Crafting and Gaming. These Are a Few of My Favorite Things.
It’s cold and the sky, filled with swirling gray clouds, looks angry. Local meteorologists are calling for snow flurries in our area but so far I haven’t seen an inkling of the white stuff. We embrace snow since hubby’s job was made a permanent work from home position and we no longer have to drive in lousy weather. He was doing a bit of math the other day in regard to the mileage on our SUV and figures we’ve put a whopping 500 miles on the odometer in 2021.
I finally finished a couple of holiday signs for my kitchen and I’m really happy with how they turned out. Both were made using 10’ x 10” stretched canvas that was primed. I picked these up at Dick Blick last year. Love the quality, prices, and quick delivery from their online site so I’ll be buying more after the holidays.
Both SVG files were purchased from the Silhouette Design Store where I picked them up while they were on sale. The store has the cutest designs and even though I’m capable of designing my own I’m very cool with paying for someone else to create them for me.
In gaming news, my son Jack, surprised me with an Oculus Quest 2 VR Headset and I love it so much!! I fell in love with Beat Saber when my son Moe, brought his headset over last Memorial Day. Since then I’ve been nagging my husband about it. His response was, “You want to spend $300 to play ONE game? That seems like a waste of money.” When he put it that way I agreed but I still wanted VR.
And I got one. After playing with it for a few days my husband decided it was definitely worth the money. Now he has his own and we’re having a blast bowling, golfing, and playing table tennis together. We also bought Clash of Chefs and it’s AMAZING! We spend most of our time laughing so hard we can barely get through challenging each other. So far, hubby has won every time.
As a person that suffers from air, motion and sea sickness I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to handle VR gaming. So far the only time I have an issue is when I play Clash of Chefs because I’m having to turn from side to side in order to prep food, cook, and serve up dishes to the wait staff. I ordered some Dramamine and we’ll jump back into that game once I can medicate myself. Motion sickness puts me down for the count. The best part about having the VR headsets is that we’re up and moving. Even though we purchased sit-stand desks to get us out of the chairs when we’re at the computers, VR gets us moving and even working up a sweat.
After each session, I’ve checked my Halo fitness band and it has registered the activity and rewarded me with points for the day as well as counting all the steps I’m taking when dancing or playing games. What makes me the happiest though is watching my husband get up and be active with the VR headset. Now we have to link up with the kids and grandkids so we can all have fun together in the world of virtual reality.
FINAL FANTASY XIV: ENDWALKER went into early access on Friday the 3rd for those eligible. We got to play exactly 2 hours of our 4-day head start because of the insane queue times. Square Enix is aware of the problems and is working to fix them. The game has gained so many new players in the past year, a lot of whom are World of Warcraft refugees. When Blizzard scandal hit the news folks left in droves. I’m sure many WoW players have returned to support the game they love but the game took a subscriber hit for sure. We left long before the lawsuit news hit the stands. We were bored to tears with the recent expansion Shadowlands and quite frankly disappointed in the game as a whole. After 16 years we couldn’t bring ourselves to log into the game anymore and returned to FFXIV.
The explosion in player population caused queue times to increase but it didn’t impact us as much because we play on the Primal data center and not Aether which is the popular go-to for streamers. Before the expansion launched, we had queues of under 50 during peak playing hours. Now that Endwalker has officially launched our queue is over 6000. Logging in and waiting in the queue while doing other things isn’t a solution because the launcher drops you. Square Enix is working on hotfixes today so hopefully, we’ll get to play soon. It’s not a big deal because we trust the company and director of the game to do right by the players. We’ve got other things in life to keep us occupied too.
Time to bring this entry to a close and do some of those other things.
Peace,
Nim
