SD 282–295: We did it, Joe! You’re gonna be 2021!
The last bit of work before the holidays was a long slog but I survived! I’ve made good use of my week and a half off to do almost nothing. I mean, nothing work related. Which is how time off is supposed to work. Mildly productive stuff has happened around the house, so there’s that. Let’s see.
Had a virtual Christkindlmarket with the usual Walnut Room gang. Still sad I wasn’t able to drop a hundo on any glass Christmas ornaments this year.
I’ve been trying to find a video game to lose myself in over break since I’m feeling a little uninspired by FFXIV lately. I dipped back into Stardew Valley for a bit, but it’s gotten too real.
I did finally finish Night in the Woods though which was exciting. The fact that I only got a third of the achievements is stressing me out though, so now I have to figure out whether or not I should replay it. I really want to do some stuff in a similar art style, which I think is many people’s response.
Dane got some new furniture and assembled it for the office formerly known as the guest bedroom, which lead to rearranging furniture on Christmas Eve. I think Matt was annoyed but we got it done! There’ll be some more work to do since we’re still waiting on a new bookshelf. We have more boardgames than fit on our boardgames shelf. 🙁
We ended up opening all of our presents on Xmas Eve, even though my childhood tradition was to open one or two and then open most of them on Christmas Day. We’re adults! Why wait! I got several nice pairs of socks, a bunch of books I’m excited about, a ring light, and two Star Wars LEGO sets!!!! I really want the original Sebulba pod racer from 20 years ago, but the Anakin reissue for the anniversary is pretty cool too. Also got an X-wing Death Star assault set, which is kind of funny since the X-wing is way smaller than the pod racer.
Xmas Eve was also the last day of my Star Wars LEGO advent calendar and I thought Christmas was ruined because Darth Vader was missing his cape. I posted about it on instagram and then on Christmas Day got a message from Emma on Facebook telling me to look inside the calendar for a tiny box. The cape was there! Christmas was saved!
In the interesting of continuing to make these entries sound as much like a 13-year-old’s diary entry, we had steak for Christmas Eve dinner and ham for Christmas Day. It was very good.
Christmas cards got printed and mailed right before Christmas but as I really mean right before Christmas, they didn’t actually arrive until after. Went back to my roots with a simple bit of linework and flat color. Here it is… with animation!
New Year’s Eve was of course another night at home with no people, but we did have a nice long Zoom with friends and just before midnight I called my niece and rang in the countdown with her in Animal Crossing, which was a fitting end for 2020.
2021 has been off to an interesting start, media-wise. We watched Sofia Coppola’s Apple TV film On the Rocks and knowing Apple’s policy against villains using iPhones kind of spoiled the ending. Also bold choice to have Bill Murray play Quincy Jones. I wonder if Scarlett got him that role after Lost in Translation. Also, it looked like it used some of the same locations as the Bill Murray Christmas Special, but not sure if that’s true or not.
After Matt and Dane went to bed I was looking for a bad gay movie to follow up Those People with from a few nights ago. Those People was actually pretty good. The hopeless love interest between Charlie and Sebastian was very relatable, with the twist of both characters actually being gay. And anything that has Jason Ralph from The Magicians playing gay is great in my book. Anyway, the point is most of the random gay films I stumble into on Netflix can be… questionable. So I googled it! And Google suggested I am Jonas which I was expecting to be a lighthearted coming of age romance since I didn’t really read the plot summary. It… was not. Sometimes a French person smoking a cigarette *is* a movie!
The climatic moment of the film came just after two teens went to see Nowhere in the theater and it showed the final scene with Dark and Montgomery. Oof. Never thought I’d see a movie where gays go to see my favorite movie. And then have bad things happen. It was very good. And unsettling. And surprising.
Oh, and despite not spending as much time in FFXIV lately, I managed to complete this project… love how many hours I’ve dumped into this!!! It’s something to do at least.
And then this morning Spotify played this song for me.
If I ever knew it, I’d forgotten that Belle & Sebastian did the score for Todd Solondz’s Storytelling. Or was supposed to at least. Some googling after hearing this revealed only six minutes of their music ended up making it into the film. High school! It’s back, baby!!
Last year I made a joke that Construction Paper Angst would return for its 20th anniversary on April 30th this year. I actually do want to do something, but I know these next few months are going to fly by and I’m not making much more progress beyond just thinking about it. Can’t wait to be back to work stress in a few days! And then also the threat of a new constitutional crisis on Wednesday. Yay America. We’re so close to the finish line. Of everything.
And of course… I also did this again. I should probably put #msaed out of its misery but I guess part of me feels like I’ll make absolutely zero art without it, which I know isn’t true but I haven’t quite gotten into the right mindset to let go yet.