Geez, play a few games and then I just fall off of the Earth! Has it really been nearly three months since my last update? Dear lord, I need to summarize quickly!

Leisure Activity

Which games? In order of completion or last play time according to my Steam Library:

• Armored Core 6 - I managed to defeat this despite the challenging difficulty. I even got all three endings! It’s great and I highly recommend it!
• Visage - A great horror game, but I was too impatient to finish it. Horror puzzlers can be pretty annoying, so I just watched a playthrough on YouTube. Regardless, it had great ambiance, and I’d recommend it to people who like the genre.
• Code Vein - A kind of Anime-themed Dark Souls. It’s… OK, but many enemies are damage sponges and few have stun animations, so it’s almost impossible to avoid damage. I read some later reviews that bear this out, and I quit playing in annoyance.
• Cat Quest II - A cutesy cat-themed RPG where you can basically just turn your brain off and have fun. Its predecessor was a tablet game, which I also enjoyed.
• Witchspring R - Such a diamond in the rough! RPG about a young witch who just wants some pie, but is targeted by humans who fear her power. Light-hearted and refreshing with great mechanics for upgrades, levels, crafting, and more.
• NEO: The World Ends with You - A sequel to The World Ends with You for the Nintendo DS, I can’t even really describe this. It’s like playing a comic book in RPG form. Set in Japan, Limbo is a game where the only chance to survive is to win. Such a crazy take on RPGs in general, but great nonetheless.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed - A Nintendo Switch game rather than something on Steam. I’d already played and finished the core game, but the DLCs were slowly trickling out. I finally got around to actually playing the most recent and final expansion to the saga, and it was as great as expected. Set in the past, it lets you see some of how the world came to reach the state you find it in the main game, and I liked that. Not nearly as emotionally evocative, but it still exuded that Xenoblade charm, so I couldn’t help myself.
• House Flipper 2 - I know, I know, yeah, it’s one of those games. I have a weird compulsion to do virtual household chores to fix up and flip houses, possibly because it’s such an accelerated version of the real thing. It has a sandbox mode I haven’t explored yet, but I plan to architect my dream house once they add a landscaping DLC.
• Sea of Stars - You can tell they’re trying to be a spiritual successor to Chrono Trigger, and they do a pretty good job with it. I’ve been taking notes on this one, and will probably post a full review once I finish it.

Hmmm… maybe all that’s why I haven’t posted lately.

Happy Holidays

Around Thanksgiving, Jen and I spent a couple days in Naperville with Jannica, Andy, Lillian, and Evelyn, along with Jim and Linda. I relaxed my Keto diet a bit to enjoy some of the sides and despite the consequences, I feel it was worth it. It only happens once a year, after all!

Almost all of us reunited for Christmas for the annual exchange of Amazon Wishlist items. I really need to put together a notebook on people and just write down any little thing about them so I can come up with something more personal. I guess that can be my New Year’s resolution. I was in Naperville for a few days to avoid stressing the kitties out too much, and then came New Year’s Eve.

That kinda came and went with a whimper. This time we all met at Jim and Linda’s for a couple of days, but we’re all old and tired now, so nobody stayed up for the ball to drop. We had a lot of great family time though, and that’s all that matters.

Upheaval

Thanks to all of the travel, I’d been spending a lot of time away from the kitties. The increase in stress from Ursula’s combative behavior and my absence caused some unfortunate consequences. Cats under stress are prone to marking territory with urine, and that was no different here.

I purchased a blacklight to survey the extent of the damage, and our carpets definitely needed a refresh. Most of the revealed stains were likely old hairballs and other innocuous events, but not all of them. So I rented a Rug Doctor, vacuumed all the carpets, and went to town. I’m not sure if they’re all like this, but the Rug Doctor Pro Deep Clean is insanely difficult to maneuver. It was like being on a rowing machine for several hours, as my Fitbit can attest.

Regardless, everything is clean now. Though now I see we’ll probably need a carpet cleaning machine long-term. Much research into the arena suggests that all consumer-grade machines are hot garbage that will fail within a couple of years, so I’m considering a Bissell Big Green Machine. It’s the only one that anyone will recommend, and appears to be universally loved. So I’m going to rent one to make sure it’s not as unwieldy as the Rug Doctor before dropping $420 on buying it.

I also ordered some enzyme pre-treatment and a canister sprayer. Apparently that’s how the pros do it, and it’ll allow the enzyme to actually work on the urine before the machine slurps it up. I don’t quite understand why there are “pet formulas” for rug cleaners if any enclosed enzymes get sucked out within seconds on back-and-forth passes. Gotta pre-treat! Let that stuff sit for a couple hours!

Anyway, that’s all for now.

Until Tomorrow