October was quite okay. I had a nice vacation with visits to the Oberhausen Gasometer, and old industrial building that now is used for cultural exhibitions. There was an exhibition about the Ocean, mostly showing beautiful photographs. It was quite ok but the hyped media display in the tower was really not that exiting. I also visited the Ramses exhibition in Cologne. It was well done and interesting to see this really old stuff. Then I had a couple of boardgame dates with friends and we also finished our roleplay campaign of Pathfinder Rusthenge. Still don’t like Pathfinder that much, DnD was easier for me to get, but I’ll play what I get to play. The next campaign is already in the planing. Work still annoys me very much, there are many processes dragging along like a snail and I am very annoyed by „political“ things.

Gaming:
I got Hitster from the library and my friends and I had so much fun, that my friend bought the game. I also tried a couple of new games: I really liked Tiny Woodys and would like to have that game in my collection. I also liked Pirates of Maracaibo, much more than Maracaibo. And we tried Orleans which was ok but not my kind of game, too boring artwork, too eurogame-y.

Books:
Had a little challenge with myself to read a lot of books, especially during my vacation. Well I finished 16 books, this is a record. A couple of shorter books, some short stories, but still 3100 pages which is like 3 thick fantasy books.
Short stories I liked: The Deep by Rivers Salomon and Recitatif by Toni Morrison. Totally different stories but both are about identity. I adored The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. Shit My Dad Says by Justin Halpern was a funny read. After reading Muss ich das gelesen haben? by Teresa Reichl, I read a couple of books that she would recommend for reading in school (currently, in German schools we mostly read the same old stuff by old white men): Jacob the Liar by Jurek Becker, When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr and La Petite Dernière (The Last One/ Die Jüngste Tochter) by Fatima Daas. If you look for (German) inspirations, check out Reichl’s list.
I also read and like Fake Facts by Katharina Nocun and Pia Lamberty. What I especially didn’t like was Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. It won the Pulitzer price which is usually a sign for me that I won’t like a book. But I didn’t know that beforehand. The book was so boring, like listening to other peoples smalltalk and small-town-gossip.

Films:
Three movies this month. Dune Part Two was better than Part One but still very confusing and incoherent. The Last Voyage of the Demeter was okayish. I really liked Ocean’s Eight. I’m not a big fan of heist movies but the cast was superb. I also finally watched the Oasis documentary Supersonic. It’s a couple of years old but I didn’t watch it out of fear of it making me sad. I only saw a short bit of Liam talking about the abuse of his father towards his brothers and mother. So, now I watched the whole thing and it was really well done. I’m especially interested in the childhood and their mother Peggy’s story about coming from rural Ireland to Manchester to get a better life, so I was happy that Peggy was included into the documentary. The story ended quite early with Knebworth in 1996, which was the concert that really got me into Oasis (watched it 4 years later, I wasn’t there). Funnily, Liam’s solo Knebworth in 2022 got me into listening to his music again and since then I constantly listen to both Knebworths. (Yes, I am very much on the hype train, back in the old days when I was a teen I didn’t have so many stuff to hype over, a fan forum with mean men and the occasional bootleg I found at CD markets.)

TV Shows:
I finished The Bear, still like the show although I don’t get the hype. I loved the second season of Rings of Power. I also finished the last two seasons of Grey’s Anatomy and a couple of episodes of Gen V that were left to watch. I also watched the third season of Heartstopper which I found quite boring. We also watched a couple of missing episodes of Love, Death + Robots and the second season of Domina, where I had a really hard time to get who is who. Last but not least we started with What We Do in the Shadows which I quite like although it is sometimes a little bit too silly.

So it is Autumn again? I have the feeling that this year lasted longer and longer. My september vibe was: exhausted. I just realized that we had every weather this month. At the beginning I was at a Travis concert, just here not far away from home. It was burning hot. I was melting in the venue. The band even apologized for this shitty venue without air conditioning. Other than that the concert was so nice, I was almost at the front stage and the band was so wholesome and lovely as always. I also visted a theater play which was horrible. It was not only bad but also very boring. But besides that it was nice to visit my home town Düsseldorf again. I also planned to go to a podcast live show but then there was an accident and my train didn’t run. I am still very sad that I missed the show…
Other than the this month was full of doctor’s appointments. Had a cancer scare which occupied my mind. No cancer but there was the possibility that I needed a small surgery to remove the thing. Well, fast forward, now it is gone. Worries for nothing. There was also another big thing appointment for which i waited a long time. I was nervous and dying, I am so grateful that a friend was there via text messages to calm me. In the end the appointment was very good. I am so glad that this is over, although now I have to do other stuff regarding this appointment. But it’s nothing urgent.
Other than that the month was full of migraines, insomnia and being on the verge of a breakdown because I was just so overloaded and tired of everything, especially of work things.

Gaming:
A bit of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, all the Clever games, some games of Root (on the computer and on the table, too) and a game of Wingspan. Not much, but nice games anyway.

Books:
Again a month with not so many books. I finished The Realm of the Elderlings Book 2. I still enjoy the series very much, but it is a rather slow read. Then I read Girl in Pieces by Kathleen Glasgow. It was ok, but nothing I will remember for long. Another book was Die Rassistin by Jana Scheerer which I found very weird due to it’s narrative style and I kind of regreted reading it because there wasn’t much in it.

Films:
4 films. My fav was Nine to Five with Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton and Jane Fonda. What a fun office comedy but still very sad because almost nothing changed since the 80s. I also liked All of Us Strangers though my expectations where higher from what I heard about this movie. Still a good story. I also liked Breaking Surface, a Swedish survival thriller. What I didn’t like was Poor Things, a Yorgos Lanthimos film. He makes weird films, yes, but this one tried to be feministic, I think, and failed to end more on the sexist side. And it was really boring.

TV Shows:
Currently I am into the Rings of Power which I enjoy very much. It makes me miss my tabletop rpg which was close to the Tolkien lore. (I really can’t warm up to Pathfinder/DnD stuff because it has not magical flavor since it is so overrun by magical beings, a whole humanoid zootopia world, and monsters)
I am also watching The Bear. The show is good but I don’t get the hype about it. We also finished Shogun. I didn’t understand the underlying historical events that much but nevertheless I enjoyed the show. We also finished Decameron which I didn’t like, it was boring and the humor not my kind. Again also hate-watching Emily in Paris Rome. I also finished The Perfect Couple which was again this kind of „rich people are crazy“-plot, I liked the show. But Nicole Kidman is always playing the same character? I also had run through Geek Girl, which was quite wholsome. And I finished Pørni, hope there will be another season soon, I really love that show. Last but not least we finished That 90s Show. I think the kids are annoying and that it is not that authentic considering the 90s (but it is okay to not include the homophobia and AIDS pandemic). But I like everything with Kitty and Red.

What a month, it felt like a year long. It was not really intended that way, but in the end we did two vacations in August. One started at the beginning of the month and we flew to Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival. It was not our first time, but the last time we didn’t visit any shows because our time was rare. This year, I booked ahead a lot of tickets. The comedians we liked were: Susie McCabe, Chloe Petts, Jay Lafferty, Nish Kumar, Stevie Martin and Jack Docherty as The Chief. Honory mention to Eric The Submariner, not a stand-up comedian but a real retired submariner who told about his life in the navy. We also saw the Military Tattoo Parade. It was good but not so good as the one in 2016. Not so many acts like last time, very few guest countries, no special goodies. Another hightlight was the visit of the Britannia, the Queen’s beloved yacht.
I love this city so much.

Our next trip started only a couple of days after returning home. We went to the Ostsee, which I now know is called the „Baltic Sea“ in English, ha, didn’t know those were the same. My partner did a sailing course while I stayed in our apartment with the doggys. Wasn’t the best apartment and I missed having a garden. In addition, I got ill. At least the weather was really nice, not too hot like in the rest of Germany, and the doggys had a lot of fun with swimming in the ocean.

Then back to work for the end of August, urgh, which was very annoying, I need a vacation again. The month ended with me going to war with half a million other people and fight for a ticket to the Oasis concerts next year. I am still a bit sceptical about those gigs. I loved Liam’s Definitetly Maybe concerts, they were awesome and since he „turned around“ his concerts are just that which is Oasis. Noel’s concerts are also good, but his own sound and style is very different and I don’t like some of his newer versions of Oasis songs. Hope I won’t hear them next year but the original ones. I was actually trying for tickets for Wembley, but now I’ll end up in Edinburgh. For the Fringe, again. A couple of weeks after I said that I won’t visit the Fringe for the next 10 years. But not sad that I have to go again next year.

Gaming:
I played all the Clevers, a nice casual game called Bonsai, the Lord of the Rings Adventure Book game (which I am not willing to sell, since it’s more annoying than fun), Wingspan and Robin Hood.

Books:
Not so many books this month. I finally consumed My Year of Rest and Relaxation and this book was just very annoying. I also read the TikTok hit It ends with us, didn’t know that it is about abuse, so I was quite suprised when shit turned dark. Next was A House with Good Bones by T.Kingfisher, a Southern USA gothic (mild) horror. I very much liked it, it’s about a generation of women, their relations to each other and finding their peace. A more casual read was My Life the the Walter Boys, I enjoyed it as much as the TV show on Netflix.

Films:
I worked through my Netflix watchlist this month. My fav was tick,tick…BOOM, wow, much sad, but I really liked that film. I also liked Captain Phillips with Tom Hanks though the suspension was killing me. But my fav was probably The Quiet Girl, an Irish film form 2022, about a girl from a poor family visiting relatives in the countryside. There isn’t really much happening but I just enjoyed watching this coming-of-age film.
And I watched the film It ends with us. I don’t know what to think about it, it was a nice addition to the book but I don’t think the films works without knowing the book.

TV Shows:
I finished Mr & Mrs Smith, I liked the show and hope there will be a second season. Then there were a few new episodes of Emily in Paris, my hate-watch. My binge of the month was Pørni. It’s a Norwegian show about a mid 40s mother who just kicks ass in her everyday life.