Two New Games

 I'm not sure what I want to write about today. There's some stuff going on at work that is causing me some stress, but it's not the sort of thing I can write about so I'm not going to. The downfall of the USA is a thing but is too big to deal with. 

I've been playing two new games lately. The big name one is Civ VII, which has some new ideas that are novel and distinguish it from previous iterations. The big one is the splitting the game into 3 ages with there being a soft reset at the end of each era and your civilization changing to a new one more relevant to the new era, e.g. Antiquity Age Rome can transition into Exploration Age Spain which can transition into Modern Age France. Your leader stays the same so there's continuity. I'm still also getting my head around some of the new building mechanics. One thing the game does well is end in a timely fashion, often with previous editions I'd get stuck taking so long to finish a science or culture victory and with nothing else to do would build a huge army and after 6000 years of peaceful development just let loose on the world for something to do while building up my interstellar spaceship.

 The other game is Against the Storm, which is a rouge-like town building game. I do have some reservations still about the term rogue-like having evolved into "game with a core gameplay mechanic and only one life that gets enhanced as you play more" from the original "dungeon crawler like Rogue or Nethack" but that battle has been lost for a while now. Anyway, it's a good mix of managing production chains with some varying twists thrown in for extra challenges. It's a good way to kill an hour or two.

 End Post
Writing time: a while (I got interrupted by the people doing pest control so had to leave my unit for an hour and a bit)
Time since last post: 8 days
Current media:Make Some Noise season 3 episode 18

Phoenix dactylifera

Two weeks ago I did something I haven't done in a while. I went on a date. It was with a woman I'd met through a dating app, and I think the most positive I can be is that it was a learning experience. 

 We'd chatted through the app for about two weeks before I felt comfortable suggesting a meet up, and we met up Saturday afternoon at a cafe. We spent 2 and a bit hours talking (mostly her). 

Things I learned include I'm still not good at holding up a conversation, I'm not as open as I think to getting involved with someone with kids, I had no idea what a proper amount of time to budget for such an event, if I have tickets for something that evening I should disclose that ahead of time rather than having to wrap things up abruptly, and I still don't really understand my own reactions to some things.

The outcome was a sort of fizzle out. No red flags, but no green flags either. The uncertainty caused me to delay following up for a few days to the point where I felt like I was on the verge of ghosting her. I ultimately came to the conclusion that if I was still uncertain if I wanted to see her again after that time, it wasn't meant to be. It then took a bit of time to work out a tactful way of saying so. 

I'm still looking, and as usual not getting a lot back. I'll stick with it for a while longer, but also thinking about some other options.