Week 498 / 2020
As many people have pointed out, January 1st won't see things suddenly be much better, but I am glad to see the back of 2020.
The election back in November was a huge relief, although I continue to be stunned that MIL truly and deeply believes the election was fraudulent and it's all a cunning ploy to lead the US into communism.
I'm excited about the vaccine news - I know it'll be a long time until I'm in a group that will get it, but it's the first glimmer of hope that I might get to come home sometime in 2021. I haven't seen my family for 18 months, now.
Because I'm homesick, we had a "British" Christmas dinner this year. A non-animal protein for me, chicken for Alex, then roasted carrots, parsnips, cabbage, roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings and gravy. Sticky-toffee pudding and custard for dessert.
Alex hadn't had Yorkshire pudding before? He put BUTTER on his like it was bread? He doesn't like gravy? You can marry a person, be stuck in a house with them 24/7 in a pandemic for a year, and still not really understand them.
We didn't do Christmas presents. We sort of stopped that in our second year. We do tend to buy for ourselves something frivilous that one doesn't really need, instead; I bought myself a Hayden duet concertina.
I can play London Bridge and the first part of Becalmed (from the Sea of Thieves game soundtrack). I'm mostly interested in dirges.
The most fun I've been having is still co-op online games with the Dusties. We recently started playing Red Dead Online, which is free if you have RDR2 (or $5 standalone), and although it's obviously meant to entice you to buy the "gold" for upgrades, we play the free content to the max.
The best bit, though, and the part that's had me laughing so hard my chest hurts is when we get bored of running missions and devolve into what we call "purge time", turn on friendly-fire and just go to town. "Dynamite only" rounds or knife-fights. If that was all the game was, I think we'd still enjoy it.
I hyped myself up for Cyberpunk 2077 and it was so incredibly disappointing. I got it for PC, and my gaming laptop is basically brand-new, so it looked fantastic. Unfornately, it's an incredibly shallow game, more akin to Deus Ex than Witcher 3 (the latter is what I had been expecting). I asked for a refund (I bought direct from GOG) but I'm still waiting.
I finished my GoodReads reading challenge, but sort of feel like I cheated by getting in quite a few short stories.
Our car broke, which means we couldn't go on an intended hike today - a very American problem - but also the reason I thought to sit down and do a week note.