It has been a really weird weekend and as I sit down here to write my Monday morning post I largely just find myself staring at a blank screen. It was real hard getting up this morning because it was real hard sleeping last night. Around 9:30 Saturday morning I dropped my wife off at the airport for her very first international flight and around 7:30 Sunday morning she was landing in Lisbon Portugal. Knowing that she is that far away is doing weird things to my brain, and that first night I suffered a pretty nasty panic attack. Like it is not unusual for her to travel but for whatever reason the distance seems all the more extreme and tangible. My parents wanted to meet for dinner Saturday night and that is probably the exact wrong thing for me to do. I love my folks dearly but they have a way of putting me into a real bad mindset after being around them. Admittedly it is a large part of why I avoid phone calls and have tried really hard to get them used to texting. I get off the phone with my mother and I am in a foul mood for the next three or four hours… and I am never exactly sure why because there really isn’t a reason to be. However that reaction combined with the fact that I was already worried about my wife’s international adventures sent me down a deep hole that I am finding it hard to dig out of today. Apologies that this is not the most cheery of topics for you to be reading on a Monday morning. All in all however things are fine apart from the bed being too cold and there being too much room in it. Kenzie and Josie have more or less been glued to my side the entire time. I am not sure if it is that they can tell I am somewhat distraught or if they are continuing to get along better. Whatever the case I have had both of them with me in bed the last two nights, generally speaking Josie in my knee pit and Kenzie either laying on top of me or beside me. Mollie on the other hand has largely been non-interactive and I am guessing this is due to the brewing collusion between the other two. She is largely spending the majority of her time up in my wife’s office where she has reclaimed the room we formerly had Josie isolated in.

As far as media goes, I watched the first season of Atlanta because I am wildly behind watching things. That was one of my hopes for the period where I am the only person in the house was to watch a bunch of shows that I had wanted to. I knew that I really should not catch up on BoJack Horseman for reasons that it always makes me question my own existence… but Atlanta maybe wasn’t that much better of an idea. While I loved the season it also has some deeply melancholic undertones which likely did not at all help my mental state. I am engaged however and I am probably going to watch the second season tonight, or at least start it. It really has such a phenomenal cast and I am fully on board with anything that has Donald Glover or Zazie Beetz in it.

On the gaming front I made more progress into The Technomancer and I continue to love it even more. I am really interested in seeing the games that Spiders has to offer because there absolutely was a void left by Bioware that they are seemingly trying to fill. I feel like I am maybe starting to enter the phase of the game where you begin to collect allied forces and head towards a final showdown. That seems to always be a thing that exists in the type of games that Mass Effect or Dragon Age represent, and I am not exactly sure what to call that genre. It is like a sub genre within the Action RPG genre and I sorta feel dumb always referring to them as Bioware-Likes. Whatever the case I am on this course until I finish the game. It is doing a lot of interesting things, but unfortunately I can’t talk about them at length without generating significant spoilers. Part of why this game works is the way in which it unfolds the setting, and in case someone wants to follow in my shoes I don’t want to ruin it for them.

Josie is getting exceptionally good at climbing things… including me. Sunday morning I was sitting working on editing the podcast and Josie was apparently completely enthralled by whatever was happening on the screen. She figured out a way to latch onto my shoulder and then sorta drape herself down my chest as I leaned back in my chair. She is super bonded at this point and follows me around like a little lost puppy. It is almost always Kenzie and Josie that are with me all of the time, and I try and make sure they both get equal attention so that Kenz doesn’t get jealous. I write that and behind me Kenzie just bopped Josie for some reason that I fail to grasp. For those who are like me and search the background of photos, some things that you can see.

• Commodore 64 Mini that I picked up on close out for $20
• Sony PS1 Mini that I also picked up on close out for $15
• Sealed Case of Commander 2019 that I have not had a chance to mess with
• Flanaess Map from D&D 3rd Edition
• Star Wars LP that I have had for ages
• Guilds of Ravnica mini poster
• Stuffed Topaz Carbuncle

I hope you all have a wonderful day and I hope I have a better week than I had a weekend.