february faves

For such a short month, February was BUSY. I feel like it was jam-packed with work, hanging with friends and family, trying new things... and while it was a ton of fun, I'd be grateful to have a little bit of a break lol.

But this month did give a ton of opportunities to try new things to explore, which I'm happy to yap about!! So here's my monthly recap for February. :)

Jellies!

Ian and I went to the Tennessee Aquarium to check out the Animal Crossing exhibits, and I had such a great time! He's not much of an aquarium person, but knows it's absolutely my jam, so he was happy to tag along. He ended up taking a bunch of pictures of me too, which was so appreciated.

The aquarium is broken into two parts - one for the ocean, and one for the Tennessee River. While I do have a lot of interest in rivers (particularly water treatment and local rivers), the ocean side was definitely my favorite. I've always loved aquariums and the ocean, and all of the creatures within it.

But my FAVORITE sea creatures are jellyfish. I've always thought they were so beautiful and ethereal, and so captivating in the way they move. A part of me envies them - it must be nice to be beautiful and brainless, relying only on stimuli of the light and chemicals around you, and the occasional brush of other creatures. But then I think, I guess we're not so different LOL. The tiktok brainrot has pretty much done the same to me.

They had a section where you could change the color of the jellies in the tanks, and I was so transfixed with setting different colors for the tanks. They were so elegant, and I genuinely could have watched them for hours and hours on end if left to my own devices.

My family and I have started doing "Bagel and a Bev Tuesdays", which is, as you would expect, a weekly check-in where we eat bagels on Tuesday with a nice drink. My sister and I saw this on TikTok and thought it was a great idea, so we've been doing it for the past few weeks now!

Bagels are not something I usually eat during the week - I'm not much of a breakfast person, and actual bagels are kinda high in calories for what I allot each day. But I've been loving eating bagels thins for lunch, and made a KILLER chipotle chicken bagel sandwich with avocado.

The bev varies each week (sometimes it's a homemade matcha latte, other times a CZ, or Poppi soda), but it's a tradition that I'm really liking so far!

TopGolf

HELLO???? Who am I? My family came down to visit me in Tennessee a few days ago, and while here, we went to TopGolf for an hour to see what it was about! And to be honest? I freaking LOVED it. I will ABSOLUTELY be going again, with Ian, with friends, or even just by myself. Do not care. I had an absolute blast, and it genuinely made me want to try actual golf.

I've always liked golf video games, so that makes sense - one of my favorites was Super Swing Golf for the Wii, and I spent an absurd amount of time playing that game lol. While some sports (like basketball, or swimming) don't really feel up my alley, golfing feels attainable, weirdly enough. And since I'm down south now, I should have more time and opportunities to try real golfing too! Who knows, maybe this will spark something in me that I'll want to stick with!

Honestly - THØRNS (and Kasane Teto)

This was a Tiktok find, and I've been absolutely obsessed with it. Over the past few years, Teto has been more and more associated with bigger name Vocaloids like Miku, and not treated like an UTAU outsider, which makes me SO happy. I really think the big differentiator here is that a lot of her newer songs are done in SynthV, which makes them sound much more smooth, plus Teto got an update not too long ago that's also helping the boost in her popularity.

This song in particular, Honestly, sounds sooooooooo smooth. When I listened to it the first time, I was a little shocked that I could understand her so clearly - the English is crisp and makes sense, with care taken to de-emphasize difficult syllables (like "th" sounds from sounding like "d"s, and allowing "ih" sounds to be shortened to move to the consonant). Take the word "display" for example, at around :52. It's a soft "d" sound, then an unfitting "ē" sound quickly followed by the "s" sound to take away from the unnatural English vowel sound for the "ih" portion. This allows the much more natural sounding "ay" sound at the end of the word to take the spotlight. There was so much thought and care put into making the English sound as realistic as possible, and it really shines in words like these that are difficult to pronounce from a Japanese bank. But even still, the "ih" sound is greatly improved from how it used to sound years ago. The new updates have done wonders for her bilingual capabilities.

The song itself is just a banger too - the punchy rests towards the end had me hype in the gym for the whole month. :)

It feels weird to talk about Vocaloids sometimes, as a 29-year-old. It's something I've been interested in for so long, but sharing my excitement makes me feel like I'm 12 again, greasy and weird and outspoken, and about to be sneered at for my interests. It makes me feel small. But I'm trying to learn to embrace this as an adult, that there is no joy without cringe, no payoff without risk. It feels weird, like a bearded dragon molting - shedding a skin sweater, uncomfortable, vulnerable. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, for someone to tell me to STFU because no one cares about Japanese singing robots. Maybe I'll unlearn the shame someday, but at least for now, I'm happy to yap on here about it. :)

-C 💖

Bagel and a Bev Tuesdays