#omeaday Day 130: Rest and Relaxation

Well, that’s our first “full” day of holiday over and done with, and we’ve had a pleasantly relaxing, chilled out day. The temptation when coming somewhere like Center Parcs is to want to be doing stuff all the time, but honestly we’ve had a very nice day today just visiting the swimming pool in the morning, getting some bits and pieces from the shop for lunch and dinner, and then just enjoying hanging out in our lodge.

It’s strange, isn’t it? Even when you’re doing the sort of things you’d usually do at home, they somehow feel more “special” when you’re doing them somewhere out of the ordinary. I had a cheese baguette at lunchtime and it was approximately 48% more delicious by virtue of the fact it was prepared and eaten by me in a forest cabin rather than our house.

The wildlife around here is insanely tame. Earlier in the day, a group of ducks came up to our window and actually started tapping on it. They somehow knew we’d just made sandwiches, and wanted to participate. At other times, we’ve had deer and squirrels come right up to the patio doors, clearly begging. It seems the advice to not feed the wildlife mostly falls on deaf ears. And the wildlife, it appears, is not above being cute in an attempt to get food.

For activities that don’t involve going outside, I decided to play through Ufouria: The Saga on Evercade while I was here, and I beat it earlier today. That was thoroughly satisfying; it’s a great game, and I’m glad I took the time to play it. Perhaps some words on MoeGamer about that one when I get back.

Anyway, it’s now well after midnight and I should probably sleep. No real plans for tomorrow except to have dinner out, and perhaps do some “Adventure Golf”. Toodle pip.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

#oneaday Day 129: Current holiday

We’re on holiday! After a three hour drive earlier today — which honestly already feels like a lifetime ago — we are safely ensconced in our accommodation at Center Parcs.

The last few times we’ve been, we’ve stayed in the apartments that are near the main plaza of shops and restaurants, but this year it was only a little extra to get a two-bedroom lodge in the woods, so we’ve gone for that as a little extra added luxury. It’s lovely having lots of space. Indeed, there’s an entire (bed)room we probably won’t use at all; presently, it’s where I dumped my suitcase so it wouldn’t clutter our bedroom.

We haven’t done very much today. It’s been nice to just relax with no worries or commitment to anything, so we’ve been enjoying that today. We had some nice dinner bought from the shop and an amazing cake, then the rest of the evening has been spent lounging, looking at the wildlife while the light was still present, then watching some TV (old school broadcast style!) and playing some video games.

Tomorrow we’re likely going to hit the pool… sorry, the “Subtropical Swimming Paradise”, and from there, who knows? We have some idle intentions of maybe going to the gym, playing some pool and going bowling, but we’re just going to take each day as it comes and decide according to what we feel like.

The Lodge brings back some nice memories. When I came to Center Parcs as a teen with my family and some friends, we always stayed in a lodge (or a “villa” as they were known then) and while some things have changed — the appliances are more up to date and the TV is, of course, a wall-mounted flatscreen instead of a hulking great CRT — but aside from that, the layout feels comfortably familiar.

It’s bringing back fond memories of my friend Ed attempting to explain the appeal of Wolfenstein 3-D to my parents over breakfast — as I recall, his 12 year old self arguing that you “just don’t notice” the bloody violence after playing a whole didn’t go down too well.

It’s bringing back fond memories of my friend Craig and I watching MTV and realising that we both liked quite a bit broader a spectrum of music than the indie rock that was fashionable at the time — after that holiday, I remember going out and buying Madonna and Savage Garden albums on the strength of the tunes we liked on the TV.

And it’s bringing back fond memories of a trip when I was young enough for my brother to still be living at home with us, and him bringing his friend Alex along. My enduring memory of that pairing was Alex, who thought he was God’s gift to women, causing two girls to fall off their bikes by saying a distinctly Leslie Phillips-style “hell-O!” as they passed by.

A lot of good memories here, then, from both the recent and distant past. It’ll be good to add a few more to the mix this year.

#oneaday Day 128: Imminent Holiday

As I may have mentioned once or twice recently, we’re going on holiday tomorrow. We’ll be away from Monday to Friday visiting Center Parcs in Elveden Forest, which has been a thoroughly nice place to have some time away on all the previous occasions we’ve visited.

My intentions for this holiday are to unplug almost completely. I will post on this blog daily because of the whole #oneaday thing, but outside of that, I intend to avoid any sort of attachment to the Internet whatsoever, except where absolutely necessary to research things. That means I am making the following promises to myself:

I will not worry about writing anything for MoeGamer or making any sort of video for YouTube.
I will not poke my head in on Discord channels that are likely to annoy me.
I will not look at Twitter at all.
I will minimise my use of Bluesky.

I haven’t really talked about the last one at all, but as you may have surmised from the sidebar, I have been dipping my toe back into social media with Bluesky recently. And for the most part, I’ve found it a thoroughly pleasant environment that feels very much like Twitter did in the early days. It’s very left-leaning, which can at times be a little insufferable, and wherever you look you’re very likely to run into either a particularly horny furry or someone proud of the fact they’re wearing a cage on their cock, but for the most part it has been a remarkably stress-free social media experience so far.

Part of the reason for this is that the platform is built to discourage “dunking”, whereas Twitter outright incentivises it these days. The main way Bluesky differs from Twitter is through its absolutely nuclear block function, which means that if someone quote-posts or replies to someone they have subsequently blocked, if you are following the person who made the quote-post or reply, the original post will appear as blocked to you also. This discourages people from going “looking for trouble” because you can’t even see the username of the blocked post. This can be frustrating at times if you missed the original context, but for the most part I think it’s a positive thing.

So anyway, as a result of all that, and the fact I have a few friendly faces there, I have been using Bluesky a bit recently, and thus, if I’m going to share anything about the holiday that isn’t on this blog, I’ll likely do so there. If you’re a Bluesky user and want to follow me, here.

But yes. Anyway, the main point of this post is to note that I will be disconnecting from the greater part of the Internet as much as humanly possible while I am away, because I need it. I need some time away where I just don’t put any unnecessary pressure on myself, or potentially put myself in situations where I might end up getting annoyed. I’m tempted to outright leave a few Discord servers to remove the temptation altogether, but probably won’t go that far.

This holiday is to rest, relax and genuinely get away from it all. My mental health has been in the toilet of late, and the Internet has played a big part in creating that situation. So instead I’m going to be among the trees, play some video games, go swimming and look at friendly deer. We might go and fire a crossbow (not at the deer) and play some pool, too. We haven’t decided yet. But it’s going to be nice.

Today, meanwhile, it’s last-minute packing and tidying up ahead of my mother-in-law coming to look after the cats — sorry burglars, the house will still be occupied while we’re away — and perhaps finishing off Silent Hill 2 later.

#oneaday Day 115: Forest getaway

I slept terribly last night and consequently woke up this morning feeling like absolute garbage. It didn’t improve much as the day went on, but I feel vaguely more human now, just as it’s about time to head to bed.

I can, at least, console myself with the fact that the wife and I have booked a much-needed holiday for in a couple of weeks. We’re going to Center Parcs in Elveden Forest again. This is, I believe, the third time we’ve been to Center Parcs together generally, and the second time we’ve been to Elveden Forest. It’s actually the fourth time I’ve been to Elveden Forest, as I went twice when I was a kid: once with my parents, my brother and one of his friends, then again some years later with my parents and one of my friends.

Center Parcs can be a pricy holiday, particularly if you start getting involved in the activities they offer, but honestly even if you do pretty much nothing for the time you’re there, it’s still a thoroughly pleasant getaway. This time around, we’re taking a two-bedroom villa (or “lodge”, I believe they call them now) as it was only fifty quid more than the apartments we usually go for. That should provide plenty of space to spread out, relax and enjoy ourselves.

I was kind of hoping that the next time we went away on holiday, I’d be in a better physical condition, but that’s very much a slow process that has kind of stalled a little bit of late. I’m still down in weight from where I was, but I’ve been really struggling with motivation, so I’ve decided to take a short break from attending Slimming World meetings, at least until after our holiday, and then decide what to do after that. I have been deriving some satisfaction from the Fitness Boxing sessions I’ve been doing, though, so once I feel a bit better after today’s crappy feeling, I’ll be back on that.

Anyway, regardless of the state I’m in, I’m looking forward to some time away. It’s good to get away from it all now and again, have a change of scenery and spend some time in an environment where there’s zero pressure. And I well and truly intend to “unplug” as much as possible from the Internet while I’m away. I’ll still post my daily blog there, and we’ll almost certainly take some gaming equipment with us, but other than that, I intend to pretty much completely ignore that the rest of the world exists for a while, and I’m very much looking forward to that.

#oneaday Day 63: Late-Night Disco

Finished Disco Elysium this evening. I think I will save more in-depth thoughts for a proper write-up on MoeGamer, but I came away very satisfied with the whole thing, and impressed that the game as a whole managed to successfully carry a highly replayable 30+ hour RPG without a single combat sequence. If you’ve been hanging fire on giving this one a go, don’t; it’s absolutely great, particularly if you enjoyed Planescape: Torment’s approach to the CRPG: dialogue-heavy, emphasis on the story and on having the flexibility to really “play” your character in a number of different ways, despite following a canonical storyline that focuses on them.

Anyway, that has… been the majority of my day, to be perfectly honest. It’s the last full day of my week off work, so I thought I’d take a day to just do “nothing” in particular, just enjoy something. So I did. And I’m glad I did; it’s always satisfying to reach the conclusion of an enjoyable game, and especially if you can do so while not under any real sort of time pressure to do anything else.

Tomorrow I might go into town for a bit to have some lunch with Andie and a couple of her friends, then I think I might record a few more videos. I had sort-of planned to make a bunch of videos during this week off, but that didn’t happen for one reason or another. I’m not annoyed about that, mind; part of the reason for having this week off in the first place was just to decompress and unwind somewhat from the daily grind and stress of work, so loading myself up with self-imposed “work” to do may not have been the best thing to do.

But anyway. Now Disco Elysium is safely ticked off the list, I can think about other things. I got a few retro treats through the post today — Jungle Strike and Urban Strike for SNES (I already have Desert Strike), Golfamania for Master System and Rad Racer for NES. I’m excited to give all of these a go for various reasons. But that can probably wait until tomorrow. For now, I need a poo, then to go to sleep. So that’s what I’m going to do. In that order.

#oneaday Day 56: Disconnect

I’m officially on holiday for a week! I don’t have anything much planned for the time off, aside from our trip on Thursday to go and look at pianos, but I’m going to try and be vaguely “productive” with my time. That means I’m going to try and force myself out in this heat and into the gym — once I’m in the air conditioning, I’m sure it’ll be fine — and I’m going to record some videos, and perhaps write some stuff.

One thing I’m going to try and make an effort to do is not look at “online” stuff as much as humanly possible. I’m not going to look at Twitter (easy, since I don’t have an account any more except the official one I use for work), I’m not going to look at Facebook (ditto), I’m not going to look at BlueSky (easy enough) and I’m probably going to try and ration my Discord usage as much as possible also.

I just don’t want to know, you see. I don’t want or need to know what people are arguing about today, or what the worst people on the Internet are being sexist, racist or transphobic about today. I don’t want to know about the seemingly endless parade of layoffs in the games industry. And I don’t want to know how shit online media in general is. I know all these things. They are not going to change.

Instead, I would like a nice, quiet week off, away from it all as much as possible. This will demand a certain amount of willpower, of course, but I’m confident I can find enough things to occupy myself with that I won’t need to idly flip through social-related apps on my phone. I have games to play, books to read, episodes of Deep Space Nine to watch, music to play, videos to make and all manner of other things. So why should I waste my time with stuff that, on balance, makes me miserable?

I shouldn’t, obviously. So that’s the plan. Minimise looking at anything potentially upsetting, frustrating or annoying online and just enjoy the things I have around me. I will, of course, still be checking in here and those videos I’m making will be up on YouTube, but aside from that… a bit of “digital detox” is just what the doctor ordered for a week. I hope it leaves me feeling refreshed, because heaven knows I feel run-down right now.

Time for the first sleep of the holiday, then. Bring on the aircon!

#oneaday Day 54: Catch-Up Time

I apparently forgot to write anything yesterday! In my defence, it is so brain-meltingly hot here right now that remembering to do literally anything is proving to be somewhat troublesome. After I’m done here, I’m going to go and sit in the air-conditioning in the bedroom and watch some Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

I’ve got a week off from work next week, which I’m looking forward to. I’m feeling a bit run-down and tired at the moment, and a bit of a break is just what I need. Plus I have some potential excitement ahead: hopefully next week I will be getting a new piano, or at least ordering a new piano. The one we got for £250 a few years back has pretty much reached the end of its life, as it’s not staying in tune at all, and is, to put it mildly, displeasurable to both play and listen to. So it’s going, hopefully to be replaced with something much nicer and newer.

I’m looking forward to this, because I keep telling myself that I should play the piano more, but then with the piano itself not being at its best, I felt disinclined to spend time with it. Still, it’s had some good times here in its lifetime, and we must have had it a few years at this point. (According to the archives, we got it in 2015.) It has to go, though, and sadly, due to its age, it’s unlikely to find a new home. The place I’ll hopefully be getting a new piano from is able to take it away and responsibly dispose of it, though, so hopefully at least some of its components can live on as spares or something.

I’ve probably shared some piano stuff on here at some point in the past, if you’re not already familiar. Hold on and let me rummage through the archives.

Hmm. Can’t find anything on the blog, but there’s a couple of things on YouTube. Here you go:

And here:

Both of those were actually recorded using the electric piano I still own but don’t really have anywhere convenient to put. And annoyingly, the make of electric piano I have seems to be the one and only that they don’t make stands for. I have an X-shaped keyboard stand for it, but that’s far too wobbly and uncomfortable for everyday use — plus since the electric piano doesn’t have any built-in speakers, I’d have to find somewhere to put the amp that goes with it. Not ideal.

So yeah. Hopefully by this time next week I will have, at the very least, ordered a new piano. I look forward to sharing it with you!

2147: Back to Reality

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Was going to assemble a lengthy post full of Xenoblade Chronicles X tips and tricks, but felt that three days in a row would probably be pushing it a bit, so I’ll save that for tomorrow. I have plenty to share!

So, as Sunday rolls into Monday, our short holiday is over, and we’re both back to work in the morning. The last week has kind of flown by, which is a bit of a shame, but we’ve both had a good time, and it was clearly good for both of us to get out of the house and away from numerous stressful influences so we could just enjoy ourselves.

I actually don’t mind the prospect of going back to work, though. I feel like I’m getting into a decent “rhythm”, for want of a better word — though irregular shifts and hours mean that it’s probably not the best word — and I feel reasonably confident staring down the Christmas retail period. I’m also feeling semi-confident I might manage to stay on after the holiday season is over, but I’ve learned to my cost to not, you know, something something chickens hatching. So I’m not counting on it.

Not a lot else of note to share right now, really; we saw some owls and did some archery at Center Parcs (not at the same time) and lots of swimming. We ate nice food — we set aside a particular day to ignore the diet and treat ourselves, so we’ll see on Wednesday how much impact that had — and enjoyed some peaceful R&R in the woods.

We’re into December now, and the end of the year beckons. 2015 has been another year that hasn’t been all that great for me, frankly, but there have been highlights here and there; this last week has probably been one of them. Let’s hope there’s a few more I can squeeze in before 2015 becomes 2016.

For now, though, it’s time for bed, and back to normality tomorrow morning. Boo.

1872: Long Trip

I’m in Boston! PAX East proper starts tomorrow, so today was all about actually getting to the place, getting together with people and then just bumming around to have a bit of fun.

I was a little stressed out at the prospect of the journey, to be honest. When I’m going abroad, I usually travel with other people whom I can rely on and ask questions of, so this was a relatively new experience to me. Still, I got through safely, and my bag even arrived at the same time as I did, which is the main thing I was worried about.

The reason I was a little anxious was that this was also the first time I’d taken a multi-stage trip to the States — in this case, flying from my local airport Southampton to Dublin, then onwards from there to Boston. I was particularly interested to discover that Dublin airport has a “pre-clearance” area for visitors to the States. I hadn’t come across this before, but it appears to be an extremely good idea: rather than wasting hours of time after you’ve been stuck on a plane for hours, pre-clearance allows you to do all the immigration and passport control nonsense before you actually take your flight. It’s actually sort of surreal; it looks like you’re entering the States — there are pictures of Obama and everything — but in reality you’re just heading for a normal airport gate.

When I arrived at Boston I successfully navigated the subway system to the hotel I’m staying at with my friends; this cost a fraction of the price of getting a cab, so it was an infinitely preferable option given that my funds are somewhat limited at present.

I’m not sure what we’re going to see at PAX tomorrow; for one thing, we’re probably going to take on the Final Fantasy XIV battle challenge and fight Shiva in the hope of winning a T-shirt, but other than that, I couldn’t tell you yet.

For now, though, it’s after midnight (here) and my body clock still probably reckons it’s about 6:15 in the morning, so I better go to bed. Night!

1764: An Outing with Owls

It’s our second (and final) full day here at Center Parcs. We both woke up extremely stiff all over after what was a pretty busy day yesterday, so we had a relaxing morning. We headed over to a cafe in the main plaza area to have some breakfast — a pretty magnificent Eggs Royale (Eggs Benedict with smoked salmon instead of ham) accompanied by spinach and some really nice if slightly salty crispy potato bits.

After that, we had a little wander around the shops in the plaza, which we hadn’t really explored a great deal. We paid particular attention to the sweet shop, which offered the typically overpriced pick and mix, a selection of American sweets (including Nerds, Runts and Gobstoppers, the latter two of which I haven’t seen for years), some nice looking ice-cream and a selection of fudge that would put Cornwall’s finest to shame. We came away with a box full of fudge of various flavours and have been enjoying that over the course of the day. Pro-tip: chocolate fudge with Oreos in it is proper delicious.

Our main activity for the day was “An Outing with Owls”, which we signed up for largely on the promise of being able to see some owls, since owls are pretty cool. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from the session, but it turned out to be a lot of fun, with everyone getting the opportunity to get their falconry on and let owls of various sizes land on their (leather glove-protected) hands while they nommed on bits of chicken. These well-trained birds swooping from person to person is an impressive thing to witness, and not a little disconcerting when one comes flying straight for you before perching politely on your hand until it’s had something to eat.

We got to see a selection of owls, ranging from a barn owl to a Great Grey, which, true to its name, was both grey and massive. (And dubbed “Clock Owl” by Andie and I, due to the fact that when it was sat on its perch prior to the session, it had the size, shape and appearance of a rather feathery mantelpiece clock.) There was also a South American burrowing owl, which was kind of adorable, too; rather than swooping around as the larger owls did, this tiny little thing preferred to scurry around on the floor, then occasionally leap and fly up onto anywhere that took its fancy — knees, hands, shoulders and even, on one particularly memorable occasion, the top of a gentleman’s hat.

We came back to the apartment for a well-earned rest after that, and we’re shortly to have one final night-time session in the Subtropical Swimming Paradise before grabbing some dinner.

It’s been a very pleasant — if quite expensive! — couple of days away, and I predict it will be quite tough to go back to reality on Tuesday! Such is the way with holidays, though; good times have to end at some point and we all have to make our way back to the humdrum nature of our daily existences.

Still, for now, there’s still more to enjoy, so we’re going to make the most of it.