Written on December 13th, 2023

I’m sitting in my home office/game room while I wait for Yessica to finish working out in the bedroom before we go into the kitchen and eat dinner. Tonight is Wednesday, so it’s whatever we want for dinner for ourselves. Can be something as simple as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, or it could some chocolate chip pancakes. That’s the beauty of Whatever Wednesday for us! But I figured while I wait, I can get some writing down on here for another blog post…

Much needed time off from work

We’re in the holiday season here in America. Where it’s the time for family get togethers, and last minute holiday shopping, while I’m here just waiting till Friday is over because I have scheduled off of work for the next two weeks. During that time off, I’ll be doing absolutely nothing but relax and unwind for those two weeks. Unfortunately, with us only having one car and Yessica needing it for work, I can’t really go anywhere during the time.

It’s actually been awhile since I have been able to take this much time off all at once. Usually, I like to schedule Fridays or Mondays off to give myself a longer weekend throughout the year. This year, I happen to have enough time remaining that I was able to schedule the rest of December off.

Just to be clear — I do get a lot of vacation time at my job, I just use most of it if not all before December comes around. Since our office closes for days like Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years, those were enough for me to warrant not saving my days off. But this year, I need to recharge my mental health here and take some extra time for my family and hobbies.

The next few weeks

My family and I celebrate Christmas during December. With Yessica and I living close to two hours away from our friends and family, we spend a lot of weekends making trips up to go see them. Especially around this time of year, we go up there a lot. We’ll be up there this Saturday to see my brother and his family to celebrate our nephew’s sixth birthday with a little party at the local bowling alley. Our nephew’s interest has changed over the years, from dinosaurs, to Spider-Man, and now this year, Super Mario. Can’t wait to see what’s next for him on his seventh birthday.

Next weekend, we will be going up on Sunday to spend Christmas Eve with both of our sides of the family. It’ll be an early dinner at my mother’s that day, and going over Yessica’s mothers to drop off gifts and pick her brother up. We have an early dinner at my mom’s that day because we’re planning on driving back home later on that evening. Usually when we get home from a trip up there, we’re exhausted and ready to sleep all night.

It’s not every time we’re up there, we come back home later that day. A lot of the times we end up spending the night at my brother’s place because he’s got the extra space for us. These next two weekends we won’t be taking their offer to stay, instead we’ll just sleep in our own beds those night. We always appreciate their hospitality and the convenience of not feeling exhausted later in the day, but sleeping in your own bed is just what you want sometimes.

In-between those two weeks coming up during my time off, I’ll be doing some of the following: writing, reading, baking, video games, and catch up on TV!

How to Sell a Haunted House

I’ve been in somewhat of a reading slump, finding it hard to sit down and open up a book, but today I was able to finish How to Sell a Haunted House, by Grady Hendrix. This one took me over a month to finish, which has not been like me, given some of the books I have read in less time than that (Stephen King’s, IT for example). If it wasn’t for the few trips to the laundromat when our dryer was broke, I wouldn’t have made as much of a dent than I did at that time. But I was near the end of the book today, and I wanted to add it to the finished pile, so I read though the end and closed it complete.

This book was really good by the way. I honestly didn’t know what to expect coming into it. I’ve read only one other brook from Grady Hendrix, My Best Friend’s Exorcism, which I also enjoyed, but I didn’t want to assume that I’ll like this one too just because. But I did, and I’m glad that I gave it a read! I read both of these books back-to-back, and I have a few of his other books on the shelf, but I’ll read them down the road so I’m not burned out from his work.

There was a good amount of horror thrown into the story. Really gave off vibes from Night of the Living Dummy, by R.L. Stine, which was also my favorite Goosebumps story. How My Best Friend’s Exorcism ended, I wasn’t sure what to expect the ending of this book would be. I was thinking that the ending was going to be something similar. But it didn’t, and I thought it ended nicely for me (not that My Best Friend’s Exorcism had this really gloomy ending). Hard to talk about books without giving away much and spoiling it major plots.

Next for me is The Wager, by David Grann. Not too far in this one, I only finished the prologue chapter, but I read enough pages for today after finishing How to Sell a Haunted House. I’m hoping to have this one wrapped up sometime next week with the free time now. Maybe during the next post, I’ll have this completed, give my thoughts on it, and start the next book after.

I have a list of books that I want to read, and how I pick them is by picking a name out of the hat. Pick two choices to see if I like one better than the other and go from there. If both of the picks I like a lot, I settle that by flipping a quarter to hanlde the tiebreaker. This is how The Wager won by the way, my other choice was Mr. Mercedes, by Stephen King.

Super Mario RPG

Last night, I finished Super Mario RPG on the Nintendo Switch. Just a fair warning, I’m wearing nostalgia glasses on this when I say that this game is amazing.

It’s exactly what I wanted in a remake to the original Super Nintendo game that I loved as a kid. With some quality of life changes, and a few updates in dialogue, most of it was spot on from the Super Nintendo version. Just what I wanted. This game was what got me into turn-based role-playing games as a kid, so it always was in the talks of favorite games of all time for me.

Super Mario RPG is a very good introduction game for people wanting to give turn-based combat a try. There’s not much in-depth technicality that you need to know, just plan your attack and hit the “A” button at the right moment for a bonus. By the first hour, you’ll already get the hang out of what the rest of the game has to offer, so in that case, just enjoy the whacky story that it has. I loved it back then, and still love it now.

I don’t plan on playing anything after this one. Nothing really grabbing me at the moment, even though I have tons of options to play. Maybe when I have the funds, I’ll buy Baulder’s Gate 3 now that it came to Xbox, and play that in the future, or maybe I’ll play something I already have and save the money!

Lack of any TV or Movies

Here’s to my pile of shame…the lack of watching anything really. If watching NFL RedZone on Sundays, or some football during Thursday or Monday night counts, then sweet! Other than that, I have an ever growing list of shows and movies that I want to watch. I recently looked at Apple TV and saw that what I had in my queue, and it’s a never ending list here.

Since I finished Super Mario RPG, and don’t really plan on playing anything else video game wise, I could use some of that time to watch something on TV. It’ll probably be replaced with more reading or writing, but you never know.

Last remarks

After this update, I’m planning to post some microfiction that I have started writing. I’ve joined a writer’s group near me, and in April, they are having a microfiction contest for 100 or less word stories that I want to submit my entries to. One for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. The stories I’ll be putting on here won’t be the one’s I’m submitting, but I’d still like to share the ideas I have with you all. So look forward to that in the near future.

Until then, here is Chance saying, “Have a great week!”

Brad