Games

Weekend

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Glorious weekend! Today I do very little except watch some movies or TV, read some, maybe play some games.

Yesterday was King’s Day so I took a stroll over the customary flea market. My first in this town. It was much bigger than I was used to in my previous town, so many kids trying to hawk their wares. I scored some nice bargains. Found a really good condition Settlers of Catan for €7,50 and a Charmed season 7 DVD box for €10 and a Lego game and book about cats to cut up (pretty pictures) for two or so euros together.

In the afternoon I went to the Parents as my aunt and cousin were visiting and I don’t get to see them often. It was nice catching up 🙂

I spent the evening on the sofa cutting up the book and watching Tabletop on the new TV. I’d set it up the night before and, as it’s a smart TV, it can do all kinds of nifty internet things like YouTube, Netflix and Spotify. So I connected all my accounts and even made it so that I can look for a YT video on my iPad and then play it on the TV 😀

Also on Friday, Mom and I went to the birthday of my second-cousin. I don’t always get to go as they are kids, still, and celebrate on the day itself, in daytime. Which is often when I work. But this week I’d switched my free afternoons enabling me to go. I’d made pretty envelopes before we went to put the gift money in. Not just one for the current celebrant, but also for the two we missed earlier this year. The birthday was much fun.

Where’d You Go, Chair?

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So I did start Where’d You Go Bernadette on Thursday. And finished it, as well. It’s an easy read, and captivating enough that I wanted to keep going. It took a while to really get a feel for the book, but I was intrigued enough about Bernadette’s past, and I liked the narrator voice (her daughter, Bee) to keep at it. Because of the format of the book (short bits written by multiple characters (notes, letters, texts) narrated by one person) you get insights in all characters and shows that there’s always something behind everything. And most of the ‘bad guys’ are only trying to get through life just as everyone else. Everyone makes mistakes, so you might as well own up to it and try and fix it. Plus the ending is a hoot.

Also went to the thrift store on Thursday to find me a new dining chair. We’re getting rid of the rush seated ones cause the cats keep using it as a scratching post. Particularly Monkey, which leaves a mess on the floor. But, the other chairs, that actually go with the table I find terribly uncomfortable and wobbly, so I wanted a different one for me. Didn’t find any traditional ones, but found a glorious fabric upholstered one on wheels 😀 So I bought it and it now sits at the head of the table 😀

Saturday I went to the mall with the parents again. We had lunch at Hema and I bought some stuff for the house and for crafting. Sunday Ingrid came by. We watched movies (Frozen, Tangled) and played games. After she left, I ended the evening watching Frozen again and playing Warcraft.

Today at work, I assisted the Webcare people since they have workload and we don’t. I don’t mind at all, it can only be good for me in light of the job application. Playing more Warcraft tonight, working on leveling Aranthar to be my third level 90 and trying my best to level his main professions along with it, so I don’t have to keep going back.

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Achievement Unlocked: Succesfully Avoided (3) Excercise Demons

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Managed to skip going to the gym for the entire week, bad me. On Monday I skipped because I realised I didn’t really like the one half of the class I was going to, and to just do the other half isn’t long enough. Plus the instructor always manages to guilt trip me into staying for that second half anyway and I don’t like that. Tuesday I skipped because there’s too much time between getting home from work and going to the gym. By the time I have to go get ready, I’ve settled in and really don’t want to go anymore. Today I slept in and missed Pilates, which is a shame because I do like it.

Wednesday I went over to Gert to, couple months late, exchange birthday prezzies. I got him the NL variant of Ticket to Ride and he got me Machiavelli. We played Ticket to Ride a couple times and then watched some Doctor Who and Attack on Titan. I’d never seen that before but I really like it. Was also nice to just hang out and chat and stuff. Usually we go to the movies and then there’s less catching up time 😀

At work the buzz is that the workflow they took is coming back in week 8, so yay!

Yesterday and today I played a lot of Warcraft. Decided to try out my solo abilities on Cataclysm Dungeons. I face roll Burning Crusade stuff, but never really tried soloing Wrath instances since I was guilded back then and did all that with them. Managed to do Stonecore, Voretx Pinnacle, Blackrock Caverns and Grim Batol, all on normal. It wasn’t face roll easy, but it was very well doable. I wonder once I get some more Timeless Isle pieces, if I can try my hand at heroic versions. I need that to finally get my Ramkahen rep to exalted. I want my camel 😀

I also finished Cycle of Hatred earlier this week, good book.

And, I finally managed to write three letters to some people in my pen pal group, yay me. I’ll be mailing them out tomorrow, together with the traveling notebook.

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Hnnnnngh…

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I am so completely dead. Went to the gym for the first time on Monday, and O. M. G… I was going for the half hour of Vario Sport, wherein you do something else every week. This first week of the new season it was mainly twenty thousand forms of hopping about. After doing that, I felt fairly good. And so I was easily convinced to stick around for the half hour of Tabata that follows on it directly. Tabata turned out to be a high intensity interval training where we did all kinds of exercises rapidly for about thirty seconds and then another and then another and another and a 30 second break and again a series of the same exercises. Combined this killed me sooooo dead.

I made it home afterward, fell down on the sofas and refused to get up until it was time for bed. Which was a bad idea in itself because…
The next day I could barely walk, my calves hurt sooooo bad 😀

After work I made a cheesecake for the team, from scratch, just like with Christmas dinner. Started a bit too late though, it was after midnight when I took the cake out of the oven… So late, that I didn’t get around to putting up the raspberry topping until the next morning before work.

After that it was quite the adventure to get the cake in the bike crate, it only just fit. It survived the bumps on the way to the train station as well as the ride to the city. Left the cake with the team leader for handing out during the daily meeting. At that point I was gone, though.

I had to grab the train back home right after finishing at one, to make it in time for the appointment for my second T shot. It went well, I tried to keep the leg even more relaxed than I did with the other for the first shot in the hope that this would be less painful and for a shorter time. I think it worked, as I only felt it for a day or two. The calves, though… Man, they’re still driving me nuts.

Also on Wednesday, my shiny, shiny iPad Air arrived. I went to check on my old iTunes account and all my old apps are still there. And, joy of all joys, all my progress in Magic Piano is still there as well as my more than 160 songs. I did spend some money on that back when I still had an iPhone, so nice to know it’s all still here.

During singing on Saturday I noticed some first subtle changes in my voice. It’s starting to get a bit scratchy a bit sooner. And then it didn’t help I was doing How You Remind Me 😀 Am very curious to see how this develops.

The rest of the day I dumped shit in the attic and I worked on the carpeting for the front hallway. Also had a nice evening with some friends coming over.

Today I did go to Pilates (I skipped body pump on Thursday) and that was great fun. I always liked Pilates back in Leicester, so I’m glad I went here, too. Spent the afternoon in relaxation watching Sherlock again as well as my new blu ray of Les Misérables. I love that movie <3

Blog About Me [19/52] Five Favourite Video Games

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My most favourite video game is World of Warcraft. I’ve been playing since april 2009 when I decided to try it out with the free trial. Within two days I was hooked and bought the game. I’ve been playing ever since. Occasionally there’s a month or two I don’t play, but I always come back to it. I am a casual solo player, I don’t raid and since I do whatever I can by myself, I tackle a lot of content after it’s no longer current. Reputations, various achievements, collecting battle pets and mounts, leveling profession-alts and finding whatever quests I missed on my main character.

Another game, or game series, I love is Age of Empires. I’ve been playing that since the first one back in my teens. I love building the civilizations and I would ignore the AI enemy for as long as I could 😀 I also always used to play custom maps where I would put the enemy in a corner, build a wall of theirs around that, and then a wall of mine around that. This way, they wouldn’t attack the wall to get out, and my guys wouldn’t attack it to get in. And I had all the time to build the perfect town and civilization.

I also really like Skyrim and Fable III, they both offer endless opportunities to wander around, explore, make things, and kill things, too.

My final choice for this post is an old platform game I used to play. I had a whole collection of classic 2D side-scrolling platform games in my teens. A lot of Apogee titles (Duke Nukem, Crystal Caves, Agent something), Commander Keen (of which I can’t remember if it was Apogee) and also Hocus Pocus. That was by far my favourite of the bunch featuring amyoung wizard trying to save his realm. The graphics were smoother than with the other titles and the levels were beautiful. Hmmm, maybe I should see if I can get it to work on a Windows 8 box…

Around the Internet IV

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L. Weingarten has a photography series called “Series of Questions“. They’re photos of gender-variant/gender non-conforming people posing with questions they’ve been asked. Questions that are often intrusive, accusing or otherwise meant to make the person justify themselves to others.

The mission statement says:

This ongoing body of work explores the power dynamics inherent in the questions asked of transgender, transsexual, genderqueer, gender non-conforming, and gender-variant people.

Many documentary photographic projects that deal with trans issues exploit the genders of their subjects, pointing to an “otherness” or inappropriately exoticizing their bodies. A Series of Questions seeks instead to make visible the transphobia and gender-baiting that can become part of everyday interactions and lives, forming a fuller picture of the various lived experiences. In so doing, this work contrasts with the dehumanizing approaches that predominate the images made of transgender, transsexual, genderqueer, gender non-conforming, and gender-variant people, which often focus solely on their gender or trans status, or use them to further a specific point about social construction and gender.

The subjects hold signs depicting questions that each has had posed to them personally— some by strangers, others by loved ones, friends, or colleagues. Presented on white wooden boards, the questions are turned on the viewer, shifting the dynamics under which they were originally asked, and prompting the viewer to cast a reflective, self-critical eye upon themself, revealing how invasive this frame of reference can be.

 

 

The Genderbread Person. An infographic that tries (and does a damn good job) to explain all the variety in gender identity, gender expression, biological sex and sexual attraction. Should be required teaching in sex ed and related courses. Hell, should be required reading for everyone.

 

 

 

The Strangers. A very creepy short horror/suspense story about Strangers and the subway. I couldn’t stop reading once I started.

Tanah Lot, Bali

Ten amazing real-world locations that seem to come straight from a fantasy (right, Tanah Lot, Bali).

Cards Against Humanity, a party card game for horrible people. Everyone has a number of cards, and one player begins by playing a black card with a question. The others answer the question with one of their cards (blind). They get then shuffled and are read out loud by the starting player who picks a favourite. The player who played that card gets a point. Then the next player plays a question card and so on. The questions and answers are not suitable for children. The game itself is sold out, but can be downloaded in pdf format to print yourself.

 

Ending on a lighter note: 50 amazingly achievable things to do before you die 🙂

6391 Words

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I love how something as little as a week, week-and-a-half, off from work can restore your balance. I’m not particularly motivated (yet) to get back to work on Monday, but I’m sure that’ll come once I arrive back in the pit 😀

In the meantime, I’ve had a relaxing week. Monday I hung out with Eva, did some shopping. Eva needed a radio for the baby’s room so I took the opportunity to buy a new SD card for my camera. Afterwards we stopped for some groceries and some browsing at the Wibra. I’m a sucker for cheap/discount stores so I ended up with a bag of easter/spring inspired items to decorate the house with while I wait for spring proper to arrive.

Using the new items with the stuff from last year led me to this:

Tuesday I hung out at the Parents’ place. It had been a week and a half or so since I’d seen them, and as I usually see them at least once a week, it was overdue. It was a quiet afternoon, which is nice.

Friday evening Eva, Ingrid and Mellien came over to see me and Nienke and we went out for pancakes at the pancake restaurant in town. It was gloriously delicious (I had a ham/cheese/pineapple pancake) and we had a lot of fun talking. Afterward we went back to Nienke’s place to play Just Dance 3 on the Wii. Even Eva, despite being 37 weeks along, did a dance. The rest of us all went twice, and then we decided to do a quick round of Glee Karaoke before the other three had to go again.

Today I had lunch at the Parents’ again before returning home and finding Nienke cutting up all the trees in her yard. I didn’t really have anything better to do, and I love playing with the tree cutter so I gladly assisted her with this. Nienke’s upper arms thanked me 😀

We cut huge amounts from the conifer near her bedroom window, so to make it all fit, we had to push down on the cuttings to create more space. And to allow the lid to close…

Today I also found my very first Postcrossing card on the doormat, it came from Poland. Earlier in the week I got a message from the website that my first sent card was received. Score is now 1 for 1 and there’s four more from me underway to far away places 🙂

 

The Week in Review: 2012-09

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I’m grateful for the many supportive comments last week’s blog got, both here and on Facebook. I’m also grateful that the scratches Milo gave me were not that deep and are healing nicely (even though the itching is driving me nuts).

I’m happy my ukelele books arrived. I’ve decided to approach this learning how to play thing fairly seriously so I’m assigning myself two or three pages of the book per week so I have enough time to practice before I move on. This will hopefully prevent me from rushing through it and not really retaining any of the stuff I read or play. I’m also happy with the end-of-year review I got at work.

I’m slightly annoyed that it’s hiatus season for many of my favourite US TV shows (especially Glee), although it does give me a chance to catch up on others I’ve missed. (This is what you get when I have no proper things to be negative about 😀 )

I learned notes on the c and e string of the ukelele this week. Expect many ukelele related learnables in the coming weeks 😀

 

I’ve decided to add a fifth point to this thing to turn it into a bit more of a full fledged blog post since I don’t always blog in between, and as the (internet) saying goes: “Five things make a post.”

 

I discovered Postcrossing and DrawSomething. I knew Postcrossing, I looked into it a couple years ago, and was intrigued but then I forgot about it. This week I saw it come up in my news feed on Facebook and remembered again. So I decided to sign up for it, and I’ve requested my first five addresses. I’ll be getting cards and stamps this week so I can send then to Russia, Taiwan, Belarus, Germany and the US. I’m excited already about the cards I’ll be getting back.

DrawSomething is a game I downloaded on my iPhone tonight and even though I’ve played it for like ten minutes, I love it. I believe it can also be played on Facebook. The point of the game is to draw one of three words you’ve been given and then your opponent has to guess what it is you drew. After that, the roles reverse and you guess the opponents drawing.

The Week in Review: 2012-07

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I’m grateful for the 24Kitchen channel. I get so much inspiration from it, not just in recipes or more general foods or flavours that I wanna try, but also the places the chefs are or go to, the colours, the kitchens… I also learn a lot from it, both about cooking, and about the various cultures that the foods come from. It’s an awesome channel to just leave on as background.

I’m happy because I had roast chicken bits for dinner. I love chicken, and I love it even more when roasted, but as I mentioned last week, I’m not a very patient person in certain things. Cooking is one of those things. When I’m cooking, and especially meat, I want it to be done NOW! So I never really make roasted stuff because I don’t want to wait for it to cook gently, I tend to turn up the heat and burn parts of the meat. So, whenever Nienke announces she’s making roast chicken and would I like to join her? Hell to the yes!

I can’t really remember negative emotion this week. The patience that was troubling me last week is making way for a shaky sort of excitement. So I will just use this episode of NCIS that I was sort of watching as my annoyance. It doesn’t usually happen, but I switched channels. Hostage situations do this to me sometimes, I tend to be of the ‘just shoot the guy and get it over with’  kinda method. Especially when the bad guy is getting on my nerves…

I learned I some basic chess this week from Gert. We played two games and I even managed to beat him the second time around because he wasn’t paying (enough) attention allowing me to take his queen very early in the game and getting a head start this way.

 

Some Random Photos, Just Because

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January 2012: Monkey loves scritchies.

January 2012: I bought a laser pointer, Milo loves it (it’s between his front paws). Sadly, I seem to have misplaced it at the moment…

January 2012: Hello human!

January 2012: Went to Eva & Jarig’s for a game night with them and Ingrid. We played Scrabble.

January 2012: Because finding a more comfortable spot is so hard…

January 2012: New slippers, they look nice, and they’re warm. They were also dirt cheap so will probably not last very long.

February 2012: Milo was very interested in the key chain ducks that I keep on my World of Warcraft authenticator.

February 2012: I think this is the closest the two of them have been so far. Occasionally they get closer as they sit on the window sill together for a couple seconds or they walk past each other, but for a prolonged period of time, this is as close as it gets.