Trismegistus

Tarot Tuesday? Sure, why not.

Contrary to my original statement, not everything actually arrived in the mail on October 27; I'd received an email the day before with the tracking number for another deck, Uusi's Materia Prima: An Expression of Matter, that I'd kickstarted waaay back in 2019 and that was repeatedly delayed thanks to the pandemic.

The creators were really good about posting status updates throughout, even sharing several videos of the trek from their UP studio to the post office in a snowstorm to mail the decks out.

Oh no, I thought. They're going to all this effort when the postal service is clearly not going to touch the things until well after the election.

And yup, because there the decks sat, two-day priority shipping be damned, for the next three weeks until USPS got around to delivering them, after which they arrived in a matter of days.

( It was worth the wait. )

これで以上です。

...but it will cover a good many of them.

My vote by mail ballot never arrived, so I went today in person. I'd planned to head over mid-afternoon, figuring the lines would be shortest at that point, but ended up going 90 minutes after the polls opened because I just. Wanted. To. Take. Care. Of. It. Ironically, this was the point at which the lines were longest, according to one of the poll workers I chatted with while waiting my turn; I've been by the site three times since and sure enough, no lines. I ultimately ended up waiting about an hour, but that was fine: the weather was nice, breezy and overcast, and I worked through a Desky Kernowek lesson on my phone while I waited.

So, yeah. Voting accomplished.

( Life has continued to pile on. )

( EVERYTHING came in the mail this week. )

( I also picked up several cute new masks. )

So. All of this unusually concentrated acquisition occasioned delight but also a feeling of my space being stuffed to the gills with STUFF.

That in turn occasioned a Day of Industry on Friday: I did a deep clean of the bedroom, living room, and kitchen. I pruned and otherwise tended the large collection of houseplants (currently, they outnumber the place’s human occupants by a factor of five) which were turning leggy and dropping leaves to register their displeasure at finding themselves no longer on the balcony. (They do not realize that the balcony is not the sunny, humid paradise it was during spring and summer.) I filled a 10 gallon bag with clothes and walked it two miles to the donation drop off I definitely mourning some of them, which were the 100 percent natural fibers, double-hemmed, not-plastic button variety it’s no longer possible to find anywhere in this age of Fast Fashion. But work has been much more sporadic than it was B.C. (Before Covid), so there’s not much purpose to owning so many of them currently. I dropped books off at the Little Free Library. I collected unused kitchen and household cleaning items and donated those as well.

There is still a lot of leeway to get Even More Stuff out of the apartment, but at least there is less of it than there was, and that is a good feeling.

これで以上です。

...Enhanced with Gratuitous Lists.

Some interesting things we’ve heard in the last 10 days in our nearly traffic sounds-free world:

• The Blue Angels flyover. (Yay, I guess?)
  
  
• Some nutjob shooting up the Cuban Embassy.
  
  
• Lions roaring.

This last one one is cool, and one that we’ve heard intermittently before. But now we hear it several times a day.


I don’t watch much TV, but I’m certainly watching more these days.

( AEW )


( Bojack )


( The Dragon Prince )


これで以上です。

And now for the better stuff.

Acquiring the overpriced, POS laptop (now dubbed Oppos) meant I was able to join one of my two regular D&D groups for last night’s session. I always look forward to these sessions, and even more so now that they are the main social event left to most of the players. ( Read more... )

In other news, Charles Yu has a new book!


I can’t believe I only found out about this the other day—especially since it’s been out since January 27th, and Yu’s How To Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe is one of my all time favorite books. I have been eagerly awaiting another volume from him, and I am super excited to finally get to read one.

In other book news, a very good friend became the first person I know well to catch coronavirus; they have spent the last few weeks isolated in their bedroom while their partner leaves them meals and other necessities outside the door. This is objectively awful and could not have happened to someone who deserved it less. On the bright side, I sent them The Goblin Emperor to read, so here comes one more into the fold.

In televised entertainment, AEW has steadily moved in to fill the wrestling void since I—for Reasons—abandoned WWE for good in 2018, to the point where I finally gave in to the inevitable and started watching Dynamite. I have not been disappointed. And then came ( THIS. )

Keep cutting those promos, Brody Lee, because I will keep eating them out of your hand.

And finally, Castlevania season 4 is confirmed!


これで以上です。

...featuring a mixture of virus and non-virus news.

It has been an eventful 4 weeks since I was last posting regularly. I had a birthday (fun!) and a serious knee injury (emphatically not fun!). The Baldur’s Gate 3 gameplay preview came out. The FFVII-R demo came out. Castlevania came out. The Night Country, The Lost Future of Pepperharrow, Dagger and Spindle, and Mermaid Moon came out. A mysterious illness decimated my houseplants.

Real life things!
I held my birthday this year at my favorite brewery and around 30 people showed up despite its not being public transit accessible. This was way more than I was expecting and did an excellent job of cross-pollinating my various RPG, gaming, booknerd, music nerd, and beernerd friend groups.

Also, I received this for my birthday:

and am delighted with it.

The knee injury put the kibosh on pretty much everything—running, walking, yoga, kempo—that I do when I am not reading, eating, or sleeping. In the grand scheme of things, I am lucky as it didn't necessitate surgery, but oh, this lack of physical movement is an adjustment.

Media things!
Needless to say, I am super psyched about the Baldur’s Gate 3 gameplay preview; it really does look like it will mimic the creative, environment-driven problem solving of PnP games. I loved that Vincke had technical problems during the PAX preview, and that half of what he tried failed—it was a true preview of what gameplay will be like, versus a dog-and-pony show.

That said, I am a bit disappointed that I’ll have to play one of the pregen characters to get the most fleshed-out backstory and NPC interactions. I much prefer the original BG approach that fit whatever character the PC created—tiefling monk, human rogue, etc.—into the backstory than the direction Larian’s taking here. Character alignment was also conspicuously missing from the preview. Vincke ultimately addressed this in last week’s Reddit AMA, but I am still a bit ambivalent about this.

Still, these are minor qualms, and I am as won over as ever by Vincke’s infectious excitement (Look at this really cool thing I am showing you!) about the game they're putting together.

Currently, I am most excited about the following three books:

which publish in May, August, and September, respectively.

Castlevania is as awesome as I'd expected. Banzai, Warren Ellis.

Virus things.
In less pleasant news, city government decided last Friday to adopt a halfassed coronavirus response that didn’t shut bars or restaurants, but rather forbade bar seating, parties of seven or more at a table, and occupied tables within six feet of each other. Anyone who’s worked service will know that there’s no point in coming in to work when you may only have four tipping guests in 90 minutes of work, particularly if they don’t order drinks. It’s a de facto closure for many venues that shifts the blame from city hall to managers.

Relatedly, my work, in its own halfassed coronavirus response, decided that putting us back on thirds would be as effective a curve-flattening measure as idling us, so I will be returning, kicking and screaming, to hell schedule for the foreseeable future.

これで以上です。