Thankfully this week wasn't as bad as the one awhile ago when my Pap passed away, but it's been quite the interesting one for sure. As always, I've been trying to keep busy and using my time as effectively as I can. I've been dieting in preparation for August. I'm down from 250 to 238/237 and showing no ill effects yet! I've been keeping track of that all over on my youtube, which can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheApp....._as=subscriber
Eventually I'll have to make a playlist for them. But I'm happy with how this is going so far.

Then I had one of the most crushing scares of my life. I'm sure you're all probably getting sick of me mentioning it, but it involves that novel I've been working the last 13 years of my life on. It is literally my life's work and means the absolute world to me. I kept it stored on the Flashdrive I have all my old Halo fanfictions and other writing projects on, which in the past has only damaged one file once; and I was pretty sure was my fault. The file had been opened all afternoon, but when I closed it to get over on my other laptop to use its superior power to talk with friends, the unthinkable happened. The file was so badly corrupted that neither computer could open it. My Backup copy was 3 years outdated and so much of it was irreplaceable. Several of my friends got their most tech savvy friends together in a sort of special forces team and tried through the night to get it back. I was up til 5am until all hope was exhausted. I was devastated and numb all of yesterday as I came to grips with the fact that all of my hopes, all of my dreams, and the sum of what's basically my life's work was stolen from me. I have a crippling fear that Infinity Quest will be panned, or disliked, or that somehow I'll fail. But none of that compares with the feeling of having it stolen from me before I can either succeed or fail on my own merit. It wasn't until mid afternoon that  colby-hedgey in her determination to help asked for the file and managed to crack into it by converting it into an XML. The file was still chewed up, but all the raw text is still there. I'm going back in and adding the Bolds, Italics, different fonts, paragraphs, and spaces back in, but I'm grateful for her help. Hedge, for all intents and purposes saved my life yesterday; and I will never forget that.

Then to top things off, I had a development with an old old Star Trek group I used to do a lot of work in as the co-founder over on DA. We originally set it up as a roleplaying group and I was still rather young and made missteps of course, but as time went on, we had a bit of fun and made some good memories. However, the rp died off as people left and those mistakes came back to haunt me. For a time I was a bit spiteful over it I'll admit, and even recently considered leaving the group. I wrote a journal on the group which can be seen here: https://star-trek-freedom.deviantar.....talk-737276143
And very shortly after writing that, the original founder stepped down and gave me control of the group as the Founder. The thing I put so much work into, the first forum/group rp I ever did, now laying near death, was mine. I had been thinking about leaving and letting it rest. Having it finally be mine is a rather surreal experience. I honestly don't know how to feel. If anyone's interested, I'd be more than alright with trying to reboot the old group and see if I couldn't do things right this time, but then another part of me wonders if I shouldn't just let this sleeping giant slip softly into the sea of memories where it has already been for a number of years. This will wholly be on general interest, so we'll see how things go.

Contest Winners

And I've not forgotten about you guys! I've two contests I need to catch up on before things can get any crazier on me. From the Raffle held of Fur Affinity 5 Months ago we have...

 friendlywolf is getting a full scene with their partner which I aim to have done by Tuesday
 Lil-ronnie wants a 5 page story of his character, which I have in mind
And my sister https://the-gij.deviantart.com/ wanted a bust of a friend's character as a gift

The recent Deviant Art raffle winners were...
 babykitty_sierra wanted a simple funny picture of their character fumbling with adult clothing that was obvious far too large for them
https://drskytower.deviantart.com/ Whose getting a 5 page comedy story of her character Lazarus fighting the mutant hive minded monster known as 343 Studios
https://Half-Dude.deviantart.com/ wanted a 2 page story of the yellow car from the haunting yet highly memorable junkyard scene from Brave Little Toaster!
https://cherry-spot.deviantart.com/ wanted a bust of their wonderfully named Sam-A-Lamb character https://cherry-spot.deviantart.com/.....ence-686590898
And last but by no means least is the ever amazing https://kamellion.deviantart.com/ who wants a bust of her incredible dragon character, King Mel. Seriously, she's awesome, go check her out!

Personal Projects

Upload Commission of Captain Tanner
Upload teaser of Infinity Quest first chapter
Leading role in a play at High Point on April 7th
Upload Ref Sheet for Phil the Mercenary
Finish Surprise picture for  TheCoyoteFeather
Finish Infinity Quest by mid April
Continue Youtube Diet vlogs