With a lengthy shopping jaunt to Saratoga Springs, I didn’t get much reading or watching in… Our trip included Home Depot, Target, and Healthy Living Market. It all went great, except for some nasty locally sourced pickles that tasted like bleach. 

The 11th Beavis and Butthead episode of the Paramount Plus reboot’s first season got a few laughs from me. But it felt like the second or third weakest episode so far; it was not bad, but just fell short for me on laughs.

[Future me: The Paramount Plus Beavis and Butthead reboot was pretty good for the first season. The second season started out well for a couple episodes, but stopped entirely being funny by episode three or four. Emily and I haven’t watched since… However, apparently season 3 got better, so we’ll see…]

Today, I ate my first chicken in about six years, a frozen kind called Cauliflower that’s supposed to have no funny business going on. It seemed to go down fine, but at one in the morning my tummy wasn’t happy, so one thing or another upset it… Probably just not used to digesting this, but maybe just way more protein than my body was expecting.

This was a big step for me after eating basically no meat for years. I do eat chicken and turkey now, and the occasional shellfish, but I do have to be careful not to overdo animal proteins. 

[Future me: I still have to watch my protein intake and only eat meat every other day.]

There was a nasty glitch in Mass Effect Legendary Edition, where I got trapped in a lab by an immovable object, even after I survived a nasty ambush the second time… a forum post mentioned being stuck on that same part, and the only way was to restart from the last auto save. That person lost three hours of progress. My last auto save was only a half hour before… Still enough, it was enough to make me whack the desk a few times in rage… I had to quit the game for a day or two. 

I seriously considered not playing it any more but I like it enough to continue… The missions are a bit too long, the pathfinding is terrible and apparently the autosave feature is extremely inconsistent. On the plus side… Lots of great world building and the gameplay is mostly great and the graphics are absolutely gorgeous. It just may be a bit too grindy and the side quests drag a bit too much… 

I can still do the main quest without attempting that disastrous, but supposedly worth it, detour. But my enjoyment of the game has been knocked down by so many pegs… freaking out over a game’s irritating qualities just seems so petty.

[Future me: Eventually, I would come back and beat the game without any other major bugs. Mass Effect 2 on the other hand, I got stuck after a few hours and never played again.]

I still want to try out Overwatch 2… Installed it on the 5th, but I was 300th in the login queue the first time and 600th hours later… skipped a day without even trying. 

[Future me: I did eventually play for a week or two. But Overwatch 2 became very unbalanced and un-fun for most people, myself included, very quickly. It was a neat experience at first, but I learned that it wasn’t worth my time.]

The other big news today was the reveal of Farigiraf in a 14-minute gameplay trailer for Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. A much-needed if not anticipated evolution for Girafarig. Kind of a lazy name, but good design.

[Future me: I’d write an entire article on the subject soon after… In short, it turned out to be a pretty good Pokemon, living up to the hype.]