Status Report #37 - Swamped

 

Hello hello there, good people! Michael here, coming right at you out of the clouds with a new Status Report! Countermeasures! Go defensive!

So, this past week, we were actually off-work, and you'd think that would give us tons of time to do stuff and also get some much-needed R&R after the months of working on the House. And it -did-, but it simply wasn't enough. And the House project itself also decided to act up and take up a bunch of that time.

Not too thrilled about that. But let's talk about it, starting with...

-Music/Art-

Yep, well, still can't really report any progress here, we're afraid. Like we showed you last time, we've got a basic studio setup going, but there's simply no time for making music, lately.

We did have some time to work on a more personal, private project, but even that, we couldn't quite finish up. Hoping that we can at least get that done in the coming couple of weeks to free up some more time.

Art-wise, Amalia is looking to eventually get into some practice drawing herself, and she had a bit of an epiphany! See, we've been looking into Haele 3D, a 3D posing program meant to be used for drawing references. Been thinking about eventually buying that.

..... but then, she realized something. Remember how she used to use a 3D posing program to express herself and show off her form? You know, like this?

Yeah, she stopped using that program a while back because we wanted to get into drawing together (before the House Project came up and put the idea on hold). And uh.... it occurred to her that we could just.... use that program to create drawing references, too.

Hm. Kinda obvious when you think about it. But apparently, we hadn't.😜

The program is called VaM, by the way. I'd link it here, but we try to keep this blog somewhat clean, and that program miiiight be intended for some mature uses. >_>

Anyway. Finding time to resume out fledgling art practice is probably a pipe-dream for the time being, much like finding time for music, but hey, it's something to look forward to, when we eventually get to have some free time, again.

-Blog stuff-

Well, you might have seen us posing about Deliver at all costs, recently! The good news is that it felt really nice to write about a game, again.

The bad news is that it's about all the time we had before running short of the stuff, again. We've got plans to write about another game we've been playing, but gosh darn it, we just can't seem to carve out the time for it.

Well, we might force it through at some point. Blogging is the one hobby with an "output" that we have any hope of maintaining while we deal with the project around the House.

But hey, let's talk about a hobby that doesn't have an output:

-Gaming-

Well, we -were- having an absolute blast with Transport Fever 3, until our free time started evaporating, again. Frankly, we're a little bewildered by how the reviews are only at "mostly" positive. We think the game is amazing!

We've also started reading a Battletech book (Warrior: Riposte) to get us immersed in that universe, because we're now -trying- to enjoy some Mechwarrior 5, which recently got the new Ashes and Ascension DLC. Enjoying the new campaign so far, and we're darn-well forcing ourselves to take the time for it. Kinda getting fed up with all this constantly-busy-never-have-time-for-anything situation we've found ourselves thrust into.

If we can't have the time and energy to produce creative stuff after dealing with all the house-related issues, then we're at least making sure to restore some sanity and relaxing with some video games.

We've also been sort of side-eyeing Arma 3 again, because with our new PC, that could be quite fun. Maybe a new Antistasi run at some point? Could even be something we write about, maybe.

Oh, and for some reason, Amalia and I are suddenly interested in Satisfactory. It's been out for a while of course, and it's a really well-known game, but for some reason, we never really looked into it.

We recently watched the trailers and frankly, the editing and humor alone suckered us in. We're getting into that, eventually.😉

(Oh, also, the first DLC for it was recently announced!)

So, another thing we managed to carve out a bit of time for during our week off was...

-DCS-

Awyep. We missed flight simming too much! We intended to leave DCS on ice until the Tornado comes out, but whan can i say? I've been doing Flight Sims for half my life, and Amalia likes 'em, too, so we felt compelled to get back into it.

So what we're doing is that while we're waiting for the Tornado to come out, we'll focus on the F-4E Phantom 2 by Heatblur. Why? Well, it's a module that we bought a while back, recognized the quality of, and then didn't really get into. So one of the highest quality modules for DCS has just been sitting there, unusued.

It felt wrong, and so we've started studying the thing. And boy is it old. And clunky. And smokey. There's a reason they called it the "Lead-nosed diesel fighter".😜

But i'll tell you what, after the F-16, F-18 and even our beloved Apache, it's kinda nice to fly something that isn't all about staring at screens and fiddling with menus in-flight. We're in a world of mechanical switches, rotary knobs and raw aerodynamics, and it's fairly refreshing.

She's nowhere near as effective or efficient as her more modern counterparts, but who says she needs to be? She's fun, interesting, and she's doing a good job of scratching our flight simming itch.😉

Oh, and if we do crave some modernity, we do also have our lovely Apache installed and set up. We don't wanna spread our focus too thin, but y'know the Apache is our favorite overall, so we're keeping it, no matter what.

So, let's say a few words about the thing that's making everything else kinda difficult, recently:

-The House Project-

Honestly, i don't wanna talk about it too much. It's continuing to be messy, sometimes stressful and lately, a bit draining. This was meant to be a week off, and y'wanna know what we did on Friday?

We had some electricians around the house for pretty much the entire day, trying to figure out what's going on in our meter box, because the cabling is all botched up, messy and marginally unsafe.

...... they din't finish, either. We'll have to make a new appointment to just completely take the entire box apart and see what's going on with it. This does give us an opportunity to also get a couple of other electricity-related things done, but still. Just the kinda thing you wanna deal with during your week off.

Oh, and while they were doing that, we figured we'd use the time to just quickly clean out the bathroom siphon, because it wasn't draining very well. So we unscrew the nuts, try to take it out normally and....

...the thing just crumbles in our hands, because it's completely rusted to nothing.

It's at least something we can fix ourselves without having to spend loads of money on a handyman for once, but yeah, great. More stuff breaking while losing an entire day due to the incredibly faulty wiring in the meter box. A double-dipping, as it were. On the same day, we -also- got an important email with documentation that's going to be crucial for further planning and budget decisions for the whole project, which is a good thing....

..... but after how the rest of Friday went, we kinda had enough. We forcibly took this weekend off, taking some time for ourselves. We'll continue to embrace the chaos and mess in the coming week.

Oh, there's one purely positive thing, at least. As of last Monday, we've fully cleared out and finished with our old apartment. There was a bit of indecision about whether or not we'd have to rip the whole kitchen out, but in the end, we were allowed to leave it in after all. So that whole chapter is now officially finished, we handed off our keys and do not have to think about our old apartment anymore.

That's something, at least.

So yeah, there's a bit of an irregular ebb and flow to how busy and/or stressed we are with the project, an unfortunately, it doesn't quite feel like we were allowed to enjoy our week off. It's not like we were constantly busy with house-related stuff, but the whole project has made it so that even when we find free time, we have to desperately scramble to try and catch up with personal projects, taking care of ourselves (fitness and whatnot), as well as trying to get some R&R out of it. At least we've re-established some personal routines. Those help with keeping ourselves reasonably in check.

Oh, one cool little thing happened. We ended up at a flea market with some friends and, being an occasional pipe smoker, we bought this!

Really elaborately carved meerschaum pipe! And it only cost us 12 Euros! Kinda wish we'd picked up a second one, they had a few such designs. Ah well, maybe another time.

But until then, stay safe, dear readers, cherish every minute of free time you get, and have a good one!😉