Another year down. Wheew. I thought it was going to kill me.
So what has happened this year…
Bit of a story, so hit the link below for the run down
The Porsche is on its way out. A black Ford SportTrac is replacing it. Automatic, and the wife loves it even more than the little red ridding hood. It is a good little truck I think. Has a pretty good “little” motor, a decent locking hub four wheel drive, and a 4.10 limited slip diff in the back, so it could actually tow a trailer if I got a hitch for it. It also has four full size doors and a full size bench seat in the back so it can carry people too. A little bed for lawn care stuff or whatever.
The house has a problem with the septic pump again. That should be awesome to deal with. A full year before something went wrong. Fancy that. Know what I think is wrong? It burned up, because the dumb shit that installed it didn’t follow recommended procedure and make it a three float system. What everything I have ever read has said is that it should work thus: When the bottom float switches on, the pump house is “primed” to start the pump. When the middle float switches on, it activates the pump. The pump doesn’t shut off until the bottom float switches off. The very top float is a warning system that ties to an alarm in the garage. If this last float trips something has gone awry and the system is in danger of backing up into the house. This method of pump management minimizes the amount of time that the pump is actually running, and since the pump has to push such a huge amount of head (both line feet and vertical climb) to get to our drain field, would give the pump a chance to get more of the effluence up there. Instead, the pump switches on when we flush the toilet, and 10 seconds later shuts off. That isn’t enough time for the effluence to make it all the way up to the drain field, so it drains back into the pump house; tripping the float and turning on the pump again. $1500 job ruined a year later because the dipshit contractor cut a corner.
On to other news.
I made more money this year then I honestly thought I would at 32. That is exciting, but it has cost me quite a bit to make, from a personal health point of view. I have gained 30 pounds since my hip surgery. Not proud of that at all. It has all but destroyed my self confidence. Night shift. 12h of being paid to sit in a chair. Dead tired on weekends and forced to keep a night schedule and not get out when the sun shines… Yeah. Barts high paying job is costing him a lot more than anticipated. Seriously wondering if it is all fucking worth it.
Still nicotine free. I drink a lot of coffee, and switched the wife and I to pressed fresh ground, instead of packaged coffee through a drip machine. It is a bit more work, but makes the coffee experience much more fulfilling. It seems to have helped the wife with her coffee/tummy problems at the same time too, so that is quite cool too.
Still have hips-bane; aka Grace; aka the motorcycle, although I didn’t put many miles on her this year. The weather has been really shitty this past year, and the job keeping me on a night schedule has sucked a lot of daytime flexibility and motivation from me.
Playing bunches of Skyrim. What an engrossing game. Buggy as fucking hell though. I have about a hundred “pounds” of crap that I can neither turn in for quest reward, or drop into a box and forget about. There are also about a dozen unfinishable quests in my queue because I did the specific steps out of order. To say it simplistically, I can’t open a door, because I picked up the key before I knew the door existed. The game has a frustrating habit of giving you quests to go do, while not performing a sanity check whether some dependency action has already been done. This is compounded by the above problem where quest items don’t get “turned in” because they were found before the quest was started. Now I have clutter in my inventory that I can’t get rid of, for quests that are impossible to finish.
My first vice-adventurer in the game disa-fucking-ppeared on me too. Lydia. Just up and vanished. Before you say it, no. She didn’t die. I didn’t kill her. I was fucking off in the ass end of nowhere (like you do), and when I fast traveled to town to drop off the hojillion pounds of shit I was packing she didn’t come with me. Where is she? Nowhere. Fucking game.
I think I am going to finish the main plot and be fucking done with it. I found a book towards the end of the game that lets you basically break the leveling system. Through the cunning use of a book shelf you can level to infinity without any work. So that is exactly what I did. Now I punch dragons in the face to death with my bare hands, while wearing armor that would come straight out of a Nazgul cosplay convention. Seriously. I look like death, ride a pitch black horse with glowing red eyes called Shadowmere, and punch dragons to the ground in three hits.
When I actually want to slow down and savor the kill, he makes absolutely no sound, and with daggers do an absolutely staggering amount of damage. Oh, those daggers? I made them. Then I upgraded their base stats to over twice what they started with, then put enchantments to them. So lets do some maths eh? One Daedric knife has a base damage of lets say 12, my skill level ups that base to something silly like 35, then I smith that shit to 88. Then we apply the 30x multiplier from various perks and other equipment to the base damage, and pile on the stats boosting effects to that. OH! I can carry two, one in each hand, so multiply that by two. He is a demonic one man wrecking ball of flesh rending doom, ridding a horse that leaves scorched earth in his passing. My dragonborn sneezes and ends gods. He also a kitty cat named Humphre. While epic and awesome, it makes the game kinda broken.
