OMG I just realized tomorrow is the end of the month and I haven’t even create the ‘stub’ of a recap post (I’m writing this on Tuesday). My usual system is to create a recap post early in the month and just jot down notes in it because I WILL forget what I’ve done. I didn’t do that this month and indeed, I have forgotten what I’ve done.

The truth really is that I haven’t done much ‘fun’ stuff due to the move I’ve been talking about. We are STILL in the midst of this and painful, expensive lessons were learned about how much work it is, and how much time it takes, to move. Particularly if you’re a senior citizen and work a desk job so your stamina is shit. We spent money on movers to move the big furniture and planned to move the smaller stuff ourselves, but after many wasted days (and wasted gas) we threw in the towel and hired the movers to come AGAIN. And still there was more to do, like take down things we’d mounted on the walls, take down curtains… stuff like that. Then the cleaning started and eventually we threw in that towel, too, and hired a cleaning crew (this is gross and embarassing to admit but we’d had furniture that hadn’t been moved in a decade and it appears mice had been living under/behind said furniture, and what a mess they made). On New Year’s Day I’m making 1 last ‘haul’ trip. Friday PartPurple goes up to basically let the cleaning crew in. And next week we go back to turn in the keys and do a walk-through and then, finally….FINALLY…. we’ll be done. And I’ll be broke.

Anyway between shuttling back and forth between apartments, packing, unpacking, recycling runs, and organizing, not a lot of fun stuff got done this month. But here is what did:

Playing

My Time At Sandrock has been my ‘main game’ and I’ve been slowly chipping away at it. Realizing that — unlike in many titles in this genre — Sandrock lets you save pretty much any time has been a blessing and a curse. Blessing because, duh, it’s convenient, but a curse because now it can sometimes take me 2-3 play sessions to get through a single day. I keep forgetting what I was working on and so forth. Because of this I think I’m way over-level for the part of the main story I’m in, though I’m not sure I mind that all that much. Still really enjoying this one and looking forward to the next game in the series, Evershine, where the character models are a big more adult. It feels a little creepy running around looking like a 14 year old boy and trying to woo the (based on appearances) older women in the town!

Winter Burrow was finally finished. Here’s the post on that.

I still play a session of Ball X Pit every day to keep the Microsoft Rewards streak going on console. To earn the points you have to play a game on console and a run takes just about exactly 15 minutes (assuming you don’t fail) so this works out perfectly and it’s the kind of game where you can really easily jump in, play and jump out without having to remember what you are supposed to be doing, or anything along those lines. Plus, it’s fun as heck!

Last is Relic Hunters Legend, which I just spoke about the other day.

Watching

The Mayfair Witches, S2 — This was a ‘her’ pick. She loves Anne Rice and that whole milieu. We’ve recently watched Interview With The Vampire, Talamasca, and now this. I like them, but not enough that I’d probably watch them if PartPurple wasn’t really into them. It’s all urban fantasy about witches and vamps and stuff.

Stranger Things, S5 — We just started season 5 and are only a couple of episodes in. I loved this show when it was new but honestly I like it less with every season. I think. It’s been SO long between seasons I can’t be certain.

Defiance — We always do re-watches for lunchtime TV viewing since we, and particularly me, can’t focus as much as we usually do. I’m always listening for pings from work while we watch. Anyway Defiance recently hit Amazon Prime so we’re doing a re-watch and loving it.

Reading

A Christmas Carol — For the most part, we just skipped Christmas this year. We did put up a tree, and I read A Christmas Carol, as I do every year. It’s a tradition!

Old sci-fi/fantasy magazines. In the back of a closet I found a stack of old magazines. Sci-Fi Age, Realms of Fantasy, the Magazine of Science Fiction & Fantasy, etc etc. They have dates from the 1990s on them! I’ve been having quite a good time reading this old stuff, particularly sci-fi that takes place in the near future (as of 1995 or whatever) which is often the VERY near future as of 2025. It’s fun to see what the authors got right, and what they got wrong. Also ‘interesting’ is the artwork that comes with many of the fantasy stories. There’s almost always an attractive woman in an alluring outfit. The era of the chainmail bikini, amiright?

So that’s December, and that’s 2025 done and dusted. 2026 is gonna suck (in world scale) but I’m hoping it’ll be less bad in personal terms. Losing our dog Lola was really painful, and frankly really expensive, and this move is driving us deeper into debt. Hoping in ’26 I can climb most of the way out of that hole. And we’re starting the year in a new apartment, and in a new area full of places to explore and things to do. So while the world burns, I’m hoping that we in our specific household have a better year.

And I hope that you in your specific household have a better year, too!