The Weekends Are Hardest

The weekends are hardest for me. I see everyone with their families, and mine is incomplete for another 128 days. We tend to fight on weekends. We don’t get much time to talk and what time we do have gets misunderstood because text is really no way to have a relationship. He’s bogged down with the difficulties of depot, and I’m trying to raise our (almost) one year old son alone. We normally lean on each other, and we can’t do that right now, although we both try. I’m exhausted from day to day activities, and so is he, even though we’re doing completely different activities. We talk less than an hour a week.

It’s temporary, I know. I remind myself like a mantra. One more day. One more day. One more day. Some days are harder than others. Like immunization day that’s coming up. That’s going to be a rough one. They’re all hard on some level because it’s never easy to be away from your partner, but you develop a routine and things become a bit ‘normal’ for that situation. I don’t cry quite as much but I certainly still cry. Silly things still set me off. Like Friday nights. Normally we’d be gaming together, getting ready to relax. He’d give our son a bath and then read him Dr. Seuss books while I took a break. I’d take over and nurse and then put our son to bed while my husband relaxed at his desk and decompressed after a long 12-14 hour day at work. We’d each talk about our day. Laugh at stupid stuff that no one else would find funny or understand.

I miss the simple things. You never expect to miss farts, but I miss those. He says he misses changing diapers and I believe him. I miss cooking for more than just one person. I miss having someone to split the chores with. I love our son but I miss having a break. I miss just talking. I miss listening to him breath at night. He missed our son learning to sit up, learning to crawl, eating a billion different types of new food. He feels guilty about it but timing has never smiled upon us in life so we just have to make due and keep going forward. One more day. One more day. One more day.

 

Just One More Sleep!

Just one more sleep and we’ll finally be able to play GW2’s latest expansion – and hopefully unlock some mounts. One thing I’m really excited about is map completion – with mounts. Not just in the new zones, but in all of the old zones that I haven’t finished yet. I do have 65% map completion, but this should help me out a bit by making it go faster and being a little more fun. Of course it doesn’t help me complete heart missions any faster, but that’s alright.

Pictured above, my adorable asura guardian with her awesome backpack. Isn’t she completely threatening and cute all at once? I think so.

I completed dailies today but didn’t get a chance to do much more than that before I had to get back to real life things. Still, at least it was a bit of progress. I also spent almost all of the gold I had left buying recipes that I didn’t own. For some reason the completionist in me wants to own ALL THE THINGS. I also started on living story 2 – yes, I’m that far behind.

I completed my main story and living story one was auto completed (although I was playing for most of that) and I haven’t actually done any content since then. When HoT released I flip flopped between both of my accounts and really got no progress done on either of them, and then the difficulty level of HoT just left me with little reason to log in any more.

Nothing has changed in that regard, Auric Basin is still just smashing me to the ground, but in the meantime there’s still things I can work on, and that’s fine for now. We’ll see how PoF goes tomorrow. I’m wishing ArenaNet a nice smooth launch – and I’m looking forward to the hype, and seeing all the excited players in game.

With my left over gems (after buying season 2 unlocks) I purchased the storage increase item that lets you add 250 to your stacks (of 250 by default). I hoard all the things, and it’s REALLY nice to have a bit more wiggle room. What I’ll actually use these supplies for (or IF I’ll actually use these supplies) I have no idea, but I like knowing they’re there.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Preparing for PoF

I managed to find a little time to get back into Guild Wars 2 over the past couple of days and I’ve been trying to figure out who I wanted to play (and what account) when PoF went live. I know, I’ve waffled back and forth a bunch of times, sending all of my crafting supplies from one character to another – but I have FINALLY settled (for now). We’ll see how long it lasts.

Because my original characters had so much completed and were already 5 years old, I decided to put my second account on hold – even though that account has a deluxe version of PoF, and my “old” account does not (just couldn’t afford the upgrade). I have 4 level 80 characters, and a level 65 slacker. On my other account I have 9 characters, with the ability to have a total of 16 – but honestly, why do I need that many. I don’t. Plus on my “old” account I have a hall of monuments, with points into it. That’s missing completely from my second account.

So the first decision I made was stick with my old main account. Easy. Next I wanted to decide who to play going forward in PoF. Yes, I realize I’ll probably end up playing everyone, and bouncing around some too – but for the release I’d like to (try) to stick with one character. Two of my favourite classes to play are my mesmer and my guardian.

I played both over the course of the day and honestly, the classes are both just so fun for me. I have a good build on each, and I’m comfortable. What it came down to was something pretty silly, but hey to each their own. My guardian is an Asura, and I LOVE small races. I love the asura. My mesmer, is a human, and while humans are cute and adorable, they’re not asura.

So I settled on playing my asura guardian, Velours.

Will I stick with it? Who knows, my decisions change day to day, but I felt pretty good about the choice.

I also learned today that there are housing instances. What?! How did I not know this. I had enough laurels to purchase the candy corn house item that will give me some candy corn every day (harvestable). With halloween upcoming, I figured why not. I also purchased some gauntlets that look fantastic, dripping magma and smoking because baby, I am one HOT asura.

I had enough airship parts to pick up one of the miniatures from Verdant Brink, now that I have FINALLY unlocked the beginning of the frog language. Have I mentioned yet that I’m not a fan of HoT? Well, I’m not. I’ve completed Verdant Brink and the beginning of Auric Basin, and that is it. I get stomped on so hard in Auric Basin that I can’t get anything done, and I just can’t progress. Nor do I have any idea where to go or what I’m doing.

I’m hoping that things will be different in PoF, but we’ll just have to see.

As always, happy gaming – no matter where you find yourself!

Diving into Divinity Original Sin 2

I own the original game but I never actually completed it because I ended up getting to a point I just found too frustrating. Plus I almost never (ever) finish a game. Why stop now!

I noticed a few days ago a lot of my friends were picking up the game, and I started hearing trickles of talk about what a good RPG game it was and how the story was fantastic. Then @scopique stumbled into the fact that there’s a GM mode, something I had not heard from ANYONE so far. Well now. That’s something pretty unique and awesome. He has a much better write up about it here, so I won’t go into a lot of details, but I do highly suggest you watch his video and also check out the amazing Matt Mercer video (he has a link of that, too). Fascinating stuff.

I was going to hold off buying it until I had a bit of extra cash in the budget or until it went on sale, whichever came first – but my significant other ended up buying it as a surprise for me (along with STEINS; GATE which I’ll get into later)! It took a bit to download (it’s not a small game) and I debated adding mods right from the start but decided to hold off for now and go with the vanilla experience.

When you start up the game there’s a bunch of different ways to play listed. GM mode is pretty self explanatory but since I had never really played before I had no idea what the difference was between “explore” and “classic”. I ended up going with the classic experience, at least for now.

Without giving any of the story away (which is fantastic, by the way) you create a character and find yourself shackled on a ship headed some place to do something! Your character has a ton of RPG replies for those around them and the voice acting is absolutely superb. I’m not that far in yet because I keep getting distracted by items I can take. Kitchen pot? Sure why not grab that. Laboratory equipment? Sure, I may need that. Rotten stuff from the floor? Why not.

Oh and my character does have the corpse eating trait. Why not. I ended up rolling with one of the pre-created characters until I got a better grasp of things.

Have you picked up the game? Curious but waiting? Love it so much you haven’t stopped playing? Let me know in comments and as always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Knitting / Crochet Goals for… 2018?

I like goals, and I like lists. There are lots of crafty projects I wish I could do that I haven’t mastered the skills for yet. In case you’ve forgotten, I’m completely self taught when it comes to both knitting and crochet. I’ve been knitting for two years this September, and crocheting off and on for a number of years. I find crochet very difficult, knitting was much easier to pick up. As such I’ve included a list of ‘goals’ that I’d like to accomplish when it comes to my two crafting passions for 2018. Hopefully I get a few of them done, but we’ll just have to see.

  • Two sided knitting. Oy. How many tries have I given this one now? How many failed attempts? My brain just can’t seem to wrap itself around this form of knitting. It’s a shame too, because it’s absolutely beautiful and I have the yarn for a magnificently geeky blanket if I could ONLY double knit. I want to learn this more than anything else. Practice, practice, practice and then practice some more.
  • Crochet more than single crochet. I can do granny squares (I did make a granny square blanket after all) and I can do simple single crochet, but that is as far as my crochet skills go. I don’t seem to be able to keep track of half double crochet, or triple crochet, or any of that. I get a few rounds in and then my mind goes blank and I end up reverting back to single crochet. Every time. I want to learn the more complicated stitches.
  • Crochet more amigurumi. Pictured above is my small collection (minus my octopus which is on my desk living happily). The “teddy bear from hell” is a very failed experiment when I was first getting started but I still love it. Norbert the unicorn is my pride and joy, and I’d really like to attempt more cute little guys to add to my collection.
  • Fix my first ever knit socks. This is just a matter of finding the socks, and finding the time. I knit them before I knew how to do the kitchener stitch and the toes are completely wonky to the point of being uncomfortable. I’d like to rip back the toes, re-stitch them and close them up properly. If I can remember where they are. Maybe in my yarn bin…
  • Fix my first ever knit shirt. I love the shirt, it fits, and it’s lovely except for one major issue. I used a non-stretchy bind off, which means that there’s no give when you try to wear it around your waist or when you put it on or take it off. Having some give is absolutely essential otherwise you’re just wearing a tight piece of yarn around your hips. I need to first make sure I have some spare yarn, then remove the current bind off (just a regular plain one) and find and learn a stretchy bind off. Once that’s done I’ll have a new shirt I can wear. Again this one comes down to time.

Those are the main goals I’d like to accomplish – and I think it’s a pretty reasonable list. We’ll just have to see how it goes. Do you have any crafty goals you’re working towards? Let me know in comments! Tomorrow we’ll have a regularly schedule gaming post.