The Cracked Mug v 2.0

[erikavonkaiser]

Went ahead and pulled the trigger on a foldable walking treadmill!

The one I've had my eye on was $70 off and I don't think I'll manage to get it or any other reasonable walking treadmill at a better price, so I went ahead and ordered it. It'll get here on Monday and I'll be able to return it if I end up not loving it, but I think it'll be something I get a lot of use out of. I've wanted one for a while but always felt like, well, if I want to walk I'll just go outside -- I'm a very active and outdoorsy person in general, so I do, but sometimes it's 11 PM or it's raining or it's a blizzard or I just want to play video games while also not sitting still for so long. Embrace the himbo fidgets, or something.

Aside from that, got all my morning routine stuff knocked out so I have about an hour and a half of Me Time before I need to walk Baby and finish getting ready for work. I think I'll use it to play some more Dredge, so off I go to do that.

[erikavonkaiser]

I think I'll use it to play some more Dredge, so off I go to do that.

I recommended this game already I think, but now having invested more hours into it I would like to uhhhh recommend it again I guess! The premise, as mentioned, is "cozy fishing game but Lovecraftian horror" and it delivers the concept really well. It has walking simulator style storytelling where you interact with objects and people and get some nice prose/lore/"I'm sorry what the fuck did you just say about your dead sister" in return.

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The gameplay mechanics revolve around the fishing minigames (which are fairly simple and do have a "peaceful" mode), upgrading your boat, and the inventory is sort of old school Resident Evil "Tetris" style where certain fish are certain shapes and you can maximize how many you carry at once by arranging them efficiently. So, yeah! If any of that sounds up your alley it's $25 on most platforms and I would say definitely worth that price.

[erikavonkaiser]

I know it's a cliché but recipe websites are so god danged bad

I've even heard some of the logic/arguments as to why; mostly that you can copywrite a blog post but not necessarily a recipe, so having the recipes woven into your ad-filled post podjhg'ahigf'''gfh'

TINNITUS sorry in the middle of that all I could hear in my right ear for a minute was "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"

ahem

having the recipes woven into your ad-filled post makes it easier to copywrite, maybe? I don't know how true that is, and I honestly don't care, because recipe websites are just kind of a disease at this point and I'm about to go back to buying recipe books in the same way I'm going back to buying DVDs because I am tired of how the internet stores and distributes information at this current juncture

[erikavonkaiser]

I had a good weekend!

I'm on the tail end of it now and watching some Babylon 5 with Sophie (probably just an episode before I have to go to bed), but I got my chores/tasks generally completed, had a good D&D session, played some video games, etc. I also am trying to push myself to be better about my eating habits, so I did a lot of meal prep stuff today! I even prepped smoothie stuff in freezer containers so if I want a smoothie I can just upturn a container into the blender, add liquid, and blend.

I guess that's all I have to say for now, gonna watch space shows with my girlfriend for a bit and then go to bed!

[erikavonkaiser]

I used to be the person who would go above and beyond for work. I would stay late, I would forsake my free time. At one point my schedule was: wake up early, drop Baby Dog off at my brother's house, drive to work, work, go to evening class for my undergrad, then pick Baby Dog back up. At that point it would be about 10 PM and I would immediately go to bed to do it all over again, and this was my schedule most days of the week. The days I didn't have class, I would just work even later. At another point I worked thirty-one days in a row; the only time I've topped that is when I was in the USMC and deployed, at which point weekends/time off do not exist.

Unsurprisingly, I was miserable. I was also generally a closeted gay military veteran whose only social circle was abusive family members and a Toxic Childhood Friend (I call this time period and the aftermath of me later losing that job The Dark Times), and in retrospect a lot of that schedule was the pure manic energy of refusing to think a thought ever.

I'm a much different person than I was back then, and honestly one of the biggest ways is I unapologetically protect my free time. This did mean I had to become a person who enjoyed my free time and was okay thinking thoughts, which were separate journeys, but I also had to learn that capitalism is a means to an end and nothing else. I'm not gonna stay late, I'm not gonna come in early, I'm not gonna work overtime. There's some exceptions and nuance there, but for the most part it's pretty straightforward! I've found that your employer learns to deal with it, because they must, and that I literally do not care even if someone does try to disparage my choices, because they'll be doing it while I'm having a whiskey at home on the couch with my dog.

Anyway, all this brought to you by one of my bosses texting me to ask if I wanted to work 11 AM to 11 PM today. No, I don't! Hope that helps.

[erikavonkaiser]

I love slang in general, even internet slang, and doubly even internet slang I do not comprehend or have become too much of a thirtysomething to parse but every time I witness "unalive" something inside me twitches

[erikavonkaiser]

I love slang in general, even internet slang, and doubly even internet slang I do not comprehend or have become too much of a thirtysomething to parse but every time I witness "unalive" something inside me twitches

I know I'm being a joyless old coot but I don't love embracing this particular brand of censorship!

If you're making suicidal ideation jokes and it sounds cuter when you say "unalive," maybe reconsider the entire parameters of that! If you're just avoiding saying kill/death/murder/etc., maybe reconsider the entire parameters of that!

idk I just feel like this is one phrasing you should own properly or reconsider why you're talking around it, genuine tiktok censorship aside

[erikavonkaiser]

My walking treadmill arrived the other day and I love it! I rearranged my living room so I could set it up in there (I decided I would use it most while playing console or watching YouTubes on my TV, since I don't have a standing desk to make it as viable for using while I'm on computer) and I also love the new layout of the living room! It opened up the area by the windows, which is nice especially since we've had some much-needed sunny weather the past few days.

Other than that I'm chugging along. Partially due to aforementioned much-needed sunny weather, work has been busy (better weather = more people die, it's a thing), but I've been keeping up with my routines well enough. This weekend I need to get a haircut and I'm also gonna try to go to the Lincoln Park farmer's market. It's supposed to be a really nice one with lots of vendors, and I got a Baby's First Canning Kit for Christmas I'm itching to use. My current "weekend" is Friday/Saturday, so I want to take advantage of being able to go to the famer's market on a day off while I can.

Speaking of routines, let me go ahead and do a few chores and exercise. If I'm efficient about it I might have time to play some more Dredge or flop on the couch with Baby Dog.

[erikavonkaiser]

One of my goals this year has been to read more, and I've been doing alright at it! It has come along with a few realizations, however:

1) I will never be the hyper-prolific reader I used to be and that's okay, that was a different time period of my life and a different form of Erika brain
2) having a library card is dope
3) I want to track my reading but I want to do it without pressure to be perceived

That last one I've been chewing over in my brain for a while. Years ago I used Goodreads under my legal name and later ended up nuking that once I did my big social media cleanse to separate Old Life from New Life. I've made a new Goodreads under my correct name and I do like it as an app, generally, because it's a good way to store information and peruse recommendations.

But I've found I don't really want to put down reviews or star ratings? I do want to use it to track what I'm currently reading and to "shelve" or tag books as certain things, but I feel weirdly pressured and put on the spot when it's time to give something a star rating. Some of this is absolutely weird trauma --

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-- but some if it is just kinda how I am now, I think. I'm learning to be more comfortable with privacy and with not owing people (particularly strangers on the internet) my thoughts/opinions/backstory/etc. I don't like the idea of cementing an opinion about a thing with no context (i.e. there's a book I'd absolutely give five stars for enjoyment but maybe realistically is more of a two or three star book because it's not technically good, I just love it) and I don't want to feel obligated to write a public-facing pithy or thoughtful mini-essay every time I finish a book.

Anyways tl;dr I'm going to continue to use Goodreads to track my reading and what I've read, but I'm not going to review or add any star ratings and will instead talk about my book thoughts here! Lemme finish eating my breakfast and I'll do a quick recap of what I've read so far this year to get started.

[erikavonkaiser]

Quick recap of my reading so far:

The Last Exodus by Paul Tassi
One star, did not finish

So this one I read in December of 2022 but I'm including it because Paul Tassi (a prominent video game journalist for Forbes) is my nemesis and his book is bad. I fully admit I gave this a try because I was curious about how Tassi handled long-form fiction -- I didn't go into it quite as a hate-read because I was genuinely curious but, yeah. Book bad. You could tell it's written by someone whose only experience with firearms is from video games (I'm not saying you can't write about guns unless you've fired a real one but like, literally take two minutes to look at a YouTube video and your gunplay won't come across as juvenile and wrong) and it almost immediately does the "I am a grizzled white man protagonist who is a thinly-veiled idealistic self-insert of the writer and I do not have a moral compass unless a woman forces me to" and I yawnnnnnnnnnn

(this one is actually another testament to why I don't want to do public-facing reviews/star ratings, because I initially gave this book two stars on Goodreads to be polite but, naw dog, it's bad)

Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey
Confused stars but probably three of them

This was a Sophie recommendation and is her favorite book! I have complicated feelings about it, but the writing style was beautiful and I loved the world and I loved how much of Sophie you can see in all of the themes and tropes.

Vampire Hunter D by Hideyuki Kikuchi
Five stars I don't even care

I've actually read a good chunk of the Vampire Hunter D books before (this is the first one in a long series) and I'm re-reading them with the intent to finish the whole series. They're bad! I love them! I think the phrase has fallen out of style but D is definitely what I would've called a "Mary Sue" back in the day; he is so beautiful he flusters men and women both, he has essentially all the strengths of a vampire and minimal to no weaknesses, he's (spoiler tagging in case anyone cares)

basically the son of Dracula (who in this universe is the most powerful vampire to ever exist) and Mina Harker

and of course to top it all off he's incredibly noble and kind. If he has a flaw it's that sometimes his vampire nature causes him to lust for blood but even that's presented in a way that's obviously supposed to be hot versus actually horrific. The world is a sci-fi post-apocalypse where humanity has gone back to the feudal era but still has most of their old technology, so it's like laser guns and mechanical horses but also giant castles and swords. The entire book is narrated in a weird style that probably has a fancy and official name but I'd describe it as an omniscient narrator who doesn't know the characters' inner thoughts at all, so it's narrating via their actions as if the book were a dramatic stage play.

I eat all that shit up, I won't lie.

That's it so far! Like I said, not prolific, but I'm chugging along and it's nice to be reading again. (And Kushiel's Dart did slow me down, it was over 900 pages!) It's also very much a thing that the more I do it the more I make time for it, so I'm already digging into the next VHD book.

#books2023