Hey all, welcome to 2026! I've had a really hard time writing on my blog lately. I don't know what it is . . . I guess after Dune and all my cancer nonsense of last year, I just fizzled out a bit. If you don't mind (I'm sure you don't), Imma just journal a bit here and catch up to the present. M'kay? M'kay!
1- Real Life -- Couple things to note here. Mom died. It's ok. She lived a good, long life. I officiated the funeral for the family, and my company granted me a week of bereavement leave. I wrote up her obituary and went with my sister to decide on the casket, flowers, and etc. It was painful, but necessary and important family work.
My kids were very respectful pallbearers
At the same time, I got hit with the Flu that's been going around. It's like 2025 was trying to give me a final punch in the gut. Can 2026 just be a bit more awesome please? Luckily Tamiflu knocked it out of me in time for the funeral.
As for cancer, well, I'm still doing immunotherapy infusions every three weeks. It's my new normal. Hopefully, my upcoming CT Scan shows continued improvement.
2- Dune -- yeah, I haven't really logged on to do anything on Dune more than just refilling my base's (and Dylan's bases') power supplies. It's dry gameplay that just isn't that fun.
Oh, you know, just spending an hour collecting fuel cells to power the bases . . .
On the upside, everybody on our server's sietch is jumping ship to a different sietch and changing over to a new guild, so that might actually get me logged on to do the same. I don't know. When a game becomes nothing more than chores you have to do, it feels a bit . . . dead. The third DLC is supposed to be dropping sometime early this year though, so if that happens, I'll for sure be joining in to play through more of the story.
3- Baldur's Gate 3 -- I should probably dedicate an entire blog post to my recent playthrough of BG3, and actually, yeah, I think I'll do that at some point. The short story of this playthrough is that my son started DM'ing a game that takes place in the Feywild, and I'm playing a clown-based Mischief cleric named Dandy Goofus. I was so excited about this character that I made him over in Baldur's Gate 3 to see how he plays.
Clown makeup secured!
The original goal was simply to get him to Act 3 so I could get him the clown makeup from the circus, but I ended up really going crazy on Act 3 and doing everything I just kind of skipped through in the past. That means I actually helped Shadowheart with her Mother Superior problem. That means I helped Asterion become a Vampire lord. That even means I saved Minsc, fought Raphael, destroyed the steel watcher factory, and got Orpheus's hammer.
BG's newest vampire lord in the house!
Really, all that's left in this play through is to get the last Dribbles the Clown body part (this is just some clown-to-clown good deed stuff I need to do), finish up the Orin fight, and take the final fight to the brain. I'm near the end, and I kind of don't want it to end. :(
4- Quest 3S -- I got TWO Quest 3S's for Christmas: one for me and one for my youngest. They were on sale for $200 at Costco during the holidays, and I couldn't resist.
I've told a few people who read this blog already, but I'll repeat myself here: I don't think I realized how devastated I really was when I had to return my Quest 3 engineering model to Meta when WIMO folded. It felt like a larger metaphor in my life for some reason (as weird as that may seem). I put that thing on after opening up my Christmas present and played Smash Drums until the battery ran out. It felt really good. It felt really cathartic.
Smash those drums!
I've played a few other games on my Quest 3S since Christmas, and that means, if I can get to it, I've got more fuel for the blog post dumpster fire in me!
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Anyway, that should catch you up on the holidays and the start of 2026. Thanks for reading, and let me know your thoughts. I love hearing from readers and old friends. I appreciate it and hope your holidays went well and that your 2026 is starting off right.
Happy Dueling!
