Happy Monday, my friends! I had a nice, restful weekend of doing the bare minimum, and I am feeling refreshed and ready to take on the week.
I did have a migraine most of the day yesterday, which was frustrating since I had planned on being a potato Saturday and productive on Sunday. So it goes with chronic illness, though. You can’t always predict the bad days. Even with a raging headache, I got the laundry done and did my meal prep, so I can’t really complain.
What I’ve Been Up To
Work/Writing
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III came out on Friday and was the major focus at work. If you know me, you know I am not a first-person shooter fan, but I still offered to do a guide or two since my husband bought the game.
I didn’t realize the horrors of being a girl in Halo circa the early aughts were living rent-free in my head until I logged in to CoD and immediately had to have my husband come reassure me that the mic was off and no one would hear me if I reacted to something. Guess the whole “Are you a girl?!” thing is still lingering after all these years.
After writing a few things, I decided this was weirdly too stressful and logged off CoD, probably for good. Then, I turned my attention to Pokemon Scarlet & Violet, which I’m trying to play through before the next expansion launches in December. That is much more my comfort zone, even if I’m not as partial to the art style for most of the newer Pokemon. (One of them is just a straight-up flamingo. It’s called Flamigo. I mean, come on.)
General Life Updates
Pretty typical week last week without much in the way of major life updates to share. I spent the week recovering from being out of town the weekend before, so I was as much of a hermit as the workweek would allow.
Current Obsessions
Gaming
It’s weird that this section and the work section can sometimes be more or less the same thing. I confess I gave up on Scarlet & Violet a little less than halfway through because I was struggling to navigate the world map.
Now that I’ve picked it back up and am in the groove, though, I’m really enjoying it. I battled my way through the rest of the gyms this weekend, so now I’m just trying to polish off other side quests before I challenge the Elite Four. Then, it’ll be on to the first expansion so I can be ready when the second one comes out.
I’m also still deep in my Baldur’s Gate 3 business, though I’m in a really difficult combat loop at the moment that has me frustrated (no spoilers).
Books
I’m still in a bit of a reading slump, but I did start a new audiobook! My Libby holds are still pending, so I decided to poke around the new Spotify feature where Premium members get to listen to 15 hours of audiobooks each month. Weirdly, there is a lot of frontlist featured in the Premium collection, which is surprising to me.
There are some questions about how authors get compensated for their books being on the platform, but I think Ali Hazelwood is going to be just fine, so I grabbed her YA debut, Check & Mate for some laundry listening yesterday. I’m already several hours into the book, so that’s how that’s going.
Words on the Web
Mostly video gaming content from me still, as I’ve accepted that other writing projects are going to be a bit on hold until the semester ends and all that teaching energy can be redirected toward other writing stuff.
I got to do a write up about the Fashion Week event in Pokemon Go, which isn’t something I even knew existed until last week. I’m now very excited for it, and maybe this is a Pokemon newsletter now? (If you didn’t know, the title for this week is a reference to the Pokemon theme song.)
That’s about it from me this week! Hope your Monday is off to a good start!