NOV 28

2024

Thursday: Today was Thanksgiving in the United States, but more importantly, it was the day that online services for Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp were terminated. Julie woke me up around 9:30 AM, which was just enough time for me to get in and obtain the final fireworks display, change my outfit one last time, send out a bunch of last-minute gifts, do last-minute treasure maps, and accidentally forget to take a photo of my Pocket Camp Club ID card! I did take one on Wednesday just to be on the safe side, so my count of "2,563 days on the job" is one day short of what I'd actually played. It was an emotional morning for us. As I wrote on facebook a couple of days ago, it was strange to think that I'd only missed two or three days of playing since the game came out seven years ago. While we were thankful that we wouldn't lose all of our data, it wouldn't be the same without constantly sharing gifts and bugs, cross-pollinating in each others' gardens, helping each other out with the quarry, and seeing friends and strangers at the different wilderness locations.

In the afternoon, we drove down to the Bakers' place for dinner. Had the usual meat and cheese plate for snacking, while the meal itself involved roast turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, a cheesy macaroni casserole, the green bean casserole Julie made, dinner rolls, and dessert. (The absence of either gravy or a cranberry dish became a running joke.) Julie had to take a call after the meal, but it was a night of good conversation. Before we left, Denise added a bunch of the leftovers to our casserole pan. I then stayed up too late playing video games.

2023

Tuesday: despite waking up in a state of exhausted misery, I was able to get myself to work on time. Today marked the first day in a long time when I had bad coughing fits thanks to the change in the seasons. It's cold, it's been snowing in Kansas, and even though I have options to deal with personal discomfort, I haven't been very diligent about wearing extra layers or covering up in blankets.

Anyway, the calls are not slowing down much at all, and I imagine this will continue for a while, though thankfully tomorrow's the last day before my weekend.

After work, we decided to get all the litter and trash and recycling taken out before we ate dinner. Julie worked on the dishes while I did my rounds; I spent a while in the basement changing out the shower curtain liner pieces we'd laid out to try to simplify future cleanup efforts.

Once I finished taking everything out and showered, we finished my caldo verde soup and started watching the U.K. version of Ghosts, and once we finished with the available episodes, we switched back to It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I caught up on Hearthstone quests, but the downside is that I'm backed up on my projects, my podcasts, and a couple of youtube playlists. (In Hearthstone, I'm really enjoying playing death knight now that the nerfs have taken down warlocks and all the aggro decks. Plague DK, Blood control, this awful Blood/Unholy list I built around copying Maw and Paw to max out my health total. It's not great, but it's fun.)