Today I'm putting up Christmas decorations. I pulled out all of my Stalight decor for my house in the Lavender Beds late last night, so the virtual home is finished, and this is the real life one! A new year will be rolling in soon and I hope it's more tranquil than 2021. I wouldn't say it's been a bad year exactly because overall everything has worked out for the best but fewer ups and downs would be preferable, overall.
My daughter spent all of May in the hospital, which was extremely stressful. She's fully recovered now but at the time we didn't know the extent of her illness or what was causing it. The diagnosis turned out to be Crohn's disease and surgery was necessary. It's so difficult to see your child suffering and be unable to do anything to alleviate it, not to mention having them live at the hospital for an extended period. Even with an older teenager that part is bad, but it must be worse with a little one.
In June we had to have our older dog euthanized. He was an almost fifteen-year-old yellow lab so given his age it wasn't a surprise, but he was part of our family for a long time. He lived a long, full life which did somewhat mitigate the loss.
Then on July 4th our little pug was spooked by fireworks and ran away. We have a fenced yard, but the gate was accidentally left open at just the wrong time. Luckily, he showed up at the door late one night a week later so there was a happy ending. During the time he was missing we'd searched everywhere, all of our neighbors got involved to help, and there was still no sign of him. It was very hot that week, we do live close to a lake and everyone left water out but when a week passed, I didn't honestly think he'd survived. It's a rural area and aside from the weather and the road we have coyotes and all sorts of predators that could easily take a fifteen-pound dog. I'm so glad I didn't have the heart to stop leaving the gate open overnight, even though I thought after the fifth day of ninety-degree weather it was futile.
To cap off the year my purse was stolen the Sunday before Thanksgiving! Not the worst thing that's ever happened but what a nuisance. Also, I liked that particular handbag a lot.
In-game I started my own FC. The break from my old one was a little unpleasant but all I can say is that in my opinion any friendship tied to membership in a FC was never an authentic one. Anyway, the new (to me) FC that I was given leadership of is doing great. I don't intend to ever grow it into a large one, but over the past few months we've gotten a few new players originally from WOW and I may actively recruit at some point when I have more time to invest.
My husband and I managed to play just a bit of the expansion so far, but I adore Sharlayan; The Dravanian Hinterlands has always been my favorite region, partly due to the overgrown ruins. The architecture immediately appealed to me and for a long while now I've wanted to see more. We always play though the msq together and our schedules don't align well for playing outside NA prime time hours, so we're going quite slowly. We never blast through, but this particular expansion ended up being a high ratio of Netflix versus actually playing FFXIV!
We finished Chapelwaite while waiting in the queue Friday night.... That one may have been on Showtime not Netflix but at any rate it's very good. I found it reminiscent of the 2018 Haunting of Hill House mini-series, in overall tone. It's a brooding, gothic horror story. Less sexually explicit than Hill House if I remember correctly. Adrien Brody has the leading role and in my opinion he's an actor with whom it's hard to go wrong. Much of his work does fall outside my preferred genres of horror, sci fi, and crime but he's one of a few actors that can influence me to give something a shot, despite the genre.
