These weekly TToT posts have become one of my favorite ways to show my grats', talk about my week, and read about other people's weeks...

You can choose to participate or read others' posts at the link-up.

Ten Thing of Thankful #17

First—the Six Sentence Café & Bistro.

A fricken' awesome tiny (define tiny lol) collaborative world—created by some rather cool authors—that I have now been part of as a walk-in character for 12 weeks!

This week, we will have a little function coming up—a Poetry Slam evening where our beloved characters will be on the stage performing a poem…

I myself will do an audio recording and upload it together with this week's entry.

However, it will probably happen by late Thursday (in Estonia), as I have to time the recording by when I am alone, when my neighbours are likely at work, and when my other half has time to edit it.

This weeks' entries to the whole six-sentence blog-hop can be accessed at the link-up. The prompts and link-ups are provided/hosted by Denise.

Second—dVerse poets.

School begins, so I will probably be taking part in very few prompts and linking up my older work that hasn't been shared at the Open Link Night yet. But there are many cool prompts and awesome authors there to keep an eye on.

Third—got the university schedule.

If all stays as is, I can already come home on Thursdays, sleep in my own bed beside my other half, and leave again by Monday noon (fingers crossed it stays that way).

My Courses for this semester (translated from Estonian by ChatGPT):

• IT Infrastructure Services (ICA0002)
• Data Security and Cryptography (ICA0003)
• Windows Administration (ICA0009)
• Web Technologies (ICD0007)
• Advanced Computer Networks (ICA0020)
• Fundamentals of Database Systems (ICA0005)

Fourth—a reminder to set up email subscription.

One of my favorite authors in the blogosphere asked me about it. I had taken it off as I had some problems with it and thought I would add it back later… I have currently moved to Brevo and set it up to check my RSS feed daily for new posts.

However, my RSS currently only provides excerpts. If many people really want to use it to read the whole blog in a dedicated RSS reader or directly from the email, I can change that. For now I have the RSS set up this way for security/plagiarism/scarping reasons.

Also, I did test the integration, but I will see if something needs adjusting tomorrow when it checks my feed and sends the email automatically. I tried to keep it simple and compact for users.

Fifth—Paide Rally.

It was raining heavily, but I was so lucky I could see both the start and part of the rally course from home. One year, I had to stand outside in blazing heat and another in the rain, so I am very happy they did it this way this year.

Sixth—music.

I am listening to the MORTAL DOWNER by Dir en grey. I have a physical copy of the album (Limited Edition, straight from Japan), and I just realized I have not even used it, haha.

Somehow, I keep buying physical media like vinyl and Limited Editions of albums, and I never use them. I either stream them or, umm—download them and burn my own CDs so I wouldn't ruin the pretty ones. I mean, the box still has the protective plastic wrapping on it even though I received it in April—I did peek inside, and the artwork is really cool…

I should watch the Blu-ray, at least once, lol.

PS: By the end of editing I moved to another album: Spirituality and Distortion by Igorrr.

Seventh—Elder Scrolls Online.

I have been doing PvP for the past few days because during school time, I don't have time for that. I am grateful for all the people we play with and chat with on Discord.

My in-game @ is Uural, if you are wondering… Yes, I am that ugly, annoying Templar-Dragonknight in the Battlegrounds, so quit messaging me, “MAN, I HATE YOU.”

Eight—orchids.

I love different varieties of lilies too, but they cause me headaches and in severe cases asthma, so I have been hoarding orchids for years. Such beautiful flowers that need very little attention and don't smell. However, my other half left my windows open last winter, killing four of my plants, but he bought me new ones this summer, and I am so happy now.

I legit talk to my plants every morning, haha.

Ninth—managed hosting.

They handle the WordPress upgrades and version control, which can be a serious headache. There are many other things they handle on the server side, which makes my WordPress installation much lighter and easier to manage.

Also they are fast at replying and fixing stuff if I have any issues, yay.

Before, I was on another hosting plan with this blog and I have also self-hosted in the past. So, I had a lot more to do myself, which was fine then, but as a busy university student, I now have far fewer things to worry about with this blog. I wanted to make it super easy to manage so I could fully lock in on school and writing.

Tenth—writing communities.

It is not a secret that I have been on and off with writing publicly since the early 2010s. However, I have had many pauses, and the most recent one wasn't that long ago…

Those prompts and blog-hops I participate in now kinda keep me creative when all I wanna do is hide under a blanket and listen to music or just daydream. I believe that writing—as with many forms of art—is essential for survival.

I am grateful that I have a more directed form of writing than just journaling or dreaming. And I truly think I have made some awesome friends along the way.

There's more of my work:

All of the six-sentence stories.

The Nervous Poet Entries for the SSC&B.

There is also a page for all of the poetry.

More personal entries can be found at the Blog.

The IT studies blog in Estonian for a course at the university.

the Band "Chaos in Spring" is on YouTube, Spotify and other streaming services.