Hello and welcome back. This is Issue 21 of “a bit of bird words” and, you know, I might be a bit biased, but I really like this month. The seagulls do too; they bully the crows and magpies out of their usual areas here and start nesting. Won’t be long before we’ve got some giant fuzzy seagull babies waddling about.

What did I do this month?

I got older! Well I guess we all probably get older every day, but I completed another journey around the sun and celebrated with some ramen.

It was a relief to have recovered enough to be able to celebrate my birthday, honestly.

I did finish quite a lot of books this month, though most of those were manga. After hearing enough about Dandadan to be interested, I started reading through the released volumes. It’s a series that starts off strong—a refreshing mixture of science fiction, horror, romance, and comedy—and probably stands out most for its persistent non-sexual sexual matter. However, past the first dozen volumes, it devolves into a pretty standard shounen and while it keeps the genre blend (mostly), it loses some of its razor edge.

Outside of manga, I also read The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches at the beginning of the month and The Hidden World of the Fox at the end. I really don’t recommend Witches; I know there’s some appeal to these fluffy kinds of books, but it frankly felt like eating cotton candy. Fox was much better, though it fits neatly into the category of “book about animals that’s also about humans.” The author is very careful to give due respect to the average human as much as to the foxes while trying not to downplay how much humanity has radically altered the lives and habitats of countless species. Foxes have adapted to it with relative success, but many species cannot, maybe never will, and I find it difficult to feel too glad about their success.

I didn’t finish any games this month, but I’ve been picking away at Pokémon Pokopia. There was enough positive reception around this game that I thought I’d give it a go. I certainly like it more than I expected, but the bar was kind of in the dirt; I don’t enjoy resource grinding games, and this game also seems to follow Animal Crossing rules (which is to say, the better my life is going, the less impulse I have to play these kinds of games).

But it’s cute enough, so on I go. I don’t play more than an hour or two at a time on average I think.

(Okay, I did play a teeny bit of Final Fantasy X, but it was only Monster Arena capture grinding. Doesn’t count.)

What else?

I think I forgot to mention this last month, but I volunteered for Frost Fatales in March. I was very nervous about doing it, but the Fatales are all a very lovely, welcoming, helpful bunch. Oftentimes I was shocked at how quickly my shifts monitoring donations went by. Fingers crossed I can volunteer for Flame Fatales in the autumn.

We did go see Project Hail Mary for my partner’s brother’s birthday. I still believe movies don’t need to be longer than 100 minutes, but this one was alright! The humor made a lot more sense once I saw who the directors were.

My recommendation this month is send a letter to someone. Can be a physical letter, can be an email, but spend some time writing to someone. I wrote an email a couple days ago responding to someone’s blog post, for example! Just indulge in communicating with other people. (That other person can be me, if you want!)

See you next month.