Promiseland

[Fetian]

  Hidden text. You are not a member of the groups to which this text is available

[Fetian]

ugh, got stuck and now it's 7 AM

[Fetian]

Moods have shifted again and I'm out of language-space, I think. I'm also flailing around for a video game to be playing -- tried Bioshock for a couple days but between the wonkiness of the PC ports for it and just, the game's rough edges in general, I'm not really feeling it. Also tried Borderlands and didn't get into it. Unsure what I do want

Did I mention ash and I played through Ib? I think I did -- we've moved on to Off, which is only related in that they occupied the same fandom-space for a while. They're similar in era and medium if not really genre

Games aside, I do want to be pushing myself more out of my comfort zones and do less passive intake, again. Might be time for a straight up internet hiatus again

Yeah, that sounds like it's probably a good idea. Next week, maybe

[Fetian]

Discord continues to update in ways that break it -- now the icon has stopped appearing in [linux's equivalent of] the taskbar, so I have no visual indicator of any notifications. Super cool

[Fetian]

  Hidden text. You are not a member of the groups to which this text is available

[Fetian]

Up late last night, so awake late today, and upon getting up I took a shower and then ash and I played video games together for basically all afternoon/evening. We beat off finished Off, a classic indie game from the late 00's. I believe it's an inspiration for Undertale -- it's also an incredibly unique game, with an unfortunately somewhat cliche story, once you're through it. I still enjoy it, ash enjoyed it except he didn't like the ending, which is very fair. So we did that until dinner, then we watched a small handful of youtubes and a Steven Universe, and then we went back to video games and played PlateUp! for like four hours. PlateUp! is a collaborative restaurant simulator, if you're familiar with OverCooked it's very like that but you run both the back and front of house, and it's a roguelike instead of having set levels. It's very challenging, and also very fun. Do recommend if you have someone to play it with and you both like that sort of game, do not recommend for solo play

Tomorrow we're going to take a walk, play more go, and play some Disco Elysium and/or more PlateUp

 
When I got the record player, I ordered a few old, cheap record listings off ebay, one of which was a bag of eleven or so records with a buy it now for $20 and a starting bid of $3. Naturally I put in a bid, and naturally I had zero competition, so I won with it still at $3 plus ~$5 shipping and handling. I expect the seller was a little miffed at not getting $20 for it, because I proceeded to hear nothing at all from them about the item being shipped for two weeks. So I sent a message about it, honestly half expecting the seller to demand more money or something, but on the contrary the seller continued to ghost me. So a couple weeks after that -- a few days ago -- I reported it to eBay as unreceived, and this morning got a refund for the order. So that's that, I suppose!

Though if I get a bomb in the mail or something, this is perhaps why

 
I have decided that Monday I'm going to start an internet semi-hiatus. I'm going to keep using my phone and whatever sites I'm signed in on there, but I won't be using the internet on my main computer. For a week, and then we'll see how I feel. So I'll still be around here and discord but not so much twitter (again), and I won't be checking my tumblr/etc feeds or my youtube subscriptions (except for the video Brian David Gilbert is supposed to drop).

Goal is to focus on things like cleaning, reading books, maybe try to work on some projects. I'm not going in with a super solid plan, but I want to push myself to improve my ability to focus, executive function, etc. Get things done that aren't keeping up with whatever is going on on the internet. Get out and get some sun, so on.

 
But in the meantime I'm going to chill for a bit and then go to bed

[Fetian]

So this morning the gardners who do the front yard got let into the back to "clean up", which is upsetting both for 'I don't like people unexpectedly existing in my private spaces' reasons and because like, I like gardening, I want to do the gardening, I have projects going in my gardens that a professional gardener would just destroy because they'd think it was weeds or whatever. And they did in fact just destroy everything growing around the pool area (which I'd liked to have been able to have a conversation about what did or did not need to be gotten rid of), and trimmed the hell out of all of the shrubs over there including the rosebush that ash had been training for the entire year+ we've lived here

It's been expressed that we do not want this service so hopefully it doesn't happen again. I am miffed it happened in the first place, I feel like ash's and my reaction to this service should have been very predictable given previous such events, but what's done is done and there's no use worrying about it.

 
ash wasn't in the mood to do walking related things this morning, so it's been put off -- plan had been to do a downtown/midtown/oldtown/whichever trip while he had weekday time off, which never ended up happening for a variety of reasons, and do a trip to an arcade when he gets some noise-reduction ear buds which should arrive within the next few days. So we'll probably not be able to do the city trip and just do the arcade trip, and only do one thing this week. It happens! We'll get into the city eventually -- it's just annoying that a feature of America's back-asswards economic system means that every adult gets the same set of days off work, which makes it rare to be able to go do something like a city trip without crowds. Oldtown in particular is so fucking busy on weekends

We also didn't play go today. Instead we watched some videos, then played more PlateUp!. We got so close to finishing the 15th day and I really think we'll make it the next time we play.

 
Day 1 of internet hiatus has mostly been resting. I woke up early-ish to be ready to walk if we were going to, and when we didn't I listened to a couple podcast episodes, and then tried to read for a while but couldn't really keep my eyes open, so I took a nap for a couple hours. When I woke up I hung out with ash in the kitchen while he made dinner, then the aforementioned videos-videogames. I'm watching another video now while I finish dinner and then I'm going to try reading again before I go to bed

[erikavonkaiser]

I'm sorry about your garden! Landlords vs. Nature is a tale as old as time but it is always invasive and frustrating. When I lived at Bad House my landlord scolded me at one point for "not trimming the hedges" and when he hired someone to do it they trimmed them back to a nub of branches. It looked awful but I guess it's the Landlord Aesthetic (tm) along with painting over everything in the cheapest and most scuffable white paint possible.

[Fetian]

Today was nice! Despite sleeping poorly, including Oz's traditional waking me up too early several times. But ash and I took the train into the city, did some wandering around oldtown, bought some junk, took an unnecessary but pleasant (but a touch too long) detour, made our way into downtown, got smoothies, walked to the train station, and went home. We were out for like five hours? The entire day

Our cunning plan to go to oldtown (the most touristy place in the city) during the week to avoid crowds was thwarted by it turning out to currently be spring break, unfortunately. Fortunately, it was still less full than it gets on weekends, and we were pretty much alone while in shops, it was just getting around on the boardwalks that it was a touch crowded. We probably would have had a different experience if we'd tried one of the museums or tours or what-have-you

There was a very small fair/carnival/whatever, on the river, consisting of a carousel and a ferris wheel -- we went on neither, and it looked temporary so probably won't be there if I go back, but if it is there when Sor is visiting then it'd be nice to go on it with them

Speaking of the river, it is so fucking full from all the rain, it's ridiculous.

And speaking belatedly of bought junk, I got a handmade journal that looks like an explorer's logs or something. It was $30, which is a crazy good price for something like that, so I'm pleased with the purchase and need to decide what I'm going to use it for

 
When we got home, the lid on the pool filter popped off, which is mildly concerning, but we'll see if it does it again, and also let the pool people know it happened so if it is an issue they know to do something about it

ash and I hung out for maybe half an hour while eating dinner and while he did some admin stuff for his podcast(s), then we played more PlateUp! -- we finally made it to day 15! And then promptly lost on day 16, but we made it!

 
There were a couple games on deep sale so I got those, and now I'm going to play one of them for a bit and probably go to bed early. It was a good day! It was so nice to get out into the sun and do stuff out of the house for a while. When we got home I was like immediately in a better mood than I've been in in a while. Hopefully the weather holds and I can get out there more often

[Fetian]

In summer it's gonna suck again but right now it's so so so nice that my room gets full, direct sun right on my sliding glass door all afternoon and evening