23 for '23

Hi y'all! I know I have not been so active on this blog recently but I had an idea to try New Year's Resolutions for once. Since the upcoming year in the Gregorian Calendar is 2023 I decided to write down 23 different resolutions to try to work on in the upcoming year. In the interest of brevity I won't be sharing all 23 resolutions but some that I think are easily worth sharing. 

1. Be able to play the bugle calls that are contained inside the Bugling merit badge pamphlet.

    There are fifteen different bugle calls in the Bugling merit badge pamphlet that I can work on and I've been trying for years on and off to be able to play at least a few bugle calls. If I can successfully fulfil this resolution my plan is to buy either a metal trumpet or a plastic cornet since I have a pBugle from from the creators of pBone trombones that plays pretty well in tune and in the key of B flat. I say plastic cornet because with brass instruments I currently don't have ambitions beyond the bugle calls and even though cornet is a serious instrument like the trumpet I'm not sure I can shell out more money for a "for-fun" instrument. The metal trumpet should I go for it will be a symbol of my seriousness and a definite goal beyond bugle calls in the brass realm.

3. Complete a Sprint Triathlon

    I enjoy running. I enjoy cycling. I enjoy swimming. So with those three disciplines in mind why not try to do an event that combines all three? It will be my first triathlon since the first time got disrupted by world events in 2020. Since it will be my first I'll be starting from a sprint distance event which if I do a specific tri in April it'll be 800 meters of swimming, a nine mile bike ride, and a 3 mile run. I'll have to quickly get started on training my swimming chops and regaining my cycling chops to have a good time at the triathlon.

11. Read at least 12 books.

    I've been trying for a few years to complete this goal and I have a list of books to read but I just need to put my nose to the figurative grindstone and read the dang books! The list of must reads for me are these but not necessarily in order: I Am a Cat by Natsume Soseki, Sanshiro by Natsume Soseki, The Makioka Sisters by Tanizaki Jun'ichiro, The Spy in Moscow Station by Eric Haseltine, Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, And Then by Natsume Soseki, All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens, Moby Dick by Herman Melville, The Origin of Species by Darwin, The Mathematics of Secrets by Joshua Holden, and Christianity... It's Like This by David R. Smith. Whoops! That was in order of month.

14. Memorize minor scales for clarinet and bass clarinet, two octaves.

    I should in good conscience already have memorized these scales as a musician but it doesn't hurt to try again and actually memorize the minor scales. Luckily for me the clarinet and bass clarinet have generally the same fingerings.

16. Monthly Rewards

    This is an unconventional resolution because most New Year's Resolutions require sacrifice to achieve but I have this unusual idea of rewarding myself with some item every end of the month. A few ideas include the Pusheen knitting kit (then I can learn how to knit), a Pusheen crochet kit (then I can learn how to crochet), and Pokémon Legends Arceus among other things.

22. Talk to friends and family more

    I'm sorry to my friends and family that I haven't been as chatty as I used to be but one of my resolutions is to try to be a bit more active in keeping in touch. Of course it's possible that I may overdo it but that's not for me to decide, my only thing to do when it's decided that I'm talking too much is to hush up.

Mr. Sean's Ten Favorite Animal Crossing: Happy Home Paradise Clients

Famous Designer Mr. Sean? Who's Mr. Sean? Is he actually a Famous Designer?

Hello everyone and welcome to yet another attempt of mine at re-awakening my blog. I've had ideas rattle around in my head the past many months but not enough motivation to act upon them. I'm currently feeling very motivated to add to my blog and I have been playing the Animal Crossing: New Horizons Downloadable Content called Happy Home Paradise. Happy Home Paradise is a spiritual sequel to the Nintendo 3DS game Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer. In the main Animal Crossing games one of the possible things you as the player can do is decorate your house with different furniture, wallpaper, flooring, and other knick-knacks. Happy Home Designer takes the house decorating game to the next level where you get to decorate houses for the various Non-Playable Character (NPC) animal neighbors that inhabit Animal Crossing. Happy Home Paradise for the Nintendo Switch is similar to Happy Home Designer but in my opinion feels meatier in content. I could be wrong but I only have at the time of writing (August 2022) about seven months left to purchase Happy Home Designer for the Nintendo 3DS and see for myself which game has more content. 

Enough about my worries about time and FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), it's time to get to the meat of today's blog post. I've been playing Happy Home Paradise recently and having fun decorating houses for different animal NPCs and have worked on enough houses that I can discuss my ten favorite and my five least favorite NPC clients I've worked for. Today I'll focus on my personal best of the best and who knows, maybe my ten best list will be different in 2023 if I keep at it. This list is not in order of whose houses I enjoyed designing the most but is just a list of whose houses I greatly enjoyed designing.

1: Tipper

Tipper is a cow character of the personality type called snooty. Snooty villagers tend to be very fashion forward and quite judgmental of their neighbors' fashion choices. Tipper wanted her own ranch so I gave her a desert wheat ranch because it looks cool and also I had the idea that Tipper wanted some challenge to accomplish.

2: Nan

Nan is a "normal" goat NPC. Normal is a misnomer and it would be more fair to call Nan a "sweet" villager as normal villagers tend to be the kindest neighbors in Animal Crossing. Nan tasked me with the making of a luxury hotel room. I tried to make the hotel room in the spirit of an actual hotel room, but really spruced up. There usually are not pianos in many hotel rooms.

3: Claude

Claude was my first lazy villager and my first rabbit villager in Animal Crossing: New Horizons back in April 2020. In New Horizons, lazy villagers love food and their bug friends. Claude also happened to be one of my first Happy Home Paradise clients and he wanted a fun arcade. He has great taste in vacation homes and I had to include some gamer fuel provided by the vending machine on the right side of the image. 

4: Audie

Audie is a peppy wolf villager and in New Horizons peppy villagers are obsessed with becoming pop stars. Audie is making a name for herself in the electronic music scene instead of mainstream Top 40 music with her club. Her club is complete with club snacks because those who dance to Audie's beats will work up quite an appetite.

5: Ken

Ken is a smug ninja chicken. Smug villagers are fashion conscious like snooty villagers but are more inwardly focused on themselves to the point of vanity. Ken wanted a dojo for martial arts so I obliged him with one where Armor-sensei (the Samurai Armor item in the background) watches over martial arts practitioners and four zabuton (seat cushions) for guests to observe the action.

6: Agnes

Agnes is a sisterly (or uchi as some Animal Crossing fans prefer) pig villager. She may be a little rough around the edges but she genuinely cares for her friends. As much as uchi villagers seem to get a bad rap for not being cultured, Agnes bucks the trend with her request for a museum full of cultural treasures and knowledge to be shared.

7: Miranda

Miranda is a snooty duck villager. Snooty villagers tend to not be fans of physical fitness but Miranda wants a gym that can kick her butt with a nice workout. I added some variety for potential workouts so her muscles don't get complacent. The Ring Fit Adventure station in the back is worthy of being included in the great gym as it will give you a real workout but with RPG (Role-playing game) elements thrown in such as battling enemies by doing squats or planks.

8: Shino

Shino is a peppy deer whose design inspiration comes from traditional Japanese Noh theater. Naturally her Happy Home Paradise request had to be Japanese themed and with her personality in mind she can be quite the J-Pop star mixing modern day Japan with the old traditional Japan and creating new fusions that are the future of J-Pop.

9: Eugene

Eugene is a smug koala villager whose wearing of sunglasses reminds me a bit of Elvis Presley. His request for a vacation house was a talk show set so with my limited knowledge of late shows from TV I tried to include multiple cameras for multiple angles, a couch for show guests, a live audience section, and a piano represents the musicians that tend to accompany the late night talk show hosts. 

10: Petri

Petri is a snooty mouse villager. In Animal Crossing promotional images she usually is wearing a pair of glasses that conceal her eyes and is dressed in a lab coat because she is a scientist mouse. Petri's idea for a vacation house is a message to her fellow scientists that it is okay to take breaks sometimes and that you don't need to be nose to the grindstone 24/7. Petri's ideal relaxation includes tea and snacks.

Next time on Mr. Sean vs Motivation: My five least favorite Happy Home Paradise clients and their visions.

Mr. Sean's Crazy Idea Regarding Pies

Recently my dad brought home a pie from a local business called Tuttle's Treats (link to their Facebook page here: Tuttle's Treats). It was a delicious pie and it got me thinking about pies. Thinking about pies got me thinking about the mathematical constant pi (π ≈ 3.14) and that maybe I should try to find 314 recipes for pie. As the days have marched on since eating that delicious pie (I've been told it was a chocolate chess pie) I've been coming up with how to approach the Pie-pendium. At first I was going to allow duplicates within the 314 (100*pi) recipes, but I figured that would make the collection of pie recipes less challenging. So I came up with the idea of letting pies that have multiple recipes available to me have one recipe in the first 314 pie recipe collection and the multiples would occupy the second 314 pie recipe collection, for a total of 628 (2*pi*100) pie recipes. 

The more I try to hammer out my Pie-pendium idea, the more I think of how hard it will be to properly attribute each recipe since some of the cookbooks I can look at involve groups of people from years past (such as an Enlisted Spouses Club of a military installation from around 1999). I will try my best to give proper attribution of recipes by writing the names associated with each recipe and which group of people they are/were associated with and/or the title of the cookbook I got the recipe from.

There are also some issues in the world of pies and pastries. Some people argue that quiches and tarts are not pies. Besides different baking pans and words, there aren't very many differences between pies and tarts. Then there are also the fried pastries of various kinds to take into account (empanadas are somewhat similar to the apple pie turnovers in the outer shell). My verdicts are that tarts are fair game for the Pie-pendium and so are dishes such as empanadas.

I'll have to figure out how to keep all the recipes together later, but I know that loose leaf paper will need to be placed in a binder and that five subject notebooks can be quite expensive, though with loose leaf paper, I won't have to worry about running out of room on a finite space in the way I would with notebooks.

Anyways, here's some pie to serve as visual inspiration for my crazy idea. I have got to find that postcard I bought from Lancaster County in 2009 that is a recipe for Shoo-fly pie. I love Shoo-fly pie!

Mr. Sean's Small Cookbook Collection

So recently I've been learning how to cook more so when I'm finally ready to move out of the house (with a job that pays enough to do so) I'm not a complete amateur in the kitchen. My parents have encouraged my brother and me to cook more instead of relying on take-out so much (though I think making an exception for local joints is fine). The parents fished out a few cookbooks from their stash for me to peruse and to find recipes I could probably succeed at making and that sound delicious to me. It was from reading their cookbooks that I decided to expand my collection of cookbooks and this blog post will highlight six books in my collection so far. I'm sorry for those who don't like reading, but this may be my longest blog post ever despite the omission of two cookbooks from this post (my total collection currently stands at eight).

The Chesapeake Collection

The Chesapeake Collection was, "created in 1983 by the Woman's Club of Denton, Inc." as part of a series of fundraisers to preserve the club's clubhouse which was originally a schoolhouse built in 1883 and placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. Denton is the county seat for Caroline County in Maryland. Located on the Eastern Shore, one would expect seafood to be heavily featured in local cookbooks and that is indeed the case. There is also a section of the cookbook dedicated to the preparation of Game dishes such as Maryland Fried Quail and Muskrat Stew. The recipe I'd like to try and create from The Chesapeake Collection is Crab-Shrimp Casserole by Barbara Maske. I was able to purchase a copy of this cookbook from The Maryland Store: The Chesapeake Collection.

A Cook's Tour of the Eastern Shore

Along with The Chesapeake Collection and another cookbook later in this post, I bought this from The Maryland Store. Their website is themarylandstore.com and they have a physical location in Westminster in Carroll County, Maryland. So this cookbook was first published in 1948 by the Easton Memorial Hospital Junior Auxiliary and when I opened it up I was surprised. The recipes might be photocopied in my book, but they are photocopies of the handwritten recipes that originally went into the book. I also noticed that each recipe was credited to Mrs. *Husband's name* rather than the wife's name. 1948 was definitely a different time and the Eastern Shore keeps traditions up longer than the western shore. The recipe that I'd like to try out from this book is the Curried Chicken #2. I love curry in all sorts of forms and found it interesting that there was a curry recipe from people who live on the Eastern Shore. This book is available for sale at The Maryland Store: A Cook's Tour of the Eastern Shore

My Favorite Maryland Recipes

My Favorite Maryland Recipes are not words coming from my mouth. Instead, a former First Lady of Maryland is the person making this bold claim. This cookbook features First Lady Helen Avalynne Tawes' favorite Maryland recipes and menus which she cooked for her family and for entertaining State Guests at the Governor's Mansion. Governor J. Millard Tawes must have eaten well. There are some recipes which currently cannot be cooked exactly as stated such as Maryland Diamondback Terrapin Soup due to the depleted number of Terrapins leaving it nearly endangered in some places. Luckily for me, the recipe I'd like to try from Mrs. Tawes' cookbook is the Seven-Layer Chocolate Frosted Cake. It's not quite Smith Island Cake tall in number of layers (a Smith Island Cake typically has ten layers) but I like layered cakes with chocolate frosting. This was the third and so far final cookbook I bought from the Maryland Store. The book is available for purchase at The Maryland Store: My Favorite Maryland Recipes.

The Ultimate Cooking for One Cookbook

So I was looking for recipes for one as I do plan on cooking some when I move into my own place eventually when I found a neat website. The website is https://onedishkitchen.com/cooking-for-one-recipes/ and I found interesting dishes such as Cornbread for one and Pecan Pie for one. I wondered if Joanie, the creator of the One Dish Kitchen website, had a cookbook full of recipes for one serving. Yes she does, though I ordered mine from Amazon. The book is available at various online retailers and you can find the list of retailers selling the book at Cooking for One Order Page. The dish I'd like to try from the book is the Maple Pecan Breakfast Bread Pudding. Honorable mention dishes from the book and the website include Butter Chicken and the aforementioned Pecan Pie for one.

Binging with Babish

Andrew Rea, the man behind Binging with Babish the cookbook and Binging with Babish the YouTube channel, has for a few years now tried to re-create various food items from film, television, animation, and even video games. Some dishes are ridiculously sized such as Bubble Bass' order from SpongeBob SquarePants (his stream of diner lingo was translated into a 24 patty burger on toast) while others are something even a novice home cook could pull off with style. My dish to try to cook from this book is okonomiyaki. There is a video of Rea cooking the okonomiyaki from Sweetness and Lightning over on YouTube at: Binging with Babish: Okonomiyaki. Okonomiyaki literally translates to "cooked how you like" and the base of it is a cabbage and flour based pancake with many options to top and add to your meal such as bonito flakes atop or seafood within. Sweetness and Lightning is originally a manga series written and illustrated by Gido Amagakure but was later put on television as an anime and is basically about a widower father who, inspired by one of his students, learns how to cook for his daughter.

Joy of Cooking

Joy of Cooking is arguably the grandmaster of cookbooks in the United States. First published in 1931 by Irma S. Rombauer, this book would see nine different editions throughout the more than ninety years it has been in print. The most recent edition of Joy of Cooking, published in 2019, had John Becker, Irma's great grandson, and Becker's wife Megan Scott updating the cookbook for today's home cook. If there is a dish you'd like to create, there is a good chance that you can find a recipe for it within this huge tome. Some people prefer the older editions of this book, especially the 1975 edition of the book, but if you'd like to purchase the most up to date Joy you can! I bought my copy of Joy from Amazon but such a ubiquitous cookbook should be available for sale in pretty much every online retail store that sells cookbooks. The dish I'd like to cook from this book is the Thai-Style Yellow Chicken Curry.

Closing thoughts and Anticipations

I would have described the other two cookbooks I have, but this post is already long enough as it stands. I could probably have made a blog post for each cookbook, but that's more for the readers to decide. When I do get around to cooking the dishes I'd like to cook from each book. I'll try to make a blog post about the experience of cooking each dish and have a picture of the finished product. I'm already considering adding another cookbook to my collection. This cookbook would relate to me in that I was born in Hawaii. The cookbook is called A Taste of Aloha Favorites by the Junior League of Honolulu.

Mr. Sean's Ranks his Animal Crossing: New Horizons Neighbors: Numbers 10-1

Today I will show off my top ten Animal Crossing: New Horizons neighbors. There is an old favorite in the mix along with a really tiny villager. Here we go!

10. Kabuki

Kabuki is a cranky cat, except he isn't really all that cranky in New Horizons like he was in past Animal Crossing games. Anyways, he ranks highly because he's a good mentor to Broccolo who'll appear later in the post and is willing to sing with his neighbors even though he is shy regarding solo performances.

9. Audie

Peppy Audie may say foxtrot and seem more fox than wolf, but either way she is an interesting peppy villager. Peppy villagers in New Horizons tend to have the nebulous goal of being a popstar but Audie's main hobby is fitness. Health is important and fitness can build endurance for long tours. Bonus points to Audie's house for being perfectly themed for island living.

8. Norma

The first cow in the countdown. Norma's name is a bit on the nose as she is a Normal villager. Nintendo should come up with a better name than "Normal." Maybe try "Sweet" or "Caring" instead? Anyways, I like most of the cows in Animal Crossing and her hobby of nature pairs well with Claude so they can learn from each other about the flora and fauna of New Maui.

7. Tipper

Tipper is ranked higher than Norma for looking more like a real cow (I've yet to see a pink cow in real life). Also, despite being a snooty villager, she tended to not be snarky but helpful in her fashion advice and other conversations. I like how her eyes seem perpetually closed yet are very expressive. Also, she pulls off the Animal Crossing version of haute couture very well.

6. Skye

Skye is a sky blue wolf, but she's not hungry for meat and is rather sweet. Her house continues the sky blue coloring scheme and despite it looking like a normal house for a normal villager, she has a piano that accompanies well with her singing. She was a shy singer like Kabuki, but she was even shyer.

5. Katt

Katt isn't the prettiest cat out there, but who cares when she's got musical chops for days. Singing? Katt can belt out tunes really well. Guitar? Yes! Drums? She keeps telling me to not request her to play them but I have evidence that she has an excellent sense of rhythm. She's also defends Broccolo the mouse from haters. I personally like her color scheme, fangs, and eyes. Her hind paws (feet) are blue, which is cool.

4. Sydney

Sydney the Koala and I go way back. All the way back to the GameCube Animal Crossing. In fact, she still lives in the acre to the left of my house today. Anyways, New Horizons decided that she would be musically inclined like Katt, Kabuki, and Tangy are. Maybe she can be the lead singer and have Kabuki playing bass, Tangy at guitar, and Katt on drums? She is definitely the sunshine on my island.

3. Claude

Claude the rabbit often mentions his love of bugs. Other lazy villagers do the same thing but only a few of them can prove their love of bugs via knowledge. I'll often see Claude reading books about nature and his favorite nature book features bugs. He also has books on fish and flowers. One of my favorite things about rabbits in New Horizons is that their ears are very floppy despite being upright. The wind will blow the ears back and forth. I wonder if heavy winds give Claude a headache?

2. Broccolo

Tiny mousey boy Broccolo is my second favorite New Maui villager as I write this post. He's basically a little child who: must be protected at all costs, is ready to learn everything about the world, has a bottomless pit for a stomach, and is one of the cutest mice in the game. He can relate to each of my cat neighbors well. With Mitzi, he and Mitzi have a younger brother older sister dynamic but seem to be best friends. Kabuki is the mentor to Broccolo being the mentee. Katt will defend Broccolo against all haters and Tangy and Broccolo share a favorite song: "I Love You" by K.K. Slider. He also gifted me at least two real pieces of art for the museum. For somebody who loves to run around like an airplane, he's contributed a lot to New Maui society.

1. Mitzi

Although Mitzi hasn't contributed artwork to the New Maui museum or been the most active cat in the town square, she is my favorite villager in New Horizons and is knocking on Purrl's doorstep as my favorite Animal Crossing cat. She's friends with everybody, is an opportunist when it comes to finding places to plop down with a good book, her eyes are funny when she's surprised, and is the sweetest virtual cat I've ever met. She also loves to visit the museum and is one of the few villagers I've spent much time with looking around the museum with and seeing the growth of New Maui's culture. 

Mr. Sean's Ranks his Animal Crossing: New Horizons Neighbors: Numbers 20-11

In the past six months since I got Animal Crossing: New Horizons, various villagers have come and gone from New Maui. Some I liked more than others, one was a total disappointment to me, and one of them is an old favorite from when I played Animal Crossing on the GameCube. This post will showcase the first half of the twenty villagers that have called New Maui home.

20. Bangle

I'm from New Maui, but I'm not a fan of you up and leaving so quickly that I couldn't get at least a poster with your face on it. She may be a tiger, but she left with the speed of a cheetah.

19. Rizzo

Rizzo failed to live up to my hype. He's actually based off of a Japanese thief and folk hero called Nezumi Kozo but he was more boring than his fellow cranky Kabuki (who will be featured in the top 10). At least he was pretty funny when he was angry as he is a tiny mouse.

18. Reneigh

Reneigh's hairstyle may remind some people of Rihanna (her Japanese name is リアーナ, which sounds like Rihanna). Personally, I don't feel she added much to the culture of the island. I hardly saw her partaking in activities but she did Naruto run a few times.

17. Boone

Boone was an okay starter villager and his design is cool (in-game he is a gorilla, but he looks like a mandrill), but he was too one dimensional in terms of working out. He could have worked out his brain muscles more with reading and vocal muscles with more singing.

16. Lyman

Lyman is slightly better than Boone because he wasn't singularly focused on weight training. He was more into cardio with his running around the island. His running form could use some work though as arms behind you isn't quite optimal. He also managed to get two of his neighbors to really work their singing muscles one time. He was an okay koala.

15. Henry

Henry's ranking is bolstered by his house, which is a showing off of the ironwood furniture set. He also liked to sing and having some musical experience I'm a bit biased towards musically inclined villagers. Being a frog, he had no need for an umbrella and actually loves the rain.

14. Tex

Tex's house might not have ironwood furniture, but it is definitely cooler than Henry's house. Tex also loves music and he does a better job of showing it with a drum set, a few guitars, an amp, and a DJ booth. Also, penguins are better than frogs.

13. Tangy

Tangy is only ranked so low because she is the newest neighbor on New Maui. She'll definitely rise a few spots the longer she stays on the island. I think she'll be better than Audie. People love Tangy because she's a citrus cat.

12. Soleil

Soleil's hairstyle may remind people of the stereotypical middle-aged woman who demands the manager, but Soleil hardly complains about things, especially places to sit and read her book. Often times she'll be on the cold hard ground enjoying her read. Soleil is one of the better hamsters, certainly better than Apple.

11. Twiggy

Twiggy does not seem to be liked or disliked by the Animal Crossing community, but rather ignored. I hope this post will at least bring some awareness to her existence. This budgie bird has dreams of being a popstar, but sometimes I had convince her to stop reading fashion magazines and practice singing to help her achieve her goals.

Mr. Sean's Animal Crossing New Maui Adventures Part 4

I think it's been long enough that there aren't any spoilers for day to day events now. Anyways, more moments from New Maui, now with video! I'm sorry that most of these photos involve Katt the cat, but she's my favorite villager in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

Here's a video of Claude the rabbit singing K.K. Swing.

I like how his ears flop around in the wind. Maybe he'll convince me to find more rabbit villagers if other villagers want out.

You called Katt uncool, you deserve the net Twiggy.

Katt rocks an unconventional style (it's unconventional for her). 

My laughing failed to wake Katt up.

Instead of the early worm, we get Tipper talking about the early cow.

The camera angle made it so the electric bass disappeared. It'd be cool if Katt could strum air bass and make a sound out of it.

Katt's hobby is music, so I am encouraging music in the island plaza.

Regular cats like lasers. Katt likes lightnin' bugs.