Play. Read. Watch.
Time to start anew, again.
All of the old blog entries are packed away in the Archive. It’s a mix of what I wrote here and on a WordPress blog when I was bouncing between the two platforms. I keep an analog journal that I write in regularly and yet I feel the need to write beyond the journal. The blog allows me to share images from gaming as well as craft and art projects. So here we go again.
Play
Games have and always will be a big part of our lives together. We met while gaming and play games together regularly. We enjoy both large and small family gaming sessions. At the moment, Dungeons and Dragons is on hiatus since the guys got back into Magic the Gathering. For my 60th birthday I learned how to play MtG and enjoy it a lot. My nephew’s wife wanted to learn to play too, so we get together a few times a month for dinner and Magic. The first deck I learned the game with is a mono green stompy. J is building me an angels deck because I want to try other options. I learned the basics with a 60 card deck and now we all play Commander decks.
One of our first sessions playing MtG
My husband played Magic from the time it came out until ‘02 when he moved across the country to be with me and the kids. Last Fall, the guys mentioned that they’d been getting together with friends to play MtG and asked if he’d be interested in playing with them. He started building decks and ordering cards the same day they asked. Since we’ve always gamed together he asked if I wanted to learn. We play most games together so I said I’d give it a try. Now I’m hooked. My nephew heard we were playing so he pulled out his card collection and then his wife wanted to play. She’s become quite the gamer in the last decade. Maybe one day we’ll talk her into playing video games with us too!
Final Fantasy XIV
In early 2021, we stopped playing World of Warcraft permanently. It was long before the scandals and lawsuit. We played it since launch in 2004. Over the years we spent less time playing. When a new expansion released, we resubscribed and played hardcore for several months at a time but eventually would lose interest in the expansion. This became a trend during the last several xpacs. With the release of Shadowlands we were excited but once again after several months it just fell flat with us. So we returned to Final Fantasy online.
We initially started playing FFXIV at the end of 2017 and loved it. We found a great FC and had just purchased a small house. Early in 2018, life needed attention so we stepped away from the game and dealt with life. When we had the time for an MMO, we returned to WoW because most of our family and friends were playing together AND I lost access to my FFXIV account. At the time I didn’t even think to buy the game again because everyone was yammering about WoW.
Hindsight is 20/20.
When we washed our hands of Blizzard titles, I bought FFXIV again and we decided to move off the Aether Data Center and hubby started with a fresh character in order to play with me from level 1. Moving from Aether to Primal was a solid choice.
Destiny 2 - The Witch Queen
The other video game that I play is Destiny 2. Some people love it. Some people loathe it, but you can say that about every video game in existence. I love it and have been playing since it showed up on the Battlenet launcher in November of 2018. It was free and I wanted to try my hand at an FPS to see if I could actually play. I tried to play Borderlands 2 on console and had no luck.
In my husband’s words, “You’re playing Destiny 2 and holy shit you’re actually doing really well!”
We never thought that that moving to the mouse/keyboard combo vs playing with a controller would fix my issues. I played and continue to play Destiny 2 even more than the rest of the family. The biggest change for me was switching from Warlock to Titan. I love Titan, and currently play Sentinel because in the new season, Void is relevant.
Read
I just finished reading The Keeper of Happy Endings by Barbara Harris. I enjoyed the book but won’t be adding it to my favorite “historical” fiction titles. It was a sweet story but halfway through I already figured out the end because it’s been done before in the written word, television and movies. I do like the author’s writing style so I might read another of her titles in the future. I like to bounce between the historical (WWII) fiction and crime/thriller genres. While I love police procedurals it can get a bit gritty and I need something a bit lighter. Recently I started looking into cozy mysteries on Kindle Unlimited.
Watch
We’ve been streaming a lot recently and finally got around to watching all five seasons of The Last Kingdom on Netflix. Our sons have been nagging us to watch the show because they fell in love with it when it first premiered. It’s outstanding. The final season is especially good because they brought everything full circle. I’m going to miss those characters a lot and I’m sure we’ll re-watch the entire season again next year.
We’re letting episodes of Moon Knight, on Disney+ build up a bit because we know we’ll binge the heck out of the season. We also tend to watch Disney+ series together with our youngest son who lives with us. Since he works 10 hr. shifts we binge shows on the weekends when he and his Dad aren’t working.
