January 2024

January was the month of various doctor’s appointments. Including my nose operation, I had a correction of the nasal septum in order to breath better through my nose. It was with full anesthesia but only 20 minutes of surgery. The whole thing felt like a drive-in. I got there, changed, had a short conversation with the anesthetist, then the operation started and 30 minutes later I was awake and out of the practice an hour later. The operation went well so far, but at some point the silicone splints inside my nose drove me crazy. And I had constant headaches. I had to water my nose 3-4 times a day and a part of that water kept being inside my face/skull and since I am very sensitive in the skull area I got headaches from this. I was glad that I was on sick leave. I had various other doctor’s appointments, check-ups, etc. and a very stupid and unpleasant appointment with a person who I had the impression was incompetent and unprepared. It still gnaws at me. There were few social appointments, all before the operation: a snack & play with friends, a game of Twilight Imperium 4 with three players and one offline game of Pathfinder.
Oh yeah right, there was also a lot of snow for a week or so. This was very nice, the world was beautiful and the doggys enjoyed playing in the snow very much.

Boardgames (and other games):
Well, there was Twilight Imperium 4, Planet Unknown, Robin Hood, Azul and some of the Clevers. I very much enjoyed Planet Unknown which I got from the librabry. Maybe I’ll buy it some day. I also played a lot of Baldur’s Gate 3, almonst only in Act 1.

Books:
Yes Please by Amy Poehler was a good audiobook. I need to rewatch Parks & Recreation with her. Defiant by Brandon Sanderson is the last book in the Skyward series. It was not as good as the previous books but I still like this young adult sci-fi series. Then I read When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill which was an interesting alternate history read.

Films:
We finished watching The Lord of The Rings, still my fav movies. We also watched Renfield, a weird Dracula adaptation with Nicolas Cage. Rebel Moon really sucked, it reminded me of Star Wars and I don’t like Star Wars.

TV Shows:
A bit of For All Mankind. I still like the show but the fourth season was weak compared to the previous ones. We watched Monarch which was kind of ok. I liked the new Percy Jackson show though it’s cleary aimed for people with a very low attention span. Everything happened so fast and some things were skipped. Then there was a lot of Shameless. I love that show.

Dezember 2023

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.

November 2023

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.