Monday, April 1, 2019

March 2019 Entry

March 2019 Entry

A long and exhausting month. After typing notes, not too much happened. 

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- Got a text from my bank (03.01). It was similar to one I got last time my credit card information was stolen. And that was the same case again. This time someone was trying to use it multiple times at a gas station (was told $1 purchases at first, but it ended up being $75 each time). Since it seemed to happen at the same place again (a gas station), I decided not to go there again unfortunately. So for the third time in a year, I had to replace my credit card, lame.  

- Had made plans prior to eat dinner with a friend, but got a text earlier in the day by another to eat lunch (03.06). Went to Korean Noodle House for lunch. Had not been there in years and they relocated, but were in the same area. They had just gotten bigger. I was worried the food wouldn't be as good, but it definitely was. Glad they were able to grow. But my friend and I caught up and talked about a lot of things. One was about something I kept forgetting to ask her for months now. It was about a time where she introduced me as her best friend and how I was surprised when she said it. But it's great to know I have 2 best friends now. We did go to a Starbucks after to continue talking and then later got her to visit the new work place since we were close by. Showed her around, answered questions, and then she had to go and I had to actually work. It was great catching up with her like always.  

Work was a short day and I went to go meet another friend for dinner at Yardhouse. Unfortunately, she was late, but she made it. Shared some similar stories with her, but definitely talked about other subjects. We hung out and basically kept talking late into the night. Through no fault of hers (someone else's), the night ended on a sour note, but we still had a good time.  

- A week later, caught up with more friends (03.12). One was on Spring Break and wanted to hang. I told him to swing by work and check it out finally. Thought my work day would end short like it normally does on Tuesdays, but we got a booking the day of and literally an hour before my friend showed up. He was contemplating leaving as he was feeling tired, but he sensed that I wanted to talk so I convinced him to stay. While he was waiting, he called up his cousin to come join us for dinner. Closed up after the session was over and we went to Ra. Food was great. We all vented about things. Mine was related to Twitch (first friend thought it was my new source of income, didn't know it was only donations). I still have some similar gripes and they both kept assuring me that things will happen soon. We walked around a bit afterwards, but it also kind of ended on a small sour note for one of them (that's what poor customer service can do to someone). It was still great catching up with them though. 

Uno night with friends. Got to visit a new house, meet someone new, catch up with everyone, share stories, and reunite with friends and their kids (who were very playful and played Uno with us). I was the ultimate loser, but it was too fun. 


- I tried to start doing more exercising lately. My gut is growing and I have felt weaker in general. But it really has been destroying my back. It really felt bad getting up at times. Going to need to find a good balance...or get back into yoga as suggested by AGirlKeepsSecrets. As of publishing this, I have yet to try it.

- And I retired 3 devices this month. The first was carrying around my 2DS/3DS in my bag. I forgot when I actually started doing it though, but I figured to do it after forgetting to take out of my bag after a few days. The other things I retired were my 2 iPod Minis. The reason being that I finally found a larger iPod I had after many months. Now all the music will be that I can squeeze (which is twice the amount of the 2 minis combined) into it. 

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Fastlane was a fun PPV (03.10). If you decided to skip this one, go back and watch it. 


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- Finished Final Fantasy IX (03.04). The ending hit me more than before. I definitely appreciate this game more this time than the first time around. It was great playing it again after so many years. I also named my Moogle, MiSaMo (Mina, Sana, Momo). 


- The DLC for Travis Strikes Again came out (03.06). Black Dandelion gave a few new shirts and the choice to play as Shinobu. While leveling her up, I alternated between her, Travis, and Badman who I didn't use at all until then. There was also an extra visual novel sequence to give more backstory to Badman, which was really good. Same standard stuff, but I still enjoyed it. And if you want a real treat, you can watch the last stream of the DLC to watch my lip sing and dance to BoA and DBSK as I was leveling up Shinobu. 


- During my stream of the Black Dandelion DLC, two packages came in so I unboxed them on stream (03.06). One was a chocolate flavored snack called Bing Bing (really good). The other was my Japanese copy of the Ace Attorney Trilogy. That makes it my first Japanese game I've owned for my Switch. Can't wait to play this next month. 


- New Demo Showcase (03.08). This one featured Awesome Pea (short, but simple), Bad North (fun stratetgy game that gained a lot of attraction and convinced others to buy it), Collidalot (interesting take on RC/slot cars), Venture Town (another nice sim game), and Yoshi's Crafted World (gorgeous Yoshi game). Bad North was the favorite for this showcase. Not only did I enjoy it, but the excitement from the chat (followers and fans of the game) at that time helped. 

DELTARUNE Chapter 1 was so good (03.11). Never played UNDERTALE, but had seen playthroughs of it so I was familiar with characters and game play. Had a good turnout of UNDERTALE fans come in to watch and help me out when I was struggling. I went for a pacifist run, but didn't get a true run as a computer character killed someone (but apparently it only changed a small thing in the end). That Jevil fight...geez. But we also beat it in a single sitting. I thought it might have been something to split into 2 parts, but again the active chat helped and gave me motivation. Highly recommend this even if you haven't played UNDERTALE like me. 



- Yay for more free games. Tried out SMITE (03.13). The stream was delayed though as SMITE had to be updated (tried to continue without it) and it took a little under an hour to do. Got to play with one of my viewers, which made it fun (however we lost every match, ha). There were times that I lost interest because the champions I was choosing weren't as good as others, but overall it was okay. 

- I bought the Child of Light/Valiant Hearts combo since it was the only way to get a physical version of Child of Light. So I finally played Valiant Hearts: The Great War (03.15). I was very surprised to see that one of the tags for the game was "educational." That part is optional as there are facts you read about the war as well as the trinkets you pick up in the game. By the way, the game is a fictional story based in WWI. I went in knowing nothing and really enjoyed it. The art style is wonderful, the game play is simple, and the story/characters are very likable (emotional). It took 2 streams to beat and then an extra 1 to 100% it. Definitely recommend it. 


- Thanks to Agent PQ for the Mega Man stuff (03.17). I bought the Fanta drinks on my way home. The new flavor of Wild Cherry...was fine. It just seemed like normal cherry. Didn't sense the wild part of it. 

- The Nindies Showcase Spring 2019 was alright (03.20). I thought it was a little underwhelming, but had my favorites, which were My Friend Pedro, Katana Zero, and Cadence of Hyrule (which makes me want to play the previous Necrodancer games...sometime soon). 

- Had to reschedule when I wanted to play the Splatoon 2 Special Demo (03.20). Originally I was going to lay it after StarTropics, but it would have ended that morning. So I bumped it up and I think it was good timing. Ended up playing with 2 people I knew. Both happened to share the same first name and be over level 40, ha. And it was great playing with them. Definitely made it more fun and I enjoyed it when I was playing with completely random people too. I think I ended up being level 7 or 8 by the end. Definitely cool to see a nice spike in viewership.



- Beat StarTropics for the first time ever (03.22). Mentioned it on stream, but I only rented this game back in the day. I remembered a little of what I played, which was less than a third of the game. But thanks to save states, an FAQ, and helpful/encouraging viewers in the chat, I was able to finish this game in one sitting. It was a tough one. Hard to recommend it though. 



- We started playing Final Fantasy VII (03.26). First time playing it in 20+ years and it's great. Things are very familiar (however I am following my strategy guide) and the modifiers help the slower parts move along nice and quickly. Not planning to 100% complete, but I want to do a few major things (Knights of the Round, Emerald/Ruby weapons, etc). I don't know if I'll be able to beat it in my initial predicted time frame (before the digital release of Ace Attorney Trilogy) because plans and Wrestlemania weekend, but that's okay. I'm cool with enjoying the game again. 



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Escape room escape rate is at 82% (03.15). That's 28 escapes out of 34 rooms now. Found this small escape room that was planning to have a versus concept, but it was not out yet. So that made me want to check out the other room they offer. It's a small place ran by 1-2 people. The room was also small and very home made. All of us was reminded of our original version of our first room. So many similarities between the 2 rooms from some of the props and their usage and general development. We liked it, but definitely saw where they could improve. The person working there was very kind and open with us too so that's always a plus. 

- One weekend, there were 2 individual ladies that came in that I was really attracted to (03.23, 03.24). The first one was with her family. Throughout the session, I felt we were locking eye contact with each other a lot. The last thing that really caught my attention was that she actually waved "bye" to me as her family was leaving our conference room after taking photos. I just could not find an opportunity to say something to her without raising suspicion from her family. 

The other was with a group of friends celebrating one of their birthdays. She was gorgeous and it was hard to tell if one guy was with her as they didn't arrive together, but he was close to her throughout the majority of their session. Similar to the the previous girl, I could not find a good time to talk to her without her friends noticing. While I've done that before a couple years ago, I had the confidence and the "I have to do this" gumption to actually do it. I wish I tried for at least one of them. If anything, with the first one as I felt she was showing some interest. I'm usually wrong about these things though.  

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- TaeYeon - Four Seasons (MV) 


- Tiffany - Lips On Lips (Live Session) 


- Couple things to note. One is that I think I have more of a handle on Twitch and how I want to approach it. Per month I'll have the main/new games I want to play at the beginning/middle/end of the month and in between each of those will be one Demo Showcase, one NES game, and one-offs (free or purchased). Still does feel weird scheduling out when I play games. And I'm also pulling back on my time on Twitch. That includes taking a break from streaming (like how I didn't play anything between StarTropics and Final Fantasy VII) and from taking a break from watching streams. It was becoming too much at one point that I needed to do this so I wouldn't feel burnt out. I've been doing this for half a year now (03.28, missed when it happened) and it kind of flew by. 

The other thing...I've just felt more lonely. I'm trying not to let it get to me, but it's been growing over the years. I have bestowed upon others over time to help me get dates or introduce me to someone, but the response is usually the same. I don't know. I just don't want to get too desperate and too lonely. I mentioned trying to approach a couple of customers earlier in the month. I think because I didn't, my loneliness shot up. 

- That's it for March 2019. Thanks for reading and take care (can't recall why I started to shorten this outro sentence, but I wanted to add "take care" back into it starting now). 


"Reprise the theme song and roll the credits." 

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