Marsden is Here

So, 2024. We've kept our heads above water but little more. Ever in hope of the bulk of D's inheritance actually arriving which has seen delay after delay. It means we've periodically shifted into house-hunting mode as with D's youngest, R, coming to live with us ... in less than a week now ... and D desperately needing more studio space we have outgrown this little house. We're poised to put the property the market (contract signed etc) as soon as we have somewhere else we can offer on. We've seen a good number of places that would work excellently for us, or be they mostly at the very upper end of what we expect to be able to afford, and sales in that space have been slow so I'm confident we will be able to find somewhere.

The landscaping on this property has been done, just lawn, gravel and a little wall along the back bank, thanks to a loan from parental unit which will be paid back when house is sold.

Work this year has been solid, no dramas. The NDRI prescribed by my new doctor seems to be working, I've been able to keep focus a lot better although this hasn't actually increased the number of hours I can manage :( But I'll take writing better code that I'm more confident in / happier with as a win. I've also had more energy for chores around the house in the mornings, though not a lot more mental/emotional spoons outside of work.

Gaming - not much, in person anyway. A short campaign at the beginning of the year while A was in the country. A couple of visits to J & T's. Mostly it's just D and I on BGA, Terraforming Mars mostly with Wingspan, Seven Wonders Duel, or Race for the Galaxy when we don't have enough time/spoons for TM. D gave me Masters of Orion 3 for Xmas so we had an actual computer game that we could play together, the MOO games are exactly one of my cups of digital tea so I may lose more time to that on single player than I should.

Family-wise - D & I had our big trip to Sydney, and we'll have been married 5 years in two short weeks. On one of the boys' visits down R discovered that D keeps all his cards and drawings and stuff and had a bit of an epiphany about how much his Mum loves him (and a consequential emotional overload episode). That's contributed to him expressing his desire to try living/schooling down here for at least a year. E has had a bit of a roller-coaster year including more diagnoses, but has really blossomed in/from their drama group and grown in confidence overall.

We lost Gytha of course, which was a big blow to all of us. It was a bad year for pets - I lost count of how many friends and acquaintances also had to send fur-children over the rainbow bridge.

D has continued to go from strength to strength in her quilting with more exhibitions, more prizes (including a viewers choice), and of course Epilepsy's acceptance into the Houston International Quilt Show. We did manage to raise enough funds to send her there, I'm very proud of her receiving 3 out of 3 funding applications as well as very grateful to everyone who contributed to the GiveALittle. Once she actually gets the write up posted on her website I'll come back and link to it. She had an intense and inspiring time.

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I have taken the work shutdown as holidays again this year, and intended to take it easy. In actuality my time has been mostly taken up with end-of-year administration, reinstalling 2 PCs and 2 laptops (so far) with slimmed down versions of Windows 10/11 in anticipation of increased household computing needs, and "spring" / pre-sale cleaning and clean-out, and I don't feel rested /at all/.

E is at their father's for Xmas/NY so D & I have theoretically had a quiet couple of weeks together. In actuality between our body clocks running almost completely opposite hours at the moment and a mutual lack of spoons we haven't seen as much of each other as we would have liked, nor to get out and visit friends. D has spoiled me with dinners and baking though <3

Most people are probably aware that over the past going on 24 hours NZ has been hit by another series of major earthquakes starting at very just after midnight Sunday/Monday. I had not long gone to bed when it hit so after about 10 seconds of "aftershock" and then ~ 1:20 minutes of "nope, crap, that's a BIG quake inland just getting here" and some minutes on FB checking that no-one in Christchurch itself was reporting major issues I went off to sleep, thus not seeing the tsunami warning and evacuation notices (which didn't affect me anyway) until checking again during a wake around 4am. I figured if anyone needed transport or to shelter at my place I would get a message or txt directly so I slept for another few hours, starting the day feeling not significantly tireder than usual. That wasn't to last.

Fortunately I had already booked the day off work to recover from attending a 48 hour charity event over the weekend (more on that below). The first hour or so I spent touching base with various people by FB and phone before starting on my pre-existing chores list. I didn't get through as much of this as hoped - a somewhat overdue cleaning of the bathroom leaving me physically exhausted and attempting to set the ball rolling on a safety inspection of the Hall further soaked up energy. I eventually spent 2-3 hours napping - in part to shut down some nervous energy and generalised anxiety - before setting out to help a friend with transport and hugs, do the grocery shopping and after a simple dinner deliver some care packages. (One of which had already been on my to-do list but which under the circumstances I bulked up a bit more ;) ) I could tell that I probably shouldn't be driving well before I got home, and if I wasn't waiting for a better time to take my meds I would be back in bed already.

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Friday / Saturday I spent about 24 hours total at SAGA's now-annual 48-hour gaming event to raise money for charity (this year AVIVA). I'll just copy and paste from my FB statuses here ...

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Saturday 4:30pm
Plays so far:
Colony Wars (obliterated by Daniel Starky's base spam strategy)
Thurn & Taxis (resounding win)
Dominion w. Prosperity (barely last but a long way from the winner)
Broken Eagle the Learned Nano who Combines Words of Power is about to set out into the world of Numenera in search of greater knowledge.

Saturday 10:50pm
After Numenera finished off for the day with a game of Tiny Kingdoms. Didn't do particularly well but probably OK for a first time.
I'd liked to have stayed longer but it is patently obvious that it would be a very bad Idea. If I can get a good sleep tonight I may be able to stay later tomorrow night.

Sunday 3:20am
Didn't get to games until after 2pm but then stayed somewhat longer than expected. Still 3am is no later than I get home from a good party. Cat seems unimpressed by my long absence.
Plays today (pretty sure I have forgotten something)
Tiny Epic Kingdoms
Settlers of Catan
DC Heroes
Colony Wars
Zombie Dice
Biblios
Kingsburg
Seven Wonders
Istanbul (new)
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... preliminary reports are that we raised well over $1000 if everyone comes through on their pledges. I enjoyed myself - overly much so without really realising it, on the Friday in particular which left me stuck in bed until much later than I had planned on Saturday. I did spend more time and energy than I had hoped taking the lead in deciding on and teaching games; the teaching not so much of a problem (I was actually recommended, to my face, and later even messaged thanks for the fun time someone had as a result). I also made sure one person who probably otherwise would not have made it but I knew would benefit greatly from getting out of the house got both there and home.

As always I experienced more downtime between games than I would have liked, but I had gone prepared for that also with things to do.

Sunday afternoon (you noticed the status update at 3:20AM above?) was spent on a few chores and Sunday evening instead of my usual game we chilled and watched Guardians of the Galaxy which a couple of our members had missed at the theatre. (I am really enjoying the new projector.) I actually went to bed feeling uncommonly relaxed and happy ... and then the quake hit.

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That has filled in the time nicely; shortly I will be abed and hopefully will feel much better in the morning. Because otherwise I am /not/ looking forward to work tomorrow.

I am /very/ run down at the moment as demonstrated by (among other things)
( snip )

Last week "on holiday" which means I need to start coaxing my body clock back into something more suited to work hours. This basically means getting out of bed at a reasonable time and setting myself to do things over the day.

Each time I try to list the things which need doing it rapidly balloons out of control, so I'm restricting the length to three significant items at a time. Which of course means so far today I have simply made headway on a fourth ... and fought off the desire for a late-morning nap.

The desire for more sleep this week can probably be partially attributed to the fact that I have pushed myself to exhaustion four of the past seven days - wedding on Monday, mass pruning on Thursday*, serious housecleaning on Saturday and hosting board games on Sunday.

* along with losing my phone when dumping the prunings at the refuse station, which led to some hours of stress. Karma paid back however and M called some contacts at the council and got permission to go in and look for it - once fence-climbing mission later and it was right where I thought it would be, although you needed to be within a couple of metres to hear it ringing from under the rubbish.

I haven't done a general life update here for some time. In brief life has been busy, social, mildly overcommitted, exhausting and I'm just getting back on top of things again or be it with a long list of non-urgent deferred tasks. (Like this post.)
( In long )
~~~( Other )