After a holdup in JFK, friends Dean & Jessi returned home in the afternoon. It was great to see them again, and hear about all the things they got up to. They bought me back some lovely gifts, including some lovely wool yarn and a cute china tea cup set with bees on.
I made progress on the crocheted shawl. I'm still not 100% happy with it, but I think it''ll be ok. I'm liking the how the colour changes are panning out. I am tempted to undo it, but I'm too lazy to undo it all again.
Thursday will be a day of catching up. They'll be unpacking and then I'll be packing as we're doing the return trip to Florida on Friday/Saturday. There likely wont be a blog post on either of those days, and then I'l be back home.
Got stuck into my crochet project today. I've been getting irritated with it but my decision to ignore the stitch count has paid off. I think it'll be quite pretty once complete.
Felt a bit unsettled all day, so I baked some cookies. Halved my usual recipe, and ended up using bread flour instead of all purpose flour. The texture is a lil different, but they'll do the trick as cookies.
Still wrangling with the ongoing health thing, but I'm able to manage things just fine. I'm doing ok, and I know I have friends nearby to help if I need which feels great. Got some unfortunate news, which adds to the pile but I'm gonna just push that away until I have the bandwidth to process.
I think that the little walks each day have been helping my hip a bit. It's nice being able to get some fresh air, and feel the wind/rain on my skin too. It was quite warm, but apparently it'll be back down into the 60s overnight which I'm looking forward to.
I took the day to myself and disconnected almost entirely, except for a few welcome Discord DMs. Felt a bit better today, but I think it'll be another day or two before I'm better.
I was planning on an early lunch because I forgot dinner the night before, again. I was still a bit groggy from sleep when I was preheating the oven for the pizza. I found out that, apparently, a lil burned smut in the oven was enough to set the fire alarm off when I opened the oven door to put the pizza on. That woke me up awfully fast There was no discernable smoke but I opened the patio door and it stopped pretty fast. I was ready for it when I took the pizza out of the oven, so the alarm only had a couple of screeeches before it stopped. The pizza was good, at least! A certain doggo was very interested in my lunch, but I wasn't going to share given the mental effort expended in making it!
I picked up my latest crochet project again, and frogged a couple of rows becasue I couldn't make the pattern work. I think I got it sorted out though, with a few applications of artistic license. If I can be consistent with the things I've done, it should work up well. I might try to do some more on it, on Tuesday, but I need to be mindful of my silly hands.
We got through a good chunk of the show Call the Midwife. I perhaps should have gone for a different thing to watch, but I started and didn't want to leave it hanging. I probably won't be able to finish it while I'm here, but I might be able to end a season Tuesday so there's an end of sorts to wrap it up with.
Today was a quiet day, outwardly, but a bit of a rough one for me mentally, and physically. The dogs were great on their walks, which was nice, and we saw the bunny again. Dio actually did see it this time, but I was expecting the yank as he tried to scamper over to it. Walking a pibble gave me the stronk training, I guess!
Had mushroom risotto and fresh bread for lunch, which all sounds rather fancy. I wasn't particularly hungry, but I made myself eat so that I'd have some fortification for streaming, and the rest of the day. I'm glad I did!
Stream went pretty well, though I had a few moments where I was feeling overwhelmed with demands. I managed it without a meltdown though.. mostly, and we carried on. I enjoyed hearing what people were up to on the server and, considering it's a passive server, there was a lot of death-by-cow! I tried to take a few screenshots so that there would be something to post here. I mentioned that I didnt even have a mudhut setup, since Id just been exploring, and Bill made one for me lol. The starter area is looking pretty fancy now, with a longhouse, chicken house, and a bunch of other buildings.
After stream, I had another catchup with Flint which helped my brain a bit. We just nattered and he showed me cute/silly things on twitter. I miss him terribly!
I'm hoping Monday will bring an ease to the brain and body. Dean and Jessi are due back on Tuesday, I think, so I'll be trying to get things squared away and tidy for their return. Other than that, I'm going to be gentle with myself, and take advantage of a day with no demands.
I'm not sure when my next stream will be, since I won't have the access to a PC like I have this last week. I will try to keep posting here though, and I'll be about in Discord too. It's been wonderful seeing everyone popping into chat. I really do enjoy the company, and it's immensely reassuring that you were all still around after 2 weeks of no streams.
Welcome to our newest FW member, Beard. Thank you for supporting lil ole me in my creative & gaming endeavours!
The dogs were both pretty anxious Wed-Friday, but they both seem to have calmed down. Dio was clingy, which wouldnt be too bad on it's own, but Kit was quite whimpery and it was breaking my heart. She was still romping about with Dio, and eating/drinking/pooping ok, so I assumed she was pining for her humans. Today, she was much more cheerful, and even did some wigglebutts and frolicks on her walks!
I had leftover lasagne for lunch, and watched an episode of Call the Midwife. I tried watching it a while back, and it didn't quite land, but I'm enjoying it this time around. This episode had no animals, so there was no accompaniment by Dio this time!
I was able to chat with Flint for a little while before stream, and it was so lovely hearing his voice. I may have had a lil cry at the end when I was ending the call. I can't wait to see him again!
Stream was more Vintage Story today, on the FW server. We had 5 people for a while, which was pretty neat. There was some great progress at the spawn location, and I found some handy stuff while flailing about on the raft. Beard found the fanciest island, apparently... and was bragging about it so much that he crashed the server (not really.) We started getting some issues, but it seems to have been resolved by increasing the RAM.
I kept an eye out for aurora activity when I took the dogs out for the evening poop, but no luck. It was a clear night though, so the stars were still nice to look at. The temperature was perfect too, so I wasn't drenched with sweat when I got home.
Sunday will probably be more VS, unless I get the itch to do something else. While I'd normally do a craft stream, I don't really have the right setup for it here. I could figure something out, since I bought a spare phone for that purpose, but I'm feeling more game/less craft at the moment.
Welcome to new & returning members AlphaStitch & BubblyBill! If you haven't already, you can sync Discord and Fourthwall here to get your roles automagically booped.
At the moment, I'm attempting to do a lil blog post each day that I'm away from home. I'm hoping it will develop a good habit, but we'll see if it sticks, especially when I don't have any adventures IRL to share. Sometimes, game screenshots will have to do!
I am really missing Flint. I keep wanting to get up and go talk to him, but he's not quite within walking distance at the moment. I didnt realise how much I natter at him until now! I'm over halfway into my time away though, so I can start counting down the days soon. Between that, and general brain blergh, I was struggling a bit with the mental health today but streaming helps!
I did much better job feeding and watering myself today, thanks to Saty and Ali poking at me.. and the frozen meals I picked up when Buckma visited. I had butter chicken for lunch and, after stream, cooked up the lasagne. I was only able to eat half, so I have some left for Saturday lunch!
I was up past midnight, with Toast, setting up the Vintage Story server and it's finally running and stable! knocks on wood We found a nice spot to spawn too. It seems like there's a goal to create a community build on this server, so I'm looking forward to seeing what comes out of it. While people were building bridges, and getting stuff done, I spent most of stream tootling about exploring.
I only got one screenshot for the whole day, and it was of cursed Saty in character creation.. so now you get to see it too!
Saturday will be more VS and hopefully I'll be feeling a bit brighter.
No stream for Thursday because there were adventures with Buckma, instead!
I spent the morning wrangling the Vintage Story server, only to figure out that most of my messing about could have been dealt with, with a single chat command. Learned about some new functions offered by the server host though! The server was stable, but a bit wonky still, went I went out.
Buckma arrived mid afternoon and, because we hadn't actually planned anything, we decided to head out for food to get started. We headed out to the North Market food place again, since it's the only place I know here. This time, I got a bowl of yummy Somali rice and lentils and stuffs.
Afterwards, we were going to get ice cream from Jeni's but the local township had some event going which closed off some roads. We eventually found a parking space, but the store was so busy I noped out. Standing in line isn't my favourite thing to do!
Instead, we went to check out a giant field of corn. (link to wiki page) Yes, corn.. in Ohio. Who woulda thought?! It's actually an art installation of 100+ human sized ears of corn. They were large... apparently it is colloquially known as corn henge, though by who I don't know!
A search of ice cream places nearby led us to a place called Dell's Ice Cream. Of course, we had to go there! It had all handmade ice cream and sorbets. Some of the flavours sounded great, I'm always a sucker for mocha flavoured stuff. They even had a campfire flavoured sorbet, which I think was s'mores! They had an affogato on their menu, that they call a Dellagato, so we had to have that. It was delicious!!
I had a lovely time. Meeting people who you've only encountered online can be hit or miss, so I was relieved that we clicked as well as we did. I didn't doubt that Buckma would be lovely, but I had doubts about myself lol.
it started storming on our way back, so Buckma had to drive home in the rain.. and I got soaked taking the doggos out for their evening walk. All in all, though, it was a great day!
I didn't go anywhere other than dog walks, so I didnt get any photos of exciting adventures or tasty treats. It was a very computer-y day!
I think I finally got the alerts (mostly) sorted out, for stream stuff! Not sure if I did it the right way, but it seems to have worked except for some wierd hiccups with fonts! Assuming all works as intended, you're sparkly Fourthwall greetings and all the point redemptions should be good to go.
I was messing about at the computer around lunch time and got the poop scared outta me by the dogs going bonkers... and then I remembered being told that there's a weekly tornado siren test that happens Wednesday's at noon. The siren itself wasn't particularly loud, but the dogs were. Good to know how they react for future reference, I guess :D
I managed to remember that I needed to feed myself before stream (go me!) so I didn't have a hungry when I started. I did do an oops though, and have a zero-sugar soda. I forgot that some artificial sweetners cause very.. intense digestive issues. I was reminded of this just after I started stream, so that was fun! I won't do that again lol
Stream itself was fun! It's been so nice catching up with everyone, and having the company. A large part of stream was me dithering about which mods to install for the server refresh. I got hung up on a mod that adds villages to the map, but eventually (thanks to gentle chat nudges) decided that I didnt want it. I wasn't immediately taken, the way I was with some others, so I should have used that as an indicator. I then spent an hour or so flailing about unsure if I should setup the server while live. I'm really self concious and constantly worried that I'll be "boring" if I do something not full of fun and excitement. A silly concern since you're all still here after this many years lol.
We did get the server up and running, though there's a few hiccups to figure out. Im excited to get started on it. I think the beginning stages are my favourite!
Stream is uncertain for Friday. I have tentative plans to meet up with a friend, but it depends on a few things. If the plans fall through, then we'll be back with some more Vintage Story!