I was feeling nostalgic, so I pulled up Road Not Taken and played it for a little while earlier. It took a bit to get back into the swing of things, but I started to remember some of the hidden details and combinations after a while.

It's been ages since the last time I played, and I'd forgotten just how much I love it. It's so helpful if I want to turn off my brain for a little while. I can't believe it's been over a decade since it was first released.

In tonight's game, ( the rest under a cut for those who don't care. )

And that's where we left off.

Since a number of staff at Unnamed Nonprofit are either Christian or Jewish, they've announced that they're closing the office at lunchtime today. Which, you know, as someone who isn't celebrating a holiday at the moment? That's still a nice little treat for me.

I finished my fourth Dragon Age: The Veilguard playthrough last night, so I think that I'm going to pick back up with my fifth one (which is in Act 2 right now) for a bit and then maybe switch to Baldur's Gate 3. D&D is cancelled again tonight because it's the DM's spouse's birthday, so I can properly settle in to play for hours which is something I haven't had the time to do in ages.

In tonight's game, ( the rest under a cut for those who don't care. )

And that's where we left off.

I found a perfect place to do some banter farming in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, so I settled in to max out all of the possible conversations between various pairs of characters off-and-on over the past almost-a-week before starting endgame in my most recent playthrough.

There was so much dialogue that I've never encountered before. Even with characters who I've frequently had together in my party in previous playthroughs, I was getting to conversations that I never heard in previous ones. There's just so much potential banter that's never played for me because I didn't have two specific characters in the party together for long enough, and it was lovely to hear it all. And I'm sure there's still more banter that I've missed that's only available earlier in the game.

( Nothing really spoilery, but under the cut to be safe. )

It definitely makes some of the potential choices in the game even more bittersweet, hearing just how close some of the team members are to each other based on their conversations and teasing of each other.

Let's try for two positive posts in a row, shall we?

I meant to post about this when I found out a month or so ago, but I completely forgot due to all of the chaos going on at the time. It turns out that Unnamed Nonprofit is doing an experiment this year where we get the entire week off for July 4. Once we close on Friday, June 27, we won't be back until Monday, July 7, so we'll have a whole nine days off in a row.

We always have that week-and-a-half off at the end of the year in December, where we're closed for the holidays before the super busy season starts at the beginning of January, and apparently the new president was impressed by how much it seemed to increase productivity at the beginning of the year. So because of that, he's testing to see if giving us a paid break twice a year instead of just once a year seems to give another mid-year boost.

I'm probably still going to be working a little, just to keep an eye out for emergencies like I did at the end of the year, but the summer tends to be significantly slower so I'm hoping it won't be more than an hour total over the course of the entire week - and it would five minutes here, five minutes there, etc.

Considering my Wednesday D&D group has chosen that week for our in-person D&D game, the timing is perfect. I'll have a whole five days of hiding from human contact to help build up my spoons before the long weekend of lots and lots and lots of human interaction.

Hey, I have an actual positive post for once!

My Wednesday D&D group has been actively trying to have an in-person game every year or two, since we're all in the US, unlike my Friday game, and 3.5 out of the 7 of us are already in the DC area, unlike either my Friday or Sunday games. (The 0.5 comes from Zooey since she splits her time between here and Montana.)

Anyway, we had our first in-person weekend in August 2022. We weren't able to pull one off in 2023, but we did manage to have one last year in July 2024 just before I moved into the hotel. And we've just finalized another in-person weekend for this year!

( More details under the cut for those who don't really care. )

I'm going to be exhausted and so very much peopled out when I go back to work that Monday, but it will be worth it. Especially since it looks like everyone can make it this time. The last two in-person weekends, one of the players - Hannah - hasn't been able to come in person. She ended up calling in via Discord, and we had a whole elaborate set-up so she could see the map and such. She doesn't have any prior plans this year, though, so she's actually going to get to play in person with us.

So unless something changes, it looks like all seven of us will be there this time around. 🤞🏻

One of my D&D friends and I were talking about jury duty on Discord a few days ago. She mentioned that her parents had gotten a jury duty notice for her at their home, despite her moving out and changing her address years ago. I told her about the same thing happening to me a few years ago, despite me not living in Tennessee since 2010, and we both shook our heads at the fact that Illinois and Tennessee are both that bad at updating records.

I was apparently tempting fate.

I've mentioned before that I'm signed up for USPS Informed Delivery, since my mail goes to my P.O. Box, and I don't want to go out my way to visit the post office unless I know there's something waiting for me. I got a notification today saying that I have a letter from the Jury Commissioner waiting for me, which is almost certainly a jury duty notice.

I'm going to go to the post office after work to pick it up so that I'll know the details about when it is. I need some groceries for Aldi anyway, so I'm just going to kill two birds with one stone and take care of it all after work.

I've gotta admit, as someone who's nonbinary but is typically assumed to be a woman because of the clothes I prefer to wear and the shape of my body? It's really making me uncomfortable to see so many people complaining about the Murderbot casting because it's "too male" or "not androgynous enough" for a character who doesn't identify as having a gender.

Don't get me wrong, it's fine to not like the casting because it's not what you pictured in your head! There's no issue with being upset that person cast is white. It's perfectly okay be upset that the actor is cisgender instead of them hiring someone who's nonbinary or genderfluid. But when you're talking about a genderless character? Words matter.

So, you know, congrats! You just told me that in your eyes I'm "too female" or "not androgynous enough" to be nonbinary. Which is kinda an asshole thing to say because nonbinary ≠ androgynous.

A number of people who I've known in fandom for a long time have made comments like that, and I'm currently doing my best to resist the urge to go on an unfollowing spree on several sites because I know it's a knee-jerk reaction. It's just that it really kinda sucks to find out that people you've known for years apparently think your gender identity is fake unless you look a specific way, and since you yourself don't look that way? Well, that kinda implies some things.