I spent most of the start of the 21st century not worrying about medical stuff. But everything changed when the Fire Nation diabetes attacked.

For various reasons, and I’m going to guess that the ongoing, possibly never-ending COVID situation is high on that list, the primary care physician I’ve been working with since mid-2020 is leaving the clinic I was going to, which means I need to line up a new doctor. You’d think that in the year twenty twenty two I could just go to a website and click a few times to set that sort of thing up, but no, a phone call is still required.

I hate phone calls.

But I sucked it up and made the phone call anyway, because “not dying” is kind of important to me. Yay, I pretended to be an adult!

Hopefully by this time next week I’ll be properly assigned to a physician again and I can keep getting my stay-above-ground medicines.

For my first real activity of the new year, I got a haircut.

And if you know me then you’re probably thinking, “Hey, but you’re super anxious about All Of This Going On, how are you able to go into a hair salon every six weeks or so?” The answer, friend, is “Heavily masked and I can only manage to put up with it every six weeks or so.”

The alternative being shoulder-length hair or worse, this is a risk I take (as carefully as I can manage) to keep from losing my everloving mind. That stretch in 2020 when nobody was doing anything, nothing was open at all, and my hair was constantly in my eyes and on the bottom of the back of my neck? That was not fun at all.

If you don’t know me, you’re probably thinking that I should look into some DIY or other at-home solution. No, that’s not happening. I’m vain and fussy about some things and my hair is one of them. I have A Professional that I work with regularly, they know how to get a result that won’t leave me frustrated after it’s grown out for a couple of weeks, and those kind of working relationships are absolutely golden.

Everything else may be going to hang out with our friend Helena Handbasket, but at least my hair’s out of my eyes and not sticking up in weird directions.

I rang in the new year the same as I’ve done the last several: By wishing people would lay off of the fireworks. But I live in America, land of the free (to explode things any time they want), home of the brave (and foolhardy and obnoxious and so on).

For the most part, I spent the first day of twenty twenty two either gaming or doing game-adjacent activities. Vyx and I worked out some plans for future Fire Emblem Three Houses play sessions, I played a bunch of different mobile games on phone & tablet, and I put in another few hours in my current Satisfactory save game.

(More on that, soon.)

Tomorrow I will get a haircut and possibly do something besides play games with the last of my holiday weekend. Possibly.

I don’t recommend holding your breath.

Good heckin’ riddance.

Okay, it wasn’t all bad. I added some good new music to the library, a few shows were worth watching, and my diabetes seems to be mostly under control.

But still. Ugh. Nobody’s going to look back on this year fondly, are they?

I almost forgot to write anything at all for the entire month of November 2021.

Whoopsie.

It was a rough month. We had a death in the family, it was another rough month of pretending like we’re making progress toward a post-COVID life, the clocks changed again, I had to drop several shows I was trying to watch, and most of what’s kept me going at all is a bit of new music and reading material and picking Satisfactory back up again (after basically burning out on Fire Emblem Three Houses, mind you).

Among other things.

I’ll probably write about the new stuff in Satisfactory (Update 5 definitely changes the game!) in the days to come. I’m just not sure how many days that’ll be, you know?

I’m looking for something to do, something to get into, something to give me a bit more purpose and energy than my current routine of Doing Almost Nothing Day After Day is providing.

General status update: Left-side shoulder (and upper arm) still hurts like hell. Blood sugar numbers aren’t great, not terrible but not great. Next doc appointment is nearly end of month. Later this week I should be able to play the Diablo II high-def remaster, which is money I kind of feel bad about spending considering the Blizzard/Activision shenanigans but dammit, I need something to look forward to and playing one of my all-time favorite games in glorious high resolution and detail counts, you know? Job’s stable (long may that continue to remain). Home life, same (and, same). Looking forward to the next season of anime, given that the summer season was almost devoid of quality material.

Hmm, maybe an anime post is in order. (Later.)

Gaming has mostly consisted of Fire Emblem: Three Houses but I’m also feeling a bit burned out now that I’m close to the finishing line on my fifth play-through. Satisfactory? I’m still waiting on that map-changing “Update 5.” Nothing else has caught my attention, except for a game on the Switch that I can’t really play because it uses my left arm so much that I end up in pain after a little while.

Getting older: It’s not for wimps.

There are some books and records coming out over the next couple months that I’m cautiously optimistic about. Maybe I’ll talk about some of that here soon.

I should… absolutely start using this site again. I know: I’ve said that so many times in the last decade. So. Many. Times.

We’ll see.