It’s been another challenging week in our house – between our heavy loads of work/studying/running, the saga of my laptop replacement, dealing with Zombie Eye IV, and a bit of a shock yesterday when we received a letter telling us the company scheduled to do our front garden this year had gone bankrupt (resulting in us needing to find some way of getting our rather large deposit back), it has been extremely eventful and it feels like last weekend was months ago!
Other than a bit of admin relating to some of the above – and finding a parkrun near us that will actually be going ahead tomorrow morning – I expect I will be spending a lot of the weekend staring into space on the sofa. If I do find some energy from somewhere, I may try and get some of my less-taxing course modules done so that I’m not panicking so much at the end of February.
Tonight, though, I most definitely need a couple of hours of Not Doing Anything At AllTM!
First work-ish week of the year done (I’m not back at work till next week but I have been back on my course and there’s been a lot to do so it’s felt like a normal work week in many ways) and so Friday night is appreciated once more. I’ll be back at my home parkrun tomorrow for the first time in ages and spending some time over the weekend setting out my marathon training plan for starting on Monday. In fact I’ve got a bit of a list of stuff to do in general over the weekend but we’ll see how much of it gets done, because I do need a quiet one before work starts in earnest.
The Christmas decorations came down yesterday, which has highlighted a few things that I feel look slightly ‘wrong’ in the house, so I may be doing some furniture moving soon as well.
No picture today (because I’ve decided that I will no longer post random just-taken pictures of whatever’s currently on my side table if I haven’t happened to photograph anything interesting during the week) and no earworm playlist either, because that will be going private and possibly returned to for statistical purposes in the future.
Geth and I did do a New Year’s Day parkrun this morning but I’ll save my regularly scheduled parkrunday post for tomorrow. Lots of 2022 stuff to discuss today!
This year’s non-binding New Year Resolutions:
Sort out the house. It didn’t happen last year and it may not happen this year, but I would at least like to get some more stuff up on the walls (including that spice rack I bought a year ago) and work out a more manageable cleaning schedule.
Don’t book any midweek trips away and assume I can just ‘squeeze any work in’. I’m far too busy to be away during the week. Trips will be weekend-only with very rare exceptions.
Get one or two of my years-in-the-making longer game projects published by focusing on those rather than short things for jams and competitions.
Use the skills from my TechUP course to build at least two fairly complex websites.
Create some games using Python!
Take another big chunk off my marathon PB at the Edinburgh Marathon in May.
Get back to the fitness level I was when everything screeched to a grinding halt in March 2020.
Get my parkrun ‘different events’ total up to at least 30, continue to volunteer once a month, get my Wilson index to 15 (geeky – don’t worry if you don’t know what that is) and take part in parkrun every possible parkrunday!
Listen to more music and keep a closer eye on what’s going on with synthwave, industrial and heritage artists.
Actually leave the UK for the first time in four years (Ireland is the plan… not going far but it’ll be something!).
Catch up with what’s been happening with Doctor Who. It’s my favourite TV series but I’ve drifted away from the fandom over the last few years as I’ve been busy with other things and haven’t been hugely fond of the Whittaker/Chibnall era. I’m about two and a half series behind!
Finish all the books I’m reading. I’ve got into an awful habit over the last year where I start a book, read it for a week or so (last thing at night in bed is my reading time), neglect reading for the following week or so (because I’m anxious about not getting enough sleep if I read… even though I know I sleep better if I do), then abandon it and start a different book. This year, I’m going to concentrate on one at a time and read them right to the end. 20 books in 2022 seems like a good target!
Make a LOT more time for videogaming by keeping my evenings and weekends free. My game backlog is probably 1,000+ now and it’s time to start whittling that down. It’s my favourite way to relax and I most definitely have not been doing enough relaxing in 2021, so this has to be a real priority over the next year.
It’ll be interesting, as ever, to come back to this post in a year’s time! I didn’t make any resolutions last year except the house-sorting one, which was kind of a fail… let’s hope there’ll be more hits than misses in 2022.
Geth’s current videogame (which he has been playing nonstop since Christmas Day) is Shin Megami Tensei V, which I got him for Christmas. I would love to spend as much time videogaming as Geth does, and in order to do so I am planning to reorganise a few things this year.
I always intend to post lots of blogs at the end of the year with lots of big lists of all the things I did and the media I consumed and my highlights… but December is always so insanely busy I never get round to it. Maybe in 2022 I will write them as I go along haha! It’ll just have to be one megapost this year…
This year’s big resolution was to sort the house out. I did not do that and now it is one of 2022’s big resolutions. Other things have just taken more priority.
Business exploded in a good way this year, which means that I’m now working a lot more hours. It’s taking a while to adjust my life to this, and I’m beginning to realise that I can no longer just plan a trip away midweek on the assumption that I won’t have much work to squeeze in. 2022 will be a lot stricter in this regard.
I continued writing and coding text adventures and being involved in the wider interactive fiction community, and managed to release four games for various competitions. My highlights were winning the Scott’s Choice Award from legendary text adventure game creator Scott Adams for Barry Basic and the Quick Escape, and winning PunyJam #2 with Morris, my first ever PunyInform release. I also enjoyed making a short game for ParserComp based on photos of the beautiful area around Causey Arch after visiting it with Mum and Dad, and my first ever attempt at speed IF for EctoComp!
Since October I’ve also been very busy with studying for the TechUP Software Development course. I have learnt a lot of Python and other very interesting things that I will be taking forward as my career gradually transitions more towards tech. (The Python knowledge will also enable me to do some very fun stuff with my game development!)
Running has continued on a more positive trajectory this year, with races and parkruns returning. I am nowhere near as fit as I was in March 2020 when everything shut down, but I have still managed two important PBs in 2021 – I took nearly five minutes off my 10k PB at the Sunderland 10k, and more than 45 minutes off my marathon PB at the London Marathon. I have also completed the second year of my daily run streak today and am hugely proud of that, as it’s been very difficult at times. Finally, parkrun-wise I have visited two new-to-me parkruns (Girvan Prom and Southwark) and earned my V25 t-shirt with my 25th volunteer stint!
As usual, I didn’t listen to much new music, but I absolutely loved the long-awaited new Duran Duran album Future Past, and I was over the moon at finally being able to see them live in Birmingham in September. Geth and I then saw Andy Taylor the very next night back home in Newcastle, and we had a great time seeing Soft Cell in Leeds in November. Lots more COVID-postponed gigs to come in 2022 (and some reviews of the ones I’ve recently attended!).
I watched pretty much zero new TV shows and films this year, though there were a few I added to my ‘buy the BluRay at some point’ list. I did record a lot of stuff on my digibox though! Geth has watched thousands of hours of YouTube channels about gaming and running, and I’ve enjoyed those by virtue of being in the same room. I did enjoy the Strictly series in the autumn, as ever.
I didn’t manage to find nearly as much time for videogaming this year as I would have liked, but there have still been a good few games to enjoy. In addition to playing all the other text adventure games in the jams and competitions I entered (see above – and also finishing off the Adventuron Christmas jam games from last year in January!), I finished Bravely Second in time for the much-anticipated Bravely Default II coming out, played Bravely Default II on and off from February but have still not made much headway ten months later, played the interesting demo of Project Triangle Strategy (set for full release on Switch in 2022 as just Triangle Strategy), finished Final Fantasy I (finally! I will be moving onto FFII for 2022), got very freaked out by Return of the Obra Dinn, got most of the way through The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, played about ten minutes of Pikmin Bloom before deciding it wasn’t for me, enjoyed a couple of old ’90s platformers for Christmas that I’ve loved since childhood, started Braid again (will actually finish it this time!), continued enjoying the lovely meditative filler game Link-A-Pix Colour, and COMPLETED EVERY SINGLE DEMO ON THE NINTENDO 3DS ESHOP (a project I’ve been working on for years). Watch out for next year, when I will be putting some serious effort into finding a lot more time for games!
I have lots of plans and resolutions for 2022, but I’ll talk about those tomorrow…
Snowflake leggings and new silver nails – all ready for New Year.
I’ll do a separate earworm playlist post soon…. maybe (I’m considering starting to log that separately from the blog and doing a yearly chart instead). So far it’s three weeks’ worth of Christmas music and Disney/Pixar soundtracks. I must admit I am looking forward to listening to something else in January in order to clear it all from my brain.
I had hoped this upcoming week would provide a bit of a breather, but as ever there’s a lot to do. Today I did a bit of day job work and caught up with most of the housework, and the rest of the week will mostly be spent either working or studying. I am going to prioritise some evening downtime, though, as it’s badly needed at the moment.
Still hoping to have everything organised for Christmas by the end of November…
I made the Christmas cake yesterday, which is a big job ticked off the list!
The to-do list doesn’t really stop at the moment – I’m back and forth between work and studying and house tasks and running and all the other stuff that seems to come out of nowhere… but it’s making life very interesting, as I’m basically doing something different every day.
Geth and I are doing our weekly parkrun volunteering slot tomorrow as he’s got a race on Sunday. The rest of the weekend will be spent doing all the stuff I didn’t have time for during the week!
It’s certainly a lot fuller than last year’s version.
Two weeks’ worth of earworm playlists:
Saturday 23rd
Ray Parker Jr – ‘Ghostbusters’ Edison Lighthouse – ‘Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)’ Bee Gees – ‘Stayin’ Alive’ Radiohead – ‘No Surprises’ Tracey Ullman – ‘They Don’t Know’ Duran Duran – ‘Anniversary’
The Power Station – ‘Some Like It Hot’ Dead Or Alive – ‘Something In My House’ The Beatles – ‘Drive My Car’ Revo – ‘Battle Against The Ones We Inevitably Confront’
Wednesday 27th
One Direction – ‘Little Things’ Rockwell – ‘Somebody’s Watching Me’ Shakira and Wyclef Jean – ‘Hips Don’t Lie’
As part of the big year of home improvement, I’m gradually adding stuff to help make the space easier and more comfortable for day-to-day living. The coffee table in the centre of our living room had been feeling a bit claustrophobic and precarious, as it was too close to the sofa (meaning I had to squeeze in and out of my favourite spot all the time) and really cluttered on top due to my need to have a cushion on it during the day (I like to put my feet up!). I’ve never kicked any of my drinks over yet, but it was only a matter of time. As such, I bought this useful side table last week.
The soft storage basket in the base provides a space for all my gaming handhelds, and keeping drinks on the top next to me means that they are now at much less risk of being knocked over! This is important given the quantity of electronics I keep and use in the space.
I’ve also been enjoying having all our bread products tucked away out of sight in our new bread bin.
I found it a bit difficult to open at first, but it turns out the trick is not to close it too tightly.
In non-shiny news, I’ve had a fairly busy week. Not too much day job work, but I did have a lot of admin and accounting to do in preparation for submitting my tax return, which was as boring as you might expect! I’ve also been continuing with the TOMM cleaning method, which is still taking me about an hour a day while I get into the swing of it.
From Sunday onwards I was able to go outside to run, which I was really appreciating… and then on Wednesday night it snowed heavily again so I was back indoors on the treadmill yesterday morning! Thankfully it had mostly melted by today so I was back out on the roads again. Hopefully there won’t be any more snow over the weekend as I’ve got lots of outdoor running plans.
I’m still playing ukulele as part of the Zoom group on Wednesday evenings, and I’m still getting as much videogaming in as I possibly can, and… that’s about it. I expect life will continue in this vein for some time, at least until the current lockdown restrictions start to ease off again.
This week’s earworm playlists:
Saturday
The Marcels – ‘Blue Moon’ Ben E King – ‘Stand By Me’ John Barrowman – ‘Anything Goes’
Sunday
Yoko Shimomura – ‘Radiant Historia’ Cast of Oliver! – ‘Food, Glorious Food’ Duran Duran – ‘Friends Of Mine’
Monday
Noriyuki Iwadare – ‘Turnabout Sisters’ The Weeknd – ‘Blinding Lights’ Julian Nott – ‘Wallace And Gromit Main Theme’ Arrow – ‘Hot, Hot, Hot’
And a bonus track Geth was humming that day:
The Lancashire Hotpots – ‘The Technical Support Song’
Tuesday
Men Without Hats – ‘Safety Dance’ Glenn Miller – ‘In The Mood’ Audrey Hepburn – ‘Moon River’ 3 Daft Monkeys – ‘Paranoid Big Brother’
Wednesday
Oasis – ‘Songbird’ Duran Duran – ‘Friends Of Mine’ The Strokes – ‘Last Nite’ The Chemical Brothers – ‘Galvanise’
Thursday
Bob Marley & The Wailers – ‘Three Little Birds’ Katy Perry – ‘Firework’ Duran Duran – ‘The Edge Of America’ Revo – ‘Fighting To The End’ Duran Duran – ‘Tel Aviv’ Belinda Carlisle – ‘Circle In The Sand Duran Duran – ‘Anyone Out There’
Friday
Nintendo 3DS eShop – ‘Main Theme’ Landscape – ‘Einstein A Go Go’ Traditional – ‘America The Beautiful’ Pointer Sisters – ‘Automatic’ Audrey Hepburn – ‘Moon River’
It’s been a tiring week, largely because I’ve spent most of it cleaning.
I’ve always (sort of) tried to keep things clean in the house, but I’ve never really felt able to stay on top of it or have the place looking as nice as I would like. This year, I really want the house to be up to my standards all the time – it makes me depressed when its not – and so I’ve decided to follow the TOMM routine, which is primarily aimed at busy mums but can be used by anyone. After a few weeks of settling into the routine, the idea is that you spend no more than half an hour per day on the housework (which, in the long run, is all I can realistically spare!). This week was my first week doing the routine, and it took me ages most days because there was a lot of stuff that just hadn’t been done in months, but I already know it’s going to be a lot easier next week, as from now on it’s just about maintaining things.
Having a constantly-clean house will also make it much easier to get all my decorating projects done this year!
I’ve had bits and pieces of day job work as well this week, but have made sure to carve out a bit of time for playing videogames. I’ve finally been able to make a start on playing all the other entries from the most recent Adventuron jam, and am going to finish them off tomorrow before the rating period ends. I’m also making good progress in Bravely Second, and should be able to get it finished before the next game in the series comes out next month.
Running has been largely indoors on the treadmill due to the winter weather. I’m crossing everything that it gets milder soon!
At the moment, next week looks fairly quiet, so I hope it stays that way.
I wish I had a house progress photo to share but I’m not quite there yet. Here’s a shot of the mop and bucket instead, which have done good work this week.
This week’s earworm playlists:
Monday
Devo – ‘Whip It’ Duran Duran – ‘Five Years’ Sparks – ‘This Town Ain’t Big Enough For Both Of Us’ The Weeknd – ‘Blinding Lights’ Duran Duran – ‘Falling Down’ 5 Seconds Of Summer – ‘Youngblood’ Frankie Goes To Hollywood – ‘Relax’
Tuesday
The Midnight – ‘Jason’ The Timelords – ‘Doctorin’ The TARDIS’ The Dream Academy – ‘Life In A Northern Town’ The Police – ‘Don’t Stand So Close To Me’ Haim Saban and Shuki Levy – ‘The Mysterious Cities Of Gold Main Theme’ Nobuo Uematsu – ‘Chaos Shrine’ Duran Duran – ‘Hungry Like The Wolf’
Wednesday
Cast of The Muppet Christmas Carol – ‘Thankful Heart’ Yuka Tsujiyoko – ‘Onset’ Robert Palmer – ‘Addicted To Love’ Fleetwood Mac – ‘Dreams’ Roxy Music – ‘More Than This’ Oasis – ‘Songbird’ Noriyuki Iwadare – ‘It’s Detective Gumshoe, Pal!’
I’ve only been back at work for three days, but it’s been a pretty busy half week, so the weekend is very welcome! The combination of lockdown and snow lends itself well to videogaming, so that’s what I’ll be doing. Geth got me a Switch Lite for my birthday, I still have plenty of games in my backlog on other systems, and I still have lots of games from the most recent Adventuron jam to play and rate – so I’m not going to run out of entertainment any time soon.
It always takes me a while to find my feet again after Christmas. There’s a lot of stuff that needs sorting out in the house, but I’m gradually catching up with things. I’m sleeping late at the moment, which is a habit I really want to get out of so that I can get more done in the mornings. Hopefully once Geth is back at work next week, it’ll be easier to get into pattern.
I started attending a new Zoom music group this week. It’s very beginner-friendly, and Zoom music groups are always muted so I can happily bash away on my ukulele without worrying about anyone hearing me. As such, it’s a really good way to get back into playing; I haven’t found much time for practising since my previous classes came to a halt last March.
A good start to January, given the ongoing circumstances.
All calendars now arrived and installed. Getting there!
I always find the house looks strange and a bit bare when I take the Christmas decorations down. Still, I’m excited about all the sorting and decorating I’m going to be doing this year!
