to put some honey on it and that it would heal by itself because they thought it were some lesions from fighting with another cat outside. (I know letting your cat outside is very looked down upon in some places, but we live in a very safe area in the countryside, without dangerous animals and where it is pretty normal for every villager to let their cat outside.) Unfortunately during the following weeks the spots became larger, so we went to the vet again and they decided to keep him there to treat him. My cat ended up staying there for unbelievable one and a half months because it kept getting worse and worse. The first time I visited him I was shocked! He had lost the fur on a large portion of his back, belly and one of his legs and the skin was very inflamed and oozing. They tried all kinds of common treatments on him but nothing worked, it only got worse. They reached out to other vets all over the country to get opinions on how to treat him and did several lab tests to find out what could be the cause. For weeks no progress happened and all lab tests only showed inflamed hair roots (no bacteria or parasites that could be the cause). Unfortunetely during the time that he was staying at the vet they were very sparse with giving us information about what was going on. At one point I was so furious that I showed up at the vet's office unnannounced and demanded information about him. At that time they thought he has an auto immune disease but later on they found out that it was not the case either. (You might be wondering why we didn't go to another vet but we didn't want to put him through the stress of going to different vets as he was very miserable already.) To this day we still don't know what it is or what caused it but after he returned home in January this year they finally found a treatment and medication that worked. I think getting back home also played a big role in getting better for him. He looked so sad when he was at the vet. He is a lot happier now that he is home. In December he looked so miserable that we though we might lose him. But gladly he is doing a lot better now. His back and his belly completely healed. He recently struggled with some digestion problems from the medication but it normalized now that he doesn't have to take meds anymore. Only his foot is still worrying us a little after the inflammation traveled down from his leg to his paw. But he currently receives foot baths for that which seem to help already.

Besides everything mentioned he also needed a lot of care since he returned home. From bathing him in special soap every 1-2 days, giving him different medications, applying spray plaster and changing bandages every day, keeping his environment clean, keeping him clean and removing built up from his fur etc. to vet visits every 2-3 days. During all that (and besides work) I found no motivation to work on my websites. The thought of working on something for hours on my PC somehow only stressed me out. Some might wonder why I even did so much for "a cat", but he is part of the family and I love him very much, so of course I do what I can to help him recover! We still have vet appointments every 2-3 days but caring for him is a lot less time consuming now that most of his wounds healed, so I'm trying to find time and motivation to work on my websites and write blogposts again.

Something else that had me on the edge in November was the company that I ordered a new PC from. I wanted a really good PC for graphic editing and gaming so I was ready to spend a bigger amount. I ordered a pre built PC for 1,5k with the specs that seemed fitting and the website stated that the PC would be shipped within 5 days... but it took the company 3 weeks! They had me sweating those whole three weeks because I thought I got scammed. I tried to reach the company but only received an automatic answer to my mail that stated that the customer service was down for an unknown amount of time because they had been victim of a cyber attack.
I need to say it was also my fault for buying the PC on a whim, tired after work thinking it will be alright and not checking any reviews about the company before ordering (I usually always check those before I order something somewhere, but for some reason I thought "whatever" that day *big facepalm*). And they had some really bad reviews. When the PC finally arrived I checked it very thoroughly and luckily everything is running fine. I wont't be reckless with something expensive like that again. (^▿^ ')

I think that's everything I wanted to mention in todays blogpost. Now onto some small website related updates: I added a new category to the gallery where I will post character build cards of some of my genshin characters. I also updated the text in the box above the blog posts since I turned 30 this year.

I hope everyone is doing well and wish you a nice and sunny day!

Greetings,
Ran
posted on Sunday, 18th June 2023 - comment?

An eventful summer

Hello hello and good evening / morning / or whatever time it is for you!
I hope everyone is doing well! It's been some eventful months. My head is a little cloudy as I'm still recovering from Covid so this blogpost might be a little shorter, but I really wanted to post something again. I caught the virus about 3 weeks ago from my parents. It's crazy that I'm still affected by it. I haven't been that sick in a while, the last time was probably when I was a kid. I was batteling with a high fever for the first 5 days and now one and a half weeks later I still have a cough, low energy and a hard time focusing. Today was the first day that I was able to leave quarantine. We only went grocery shopping but I'm totally worn out alreay. Next week I have to return to work. I hope I can deal with the stress already, but I try to think positive at the moment and I'm glad that my parents are recovering well and that my grandma didn't catch it.
Before I get into what else happened in the past months I would like to mention that I have a new affiliate: Suzy and her blog redvelvet. Check out her site if you are looking for another active blogger!
So in June I have been to the first of three anime conventions that I mentioned in my last post. To be honest, I totally underestimated how exhausting the first convention would be. After 2 years of almost not moving at all, walking around all day for 4 days straight was really hard lol. My plan was to wear the work outfit version of my Kotori Itsuka cosplays on the last day of the convention, but on that day my feet and legs already hurt so bad that I decided to not wear it. And I'm glad I didn't. On the way back from the convention to the parking lot I was in tears because I was in so much pain. For the first convention after such a long time we definitely should have planned to rest for a day in between exploring the city and going to the venue. Besides that the location was also extremely crowded, which was a little shock after 2 years of social distancing. The parking situation was a chaos as well because although they had enough space they didn't have enough staff to handle everything so there were very long waiting lines to enter the fields. At some point they just let everyone in but there were not enough cashiers so after parking their cars everyone was walking around confused and searching for the cashiers.
The next convention was in August and... not so great either to be honest. They had ridiculous rules of what you were allowed to carry in your bag and what not and some of the rules weren't even announced before. So if you wanted to get in and you carried something "wrong" you would either have to deal with them throwing your stuff away or stay outside. We were lucky that we didn't carry anything that wasn't allowed but were quite confused about everything. Unfortunately this convention was very crowded as well and we weren't able to see all shows because the rooms were too full (although we payed so much for the tickets ). We never had those issues two years ago. The only positive thing was that I got to wear my Kotori Itsuka spirit form cosplay and absolutely loved it.
The last convention was 3 weeks ago and although I didn't get to wear a cosplay again because it was too cold it was my favourite convention of all three. It wasn't too crowded, we found a good parking spot outside of the city and were able to comfortably get to the venue by public transport which was included in the ticket. I also managed to sell some figures and mangas that I didn't like anymore (none from the gallery ) and we were able to see every show we were interested in. I'm glad that we made it there before I caught the virus.
During my freetime between the conventions I got totally addicted to Genshin Impact which kind of disctracted me from my websites (I'm so sorry ;-;). I always had an eye on that game but avoided it because I wasn't sure if I would like it. I usually prefer games where you can completely customize your character and the gacha mechanic which brings you premade characters didn't sound too appealing for me. But I gave it a try and got totally hooked. I love games with characters that have an anime aesthetic and Genshin has some really cool character designs. If anyone else plays Genshin I would totally love to hear what your main is. My main is Ningguang but she doesn't seem to be very popular.

That's everything for my blogpost today. Turned out longer than I thought it would. I hope everyone has a great day and wish you a sunny autumn weekend!

Sincerely,
Ran
posted on Friday, 21st October 2022 - comment?

Where to start?

Hello hello!
The title says it all: it's been so long that I don't even know where to start. I have been soo lazy when it comes to blogging. I though about writing a post several times but I either was to busy or just couldn't get myself to do it lol. Buuut I made some notes what I wanted to write about. First of all onto some site related things: I changed the text colors so everything is easier to read. It seems on some devices the text was just too dark. I also added a new category in the gallery. I found this fun site called picrew.me where you can create characters in different art styles and thought I'll display the ones I created here. Besides that I corrected some texts and did some background work.
The first months of 2022 were kinda chill. In January I got my first booster shot (which had no side effects at all), was addicted to Pok mon Legends of Arceus and did some relaxing stuff with my bf like watching The Witcher and anime. He also got us this Lego Tokyo kit which we built together.

Sometime by the end of March / beginning of April a depressive phase hit me. I was looking forward to some days off during the easter holidays but due to the depression I couldn't do anything. After a while I started to force myself to do stuff which helped me to get out it.
While I worked on keeping myself busy I tried recording myself using an avatar from Reality app - a fun little app where you can easily create a 3D model and start streaming with it. I have been intrigued by the thought of trying out to be a vtuber for a while before but I am very shy and I can't imagine to go live so I decided to use the app to create videos instead. I'm not sure wether I'll upload something to youtube or just add a video here and there on my websites yet. You can find my first try creating a video on the enter page of my graphic site. It's a disaster but at least it's kinda funny. I still need to figure a lot of things out.
Another thing I have been up to is planning conventions and cosplays for this year. I will go to 3 conventions this summer and I'm excited af. The last convention that I have been to was in February 2020. It's definitely something I have missed a lot during the pandemic. For a while I considered to quit cosplaying because I feel like I'm starting to get too old for it - not because of looks but because conventions are already exhausting out of cosplay - and I feel like I have less and less energy the older I get. But I want to go all out this time after those 2 years. The character I'll be cosplaying is Kotori Itsuka from Date A Live. At first Date A Live was more of a filler anime for me because I didn't find anything else to watch, but I got kinda hooked after a while. I like Kotori's character design. I love characters with red hair anyways and I love her spirit form. I ordered both her work-outfit and her spirit form dress. I hope one of the cosplays will arrive before the first convention. I would love to make the cosplays myself but I got way to much going on, especially with work.
Speaking of work: Whenever I think it can't get worse - it will get worse. We have been shorter on staff than ever the past weeks. Many colleagues suddenly called in sick while others were on vacation and one of my colleagues had to suddenly rush from work to the hospital several times because of her sick son. Things were already going terribly anyways - it's just been a mess. I have been working overtime a lot for weeks and I'm reaching my limit. It's already affecting my private life and my health. I hope things will calm down soon. I can't wait for the next time I have some days off from work.
I'll end this blog post here as I'm almost falling asleep while writing this after a long week. I hope you all are doing well and wish you a nice weekend!

Sincerely,
Ran
posted on Saturday, 14th May 2022 - comment?

A hectic month

Hello everyone!
My blog finally has a new layout! I have been a little lazy with new layouts for this site but I have to say I liked the old one a lot. I recently started to watch the anime Blue Period which is about art and creativity and it motivated me to get creative myself. I also gifted myself a new PC monitor for christmas which has me hyped to do stuff on my computer. I got the Xiao Mi 34" curved monitor. It can be tilted in all directions and you can adjust the height. The blue light filtre is also a big plus as well. Definitly check it out if you are looking for a new (not to expensive) monitor as well. I had a 22" flat screen monitor before which was a little too small for coding and graphic designing in my opinion.
This time the layout is a centered div. I figured out how to code a centered div when I coded the recent layout of my graphic site. I also took inspiration for this layout here from my own layout there. I think the circles that repeat parts of the header make it a lot more interesting. What I especially like about this layout is that the colors match the eye colors of the girl on the header. The butterflies are kinda random. I was searching for "blue" and "anime" on PNG Wing and the butterflies randomly came up besides the PNG of that girl and that bottle. I like the contrast somehow. The affiliates are linked on butterflies now too.
This month has been very stressful. I feel like somehow I was missing the time of the two weeks that we spent on vacation. I didn't find much time to organize christmas presents because things were worse than ever at work. Another colleague has quit. Because of her contract she would have had to stay a few more weeks, but right after she handed in her resignation she caught the Covid virus and her co-worker in her part of the office caught it as well so we were suddenly missing two people. We then worked about 12-14 hours a day, which totally wore us down. Last week her co-worker was finally feeling better and able to at least work from home, so things finally got a little better. Now I have a few days off between christmas and new year. Hopefully I can find some time to unwind now.

Have a nice evening everyone!

Sincerely,
Ran
posted on Monday, 27th December 2021 - comment?

Christmas is coming

Hi, hello and wow it's already been over 2 months since my last blog post. Time flew by like crazy. That's what happens when you have a lot going on. First of all some good news: my cat is doing a lot better. The two weeks he spent indoors and didn't move as much really helped. If it doesn't get worse he won't have to see the vet anytime soon again.
Unfortunately by the end of September my bf had some really bad pain in his abdomen so I had to drive him to the hospital in the middle of the night. It then took them grueling 12 hours to find out what's the cause of his pain. Since he had cancer before we expected the worst but turned out it was his appendix which was inflamed and needed to be removed. The first weeks after the surgery he couldn't move as much so he needed some help from me but now he's almost fully recovered.
Once he was doing better he also went back to his family (we have a long distance relationship) to get the Covid vaccination and I decided to go on vacation with my parents. I was very stressed out because of work and everything so I really needed some time to relax. And that's all I did on that vacation. Relaxed at the beach, played some Animal Crossing on my Switch and learned Japanese. I just started to learn Japanese on that vacation. I'm thinking about spending a vacation in Japan in 2022 or 2023 so I thought knowing a little bit Japanese could be useful once I get there. I've been dreaming of spending a vacation there for quiet a while now. Hopefully it will work out in 2023. They are really strict with Covid when it comes to tourists at the moment so I don't see myself traveling to Japan in 2022 already, but we will see. If it doesn't work out next year then at least I have some more time to learn Japanese as it's not very easy anyways. Remembering all the symbols is the hardest part for me. Regarding Animal Crossing I didn't get to play much of the 2.0 update yet as it only came out when my vacation was already over. I have seen the new items all over social media though and I'm really hyped what possibilities we have now.
I definetly have a lot more energy since the vacation. Only this weekend I'm not feeling well somehow and I don't feel like doing anything. Christmas is already stressing me out too. I love gifting others but I hate online shopping and I'm very uncreative at the moment. My plan was to order everything before December to avoid the christmas chaos. Not sure if that plan will work out anymore. I would also like to get myself a new PC monitor but I can't find anything that fulfills my expectations and works with my old ass PC and graphic card and I don't plan to buy a new PC this year. My bf and his brother will search for a monitor later on, hopefully they find something nice. I used to be very tech-savvy when I was younger but it seems I have no clue about this stuff anymore.
I hope I'm a little more creative soon. ARW didn't have an update in over two months. I would like to make some new graphics and a new winter themed layout. ARW also had it's first birthday in October (which I totally forgot). I would like to create something to celebrate it somehow.
Now to some blog related updates: I had a request to add Sayla's forum Tainted Onez to the link collection. As a new site to the collection it is also linked on the header for a while now. If you are a fan of role playing or like to write stories you should definetly check it out. I also added Ruber Rosis as Affiliate on the right side of the layout and decided to add the names of the affiliates underneath the buttons so they are more noticeable.

That's everything I had on my mind for today. I hope you all have a great sunday!

Ran
posted on Sunday, 21st November 2021 - comment?

Been a while

Hello everyone!
It's been a while since I posted here. There is so much to talk about that I don't know where to start. First of all I'm over my depressive phase. Many people are still talking about leaving at work but I try not to think about it too much. We also have a new colleague and another colleague agreed to work more hours, so things somehow work out at the moment. My grandma is also doing well again and can do most of the things she used to do before her accident. The only one who had me worried during the past weeks was my cat. One day we noticed that he is limping. We had to take him to 5 vets until someone finally figured out why. The first vets we visited thought he might have been bitten by another cat / animal outsite although they couldn't find any bitemarks on him. They prescribed him antibiotics and pain meds but after weeks of treatment he was still limping... Then one of the vets finally had the idea to do an x-ray of his leg. They noticed that something is wrong with his knee and sent us to a specialist. The specialist told us that he has osteoarthritis and an inflammation in his knee. Now he is not allowed to move as much and has to stay indoors for 2 weeks. One and a half week already passed by and it seems to finally get better. Next wednesdey I have to call the vet again and report how he is doing. If it didn't get better they would have to take a sample of his bones because the vet also assumed it could be bone cancer. Luckily it won't be necessary. My cat is also adapting a lot better to the indoor life than I thought he would. He even seems to enjoy it. In the beginning of the year we had a lot of snow so we couldn't let him go outsite as well because the snow was taller than him. During that time he was a lot more unhappy about being inside. But it's possible that the pain meds he still has to take are knocking him out a little at the moment.
To treat myself a little during my depressive phase I bought a lot of stuff in the past months. From animes figures and Japanese sweets to decorations, a new shelf, a new phone, a ringlight (for taking photos) and room organization items. I especially took joy in organizing my room in the past weeks. A tidy space definitly helps to tidy and calm the mind. Here are pictures of some of the stuff I bought:

I looove the Yukinoshita figure, she is so cute! The pictures of the figures will also be added to the gallery. Most of the things were not too expensive, just the phone and the owl lamp. ^▿^'
I can also say that I'm fully vaccinated now. I received my first shot on the 20th of July and my second shot on the 12th of August (Pfizer-BioNTech). After the first shot I had a burning sensation and pain in my arm which lasted for about a day. After the second shot I had the same side effects at first, they just started later (2 days after the shot). But (what I didn't mention on my twitter yet) on the 3rd and 4th day I started to feel tired and sick with diarrhea. My doctor said that diarrhea is kinda rare as a side effect and was not sure if it really came from the vaccination. But I'm sure that's what caused it. By the 5th day my arm also started to get numb and after working for hours even my fingers turned numb. I had to call in sick for a few days at work but the next week everything was fine again. I'm glad that I'm finally done with the vaccination thing and hope I don't have to get another shot anytime soon. My parents are thinking about going on vacation by the end of October. Now that I'm fully vaccinated I might join them. I didn't see the ocean since about 2018 I think. It would be a good opportunity to take some photos for my graphic page again. But I'm not sure if I will really join them or not. My boyfriend still didn't get an appointment for his vaccination yet and somehow it would be sad to not spend my weeks off with him. I'm also not sure if we can leave my gramda alone for 2 weeks. She said it's no problem but I'm unsure though. There is a lot of stuff I would have to get done before the vacation too.
A while ago I mentioned that I'm working on another website project for someone. I can finally say that I found out how to code mobile layouts! This week I also learned how to create centered divs. With these accomplishments I can take the project to the next level. My graphic page ARW also has a centered div as new layout now. I don't think I will create mobile versions for my own websites anytime soon though. I would need to optimize some other things on my sites first and re-do a lot of the coding and I don't want to spend my time on that at the moment. I also don't really mind to not have mobile versions for my own sites.
I think that's all I had to say for today. The post is already way to long. What I still would like to mention is that I made some new buttons for this blog and re-did some of the texts on the site a while ago. I need to add some new sites to the link collection soon too. I have no new sites to display on the header at the moment. I might edit this post when I decided for some sites that I would like to add.

For now I wish you all a great week and take care!

Ran
posted on Sunday, 6th September 2021 - comment?

Still alive

Tired

Hello everyone!
How you been? I hope better than me. Last month wasn't so great for me. But before I tell you what happened I would like to mention that I updated the featured site on the header. This month it's Alaina's cute pixel and css site named Milky Glitter. Visit her site and show her some love.

So what happened in March? I had a depressive phase in March and during that phase my grandma also fell down the stairs to the basement. She was still recovering from last time when she was sick and not very sturdy on her feet yet. We told her not to go into the basement, but she did it thought and tripped on the last step. Luckily it was only the last step so she didn't fall harder. She has a crack in her pelvis now and can't walk at the moment. She has been in the hospital for 3 weeks now since then and will be there for another week. Since she won't be able to walk a few more weeks until that crack has fully healed she will be transfered to a nursing home next. Everyone in my family works fulltime and nobody has experience in nursing care so we can't take care of her at home. We are afraid to make a mistake and make her injury worse. But we were lucky and found a spot in a very good nursing home. I hope she will be able to walk again. She is over 80 y.o. already. I think it's hard at that age to recover from something like that. But I'm hoping for the best.

The worries about my grandma also made my depressive phase worse. During this pandemic the hospital and nursing home isn't the greatest place to be because of all the people there. But they are very strict with testing in those facilities here and they don't allow any visitors, so it should be ok. It's just sad that we can't visit her. We can call her though and once she gets better she can come back home.
Speaking of the pandemic: It's been a year now since the first lockdown here. Last year in late summer things got a little better here and it was possible to go out again, go to restaurants etc. But since autumn everything is closed again. All you can do is sit at home or go to work. So far the weather is still terrible and cold here so there is not much you can do outside yet. It feels like its been forever since the current lockdown started. I can't wait until the weather gets better.
Last week, when I thought that I finally start to get over my depressive phase, I received more bad news: another colleague told me that he is going to quit. I felt even worse after that. I don't think I have the energy to work for x people again and to teach everything to a new employee once again. I had a talk with the department manager this week and also talked to some other colleagues about it. I will take next week off because of my boyfriends 30th birthday and because I have to take care of some things related to my car. I'm still feeling out of energy and depressed so I hope a few days off will help somehow. I was told that a former colleague will come back in May and my other colleagues (who don't plan to leave) were optimistically too so that gives me some hope that everything will be fine at work. So my current plan is to regain some energy and get over that depressive phase for now. I don't feel like doing anything at the moment. I don't feel like playing any of my console games, I don't feel like working on my websites, I don't feel like doing anything of the stuff I usually do, and I feel kind of sick too. I hope that will improve during my days off.
I hope you all are doing better and stay healthy. I wish you a great weekend.

Sincerely, Ran
posted on Sunday, 18th April 2021 - comment?

Evolving

Hello, Hola and Kon'nichiwa everyone!
I'm a little shocked myself but we have a new and quite different to what I usually make layout. I wanted to create a more modern looking layout and this is the outcome. Too bad I didn't come up with this earlier, before I uploaded the new design to my graphic page. I probably would have used this design for my graphic page and not for BALC. But it doesn't really matter, the current layout on my graphic page will stay for a while, while we enjoy this one here. Maybe I will create something similar for ARW as the next layout or as a free design. BALC's new design already benefits from my other project that I mentioned in my last blog post. It might seem like a small achievement, but I found out how to use two background images (one vertically and one horizontally). I'm a little embarrased. But I shouldn't be as I'm no professional at coding. It's also the first time that I tried out image shadows (the affiliates on the right). The PNGs on the header are from Kuroi Inku. Yuumiko has a really good taste when it comes to choosing images for PNGs. There were so many cute ones that inspired me, but I decided to use this one of dreamy looking Asuna (and the flowers in the back). I had something clean with soft colours in mind that would go well with Asuna's colours and I think I nailed it.
This month the site Catch A Star is featured on the header. Caz got some insanely cute pixel art there. I especially love the pixel animals. Check out her site! I think I will look for more sites to add to my link collection soon. I already got one or two sites on my mind that I would like to add.
I also received a new application for the awarding by the talented Amanda for her colourful blog & pixel art site named Ruber Rosis. You can find the award of my choice in the awarding section.
To be honest I'm writing this blog post over the span of two days. Yesterday I was full of excitement and energy and today I'm somehow tired and gloomy. It had gotten way to late yesterday so I had to call it a day and continue today. I'm trying to keep up the energy that I had in the first part of this post.
So what happened in February? As mentioned in my last post I had a week off in the beginning of the month. After my grandma felt better I got quite addicted to Animal Crossing for the rest of the week. Here are some screenshots of my island so far:

(areas are not completely finished yet)
I had Animal Crossing on my Switch Lite before, but I never really used terraforming. This time I plan to recreate a lot of cool areas that I saw on Youtube which require terraforming.
After that week my energy dropped quickly again. This time my energy was even lower than in January. I was worn out before I went to bed and still felt worn out after I woke up. So last weekend I was laying down the whole weekend and did absolutely nothing. This week I was lucky that there was not much going on at work. I was able to leave in time or even earlier each day. I really needed that. I'm definetly feeling a little better now. I wonder if my energy lows are a result of my stressful job that I had for several years now. I've been thinking about quitting my job for a while, but I'm such a scaredy cat. I like to know what awaits me every day. New people and environments scare me. And this job gives me a lot of security for the future. The industry I'm working in benefits from the decrease of plastic packaging because we produce alternative packaging which is more environmentally friendly. We probably won't run out of orders for many years to come. I also thought about staying at home for a while and live off of my savings. I would have time for a lot of things that I usually don't have time for when I work 10-11 hours a day. But I would have to find a new job after that too. I'm not sure what I will do yet. Unfortunately things will get rougher in my current job soon too because a colleague has quit in February and another one will quit soon as well because of her pregnancy.

Besides that good news are that my dad found my old Yu-Gi-Oh duel disc in the loft when he was sorting out there. He wanted to throw it away. Luckily I saw that and was able to rescue it.

I changed the batteries and excitingly the display is still working:

I think these duel discs used to be sold for 25 bucks and now sell for over 100$. I could sell it but I prefer to keep it as a collectible and display it somewhere at home for nostalgia reasons (and who knows, maybe these duel discs will increase in worth even more? I could still sell it later on).

I think that's all for todays blog post. I'm happy that I can include larger images now because of the wider content area.

I hope you guys like the new layout and wish you a great day!

Sincerely, Ran

posted on Sunday, 7th March 2021 - comment?

Websites, stress & more websites

Hello everyone!
Time has flown by like crazy. My last post is already exactly a month old. But a lot has happened since then. The first weeks of this year have been quite stressful. We had a lot to do at work and if you follow my graphic site you eventually already know that my colleague had the Corona Virus. I was very nervous because I was worried that I might have caught the virus too and I didn't want to pass it to the people I live with. But luckily all my test results were negative. My colleague is also feeling better by now. Somehow I felt out of energy all the time though and had to take things slow.
But despite all that I managed to finish a new website project of mine: my very first fan listing. It's a fanlisting for the Pok mon Sceptile. Sceptile has been my favourite Pok mon ever since the Ruby and Sapphire games came out. I wanted to create a fanlisting for a while now and feel very lucky that there was no fanlisting for this Pok mon at TAFL (The Anime Fanlistings - a collective for anime related fanlsitings) yet and that I was able to have it approved by them. If you like Sceptile too I would be happy if you could join my fanlisting. The only information needed for the registration are your Name/Nickname, eMail Adress and Country. (The eMail Adress won't be shown in your profile if you don't want it to be shown.)
Besides that something else exciting happened in January. Someone that I met through a friend at an anime convention a few years ago randomly contacted me on my social media and we happened to talk about websites. Since this person runs a small convention himself and didn't have a website for his convention yet he asked me to build one for them. I told him that I'm no professional at website creating and only do it as a hobby but he didn't mind. I love conventions so I was very hyped to build this website for him. At first everything went smoothly, I had the layout and the basic coding done quickly and he agreed that everything was fine at first. But then he showed the site to some of the other people who run the convention with him and they wanted things changed here and there and in a certain way. I underestimated how difficult it can be to build a website for someone else and to meet their expectations. My coding knowledge is very limited, I only know a little bit of HTML and CSS. At the moment I'm stuck at creating a mobile version for the website (haha mobile devices, my old enemy ). I have never done that before. It will be tricky for me but I will try to make it work. This is a good opportunity for me to learn something new. I already found some flaws in how I usually do my layouts and was able to fix it for that website and will consider that for future layouts for my own websites.
But before I continue to work on that site I'm planning to finally upload something to my graphic site. I already finished a few graphics which I will add to the site after this blog post. A new pixel set will follow as soon as possible too, but these take a very long time to create. I have this week off so I will see what I can get done, but I also plan to relax a lot (and play Animal Crossing on my new Nintendo Switch ) to get some energy back. I couldn't relax yet because in the last few days I had to get some things done first and I also had to help my sick grandma. But she is feeling better now.

Now to some topics related to this blog:
I changed the featured website in the "latest added" area to Jessica's website Sictaena Ethereal Goat. She is also the first person who got an award from me. You can check out the award in the "Awarding" section.
I also have my very first affiliate for this blog now: Suzy and her blog Redvelvet (linked on the heart symbol in the affi area). Thank you for the affi request.

That's all for todays blog post. I hope you all are doing good and I wish you a nice evening.

Sincerely, Ran
posted on Wednesday, 3rd February 2021 - comment?

Happy new year

Hi and happy new year everyone!
A lot has happened here since I opened this site. I added lots of scans and photos to the anime and manga section. For example of my first manga ever: "Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch". I still remember the day when I got the first issue as a kid. We wanted to go to a public swimming area in summer and went to the supermarket beforehand to buy snacks and something to read. There I found it on a table with discounted books. I think I found the second one a little later in a supermarket as well but I don't really remember how I got the other ones anymore. I think my parents ordered them for me online.
I also added pictures of most of the anime figures that I own. They represent the obsession that I had for some of the animes for a long time. I loved "Sword Art Online" for years, but I didn't like the last season that much. I'm also dissapointed that "Swort Art Online: Progressive" will be just a movie and not a whole series. But I will watch it though and still love the older seasons. I especially have a soft spot for Sinon's and Leafa's character design. Blue, yellow and green are my favourite colors and I also love cats (i.e. Sinon's Alfheim version is love! ). But what else can I say? The "Super Sonico" anime wasn't too great, but she loves cats and is kinda cute so I somehow ended up with way too many figures of her, haha! I also loved to watch all kinds of music anime for a while. My favourites were "Love Live", "Love Live Sunshine", "Bang Dream" and "Bang Dream 2nd Season".
I'm thinking about adding more pictures of my weeby collection soon because I still have lots of cool stuff to show you here.
Another new thing that I added here is the awarding area. You can now request a cute award from me for your website. Check out the samples that I added, maybe they will help you decide if you want to give it a shot.
I had some time during the holidays to browse through the internet and found some really cute pixel websites. So I decided to add the first websites to the link collection. I will feature them one after another in the "latest added" area too and will leave each of them displayed there for a few days / weeks, starting with Lejla's lovely site named "Appledust". I'm in love with all those pixel websites at the moment. Each of them is so cute!
Since I finally had some freetime now I was able to relax a little bit as well. I was really stressed out during the weeks before christmas. As I already mentioned on my graphic page: the customers were crazy around that time. So work had been very stressful, plus I also had lots of stuff on my To-Do-List which needed to be done before chirstmas. Now my bf and I have put up a new shelf in the bathroom and spent the last few days eating nice foods, playing games and watching youtube videos all day. Yesterday I was somewhat bored so I even made a spring layout for my graphic page already. I found a cool PNG of one of my favourite characters of all time and was so inspired that I immediately had to create a layout with it. Ofc I will keep the character and layout a secret for now so you have a little bit of a surprise when I release it. I would love to already use the new layout but we are still in the middle of winter. That would be way too early. Maybe I will upload it by the end of February. Meanwhile there's a little sneak peek to the left.
This blog entry has gotten way longer than I thought it would. I think I said everything that I had on my mind for now. I hope you all have a wonderful Sunday.
Sincerely, Ran
posted on Sunday, 3rd January 2021 - comment?

Let it snow

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