IRL

Words and Such

I haven’t really been in the writing mood too much as of late. I know, not a great business model for a blogger, but also… I do this for fun, not for glory.

In an effort to post something, here’s a point-form list of things that I maybe would have written more about in another timeline and that may be of moderate interest. I may still write about some of them at length, but probably not.

I’ve been playing the new Ys game in short bursts since it released a couple weeks ago. As you may know, I’m a big, big fan of the Ys series, and Ys X: Nordics is not disappointing so far. The first few chapters were a bit slow, but it’s taking off now, and I really like the two-member party system. It’s very unique, if a bit limited in options.
Work has been kind of insanely busy lately. Which is a good thing, because it helps to keep me on task. Also, it’s becoming more and more apparent to me how well-respected (and maybe even well-liked) I am within the organization. As someone who’s had low self-esteem for basically his whole life, it’s really quite nice to feel confident and dependable.
I bought a stupidly expensive alarm clock from Nintendo recently, and I don’t regret a penny of it. I never expected such a weird thing could bring me such joy. Will likely do more words about this at some point.
Went to see Venom: The Last Dance recently. I’m still not sure exactly how I feel about it or why (I haven’t given it all that much consideration), but I may have been kinda bored for most of the runtime? Definitely the least enjoyable of the trilogy, in my opinion, even though the climax and epilogue were satisfying.
After years of sleeping on the couch with the TV on just about every night, I’ve been sleeping in my bed like a normal-ass person over the last week. I’m not really sleeping much better (still waking up at least once a night), but I am feeling a little more well-rested, and my back is definitely thanking me.
A couple of co-workers have been singing the praises of the roguelike poker game, Balatro, so I decided to give it a whirl on their recommendations. I’m trying my best, but I don’t know if it’s right for me. Even the tutorial felt overwhelming. And here I was thinking that I was getting over my fear of roguelikes.
I was going to put a link to a relevant post in the paragraph above, but it turns out that I never published it. I guess that’s something I probably should do, seems silly to have written out a full 2000-plus-word post that’s just sitting in limbo. Actually, there are at least two of those…
Taking a more proactive role in managing both my eating and exercise regimens throughout the year has done wonders for my health, both physical and mental. It’s been a long road, but I’ve far surpassed my weight loss goal and I’ve been feeling fantastic. It would be nice to have someone, you know, notice, but oh well! External validation is for chumps, anyway.
I went on a short vacation with my family at the end of September. I don’t think I wrote a single word about it, but it was awesome. Nothing terribly exciting, but it was great to simply get away and be somewhere different for a while. And also to have that QT with the people who are closest to me, of course. That’s always good.

History of TE: 2004

Did you know that June 2024 marks the 20th anniversary of the release of Mega Man Battle Network 4? Well I did. Or at least, I had a hunch, since for whatever reason my brain has been laser-focused on memories of playing that particular game – despite the fact that I didn’t really like it.

But I’m not here to type a retrospective about MMBN4. No, sir. I already did that almost a decade ago, and haven’t revisited the game since.

Today I want to just rattle off a few interesting points about 2004. It was a big year for me! Lots happened! Firstly, there was the MMBN4 release. That was big, but not for the reason you think! See, I played the Japanese ROM for a while before the NA version came out (there was a six-month delay), and because it’s an RPG, the fact that I couldn’t read Japanese was kind of a big deal. So I started trying to tech myself katakana. It obviously didn’t really take, but I was able to learn enough to read some text in the game, and I still remember a handful of the characters to this day! I don’t think that it’s a stretch to say that the best part of MMBN4 is that it made me engage in self-improvement, in some tiny way.

Who Arted?

Well, I drew these things. Better put ’em here for posterity.

Absolutely Not a Book Review

Early this year, I decided to write a little list of things I want to accomplish throughout the year. Not resolutions, per se, but just a few things that I would like to do. Things that may or may not improve me or my life. I even wrote them out on a sheet of paper, checklist-style, and stuck it to my fridge so that it’s always at the forefront of my mind.

I won’t share the whole list, because quite frankly, it’s none of your damn business. However, one of the items on that list is to read six books. Not a lofty goal by any means, but a goal no less. Something small to strive for. And of course, me being me, I dove into this task by choosing the most difficult book that I own: Alien Phenomenology, or What It’s Like to Be a Thing by Ian Bogost.

Now, I have read this book before, several years ago, and I remembered it being a very intellectually challenging read. My line of thought here was that I’ve become much more interested in philosophy in the intervening years, so maybe it’d make more sense to me this time around. I don’t think it worked out quite that way! In all honesty, I thought that I’d written something about this book the first time I read it, which I was planning to pop in a link to and call it a day. But I hadn’t written about it before! Oops!

I’m Still Here

Hey, so… blogging. It’s a thing I used to do. I know that nobody cares that I haven’t really been writing anything lately, but I have excuses, and they must be made!

First off, January and the first half of February were nuts at work. Things have calmed down now, but for the first 45 days or so of 2024, I was run pretty ragged. Most days left me mentally exhausted, and that really killed my drive to do much in my spare time besides watch other people play video games on YouTube.

Oh, and as an accidental segue, AGDQ happened a few weeks back. I didn’t catch a ton of it, but the Donkey Kong Country and Donkey Kong 64 runs were amazing. And we can’t forget the Super Mario 64 drum% run. That was mind-boggling.

Then there’s my own YouTube presence, which I’ve been grinding away at, spending huge chunks of my weekends recording and editing videos that nobody will ever watch. To what end? I don’t know, and I’ve been seriously pondering why I even continue to do it. Well, the let’s plays, at least. People seem to appreciate my fast food reviews for whatever reason.

Lastly, I have been hopelessly addicted to Steelrising for the last week. This is a video game you’ve likely never heard of -I know I hadn’t- which is free on PS+ as of this post. I added it to my library, not expecting to ever actually play it, but then I did. And then I couldn’t stop. Even when I’m not playing, I’m thinking about it. Pleasant thoughts, too, which is odd because it’s a soulslike and usually those go hand-in-hand with feelings more along the lines of… intense frustration. I would like to write a full thing about this game at some point, but given my total lack of writing lately, the outlook is not terribly optimistic.

Yeah, so that’s my short list of excuses. They’re not good, but that’s why I’m categorizing them as excuses, specifically. Please note that I have completed writing my 2023 Game of the Year feature, and it’s been done since mid-December. I just haven’t had the drive to put together fancy header images. That’s literally all that’s holding me back from publishing it. Kinda sad. Maybe I’ll get around to it by the time spring rolls around.

Minneapolis 2023 – Big Bag o’ Candy

Earlier this year, I went on a little trip to Minneapolis, Minnesota with my family. You can read all about how poorly I ate during said trip here. As something of a follow-up to that post, now I’m going to write about all the candy I bought while I was there!

So, there’s this store called It’s Sugar in the Mall of America. I don’t really know much about it, aside from the fact that it’s a big ol’ candy store. I actually first encountered this establishment when I was in New Jersey last year. In the American Dream mall, It’s Sugar is a three-story-tall paradise with an Oreo-themed café on its top floor. MOA’s version isn’t quite as big, but it’s still basically the promised land for people like me who suffer from an insatiable sweet tooth.

The biggest appeal of this store are the bins upon bins of bulk candy available to mix and match at one’s discretion. Both of my trips to It’s Sugar ended with me buying a bag of assorted gummy candies that was roughly the size of my head. I won’t say exactly how much they cost, but it’s somewhere in the ballpark of fifty American dollars. So, yeah. Look, I’ve never once claimed to be good at money. These bags of candy lasted me weeks though, so the cost was justified enough for me.

Now that you have context, I am going to describe every different type of gummy candy that I selected for my big bag of candy. Because that’s interesting. Right?

Minneapolis 2023 – Food Journal

A few weekends ago, my family and I went down to Minneapolis, Minnesota for a little bit of a get-away. There was actually a very specific reason why we went there, but I’ll get more into that in a later blog post (I indend to publish several relating to this trip!). What I want to talk about today is the depths of gluttony that I (re)discovered during this journey.

I often joke about how poor my diet is, and I like to think that my exaggeration is usually fairly obvious. That said, I knew that this trip would be one long junk-food-fest and did my best to eat little and well for the few days leading up to it. My family, though I love them dearly, are absolutely enablers when it comes to eating terribly, and I am a boy of very little willpower. Let the record state that I have no-one but myself to blame!

So, yeah, I don’t own a scale, but I could tell by the way that my shirts didn’t fit quite right when I got home, that I definitely over-indulged during my trip. Here’s the summary of all the terrible meal choices I made!

Mighty = Fallen

I’ve never had any delusion that I’m special. In fact, considering that there are roughly eight billion of us humans, I’m of the mind that nobody is special.

But I did hope, for a wonderful, fleeting moment, that perhaps there was something special about me. Specifically, after three and a half years of COVID-19 being a thing, and having been in close proximity to infected folks on a number of occasions but still never contracting it myself, I hoped that I might have a natural immunity to the virus.

And then last week I caught it.

Thankfully, I didn’t end up in an iron lung or anything. It’s actually been fairly bearable -not nearly as dire as it was made out to be in those early days (which could be because I’m a generally healthy person, and/or caught a weaker variant). That’s not to say it’s been fun! No, sir! For a week now, I’ve been almost completely without energy, essentially glued to the couch and wishing that I could sleep for more than two hours at a time. Add to that a cocktail of cold and flu symptoms that seem to come and go as they please, and you’ve got a recipe for a pretty miserable Ryan.

Well, I mean, my physical self has been miserable. I like to think that I’ve been in reasonably good spirits, considering all the horrible things happening inside my body. It also probably doesn’t help that I haven’t been sick at all since before the whole pandemic thing started, so I likely perceived it as being worse than it actually was. Also also, you know that stereotype of how men aren’t very good at handling being sick? Yeah, I embody that trope. Hell, I probably caused it.

Which is all to say: I’m good. I got knocked down for a while but I feel like I’ll be back to 100% before too long. There’s honestly not much else I feel like I need to write about the experience; it was basically a kaiju-scaled cold that hung around longer than usual. I just wanted to make sure that I recorded that it happened. I need to write about something, after all.

That Time I Went to New Jersey

I’ve been blogging for over twenty years now, and over those two decades, my website’s focus has definitely changed. Or, narrowed, at least. I used to write up long, fun articles about whatever I found inspiration in. Now, I mostly just list video games that I’ve played and occasionally fart out some ramblings about movies or donuts.

One of my favourite things I’ve ever written was the 6-part summary of the trip that my family took to Walt Disney World in the spring of 2004. It was an incredible adventure, and being able to read it over and over again brings me so much joy. Especially since it’s so long ago now that the memories are starting to fade. So it strikes me as odd that I haven’t written a single word about the trip that I took to New Jersey and New York last year. Super weird, right?

Welp, it’s time to correct that. Now, you will get the chance to read all the grimy details of the first real vacation I’ve taken since… Minneapolis 2012, I guess? Now I’m wondering if I wrote anything about that one.

Our adventure actually begins in December of 2021, when I was writing my 24 Days of Gluttony feature. One of the entries was about BAND-MAID, one of my all-time favourite bands, and how I felt as though I’d never get an opportunity to see them live. As luck would have it, only a couple of months later, they announced a US tour! That alone wasn’t especially helpful to me, being a Canadian citizen. But then I said to myself “Ryan, nobody is going to make your dreams come true but you!” and as soon as tickets went on sale, I secured a couple to the BAND-MAID show in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

Now the trick was figuring out who would want to go with me. I have a handful of people that I know will tag along to local concerts, but asking someone to spend a long weekend and a cubic buttload of money to go see a band they’ve never heard of is a huge ask. It took a couple months before a flash of inspiration hit: I’d convince my brothers to all come along with me as a cool adventure that we could all go on together. To make a long story short: only two of three were able to come, which isn’t the worst turnout. It would still be a great little vacation!

Now, I’ve never planned a real trip before (only short road trips), so I had a lot of anxiety when it came time to booking flights and a hotel and creating an itinerary. It was a pretty daunting task, but apparently I did a pretty great job, because everything went exactly according to plan. Well, aside from the fact that I’d initially rented a car, but was quickly convinced to cancel it and just Uber everywhere. That turned out to be very sage advice, because I think that I likely would have had an emotional breakdown trying to drive on the New Jersey turnpike. I’m a perfectly competent driver, but only in small-scale traffic. The roads down there were like nothing I’d ever seen!

Actually, I made another mistake at the very outset of the trip that could have very well tanked the whole thing. Apparently, you need a very specific proof of COVID vaccination app to get on an airplane these days, and I had the wrong one. Also, I didn’t have the documents needed to register on said app on me at the time, so it was only through an extremely fortunate series of coincidences that I was able to get that all squared away in time to board the plane.

Other than that little snafu, though? It was all smooth like buttah. The screening line to get into the airport proper was insanely long and slow, but we had showed up plenty early so it wasn’t a problem. Getting on a plane for the first time in roughly 18 years was incredibly exciting, and I have to say that my appreciation for air travel is just as strong as it was all those many years ago. Flying was great fun, even though much of it came down to the distractions that I’d brought with me (several books and a Nintendo Switch). Takeoffs, landings, being above the clouds, looking down on the world below; I just can’t get enough of the romance of it all. Admittedly, I don’t think I’d enjoy a flight that lasts longer than a couple of hours quite as much, and since I fly so rarely the experience is that much more special, but still, it was great!

Our first layover in Montreal airport wasn’t terribly exciting. We had a ton of time to kill, but failed to realize that all the most interesting shops and restaurants were before we went through the customs line. So we had to settle for a comparatively small selection of food vendors for snacks. I did end up getting a really good (but insanely overpriced) sandwich, so it could have been worse.

The second flight was even more impressive than the first, as we flew over the Catskill Mountains, which was an incredible sight to behold. I quite honestly wanted to jump out the airplane, parachute down into the middle of all the golden trees, and start exploring. That’s not very realistic, of course, but that’s what putting like 300 hours into The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild will do to a person.

Many hours later, we landed in Newark Liberty International Airport. We were now squarely in good ‘ol ‘Murica, which meant that unfamiliar restaurants were everywhere in said airport, and good gravy did I ever want to start eating everything in sight. But we dutifully soldiered on to collect our bags and hailed a cab to take us to our hotel. Fun fact: this was the first time I’d ever taken a taxi anywhere. Many firsts for me on this trip!

While I said before that all my planning turned out very well, I did learn a lesson about booking hotels. Namely, make sure that your hotel is not situated in the middle of absolutely nowhere. In the name of efficiency, I opted to book a hotel very close to both the American Dream mall and MetLife Stadium, both places that we were going to visit over the course of the weekend. Unfortunately, I had failed to realize from the Google map that this hotel wasn’t within (reasonable) walking distance of anything, and even if we did want to hike anywhere, there were no sidewalks at all. Just roads and ditches. So a car would have actually been kinda nice to have. In the end, we spent less on Uber rides than the rental would have cost, so it did work itself out.

That nonsense aside, we arrived at the hotel and took a load off for a while. The Marriott where we stayed was… well, it was fine for the price we paid. The room was nice enough and was overall pretty clean. There were a few things that caused me to cock an eyebrow in suspicion; namely the bathroom that seemed to have been in desperate need of a renovation for many years. Also, the television knew my name, which caught me off guard. I didn’t know that kind of personalization was possible. I hadn’t been in a hotel for about a decade! We would also learn before long that whoever had been in our room previously had presumably used the mini-fridge to store open pepperoni; we put some water bottles in there and upon retrieving them, they were thoroughly coated with a strong scent of pepperoni. Not exactly what you want to be smelling when drinking water.

The evening was then spent checking out the Amercian Dream mall. We Ubered our way over there (my first Uber ride!) and discovered it to be surprisingly empty for a Friday night. It was also surprisingly empty as far as shops go. The place is massive, the second-largest shopping mall in the US, but probably half of the retail spaces were blocked off and empty. That’s not to say that there wasn’t a good selection of things to see! It’s just that the actual “shopping” part was a little underwhelming. Here are a number of other attractions you can find at American Dream:

Nickelodeon Universe theme park
DreamWorks water park
An indoor skiing/snowboarding hill
At least two mini-golf courses
Escape rooms
A giant Ferris wheel
A three-story candy store (IT’S SUGAR)
A skating rink
A mirror maze
LEGOLAND Discovery Centre
An indoor wave pool for surfing
Probably a bunch of other things that I missed!

We wandered around for some time, doing a little shopping, getting the lay of the land, and seeing the sights, but for the most part just looking at all the restaurants and trying to figure out how we were going to eat that much food over the course of two and a half days. The only things that I bought that evening were a huge bag of candy and a giant slab of a cookie pizza, but it was one of the most satisfying cookies I’ve ever eaten (half of it was saved for a post-breakfast snack the next morning). We ate dinner at the “legendary” Mr. Beast Burger, and it wasn’t bad. It was just… nothing really special. If I’m remembering correctly, I had a bacon burger with fries on it. Good, but like, there would be no hype around it if not for the major YouTuber branding.

Heading back to the hotel once we were all walked out for the day, we began tossing around ideas of how to go about the next day’s adventure, which was heading into Manhattan to do the tourist thing. With a vague sense of which landmarks we’d be visiting, we drifted to sleep to the humorous antics of The Office and American Dad, which would become a trend for the whole weekend.

The next morning… Well, that’ll have to wait for Part 2. I’m already about 1700 words deep here, and that’s probably more than everything else I’ve written to date this year. So, to milk this one for a little more “content” I’m going to cut it off here and make it a two-parter. Those are always more exciting anyway! So be sure to check back in like, I don’t know, four months?, when I finally get around to writing that up!

(my) Butt hurt(s)

Well, I did a thing yesterday: my fifth ride in the Cerebral Palsy Association of Manitoba’s Stationary Bike Race. I’ve become a big fan of this annual fundraiser, as it gives me a chance to hang out with some co-workers that I don’t ordinarily see much of, or at all in some cases. While I’m typically not a very social person, I’m all too happy to be an active part of the team when this event comes around.

On the other hand, I really let myself go last winter, and despite having gotten into a very good (at least for me) and consistent exercise routine over the last couple months, I was not at all prepared for it. Basically everything below my sternum has been in pain since my ride. Yes, it’s just 25 minutes of riding a bike, but it’s 25 minutes of riding a bike as hard as I can. And this year, that was not very hard at all. Last year I rode 19.22km, and this year I came in just shy of 17. I am a bit disappointed, but in all fairness, I was in the best shape of my life when I rode last year.

Most of all, though, I’m very proud of the artwork that I made for my team!

It was kind of a last-minute thing; I wasn’t going to do it, but then a pretty girl told me how much she liked the piece I did last year and asked me if I’d do another so… call me a simp if you must. I spent pretty much an entire weekend on this thing, and all things considered, I’m quite happy with how it turned out. And my co-riders really liked it too, so that’s wonderful! It’s nice to get validation once in a while.