And so another weekend ends, which means it’s also the end of cheating on my diet and back to watching calories for the week to go along with my planned exercise at the gym.  My target for this week?  A modest pound, maybe one and a half if I push it.  Anything more than that will be far too aggressive, and would be damaging in the long run too.

Hmm, come to think of it, it’s about time to pay for the monthly membership fee.  Good thing I actually have money for a change, so it won’t be much of a problem, and given the massive difference between the price per session compared to the bulk monthly fee (two-hundred pesos per session versus one thousand two hundred pesos per month), I’m actually getting my money’s worth, especially since I go to the gym every day during weekdays, heh.

After that though, I’m pretty much on savings mode again until the next payday.  Ah, those times where I had all the extra money to spend for myself seem like a far-away memory now.  Heck, I can’t even go visit the dentist now even if I wanted to, since I don’t have the extra money to use.  Even having my teeth cleaned (something I used to do every three months) seems to be a luxury, as the cost of a session will sink my savings very quickly.  Mmph.

It’s during these times that I wonder if I should try one of  those get-money-quick stuff, just to be able to earn extra cash… like blogging for money.  But I figure, nah, it’s just not in my nature to do so.

And so I wait, and so I endure.

Anyway, on the hobby side of things, it might not be much, but I’ve based three more magical girls today.  It’s not as fast as I had initially hoped, but with three of the Pleiades started on everyone (at least, everyone with color schemes anyway) should be done by midweek.  After that all I have to figure out is the possible non-corny color schemes for those who don’t have any, then deciding on a background of course… That’s always hard.

Hey, at least I won’t be idle for the week, yes?

On the hobby side of things, I spent most of my free time today putting some base colors on as many puella magi as I could.  I’ve managed to do twelve so far, which is almost half of the number of the girls actually in the line-up, but I think I’ve hit my limit for the day, as can feel my eyes already twitching from strain.  That’s what I get for sitting in front of the PC for a few hours, I guess.  I’ll see if I can continue tomorrow, so I can show the progress of the project on Pixiv again.

Aside from that… Well, it’s my cheat day today, so I obviously ate to my heart’s content today without worrying about the calories I consumed.  Come tomorrow it’s back to counting calories though, as it’s also back to the gym come Monday.  Ah well, at least it helps my metabolism stabilize somewhat.  Hm, I wonder how much I’ve lost over the week?  I never was able to go to Makati today, so I guess I’ll do so tomorrow, on the way to paying for the phone/internet and water bills.

So, what’s left for me to do?  Sleep, obviously.  It’s the Sunday shift again tomorrow, which means all sorts of stress, which means a good night’s rest will do me wonders.

I can’t really say much happened today.  While it was my day off, I had to start my morning washing the pile of laundry that had accumulated over the week (which disturbingly was more than the amount last week), although since I woke up later than usual (nine instead of eight in the morning), half of the work (well a quarter of the work since all tatay did was dunk the separate the pile between whites and colored, then dump them into basins filled with soapy water) was already done for me.  There was still a bit of soaping, scrubbing, and rinsing to be done though, but because of my father’s contribution it wasn’t even an hour before I was finished, and the clothes hung on the clothesline to dry.

As for the rest of my day?  Eh, I was trying to figure out how to base-color the puella magi stampede without crashing SAI in the process (at this point, it’s eating up 98% of the memory allotted to it).  In the end, I had to go with coloring each of the girls one at a time, then toggling their visibility to reduce memory load, then move to the next one in line.  It’s slow going, but at least I won’t have to worry about having the program go down on me unexpectedly.

After that?  Ah, well mid-afternoon I dropped by the gym again, and did my usual routine for an hour and a half.  Been gradually increasing the speed on the treadmill, though I have to wonder if I’ve lost my target for the week.  I guess I’ll find out once I drop by a Mercury Drug store with one of those weight machines again.  I needed to drop by Makati anyway, and I know of some outlets with those machines, so might as well…

And what else?  Just generally goofing off, I suppose.  I read through Imperial Armour 11: The Doom of Mymaera, and did my quota of surfing through the net (which meant I was able to browse through the latest chapter of Medaka Box while I was at it).  I was even able to get some gaming done, mostly on Katawa Shoujo.  I really should post my progress on that one.

Surprisingly I went through the day without the expected afternoon siesta… which might explain why I’m feeling sleepy at this hour.  Ah heck, might as well oblige again, like yesterday.  

Also I have to wake up early tomorrow early for laundry anyway, so might as well turn in.

It’s payday yet again, but as usual it looks like I’m not going to be able to enjoy the fruit of my work at the office since the last cut-off.  Even now I’m thinking just how much will I have to deduct for the bills that I’ll have to contribute in (at least three thousand three-hundred pesos), as well as set aside the rest for my savings, in preparation for the things I have to pay for at the start of next month (like the monthly membership fee for the gym).  That leaves… not a whole lot, actually, and when you add in the expected credit card bill, hmm, to say that it’s tight is an understatement.  

This pretty much means that I won’t be able to pay back my sister for what she did last month (footing my half of the household bills), but at least I’m going to be able to contribute this month, right?  I’ll try to pay her back eventually, but first thing’s first: I have to get the money in the bank, which means I’m going to have to make a brief detour on the way back home.  I wasn’t able to do so this afternoon, since I sort of forgot about it while I was preparing to head to the gym.

Speaking of my sessions at the gym, one of the other regulars asked me why I was keeping to the treadmills for now, instead of doing the usual circuit on the other exercise machines that everyone else was doing.  My answer?  I’ll do the circuit on the machines eventually, but only after I hit a specific weight — in my case about ten-odd pounds to my ‘ideal weight’ for my height — since at that point no matter how hard I run I stop losing poundage (as I experienced in Washington DC).  The extra effort that the workout machines will bring might be just the thing to help in that final push.

Oh, and there’s another reason I avoid the weight machines: my arms usually feel either numb or stiff afterward, and with the amount of drawing I’ve been doing lately, ah, that wouldn’t be optimal at all.  Especially now that I’ve been adding base colors to the members of the stampede bit by bit, though it’s slow going since I have to make sure everything is in-line….  

I have to admit, this last bit of line-art took some work.  I think half of the details (pretty much everything from the waist down really) was just guesswork on my part, but it’ll have to do, until the time Aoki Ume comes out with an artbook detailing the new characters from the mobile game.  I was supposed to include some of her attack summons (essentially clouds with very sharp teeth), but I’ll just have to add those later on.

With this, I figure that I’m around halfway done with the Puella Magi stampede.  I may include some more, but I think twenty-seven characters is plenty for the time being.

Now to see how everything lines up together. It should be interesting to see.

As for non-fanart or hobby-related things… My tita (one of my father’s younger sisters) and her German husband dropped by for a visit this morning.  We talked for a bit, catching up basically, but I was curious why my cousin wasn’t with them.  Apparently she was resting at their hotel, since she was still exhausted from their visit yesterday to our other relatives in Cavite.  It was too bad, as it’s been a really long time since I’ve even seen her, much less hold a conversation, and I was also interested in how she was right now (a few months ago she attempted suicide after her boyfriend broke up with her), but it seems that she’s doing fine now.

Aside from that, well, nothing else to share really.  The same usual weekday, I suppose.

I think I’ve accepted the fact that, whatever I do, I’ll always be a disappointment to my father, and an object of derision for my younger sister.  That’s what I get for wasting two-odd years and causing God-knows how much anguish to my mother, I suppose.  

If anything, their already-low opinion of me only deepened after I quit my well-paying job at E*Trade to start studying, only to run back to my parents once my savings gave out.  Although I’m working now, the fact that the salary I’m getting isn’t that hot only seems to strengthen the perception that I can’t look out for myself, and that I can’t be trusted to making a sound financial decision even if my life depended on it.  Given my constant savings troubles, I’m tempted to agree with the latter assessment.  

Which brings me to the most current wrinkle in my family’s interpersonal relations.  As I mentioned a while back, after I learned about how heavily overweight I was in the wake of the holidays, I decided to enroll in a gym.  On top of the initial membership sign-up, I’m also going to have to pay a monthly fee for as long as I remain a member.  When one considers my relatively meager salary it’s a huge expense, especially when one considers that I have to contribute to paying for the bills of the house (a responsibility I had to pass on the previous month because of flagging savings), but I think it’s well worth the investment, especially in light of how much I’ve lost since I’ve signed up.

Unfortunately my father doesn’t share that assessment, and my sister’s mostly agreed with him (surprise, surprise).  The thing is though, instead of confronting me directly about the issue, my father’s fallen to his usual habit of denigrating what I do when he thinks that I’m not paying attention.  The other day, he was spouting how wasteful it was to pay for gym use when one can just jog in the morning (which I can’t do, since I have work), and how gyms are unsanitary since you don’t get the needed oxygen, and instead inhale the flatulence of the people who share the gym floor with you…  And this morning, while I was in the loo, my father and sister were talking about how the airconditioning in gyms are usually filled with mold, which meant that you’re not getting any healthier, but sicker the more you go…

Uh, what?  Clearly the logic used by my father to formulate these arguments don’t match up with anyone else’s.  And let’s not go into my sister’s support in all this.  Hello sis, I know that you’re taking up yoga and belly-dancing classes so you can lose weight before your wedding, so you’re in no position to criticize me.

Sorry, I just had to let this all out, else it would just eat me up inside.

Anyway, on to less weight-related stuff.  Although I have a sketch ready and scanned, it still looks like I won’t be able to finish the line-art for Elise tonight, but hey, at least I was able to decide on a running pose.  After that, uhm, background composition and on to the coloring stage, I guess.

Oh, and at this point I’m supposed to start revising the screenplay that I used the previous term for this semester’s workshop.  Ugh, this will take a lot of work for sure, if I’m going to trim 20 pages off its number.

I don’t know, while I want to finish the sketch for the last puella to be added to the stampede, I just couldn’t decide on the pose to use for her.  The fact that I also have to do some guesswork with regards to her choice of footwear doesn’t really help either.  It’s just one of those days, I suppose.  If I can just decide on an outline though things should fall into place very quickly, but until then, well…

It was a little slow at work today.  I have to admit though, it was partly my fault: I kind of fibbed about my systems still not being restored (when in fact they were ready for use as soon as I logged in), if only to avoid taking in customer service calls, and on a Sunday shift no less, for a while longer.  Of course this meant that I spent my shift working on applications, but eh, every little bit of stress I can avoid is a good thing in my book.

Oh, and I found wedding documentation in the shared documents folder in my desktop PC, and evidence that my younger sister has finally decided on a reception area and a date for her wedding.  Man, does that make me feel old.

Anyway, lets see if I can get a decent pose in at least before I head off to bed.

Another weekend, another workshop class.  I won’t get into the details, but there was a lot of laughter at the expense of the people whose screenplays were read, but I can’t help but cringe inwardly at the thought of my own work being critiqued like that.  I suppose it’s okay to laugh now, since there’s going to be some sobbing to come later on…

Finished another sketch today, and uploaded it unto Pixiv. That makes twenty-six magical girls drawn so far, and if things go well, the twenty-seventh should be done tomorrow as well.  Should I finish Elise’s sketch as planned, that would make all named, non-public domain puella magi drawn.  Hmm.  Well, I suppose the next step should be working out what background to use, then there’s the issue of basecoloring.  That’s going to be a doozy, for sure, since more than a few of the girls don’t have any official color schemes. 

On a more serious note, I learned from my father that one of my grandmothers passed away today.  The eldest sister of my grandmother on my mother’s side, she’s the one who’s been living in the USA since… forever, I suppose.  Since at least after World War II, when she and her American husband escaped via submarine to Australia, and from there to mainland US.  She’s been living in Washington state since then, though the last few years she’s been staying in a nursing home, since neither my auntie nor her husband could look after her twenty-four-seven.  Her memories have been deteriorating for a while too, and by the time of our own visit there a year or two ago, she could barely even recognize her own daughter or her niece (our mom).  Still she was happy enough when we did visit, and the image of her smiling, well, it’s not easy to forget really.

I’m not really sure how some of the family over there in the US is taking the news, and I’m not really sure either if nanay or my tito (and his family) will be able to go for the wake…  Not to mention our own grandmother.  With the eldest gone, she’s all that’s left of her four siblings.  I pray that she won’t take it too hard.

And… That’s all that I can do at this point.  Just offer my prayers, really.

So, I took a good part of the early morning on laundry duty.  We’re talking about hand-washing here (no convenient washing machine or drier here, no siree), so it was a bit of work, and truth be told I’m not all sure that I was doing things right.  It’s been a while, after all.  Anyway, I somehow managed to get the clothes hung without doing undue damage on them, so I suppose things worked out fine.  There’s still the white clothes to worry about though (they’re currently soaking in a laundry-soap and bleach-filled basin), but that’s something for tomorrow.

Aside from that I was able to do some drawing as usual, and this time around I was able to finish both the sketch and line-art earlier than usual.  The wonders of a normal night’s worth of sleep, I guess, though the simplicity of the design I was copying helped as well.  For those who’re wondering, it’s Hiyori this time, but I have to really wonder at the practicality of having a harp,  of all things, as a primary weapon.  Uhm, I’m not sure singing a witch to death is really feasible. *shrugs*

Oh, and I was visited the gym as usual this afternoon.  My father didn’t raise a fuss this time, so things went mostly smoothly.  So,  that’s one week straight again, which means that I’m taking the weekend off.  I think at this point I’ve mostly returned to how I was prior to the holidays… which is to say overweight instead of plain obese.  Still got a bit to go at this point, but things are looking up a bit in my battle against tummy bulges, ahaha.

It’s back to school again tomorrow, though I think I can afford staying up a little later than usual this time.