SEP 29

2024

Sunday: had a sleepy Sunday workshift, but I was at least able to catch up on all my follow-ups and take care of a bunch of trade sanctions emails. Rainy weather was rolling in such that Julie started having a migraine, so we napped for a while in the evening. She'd had plans to make dinner, but due to the weather, we decided to just have the leftovers. I walked to the store before I ate, since I wanted to get more sunflower kernels (and we were out of the Temptations treat-spoons). While we had our soup, we continued watching Buffy, getting through a few early Season 2 episodes. Afterwards, I came into the office to post this update.

Summer of Slow Recovery
Before I started this website, I didn't like how the years seemed to run together without differentiation. My sense of episodic memory was never the strongest, but once I learned how the brain creates and recalls memories, the entire concept of memory started to feel like a subjective illusion. This was a big part of my motivation to start blogging my daily activities, both because I now have a log of exactly when certain events occur, and because I can start to characterize larger periods of my life.

Decades back, I settled on a quarterly schedule of writing big summaries of how life is going. I planned to write these summaries on July 4 (or Independence Day), January 1 (or New Year's), March 29 (my birthday), and September 29 (my half-birthday). I think I only managed a single update on this schedule at that time. Now that I've gotten the (semi)-daily schedule down, I'm adding seasonal updates along those lines, but I thought I'd put them all at the end of months: March 29, June 30, September 29, and December 31.

This summer was one of slow recovery in that I'm finally getting around to addressing some health issues that have gone without attention for too long: trying to get another ADHD diagnosis after blowing off the one I got in 2004, finally getting a local dentist in Philadelphia, resuming a more regular gym schedule, etc. We're also still settling into the new normal of "only" having five cats and ensuring that they're all getting all the care and attention they need, particularly our aging kitties like John and Isabel.

This has also been a season in which I've been very satisfied with the current game releases. I really enjoyed both expansions for FFXIV and WoW, and I've enjoyed a lot of other game releases during this period. Enough so that I haven't really given myself any time to work on my own projects. I think that should change in the winter, though.

2023

Friday: spent too long in bed with various cats catching up with stuff on my phone this morning. Julie was excited to have Emily over to the apartment to meet Cliff, so the whole weekend was a cleaning frenzy. I changed out the litter upstairs, vacuumed in the bedrooms, had a fast food lunch, and went shopping for a very light load of groceries. (I brought back chips and dip as a special treat.)

In Hearthstone, I've been making bad decks using all the Old God cards I can fit together. Terrible synergy, but nobody knows what to expect, so as long as I don't get blown out through early aggression, I usually have the late game under control since people misplay their removal.

While Julie was away with Emily, I had more stir fry since I overlooked the leftover meatloaf by mistake. I watched a live playthrough of (the first half of) Ryan Veeder's The Little Match Girl 2: Annus Evertens. I think LMG3 is a more exciting and impressive game, and LMG4 is my overall favorite, but LMG2 is the funniest. I started a discussion thread on the IF community forums about EarthBound, but since my deadling for FFXIV anniversary content is just days away, I didn't stick around to post much.

Speaking of which, tomestone collection continues, and I both leveled up my Machinist to 80 and continued the "Gods Revel, Lands Tremble" storyline. The highlight was running Rubicante with Pookia and Jiggly, but now I need to finish these updates and go to bed.