rosanicus

Did in fact have the novel coronavirus last week, although thankfully I was well enough to still go away for the weekend - my partner and I were invited to a wild weekend in the Devon countryside by one of her uni housemates, and we managed to toil our way down to Exeter and then on into the wild forests of Exmoor. It was a lovely weekend, especially the group trip to the beach, but we were very happy to escape on Sunday morning and spend all of the afternoon in complete mutual silence.

• Steam Next Fest is on at the moment and I am having a blast playing through a lot of demos. My favourites so far include
  
  • Snufkin: Memories of Moominvalley (of course), a very cute game in which you play Snufkin trying to find Moomintroll after the winter frost has melted. It's all officially licensed and the music (by Sigur Ros!) is gorgeous, so very excited to play it when it comes out in full in 2024
  • The Beekeeper's Picnic, which I downloaded thinking 'oh wouldn't it be nice if this was Sherlock Holmes inspired' and lo, it opened with That Bit from The Three Garridebs and then did a flash-forward to 1920, when Watson is back from WW1 and goes to stay with Holmes in Sussex. So Holmes decides he has to welcome Watson with a homemade picnic, and the point-and-click adventure begins! It's still rough around the edges but I enjoyed the dialogue and gameplay enough to back it on Kickstarter, where it still has about a week to go.
• Speaking of gaming, my ancient USB Xbox controller finally gave up the ghost so I've had to buy a new one from Argos. Honestly I'm just cross about this due to my hatred of even minor changes, so I ordered one which looked as similar as possible to the old one without having to pay silly money for the exact same thing (these are collector's items these days apparently). This will hopefully help with the fact that I haven't been able to press left on the d-pad for probably five years now, and also with my second Baldur's Gate 3 campaign which I just started - I was missing out by playing an origin character I feel.
• SPEAKING OF SILLY MONEY, I have finally snagged a copy of Looks Back from eBay! I got it for £45 + P&P, which I am very pleased with, and I look forward to reading it and agonising over it in extreme detail to my partner, who tolerates me very sweetly considering my descent into Biggles Hell this year.
• Work has been alright! Was very amused on Tuesday when a teacher at one of the less good schools I work (speaking politically here) at turned to me and said 'so is the behaviour here like... worse than at other schools?'. Oh, Alice. If only you knew. She's moving to a school in Dorset in January and I wish her every happiness, because her current class is awful.
• Slogging along on FIAB. I am determined not to default or require a pinch hit but my writing juices are not currently flowing (hence all the video games).

Hope everyone is doing well! This weekend we plan to do nothing, although my parents may be swinging by on their way back from visiting their grandson in Australia...