girlofprey

Stardew Valley update:

I got real confused the other day, because I assumed most of the kids in Stardew Valley were highschoolers. What with their kickflips and emo hair, and constant complaining about homework. It turns out most of them are probably college age, and one works in his basement as a freelance programmer. Even the one constantly talking about 'school' is apparently taking some online classes, and seems to be more working on a degree than anything. I was fooled by Americans' tendency to call everything from kindergarten to studying for a PhD 'school'. Anyway. It did seem really creepy that the main character was of an age to have a job and own their own farm, but most of their romantic options were young teenagers. But now it's a little less creepy. Although I still consider them emotionally immature, what with the kickflips.

My farm is in its second year, which means I get to raise the new crops. And I finally gave in and started using sprinklers, so I could have some energy for anything other than watering, and do anything else with my mornings. Such as fishing. I still can't remember when you can catch sturgeon, but other than that I think I'm probably en route to completing the community centre this year, if I can upgrade my barns and get all the animals I need. I've been whizzing through it a little bit, trying to get to the same place I was in during my last stint in the game, but it's all coming along pretty nicely.

Shane still doesn't love me. But I'm working on it. I feel like I've reached the point now where I'd know enough about him to give him his favourite things, and his birthday is soon. The guy who made the game has really ramped up the whole depression side-story he seemed to be running with Shane though, which is considerably better than ignoring it completely but. It makes scenes with him kind of uncomfortable sometimes, from the perspective of romance. I feel like many of our dates will be spent in the doctor's office, trying to get him some help.

Quite a few other people in the town want to do me though. Success!

Anything else update:

My games shop got Resident Evil 7 five days early, so I have been playing it. I tried to play it after dark with all my lights off, but it turns out that's not so easy when you have a keyboard and mouse glowing like a rainbow behind, flashing into different colours every few seconds. And a lightbar on your PS4 controller that you can't turn off. I'm still enjoying it though. It's very puzzly. It seems a lot like playthroughs I have seen of the original game, albeit with less nameless enemies so far. I'm only a few hours in though. Apparently the whole game can be beaten in just 15 hours. With my performance and constant hiding in corners, we'll see.

It's cold today. I feel sad for the birds. I suggested the idea of getting a bird feeder the other day to my dad, but the idea was treated with levity. We had two magpies in our garden last week, and then a squirrel. Which has never happened before. Then I saw a deer from the train on my way to work. And then rats in a little green area behind where I work. Although I have no idea how common that is. At least it is finally cold though, and not creepily, unusually warm.

Feeling down? Try these videos!

A fighting dog reluctantly gives into affection at a rescue centre:



Cats defending their kittens, and sometimes humans:



I had a Sunday lunch at a pub and then too much ice-cream, and now I feel awful.

( Coronation Street )

I am going to Cannon Hall Farm tomorrow, in the end. Gonna see some baby goats, aw yeah. In the horrible rain, aw yeah. But most of it's inside, so it should be alright, and it'll be warm at least. The cafe might well be packed, as it's Easter, but if we even get a chance to eat their delicious farm food and tuna paninis, it'll be all worth it.

I was going to go see Batman Vs Superman today, because <3 Superman. But I ended up going on an Easter egg hunt with two of my nephews yesterday, so I thought I'd give it a miss today. Apparently people don't like it. But most people didn't like Man of Steel, and I did, so we'll see.

We have a hedgehog downstairs. My dad saw it laying on its side in our cul-de-sac, and rescued it into a box. I spent about ten minutes looking up who to call about it, then half an hour on hold with the RSPCA hotline. During which time the hedgehog completely roused itself, started climbing the sides of the box and looking up sniffing every time I looked in the box and breathed on it. So we figured it was probably fine. We ended up calling our local vets just for some advice, and they said if it looks fine the best thing to do is to wait a few hours till it's dark, then release it in the garden and give it some cat food to send it on its way. It's downstairs in the bathroom right now.

Last night in kickboxing I learned how to slit someone's throat with their own knife if they came at me with one. So yeah. Exciting times.

I'm gonna get my haircut tomorrow. And shave my underarms. All excess hair will be lost to cope with the heat. I shall be summer-ready at last.

I went to the Yorkshire Wildlife Park today, with my parents. It was nice. There's not a huge amount of animals there, but we saw some lions, and some giraffes, and some polar bears, and some leaping lemurs. And some painted dogs, which are super pretty, and I've never seen in person before. It's pretty good considering it's only half an hour from my house and only costs £16 to get in.

The news out of Germany has been a real shock to me, as I'm sure it has been to lots of people. We still don't know what happened, but it's looking pretty grim from a mental health standpoint. A part of me's worried there's going to be a backlash against people with mental illnesses because of it, and Piers Morgan seems to be already leading that charge. Ugh.

On the other hand, I'm incredibly happy Jeremy Clarkson has finally been fired from Top Gear. OH HAPPY DAY. Quite apart from how I feel about him, though, his behaviour has just been getting worse as the years have gone by because everyone let him get away with it, and if they didn't punish him for hitting someone, he'd have ended up killing someone at some point. And been like "oh, but was I PROVOKED though? Their very existence provoked me'. So I'm glad consequences have come to pass, finally.

I got the PS4 remaster for Borderlands yesterday, for my birthday, and I sort of wasn't going to before I learned it was coming out on my birthday, and that seemed a little too perfect to ignore. But I'm glad I did, because it has made the whole game 10x more beautiful. Some games you really can't tell the difference, but Borderlands, the style must really suit a remaster or something, because every time I move in-game there's just so much more depth and everything looks great. Super happy with my purchase now. And I might be able to exchange about 3 game cases for just the one.

This is probably the funniest thing I've seen all week (for some background, this is the original trailer for the game, and gives a better idea of what it's about):



I was at jekesta's last week playing with her puppy Rita, and yesterday I ended up chasing around a dog that had got out from it's owner's garden, and I think that was one too many dog adventures because last night I dreamed about finding another dog that had gotten away from it's owner, and I really wanted to keep it but I knew mum and dad wouldn't let me have it in the house, and also - as sometimes happens - I knew I was dreaming and the dog wasn't real. She was golden brown and sort of short and stocky - I don't know about dog breeds and also she was imaginary - and called Aeren. Also the owner either didn't care or was a cult leader, so she was better off with me. But it turned out she wasn't real. So there we go.

The dog thing yesterday was basically that I was walking into town, hoping to go to the cinema, and this dog just came pelting down our road towards me, obviously not with anyone. Our road is a big main road, that leads down to the A1, so it's no place for a dog to be on its own, and it was only a little terrier. And I could see it had a dog collar on with a tag, so it was obviously someone's pet. So I ended up trying to call it over to see if I could get its address or a phone number, and then calling the dog warden. And then the owner turned up, asking if I'd seen a dog, and he managed to get it back on a leash. It turned out he only lived a few doors down the road, and the dog had escaped a couple of times before, because there was a bitch in heat somewhere in the neighbourhood and he hadn't had his (male) dog fixed because "he didn't believe in it". This dog apparently just kept finding escape routes out of their garden because it was so desperate to get to this bitch, and when it escaped he just gave it half an hour before even looking for it, so it would be tired and less likely to run off again when he found it. Frankly I think he deserved his dog running off a little bit, but he did seem to take pause when I said I'd seen it running across the main road and, at one point, directly down the middle of another one. Still, at least I know where he lives now in case I see it running free again.

I was going to take at some point about how Assassin's Creed: Black Flag simultaneously amuses and irritates me, but at the moment irritation is winning out, and I don't have the energy. Coronation Street on Friday, on the other hand, had a scene of someone fancying David, David kicking in a door, and David then rescuing a child. It did very well.

Some things that happened in the last 24 hours-ish:

• While going through the Apprentice tag on Tumblr, I discovered the existence of Katie Hopkins. Information I could have happily gone my whole life never discovering.



• I also found out that Mark Wahlberg was a huge cunt and a racist. I mean I suspected after that rape joke at the Oscars. But now I know quite a lot more about him. So. There we go.



• I watched Team Starkid's 'Holy Musical B@tman!' online, and now my favourite superhero is Superman, whaaaat?



• We had a powercut today, so my mum had to keep up with what she assumed was the end of the women's final by listening to it on the radio, through an open car window, on our driveway, while trying to tune out the sound of a burglar alarm down the street.



• After a few weeks of PMT symptoms and a day or two of stomach cramps, I finally got my period, yay!



• It's hot. It's so hot that I wandered into the garage an hour ago, and realised my dad had the garage door up and the door through to the kitchen open while it was dark outside, and I hadn't even noticed. I kind of like it when days like this happen, because it feels sort of exotic. But a bit like when it snows, I also only really hope for about a day of it. And I suspect this is going to go on longer than a day. Still, now I have my period maybe my body temperature will lower slightly, and I'll be able to sleep better. Rachael: talking my body's language. Maybe. Sometimes.



• Are videos of animals not understanding trampolines just the best ever?:
  
  
  
  
  We'll be talking to an expert.
  
  ETA: But you may also consider this video of two (young?) mooses (moosi?) and a cyclist trying to pass each other:
  
  
  ""What's the naughtiest thing you've ever done?": Kids Ask Tom Hardy Difficult Questions" (Watch on YouTube)
  
  
  N'awww.

Dragon Age 2 is so dull. SO DULL. I am into Act 3 now, and I don't care, all the care I previously had went away. And all my companions are dicks, I literally hate asking them for help, and I know it's because game 2 is all about Politics and Fantastic Racism, but aksnldcmclndlanj. Where is the part where they say "You're right, Hawke. You're beautiful and amazing and ALWAYS RIGHT, I will stop being such a dick now"? WHERE IS THE PART WHERE I CAN CHANGE THEIR PERSONALITIES TO SUIT MY WHIMS, I'm PRETTY SURE I get that option in most RPGs nowadays. Is that the ending? Is a big party with cake and everyone realises the error of their ways? Are the errors of their ways still to come in the story, and THEN maybe they'll have a change of heart over it? Because I don't care. I no longer care. I hope most of them die. After they've finished helping me in fights and stuff. Pretty much the only companions I care about are Varric and Anders, but my relationship with Varric is going nowhere since all we ever discuss are the stories he tells about me (AND I CAN'T TELL HIM I LOVE HIM), and Anders is going weird. I'm pretty sure I mostly only love Anders because my PC from Dragon Age Origins recruited him, and she would LOVE HIM, no matter what he did. Barring a few things, obviously. Ugh. I hate Templars, but I'm pretty sure they're going to give me a reason to hate mages shortly. And every other quest is basically a fetch quest, where my basic reward is a bit of money and a 'tick' next to the quest in my journal.

It's fine. It's perfectly fine. I'm just really bored.

In other news, people are saying Livejournal is no longer sending comment notifications, is that true? It sucks if it is true. I'm assuming I will get a 'notification' on the home page, or my journal, if you comment on this post. If not things are going to get a lot more complicated around here.

I have also been watching Springwatch, this week and last week, as I attempt to do every year. I love Springwatch. And I love Michaela Strachan now she has calmed down and stopped trying to do cheesy jokes and wacky presenting all the time. I have to assume either the others told her to calm down, or she found a genuine love for nature, or - in a way that is sad but perhaps for the best - she witnessed one too many 'tragedies', like entire nests of cute chicks being eaten by weasels, and it soothed her manic soul. In any case, she's a lot better nowadays. And I seem to be detecting a frisson of sexual tension between her and Chris Packham on the show. If not, they're still really lovely with the way she makes him laugh despite himself all the time.

And while watching Springwatch, I saw the presenters make a few comments suggesting cuckoos were getting really rare in Britain nowadays. Which made me lucky, I suppose, since on Tuesday my mum and I took my ON to a local nature reserve, Fairburn Ings, and totally heard one in the woods. Result.

I also had to go see a woman from the Jobcentre on Wednesday. It was the Disability Advisor, and it was just a routine checking in type of thing, but it was a new woman because the previous woman retired, so I decided I should go in and meet her face-to-face, and I was a little bit anxious about it. But she turned out to be really nice, I explained everything I was doing and everything I wasn't doing, and a bunch of things I was waiting to hear about, and she suggested a new website I could look at for volunteering opportunities, and a new service I could go to for therapy once my current counselling is finished, and that was it. It all went pretty smoothly and she'll check in with me again in three months. Hurrah.

Also, you know what I don't understand? When you see the same actor over and over again in roles where they are meant to be not very attractive and kind of creepy, but they use actors that are obviously incredibly attractive in a slightly odd way. The main person I am thinking of is Harry Kershaw, who looks like this:


(from microsite.bournemouth.ac.uk)

See what I mean? I guess that's what they mean by "TV ugly". They mean not ugly. I feel like I want to follow Harry Kershaw's career, in the hopes of one day seeing him in a thing where they treat him as as attractive as he is. Apparently he was in Skyfall. As "Q's assistant", which was probably the most forgettable role ever. Still. Maybe it means he is moving into Hollywood, and will have massive success in the future. Tom Hiddleston managed.

Also I really hate the changes Youtube have made to their site. Just so everyone knows.

Cute internet video of the weekend: a puppy reacting to the sound of wolves howling.

Continuing my theme of bringing you videos of animals bouncing on things, I give you: foxes on a trampoline.