Almost relax time

Just one more day of work until sleep for the week !

I feel like I well need it. I'm drained to levels I don't think I've felt before. I am repairing though, which is good and that's another objective of next week if I can leave the damage alone long enough for it to heal ! Good signs though.

It will be good to be able to resume heading out at the slightest excuse, that needs a little preplanning at the moment. But ... it's definitely getting there and being lazy next week should help more too.

What's the plan ?

Cricket watching - definitely. The 4th Test vs South Africa starts tomorrow and while I'll miss most of tomorrow's play, I fully intend to watch the rest of the game. And the domestic T20 games too. Wonder if there are any nearby games to go see too. The best prospect there is Worcester, although Hampshire has potential too, as does Taunton. I refuse to watch the most local games with Gloucestershire due to how they treated the works team.

(We used them for preseason practice for a couple of years and then they just stopped taking our calls and refused to let us use the nets again - no reason given).

There will be much music listened to and perhaps a few more albums will appear ... I have my eye on Ed Sheeran's latest, Lisa Hannigan and Agnes Obel for albums out there that I want but aren't in my library yet.

Much gaming will happen. Hopefully my Archer racing team will soon be in a position to repeat this without it being a freak :

That's my two boys taking advantage of the AI having difficulty deciding what tyres to use in the wet. We're usually finishing around 8th to 12th at the moment although the team is catching up. It's Motorsport Manager, which is a game I've hugely enjoyed playing since I got it.

There will be lots of space game playing ... Both from :

Cosmoteer, which I've started playing and will definitely put more time into. My fleet currently consists of the IceBrick interceptor, a simple craft with two big lasers, two little lasers, a couple of shields and lots of engines. It has a long way to go and develop. But like Cosmoteer, it's a hugely promising beginning.

Of course there will be time in Elite :

That's my workhorse ship, Chrissa's Potato along with its rover, the Pea. Yep. Pea and Potato had an amazing ring to it. The buildings in the top right are from an abandoned mining base which just happens to have lots of materials that the engineers want in return for big upgrades .... That was a profitable shopping trip.

I'm now in the Dorothy Drake :

It's another Asp, like the Explorer above ... but this one is the inferior Scout variant. One of the challenges in this run through is to own all of the ships ... but I'd feel cheap if I didn't use them for some good purpose. This one will be following the Road To Riches, which is a list of very high value exploration targets. I'll be hitting that over the next week and it might push the character a long way towards getting a first Elite.

It'll also help with the engineers ... The Asp above should jump up to 29 light years at best but with the almost-the-best (not unlocked best yet) modifications, it's reaching 41. That speeds up the exploration and travel a fair bit.

Why Dorothy Drake ?
Dorothy - after she who followed the Yellow Brick Road, in this case the Road To Riches
Drake - after the famous explorer who brought back the potato.

I've really enjoyed coming back into Elite and having real progress. It feels so much faster this time around and I keep getting that sense of getting things done. Like my time spent in game is seeing real progress. Which it is. Most of that it down to knowing how to game the game, how to get the best trading and what's effective. Early on, it was doing lots of missions for early money. Currently, it's running clusters of missions for ranking. I've been contributing to community goals for huge boosts in money and now the character is ready for it, the next step is to really boost that exploration.

Not a run to the centre of the yet, that'll be for when I have the top tier high value ships. I had another idea for that, to run two ships. One to get to the outposts near the centre, one to come back. The one going there would be called "It's a long way there" and the other "It's a long way back". Fits my strange sense of humour. Not yet though and the ship I use will be different.

Hopefully I think of a decent name for it by then ! (Anaconda cruiser built for hugely long range jumping)

Maybe even build one of them in Lego too.

One more day of work to go tomorrow and the work-ish mob will be watching the film Valerian after too. I'll watch a few more blurays on the week off and I really must read Revenger at some point.

Looking forward to a chilled out week off !