February 2021 Entry
Heck of a month. Heck of a month.
MISC=========================
- Twix Cookies & Creme are delicious (02.03). The ice cream version is great and so are the regular candy bars. I have been eating half of one bar for each break on stream. But I did need to pull back on it some and not eat them every day as I noticed I was getting similar feelings for eating too much sugar. So at least every other day.
- A friend from the dance studio (I used to go to) and I recently reconnected online sometime last year. We weren't super close back then, but it was nice to talk to someone I had not seen in 5+ years. We decided to meet up for dinner (02.07). It was nice seeing her all grown up now and to simply talk to someone and see them in person. Definitely talked about things I never thought we would talk about, but I guess we're cool like that, ha. Hopefully it won't be another half decade before we see each other again.
- New TWICE face mask (02.08). Had a $5 coupon to use at YesAsia so I figure this would be a good purchase.
- The winter storm happened (02.15-02.21). I'll recap stuff per day, but I may forget some small details.
02.15 - Lost power from 6:30AM-3:30PM. The snow had fallen that night. It wasn't a crazy ton of snow like in other places that regularly get snow. It was nice to see the snow. Plus it wasn't too cold during that outage. During that time, I listened to podcasts that were already saved on my phone and leveled up in Trials of Mana (to a certain point) and Wheel of Fortune (one full game). When the power came back on, I didn't think to recharge all my devices because I thought we were good, but the power went out 4 hours later. That first night I put on extra layers of clothes and got one extra blanket. Wasn't too cold that night.
02.16 - First full day without power and water. Tried keeping contact with others as best as I could. Unfortunately, my phone doesn't stay charged for a long time anymore. Plus there was also the struggle of having a weak internet signal. I think the power came back on for 5 minutes at one point. Sucked to see it go. It was colder too so all day I had at least 2 pairs of socks, 2 pairs of pajama pants, 3-4 shirts/hoodies on with the hood up, gloves, and a ski mask. Also slept with 2 more blankets and had one set up against the wall since my bed is next to the windows. I listened to music from my iPad to help me fall asleep. I think on this day that I left a message on Discord so people knew what was going on. This was the day that my brother and mother opted to go to a cousin's who still had power. Dad didn't want to go and I didn't want to leave him alone. So they went and we stayed. Later learned that they lost power there around 10PM. We ate dinner around 6PM and the lights were already out. We ended our day at 7PM. When I went to my room, I had an overwhelming sense of loneliness. It was pitch dark, it was incredibly cold, and I was by myself. I cried. I went to go see my dad and we ended up having a heart-to-heart, which we normally don't do. Some already know the details, but things are set in motion for things to happen if I can't personally make it happen myself. I messaged a group text about it too as I really missed seeing them (been over a year). One ended up calling me and it was good to talk to him for about an hour in general and about what may happen. I felt better going to sleep that night after that call.
02.17 - Still no power or water.
I went out with my dad as he helped some of his friends with pipe issues. We also went to Hong Kong Mall, which was open. It wasn't completely open, but the grocery store and some restaurants were. They also had wifi so I got a good hour of being able to check on things. I also helped him with some pipe stuff when we got back home, which required a trip to Home Depot. That was bad. A line outside to get in, a line inside to wait to shop, and once you were out of that line...no social distancing was enforced and everyone was in the same aisle for pipe stuff. We got the pipe faucet we thought we needed and left maybe half an hour after we got there. Unfortunately it was the wrong piece. I wanted to end my night with Wheel of Fortune again like I did the previous night. Towards the end of the game was when our family in Canada called. They actually had no idea what was going on. The power actually turned on for 10 minutes 2 separate times. It finally came back around 8:45PM and stayed.
02.18 - Brother and mother returned around lunch time. The rest of the day was kind of normal. I did start to discard blankets and extra layers of clothing as we had heat again. But I had everything ready just in case. Thankfully the power never went away from this point on.
02.19 - Same with water returning, but at low pressure.
02.20 - Back to normal minus the low water pressure.
02.21 - Water pressure was finally back to normal.
- Sonic The Hedgehog became free on Prime Video the day before the one year anniversary from when I saw it. I felt it was highly appropriate to watch it the following day (02.19). It was just as fun as I remembered it being. After the winter storm, this was one of the best pick-me-ups to happen.
- Prime Movies Round 11 is in the books. They weren't all winners, but there were some I really enjoyed a lot. My top 3 were A Simple Favor, Sylvie's Love, and Life In A Year (director liked my tweet, yay).
WRESTLING=====================
- NXT TakeOver: Vengeance Day was excellent (02.14). I feel like I say the same thing over and over for TakeOvers. It's always true though.
- Elimination Chamber was full of surprises (02.21). Definitely not one to miss out on.
H.E.R.========================
- One of the best things I got to do during my first year at H.E.R. was a pregnancy reveal. I might have told this story before. The email request came on February 18th, 2015. When it was forwarded to the staff, I jumped at the opportunity in coming up with a way to alter Mo's Safehouse to make it work. I don't know if anyone else had ideas because no one said anything and my idea got greenlit. There were a couple of things I remember being funny about buying specific props. One was just going to a Babies 'R Us in general because I can't even remember if I had been to one prior. The other was having people stare as I was buying very specific things. Like here's possibly a single father buying things that make no sense together. I also started to correspond with the customer we were doing this for. Other than asking if she liked the idea or not, I asked for a few things like her sonogram (and a few other things I can't remember). She had also done Mo's Safehouse already and that's why she thought it would be a great idea to do this.
I was obviously going to run the session too as it was my idea. I explained to the group since she had done the session before that she was going to be an observer and stick by me, which made it fun for her to see things from our perspective. I'm sure she was also nervous and excited to see her friends and family figure things out. While the plot of the room led the participants to think Mo was pregnant, it wasn't until a planned key point towards the end that it was revealed that the one who invited them was pregnant. That part in itself was great because the majority of the group found out one after the other as they couldn't all crowd around and read the clue. As others were figuring it out, the ones that did went to hug her as she cried so it was a kind wave of emotion flowing. I think I was either texting the rest of the staff what was going on or they heard. Afterwards they told me they were wondering if they should join the room to congratulate her as well, but they didn't. After a few minutes, I reminded the team we were still locked in and they almost immediately went back into game mode while the true main character was wiping her tears. They eventually escaped, I explained the differences in props, and the story of corresponding back and forth was revealed to them.
While we had done wedding proposals, birthday surprises, gender reveals, and more, there was only one pregnancy reveal. It was the story I told the most and is one of the more clear memories I still have of a specific group. The link below is the thank you card that was sent to me a week or so later. I might still have it. If I do, it's in a box of memories. That kid would be 5-6 years old now.
GAMES=========================
- Something I had forgotten to mention (or maybe I forgot that I had already mentioned it) months ago was I found a work around for the PC audio jack issues. I remembered that I had an audio splitter so that 5 sets of headphones can be connected to the same device (bought and used twice for separate Christmas events). Plugging that in and then plugging my headphones into nullified the issue by 90%. The other 10% is just a small touch or adjustment and it's good. Yay for a simple fix.
- Capcom Beat 'Em Up Bundle | Armored Warriors (02.01)
Started the Capcom Beat 'Em Up Bundle. The plan is to play one of the 7 games a month in alphabetical order. I've only played a few of the titles and Armored Warriors was not one of them. The game itself was fine. Played like most beam 'em ups, but with different mechs with different weapons you can pick up. But it was fun.
- Demo Showcase 57 (02.02)
While Grimvalor might have been my favorite out of the batch, a large chunk of this Demo Showcase was from Fitness Boxing 2. I threw so many punches, ha. According to one friend, they bought the game after watching me demo it. Always nice hearing stuff like that.
- S.C.A.T.: Special Cybernetic Attack Team (02.04)
- Super Punch Patrol (02.06)
While I was looking forward to playing Super Punch Patrol, it was a little disappointing. The art style is great and one of the main reasons I was interested in it (same creator of Gunman Clive). If you're in the Discord, you'll know why. But yeah, not as great as I hoped it would be.
- Super Mario 3D All-Stars | Super Mario Sunshine (02.08-02.10)
Playin Sunshine for the first time in decades was great. I was worried at first as I was going slower than I expected, but we did finish with a little over 100 Shines. The remaining Shines would have taken another stream to do so and I didn't want to add another stream to this. It was still as challenging as it was back in the day. Despite a new generation not liking the game (understandable to a degree), I enjoyed getting to replay Super Mario Sunshine.
- GRIS (02.09)
- RUINER (02.11)
- Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity acrylic (02.11)
- Overcooked! 2 (02.12)
Added this game to the stream schedule. Overcooked is fun, but I'm not great at it (as I knew from playing the first game before). Someone did join the stream who was an expert with thousands of hours logged into the game. It was cool learning interesting techniques and exploits for it. Still enjoyed it overall.
- Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury (02.13)
- Florence (02.14)
Originally wasn't going to stream on Valentine's Day, but this was an appropriate title to play that day. Short and sweet and lives up to the positive hype I've heard about it.
- KUNAI (02.15)
This was a scheduled post as I did not have the internet at the time it went up.
- amiibo (02.20)
I picked up Bowser Jr. from Best Buy the same day I got Bowser's Fury from GameStop. The Cat Mario and Cat Peach amiibo arrived one of the days during the winter storm surprisingly.
- Forgotton Anne (02.21)
Forgotton Anne was the first stream back after the winter storm. The ones scheduled during that week were to be pushed to the following month. But this game was great. Wonderful animation, voice overs, music, and a deeper story than expected. I knew it would be a long one. My voice wasn't keeping up with such a long stream after a week, ha. But I definitely recommend giving Forgotton Anne a try (there's a demo on the Switch).
- Ninjala (02.23)
Our free-to-play game of the month. It was...okay. Fun at times, but I agree with others that say the matchmaking isn't good. It sucked going against players hundreds of levels above you and they're infamous for showing no mercy. But I enjoyed parts of it.
- Space Elite Force I & II (02.24)
Sponsored by QUByte Interactive who had given us games in the past. Both are decent horizontal shooters. The first game was short, which gave me false expectations of how long the second game would be. It was double/triple the length. The only downside was the slow frame rate at a specific point in the second game. Other than that, not bad.
- Cadence of Hyrule | Shadow Zelda (02.26)
This is something I'm looking forward to each month now. The music, the world...so good. This run as Shadow Zelda was the second fastest I went through the game (first being as Cadence). That was thanks to finding an item early that negates lava damage. The fire dungeon was done in 5 minutes or less. Can't wait to play this again next month.
- Super E.D.F. EARTH DEFENSE FORCE (02.27)
Wow, this was tough. From the beginning, it's tough. But I got into a flow and thought we'd be able to get a second playthrough on Expert. Nope. The last boss took a good hour in itself. Cheat codes only worked in the Japanese version so we were stuck there unless we wanted to start all the way over. Glad to have beaten it, but geez.
ETC=========================
- TWICE - Switch to me (DAHYUN and CHAEYOUNG)
- GoBuKuRo (Special Version with SANA)
- TWICE - MOMO Performance Project
- February will be remembered because of the winter storm. That was not great at all. I was dreading writing about it, but figured I needed to keep a record of what happened. Honestly, I don't think I've recovered from it mentally.
- That's a wrap on February 2021. Thanks for reading. Thank you for your support. Be cool and be kind.
"Reprise the theme song and roll the credits."
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