I took Friday off to celebrate the release of Baldur’s Gate 3 on PS5 and played extensively all weekend. Now it’s Monday and I’m sitting in the dark drinking my coffee and trying to ready my mind to go back to work and not play video games all day. While I like my job, I would like another weekend now please.

I wish I was better at conflict, especially with my partner. It gnaws at me constantly if unresolved, gives me horrible anxiety (I’m normally not an anxious person) to the point where I can’t eat or sleep. So, I tend to hold back from conflicts altogether. Not a useful solution. I wish I had better advice to offer but in place of that, please accept my commiseration. Hopefully some time to reflect and cool down will prove useful and perhaps your partner will have fresh ideas for resolution when you readdress it.

Our vet told us that cats don’t really chew their food, they just kind of horf it down and sometimes use their teeth if there’s a big piece of something that they can’t swallow whole. Kibble seems to horf down just fine!

Looks absolutely delicious! Did you make the pappardelle? If not, what brand did you use?

My partner and I had fun playing Cat Quest 2 and Spiritfarer as coop games, in addition to It Takes Two which you mentioned. CQ2 is a cute action RPG and Spiritfarer is very chill, lots of sim/management tasks but with really beautiful characters, art, and story. Definitely very unlike Cuphead or Portal 2 but sometimes it’s nice to switch things up a bit.

Option A has a description but options B and C don’t for me.

Agreed. I bought Beyond Meat patties at Costco because mine was out of Impossible and I was sorely disappointed. Impossible or bust!

But much healthier for the cow, which I think is the reason a lot of folks are interested. Those eating plant-based for health alone are probably more likely to go for a lentil or black bean patty than Beyond/Impossible Meat.

I put out a birdbath last year and it truly warms my heart how much my local wildlife uses it. Every kind of bird, squirrels, chipmunks, everyone comes to cool down and have a drink. I have to clean it out daily but it’s a small price to pay to see my critters hop up for a drink of fresh cool water on a 90-degree day.

Seriously, I’m pretty disappointed. Just scrolled past a meme about Lizzo (har har she’s fat) and then I find this (har har short-haired bitches be like)… I’ve been finding this community to be overall pretty positive so it bums me out to see that shit infecting this space too.

There’s currently a Douggles (that’s what we call them at my house) on a branch screaming his high-pitched incessant barking scream - this will probably go on for several more minutes. They’re lucky they’re so cute because they can be god-damned annoying. But then they meet me at the feeder and take a peanut from my hand and all is forgiven.

Republicans who want to smoke weed and abolish the age of consent.

My brother lives in Texas and his property taxes are astronomical. I think that’s better than higher sales taxes since it’ll tend to favor those who are wealthy enough to own land and be higher for those with more property/properties, but it still shocked me. I live in Washington, though, we get the shit taxed out of us and in pretty regressive ways too, like high sales and gas taxes that disproportionately impact the poor.

I’ll be 36 next month. I let myself slept in this morning until I woke up. I have a crick in my neck and the left side of my lumbar spine is a dull mass of burning discomfort. I’d rather sleep 6.5 hours every night than wake up feeling like this every day.

Same! I have chronic neck pain that I’ve been working to address for about 3 years. We have a new mattress and I’ve been through probably 5 sets of pillows in that timeframe to get the perfect set that doesn’t leave me feeling shitty when I wake up. Nonetheless, I get about 6.5 hrs of sleep a night and wake naturally from that without feeling tired during the day. I slept for 8 hours last weekend and felt worse than I have in a long time - back, neck, and shoulder pain and felt more groggy and sluggish than I have in ages. I’m with you!

I’m looking forward to Season 2. Season 1 wasn’t the most incredible story I’ve ever seen, but I found it compelling, visually very appealing, and the story, performances and characters were strong enough that I’m excited to see how things play out. I’ve not read the books, though.

I think there’s so much mediocre TV out there, it often seems like fantasy/scifi is held to a weird standard where it has to be groundbreakingly innovative and earthshatteringly well-done to get people on board. I’d much rather watch the next season of Wheel of Time than NCIS: Duluth or whatever else is getting pumped out by the police procedural-industrial complex (and believe me, I watch plenty of schlock crime dramas too).

Exactly. I consider it basically payola these days. Every big-name review is gushing, falling over itself to expound on the innumerable virtues of every AAA release, and then once normal folks have played for a few weeks, the real story comes out. My partner played the demo and was shocked to be playing the same game as the one that was reviewed. Unless I’m so excited to play a game that I don’t care if it’s mediocre, I wait to buy until actual the real user reviews trickle out post-release.

I’m largely extrinsically motivated. I always have high hopes of 100%-ing games, but I find once all the quests are done, my enthusiasm for going out and wandering and finding the last things drops off precipitously. Even if I’m not following the storyline and have wandered off to explore, I still feel the need for some ultimate promise of more story to come.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, as we anglophones say.

Nothing like a cool floor on the tum on a hot day!