04.13.2026
I'm being good and getting back to my Monday night blogging routine. It's a gorgeous 70 degrees out right now and I think after I post this blog I'm gonna head down the street and get some ice cream.
Been thinking about spring cleaning and have been doing random tasks when I work from home and it's quiet (which has been frequently because my job's switch of project management software has been going horribly lol). I listed a bunch of stuff on ebay and marketplace a few weeks ago, and today I did some fridge cleaning and bedding washing. I also gotta go through my closet at some point and donate some stuff.
What I wanted to lead that into was my friend Honor's blog post today about how when you work full time you never have enough time to do what you want! It sucks especially when I'm in the office with nothing to do and I feel like I'm wasting away. At least when I'm home I can take care of chores or noodle around on my bass. I'm reminded of pre-covid times where I would wake up at 6am to get ready for work, drive 35 minutes into the office, work a full day, drive home, make dinner, go to the gym, play an hour of video games then go to bed. I have no idea now I did that! Maybe it's because I'm older now or maybe (realistically) I need to manage my free time better too. A recruiter messaged me on LinkedIn to ask last week if I'd be interested in a 30 hour per week contract job which seems ideal but also with everything getting more expensive I'm not sure if I'd really want to take that even for a decent pay bump. I hope we can keep working as a society toward less insane work weeks.
On a more positive note... Pintastic was last weekend. I only went for two days this year and on the first day I didn't play a single game. Thursday is the karaoke night and as a karaoke fiend I was there and ended up singing 4 songs lol (the highlight being Chop Suey with two of my friends). Friday I went back after work and played actual pinball with my friends and did a small side tournament. The highlights were getting a chance to play some lesser known 90s games (Shaq Attaq, Space Jam, Starship Troopers, my beloved Safecracker), Spooky Pinball's new Beetlejuice game which is really cool and the newly released Stern Pokemon game which was fun and more fun to hear old men get angry at. There's not much in the form of announcements from manufacturers which is whatever but the one really new thing I did see was an absolutely hideous Fish Tales mod that adds two LCD screens to the machine with some seriously questionable art on them. There are a few fun rule changes and extra modes they added but it just looks so amateur that I doubt I'll see it again in person after the show. But other than that was a lot of fun and I always love spending time with my pinball friends.
Sunday the Speedway in Allston had a mini ren faire so I went down to check it out with some friends. Got yummy beer and food, they had a really cute craft fair set up that we walked through and I got to see my beloved North Horde knight fights. They kept being like "if you're interested in this come talk to us!" and I kind of love the idea of dressing up in medieval armor and hitting other people with swords (plus I think it would help me get really strong) but then I think about getting punched in the head and I'm like Hmm. But they are fun as hell to watch. At least once a year I think about getting into a combat sport because my gym friend keeps trying to get me to do Brazilian jiu jutsu with him and I think it would fix me lowkey. We'll see.
Anyway to wrap things up I commissioned an artist I've followed online for a long time to draw two of my current fixations. OK I'm off to get some ice cream now.
Links for this week: