"you don't know me, but i noticed on the internet that your life sucks."

I wanted to take a minute to type up my plans for the weekend while I'm thinking about it. I'll probably type up a proper to-do list sometime tomorrow (well, I suppose it's technically today at this point) so that I can mark things off as I do them, but I thought it would help to at least come up with a summary of sorts.

( More under the cut. )

In general? I'm really hoping that Monday will mark a new beginning of sorts. That's the plan, as long as the universe cooperates. 🤞🏻

Life has been exhausting even without all of the stuff going on in the US in general, and I'm just so fucking tired. I need a new beginning, even if "autumn is finally here" is a relatively arbitrary one.

In tonight's game, ( the rest under a cut for those who don't care. )

And that's where we left off.

Yuletide nominations are officially open, which means I have to get my ass in gear and actually figure out what I want to request and nominate this year.

A couple of my usual requests are almost always nominated by other people, so I can hopefully scratch those off the list. That doesn't help narrow it down a lot, though, because I've written down a frankly ridiculous number of fandoms this year that I've been considering requesting.

Right now, I'm leaning towards the following for my nominations:

Black Ships - Jo Graham OR Hand of Isis - Jo Graham OR Stealing Fire - Jo Graham
Home Alone (Movies) (mainly because of this post)
Hornblower (TV)
Peacemakers (2003)
The Witch Wolf (Webcomic)

My other requests will depend on what does or doesn't get nominated, but some of my ideas for fandoms that tend to show up in the tag set regularly are:

Gargoyles (Cartoon)
Jurassic Park Original Trilogy (Movies)
Justice League International
The Martian (2015)
The Scarlet Pimpernel (1982)
Titanic (1997)
Treasure Planet

Of course, there's always a chance that I'll see something in the tag set that I wasn't expecting that calls to me. That's definitely happened before, and it'll probably happen again.

D&D is cancelled tonight so that the DM can drug herself into a stupor and try to get more than 3-4 hours of sleep for once. As for me, I think that I'm going to take a short nap for the next hour or so and then settle in to play video games all night.

I'm leaning towards playing more of that Mass Effect: Andromeda playthrough that I started last weekend, although I may switch over to Baldur's Gate 3 or Dragon Age: The Veilguard for at least a while. We'll just have to see what my brain seems most interested in tonight.

Hey, there was a positive for once today!

Me: Here's my money to cover another another week in the hotel.
Hotel Manager: Thank you. Would you like a brand new 43" TV to replace the 13-year-old 32" TV that you currently have?
Me: ... so is this a trick question?

But, yeah, they apparently are updating some of the televisions in the hotel, and the manager likes me enough that I'm near the front of the list. Which means I got a brand new TV in my suite today!

My poor cleric, Siân, has had a really bad couple of weeks in-game. Over the course of the last not even a full two weeks, she has:

- woken up from being held captive by mind-controlling plants for a week
- found herself in a prison camp in the middle of a warzone
- watched a friend die while trying to escape said prison camp
- failed to resurrect said friend
- watched the resurrection fail again when someone else attempted a higher level spell
- found out that her family has been accused of treason and placed under arrest
- found out that a bunch of powerful nobles want to make her father emperor
- saw the instant destruction of an entire town via a weapon of mass destruction
- watched the friend who died come back to life separate from his still-dead corpse
- given up the very last gift her deceased mother ever gave her
- had a bunch of ancient knowledge magically dumped in her head
- had her right arm chopped off
- found out that her father named her his legitimate daughter due to obvious coercion
- had her right arm unexpected regrown by way of alchemy
- almost been killed by malfunctioning golems
- almost watched her entire group be killed by a shadowspawn beholder
- been publicly seen with magic users in an empire where magic is illegal
- been involved in a very bloody battle
- joined a pirate fleet
- found out that the empire-wide newspaper has been smearing her name
- almost been killed by assassins
- found out an assassins' guild with a reputation for never quitting has been hired to kill her
- been involved in another very bloody battle
- found out that she's one of the most wanted people in the entire empire
- almost been killed by lightning
- almost drowned
- died instantly from a magical trap while in a shadow plane surrounded by enemies

Considering the circumstances of her death, I'm honestly not sure what's going to happen. Resurrection may or may not be on the table, especially considering the rest of the group is about to go into a pretty massive bit of combat without a healer.

Next week, I'm planning on basically just being off camera the entire night unless something very unexpected happens. I'll figure out future plans after I see what happens in-game over the next, uh, 60 seconds or so.

They do technically at least have access to an item that will let them cast unlimited Gentle Repose, but said item is on their ship which is currently shrunk and inside a bottle. Plus said item is being used on the dead body of the group member who came back to life by other means and therefore has both a mostly-alive body and a corpse sitting on the ship, so... yeah.

(Don't ask. Trust me.)

Autumn starts in about a week-and-a-half, and the first day of fall is on a Monday this year. Which, you know, kinda bodes well for new beginnings in my mind since it's the first of the work week at least. And, considering how things have been going so far in September, I feel like I really need a set point for a fresh start.

So, you know, Mabon works fairly well for that.

Things have been pretty chaotic in my life the last year or two for a variety of reasons, and I think that I'm going to force myself to set up a strict daily schedule to start following again come September 22. I won't stick to it forever, but I've found in the past that the structure really does help me even if it's just for a month or so to get me back in the habit.

Now I just have to force myself to start thinking about a set schedule that will work for me while still having some flexibility for when things don't go quite as planned...

In tonight's game, ( the rest under a cut for those who don't care. )

And that's where we left off.