Looking back: Nov '25, Week 1

Minerva Murasaki
Nov 10
5 min read

Updated: Nov 17

November means it is time to work really hard so that I can wind down by mid-December! 🤔 So I started the week with a plan! But several curve balls came my way and I didn't complete what I had set out to do. 🙃 Even so, the week turned out to be much better than expected! 🥹

✨ Touching grass -- Went for an eye check up

I'll cut to the chase: The doctor figured that the symptom I was feeling (a darkened area in my right eye's vision) should go away by itself after about 6 to 12 weeks. I sure hope so!

My mother was kind enough to accompany me to the hospital, chatting with me the whole way from when she picked me up, waited for 2.5 hours while I went through a bunch of tests, till when she sent me home. The nerd in me was so amazed at all the medical equipment, and I actually had a lot of fun doing all the examinations. 💖 The experience was well worth the discomfort! I even got to see some of the medical reports and scan images. It made me wonder if maybe I should have followed some of my course-mates from university and took the medical physics specialization modules. 🤔🤔🤔

But anyway, the tests revealed that somehow, a spot on my retina is inflamed, causing it to bulge. This would explain why I can still see clearly, just that light isn't hitting my retina as it should at that spot, causing my brain to perceive that area as darkened (like a temporary scotoma). Had to do a bit of Googling to find the vocabulary to describe what I saw on the scans, but it seems like I have 1 soft exudate (an elevated lesion on the superficial retina) on the nerve fiber layer (the top-most/ superficial layer) of my right eye's retina, somewhere above and to the side of my macular (the focal point). It's just an isolated spot though, so hopefully it's a one-time off issue that will go away on its own! The doctor asked if I recently fell ill or had any eye trauma, to which I said no (does staring at a really bright screen count? 🤔). Since there was no known ongoing issue that caused it, we can only hope that it goes away by itself before the follow-up appointment in January.

Feeling better after knowing what was going on, my mother brought me to grab lunch before heading home!

Chee Cheong Fun (Rice noodle rolls) with shrimps. 💜 Had iced Milo too!

All was fine and well until I saw the medical bill a few days later. 🙃 SURE HOPE THE SPOT GOES AWAY SO THAT I CAN SKIP ON THE FOLLOW UP SCANS. 💸💸💸

✨ Gaming -- Finished RV There Yet? and played quite a bit of Judgment!

Not even the hardest part of the game. Stopped for a picture because it was scenic.

The game was fun! My one small gripe is that the camera/ graphics was causing me to feel motion sickness despite having adjusted the Field Of View. 🤔 We finished the game 10 hours in, which was way longer than I expected. At some point I wasn't even sure if there was an ending, but there was! 🤣 Would be happy to replay it with a different group of friends to rethink some of the challenges.

Spent most of the rest of my week playing Judgment! The story feels a little slow, though that might be because I keep doing side stories. 🤔 But I have learned that the best way to enjoy the Yakuza series (and by proxy the Judgment series) is to enjoy the vibes and do whatever I feel like doing.

The cats in this game are a little weird...

Looking forward to enjoying the rest of the Judgment series!

Ah, and I managed to sort through my FFXIV inventory! Next is to sort out my glamour closet, because I'm so ready to just use 1 glamour for all my jobs after Patch 7.4!!! \o/ Yippeee! Fashion is difficult! 🙃

✨ Projects -- Dropped a project, started another... and I'm happy!

I realized that I wasn't satisfied with what I was able to do with the song I partially recorded at the end of October, so I decided to drop it. I like the song, but I'm happy to work on something else! I've never been a fan of screamos so it felt like a chore to learn to do it, and I guess it showed in the results.

But I wasn't sad, because it was almost like fate that as I started working on the next project "ahead of time", I received an update from a collaborator that their part of it would be ready ahead of time!

Overall I feel better about the project too. Maybe it's the song choice? But anyway, I'll be focusing on pushing out that project before the end of the year! I only have 2 more planned for 2025, so once both are done, I'm free to get back to crafts and planning for 2026. :))

I have some craft projects that I want to finish before 2025, and hopefully I'll be able to find enough time to work on them! 🐰

✨ Something interesting -- Cleaned my and my partner's keyboards!

It took quite a bit of effort to clean my partner's keyboard because... I don't recall him ever doing a thorough cleaning (I think he only ever used an air duster a couple of times?), but boy was I satisfied with the results! ✨

My keys are starting to look really worn out though... I think I got my Ducky Shine 6 in early 2017? 🥹 It has served me pretty well, accompanied me through several house moves, and I'd be happy to just get a Ducky One 3 as a replacement... only if my Shine 6 breaks. 💔

But anyway! I'm very happy with my clean keyboard! Please perceive it! 🥹💜

✨ Random stuff -- I finished my last box of Zooland biscuits, and... colored my Dinoland box...

The Zooland biscuit designs are so much cuter than the rest! I might have a new favorite. 🥺💜 Unlike the rest, there were also more designs! Yay!

I also colored my Dinoland box because I wanted to feel like a kid after the trip to the hospital, so I pulled out my color pencils and markers -- only to find that the pencils were too waxy to leave behind any pigment, and the markers were opaque and I would risk coloring over the line art.

So I found whatever highlighters I kept from my university days and... let creativity take its course???