Status Report #35 - Restoring order

Grrrrreetings there, good people! Michael here, and as you can see, it's time for us to return to our regular Status Report series!

Of course, the house project we've got going isn't done. And it won't be done for months and months. But that's kind of the point.

See, Amalia and i came to the decision that we really need to re-establish some proper routines in our life. Because it's been 3 months, now. 3 months of chaotically tumbling through life, constantly busy taking care of a million things all at once. And how far along are we with everything?

..... oh, we've dealt with about 20% of the whole project. Yep.

Don't get me wrong, we've made huge strides, and an enormous amount of stuff has already been squared away and taken care of, but there truly is an immense amount of stuff to deal with. How long will it take until -everything- is done? Well, hopefully next year around this time, the dust will be mostly settled.

And that's just the thing. We're not gonna live in unstable chaos for a year. We're going to work towards stabilizing things, establishing some proper routines for ourselves again and learn to live somewhat normally even with the whole house project going on.

A big part of that is clawing back some time for our hobbies. Which is why we're getting more active on this blog, again, starting with the revival of the bi-weekly Status Report.

In turn, the Changing Burrows series (we regret that stupid name, in hindsight.😜) will no longer be needed. We'll still update you on what's happening around the house, but it'll come alongside other topics.

And speaking of topics, let's get this Status Report underway, starting with....

-Music & Art-

Well, these two hobbies have suffered by far the most from the situation with the house. We're starting to get our studio set up in the Attic, and we're planning on making a bit of a tune when it's established, but it'll be a while. But hey, we've got a desk up there, now!

That's where we'll be producing our tunes in future. It's not much for now, but it's a start.

Still, we expect that for the next year or so, our musical output will be quite low, and our budding art practise is pretty much on hold. We just won't have the time to get into either of these very much.😒

-Blogging-

There's good news here, however! Not only are we picking up our Status Reports again, but also, there's not one, not two, but three(!) gaming-related posts coming up!

One of them is chapter 2 of our Snowrunner series, which shouldn't be a surprise if you've been looking at our activity on YouTube, which you surely have.😉

But yeah, the other two posts we're working on are related to relatively recent indie games, both of which have left a fairly strong impression with us.

And, y'know, we wanna write. Writing is good and nice, and so we're making some time for it. Another thing we're making some time for is...

-Gaming-

Indeed! Those two indie games i mentioned kinda came outta nowhere and took away a bunch of our limited gaming time, but we also got back to Atomic Heart. Still got the Blood On Crystal DLC to finish.

And next month there'll be a new Mechwarrior 5 DLC, too!

But actually, before that, there's a huge highlight for us:

Transport Fever 3 is coming out on Tuesday! Whoohoo!

.... or at least it -would- be a "woohoo", if not for 2 things:

For one, we've got an appointment at the bank after work on that same Tuesday, discussing savings management and sorting house-related documentation in preparation for the mortgage. Woohoo?

And then, there's the unfortunate timing of our new PC.

Err, yeah, you read that right. We're separating our living room and studio, and that means that we need a second PC. Our current one will become out studio machine, while we've ordered a new, reasonably powerful machine for gaming, recording and general non-studio use.

..... and it looks like it's gonna be delivered early next week. Possibly even -on- Tuesday. Sounds like good timing, but obviously, with a new PC comes a good evening or two of setup time, getting all the important apps installed, getting our logins sorted, all kinds of stuff to do before we start gaming with the thing.

So basically, i expect we'll only really be able to get into Transport Fever 3 by the end of the week. Oh well, we won't complain. After all, this is some serious "first world problems"-kinda stuff.😉

Oh, also, on a side note, we did a bit of browsing on Steam the other day, and aside from learning that there's a new Poland expansion for Gates of Hell in the works, we also found a couple of games called Drone Sector and Battlespace Command.

Just thought we'd point those out, 'cause they look quite cool. Amalia's already demanding Drone Sector for her next birthday, because my sweet tulpa companion is a serious military nerd, sometimes. Y'know, i -was- actually reading a Tom Clancy book when i started the tulpamancy practise. Maybe that was a formative experience for her. She's the one who got us into 40k, too.😜

-Flight Simulator-

Speaking of military nerd stuff, we're gonna be waiting on either the Tornado or Eurofighter to come out for DCS. Whichever one comes out first, we'll get back into DCS at that point and stick exclusively with that one aircraft, really studying it properly.

We figure that's the best approach for us. Even at the best of times (when we're not renovating a house), we just don't have enough time to try and learn multiple aircraft in something as complex and detailed as DCS, but focusing on a single machine at a time should work.

.... and yes, we -are- biased and wanna fly something German, especially since with the new PC, we'll have enough space to keep the gigantic Germany map installed. Pauke, Pauke!😜

While we wait though, we -do- wanna play some more campaign stuff in IL-2 Great Battles. Turns out we really enjoy that stuff.

-VR-

Ha, didn't see this one coming, didya?

Before you ask, no we don't have a Steam Frame.

.... but we did sign up for a 1TB model. Got put on the waitlist, but that's actually a good thing. With all the costs and bills currently hailing down on us, we're actually quite happy to put that purchase off for a bit. Hoping that we'll "have" to wait for a couple more months, then we'll have taken our mortgage and can stop paying for everything from our savings account.

If we got an email right now to tell us "hey, someone cancelled their reservation and you can go for it!"...... we might just have to decline. We could probably make it work, but it'd be a bit reckless, financially.😶

So yeah, nothing to report here just yet, except that yes, you can expect to read about VR stuff here in future. We're moderately hyped for it. Haven't bought a headset since the Index, and we're mostly interested in PCVR, with maybe a dash of standalone on the side, so this is -very- much the right upgrade for us.

Alright, it's time to get into the house project. But i've actually been writing for ages at this point, so imma let Amalia take over for this part. See you around!😉

-The house project-

Howdy folks!

Y'know the reason  he was writing for ages is because we realized the heating was doing some funny stuff, so he interrupted the writing session to run around the house, vent the radiators, figure out which of the pipes in the heater room carries water so we could refill the water level of the heating system and check that it's working properly. Welcome to our current life.😜

Right, well, lemme tell ya what we've been up to. To be honest, in terms of work around the house, these last few weeks were fairly quiet. Most of the work happened in the Attic/Studio. As Michael's showed you we set up our desk, but before we did that, we first took some of the old furniture and took it apart. Like these:

Some big old cabinets. Fun (or perhaps haunting) fact: This used to be Michael's kid's room, and some of the furniture up there is in fact still from that time. So in a sense, we kinda dismantled part of his childhood.😵

Mind you, he's cool with it. He did his share of the work, too. There was also this old thing:

Well, you might think an old thing like that must be worth something, but frankly, we're struggling to even get newer, relatively simple stuff sold. And when it comes to "antique vs. just plain old", this thing was decidedly the latter. You can just make it out in the picture: The lower portion of it was all scratched and chewed on by the family dogs over the years. So we took the thing apart as much as possible (The main frame was all glued together) and carried it downstairs, ready for the next bulk rubbish collection.

But honestly, the biggest amount of work this time actually happened in our old apartment! We've made big strides towards vacating the place, including the removal of these two lovely mirror designs Michael put up when he moved in:

T'was a real shame, having to take those down. But needs must. Michael had affixed them to the walls by two-sided glue pads. Fortunately, they weren't that difficult to get off the walls, especially with the help of this heat gun we found in the house:

Proper stroke of good luck, finding that. Like it was made for this job, specifically.😉

We also went and filled out some drilling holes in the walls, painting over our little bits of plaster work where needed.

Actually, the week before we did all that, we called in a good buddy of ours to help ferry over pretty much all the stuff we still wanted to keep, meaning that at this point, the old apartment looks like this:

Funky panoramic camera mode is funky! But yeah, pretty much empty. The kitchen, tiny sofa and a simple little coatrack are left, which we'd like to offer the next tenant for free. Basically, we don't need them in our house, and we'd rather avoid having to dispose of 'em ourselves.

We'll see if we can get away with it.😜

Point is, we'll quite soon leave that old apartment behind properly, and that'll be wonderful. It's not a bad little place (well, except for the neighbours), but it'll be good to fully focus on our own house without having to split our attention like that.

However, getting all that stuff out of our old apartment also means we got it all into our house!

..... oh heck.😵

Yyyyeah, so we'll be busy just sorting all of our old stuff into our new house. Mind you, not everything in the picture came out of the apartment, just.... well, a lot of it. Still, it's good to have it out of the old place.

And.... yeah, that's where we stand. Big status report today, because we wanted to catch up a bit.

So our intention is to get back to a biweekly rhythm. We look forward to doing so, buuuut i feel like it'd be prudent to mention here that we can't quite guarantee it. We might be a day late, or even skip a week. As much as we're trying to establish a bit more normalcy again, this -is- still a bit of an unpredictable time in our life.

Anyway, with that said, we hope to see you back for our next post!

Until then, stay safe, enjoy getting to play Transport Fever 3 before we will and have a good one!😉

"Jeez, how was this little shelf so heavy? It's like it was full of rocks! Oh hey, there's a hidden little compartment at the base of it. What's this?"

*Literally a concrete slab embedded in the shelf for ballast*