If you have a computer, tablet, or smartphone and aren't aware of Humble Bundle you are seriously missing out. I've been using them for a few years as a source of games and software, and they also carry mobile applications as well as books (digitally, of course). They often offer all of these things for prices much lower than where you find them on Steam or elsewhere, but still as legitimate licenses that pay the developers/publishers. Items are bundled together (hence the name), and you can get a whole suite of things for less than the regular price of a single item typically. Don't want everything in the bundle? Give the unwanted keys to a friend!

To sweeten the pot, Humble Bundle is also a "pay what you want" service. You can get bundles for as low as a dollar, but are welcome to (and encouraged!) pay beyond that in order to give the creators a little more cushion in their pockets. When you purchase a bundle, you're able to select exactly how the money you're paying is split between devs/publishers, HB, and a charity! It's right below the Order Summary box (some people don't scroll far enough and miss it), and you can get as granular as you want with it. It's kind of an awesome system, and is how I've been able to expand my game and software libraries as much as I have on the limited budget I need to stick to. Bundles are always changing, providing all kinds of new opportunities to pick up stuff. I've got email alerts set for certain types of products and get notified any time a new one pops up that fits the criteria.

So now that I've talked your ear off about that, I want to share that Humble Bundle started a partner program, and I am a part of it!  What does that mean? It means that if you click that handy dandy Humble Partner button on the right (bonus: bookmark it for later use!), anything you buy from HB during that session will have me added to that payment split as well! You still get good stuff, and I get a little bump to help keep me doing what I'm doing. You'll also be supporting a charity I love, Austin Pets Alive! They're a great rescue local to me and I'm super happy to be able to help them out as well.

Short version: if you buy anything digital, you should be looking at Humble Bundle first to get better deals, and if you use my partner link you get extra internet cool points.

Crohn's disease sucks and chances are you probably know someone affected by it. It would be really cool if the world could become a place where worrying about whether your intestines are going to destroy themselves every time you eat was a thing of the past because we figured out how to actually cure it instead of just taking a bunch of pills and hoping it's enough to calm it down for dinner. MrWartburg put together a crackerjack team of cool kids (not sure how I weaseled my way into the group, nobody tell them I'm a nerd pls) to do a fundraising stream on Saturday May 19 towards that goal. There's some bitchin' prizes being raffled off to boot. You can read more and donate here.

I'll be streaming on my channel from 3pm to 6pm Central that day, and hosting the other participants during their blocks. I'll be streaming Monster Prom (doing dumb voices of course), and doing squats for every dollar donated during the block (because I hate myself).  Every $5 you donate is a raffle ticket that you can use to enter the drawing for some really cool woodburnings made by MrWartburg himself, just make sure you put a note in the message field for your donation for which drawing you want to enter. You can also split your entry to multiple prizes! For example, a $20 donation could be towards 1 entry for the TARDIS and 3 entries for the Pokemon set. Just make sure you get those donations in sometime between now and the finale of the stream, as Maddy will be doing the raffle drawings live to wrap things up! Have any questions? The info on the donation page itself should just about cover it, but let me know if you've got any leftover after checking that out!

I took an improv class through the community college here at the end of last year. I did it because I had always thought about it, but always inevitably chickened out. Improv is scary! From the outside it is quick wit and comedic reaction, and I simply never thought of myself as a funny enough person to be able to survive in that kind of environment. It looked fun though, and I thought it could help me with some of my social anxiety issues. I'm the "have every conversation in every way it could go while in the shower this morning" type, and for those of you who are also that type you know that the second the conversation doesn't go one of the ways you prepared for, you're not really sure what to say and it's easy to shut down. So, I finally did it. And surprise! I enjoyed it.

I wouldn't say I left that class feeling like I was funnier or a great improviser, but I did leave it feeling more confident in my ability to react to the unexpected and rolling with a situation or conversation. I liked the experience enough that I wanted to continue learning about it. The gentleman who taught my class was actually the conservatory director for a local theater, which led myself and a few other people from my class to sign up for the level 1 classes there. We all had to split up, though, based on our schedules and what was available. It meant we all lost our safety nets of our relationships with each other, and we all had new teachers to boot. It was still scary, but less so than it was to start the first time.

This new class was...interesting. My new classmates were a vastly different makeup than the last round, which led to entirely different approaches to learning and participating. It jolted me right out of any confidence I had managed to build during the last course, and between them and the different instruction style I felt like I was starting from scratch. Which is okay! There's no right way to do improv, so "starting over" could be a refreshing way to approach any skills I hoped to pick up.

There was a different focus on skills and techniques than I had had previously, which felt more just like a challenge to reapply what I thought I already knew than anything else. I was happy to have that challenge for the first half of the class. The last four weeks were...less exciting. For a while I thought it was me, but a conversation with some of my classmates following the week 7 class showed me it was a broader feeling. Something changed, and the class was no longer about trying to learn this new thing and get constructive notes on how to improve. It switched over to "you're doing it wrong and here's why it's wrong" format. Of course we need to know what needs to change to be better, but in a skill that is inherently one that requires confidence (and where the class is specifically touted as building confidence in the skill) some positive feedback is needed. There was no longer any acknowledgement of what may have been right about what we did.

I left week 7 feeling even less confident about myself, not just my improv skills but me as a person, than I was when I went into my first class way back in November. I strongly considered not going to the final class or the performance we were supposed to do. The more I thought about it, the more I believed it wasn't a lack of progress on my part but was a sign of a poor teacher, but that didn't make me feel any less bad about myself. By the end of the final class I was going to consider the student performance a success if I actually made myself go out on stage and managed to not throw up, and there was no way I was going to do any further classes.

Improv at its core is about support. That's the number one lesson and the thing you work on the most. Improv doesn't work if you reject the reality someone sets up for you. It's surprisingly difficult as it requires relinquishing control and making yourself vulnerable, but its a very necessary part of the art. We're still learning how to do it, but we're trying and we're all able to recognize we don't intentionally shut someone down (fun fact: I am now acutely aware of subtly how we all shut each other down in every day conversation). Our instructor seems to have forgotten that we need his support too, and it's killing our desire and ability to learn how to be better.

I can't even tell you what we did or said or if anyone laughed (LoLink says they did). I got so hyper-focused on not throwing up (I was successful), making myself go out there (I did, and I even started a scene at one point too), and supporting my classmates in whatever ridiculous thing happened that I did not register ANYTHING that happened off stage. The lights went dark to indicate the end of our time and if I hadn't had a watch on I would have assumed the guy running the booth was just trying to save us by cutting our set short, and we ran off stage to celebrate no one vomiting and making it through our first set as improvisers. Our teacher insisted on immediately meeting to give us notes (which were SURPRISE all about the things we did wrong and no comments about anything we did right), which shouldn't surprise me but disappointed me nonetheless.

LoLink and some other people I knew who saw the show insist we were funny and that I did well, but it's hard to believe that after having a month of negativity from someone who is supposed to be our biggest ally. A friend who was in another level 1 class is trying to convince me to do the level 2 because our initial teacher is doing it, but I'm still not sure. I guess we'll see. For now, I'm glad just to have made it through this without embarrassing myself!

You remember that whole "working out" thing I posted about literally 5 months ago? I was all "yeah I'm gonna do this and update you guys on my progress and it's gonna be great" and stuff? And then I...didn't? You wanna know why?

Because I did that thing we all do and didn't make the progress I expected when I expected it and was embarrassed.

Here's the thing though: I was embarrassed because I wasn't hitting the ridiculous expectation I set for myself, which was unintentionally based on the false narrative that so many magazines and commercials spew that weight loss is only valid if it happens impressively. Wanna drop 15 pounds? You can do it in 2 weeks. Slim tummy? 10 days. Fabulous booty? Do this for a week.

You read it and you know it's not normal and not likely, and just because someone somewhere did it doesn't mean its remotely reasonable to expect anyone to do it. You know this, but logic takes a backseat to insecurities. Working out hard for 3 months and not seeing the changes you want feels like failure, and who wants to advertise their failure?

But it's not failure. It's establishing better habits and healthy practices that have a positive impact, regardless of what level of "measurable" changes you see on a scale. Accepting that is the hardest part of such a journey. Numbers on both the scale and the body fat % tester barely moved, but I was feeling better. That should take priority over anything else.

We're now at 5 months after I started taking an active approach to eating differently and working out. I'm currently at 130lbs, which is my pre-surgery weight. My clothes fit better and I feel better about myself when I look in the mirror, and while I still want to take it a little bit further, the fact that I'm down 14 lbs from where I started (and 20 lbs from my worst, right after Day 5 finished production) is huge. The fact that it took me 5 months to get there versus 2 shouldn't diminish that. I found a pace that was and is sustainable, so weight that has come off is more likely to stay off.

Oddly enough the new eating habits are the easiest part of this change, and keeping the workout rhythm has been the hardest. There's a month left before our friends' wedding, and I'm hoping I can make that last little bit of progress to be where I really want to be by then. For now, I'm proud of what I've been able to do for myself and that I did it at a pace that, while frustrating at the time, will afford me a greater opportunity to keep myself here rather than repeating this cycle in a few weeks.

I choose cosplays based on things I have an interest in and characters I care about. The design of the character rarely plays into it, whereas a lot of cosplayers I know will choose characters more for their design than their feelings towards them. Everyone chooses characters for different reasons, and that presents different challenges. For me it can mean I really want to portray a character that is beyond my skill level (which is killer for my need for perfection) or would be considered visually uninteresting (where I would feel the need to find ways to add some flair). My latest obstacle? Not actually knowing what the character looks like.

I present to you the weird world of cosplaying a character from a purely audio medium.

When I presented my music experiment to you (I compiled the responses already and am working on that post!) I talked about a podcast I was listening to recently call The Adventure Zone. It is a D&D podcast that I'd argue is less gameplay and more storytelling, and it's masterful storytelling at that. These guys do a great job of creating a story you want to see through to the end and characters you care about seeing make it there, and lemme tell you I got invested at a particular point. Even if you're not into D&D (I wasn't when I started it) I highly recommend it. It takes them a while to get the ball rolling, but once they settle into a rhythm it is an entertainment delight for your ears.

Perhaps the coolest part of this story is that there is a very intentional open-endedness to their descriptions of these characters. All we have for visuals is whatever images their words paint for us. We know a lot about who these characters are, but there's very little ever said about their appearances beyond their race (human, dwarf, elf, orc, etc). They leave it up to the listener, and it means we can all make them whatever we want. You can imagine them with any skin color, hair color/style, clothing, features, etc you want, and it makes them accessible in a way most fictions aren't able to. The variety in art people have created because of this is amazing.

So what do you do when you want to cosplay something that doesn't look a particular way?

My favorite part of cosplay is nailing all the little details, and in a case like this those details are arguably no longer little as they're the only real identifying marks. I can decide what I think Taako looks like, but if I don't hit the few things we know about him really well no one else is going to have any hope of knowing who I am. When I decided I wanted to cosplay someone from this show, I had to really think about the few things I knew about them and how to absolutely nail those qualities while still allowing myself the freedom to decide what I pictured when Griffin wove a lovely word tapestry.

If you haven't finished the series this would be a good time to stop reading.

LoLink and I decided, less than three weeks out from PAX South, that we should do a do cosplays of Barry and Lup. We were in love with those characters, and it worked out pretty fabulously that they're a couple too. We know most of Barry's clothing (thank you, episode 57!), but we knew nothing about Lup beyond the fact that she's an elf who looks like Taako (who we also don't know much about). How do I cosplay someone when I don't even have a hair color to work with?

I spent waaaaay too much time looking through images of renaissance fairs, TAZ fan art, generic D&D art, anything I could think of to see how other people see her. This was simultaneously helpful and not because there was such a variety of every possible feature that it didn't narrow down my options, but also proved there wasn't a wrong way to do it. I built a look off of what came to mind when I thought of the phrase "sassy pyromaniac elf" and chose to focus most of my energy on the three things I knew: she's an elf (so you gotta go for the ears), she is a part of the IPRE crew (red robe with a crew patch on it), and she is the creator of the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet. She also created the Umbra Staff, but that's a common accessory for Taako cosplays, so I wanted to try to avoid that one to prevent confusion over which of the two characters I was going for.

Defining a character with only three qualities is difficult and feels odd, but it's the best I could do given the situation. I'm pretty happy with how it's come together (especially given the tight timeline), even though there are things that I'll probably switch out for "better" versions of later. I can't wait to show it off at PAX South in a few days and be able to share pictures of the completed outfit!