The Truck's been back ...

Crikey !

Feeling rough again. But still surviving.

I've been struggling on a few fronts lately :

Sleep - as ever ! I'm pretty sure I'm getting some sleep but it doesn't really feel like it. Energy is lacking and my self discipline slips when I'm failing to sleep, which makes me attack my arms again.
Tiredness - definitely ... This is manifesting as a lack of energy. I throw myself into doing what I can at work and then go Splat when I'm home. This is one reason* why I've not posted much here lately, haven't had the energy to drive the inclination.
Dehydration - I think this is from my ongoing condition with my outsides. They're needing the fluid to help them repair but I don't seem to be getting enough water on board. And when I do, off I pop to the loo every 10 minutes.

Frustrating, especially as it seemed as if I was getting really close to getting healed up before the problems hit again on my week off. I have been steadily recovering again but it's still so easy to set the healing backwards.

*Reasons for being light on posting ? Part is having ideas for posts. I have been having the ideas that could be the genesis of posts but when I get tired like this, those thoughts tend to be fleeting and will exit my brain before I can turn them into posts. I am overdue another Alphabet of the Human Heart post though, I'd like to have a bit more mental energy before I do another one of those.

Oh the dehydration hits me in other ways too. My muscles hate it when I get dehydrated, leading to cramp and sometimes even torn muscles when they do cramp up. Yep. My muscles tear themselves when they cramp heavily.

I have been steadily recovering though, it's just frustrating that it's taken all this time and that it's had such a deleterious effect on my general health.

But apart from feeling bad for myself, what else has been happening ?

Hmm - tough one ! I've been attempting to sleep more by going to bed a bit earlier. (Hasn't helped).

Weekend - more Planetbase. I thought I'd go for it with that last planet and ... yep, all objectives completed, albeit with a reload or two due to a disaster when armed intruders got in and proceeded to wipe out all of my colonists because I hadn't built the security room that tells your colonists to all pile in on the bad guys.

Erm ... don't pay any heed to all of the Low Oxygen warnings on all of the domes. There was enough for the Pixel People to breathe ... in other parts of the base. Just not so much in the overcrowded main areas.

That's one nebulous thought I had for a post - Games being accidentally educational. I learned budgeting by playing the very first XCom game. If you built too much too quick, you would run out of money, which isn't fun. And then the aliens would wipe out your guys. Budgeting was very important ... In Planetbase, you have very limited resources at the start, so you have to limit what you build. And then you have to balance several resources like Water, Power, Storage, Oxygen, Food to have a successful colony.

I found Planetbase to be a quite compelling game. It has just been updated too to add in challenges for more variation in how it can be played.

GoG.com have a sale going too with some very interesting looking old games and new games going cheap. Very tempting, especially as I'm looking for something to keep me busy after Planetbase. I haven't been on the Internet Elite Spaceships much lately, the inclination hasn't been there.

Candidates on GoG are games like :
The Flame And The Flood - an explory game
Satellite Reign - a tactical cyberpunk game
Shadowrun - more cyberpunk, I'm waiting for these to go cheap on Steam though
80 Days - Go round the world - I'd prefer this on iPad though.
Duskers - a tense space explory game.
Pillars of Eternity - a role playing game, not sure I'd get on with it.
And some golden oldies like Starfleet Command, XWing, Tie Fighter.

However ... as tempting as they may be, the price isn't right yet and I haven't bought anything. Besides, I have other games to dive into like Rebel Galaxy and a couple of others that haven't been given the time they deserve.

I have something else to draw my attention this weekend ...

I've made a start already. Couldn't resist. The rear suspension assembly is together and is reminding me how good Lego Technic can be.

I'll put the rest together while the Le Mans 24 hour race is on. It'll be a congested weekend actually ... Le Mans on the telly, also Formula 1 which I'll watch around the Le Mans. Perhaps a little cricket too. Maybe even the football ! Although football watching doesn't appeal to me too much. There's a Guy Martin memepic about that which I buy into.

Motor racing can be pretty mixed too. The crashes are exciting, although you hope they don't happen too much because the drivers do get hurt ... And it interferes with that whole thing of Who Is Fastest Should Win. With Le Mans, it's also which cars survive relatively unscathed too and we've seen miracles happen like the Audi car that got repaired from a heavy frontal impact ... before the crash barriers were fixed.

I have the qualifying on at the moment which I have to admit, is pretty much background noise to me.

I will enjoy seeing that story of the race unfold though. That's the thing with these races, I read back on a few older races and can remember how I felt when I saw them happen.

Horror when McNish and his fellow Audi drivers had horror crashes which meant changes happened to the shape of the cars to make sure they wouldn't fly again.
Outrage at Ant Davidson's crash, caused by an idiot amateur driver.
Sadness at the Aston driver who died because he happened to hit the only piece of crash barrier that couldn't serve its function as a crash barrier due to being too close to a tree.

Am looking forward to Le Mans. Who knows ... maybe a post or two this weekend ?

Struggling ... but surviving and steadily getting stronger. I think ;-).