Week Notes 6

Dec 28, 2024

Week notes the format, not week notes the schedule!

Enjoying family time and Christmas

Spending Christmas with family has been a great way to end the year. I got a lot of neat gifts, but it was just as fun to watch everyone else open their own. There’s also just the hanging out around Christmas while most people aren’t very busy that I really appreciate.

I got a few Lego sets which I’ve been really excited to complete. The one I’ve already completed is a new set celebrating Bionicle, which was the best thing Lego has ever done and nobody will ever change my mind on that. I still fondly remember getting Bionicle sets for Christmases and birthdays over 20 years ago and poring over every piece of Bionicle media that was coming out back then. This new set they’ve made is a different style from the originals, but it was still a lot of fun to put together and it’s great to see Lego acknowledge the existence of Bionicle again.

I don’t go back to work until after New Year’s so I’ve still got plenty of time left to keep lazing around and eating sweets.

Reading

I finished the second book in The Expanse, Caliban’s War. I’m really looking forward to seeing where the rest of the series goes. Up to this point things haven’t stopped ramping up, and already this series is one of my top sci-fi recommendations. I’ll likely be starting the next book in January.

Games

I’ve been a lot more casual with gaming on account of the holidays which I think is a good sign. But that didn’t stop me from discovering Balatro, with some help from a family member.

If you haven’t heard of it by now, the easiest way to explain it is as a blend of poker and solitaire. You go through rounds of increasing difficulty and need to play poker hands to beat each round’s minimum score. There’s a lot more depth to it than that though. You have jokers you can earn which usually put modifiers on how your cards are scored, and you have lots of other ways you can modify your deck to give yourself an advantage.

I don’t typically enjoy roguelikes, but I’ve still found something incredibly satisfying about Balatro. A big part of that I think is how easy it is to pick up, but still how much depth and strategy there is.

Last week notes of 2024

It’s still unbelievable to me that 2024 is nearly over.

Before the year is through (and likely after given how little is left), I’d like to write a few posts going over some of my favorite things of the year in more depth than I’ve been going into in the week notes. Games, books, personal moments, those sorts of things. It would give me another excuse to gush about Outer Wilds, after all.