December was kind of stressful, but also many good things. There was: a nice birthday party with a delicious buffet, breakfast with colleagues, the Christmas party at work (with a previous two-hour lecture with surprising content), a very good trip to Amsterdam (especially to the Pikachu Van Gogh Museum) and finally New Year’s Eve with friends with an epic game of Twilight Imperium 4 and the role-playing game Ten Candles.

Boardgames (and other games):
December ended with another epic game of Twilight Imperium 4 (I won, ha) and thus I completed my challenge to play four games of it in 2023. I also played two games of Everdell and Dominion with friends, both great games. Otherwise I was occupied with Baldur’s Gate 3 on the Playstation.

Books:
I finished A ​Court of Silver Flames and I didn’t know before that there are no other ACOTAR books so far. Oh no! I really liked the Silver Flames one. I also read I was born for this by Alice Oseman, a cute book about a fan meeting her idol in rather weird circumstances. And it’s not a love story.

Films:
We watched all the Hobbit films. I know that a lot of people like to give hate on them and complain that there isn’t enough material for three films. Well, I disagree. I quite like the films and think it was good to make three of them. We watched the second Avatar film The Way of Water which was surprisingly good. I liked it more than the first one. A very weird film was Leave the World Behind. But now I know why I’d never buy a Tesla.

TV Shows:
I binged Lessons in Chemistry, we finished The Crown and I finished Servant. I liked all of these shows very much. I watched the Beckham show which was okay but nothing special, a few episodes of For All Mankind and I started to watch Shameless.

I had a cold in November which was very annoying. My first real cold since 2019 (not counting Corona in 2022). But never mind, it was over quickly and the rest of the month was really nice. We had friends over for boardgames, I visited my other friends for more boardgames and snacks. I made a little trip to the Ruhrpott, had breakfast with friends before we went to an Escape Room. It was my first one and it was fun! It started in the animal department of a ship, so fitting since we love animals and zoos. No surprise: afterwards we visited the zoo in Gelsenkirchen. It’s my second fav zoo in the area, right after the one in Wuppertal. Afterwards we went to a restaurant. It was a really nice day.

I visited two concerts. The first one was Noel Gallager in Düsseldorf. 20 years ago, I saw Oasis for the first time live at this venue, living so close that I could go there by foot. I still remember how high I was after this (no drugs were involved). One of the happiest moments of my life. So now 20 years later and there I still am. I liked the concert, I liked the new album, I even liked the opening act. Additional fun was to watch Noel’s (20something) daughter in front of the stage, taking pictures, singing along but also being on social media and not paying any attention. Not so fun was the standee of Pep Guardiola on stage that gave me the creeps. I could only identify him because I know the colors of the football club Manchester City and I saw Pep on Ted Lasso. Oh I am very happy that German tv was at the concert, so that I have the concert on video now.
The other concert was Babymetal and honestly it sucked. The band was good, I could have really enjoyed them. If I would have been able to see anything. The venue was the Palladium in Cologne. The stage is way too low (I compared pictures with concerts at other venues), I couldn’t see any of the dancing that is part of the show. At least many many people were constantly filming the concert (why do you watch a concert through your screen??), so I could look there to see something. But I could have watched a youtube video instead, too.

I finished November with baking a lot of cookies. Of course the standard butter cookies were the worst again, I always struggle with the dough. But I have five other sorts so far, some with spices, some with marzipan and they are all excellent.

I also visited the first Christmas Market, we had nice food and then went to a café. It was my friend who lives in London, and she asked me to book my next stay at her place soon. So I got plane tickets for February.

November was a good month because I managed to see my three close circles of friends!

Boardgames (and other games):
November started with a holiday and hence with a long game of Twilight Imperium 4. It was epic and fun. I played a lot of Azul this month and fell in love with the second implement Azul Stained Glass of Sintra. It was a copy from the library. I also borrowed a copy of Arak The Lost Ruins. It’s a good worker placement game but I wouldn’t buy it since the design is ugly and there is too much material to quickly play the game. I bought two solo games by Rainer Knizia. The very ugly Schwarze Rosen and Number Up. I like both very much.
Concerning Videogames I am back to Octopath Traveler II and I played a bit of Baldur’s Gate 3. Unfortunately, I still struggle with my seating arrangements with the playstation. I moved it to the bedroom to play from bed because I cannot sit without leg pain on the couch. But the tv is too high in the bedroom to play without craning my neck. It sucks so much that I can’t use the playstation properly in any place. I wish I had my old couch back or that my armchair would have space in the living room 😞

Books:
Lazy reading month, I only finished four books. A Court of Frost and Silver Thorns was quite nice because it is about winter solistice. Of course I am all in for the spicy content. But I also like about the series that it is often about everyday life. You don’t get that much everyday life in fantasy. Funnily, my other fantasy book, Yumi and The Nightmare Printer, was also about everyday life and about people’s jobs in fantasy worlds. I really liked this book, it sometimes reminded me of Final Fantasy X and then I read in the afterword that Brandon Sanderson was inspired by the game. I listened to two memoirs that were quite shocking. The Woman in Me by Britney Spears, narrated by (the) Michelle Williams. It was horrible to read about Britney’s enslavement to her father and how she was treated as (made to be?) an mentally ill patient. The other memoir was by Matthew Perry, my beloved Chandler from Friends, who died too early in October. He writes about his livelong struggle with addiction. It made me so sad to read the book and even sadder because it seems like he was undiagnosed with Adhd. Maybe proper meds for his lack of dopamine would have helped? We’ll never know. What made me also sad is how much he was like Chandler (a non-addict version) and how Chandler got the happy ending with a nice wife and kids, that Matthew always wished for. Chandler and Monica were my idealized happy couple. It still makes me sad that Matthew is gone. (And I wonder if there is something terribly wrong in the rehab system in the USA. Wouldn’t be surprised since their whole medical system is an utter mess.)

Films:
No films this month!

TV Shows:
I finished the 3rd season of Morning Show which was just a as good as the previous seasons. I would have never expected such a good political and sociatal drama (well, and Jon Hamm in a guest role was a nice addition). I also watched Who is Erin Carter on Netflix which was a good mini series. Then I went over to Shrinking, I didn’t like the first episode but then the show got better, especially thanks to Harrison Ford’s role as grumpy old shrink. Next up was my show of the month: Servant on Apple+. Its visual style with the old large house is very gloomy, the story was excellent, there were so many shifts in story-telling and characters without the show becoming confused. It’s one of the best horror/psychological dramas I have recently seen.
Other good tv shows this month: The Crown but, wow, what a soap opera the life of the royals has been. And For All Mankind started it’s fourth season which is so far very entertaining and well done.

October was a month full of nice stuff. I visited friends, we had friends over at our home and I enjoyed the social time very much. We also had some quality time with the doggys, the local swimming pool was closing their outdoor area and made a dog swimming event. I also visited my friend in London for a couple of days. Last time in July, I was cold. And this time my packed clothes were too warm…. We visited Windsor Castle and Eton, my first time there. I enjoyed the visit, I like Castles and „typical English“ towns. And we had good food at The Ivy in Windsor. The next day we spent in the City, in posh Mayfair. There we visited the Fortnum & Mason store and I bought quite a lot of tea. It’s not that the tea is very special, I can also get very good tea in Germany. But in bigger stores like F&M, I can sniff the different teas without being watched by a salesperson, like here in Germany in our rather small tea stores. We also vistied Kensington Park, it was a beautiful late summer day! First time this year that I had luck with the weather during my visit. It was a really nice visit, not so busy like my last one.

Well, talking about UK trips: I am going to Manchester next year. I have been a fan of Oasis for many years. When they split up in 2009, I was really devasted. It wasn’t surprising but 2009 was a really shitty year for me with cancer, death, loosing my home, my social circles and on top of that the band that I loved split up. A couple of years later, the Gallagher brothers did music on their own. Which was good in Noel’s case and got really bad in Liam’s case. His voice sucked, his concerts sucked, I gave up on him. Then I stumbled last year over his instagram and saw that he had performed at Knebworth. A huge and legendary location. I was really surprised that Liam played there, that he was that famous play at this venue. I started to read comments that he really turned around. So I checked out his music. His voice is the best since maybe ever, he seems to be way more professional and he does really great music again. I listened to some of his newer albums where I found many songs that I liked very much (but I also liked that he played a lot of Oasis songs live). I got really excited when I read that he wanted to do a 30 year anniversary tour of Definitely Maybe. My most favorite album. Well, in October he announced this as a UK tour. I was thrilled and very very eager to see a show. I wanted to go to Manchester, the home of Oasis, the home of Britrock. Getting a ticket wasn’t that hard, after 15 minutes I could buy one for my preferred date in Manchester (after 5minutes I had already bought one for a not preferred date – already sold this one via the platform). I AM HYPED.

Boardgames (and other games):
We visited the Spiel Messe this month, after a longer hiatus. I enjoyed the day very much and we bought a selection of nice games like Beacon Patrol and Everdell Farshore, which I both tried already and like. I played quite a lot in October. We played games like Ark Nova, Seas Salt and Paper, Mysterium, Cascadia, Quacks, Takenoko… a very good boardgame month!
Not quite boardgames but related: we also had a great evening with Call of Cthulhu, the tabletop pen and paper game. It was the first time for our friends and they absolutely enjoyed it. There was also a game of Pathfinder which is a bit too much on the fighting side and too few on the investigation side for my taste.
I finished Final Fantasy 16 on the Playstation 5. This took me about 57 hours, I wanted to finish all side quests and monster hunts. I bought the PS5 for FF16 and it was worth every Euro. I absolutely loved the story and FF16 is now in my top 3 FF games.

Books:
Finished 7 books in October. King of Ashes by R. Feist was a big disappointment. I love his Midkemia books but this new series was just very boring. I liked Alle_Zeit by Teresa Bücker, it’s a book about… well, time. From a sociatal perspective. I also liked Daughter of the Pirate King by Tricia Levenseller, it was fast-paced and also quite surprising.

Films:
Films I liked: The Fabelmans, Stoker, Decision to Leave, Broker, The Wailing. I also re-watched Titanic. I saw this film twice in cinema as a teen. The film aged pretty well and is still extraordinary. Better than expected was the horror film Leviathan and worse than expected was Knock At The Cabin. It wasn’t bad but the ending was boring.
In England I saw the film Killers of the Flower Moon in the cinema. Well, that was the first time I left a film early. Partly due to the cinema’s ac being very high and delivering a scent of meat. Partly also due to the film being 3 hours long and boring in the first 1,5h. I lived Lily Gladstones performance, but I was so bored and tired of old white men talk with Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert DeNiro. It’s a typical Scorsese film, it’s not bad but it’s also very uncreative. I have no longer energy to watch such films in one sitting.
Well, concerning long films: I also saw Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour in the cinema in London. I didn’t know any song by her and I didn’t recognize any song during the movie. Her shows are really something special, wow. It was all so sparkling and so magical. But to me it also seemed somehow artificial? Every wink, every smile, every sentence seemed to be on cue. Like a musicial. It was still very good but also a very different kind of concert that I usually visit. Her songs were also…nice? But I think I didn’t remember anyone. Well, but it was a fun evening, especially watching the fans enjoying themselves, singing and dancing. First time I saw something like this in the cinema.

TV Shows:
I finished Sex Education, can’t remember much, but the ending was okay. I binge-watched Killing Eve. The show got worse with every season but I still enjoyed Sandra Oh’s performance and overall the show was entertaining.
The Fall of the House of Usher was quite okay. A bit weird was then watching Painkiller. Both shows were about families being in the pharma business and selling painkillers. But Painkiller was based on real events and the opioid crisis in the USA, really shocking.
My partner and I started The Crown and finished the first season. John Lithgow as Winston Churchill was just brilliant. I’m not a royalist but I still enjoy the stories about the English monarchy. I like the show so far.