APRIL

My birthday was last Thursday! As I said in my last post, my parents and I went to visit two of my aunts to share the Easter holiday and two of our birthdays together. It went very well, I think! One of my aunts made the other and I a really sick cake that tasted AMAZING, all from scratch!

It was chocolate, with a "frosting" consisting of cream cheese mixed with cool whip, topped with chocolate covered almonds. Each layer's filling was different, one being more chocolate covered almonds crushed up, another being the same "frosting" mixture, then homemade raspberry jam, and lastly, homemade chocolate pudding. I'm usually not much of a chocolate cake person—I prefer vanilla, myself—but I really enjoyed this one! I even brought some home to share with a friend of mine, and she liked it, as well!

I ended up getting a few really cool gifts, too! I'll show you a few of my favorites here.

This is a set of stones made to resemble the planets in the Solar System (Pluto included)! I've always had a deep love and fascination with rocks, minerals, and crystals. I have a big collection with some really cool specimens included. (Maybe I should add that to my Collections page?) People that know this tend to get me little tumbled stones and the like for different holidays, which is always super appreciated! I'm actually in the process of setting out my whole collection in a big cabinet that someone made for me this past Christmas. It's looking super good so far‒I'll post a photo here once it's finished!

In the same theme, this is a Geode! It's the kind that hasn't been cut or opened yet, which I've wanted for some time. I can't wait to take a hammer and chisel to this thing and see what's inside. I'm really hoping for some defined crystal formations! I'll post a picture of this, too, once it's opened.

A kit to grow my own Bonsai tree! I'm not certain how well it will work, but I absolutely love plants and have wanted to own my own Bonsai for so long! I'm going to do a bit more research before starting this, as I've heard Bonsais can be extremely difficult to grow and maintain, and I want to give it as much love and care as possible. I've got a whole grow light setup with lots of flowers, succulents, and cacti here in my apartment, which I'm hoping will work for this little guy as well. I'll keep posting updates about its growth here, once I've got it all set up. Maybe I'll even give it a name.

Tomorrow, my parents and I are going to watch the Solar Eclipse! My best friend informed me a few months ago that, living in Newfoundland, I would be in the prime spot to experience 100% totality. The eclipse is going to be positioned perfectly over Grand Falls, which is only an hour's drive away from where I'm currently living. I immediately told my parents that we would have to be there for it! So, we've secured some eclipse glasses, and we're going to make a day of it. They live about an hour from me, so they'll drive in and pick me up in the morning, then we'll head in and spend the day around town, before experiencing the eclipse in the evening. It'll start around 4:00pm Newfoundland Time, and end around 6:00pm.

Did you know Newfoundland Time has an extra half hour added to it? I think it's the only time zone to have an extra or missing 30min instead of an even number of hours. For example, 2:00pm EST would be 3:30pm NDT! I've always found that kinda interesting.

While we're in town, we're planning to try out a brand-new little café that opened up there. I've just recently started getting into drinking coffee (usually iced), and I had my first real café experience around a month ago in another small town here called Corner Brook. It was a board game café called "Sugar and Dice", and the food there was fantastic!

I had the "supreme grilled cheese", which had, among others, Havarti cheese on it, and a garlic cream cheese spread. They served it with kettle-cooked chips. I also had an iced latte, which started out really strong and bitter, but as it got more evenly mixed, and the ice began to melt, it mellowed out a bit. I brought home a crème egg brownie, too, which was just a big brownie with half a Cadbury crème egg on top. It was really rich, but so good! I'm hoping this café in Grand Falls will be just as good!

Lately I've been spending most of my time working on an area of this site called the Unicorn Friendship Center Conservation Project. I've already made a big writeup about what it is and why I've made it, but to sum it all up, it's a project centered around keeping an old cyberpet page from becoming lost media. The woman that drew all of the pets and graphics for the page, Shirley M, was a really talented artist, and I can tell how much passion and love she put into what she made. She offered all of her graphics for free, and had such a large catalogue. The sheer number of broken links and images that I ran into upon exploring her webpages really struck a chord with me. Even some of my own work has been lost to time, gone to never be seen again, and I didn't want the hours of talent and genuine love to just disappear.

So much of the Old Web disappears every day, and I fear that at some point, there won't be any left. I'm really afraid that not just information will be lost, but so will the last remnants of so many people. Yes, we have things like the Internet Archive and the Wayback Machine, but what about those tiny personal webpages that no one thought or cared to archive? How many have already been lost, and how many more will be gone within the next 10 years? Will anyone even remember them? The people that poured hours of their lives into them? I feel like we're losing the more intimate, personal areas of the web. That online experience that was wholly, completely yours to do with and decorate as you liked. Each time you typed of one these URLs into your search bar, it was almost like entering someone's home. Or, maybe, even their personal bedrooms. Places that harbored everything that they loved; their interests, their thoughts, their creative works. It was like being invited into a part of them, though you may not have even known their real names.

Maybe I'm looking too deeply into things. Waxing poetic about webpages with text too bright to read and so many flashing images the light from your Dell monitor would make your entire room pulse in the middle of the night. But I do think there can be deeper meaning in the mundane. I think that anything someone deems worthy of pouring their time and effort into can be special. Every blinkie, button, and stamp, was made by a real person, usually posted online with the intent to be shared and changed and loved. There's something special about that, isn't there? That community? That desire to create and to contribute to creation? That's what I believe, at the very least.

It's not finished yet, but it's close. I just need to place all of the actual pets onto their respective pages. I'm thinking another couple days, and it should be up and running and usable. If you're reading this and you haven't already, maybe check out the Unicorn Friendship Center Conservation Project, or read the writeup I made about it and what it stands for. Maybe you might find something special about it, too.

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