Today’s deck is the Wicked Tarot.
It’s a very par for the course licensed deck, but at least it’s very well-made.
Today’s reading has a very sour undercurrent of feeling helpless and stuck that didn’t feel like how I felt myself today… but then I realized that it’s effectively how I’ve felt most of the year and I HAVE been in a general retrospective mood.
The day started with me wanting to sort my knives.
I wouldn’t consider myself an avid knife collector, but I love me some trinkets and tools and what’s a multitool if not exactly that? I’ve accumulated a shocking amount since last year and I wanted to put them all neat and tidy in their own snug places rather than throwing them haphazardly in the same toolbox.
This one’s for all the fancier ones. I’ll say I’ve become quite the fan of Buck knives. Dunno how they fare long term but middle term they’re pretty damn good.
This one’s for the woodcarving tools. I might have my reservations with the Swiss after all the bullshit I went through with my bank this year, but I’ll be damned if Morakniv aren’t nice tools.
This is the one for The Rest.
And this one is the one for… not really the “fancy” ones but also not “the rest”. It’s kinda for the ones I might wanna have in standby alongside assorted sharpening trinkets I’ve gotten over the years.
Later in the day I resumed the mission of going to used clothing shops to get something for New Years, so I go to Umeda and one of the first things I saw was this which is a great start.
Haul in this one was a couple of shirts and a couple of jackets.
…yeah, the siren call of the cool jacket was too strong, but in my defense it’s a red jacket and I didn’t have one of those and also the other one was a raincoat.
Went to another one for a couple of pants and then, realizing the amount of stuff I had on me and the fact that I wanted to visit Evil one last time before the year ended, I went back to Shin Osaka and left the clothes in a coin locker.
Then I dropped by Uniqlo to get some underwear and socks and they gifted me a blanket for the purchase.
Uniqlo shirts might not last the heavy use I give them in a single winter but I’ll be damned if Heattech isn’t a godsend.
Anyway, with more clothes on a coin locker I went back out.
I was slightly sleepy so I tried to play it safe. I had dinner at McDonalds in Dotonbori which I tend to not recommend because the staff being as overworked as they are constantly might make errors.
Case in point I got a Bacon Lettuce burger with egg. I’m not complaining but I didn’t even know that was possible to get. It’s one error that worked in my favor, I guess.
While the second floor of that McD’s is where all the tourists and normal people go to, the third floor is where people go crash out and sleep while charging their phones. I chilled there for a bit.
Evil opened and while I was tired by that point I’m so glad I did. The bartender went to Izumo and got me an omamori and that was such a highlight for me, for like… the whole year, really.
Like, here’s this bar I’ve frequented since around March, whose mood was good enough that I was like “hey, I like this place, I might come back on my own”. Then I just let myself be myself bringing souvenirs from my trips and whatnot and lo and behold, I made enough on an impact on someone I just met this year they gave me that gift.
In this period of reflection as the year closes, it’s a very welcome thing.