ELSEWHERE

ash and I are in fact planning to go to the arcade tomorrow/today (Friday), and we want to get there early to avoid the worst of the crowds, so I went to bed early and took a melatonin to try to sleep through the night. Unfortunately the cat woke me up at 3 and then 4 and then my brain got stuck in troubleshooting mode to the extent I had to get up to see if the solution it came up with was viable. And then I was hungry enough I wouldn't be able to fall asleep unless I ate something, so I ate something.

Trying for more sleep now, but boy is waking up going to suck

So yeah, went to bed with intent of being asleep around 1, woke up briefly at 2, cat woke me up at 3, then at 4, couldn't fall back asleep until after 5, woke up before my alarm close to 9. Not enough sleep, not enough restful sleep

But we went to the arcade! I am miffed at that particular arcade for reasons, but it was a good testing ground for ash's earbuds, so. We spent about an hour there, with a brief break at the half-hour to sit outside for a few minutes. Some skeeball, some gallery shooting, some video games. Not a huge or very interesting selection, but the hour passed well and we both had fun. ash's ear thingies worked, so we'll be able to try out a more interesting arcade in future, and/or go back to that one if we feel like it

We went grocery shopping on our way home -- soda was a crazy good deal so I got that, and don't have to try the store brand any time soon, also got some snack options and a frozen pie, and I got a peepsi to try. It was not good! ash said it tasted like a cream soda he'd already added vodka to, and I agree it's like a cream soda but made wrong. Very interestingly, the two flavours do not seem to mix at all -- the pepsi and the peep. While in the mouth it just tastes like regular pepsi but as soon as I swallow it tastes like, like marshmallow is the closest I can think of that it tastes like? But it doesn't really taste like marshmallow. Dave said it tastes like vanilla extract and that's probably close too, but not exactly.

Anyway.

Came home, rested for a bit, read to ash while he made dinner. We played a round of Go, but ash wasn't super into it and it seems like it's just not a game he enjoys very much, so we'll need to find something else. He wants to play Hive for our monthly game night, but we need to get the game in some way or another, so it's possible we'll end up putting that one off for a month and playing something else this month.

After dinner we did our now-traditional PlateUp! run -- last night I found some mods that adjust a couple features of the game that turned the difficulty into frustrating for us, and today we made it past day 15! We made it to day 18, technically -- days after 15 are labelled differently. We then saved the restaurant and quit for the night, because it was 10:30 and things were getting hectic.

Not sure what I'll do with the rest of my evening before bed. I'm definitely too tired to read and I'm not feeling continuing either of the games I've been playing. Might just chill for a while and watch or listen to something

ash and Erik went to the movies this afternoon, so I had the house to myself for a couple hours! I took advantage of this to get some chores done - ash specifically asked me to wipe down the kitchen counters, so I did that but only gave it a quick clean because I wanted to spend my energy giving the stovetop a thorough scrub and doing a quick pass through the house with the duster. So I did that! And then I went into the backyard and checked out what kind of gardening needed doing and what state everything is in, for the beginning of the season. Then I watched a youtube and ate crackers until the housemates got home

Erik got an autonomous vacuum and spent the evening setting that up, and ash and I did a little bit of picking up/rearranging the house to allow it to function, so that's pretty neat. ash and I are going to hang some pictures tomorrow and do a little bit of yard work. I bought my new rose for the year.

We ate dinner, watched a few short videos, then went to bed

ash and I just spent an hour doing yardwork, including trimming a bush, weeding, herbicide-ing, raking, putting out bird bath and feeders, and just general pickup/repair. It looks great -- weirdly it's easier to do post-winter yardwork when you do it every year, and don't just leave things for years at a time as the previous tenant(s) definitely did

This year I asked the housemates to leave the fallen leaves over winter and the experiment has paid off! The soil under the leaves is in great shape, and the leaves are much more decomposed than I thought they'd be. Much of the reading I did told me that it would take years for a leaf layer to stop being leaves; this is perhaps true in other climates or if your yard is starting off in worse shape than ours, but I'm very comfortable just leaving them over areas that I plan to grow things in and removing them from, for example, concrete. There was even a good amount of soil on the concrete from the worms doing their thing to the leaves, which is very neat

All the plants are in very good shape, I'm very excited to get back to gardening projects

Ugh. Was working on 100%ing Evoland but I've decided I hate it. What a frustrating game

mek wrote: ↑Mon Apr 10, 2023 6:22 am

Ugh. Was working on 100%ing Evoland but I've decided I hate it. What a frustrating game

Would be interested in your rant if you feel like giving one! I hadn't heard of it so I gave it a Google and it doesn't look quite up my alley but seems to have generally favorable reviews.

Successfully got myself out of bed and toward the store at 9:30 this morning. I was disappointed when I got there because pickings were very slim -- and not in a 'people have already combed over the shelves' type way, in a 'they didn't have much in stock in the first place' type way. That store is always very weird, as I believe I've commented before.

I did get another 5 cases of soda, because the same buy-two-get-three-free deal was going on, and I got some cadbury creme eggs and some lindt bunnies, because that was literally all I could find in the entire store in the way of easter candy. So I started home and then I thought, maybe I'll pop into rite-aid and see what they have on offer

At first I was disappointed there, too -- a fair amount of peeps-related stock and a couple novelty candies, but what I was really after were large chocolate bunnies. Well, thought I, I suppose it makes sense that people would buy those out for actual easter

Except then I happened on an aisle-end that was stocked with chocolate bunnies

I got a lot of chocolate bunnies

Also a lot of peeps

So in the end a successful haul! I am well stocked on candy for a good while

erikavonkaiser wrote: ↑Mon Apr 10, 2023 2:59 pm

mek wrote: ↑Mon Apr 10, 2023 6:22 am

Ugh. Was working on 100%ing Evoland but I've decided I hate it. What a frustrating game

Would be interested in your rant if you feel like giving one! I hadn't heard of it so I gave it a Google and it doesn't look quite up my alley but seems to have generally favorable reviews.

I actually hear a lot of complaints about it, but not for bad-gameplay reasons, for 'this isn't what I was expecting from the premise' reasons. The gimmick is that you start off in an 8-bit 2D RPG and as the game progresses you also progress through technological advancements in video game history -- in practice, you unlock 'HD backgrounds' and 'health bar' and such. This ties into the actual game in basically no way, it's pure gimmick, and honestly not incorporated into the gameplay particularly smoothly -- you end up switching back and forth between genres a lot, because different sections of the game (the overworld, the dungeons, etc) have a specific way of playing (JRPG, diablo-alike, zelda-alike), so it doesn't feel like progressing through history so much as, like, playing three different games at once

Anyway, all that is fine, it would make for a good mindless grindfest, except that the controls are garbage and the developer's idea of increasing difficulty is to throw more enemies at you. And what is with these games not giving you a shield! I swear to christ if you're making a zelda-alike you HAVE to give me a shield it's a core part of that gameplay! You cannot rely on me dodging enemies when you have me moving at 0.3mph and unable to reliably turn around corners!!

They also do a lot of 'guess there's a hidden passage here with no clues that there is a hidden passage here', and walkthroughs for the game are abysmal, so I hit one of those, got to the 'defeat this boss without taking any damage' achievement, spent an hour trying to get cheatengine to find the health variable with no luck, and decided, you know what? This game isn't worth all this effort. I'm just going to stop playing it

Chores+yardwork+store in as many days means today (and probably tomorrow) is a recovery day, though I do need to do some pickup to be able to store all this candy, and need to clean Oz's litterbox and take out my trash. Today is supposed to be my laundry day, but I'll just steal the washer later in the week somewhere

 
Candy cube