December 2025

Winter time and New Year. Made a shepherd’s pie for the Christmas meal. Impossible meat ( a plant-based protein ) + roasted corn, mushrooms and onions topped with mashed potatoes and cheese. Very tasty.

Books

Books recently read:
- [ Book ] Protest! A History of Social and Political Protest Graphics By Liz McQuiston : A book documenting some of the history of protest art from around the world.

- [ Book ] Perdido Street Station by China Mieville : First book in a series of fantasy stories, featuring a fantastical world populated by strange creatures and humanoid beings of various characteristics. Started reading this near the end of the month, so I am still early in the story, but I am enjoying it quite a bit so far even though the text can sometimes be a bit painfully late-90s / early-2000s at times ( the book was originally published in 2000. )

I have accepted that reading physical books is a struggle for me ( sometimes hurts my hands depending on the size and shape of the book, and I often want to read later in the day...which means less light so have to use an obnoxious clip-on reading lamp to see the text. ) Not a big fan of digital books due to DRM ( what if the platform I am using to access texts becomes inaccessible? Or the text I purchased is pulled from the platform? ) and the reliance on digital devices. But shelf space is limited...less of an issue for digital space. Slowly getting over the stubbornness...maybe I will finally start actually reading books in 2026. We will see.

Games

Video games recently played:
- [ PS2 / PC ] Barnyard : Licensed game for the Nickelodeon movie of the same name. The game is surprisingly okay. Basically it is a lite Grand Theft Auto but you play as a bovine.

- [ PS2 ] Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly : Still in a Spyro mood, so playing some of the later games. This game probably would have been okay I think if it the development hadn’t been rushed. I remember being impressed by the water in this game when I first played this game when I was a kid, and I still think some of the water in this game looks pretty nice, though it is definitely a source of lag (the framerate drops significantly whenever I look at any water that has the surface ripple effect.)

Moving Pictures

Things that I have watched recently:
- [ Film ] Night of the Zoopocalypse : Very fun and silly animated film. The red ruffed lemur character is my favorite.

Artwork

Continuing work on [ Salamander Isles. ] It is going surprisingly smoothly so far. I have mostly completed the geometry for 3 of the major islands: the nest, oasis, and snow. The basic system for collectible items is also setup. I would like to add one more major island and then will move onto working on characters to populate these islands.

I have finally started uploading pages for [ Chapter 1 of the Teratoma comic. ]

I think one of my goals for 2026 will be to create more artwork with traditional media, such as ink and paints. The majority of my traditional media use lately has just been ballpoint pen drawings in my sketchbook, which is how most of my paintings start. Part of reason I would like to create more traditional media art is so I can spend less time at the desk. Working at a desk has been very rough on my health, even though I take frequent breaks to move around and stretch muscles. [ This painting from 2020 ] is mixed media, a gray scale painting completed digitally, and it is still one of my favorite paintings I have created. I would like to create more such works.

Would like to continue my Spanish / Español studies, was working on that earlier in 2025 then got invited to a project which resulted in the studies being put aside. Would like to work more on toki pona as well.

We will see how things go.

That is all the words for now,
bye-bye.

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Xzy's Journal

December 2025