See The Shadow

I just realized today is Groundhog Day, that time-honored celebration of a diminutive animal weather prognosticator, celebrated at least in the US and Canada. I never really understood all the fuss about it. If he sees his shadow, more winter; if not, early spring. Please, no early spring, I want more cold. See the shadow. But according to a random search I did, “Punxsutawney Phil” didn’t see his shadow in 2024, so an early spring it is. ὡς φάτο; sic effatus.

I haven’t written on here for awhile and I’d really like to be better about that. It’s just tough finding the time and material, y’know? I feel like I don’t have much worthwhile to say these days. Mostly just working, playing videogames, listening to music and podcasts, watching TV, and hanging out with my spouse and the kitties. Life is pretty boring and I’m OK with that, flashes of excitement once in awhile. My parents are coming to visit in a couple of weeks and I’m really excited to see them, so we’re looking forward to that. Our anniversary is tomorrow (9 years, almost 10!) and we’re gonna do something fun for that. So life is pretty good. Fun having three cats, although Lyra is quite a handful at times, albeit very fuzzy and lovable.

Busy week and I covered phones today for half the day, which kept me busy, busy, busy. Love work but it’s exhausting at times, both mentally and emotionally, but as my colleague said yesterday, “none of us would be here unless we really wanted to be.” so it’s all good. I’m happy for the weekend and looking forward to a couple of days off with my family.

I’ve been playing a lot of Final Fantasy V lately, it’s been my latest RPG obsession. After I gave up on Final Fantasy X and finished Final Fantasy IX, I figured I would return to V. I initially played it on PSX via the port included in Final Fantasy Anthology. Honestly, as far as I can tell, it seems to be a straight-up emulated version (albeit localized) of the SNES game, except with loading times (ugh). I’m playing a retranslation (the “Final Fantasy V Tweaks” romhack, which uses the “Legend of the Crystals” retranslation) and it is very good. Very much enjoying it, and I’ve made it to the final dungeon, and honestly, the final save point. Just working on maxing out jobs and levels before I take on Exdeath. One (arguably) fun quirk is that one of the enemies in this final area, Necromancr, uses “Zombie Powder” liberally and frequently, which zombifies one of your party members. Squaresoft decided that the Zombie status is only curable with an item called Holy Water (also called “Revivify”), not Heal (Esuna), or anything else. If you don’t have Revivify, no dice. And the hilarious part is that Necromancrs occasionally drop Revivify, and it can be stolen from them. But they can cast Zombie Powder as much as they want, and could easily Zombify your whole party if allowed to live for very long. I only stocked maybe 4 of those items and used all of them. I got one from an enemy, but for the most part, I kill the Necromancrs as quickly as possible and don’t let them cast it.

And this is where party makeup is important. I always have a party member with the !Time skill, so if someone is suffering from Zombie, I can cast “Reset” (1MP!) and restart the battle, and try to kill Necromancr quicker. If that doesn’t work? Or if the Time mage gets zombified? This is why I am saving after every battle, so I can just reset the game and not lose any progress. It makes it kinda slow going, but is 100% worth it. I’m ok living dangerously.

anyways, love playing oldschool RPGs and hopefully I will finish it this time! The last run-through, I think my memory card glitched out and I lost my save (got corrupted? I dunno). anyways that PSX is also long-gone too, this is all emulation (ares with bsnes!).

I was listening to a fun creepypasta podcast called Lighthouse Horror for awhile and really enjoying it. I highly recommend checking out the early episodes if you’re so inclined and enjoy creepypastas. But I got to a point where they started injecting ads into the middle of stories, and yeah, I noped out. I found a different creepypasta podcast called Mrs. Nightmare’s Creepypasta and it’s really fun, although the last post is from Halloween 2023, so I have a limited number of episodes. But no ads so far! Otherwise I’m still enjoying You’re Wrong About when it comes out, Lingthusiasm, The Ghoul Club, and some other stuff. I have a Lingthusiasm episode that I’ve been saving for awhile, since it covers the movie Arrival, which I haven’t seen. I should watch that movie soon. Speaking of movies, I put Terrifier 2 on hold at the library and haven’t heard back about it yet, hope it comes in soon. Terrifier was one of the most disgusting, brutal horror movies I’ve seen in a long time, and I hear 2 is a better movie, so we’ll see. I ditched Shudder at the end of 2023 when the membership was up for renewal, since I just wasn’t using it very much anymore, and honestly Hulu has a pretty good horror collection, and I can get other stuff from the library if needed.

As I write this I’m listening to Bandcamp music, since it’s Bandcamp Friday for February! Figured it would be good to get some thoughts out while checking out new music.

I started back up with reading Emily Wilson’s translation of the Iliad and it is really quite lovely. The Iliad is brutal and horrifying but also contains some gorgeous stuff, and I hadn’t read it in years. The last time I remember reading it was in my MA program, so I haven’t read it for at least 15 years (!). I’d love to read through it in Greek sometime; I’ve only read bits and pieces. I have M. L. West’s lovely Teubner 2-volume edition, and other editions and commentaries, and Georg Autenrieth’s Homeric Dictionary, so plenty of useful material to use for reading it. Sometime. I need to finish Ennius’ Annales which I’ve not picked up in way too long. Anyways, I just finished book 8 of the Iliad, so I’m about 1/3 through the translation.

I’ll try to write more soon. hope y’all are doing well, friends, sending you lots of love.