Timeskip to mid 2026
Man, it's already half way through June of 2026 and my last post was... October 22 of last year?! So, what the hell happened and why did it take so long to post anything?
Goals
At the start of the blog, you may recall I made a post for my Goals of 2025. The main thing was writing more, creating mini reviews for board games in my collection and more. Considering I ended up making like 65 posts, I consider that a win. And honestly, I did plan to post more. If we look at what was in progress in the drafts, there are things that could have counted for 2025 if I had gotten around to them.
Obviously, the main things that kept me busy are the big winter holidays, Thanksgiving and Christmas. A lot of social events, gatherings, and just taking time off to decompress. One of the things I had intended to sort of push towards the end was finishing a 10 x 10 challenge, and I even got reasonably close doing at least 10 plays of these games:
But in the end I just didn't have the bandwidth to get it all done in the year let alone blog about it like I had wanted to.
Regarding tech, while I didn't post about it I definitely explored a lot of AI stuff, mostly in regards to coding and automation. Looked into locally hosted models on my Mac Mini using LM Studio and this year have been utilizing Antigravity to help with small personal projects and scripts. Nothing too crazy to mention here, its just a lot of exploratory playground stuff.
As for personal reflection, we did make the #irl blog posts, and I consider this a part of that. I think its nice to have and to journal about what is going on with my life, especially for the good stuff. I won't say there will be more but it's something I'll do from time to time, especially for content lulls.
And Game Dev... oof, this one definitely fell by the wayside. I don't think I can make the same promise of working on it this year, feels disingenuous. Don't get me wrong, the desire is still there, its just, we're already half way through the year and there's been already so much to juggle with my life.
Life
Meanwhile the lease on our apartment was coming up in Feb, so we had to search for a more affordable place to stay. As much as I loved the location and that I've been with them for so long it was definitely not feasable with rising cost of living and our needs.
How barren the old apartment was afer moving out, kind of crazy for how long I had been there too. A lot of memories here.
We did manage to find a place and successfuly moved, it was stressfully hectic and while we did majority of it ourselves I am glad that used movers to help for some of the harder stuff like major furniture (sofa, shelves, etc).
The mess of moving everything into the new apartment. No time to unpack, just get all the boxes and items into the place. The tricky one was the 5x5 Kallax which had to be partially disassembled on the spot to get enough clearance on the stairs. I do wish that I left the reassembly to myself because the movers ended up breaking some of those divider dowels. Doing all of my board games was tough but doing it the way I did it was worth it as it ensured we had space for everything else once they were set in the shelves.
Japan
Of course, the biggest highlight of the year was the honeymoon trip to Japan. We were there for a little over 2 weeks and had a great time exploring Tokyo and Kyoto.
Some of the sights on our arrival and first day.
Our very first activity was going to Eorzea Cafe. The food was delicious and I really enjoyed the theming of the Gold Saucer room. It definitely was meant for a large party gathering but still it was nice that it was just us.
We also went to a local board game cafe called Jelly Jelly Cafe which I only learned of from one of The Dice Tower's vlogs when Mike DiLisio visited Japan.
Tried out this fun dexterity game of knocking off the the bark of the tree.
Visited the Pokemon Center DX in Tokyo and got a bunch of merch.
Getting to see some of the cherry blossoms in Tokyo was really nice.
I think one thing I only started to realize as I took the trains in Tokyo was just that it was a complete concrete jungle. You'd be riding from one place to another for 30 min or more one direction and it is just and endless sea of buildings. It's a very stark contrast to the cities I'm used to in the US.
Went to the Tokyo National Museum.
Samurai exhibits
Before going to Kyoto we found a fun little art cafe and I (tried) to make a little samurai cat.
And did a rickshaw tour of some shrines.
The Atoa aquarium was really amazing.
Seeing the sights of Kyoto
Nintedo Kyoto shop
Cat cafe
The most amazing souffle pancakes ever.
Shopping at the Square Enix Garden
Raid
On top of all that, early this year the last raid tier for Dawntrail came out. These whole series of raids have been absolutely excellent and the best content out so far. This time around I got to raid again with Mille, Xereden, and some other familiar faces. We had some really great early success with clearing M9S on the very first week too, and admittedly I very much celebrated the fact that I had a nice 91% parse on the fight too.
I feel like thematically I like M10S the most, especially with the music.
Though I will say the fast pacing of the mechanics in M11S is pretty satisfying.
I think it was kind of insane that they created one of the hardest mechanics ever for a savage, Idyllic Dream, which apparently has you try and memorize a trio of mechanics all split up in execution order. This is one where I feel like you need to be able to practice and complete the sim completely on your own to feel even remotely comfortable doing it.
One of the cool things of this fight was seeing giant clones of your character.
But hey, at least we cleared the tier. It was rough at times, but I'm glad that we got it done and that we'll be finished with reclears soon enough.
My first clear was actually as a Dragoon with another raid group, Xereden and I got that done together.
So yeah, at the end of the day I just had a lot on my plate and the blogging had to take a pause while prioritizing the move, raiding, and the Japan trip. I think what I'd like to do is at least work on all those in progress drafts, especially for stuff I enjoyed and/or were really close to finishing the write up for.
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