November 10, 2024 - bloghan 20

A less melancholic week, because it was a way more work filled week. Honestly, I think work just filled this week out so that I couldn't get an opportunity to be any melancholic about things. Although I still had my chances to do that, there were other things I got to fill it with too. I should do this "running away from my problems" thing more often.

Edit on November 11, 2024: Guess what? It happened again! I forgot to actually make the bloghan live on Sunday, though I did finish it. To compensate, I added two more mini cryptics to the "Future plans" section.

Tier list of the week

This week's tier list: New York Times games. This tier list is specifically focusing on how much I like these games, somewhat based in required skill or perceived required skill, but even for some of the easier ones, there's a basis on how satisfying they are to solve. Here's the tier list:

Ordered tiers, but unordered within tiers. I don't really get all the hype and excitement about Wordle, I find the Mini Crossword to be more skillful and more demonstrative about your knowledge: Wordle tests if you know words, and the Mini tests that and if you know what they mean, which I feel is more important. One of the most important things in our lives is words, words and their meanings. Words hold power. Words allow us to explain to another "this is who I am," and ask and answer two questions. "Who are you?" and "Do you accept me for who I am?"

Personal updates (achievements, reflections, and antics)

Alright, well I know Istarted off this bloghan by saying it was a busy work week, but Monday wasn't all that busy. I finally got around to fixing something my manager asked me to weeks ago, since in those weeks, I had that Absconder task to do, assigned to me by the director and my work rival's manager. I submitted the change, but it wouldn't be until tomorrow that it would go live, so I had nothing else to do with that. By the time this was done, it was time for lunch, which was mostly uneventful. Ever since my work rival discovered 'Exploding Kittens,' he's been playing it at lunch every single day for weeks. Nowadays, I don't really play it as much with them, preferring to keep to conversation with other people or making or solving more cryptic crosswords. This Monday, I caved, and I played along. I was knocked out pretty quickly, but this game marked a turning point in the lunch group's strategy, mostly because it was a strategy that quieter players were using that came to the attnetion to my work rival, who immediately broadcast the strategy to the entire lunchroom. Some players had apparently been metagaming the game, by looking at the creases of the backs of cards to see if it was a bomb card or not. Since people tend to slap the cards down on the table when they get a bomb, those bomb cards tend to collect more folds and flaked corners, so these quieter players would seem to just play skip cards out of nowhere, and magically avoid bombs. My work rival didn't believe in the strat at first, until our Japanese coworker looked over the deck as we were playing, guessing "bomb" or "not a bomb" as people drew, and getting it right every single time. Suddenly, everyone at the table began playing it like this, taking action on creased cards and just drawing non-creased ones. I resolved not to play like that, and very quickly got knocked out. I watched the rest of the game play out, and it was a bit amusing to see how people would react to a slight fold, or bended corner, or both on a card. One of our other coworkers was kinda upset watching this play out though, and so she would grab some of the cards that were being played and crease them too to "make the creases mean nothing." Well, I guess that would work, but I'm not sure if that's really the best solutions. I would think card sleeves would work next, but that would make it harder to put the cards in the box. I'm not really sure how I feel about the whole metagaming aspect of the game - while it has introduced a whole new dynamic to the game, and eveyrone knows about it, making it a bit fairer, it still does go against the whole idea that you don't know where the bomb cards are in this game, which is sort of the whole point. I was already not feeling like playing the game as much, and I guess I will probably continue on like that. The rest of the work day was more relaxed, having some conversations with other coworkers: for example, there was one where we talked about another coworker's short story which I proofread, and another two discussing my new hobby of writing cryptics. This latter conversation involved the two people I had sent links to, containing my first two practice mini cryptics, and in the time since then, I had made a third. One told me it was really hard and she couldn't figure them out, while the other told me they were not too bad, and that she got them in 5 minutes. They asked if I had another, and I said yes, and they told me I should put it up on their whiteboard so that people could try to solve it together. They drew out the 5 by 5 grid, and I recited to them the across and down clues. As we were writing this, another important figure in the office passed by, and asked "Is this a cryptic crossword?" This guy was essentially the director of the director: something like a senior director, but even more than that. I'll call him "the Vice President," or "VP." After we confirmed to the VP that yes, this was indeed one of those, he told us, "agh! I hate those, they're impossible, they're complete nonsense." He pointed at the first clue, and correctly identified one of the letters of the answer, but that "the answer's so hard to find." I did an innocent little reply of "but the answer is at the beginning or the end," referencing the straightforward part of each clue, and he scoffed and asked "you probably do the ones in the Globe and Mail, right? Those are really impossible." I admitted that I usually stuck with the New Yorker's archive, even though they replaced it with Mini Crosswords, since those got more views. He replied with "yeah, because those are real crosswords," and left right after. Well, everyone behind me got to solving, and I went back to my desk to clean up my work on my Absconder task from the past few weeks, since I knew I would eventually have to get it into a state where anyone could use it with minimal setup. When I was mostly satisfied with that, I went back, and saw that they were still struggling with the puzzle, but they got a lot more of it down. They asked me to confirm, but I wouldn't until they got the whole grid solved. Eventtually they got it, but only becuase one of them carried, the one who solved my first two last week. I headed back to my place soon after, pretty tired, but excited for tomorrow: surely, this time, we would be able to finish off the D&D adventure we'd started months ago.

Tuesday came, and I quickly gathered assent from all the players that they would be able to make it today. Well... almost every player. I didn't ask my work rival, but he seemed like he could. It was a regular work day, with my manager confirming that my fix yesterday did indeed work. I also did a little bit to help out my work rival's team too with the Absconder task I did. Lunch was kinda just normal, with me doing that Absconder stuff, eating, and writing a practice cryptic. I went back up, and worked on stuff. My work rival came and went to have a meeting with his manager, and when he came back, he seemd really disheartened. Another coworker, who was taking a bit of a break, visited us, and my work rival began ranting. Apparently, in that meeting, he raised a concern about him not feeling like he was being given reasonable tasks for someone who just started, that there were so many acronyms and so many little details that he needed to constantly ask about to even get started on things. On that last point, he also talked about how it gelt like his team wasn't being very helpful by leaving him on seen whenever he asked about issues that turned out to be very minor. His manager told him that she felt as though what he had been given was actually quite easy for him to follow and figure out on his own, and that the team was really busy and didn't always have time to spell out things for him as much. He shared with us that the whole meeting made him feel so stupid, and also that he didn't really like his position. He talked about what I've been doing with Absconder, and how with his position, he doesn't have as many moments to do something creative, or many of those "Aha!" moments, like he had with my Absconder task's runtime. I had a feeling that I probably didn't want to stick around much longer as he complained about me and my position versus his position, so I headed off to the coworkers who I gifted with a crossword on the board. To my surprise, they were working on another mini cryptic, one I made last week, since only one of them was able to solve it last week. They had it solved, and I confirmed they were right, and I explained why. They were mostly satisfied with my explanations, but I realized that a lot of the words in my clues were superfluous, and added more confusion. It reminded me of some advice that I read a bit ago, but had forgotten, about clues for cryptics: a cryptic clue has a cryptic part, a straightforward part, and nothing else. I headed back to my desk, and my work rival had finished ranting, and was instead very involved with something on his laptop. He was quite intently doing some work now, apparently because he just got a notification that he needed to finish something off right away. The time was ticking closer and clsoer to our D&D session, and he looked to be getting even busier. The players of "Nikon," "Celeste," and "Rhythm" were ready, and we were waitng for "Kite," my work rival. He told me that he just couldn't today. What a surprise. Really, what a surprise. I should have known. This happens every time with him. I was fearing cancellation, but this time, he said something different. He told us to get someone else to fill in for him. We have another coworker, who's home city is actually pretty close to mine, who usually leaves a bit earlier in the day, but today, he was staying a bit later. I asked him if he wanted to sit in with us and watch the session before he had to leave, and he agreed. And so... we finally, finally, played the conclusion of the first workplace D&D adventure.

The session began with a little recap and with a little retcon: it had been many weeks since we last played, and we decided that even though "Celeste" was supposed to be unconscious after the poison dart hit her hard, we would pretend it brought her down to 1 HP so that we could maximize the fun at the table. The four players continued to examine things, looking for more pieces of parchment that had the recipe they were searching for. Eventually, they made their way to the back room where the work rival tried to break into by force, and failed, due to a blockade. They wanted to try busting it down again, door and blockade, and "Nikon" went ahead with that roll... and hit a natural 20. The door flew off its hinges, and a hulking figure in the bedframe, wrapped in a blanket, began to stir. They quickly started to gather in the room, and "Kite," whose player was being subbed in for, decided to instead hide behind "Nikon" and push him, which failed. "Celeste" then walked into the room, and pushed "Kite," succeeding and pushing both "Kite" and "Nikon." "Rhythm" stayed outside the room. Since they woke up the thing in the bed, combat skipped that thing's turn, but it was revealed to be a more heavily armoured goblin. "Nikon" went ahead and decided to... grapple him, and pick him up, lifting him over his head?? Thankfully, "Rhythm" took their opportunity to charm the goblin boss, and they succeeded. They went through many motions to get more info about the bakery and what the goblins were doing in it, but none of it was really useful to them, with "Kite" pushing at every turn to kill the goblin boss. I will give him this, he played "Kite" just like my work rival would. "Celeste" and "Kite" were at 1 HP, and were trying to distract him with those questions and with idol dances, respectively, while "Rhythm" and "Nikon" investigated the room. They realized that there was a desk equivalent to the one in the study, trapped and all, and successfully manipulated the goblin boss into opening it for them, getting him poisoned, and getting them the second half of the recipe. Eventually, they realized that they had what they came here for, and the calls for "let's just kill him" won out. "Kite" suggested that "Nikon" get the goblin boss to close his eyes so that he "see [his] friends again" (who they had slaughtered and cut into pieces on the bakery floor). "Nikon" backstabbed him, the charm wore off, and combat started. They underestimated the power of the goblin boss, as his armour was blocking hits quite a lot, and his double slash was dealing so much damage: "Nikon" went down after doing most of the damage, "Kite" said "nah, I'd win" and ended up dealing a finishing blow, "Celeste" hid in the loading dock, and caused the goblin scouts outside the bakery to come in and investigate, and "Rhythm" switched places with "Celeste" to try and sneak attack the goblins. "Kite" picked up "Nikon," "Celeste" and "Rhythm" ran, and all four made it out of the bakery, into town, resting at the inn, and making it back to the wizard's tower, delivering the recipe and getting to try the best applie pie on the material plane. Everyone was really quite excited and happy about the session and the results, to the point where we ended up doing a two hour session and not really noticing. Everyone was happy to join in the main adventure that I would cook up with the player of "Rhythm," which will start in January. We all set out for the Asian supermarket, where I got my barbeque pork buns (IT'S BEEN WEEKS BUT FINALLY I HAVE THEM AGAIN) and some instant ramen noodles recommended to me by my Japanese coworker (player of "Nikon"). The others got some sub sandwiches or various buns, and we ate some of them there in the parking lot. We talked there for a bit, about our work rival, and what happened to him that day, about cryptic crossword and the design philosophy behind them, about the company and our managers and what they must think of us. After everyone was satisfied, we all split, heading home. I was pretty tired, so when I got back, I made a lazier dinner and went to bed a bit earlier.

Wednesday came, and the not-manager told me that Absconder was now working with full functionality on the newer project, which it wasn't before. He wanted me to port my work over on the Absconder stuff I made for him to this newer project, but I couldn't get it to work. He told me that one the guys on his team did get it working, and I went ahead and spent most of my time trying to collect my own errors to figure out why this was happening. This was also the day that Trump was announced the winner of the US election. I don't really have many thoughts on this, it really feels like a repeat of 2016, with the echo chambers convincing me Kamala would win. I was very worried this day, because I have a transgender friend in the States, and I hadn't heard from them since the election results were announced. I had been seeing a lot of transgender people online promising that they would kill tehmselves, and I really hoped that my friend wasn't one of them. While it was nice to see all these people make posts saying "you must live, trans people" and such, it was worrying when I didn't get any responses back. While I was struggling with both that and my actual work, I put up another cryptic on the whiteboard. I got back to my desk, and someone from another cubicle came over to talk, just as a break. She asked if things were going well, and I told her no, because the director walked in, asked why my monitors were in the dual-vertical position, to which I responded with "yeah, it was for September 11th," and he replied with "my father died in those attacks." The person visitng my cubicle has such a genuine look of shock on her face, with her hands over her mouth and raised eyebrows and everything. After she asked "really?" I revealed my total deception. She was actually pretty mad, since a former coworker of ours would do that sort of thing to everyone, but hey! I did promise him I'd try to take his place in being the office's serial gaslighter. I shared why I was actually feeling down with the whole election thing, and how Reddit and Tumblr were making me doomscroll (eventually on this day, I would put a 5 minute limit on my phone for these apps: it surprises me how much I actually open these apps a day!) and worry for my trans friend. After she left, ending her break, my work rival opened up about how he was still feeling a bit down about things, and he told me that he felt pretty bored at work. I told him that someone left a puzzle on the whiteboard over by our lunch group, and when he asked me what kind, I said, "oh, it's about 10 riddles or so." He was curious, so he went up to check it out, and groaned when he realized it was another cryptic crossword. The people there had not gotten any start on it, since the person who usually carried them was very very busy that day (she happens to be my new co-DM, the player of "Rhythm"). When we went down for lunch, my co-DM asked me for a link to the crossowrd so she could try it herself, and everyone else asked her if she could give them a starting point. She pointed at the easiest one, a very obvious anagram clue, and sovled it for them there. Now that I think about it, me and her have a lot of common interests: a lot of the same game interests, hearing about the same things going on online, D&D, and now, cryptic crosswords and other wordplay things. At lunch, I kept myself busy so I didn't have to play 'Exploding Kittens,' and also because of work, I guess. The work rival was talking about the election and how great it was for his stocks that Trump won, but all the girls started explaining to him about all the policies that would get enacted. He tried to say that people were overreacting with just the president getting that position, but when they explained the whole system to him, like the Senate and the House of Representatives, he just said it was too complicated, that he was never interested in politics, and that he never voted anyways. I didn't know I could lose even more respect for this guy. Eventually, the girls got through to him, but he was confused about why Evangelist women would vote red, asking "are they bad people?" I'm glad the others took all his questions in good faith when answering, becuase it was probably way more helpful and educational to him than whatever bile I would've said. We moved on from the converssation, and soon, my co-DM finished the crossword, and asked me some questions about some words, and commented on how every square being checked (each square has two words associated with so you can get it from either word) made the cryptics easier than they typically seemed to be on the New Yorker. All interesting observations, all things I would consider in the future. After we finished lunch, we headed back up and I got back to work. I also saw my trans friend posted some memes while I was on lunch, so I wasn't as worried anymore: I would still need to check on them, but it didn't seem like they were about to do anything drastic. After some work, I checked in on the crossword solvers, and they told me that yesterday's puzzle got another reaction out of the VP. Before he left for the day, he saw some of the blank squares, walked into the cubicle, filled in a charades clues, and left. It was a bit flattering to me, but more scared: does he think this is all I do at work? I do more! On most days, I do, at least. He actually saw me on his way out today, filling in a new one for them as they solved the last one, telling me "you just can't help yourself, can you?" With a small smirk, I couldn't help but say, "nope, not one bit!" This hobby is sticking with me longer than I expected it to, and I'm glad it is! It's a lot of fun, and other people are actually interested in it! Here, at least, they are.

I got back to my place, and decided to play the rest of case 3 from 'Justice for All,' and let me tell you: it feels awful. I understand now why people really don't like this case, with all the extra penalites the judge gives you from all the options you cna pick (punished for playing the game as presented so far), and some of the characters are really quite unbearable. Most of those points are really about Moe the Clown, but even then, I can sort of excuse it. What makes no sense to me is the last little twist of the case, where you identify where the murder weapon is: in the Big Top, the Lodging House, or the Courtroom. I understand why the answer is what it is, it makes sense now. However, why would you have a hole in Moe's ceiling, which is stated to be below the path of travel of the murder weapon, and not do anything with that hole in the ceiling??? The only saving grace of the case is von Karma and Maya, because in all honestly, I really can't stand any other character (except Acro, he's pretty compelling). I got quite frustrated with this case, which I really was not expecting to experience in an 'Ace Attorney' game. I still get mad thinking about it. Apparently the community doesn't like it because of the behaviour of multiple grown men when presented with a 16 year old girl, which I understand, but I don't think it really affected my experience because I didn't even realize she was 16! But now, looking back, yeah it was kinda weird! I complained about it to my friend who is a huge 'Ace Attorney' fan, and he basically confirmed that the frustrations I had were all ones he had, and that 'Justice for All' was probably the weakest in the series, but sets up a lot of characterization. Honestly, I think that Pearl and Franziska are the best parts of this game for sure, but the cases are just not up to the first game's standard.

Thursday was supposed to be a more relaxed day in the office, but it turned out to not be that, actually. I came in to an email from my manager, asking me to update some program or something. It was currently split across two workspaces, and he wanted me to bring it into one. Well, I did that, but I wanted to understand how the parts underneath worked, so instead of doing Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, I brilliantly decided to write it out line by line. And wow. I shouldn't have been surprised that the results of that program would be completely empty. Looking back, I can't even tell you why I thought it was a good idea to just re-write it out line by line, when copy and paste was right there. Well, I told my manager that blank files were generated, and he told me to contact the senior who made it in the first place. Well, I did that, and then headed off for lunch. At lunch, I talked stories and such with another coworker, this one being the one who made a really nice short story about prospecting. We talked about reading full novels versus short stories, and he asked if I was planning on looking at short stroy anthologies over novels. I told him about some short stories that I had read from the SCP Foundation project, which has a bunch of short stories in the form of scientific articles discussing the management of anomalous objects. It's meant to be a series of horror articles, with each article being its own story, but some are more humourous, and some tackle more serious topics like abuse. I showed him three articles, and he seemed to like it, but remained unconvinced about its genre and the quality of which that genre was written to. When lunch ended, I saw I had some messages from the original author of the program I was supposed to work with today. I got asked to show all my steps, and all my relevant files. He almost immediately spotted that I made a transccription error, but he just didn't seem to get that I did something as dumb as copinyg down lines by hand, so was confused about how it happened. Did I get some other version? Did someone try to use that incorrect version, and now something is screwed? I tried to explain to him over text what happened in a way that didn't really reveal things, but then he called me out of the blue. I wasn't at my desk at the moment, but watching people solve my latest crossword on the board, so I had to run back to my desk, grab my headphones, and accept the call, but I was too late by a couple seconds. I have made such a wonderful first impression so far. He called again and I accepted, and I knew right away that I had to fess up. After a ten minute lecture on better ways to understand how things work by not copying them down line by line (honestly? I deserved it fully), he gave me a 20 minute lecture on how things worked in the project, and he had such a roundabout, sleepy way of explaining things that I didn't really get any of the information. My work rival was giggling at me while I was on the call, because I looked to be in great distress. I also received some messages from the director and someone from my work rival's team, which had to do with my Absconder task: apparently, it had an inacuracy that needed to be fixed. I filed it away in my mind as something to do after the call. And as soon as that call did end, the director walked up to my desk, and asked what my progress was on the message he had sent me like 20 minutes ago. I told him that I got off a call with someone about another task, btu he told me to sideline it completely, and tell them to reach out to my manager to get someone else to do it, because what I was doing for him was more important, and the current top priority (but what do I do if my manager was the one who gave me this new thing?? becuase my manager DID give me this new thing!!). He told me it was pretty urgent that I fix this, so I went ahead and started debugging, trying to trace through cases to see why this inaccuracy was not caught. I worked up to my regular leaving time, finding an improvement that I could make that fixed the issue in a limited version of the end result of the Absconder task. I started running the full version, which takes a bit of time, and went to visit the crossword solvers, who had managed to finish it off. My work rival was actually pretty lost and confused, but he started to get the hang of them. When he managed to solve the one that had a Tupac reference, he was so excited, and now, he seems to like the challenge my cryptics pose. Well, all it took for him was one successm and he liked it, which is how it's always been with him. They told me the VP saw that they had completed it before he left, and when he saw the filled out grid, he groaned and said he hadn't been able to do it on his own before they solved it, having only done three in his mind. Honestly, that's a huge compliment if the VP himself is giving earnest attempts to try my crosswords. I made my way back to my desk to see if the full version fixed the issue the director found... and it didn't work. It was strange, and I really needed to get this done, but the last bus back to my place was about to leave. I resolved to rushing out, and continuing when I got back. I missed two hours of work at the beginning of this week, and the director was being really insistent on this, so I ended up cracking open the work laptop back at my place. I spent some time tracking through errors again. The weird part was that the limited case could catch things perfectly, but the full case didn't, with the only change being that full version being more thorough. After some more finagling, I finally found that when I was generating reports of errors, I was overwriting some errors with new ones, because I was naming some of them in the same way. Once I uniqified those, all the errors were getting caught! It was also an hour before midnight! At least it kept the director up too...

Another thing that happened on Thursday, throughout the day, was receiving some messages from someone. It was the girl who was with us in the escape room last week, the one who was pretty close with my work rival. Apparently, two old coworkers who had left the company in August were visiting, one of them being one that my work rival really missed a whole lot. She wanted to surprise my work rival and Saturday, and I accepted my invite to do so. She tried to get me to recruit other peeople, but with all that work stuff I had to don on Friday, I just did not get a chance. Before Saturday came Friday, which was a day off for everyone at my company. I spent my day off going to the grocery store, doing multiple loads of laundry, singing and whistling, doing a bunch of assignments that I had missed, and cooking curried stir fry noodles. A relaxing day, a windy, blue-skied day, and actually one that was somewhat productive!

Saturday was the day to surprise my work rival and see those two old former coworkers. I made my breakfast and a little bit of this bloghan before leaving, then bussed and walked to m work rivals place. While I was prepping to leave, I got a message that the plans got delayed by an hour, so I also packed 'A Court of Thorns and Roses' into my bag. Once I got there, I messaged the group chat that I was there early, and would just be reading outside until the promised time. The area in front of his place was actually quite nice for reading, with some benches under a little overhanging roof. The action in this book was really accelerating with the chapters I read, with the parts talking about what it is to love and be loved making me look away for a bit before I could continue reading, the parts with action hooking me in, and the parts with "action" making my face just a little flushed, but still, hooked. I really like how Maas has written Feyre here, with this whole contrast, this flipping-on-its-head of how she perceives the worlds of man and fae - all the resentment for the fae realm, drained, and all the luxury of the human realm, empty. Her goal of granting her family a better life, a happier life, was achieved, but yet again, what she always wanted has been ripped away from her as part of that. I also love the new tone as well, with the consequences of her lie causing an innocent girl to die brutally in her place. Nesta as well, being able to resist fae magic not with physical iron, but with mental iron, actually amused me a bit (clever, Maas), and while I don't really agree with Nesta's justification of her behaviour during the first few chapters, I think I like her character a bit more now. The return to the fae realm really set the new tone well: silence in these parts no longer means something powerful is in the area, but that something powerful is absent from this area. The curse that Maas has set up here involving Tamlin and Feyre feels really handwavy and "for you see, it was always meant to be this way and every little thing actually had more significance than you and the main character thought, wow isn't that so cool!?" It's not really all that bad, but I don't know about it. I guess I haven't seen the full curse yet though, but it seems really complicated just for the sake of justifying every action, instead of a little less complicated so that it can justify most actions, not all. The shift to a darker plotline is well accompanied by the descent into a cave system, away from the light, and it makes me appreciate Maas' use of imagery even more. Yes, I know that loads of other stories do this kind of thing, like various Shakespeare plays or 'The Great Gatsby,' but it's nice to read something that makes it a bit more obvious. Speaking of obvious, the main villain (I think her name is Amouranth?) gave a riddle to Feyre, and the answer is so obviously "love." I don't actually know yet if the answer is "love," so don't spoil me, but there's no way it isn't love. I got it from the first line! But the main character, Feyre, is all like "... is it typhus? My mother had typhus." That irks me a lot. Yes, I get that maybe she hasn't had much experience with love... but does she not remember how she feels towards the man sitting in front of her as she is being told this riddle?? At all?? So frustrating.

As I'm reading, my fingers get cold, and I text my work rival that I'm in the area again, and if he was at his place. I would have liked to come inside, where I thought he and the girl planning this surprise were, but then I get a text from the girl saying that they're out, and that the plan is for them to meet up with the surprise ex-coworker, and then come back to his place. It was pretty convoluted to me - why not just have everyone gather at his place? But, the plan was the plan, and I almost compromised it by being in the area. Luckily, this wasn't the first time that I just arbitraily visited him like that, so he didn't actually think much of it. Their car swings by soon after, and my work rial walks up to me and wonders why I'm here. I told him earlier that I was going shopping and that I would read at a nearby park, so I smoothly tell him that there were wasps or hornets at that park, and then I remembered this place, so I came to read here. He apologized that he had other plans for this Saturday, but I told him that it's alright, since it was pretty spur of the moment for me to show up here anyways. He wished me well with my reading, but actually went up to his apartment and got me some sunflower seeds and a contianer to spit out the shells into. Well... I guess he is somewhat nice, for a tall guy. He had absolutely no suspicions about me being there, which was partly due to my traits as a constant and pathological liar, and my traits as just all around being a pretty strange guy. "That's why they call me the lying liar" is what I sent to the girl after they left. Once I finished my chapter, I still had 15 minutes before the scheduled time, so I decided to go out for a walk, but then there car came back. I was confused and I thought for a second that I blew my cover by leaving, but my work rival just kinda stopped in the middle of the traffic circle and told me to get in. When I didn't get in because I was still processing what was going on, he just drove off and told me to wait there. Minutes later, he came out the front door of the complex, and waved me in, asking if I knew about the whole surprise. Apparently, the first time delay of the event had to do with the surprise ex-coworker's bus getting delayed, and on the drive there, it got delayed again. My work rival was already suspicious of the wild lies that the girl was telling him (35 person house party hosted at your friend who has two doctor parents? Who would believe that???), but the final nail in the coffin was him seeing the caller ID of that ex-coworker on her phone. What ended up happening is that the surprise was cancelled, and we would just meet up with them at a restaurant. We waited in his apartment, chatting to let the time pass. I gave my work rivla my phone so that he could play 'Sonic Heroes,' just to distract him, and it actually worked. Only one other person came (this is what happens when you make Saturday plans on Thursday), and while we waited for a second, me, the second guest (same guy who guest played "Kite") and the work rival went into his room to watch him play 'CS:GO2,' or in this case, troll hard. They irritated one guy really badly, pretending to shoot right next to him 30 seconds after getting flashbanged, or just backseating on push-to-talk after rushing in and dying first. My work rival ended off the trolling by killing him on the last roundwhile screaming "purple", saying "my bad, bro" and then force quitting the game. I had no idea what was going on, but it was still funny I guess.

We packed into a car once it was clear that the third person wasn't going to show up, off to the restaurant where we would have lunch with those two ex-coworkers. One of them was the one my work rival effectively replaced, while the other one was one that taught me all about fencing. The former lives in the same home city as I do, but I felt a lot closer to the latter, since he and I shared some bonding moments over the immaturity of my work rival and the way that plans typically got made with an office-politics air to them, as well as my own feelings about being a person who isn't as affected as much by goodbyes, and just some great moments singing in the car together. Right now though, no singing was happening with my work rival in the driver's seat. The girl was in the passenger seat, and she asked what I listened to. My work rival, rightfully, tried to stop this from happening, so I offered my favourite album, but I don't think they appreciated the mellowness of Wetton and Downes in this one. The girl asked which song made me cry last week, and I gave her the name 'Snow halation,' and while it played to completion, I don't think either was very impressed. It's their fault for asking in the first place to be honest. My work rival and the girl began arguing about what song to put on next, wwith my work rival wanting to put on some "white girl bangers," (no one in the car was one of these "white girls" he spoke of) but he ended up skipping every song on the playlist if it wasn't by Katy Perry. Then, he asked the other two people in the car to start asking us general trivia questions, solely because he wanted to get better at it than me. While he got one or two questions, I got all the rest. While we were being asked, the questions would come in categories, so whenever I started doing well in a category (animal facts, US geography, some others), he would immediately request a topic change. I can't believe this guy sometimes. We made it to the restaurant, and there they were, the two ex-coworkers. We greeted each other, they noted my mustache (it is November, after all), and we sat down to eat. There was some catching up that happened, just concerning what we've been up to at work, and what the others have been up to outside of work. It was an Iraqi restaurant, one that my work rival was complaining about on the phone (once he went and they had kebab instead of protein? Then why did you order kebab??), and they gave us this soup, and this giant platter of wraps and fries and just various meats. It was pretty good, and there was a lot of conversations about other former coworkers, our bosses, about school, and future opportunities. Once we had finished almost all of it, my work rival and the girl got in their car to "take care of something" (as always, as always, with those two), and I got in with the other three. We talked a bit about how drivers here seemed to be worse than they do at home (the fencing ex-coworker lives here though, and he claimed it was just because of a higher population meaning more incidents), and I talked a bit about phoenixes because I saw the sunset poking through some thin, wispy, dark stormclouds. One day, I want to write some sort of story with a phoenix as the symbol, but I do recognize it's pretty hard to pull off. We began to talk about how it always takes my work rival forever to get back to his place whenever we split rides like this, so it wouldn't matter if we made any sort of detours. Our driver, the ex-coworker fencer, noted a store that I had been to back home, an Amazon return package liquidator. It was one of those stores that receives a bunch of returned Amazon packages, and resells all the items at a reduced priced, with the price going down the longer the item is in the buckets there. They're a bit dirty to be honest, but the stuff you can find there can be pretty funny or unexpectedly useful. We all decided to take a look, just to see what we would find. We were still going to beat my work rival to his place anyways. We go in, and since it's Saturday, it's the most expensive day. We look around, finding some alright things: a Jane Austen book, a witch's hat, a swing, so many phone cases, a ball gag, a bunch of plastic grabby stick things, 1000 plastic forks, stuff like that. In the electronics cabinets, there were about five ice cream makers, a couple of LED strips, some small always-on cameras, things like that. As we were about to walk out, the fencer noticed something on the back shelf: a brand new copy of 'Secret Hitler,' with untouched plalstic sealing. Looking on Amazon, buying it here on this day would be cheaper than on Amazon, so the fencer went ahead and started the process to buy it. Meanwhile, the three of us (me, the ex-coworker my work rival replaced, and the "Kite" substitute), looked at the bucket that had all these wires. There was this PCB completely encased in resin, some sort of HDMI to mini-HDMI cable, an Ethernet cable, and a VGA cable, among a mass of other things. I grabebd the VGA cable, and then put one end of the Ethernet cable in my fist, so that it looked like the VGA cable connected to the Ethernet: I managed to trick both the replaced ex-coworker and the "Kite" substitute with it. Pretty soon after, the fencer completed his purchase, and we all headed out, back to my work rival's place. On the way, those two apparently visited the workplace to steal drinks from the fridge and 'Exploding Kittens,' which I guess is just now my work rival's obsession? My group arrived first, so we just hung around in the fencer's car until the work rival showed up, heading in once he got back. We sat on his non-cardboard couch, and then started 'Exploding Kittens,' and the game was plagued with the same metagaming problem. The first round was mostly teaching the replaced ex-coworker how to play, and the second round is where the metagaming came into full force. I decided to end things faster in that game by not metagaming and not taking any defensive measures when I knew it was a bomb on top: the metagaming kinda spoiled the game for me, so I just went ahead and wrote some clues for my next mini cryptic. After those two rounds, we ended up playing four rounds of 'Secret Hitler.' The first round I was a liberal, but I completely believed the lies of the player who was Hitler, and after killing two liberals, they stopped hiding it and completely swept the game. The next game, I was a fascist, and I thought that the replaced ex-coworker was the Hitler player. So I played the whole game, while a liberal bloc formed between my work rival and the fencer. When the liberals won that round, we all revealed roles... and the replace ex-coworker was a liberal?? Apparently, the fencer was Hitler all along, and he knew I was the other fascist, and was so confused at some of my plays. However, we realized that when we passed the final liberal policy, it was when my work rival nominated the fencer as chancellor when we were at three fascist policies, so the fascists won, even though I was not supporting my teammate at all. He managed to use the suspcion I took on from my strange plays to avert it all from him, and it completely shook my work rival. He felt so completely manipulated and lied to, and he was in complete shock. The final two rounds involved me and the girl being the two fascists, but she's not great at lying and I'm not great at being proactive, so it ended up being two pretty easy liberal sweeps. After those games, we called it a night. I got a ride back from the fencer, and I told the replaced ex-coworker to give my regards to people back home that we both knew. The fencer was someone I had gotten rides from a while back, like in July or August, and it was really nice seeing him again. I caught him up on my new hobby of cryptic crossword writing, and he told me that a friend at his school got one of her crosswords published in a famous newspaper in the US! That alone is just so cool to me, and while I'm no good at writing regular crossword clues that are satisfying, I think that would be a nice goal to achieve one day in the future. He dropped me off at my place, promised he would see me in December, and drove off. All in all, a great day! All in all, a great night.

Finally, Sunday. A day to make breakfast and lunch, to eat the last of the tiramisu cake leftover from my birthday, and to write alomst all of the bloghan, since you already know that I didn't do very much of it on Saturday. I also wrote another mini cryptic (I can churn one of those out daily if I wanted to), downloaded some albums ontom my phone (ABBA's 'ABBA's Gold: Greatest Hits,' Billy Joel's 'The Stranger,' Kubbi's 'Taiga'), and visited the grocery store because I realized I ran out of sandwich meat for my work lunches. I also got these chicken balls? I don't know how those will go. It was rainy all day, so when I went out to the grocery store, I had my full winter jacket on. I was disappointed to figure out that the gloves I kept inside my mittens to double up on hand warmth were missing - I'll have to get a new pair of gloves to fix that. At that time, the rainstorm was more like a mist storm, with it not relaly feeling like water was falling down in drops, but floating down in mist particles. Later on at night, it would get really windy and the rainfall would fall even more heavily, to the point where the wind blew open my unlocked door!) Since no one in their right mind was walking around in the mist storm, I was all alone walking there, and all alone walking back. I ended up talking to myself a little bit too, since there was no one around anyways, and I mostly talked about the final line of my favourite song ('As Time Goes By'), which goes "the world will always welcome lovers, as time goes by." I really considered those words, about how ironic it would be to sing that line, during this lonely, rainy walk. It's always been like that, I suppose. No matter if the day was terrible and spent holed-up inside, or filled with company and celebration and everyone around you knowing your name and what you've done, at the end of the, I always end up alone. I got back, finished off bloghan, and then, did just that.

Future plans

While this week wasn't really one where I felt unmotivated, it was just really busy with work, so I didn't get to do some of the more creative things I want to do. Here's what happened anyways:

This week, I'm probably just going to be busy, but I think I'm just about ready to finally tackle that full crossword, sinc eI feel like my clues are way better in quality now. I think I can finish 'Justice for All' this upcoming week, and maybe I can do more reading? That, or more writing, not sure.

Song of the week

'Just The Way You Are' (https://youtu.be/dBqyX0UUzVQ), by Billy Joel is the song of the week. This one made song of the week not because of some person coming into my life to make me feel this way, but simply because it resurfaced in my brain a little bit and I've been listening to it quite a lot. I really do love Billy Joel, and I hadn't listened to much of his music recently, but some of his songs I really relate to ('My Life' and 'She's Always a Woman'), some I really wish I did relate to ('For the Longest Time,' 'You May Be Right,' and this one), and others that I just love for what they are ('We Didn't Start the Fire,' 'Only the Good Die Young,' and 'Uptown Girl'). Honestly, I only have songs from 'Love Live!' and form my favourite album on my phone, but I'm considering also getting Billy Joel's 'The Stranger' too. Maybe one day, maybe one day, this song can move from category two to category one... eh, probably not. That's just how it is.

Until next time

Well, the prediction from last bloghan ended up being mostly true... this one wasn't a downer really, more a "I got busy" type of -er. I feel like the next one will be like that too, since things are cooling down for the winter season, and I'm not going out as much as I did in summer. But all in all, not a bad way to end off bloghan 20.

- bubbler

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