IRL – Page 4

The Most/Least Memorable Xmas

So 2020 was bad. And the worst part of it, bar none, were the people who would deny that COVID-19 exists, and the people who just couldn’t give a damn and totally defied any efforts to suppress the virus. It’s because of those people that I’m expected to spend Xmas day completely alone.

On a merrier note, I have a “gift” of sorts for you, dear reader. You may have (but probably didn’t) noticed that I didn’t post a Top Ten Video Games of 2019 list at all this year. The truth of the matter is that I wrote it all out, and then decided that I didn’t like what I wrote, and instead of re-writing it all, I just left it to die in Google Docs.

But I’ve changed my mind! Having gone back and re-read it, it’s actually not so bad. Still not good, but not materially worse than anything else that I write. So I’ve gone and stealth-posted it back in January, when it should have originally gone live. Go have a look-see.

I know that’s not a very good gift, but it’s 2020. You should be very much used to disappointment by now.

24 Days of Quarantine Fun – Day 24: Rudolph’s Tipsy Spritzer

It’s here. Finally, this stupid thing is over. Every year that I do this, I always come to regret it by like, Day 11, but I always push on through because it’s too late to stop at that point. Sunk cost fallacy and all.

So I’m sick of writing blog entries, all stressed out by having to think up 24 things (it’s a lot, right?) and then write something passably thoughtful about them. What’s the best way to forget your troubles? A severe head injury!

That’s probably not an avenue that you want to pursue, though. I don’t particularly fancy the idea. I do have an alternative suggestion, though: alcohol! Yeah, that’s much more plausible. You probably won’t actually forget your troubles, but if you drink enough, they’ll be replaced with a whole new set of troubles. And that’s… something.

Specifically, I want to mention a concoction that my mom has been making on Xmas day for the past couple years now: Rudolph’s Tipsy Spritzer. I’m not sure where she got the idea -probably Pinterest- but a quick Googling reveals that there are dozens of recipes with that name, so I’m just not going to credit anyone. How about that?

I’ve never watched it all come together, but my understanding of the ingredients is this: Vodka, 7-Up, vodka, orange juice, vodka, and maraschino cherries. It goes great with breakfast, and is the only cocktail that I’ve ever really grown attached to. Probably because it’s a once-a-year thing and is attached to happy memories of spending Xmas day with my family. Also, it’s the one time a year I have an excuse to be wasted by breakfast time.

I don’t really know how Xmas is going to pan out this year, but the plan was for my (immediate) family to get together and just hang out and spend the entire day drinking, eating, and napping. It sounded like a perfect Xmas to me, but the current public health orders restricting people from entering a house that is not their home are kind of spoiling that. Whoops! Looks like I’ll just have to spend the Xmas long weekend all alone in my condo!

24 Days of Quarantine Fun – Day 22: Pop-Tarts House

We’ve already had one gingerbread construction project disaster. How about adding another edible construction project to the list of my Epic Holiday Failures? Sound good? Rest assured, it is not.

…

Okay, I wanted to just let it breathe, but I have to talk about this.

My video content, admittedly, does not have a high bar to clear. It’s mostly been just raw footage with a little cutting to smooth out the rough(est) spots. Lately I’ve been adding a little more love – taking close-up shots, adding music, splicing in images and end cards, so on and so forth.

The beast embedded above is, at this point in time, my pièce de résistance. I’m actually rather proud of what I’ve put together here. I was going to add “despite the ridiculousness of it all” to the end of that last sentence, but that ridiculousness was kind of the point all along. I did a thing that was gleefully silly, and put in an awful lot of time spit-shining it in an effort to make it more presentable.

Normally I don’t much care about how the general public sees my content -I do all of this for my own enjoyment- but I actually hope that people like this one. I think I might actually be a little sad when nobody watches it.

24 Days of Quarantine Fun – Day 21: Light Drive

That title is… not the most descriptive, is it?

What I mean, is to take some time to just go for a drive to look at the Christmas lights and decorations around your neighborhood. Or maybe a different neighborhood, if you find your own to be lacking in this particular type of holiday spirit. Obviously, this kind of thing is best done at night, but daytime works too, if you’re more interested in the kind of decorations that don’t light up.

Point is, it’s nice to just boot around with no real goal other than to simply appreciate the work that others have put into making their houses light up all pretty and such. Take an hour or so to just go out and appreciate the beauty of the season.

I don’t know about other places, but there’s an annual tradition here of a huge festive lights display that’s put together just outside the city limits, made specifically for people to drive through. I’ve heard that people were complaining online about it being cancelled in 2020, but the website seems to suggest that it’s still happening? My parents took me once as a kid, and all I remember is being bored to tears. I’d probably enjoy it more as a mature adult who doesn’t simply long to get home to his Nintendo, but this isn’t the kind of thing that I care to pay real money for. Also, driving all the way to the other side of the city is not on my to-do list.

24 Days of Quarantine Fun – Day 15: Arts and crafts

Living in a tiny condo with very limited storage space, I’ve had to scale back pretty significantly on how many holiday decorations I have. I’m down to one big plastic tub each for both Halloween and Xmas – a far cry from the much more plentiful decorations I had when I owned a house.

I don’t know how this really relates at all to my topic for today, but that’s the intro I wrote. It’s somewhat related, but not really enough to be an actually good introduction. I’ll keep it anyway because I’m a crap writer and I want to make sure that people know that.

Anyway! Today’s goal is to root around your living space, find some craftable materials, and make yourself a new holiday decoration. Me, I’ve got a big pile of cardboard, some coloured construction paper, a bag of cotton balls, and a sharpie. What could I possibly be playing at here? It doesn’t at all seem like I’ve pre-planned a very specific project for this blog entry. No, sir.

It’s Cardboard Santa! Golly gee! How incredible!

All goofing aside, I had a lot of fun with this. I haven’t done crafts since grade school, so it was something completely out of my wheelhouse, and it’s fun to do different things once in a while. As long as they don’t require very much in the way of time or financial commitment, of course.

24 Days of Quarantine Fun – Day 14: Go for a walk

I know what you’re thinking – I’m out of ideas and sick of writing these daily entries. You’re… not entirely wrong.

But this is a real thing that I’m advocating! It’s not just filler like Elf Bowling was! I think that taking a half hour out of your day to go for a winter walk is such a nice, relaxing activity. And you may very well need it after a stressful Monday at the office. I know I often do.

I find that the best times to go out are either early in the morning, or somewhere after dinnertime, when fewer people are out and about creating a ruckus. Natural calm and quiet tend to make for the best walks. The evening is especially nice for a winter walk, when the sun is down and there are lots of decorative lights to enjoy. Even just the regular streetlights and whatnot can lend a calming iridescence to the snow-covered landscapes.

This is all assuming that the weather is decent, of course. You go out on a windy day and you’re going to have a bad time. But if there’s no wind, you could feasibly go out when it’s like -15 and not be too uncomfortable. Bonus points if there’s a light snowfall in progress.

I, in fact, went out for a very pleasant stroll on Saturday, and it was the exact day that winter really started to show up. About -6 or so, with no wind and just the lightest of snowfalls. Basically, the perfect day for a walk. If only I had spent more time enjoying the snow-covered scenery, instead of being totally absorbed by Pokémon GO. But such is the burden we bear on Community Day!

24 Days of Quarantine Fun – Day 7: Make a Snowman

Okay, so, this one may or may not be viable depending on where you live or the current weather situation. For me, there’s barely been any snow, so a snowman isn’t really an option. Also I don’t have a yard or anything so I’d have to go out into a park or something to make a snowman. Which I maintain that I would do under the correct circumstances, but again – there hasn’t really been a good amount of snow yet.

My grand plan was to make a small snowman on my balcony, posed in a way where he’s leaned up against the window, trying to get inside. I don’t know that I’m a skilled enough snowman-crafter to have pulled it off, but the dream was nice. Maybe I’ll still try it once we finally get some snow.

I did make this little snowman out of marshmallows, though. That counts… right? Lookit his li’l chocolate chip eyes.! So cute! UwU

24 Days of Quarantine Fun – Day 4: Donate!

I don’t know how many times I’m going to reiterate this over the next few weeks, but the 2020 holiday season is totally different than usual. Stores are locked down or closed completely, people are losing jobs left and right, and we’re being encouraged not to get together to celebrate. It’s not terribly conducive to the whole gift-giving tradition.

So in a world where the economy is peering over the edge of a cliff, maybe there are better ways to go about spending way too much money? Well, there’s never a bad time to donate. People all over the world are always in need of help, and this time of year is certainly no exception. This can be the year where you throw some money at an organization that will help some less fortunate people have a better holiday season. It’s the most advertised time of year to be charitable, after all.

It doesn’t even need to be money. Find some things around the house that you don’t need and take them to a donation centre. There are always food collections going on that you can chuck a few boxes of cereal or cans of vegetables into. You could go donate blood, even. People always need blood. I don’t know how many volunteering opportunities are currently available given the state of the world, but you can use some of your quarantine time surplus to look into it. I’m not doing your research for you.

I don’t have a holiday donation plan yet, myself, but it’s been something I’ve been putting some thought into. I tend to make smaller donations to multiple organizations over the course of the year, so my charity budget is often emptied by the time December rolls around. I always make a contribution to the food collection at work, so that’s something. I really like knowing that what I’m giving is so directly helping a family that needs it.

The point is: find a cause that means something to you and make a donation. Don’t sweat the value, every bit of help is important. If you need some suggestions, I just happen to have some links right here!

Charity Intelligence Canada

United Way Canada

Canadian Foodgrains Bank

Centre for Addiction and Mental Health

Here’s Something New

I don’t think that, in the nearly 18 years that I’ve been operating a website, I’ve ever once written about clothing or fashion. At least not in any capacity that relates to me and my fashion sense (or lack thereof). So this is… this is different.

2020 has been a bit of a tire fire, but if there’s one positive thing that I get to take away this year, it’s that 2020 is the year that I discovered skinny jeans.

Rambling into the void

I set up a Twitch.tv account a few weeks ago. Finally. You would think that this is something I would have done ages ago, if only to follow streamers that I like to watch. But… I don’t actually watch any streamers. Not live, anyway. I can’t be bothered to follow other people’s schedules.

Anyway, it’s been one heck of a learning experience. The most important lesson being that I really need to make sure that my audio levels are set properly. I’ve done two streams now, and both times, getting the game and mic audio tracks to play nice has been a giant hurdle. So I’ve actually gone ahead and done a whole buttload of testing for this week’s stream.

Oh yes, did I not mention? My plan is to stream on Friday nights, and I have christened it the Friday Night Spooker Stream. Because… staying up too late playing spooky games is what I like to do on a Friday night anyhow. And this is also a great way to motivate me to continue working through my massive steam backlog.

Last weekend I played through Oxenfree, which is one of those rare games I bought purposely on Steam, and didn’t just get in a bundle. I’ve actually wanted to play Oxenfree since it was released, but just never made the time. When Friday came around and I was looking for a game to kick off the stream with, Oxenfree just happened to be installed, and I knew that it was a 4-5 hour playthrough. Perfect!

As I mentioned before though, the stream didn’t exactly work as planned. I spent the first couple minutes listening to the stream’s audio through my laptop, and it seemed fine, but three-ish hours in, I was informed that my mic audio was almost completely drowned out. Whoops! Worse yet, I didn’t even end up really solving the problem. The VOD version is up on my YouTube channel (embedded below), if you feel like checking out how bad it was. (At least you can still watch the playthrough of the game.)