LadyCrimson

Oh, also ... beware of crazed/aggressive ol' Asian lady in a red wagon trying to stick close to her hubby's van/prevent anyone else (especially taller car else's) from changing lanes in front of her since she still doesn't have the route memorized and doesn't want to lose sight of that van.... I swear, you leave more than 10 feet between cars and people still try to force in (at 75mph+).

Me: "Only one wall outlet on this side. I may need another super long corded powerstrip. I may need to daisy chain one. Maybe if I move this over here and that over there..." Hubby: "...you have too much stuff." Me: "I don't know what you're talking about." 2 PC's, 1 PS4, 3 sets of pc speaker (all need a plug), 2 monitors, 1 TV, phone/tablet charger, 2 DSLR camera battery chargers, 3 air filters, ps4 controller charger, 1 external internal-type HDD reader, 3 external HDD storage (don't have to be plugged in all the time but needs plugs near the PC's), 1 old laptop (always has to be plugged in, doesn't hold a charge long), an oversized electric heating pad (winter), 1 tiny lamp, misc. few other things. Perfectly normal these days, right?

Watched some nature parks of the world documentary with Obama narrating, on Netflix. It was pleasant enough, and Obama's voice was apparently smooth enough sounding or whatever that I fell asleep in my little recliner after an episode and a half, waking up at 5am. ...maybe that recliner will go in my room too. Hubby may never see me again etc. Although, to quote him: "You are NOT allowed a mini-fridge in there!"

Levolt room (700ish sq ft supposedly, if it was perfectly square and empty I guess) air filter unit: $161 Replacement filters, 2pk: $80 How often you'll have to replace the filter, even if you blow the loose dust off once or twice to extend them, depending on fan speed used/other factors: 2-4 months in my old fart brain, such shouldn't be more than $15 for one considering how often needs replacement. But the one I bought a couple years ago seems to help allergies a lot - dust, particles in the air etc. So I grudgingly ordered another one. Found a somewhat cheaper 2pk of replacement filters ($50), maybe they'll be the same/work just fine. They are both going in my room in Sac. so I can have at least one allergy-free space. If I wanted to fill the whole house with them the annual cost would be stupid. I should have gone into the air filter replacement business.

I can't even remember the last time I had an actual cold or flu, at least one that was worse than my normal allergies to make me notice. A benefit of an isolationist/asocial lifestyle. I suppose.

Spending this week pushing to pack "everything" - get it done. Won't take it all up now, but don't have to think about it anymore. ---old Xmas cards: realized one of my cousins looks a lot like (the older) Geena Davis. ---it's amazing how much the digital/net age has altered my perception of "what needs to be kept." ---houses feel a lot bigger when there is little in them ---box of my old journals from age 11-early20's. Y'know in the movie Seven, the villain's notebooks full of small cramped writings? Yeah, that's what they look like. Thankfully I didn't turn out to be a serial killer. So seems like, unless hubby's remote work stuff doesn't work out/he doesn't like that situation (or we win the Lottery) we've finally committed to which house to be in, at least for a few years. Goodbye postage-stamp house. We didn't especially love you, but you worked well for many years/served us well.

We actually seem to get a smallish tax refund these days from both Fed and state, which I was surprised by. I guess it's that employee tax form choice where they will take out more taxes so hopefully you won't owe anything vs. choosing a bit more initial take-home and likely owing in April. Or something. Even so, I would have expected to owe a similar amount vs. refund. Hubby went to being an official employee a while back (vs. independent contractor), mostly because the health insurance package was so nice vs. our aging selves, but still gets hourly wage + overtime rate vs. "annual salary" and it's been nice to not have to keep track of the ginormous amounts/rules/forms for taxes/soc. security (literally half of the fed tax aspect, really) that isn't automatically already taken out when self-employed. Writing those tax checks really makes you "appreciate" what the total of those taxes really are. >.>

The main reason I played Death Stranding twice on the PS4 was because of Offline and Online runs and I wanted to do a run with more "perfection" re: some stuff with foreknowledge and the "Online" help, like a perfect zipline network, roads, the top level of orders etc, because I'm like that. When I tried a 3rd time on the PC I didn't get past the first starter area because it felt like I'd done everything already and it's not all that repeatable. That said, I still want to check out the Director's Cut soon as I'm more settled re: moving houses. Maybe since it's been ages since I played it I could sorta get into it again for that 3rd/final time. The game uses a system where each new main hub area you enter into, will not show "online user" structures until you finish the first main story quest of that area (IIRC, connecting a location to the 'network'). Anyway, it'll look empty until then, and then suddenly you'll see a bunch of stuff pop in. So no, you won't miss anything by waiting. You can also just turn the "Online" mode off entirely (much more challenging re: tasks/resource and "network bandwidth cost" management), or tell it not to show vehicles and couple other options I think. I hated the "signs" everywhere, they were an eyesore and I turned those off. Once such items are placed into your game, they will remain forever and you have no control over what/where exactly gets placed, outside of manually deleting them if you find them non-useful ... which the game will then just randomly replace it with something else in/near the same spot. I took advantage of this to try to force it to place a lot more ziplines vs. anything else, although that was time consuming/very random. Online mode is great for an easier time with resources management and travel and for some, a sense of "this world has other people besides my MC in it" immersion I suppose, but it is very intrusive in a way and you may get annoyed with bridges/vehicles popping up in weird places and whatnot.

When you have 11 billion gold in Diablo3 with nothing to spend it on. I switched to my Wizard as a change of pace from Necro, and he still has this original piece of equipment that allows him to channel one skill, and constantly proc, every second, any other damaging spell you have hotkeyed (alternates between whatever they are). At some point they patched it so that item only works with a single other skill now (Twister) so it's nowhere near as good but with the original item I have, it's so OP. I just hold one button and sweep Disintegrate in a circle around me while Blizzard's and Orbs are also cast/fill the screen. Everything dies, even some stuff I can't see on the screen edges yet. It's so OP/mindless it's boring even for Diablo/ARPG standards, but makes for a great Rift Keystone or early Gem-leveling speed-farming chr.

Got my OLED TV/main PC up here now. They're sorta set up but waiting for a couple more tables for a whole setup. Still planning on staying for a year or two at least, but it all feels so weirdly temporary. We're both just feeling displaced I suppose. Sigh, whatever. Hubby has also decided he doesn't like wood foundations ... for me. I think this is because he's watching me side-crab gimp up and down the kinda steep/high 3-step stairs at every door and becoming concerned. I can walk flat ground/hills for miles just fine but me and stairs don't get along anymore unless they're perfect for my short legs/height but they never are. Just build some short ramps or something maybe.

Me right now. Sacramento is so much worse for my allergies.

My issue with Army of Darkness was it became a little too self-aware re the OTP slapstick. It was still funny but each bit went on too long. ED2 was just right of a mix for me. Darkman also had the mix of dark and weird humor to awful situations to it that I guess I like. Laughed like a loon in many spots, loved Liams perofrmance. "Take the ******* elephant!" And the cigar cutter guy. Felt like a comic book film back then. His spidey films were fun. Didnt like andrew garfields, and havent seen the newer ones. Couldnt get into Raising Arizona, found it weirdly boring.

Turning the area by the back fence into the bird and squirrel feeding station. Got lots of sparrows, doves, bluebirds, and there is this flock of magpjes around. Nice to sit under the porch cover and watch them squabble. Evenings are less peaceful then we would like tho, due to a neighbor who sits in her yard and talks loudly on the phone for literal hours, almost every night.

Mom was huggy. By the time I was a mid-teen she rarely tried to hug me. For 40 years hugs are reserved only for bf/spouse. Occasionally I'll tolerate a hug if it seems super rude to refuse or something but my usual method is to keep a good distance or literally hide behind someone else when saying goodbye or whatever, so people rarely even try to initiate one.

Since we were unmotivated/tired hubby and I finally saw SW: Rogue One last night. It's been in my (short) Prime watchlist for years, haha. At the least I didn't end up walking away like I did trying to watch Solo. It felt like it at least sorta tried to stay closer to the spirit of the first movies. I liked the robot. But they kept having these moments where I felt like we were supposed to care about chrs. demises or happenings and I didn't care at all because they gave me no reason to. The original SW trilogy is no characterization masterpiece, mind, but even less here then in those. Or maybe I just found the two leads unsympathetic, dunno. Still, it was at least watchable and there was no "I hate sand" type cringe... Sidenote: Last time I saw Forest Whitaker in a "sci-fi" role was in Battlefield Earth. From his small role/makeup/acting in Rogue One, I have decided he should stay far away from any more sci-fi roles.

These aren't really super funny, didn't know where else to put them. ...it's not just with dads. I can confirm at some point I hugged my mom this way all the time. ...opposites attract may work out for many, but I dated an extreme extrovert once, as a teen. That didn't work out so well.

I think it's Epic exclusive for some months first, like BL3's release was, in case you weren't aware/cared. I'm mildly curious about it but yeah, I don't care about BL3 at all at this point - not sure I would even get excited about a BL4 - and my expectations would be low. But maybe we could check it next Xmas, when hubby usually feels like revisiting the series.

Think I'm finally taking at least my main PC up north. Saw a game on Steam I'm half interested in (Ghostwire: Tokyo). It'd be nice to download it here then have something new to check out a bit. Doesn't seem like a masterpiece game or anything but it might fit my more casual/jump in and out, explore/expose a map, not too difficult combat style these days. Also, you can pet/feed make friends with dogs and cats or something, for some reason. Sounds like me, right? Hm.

Yeah, I try not to judge. We all have moments in our lives, just most of us aren't in the public eye when it happens. >.> Not a huge fan of C. Rock the entertainer but I did admire his keeping cool and how he kept on going with the show. Although mostly right this second I feel a little weird having randomly seen this clip (I thought it was a joke at first) and then falling into the trap of being curious enough to spend time googling for a few minutes. Haha. Back to ignoring the net.

More Google says Will's past year has been full of ... weirdness. Mid-life crisis perhaps.

I didn't even know the Oscars were on, but for some reason a video of that showed up in my YT feed some minutes ago. Using Google-fu, it would appear Jada has hair loss issues (hence her haircut) and thus C Rock's joke could be seen as not cool. But Wil's reaction was ... well. Whatever. Hollywood. I guess Wheaton has become strange? I used to like his blog way way way back, before it moved a few times. He seemed like an all right dude. I've seen some of his low budget films and he's a terrible actor, sorry, but that old blog was interesting to read anyway. Haven't paid attention to him in a long time tho.

I think that's what people mean when they talk about "sunk cost fallacy" re: TV series, like Lost, or The Walking Dead. I sort of understand that one too, but I've never done it. Loved Supernatural for 7 seasons, started to find it "eh" after season 8-9, and then stopped entirely. Stopped Walking Dead too. Same with Game of Thrones and many others. I guess my hope-o-meter isn't large enough, haha. I also tried watching Sharknado because of all the 'net hype about how bad it's funny it was, but I didn't make it past 10-15 minutes before I basically FFWD'd to the credits then turned it off.

As much as most of you seem to dislike the new Treks, I also am one who doesn't understand why y'all seem to keep on watching them. Is it a "watching a train wreck" type thing, so to speak? ...I remember watching that first episode of Picard ssn1 when they put it up for free on the web to promote it. I immediately decided that outside of simply enjoying seeing Patrick Stewart again it wasn't going to be for me and haven't bothered even looking up clips for it, let alone subbing to Paramount (or whoever it is that owns it, I forget offhand, pfft). I didn't hate that first episode but .. eh, didn't care either. ...I mean, I can watch a lot of "bad" TV sometimes if bored enough so maybe I can understand it a little bit, but...just like with anything (new) Star Wars, I've lost all interest in anything (new) Star Trek. It's not just whether the writing is good or logical etc per se ... a lot of creative/writing/thematic trends in tv/film is just not what I look for (or I became bored of already), in general. Another sign of becoming your parents, right.

Know what I like about Diablo3 on PS4? That you can play with "yourself" by running the game three times with different "user accounts" on the same single device. So I can take my main chr. on account 1 and drag 1-3 other characters behind me to increase difficulty and drop rates, as well as easy in-game access to tons of mule chrs. on those other user accounts. Make as many user accounts as you want for endless and well organized mule accounts etc. The only other time I remember being able to do similar with a PC game was Borderlands 1, where I was able to alt-tab out of that game and click/start a 2nd running copy (on same PC) to then join/mule/drag a chr. around etc. I'm sure there were other PC games you could do that too but I didn't play (or just don't remember) them. Do PC games still let you do that sort of thing anymore, or has all the digital, online/account and drm measures = never...outside of maybe some indie games here and there? At any rate, I finally got past Greater Rift 70 last week and can get Primal Ancient items now. My main Necro is at Paragon Level 809. I don't use any "meta build" so my damage is still pretty low for the last difficulty (T16) but T15 is now pretty easy. Chance for Primals is all I wanted. The chance is really low, but I have gotten a few.