Back to work with .... randomness ...

Gosh.

Didn't really mean to leave it a week since my last post before adding something here. I guess I must have been very distracted by .... not doing very much at all !

That was actually the plan. To rest up, recover, see if I could heal up some, to take it easy and bounce back in better shape to face the summer.

I think it's worked. My ailing feet and ankles are in much better shape (not out of the woods yet but they're in far better condition now than they were a week ago). My arms have improved ... same again though. The damage on my arms is mostly caused by me attacking it, whereas the damage to my feet is more down to the effects of wearing shoes all day at work. The Aveeno moisturiser is helping too ... Sometimes it needs Aveeno, sometimes steroid cream, sometimes Eurax. The trick is to feed the bad bits the right gunk at the right time.

The energy deficit was largely down to me lacking so much sleep over the past few years. I think that's coming right again too, although I've having the yawning into the pillow problem again (a lot of that is due to not wearing my body out over the easy days) over the past few nights. I've been sleeping better lately and I think that's led to the hyperactivity coming closer to the surface.

I like the hyperactivity. It does make me more impulsive, which can get me acting without thinking sometimes. That makes me sad when I say things that might upset people (it happens) but most of the time, the hyperactivity is a wave that's fun to surf on.

That's the way I think of what's probably more a light touch of manic depression. The depressive sides are tough and tend to trigger when I reach out for feedback and don't get any. I'm my own worst critic, rarely seeing much value in what I do. It takes other people to point out me doing Good Stuff. The manic sides are a real rush and the usual sign is a wave of hyperactivity.

The trick is to enjoy going up to Super, without going full out crazy.

What have I been up to ? iTunes tells me I have listened to 1371 unique tracks for a total of 3.2 days. That's a lot of music. Highlight albums over that time include .... Dubstar's Disgraceful, Kate Bush's The Dreaming and Not Too Late from Norah Jones. And then there was the late night Sing Along To Youtube session which saw me dipping into the Goldfrapp, Cardigans/Nina Persson, Tori Amos, Ting Tings ... and the rest.

I escaped the house twice .... once for pre Easter supplies, again on Sunday. Go see Handmaiden if you like the foreign language films ! I enjoyed this one with a lovely friend on Sunday. It kept us guessing all the way through and it's an excellent piece of cinema around that great story too.

Game playing has been mainly two games :

Mass Effect Andromeda - space explorer ! In space ! Well ... a lot of running around on the surface of planets and driving the Nomad around.

This one has its critics due to poor production values with the faces and the animations but they seem to be working on fixing those. Behind those is a game that I'm finding to actually be a really fun game to dive into. It's less serious than the first Mass Effect games and I'd recommend it ... but shop around for cheaper prices.

Motorsport Manager still holds my attention. My team is now in the middle tier and has a couple of wins in my second season there so far. Building steadily towards being world beaters. I've put over 250 hours into Motorsport Manager so far and it's one I'll probably hit over 1000 hours in ... wow. That's a lot of game time. Because I got tired so much, games like Motorsport Manager suit me pretty well because they are limited interaction. There is skill in determining when to make an interaction and ... you can genuinely have your team win races they shouldn't by making the right interventions at the right time. But for the rest of the time, it's sit back and enjoy watching the race.

I bought the latest Stellaris expansion yesterday ... And my Mk2 Space Raptors were born ... The latest patch allows you to do all sorts of things with captured enemies that you couldn't do in the game before. You can assimilate them into your empire, enslave them and now .... munchies. Yep. Space Raptors are hungry ...

And I've been catching up on the watching of games too with videos from people like :
Aavak playing Stardew - a marvellllllous rolling Welsh accent here. His Stardew videos are so relaxing;
Enter Elysium - what can I say about EE .... most intelligent youtuber with tonnes of wit ?
Meta Selene is another youtuber playing Stardew at the moment. She has that Scandinavian accent which I miss from the Warcraft days. That accent might be why I enjoy listening to Nina Persson singing so much.
The Flame in the Flood is a game I might well pick up when I see it on sale again, I'm evaluating that through a short series of 8 videos.
Shenryyr playing Darkest Dungeon - a curious game. Definitely a tough one ! I'll have another run at this at some point, for now ... I'm enjoying watching others play it.
And then there's the two streamer ladies, Radderss currently playing Witcher 3 and HeyChrissa about to move on to something new after enjoying Mass Effect Andromeda.

I also mean to kick off another XCom 2 campaign to kick the aliens off the Earth again.

Oh and there were loads of Easter Eggs too.

I still have some Easter Eggs. (Not for long !)

Why aren't I munching the Easter Eggs now ? Seeya !

PS Latest album is the actually really good A Hundred Million Suns by Snow Patrol. One of their best.