This post has been in my drafts since Nov 27 and has only been finished now.

It's hard to write life updates. The last one I did was just placeholder and it was done more than a month ago, at a time where I was unsure how much I could write because my mood kept slipping down and I thought that'd affect what I put down on the page (or the screen since I'm typing this on a laptop). Unfortunately I'm still more or less in the same place. Fortunately I can yap through the wall if I wanted to.

As a parallel to the last post -- I got back to games. I went about a month or more without games because my desk was a cluttered mess and I just didn't have the physical space to use keyboard and mouse. I could only stick to cult of the lamb since I could play that with a controller (though the same stands for Rain World, I just haven't been that interested in playing it recently; I don't know why).

For whatever reason (I genuinely don't remember; I think it was a mix of several people I know talking about and/or getting into the game at the same time) I picked No Man's Sky back up. I think I played for an hour or two back in July, but forgot about it afterwards.

And oh my goodness is it a good game. I've been looking for something sci-fi where you can a) have a spaceship and fly it around (and preferably walk inside it), b) get out of it to explore places, and c) do stuff like mercenary missions, and No Man's Sky hits all the spots. Apparently I came back at the right time too since they added an update in August of this year to enable spaceship interior designs. It's a huge world with procedurally generated planets, some of which no human player has set foot on before (really!). I cannot put into words how cool this all is. The words have not coalesced inside me yet. The only thing I can say is, repeatedly, "oh my god this is so cool", which after a while just sounds stupid. :/ I'm a writer, I'll come up with something better.

I need to set aside some time to collect my thoughts and write an entry on this game later. I don't feel like I can talk about it now, since I just started and know probably like 3% of what the game is. But I will. I will. I am so obsessed with this. It might even go on my obsessions page in the future.

Have I mentioned I don't know how to write reviews on stuff? The obsessions page counts as an attempt, I guess, but a lot of the time I can't express exactly what I like about the things I like and why I like them. You know? How do people do that? I can point out very specific things I like about the games I play, shows I watch, etc. like the unpredictability of Rain World, the combat of Cult of the Lamb, the silliness of G1, the exceptional (imo) plot of Guardians of the Galaxy (movie), that one scene in the Marvel 2008 gotg comic, the color scheme of Cool Kid Cody, the UI of A Date With Death (I don't know why I finished that game, very out of character for me. I very specifically love the UI of the game. Everything else is... not my cup of tea)... Actually they all are visually appealing. "Looks good" basically applies to everything I like, it seems. Or most of it.

I went on a tangent again. I mean I don't really know what to say about No Man's Sky right now but I can point out the things I very much like about it that I know about as of now. List time:

• space exploration
  • specifically when i find uncharted systems or planets
• spaceships
  • i can fly spaceships??? everytime i stick a landing it makes me so happy
• guns gunnnnns (they're multitools but still)
  • the neutron cannon on the multitool, i love being a sniper
• the korvax. such a perfect species
• the fact that i STILL HAVE NOT DIED YET but my friend did like ten times (we are on the same difficulty)
  • which means i'm good at the game more or less. i'm proud of myself #notagamer

I don't know how to transition this section, but seeing as how this is my blog and not an academic paper or a work of fiction I may as well do whatever I want. So here are some bits about real life:

I found some really good matcha drinks. One is just pure matcha I think, and the other is mixed with some kind of flower tea. Matcha actually tastes really good when iced, who would've thought.

Speaking of matcha - Heytea now has this thing where you can customize the sticker they put on their drinks. You could choose from presets or draw your own. I think it was on November the 28th that they had a sale where if you buy one matcha drink you get the second free, so I went ahead and took the oppurtunity to also do a scribble.

starscream is invading your drinks.

Yup, still neck deep in robots, this guy. It's fun though, I should do it again next time. With some of my ocs maybe. As for the drinks themselves: I chose the more bitter version of the drink which...probably means it's got a higher concentration of matcha, but for whatever reason it kind of tasted like ginger. Both were hot because it's winter. It has milk in it I think, and came with... what do you call them... plain kushi-dango? at the top. At least it's supposed to be at the top. Ours were put in the takeout cup so the dango came separately, but it was still good. I'll rate it 7/10.

More recently: baked a basque for a family member's birthday (Dec 3). I... personally don't see it as a complete win because the top wasn't burnt enough, or at all for that matter. It certainly kind of tasted underbaked, because it was softer and slightly more watery than the ones they sell at the store. But then again the ones cafés make are a bit dry. The fact that half the cream cheese I used had kind of half-seperated into solids and liquids because it sat in the fridge unopened for too long may have contributed to this phenomenon? But I don't know. Except for the slightly off-putting qualities overall it was pretty good.

Also, I think this was before I made the blog page, I made banana bread before. Jose.elcook's recipe. Please, try it, I have never made banana bread before and it turned out absolutely perfect, 10/10 best thing I have ever made slash tasted. And more recently (but less recently than the basque) I made a brownie. Pretty good, crisp edges and thick chocolate and all that, but too sweet for me personally. Really the only problem I have with brownies is how sweet they are. Maybe I could engineer something out. They say baking isn't a science but I'm pretty sure the amount of each ingredient would affect how the finished product behaves, so I'm always kind of scared to improvise. The most I've done is run with mismeasurements and decrease the amount of sugar by like 50-100g because I Just Can't Take The Sweetness.

I don't know why I talked so much about food, usually food is one of my least favorite things to talk at length about. There's just no point. Also it makes me feel weird. I do love baking though, never mind I'm only following other people's recipes.

I'm busier these days than I have been for the past few weeks, but I have quite a lot to look forward to towards Chistmastime. So... good luck? To the both of us. Peace out.