FEB 07

2026

Saturday: got to bed pretty much as intended last night, and this morning I got up around 6:30 AM. I treated the cats and pulled up my interactive fiction project. My efforts today focused on getting the start-of-game process to work the way I want, adding a couple of mode-switching commands, and building out the most fundamental component of the main gameplay loop. I think I've misplaced a resource I created a couple of months ago, though, and I need to locate it to ensure that the interchange of actions and resources flows the way I want it to. That's a challenge for tomorrow morning, probably.

After we'd both been up for a while, we got dressed to brave the dropping temperatures for our errands. Delayed trash pickup meant we were again stuck behind trash trucks at various points. I drove us to PetSmart, where Julie complained about customers who ask for unnecessary amounts of information about offered products. I then took us back down to Packer so that we could get Taco Bell for lunch. I played a little Hearthstone on lunch, as usual; I'm playing a resource-rich standard mage deck featuring the new Morchie portrait I got last week. (Folks on the subreddit are convinced that the announcement on Monday is for a Cataclysm-based expansion, which could mean some kind of major overhaul to the game; it could also imply that monks might be added with a Mists of Pandaria expansion over the summer.) Once we finished eating, I drove us past huge snowdrifts to the grocery store. Shopping didn't take long, so we were soon home again.

As soon as we'd unloaded the groceries, thoguh, I left once more to return the cable I'd bought last Saturday. (My computer previously supported two monitors, until one day the second monitor stopped working. It's still fine with my work laptop, which indicates to me that it's a problem with my computer's video card or video cable port or something. I wanted to try running the video port to a USB port just to be safe, but that also didn't wor: hence the return.) Several police cars congregated outside the store, but it wasn't apparent why. I returned the cable for a refund, walked through the PC accessories one last time, and drove back home.

In the late afternoon, I scooped the litter and vacuumed. I wanted to do a little more work on my interactive fiction project, but my brain wasn't cooperating. Instead, I just read through Skep's Eleventy conversion journal to see if that approach might work better for this website. (My preliminary answer: yeah, the way I use my site is a pretty good fit to the kind of site structure Eleventy supports, but the conversion process is going to be just as big a pain for me as it was for Skep, though my reasons will be different.) Eventually, I stopped fiddling on the computer and got my laundry going before I made dinner.

Dinner this evening consisted of slightly scorched meatloaf, baked potatoes, and roast asparagus. Forgot to season the asparagus before it went into the oven, other than spraying it with the liquid butter. The flaws in the meal weren't dramatic enough to make dinner dissatisfying. For entertainment, Julie put on the first episode of the Pride and Prejudice UK miniseries. I enjoyed it! After we finished the episode, I launched Animal Crossing: New Horizons to find that a meteor shower was occurring. I spent a while adding all my collected art, bugs, fish, and other collectibles to an app (ACNH.Guide) so that I could better determine what I should be pursuing. This is how I discovered I didn't have a pufferfish yet, and I successfully snagged one and turned it in to the museum. I didn't bother with vacation homes tonight, but I did add a lodge-style hotel room before I quit for the evening.

Once Julie was going off to bed, I treated the cats. I'm thinking about dispensing the tuna that John prefers on a set schedule rather than haphazardly intermixed with the other tuna; if I follow through with this, it would probably be on Saturdays, Mondays, and Wednesdays. Anyway. After everybody was eating, I folded my laundry and brought it upstairs, after which I posted this update.

2025

Friday: after my shift, I was going to walk to the store for treats for John, but Julie offered to come along. While we walked, I took my weekly call from David, and I updated him on John's GI issues and gradual recovery. Once we got home, Julie wasn't up for a trip to the gym after all, so I had my share of the leftover veggie pasta. It was pretty late by this point, so we just enteretained ourselves. In my case, I decided to clear some achievements in Vampire Survivors while watching random videos on youtube. I particularly enjoyed this slightly-clickbaity video I'd come across on the superiority of the "tit for tat" strategy in game theory.

2024

Wednesday: neither Julie nor I left the apartment at all today. Sunlight's finally starting to come in through the windows again, and several cats took advantage, chief among them Mim, who luxuriated on the mat for the dish drying rack for most of the morning. I enjoyed my work shift, which consisted almost entirely of time devoted to special projects, and after work, I finally finished watching the Endwalker playthrough I'd been following. For dinner, Julie had a new variation on a cheese-and-broccoli soup, which went great with croutons for texture. We continued our trip through the early Poirot episodes, and we don't really remember any of these we watched tonight. I have vague recollection of scene-setting conceits like "Poirot dislikes his vacation" or "Poirot tries to evade his dentist" or "Poirot doesn't accept cases about lurid infidelity," but hardly any memory for the cases themselves. I have a prodigious supply of dishes to clean tomorrow, to say nothing of my shopping trip or our trip to the gym, so I should go to bed soon, myself.

2023

Tuesday: despite fully intending to get to bed earlier Monday night, I still wound up crashing way too late Tuesday morning, and with no work alarms set, I woke up embarrassingly late. That meant I didn't have as much time to clean the apartment as I wanted before Julie got home, but I did manage to pick up the office, get some clothes put away, vacuum, and reorient things slightly to make the space work better.. My big goal, still unfinished, was to set up my new synth. I've had it for a solid year at this point, and I still haven't taken it out of the box! To be fair, Julie's right that there isn't enough room for it, but I know I can make it work somehow. If we can just unload a few more of these boxes... maybe tomorrow.

Anyway, after running the trash out and starting a load of laundry, Julie and I went to the gym, though there were too many people and the machines we prefer to use were occupied. I tried a stationary cycle, but it was pretty uncomfortable; I prefer a more recumbent style with an actual backed chair instead of a bike seat. I was rereading some blogs I hadn't visited in a while, so I'm updating my links on the front page again to simplify getting back to them next time.

After getting back home and cleaning up, we had more of the pasta soup from Sunday while playing Civ VI. I took the Khmer to an early lead and had the best science, culture, income, and diplomatic strength. I was suzerain for more than 80% of the discovered city states before we called it. I saved the game, but I don't know whether I'll go back to it.

It's nice that the cats like spending time with us, even outside of when they're excited to eat or play. Sure, some days they'll all stay off in separate rooms, and then sometimes they'll very deliberately hang out close with us: before she went to bed, we had Orange Juice on the egg foot rest, John curled up on a blanket right next to me, Grey Goose at the top of the tower, Koop lying on my shoes, Mim on the coffee table, and finally Pigs on Julie's blanket on the sofa. Everybody's content just to chill out here while I'm typing this. It's good.