It’s been almost a year since my last life update.
Believe it or not, I did beat Bioshock Infinite. I have to say that it was a pretty good game, and I’m usually not that interested in shooters.
I also beat Gris. It was a short and sweet game just as I had expected.
Pillars of Eternity was also an interesting experience. I love RPGs, but it was actually my first real foray into real-time with pause combat. I can’t say that I enjoyed that part of it too much, but everything else was really great—well, except for all of the loading screens. The story and the world were very interesting, and it provided me with a lot of creative fuel.
SteamWorld Dig 2 and SteamWorld Heist were awesome, of course. After beating SteamWorld Dig, I expected nothing less. I really enjoyed the turn-based shooting combat in SteamWorld Heist, and the music by Steam Powered Giraffe was absolutely amazing. I still listen to it. Plus, the Western vibes sparked ideas that led to my NaNoWriMo 2019 Project.
I’ve been playing a bunch of Deep Rock Galactic. I think that game has made it into my list of all-time favorites—it’s become my most played game on Steam! Rock and stone, brother!
At the behest of my BFF, I also watched Fringe. All of it. Unfortunately. No, not unfortunately, but the show started to drag and became very predictable in the later seasons, and that’s ignoring the plot holes. We watched a lot of it at ×1.5 speed. It was a fun sci-fi show, but it wasn’t anything close to as revolutionary as watching Battlestar Galactica.
Now, I’m re-watching Star Wars: The Clone Wars with my partner (as she’s never seen it before) so we can watch the latest season. We recently watched all of the Star Wars movies so she could finally experience them all for the first time, and she’s quite impressed that an animated series was actually able to make Anakin into a good character. Obviously, I agree.
I’ve been working on my coffee game. Using an Aeropress is nice, and I’ve recently ditched ‘good’ coffee for Café Bustelo. I’m trying to master café cubano and la espuma.
Looking back at my original life update, I didn’t end up giving a shit about Pokémon Sword and Shield. I was and still am salty about the lackluster games, and I ended up turning to ROM hacks and Temtem to fill that void (though, I haven’t actually bought Temtem yet). Super Mario Maker 2 and Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled ended up falling by the wayside for me. The next Animal Crossing game is finally coming out soon, and I will definitely be snatching that right away! Baldur’s Gate 3 took the spot of Divinity: Fallen Heroes, but I’m quite happy about that. Oh, and I played some Halo: Reach, but it got boring faster than I thought it would.
Now, I did finally get around to finishing Part 7 of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. It was probably my least favorite part so far.
I’ve started going to therapy again, which is always nice.
I’m still struggling with the symptoms from my infection, but they have calmed down a bit. I recently had a follow-up appointment with my doctor, and he said to monitor my symptoms a bit more closely so I could see how much they were going away. My swelling is pretty much gone, but the pain still comes and goes. Still, the doctor felt confident that the pain would resolve too; however, if it doesn’t, I could be looking at microsurgery for a nerve. Yuck.
Now, when I first wrote out the draft for this post (which was about two weeks ago), I hadn’t gone to the clinic, which also means that the big COVID-19 panic hadn’t started yet. Ohio has been on the forefront of reacting to the situation in the United States, and I am easily overwhelmed and it is quite easy for me to feel hopeless, so it has been a tough time. Luckily, just hours before things started shutting down, I was wise enough to grab about twenty boxes of (protein-packed) pasta, so things should be good here for a while. No, I did not go out and get a dozen packs of toilet paper and a dozen bottles of hand sanitizer. Preparedness is obviously important, but the people who are panic-buying just to panic-buy should slow down. At this point, OSU has online-only classes for the rest of the semester, public libraries have closed, bars have closed, and restaurants are doing pickup and delivery only. Things are changing too quickly, though, so I won’t say much else.
I did go out and vote early a few days ago just in case. Of course, I voted for Bernie Sanders, and I opted for a paper ballot. I’m doing my part, I guess.
Oh, and on an even brighter note, my life-long best friend visited me for a few days. We both really needed it, though we unfortunately didn’t get to do a lot of what we wanted to do because of how fast the COVID-19 panic was ramping up. We did start playing Doom, though. When I drove him all the way home to drop him off, I visited my family as well. It was nice to see them, bitch about politics, eat good food, and getting good feels by petting three cats and a dog.