It's my annual celebration of Remembering I Have A Blog! It's a far cry from the heady livejournal days where you could be assured of hearing my every passing thought or at least seeing all my blurry photos of flowers, but such are the times.
So, top of the mental list currently is my broken laundry machine. It's like 20 years old so I can't really even fault it, it was cheap to begin with, was in a rental unit with a landlord who didn't give a shit for a lot of that time, and honestly has earned its retirement. But predictable or not I sure don't have any money to replace it, so I'm doing the crowdfunding thing, because I really, really want clean socks and my nigerian prince is not returning my calls.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/dear-internet-please-do-my-laundryIn my wildest dreams I can get together enough money for a machine I can use by myself, which was not the case with the current one, but honestly I'll still be overjoyed if I can just get a new version of the Cheapest Thing In The Store, because again, clean socks. And towels. And not having to figure out how to take a full laundry hamper on the bus in a wheelchair to get to a laundromat. The two closest ones have big stairs at the entrance anyway, a hazard of living in New Westminster, which is not flat. But also sitting in a laundromat sounds like migraine hell. ANYWAY ANYWAY I don't know why I'm going on about why I want to be able to do laundry, like, you know why.
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But that's this weekend, and it's been a year! What's new?
- I moved! Not far, I ended up buying a place about five blocks from my old place. But it has TWO ELEVATORS and they are quite reliable so far. Also it's a single block from the skytrain, which is somehow like an order of magnitude more convenient than being four blocks from the skytrain. It's on a busy street so it's a bit noisier and the police seem to need to sit outside with strobe lights going every single night, but nothing blackout curtains and pretending the cars are the ocean can't deal with. It's smaller - a one-bedroom instead of two. Greg has the bedroom and I'm out in the living room, and the furniture arrangement sort of says "dollar store that won't pass a fire code inspection" but it works. Also hilariously my cousin lives here, and in the last year of living here I've run into him once. I mean I've seen him more than that because of family dinners, but I am amused by how living in the same building has not affected things at all.
- I have my new wheelchair! I kind of forgot that that was just this year, it feels like I've had it forever, and it's so, so good you guys. It eats hills for breakfast, the battery life is great, and it's so much faster. I still use my old chair for trips to Salt Spring to see pals, or rare occasions when a car trip is the only way to get somewhere, and when I do I realize how spoiled I am, because now the old chair feels soooo slow, and when I got it I remember finding the speed overwhelming a bit. Grateful for both of 'em and glad I got the foldy one first, both because I would never have convinced the ministry to pay for the better one without it, and because if this one develops any problems, I have a backup to use. Wheelchair repairs through the ministry notoriously take weeks in BC, so that's some big time peace of mind that I won't be stranded at home if I need to navigate that. It's weird to think that two years ago I _was_ stranded at home, basically all the time, except for a few excursions for medical appointments that would put me in bed in pain for days afterward. Wheelchair life is so, so much better.
- Greg just turned 15! He's 5'11" now and still as sweet and cuddly as he was as a toddler and still demands that I read him a bedtime story every night. (Which is a couple chapters of a grisly urban fantasy series usually. I would pretend that was an artifact of his age, but nah, he got grisly YA murder mysteries from Tamora Pierce when he was much younger, children are just bloodthirsty in general.) He is so thoughtful and conscientious and I'm so proud of the man he's growing up to be.
- My cats are still cats. Sammy is disturbed by the view from our new apartment; he can see birds now and he is NOT OKAY with the existence of birds. I'm not sure how this wasn't an issue at our old place, but now he keeps mewling disconsolately at them and looking at me like "Uh, fix this?" Ladybug is undismayed by anything, as usual, and spends her day getting me, any visitors, and any inanimate objects she can reach to pet her.
- I'm on a super-strict keto diet for my liver condition and annoyingly it's working really, really well. My lab numbers immediately dropped to 75% of their alarming height. I say annoying because now I have to keep doing it. I miss candy! I'm getting not bad at making keto bread in the breadmaker, though, so at least Cheez Whiz and pickle sandwiches are here to console me. Which is the weirdest health food ever, but hey, it works. Super strict = 20g of carbs a day or less, which would not actually be /that/ hard except I spend most of it on my daily 1/3 of a pudding cup to take my meds in. I've tried the no sugar added ones and they are just so much worse at disguising the taste of the bitter meds, so oh well. There is a lot of heavy cream and lunch meat in my life right now. Why eating a ton of fat is making my fatty liver improve I do not know, but I can't pretend to understand even a tenth of what livers get up to, and honestly I think that is true of most hepatologists as well. Livers: they are up to some SHIT.
- Recently enjoyed Wake Up Dead Man, and watching the two previous movies again. Rian Johnson is just so good at capturing up to the minute assholes, and Daniel Craig is SO GOOD as CSI KFC. I saw Sneakers for the first time this year, and immediately watched it again twice, dang, that was not oversold to me. Also I watched Pacific Rim about 25 times. Giant robot comfort food, what can I say.
- Steam tells me I spent most of my game time on Stardew Valley, again. Comfort food, again, ayup. I have, jeez, 8000 hours of playtime now? But the mod community is so active that it's really a new game every time, along with also being the same game every time. It's a pretty great combination. But anyhoo. Also really enjoyed Blue Prince, Balatro, and especially Dave the Diver, which I 100%ed and then immediately 100%ed again, like, back to back, I just loved it so hard. I'll probably 100% it again later this year when the new jungle expansion comes out. I can't remember if this year was when I started them or not, but also really enjoyed all of the Mosaic series by Mark Ffrench. It's a minesweeper-like puzzle at the core, but each section you solve unlocks some interesting little factoid, so it combines the addictiveness of minesweeper with the addictiveness of going down a wikipedia rabbithole. The tone of the games varies a LOT, from pleasantly benign and amusing (Proverbs) to really depressing (Mosaic Retrospective: 2024, which recaps events of the year and yikes what a year) to grisly (the latest, Mosaic of the Strange, which is an X-files homage) to educational (Mosaic of the Pharaohs,) just in the choice of the genre of factoids you get. I replayed Witcher 3, again, several times, but also this year tried out the Witcher 1 and 2, now that they have mac ports. Witcher 1 was a little painful to play, the interface is brutal, but it has the same voice actors and the same writers, so it was still very worthwhile, damn, they are good at this. Witcher 2 was very much like Witcher 3, just with the plot a little more on rails, and I really enjoyed playing it through twice to see both main pathways. I did some play-testing for the upcoming TR-49, which I highly recommend. You're manipulating reality on a fictional enigma-esque device from Bletchley park using leet-speak. So basically like all Inkle games, impossible to describe but very engrossing.
- Okay I'm running out of steam, I'll probably think of six other things to talk about as soon as I hit post and then forget to post them and see you next year? Or next week, maybe I'll pop on to brag about my new laundry set-up, because holy shit, in the time it took me to post this I'm half-way funded. WHAT THE HECK.
Ahem. If anyone needs me I'll be crying into a cheez whiz sandwich because people are very, very kind. <3
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