Tag Archives: On Life and Love

Delightful Games to Play (Part 1)

Video games are a pretty huge part of my life. I endeavor to make them. I stream them, both for my monthly Future Proof Plays streams and some on my own. Gregory and I have a standing Saturday morning date to play something before the world begins its demands on our time. I also play quite a lot on my own, although admittedly more in depth than in breadth.

I’m often eager to fall in love with a game, especially a game that might land the two objectives I talk about in my Paradise Killer post. As a result, this list of kinda-sorta-okay-definitely-favorites is:

  1. Unsorted,
  2. Pretty biased towards recently-played games,
  3. Has no games I “appreciate”, but don’t actively enjoy playing, and
  4. Sometimes explicitly about the game design, but often about my own emotional reactions

Hot Blog Summer is all about hitting the damn publish button, so this is being split into (at least…) two parts so that each can stay a little meaty.

I’m going to try not to be spoilery here, but leave a comment if I fuck up.

Continue reading Delightful Games to Play (Part 1) →

First Ever Sock (and Other Yarning)

Having already made Gregory a blanket, my next task was to craft up some house socks for him. His current pair were worn to holeyness and ready to be replaced.

I dread the idea of working on super-fiddly projects, so I opted to go for a pair of crocheted socks using worsted weight yarn. Cotton, in my case, because acrylic on your feet would be for the birds. The main sock is black, and the heel is brown, despite Greg’s worrying singing of “Black Socks“. Plus, cotton crochets quite beautifully–no fuzz means the pattern shows very well.

The heel was disturbingly confusing to me, quite possibly because I had a raging sinus headache at the time. Once I realized that the sock as I’d been working it was inside out and I played around with how the heel would unfold, everything made sense. There were only about 7 stiches that closed up the heel, so it was totally worth stitching and unstitching to make sure I understood what would happen.

We shan’t talk about the extra stitches in the body of the sock I had to swallow up shortly therafter, though.

…First sock!

It went really fast, which is nice. One more gaming session, and the second sock should be done. More satisfying than a dice bag (cute though that one is), less agonizing than a blanket, even a piecemeal one.

The addition of a new afghan pattern book to my (now 4-book) library means that I’ll soon have more pretty things to give away.

Edit: Finished the sock late last night!

Farm Tours: Goats, Horses, and Cows

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Here’s a great way to spend a Saturday: driving around in rural Charlotte-ish areas, then walking around and seeing goats, horses, cattle, pigs, donkeys, plants, and bees. Yes, bees.

Some folks and I gathered a couple of weeks ago to tour three farms. The first was Apple Orchard Farm (my favorite!), the second was Maple Springs (too pumpkiny and commercial), and a third one I forgot the name of (with sad animals).

I took and posted quite a few pictures, because most of the animals were adorable, and the ones that weren’t were often notably sad.

Apple Orchard will definitely become my go-to farm for if/when we need extra meat supplies between CSA boxes.

Go look at the pictures!

Too Human Was… Too Human

Sorry, I really couldn’t come up with anything wittier than that.

I finished Too Human about a month ago at this point, I think.

Let’s celebrate that for a moment. Given my propensity for games like Sims, GalCiv 2, and Civ 4, getting to finish a game is always a miracle.

Guy totally warned me about some of the game’s disappointments, so I went in with eyes open.

It was… alright. Kinda fun early on. Really frustrating later. I want more, but not more of what was in Too Human. (I’m restarting Fallout 3–which I never finished–as the balm for my ache.)

A couple of nights ago, Greg and I enumerated about 15 flaws in the game. Here are some of the highlights, ordered by their importance to me. I played through with the Berserker class, which is something of a glass cannon: very fast, but not a huge damage dealer and pretty fragile.
Continue reading Too Human Was… Too Human →