Hell Fakinaway

``We have no future because our present is too volatile. We have only risk management. The spinning of the given moment's scenarios. Pattern recognition...''
[William Gibson]

ohhh my god, I swear, a week has not yet passed without SOME unexpected non-work nonsense I have to deal with after I come home and just want to wind down. Last week it was a change in natural gas company mandated by the building management, the week before that it was the notification about the mandatory fire safety inspection; THIS week I updated my bankbook and discovered that the water bill for cleaning my old apartment (that I moved out of in frickin July and the cleaning company didn't get around to doing their goddamn job until September) was about as much as I would have paid if I'd been LIVING there, which, no. I'm usually good with the grin-and-bear-it approach -- you win some, you lose some -- but that's some bullshit, so I'm gonna demand an explanation for said bullshit.

I said I was gonna finish Nanotale this weekend, but, well, the game had other plans. I encountered a game-breaking bug that the devs are apparently aware of, but there's no getting past it until the "next patch" (whenever that is), or using some mysterious save file that the devs will send you when they get around to seeing your bug report, big shrug. I briefly considered starting a new playthrough and just rushing to the bit where I'm still missing achievements (I'm at 32/34! Argh!) but nah, not going to buff the game's stats on Steam with 2-3 hours of extra playtime when the only reason I'm logging the time is that the game doesn't work properly.

I gave Tell Me Why a whirl, but wasn't feeling the "sit and watch and occasionally click" gaming experience right now, wanted to be hands-on, so I decided to replay the entire Deus Ex oeuvre, as one does. I didn't even own the first two on Steam yet, and I have no idea where my old installs were, so I bought them (they were like $1 each). Dear Y'ffre, but the early 3D games were so. Just. So. I'm on the second Hell's Kitchen mission of the classic game and I'll be honest, I'm using the hell out of the console to get through it as fast as possible just to bone up on the storyline/lore and refamiliarise myself with the controls and mechanics. I just do not have the patience to look at coneheads and endless industrial-y, grim textures for longer than I need to; I'm like that with Morrowind, too. I loved the entire fuck out of these games when they were new and their graphics were The Best you could get, and I still love them for what they were, but I prefer realism in video games. Games that aren't photorealistic (or realistically drawn, cf. Hades) just do not hold my interest for long. Nostalgia shcmostalgia.

Anyway, to top it all off, it's leg day.

Slept in really late this morning; didn't wake up until 9AM, but I needed it. I am constantly going to bed too late during the week, which doesn't work well with my weight training workouts as my muscles never quite have the chance to recover and there's always some pain. After that sleep, I am back to 100%. I actually remembered to do my laundry and tidy up after work yesterday, so it's a lazy weekend, except for cooking. Which is very much a weekend activity since I never have time to cook during the week, so it feels like a leisure time task.

I'm going to fry the last of my Hokkaido potatoes with some mushrooms and onions. Usually I'd add fresh dill, too, but finding fresh dill in Japan is quite difficult - some tiny organic stores sometimes carry it but usually I end up using parsley instead. Which isn't bad; I love parsley, but... fresh dill. ;_;

Going to finish Nanotale today and maaaybe go back to Yonder. I really enjoy Yonder but some of the collectible achievements require you to wait until a particular season to collect the item/s, which takes a long time sometimes. My attention doesn't really want to focus in that way lately (do other things in-game while keeping in mind that if the right season hits I have to go and do something else). My strategy in RPGs is usually to complete one zone/biome first as completely as I can (main quests, side quests, etc) before moving elsewhere, but that's pretty much impossible in Yonder unless you use a walkthrough (which I don't like to do unless I'm well and truly stuck).

That was something that kinda bugged me about Garden Story, too, particularly needing things from other zones to get equipment upgrades in your current one, all of them unlocking at the same time (as you raise the zone/settlement level). I prefer the methodical approach: one thing at a time, but the way it works in Garden Story, you're better off farming a little from every zone each day until you have all the items to get ALL the things. Keeping many things in the air at the same time gives me stress. Garden Story needs better fast travel, too. Their latest update promised that but all I found was a couple of new bridges, which don't count as fast travel. :P

Rounding (with scissors) the corners of 50+ cards kids are going to use in class for an activity and cutting the crusts off your kids' sandwich bread slices, same energy.

I bought myself a weighted blanket a while back, and while it is AMAZING, I can't actually use it for sleeping, because I keep trying to move it whilst asleep for some reason, and my right thumb is constantly sore because obviously I am not aware of the weight of my blanket when I am unconscious. (I figured out the blanket was the culprit after I set it aside for a while, let my thumb recover, and the pain was gone... until I used the blanket again). Pain-free use of my whole hand is more important to me, all in all. Not sure what I'm gonna do with the blanket. :\

The garden they dug up behind my building continues to be just... levelled, there's just dug-up ground and nothing else. Not sure if they're planning to do something with the space; I think the original message about it implied they were going to put in some stonework but I'm starting to suspect they're just gonna level it further, pave it, and turn it into additional parking. So it goes.

I started Nanotale, and while I like the stronger RPG direction and I am enjoying the incredible artwork, the gameplay is a bit "..." compared to Epistory, and the voice acting is just meh. Three different VAs pronounced "archivist" differently within the span of 4 minutes, and the fox's VA doesn't know how to stress words in sentences correctly about 30% of the time. All I can see in my mind is the VA reading lines off a script every time he speaks. I know voiceovers are super popular and always in demand, and indie devs are under a lot of pressure to be people pleasers, but it's just grating. They should have spent more time polishing the VO work. The narrator's voice from Epistory was one of its standout characteristics; I can't imagine playing without it. In Nanotale I'm actually just going to turn dialogue off so the spotty acting doesn't continue to spoil an otherwise solid game for me.

Oh, I also got my Yuletide assignment yesterday and it's perfect for me; hopefully what I come up with will work for the recipient also.

*cheats* (shhhh, it was Sunday)

I just finished ordering things for Christmas! I'm not doing full on gifts to family overseas friends this year because I, uh, C A N ' T - there is currently no way to mail anything from Japan to Canada that isn't a letter. The restriction's been in place since May, and though I had hoped it'd be lifted in time for the holidays, at least for surface mail, but alas.

On one hand, it means I'll be well over budget this holiday season, on the other hand, I always really look forward to the gift choosing & wrapping. I'll just have to be content with making my usual boxes of stickers to give to all my students (one box per class) and I guess I could come up with something for the teachers... though that means I'm gonna need more mini boxes, oops. Though, I might actually get pre-printed decorative boxes for coworkers; they're slightly more expensive but it'll save wrapping time.

We had our annual mandatory health check at school today and I... have high blood pressure. 😂😭 I feel like usually people with high blood pressure at least can fathom a possible reason they would have it, but I have never felt healthier as an adult than I do now; I eat very well (no junk food), I exercise daily, I walk everywhere, I have a reasonable semblance of a social life despite the pandemic, my work and hobbies are fulfilling, I sleep well and enough, I remain a nonsmoker since having quit 7? 8? years ago.... it's a mystery. Could be genetic? Or because I feel stressed out/anxious right now with all the shit going on this week? IDK, anyway, the final paper with the health check results will come in a few weeks, so I'm looking forward to seeing what it all says on there (they give you letter grades for the various sections, it's kind of hilarious.)

I think I need to not worry about posting on weekends, because sometimes I just want to spend my ENTIRE Sunday playing a game about a tiny grape restoring order to tiny villages inhabited by talking fruit, vegetables, frogs, and fish. (Garden Story continues to be cute, but grindy).

Today was going well until I read this article about a sexual assault that happened on a train in Philadelphia and looked up some other sources/discussion for it and found no mitigating details (in fact, WaPo mentioned that some of the bystanders seemed to be filming the assault). Now I'm just experiencing extreme, flames on the sides of my face level of rage. What kind of country do you live in, what kind of culture, that a random selection of people who live in one of your major cities prefer to film a horrific assault to intervening on behalf of the victim? Yikes on all the bikes!!

I have SO MANY thoughts about what sequence of events over the past 15 years or so may have led to such a complete moral breakdown, but I have to go work out now. :P

This morning, I had breakfast with a friend who passed me some potatoes that her friend sent her from Hokkaido. I'm very excited to make some mashed potatoes next weekend. \o/ Then I met another friend for Chinese food and Dune, ohhh it was such an enjoyable film. I remember being disillusioned in the book series after it developed a serious case of sequelitis, but the movie really reawakened my appreciation for the original Herbert trilogy.

I could've sworn I had a Spice Must Flow icon, but it might have been a lolcat, oh well.

I've also decided on my YT signup, now I just gotta actually write out my requests in a bit more detail and maybe even make a Dear Yuletide Writer letter, who knows. I've avoided doing that for the past few years bc there seemed to be some kind of community (a discord server? an anon meme? idk) who, like, scrutinise strangers' letters and have discussions about them as if it's any of their business. I think that's pretty fucking creepy, so my kneejerk response was "avoid the creepy people by not showing up on their radar at all" 😂 but I do miss being able to have a "general likes/dislikes" section and being able to format things. We'll see!