Riku in the first Kingdom Hearts took me so so long. Halfway because of that fucking unskippable cutscene.

Similarly, I was never able to defeat Maleficent, so I never beat the first game at all.

Also, Lion King for the SNES. Technically it wasn’t a boss that I couldn’t beat, but the goddamn lava level. I had that game my entire childhood and was never able to beat it. When I was 22, I had a bunch of 12 hour overnight shifts with a work buddy who said he could beat it. So we passed it back and forth. It took us a few days and probably a hundred lives. But finally. Finalllllly, we did it.

Hard to choose just one.

Kim Petras was an absolute blast. Excellent use of the screens and her backup dancers. But pretty raunchy for sure. The people in the crowd here hardly dressed, which was super fun for the energy of the whole thing.

Black Tiger Sex Machine was I think the first show I went to that had egregious use of lasers. What a blast. So many people were dancing like no one was watching - absolutely infectious. The crowd crush got to be wayyyy too much for me though and I had to leave my super great spot.

Shawn James might have been my favorite though. Teeny tiny venue where I was standing on a balcony overlooking the crowd. The first band to play turned up the energy and then Shawn James came out and it was practically spiritual. If you’ve seen Sinners where the camera is going through the barn and the different dancers are all there and everyone and everything is kinda blending together? It was like that. Watching the crowd move as one to the beat and being surrounded by that energy and the music where we were all so crammed in together? Probably the only time I’d use the term psychedelic to describe a real experience.

Yeppers, me too. Lots.

Counterpoint to your military argument - sometimes kids have nowhere else to go. I grew up in a poor, broken household full of trauma. No one in my family knew how to apply for college, nevertheless was going to help pay for any single part of it, nor did they give me any foundation to have a life that wasn’t horrible.

So I joined the military straight out of high school. I did my contractual time and left, going straight to college with that sweet GI Bill and a bunch of life experience.

Sometimes these kids don’t really have a choice. It’s survival.

That sort of smell of decay when the fallen leaves from autumn get a little soggy from early winter rains. Gosh I could just shove it all up my nose

The bark of certain pine trees smell like butterscotch, and pine needles themselves have what I find to be somewhat floral smell.

It’s a wonderful forest smell up in there. So fresh.

Yeah same. Time to grab the ole trusty Moody Blues

Um

Don’t Stop Believing by Journey. I can’t stand that song at all. Please play anything else.

Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana. Not even close to their best music, but the radio loves it.

Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. I held on for so long but finally I can’t listen to it any more. I just can’t.

Love a 50/50 green yellow banana. When they have a good snap and that green taste? Yummm

That’s really cool! What a neat project!

Certainly not to this degree at all, but I do love having a satellite or aerial view to just look around my area. I recently found there’s sprint boat races on a small man made course nearby and I’m excited to go check it out!

Good luck on your future endeavors and I hope you find some more neat stuff :)

For another 2¢ from me, there are a lot of paid DMs out there if you can swing the bill.

After turning in my own DM cloak, I decided to jump into a beginner friendly PF2e game and met a ton of friends. Also became good friends with the GM there and they don’t have our group pay any longer. It’s just friends playing for fun now.

Not to say that will surely happen, but it’s a great way to at least expand the social circle if you want to work your way toward free games some day ahha

I started skiing when I was very young and I was always bad at it. Never really improved, but golly I was really good at super pie-ing my way down difficult stuff.

I switched to snowboarding and it just clicked for me. It felt so much better and made way more sense.

Not to say it’s easy, but give it a try. You might really enjoy yourself.

On a side note, I’ve since learned that I just suck at motion that has me with my feet facing forward. I can’t roller skate or ice skate to save my life, but long boarding or skate boarding are find. I’m a little shaky on scopters, but it’s not as bad as skates

This is really cool. Are you taking the photographs yourself? Are you using a GIS program? Running Q or something?

Clouds!

And other weather phenomena, of course.

I just think they’re fantastic and they change so often and tell us so much

I know it’s not for everyone, but I play online weekly-biweekly and it’s great.

Very excited that the Draw Steel VTT just dropped

Make sure your dog knows they’re loved and wanted. The calmness that helps provide helps a lot when you’re training.

Also please socialize your dog. Dog parks can be very scary for a puppy, so it’s important to try to ease into the socializing. Maybe by other puppy meet ups or if you have friends with dogs.

Pointless Sites

It’s a lot of really random stuff. I go through a few sites now and again instead of doom scrolling and I always seem to find at least one really interesting or fun thing.

A lot of the personal project sites and just weird stuff feels like the old internet and it makes me happy

I was doing backcountry snowboarding on a mountain I grew up near. It’s not anywhere near an established ski resort so there’s no mapped out sections or any safety measures. I was with a group and we were mostly sticking together, but I didn’t want to wait for them to smoke a cigarette so I just went ahead.

The ride itself was a ton of fun and probably the craziest line I’ve ever hit. I bombed it out of the bottom because I could see there was a big flat section coming and I didn’t want to walk through the snow to get out. I rode as long and far as I could, but eventually stopped as I didn’t have enough speed. I was in the middle of a big clearing and didn’t see really any other tracks, but it was late spring and where I was was pretty icy. So I unstrapped and stepped off of my board, picked it up, and started walking toward our meeting spot.

Apparently the clearing I was in was not so much just a nice meadow. Nope, it was a pond. I don’t know how many steps I took before I just fell straight through the top layer. Now I don’t know if the water had just backed up there from an ice floe and then maybe the dam melted and it all went away, but what I do know is that I landed with my armpits on my board and I was dangling.

Thankfully I was a strong little shit, so I pulled myself right up and was able to spread my weight out using my board and otherwise. But when I looked into the hole I had made, it was like fifteen feet straight down to a bunch of big rocks. Had I fallen in, I have no idea if anyone would have been able to find me.

I wasn’t too scared then, but it hits me now and again how utterly close to death I was just then. Terrifying.

Come do it yourself, you coward.