beyond, above

[fandomonymous]

• I ended up sick during my PTO, just barely well enough for Most Kawa 31, where over half of the invited attendees didn't show up. :| Friendships as an adult is so hard, folks.
  
• I did receive some quality gifts this year:
  
  
  • My parents gifted me money, which I turned around and spent on a used Microsoft Surface Book (first edition) and it's so niiiiiiice. Too big for a tablet on the go (it's 13.5"), and a busted headphone jack I'll have to get repaired at some point, but for every other use super lovely.
    
  • Dragon Age: Origins, and yes, I know I'm a decade late to this but WOW. The age is showing, but I'm impressed! If I had started on Bioware instead of Bethesda I'd probably have a very different opinion on western RPGs as a whole. I'm working through it pretty slowly, and have made plenty of mistakes along the way (my Warden's build is uh, almost identical to Alistair's, who she's romancing, lol forever. ...I should look into a mod or something to respec her, come to think of it.)
    
  • Something like Hope, a lovely set of stories by Hengtee Lim.
    
  • Some amazing ital black cake! Not much to say here other than DELICIOUS VEGAN CAKES.
  
  
• It's been really hard to be motivated at work lately, sigh. Not really sure how to fix that one.
  
• I did get to watch all the semifinals plus the final and third place match for the WWC, which was fun and nice! I really should start looking into NWSL and Women's UEFA CL stuff, hmm. Also a note to self here that the Supercup is this Saturday (...though at a time I can't watch, shit, this might be the *one* time I'm salty a game's not at 9 AM my time) and the first Bayern game of the BuLi season is Friday the 16th!
  
• Leading BiRequest wasn't as hard as I was fearing it would be, partly because again, the group was much smaller than I was anticipating. I'm consciously cranking down my involvement in the group - skipping social events - but it still feels good as a whole. Other people are working on getting a Queens variant off the ground, which will be nice when it happens.
  
• Still functionally a toddler in Tagalog, including finding preschooler worksheets in Tagalog to color as practice, hilariously enough. I really need to get started on actually finding ways to *converse* in the language.
  
• PartnerBeast hasn't DMed, but that's mostly because we've joined a campaign! Lady Blackbird, which is a lovely system. I would...not choose to play with some of my fellow players, which is cramping my style a bit, but we're making it work.
  
• The future is mostly more of the same, other than my parents being in town for at least a weekend. Counting down the days until my next real vacation, which will be in late September, to Seattle for a week then to San Francisco for RogueCel. ...I should work on my RogueCel talk, come to think of it...