Dear Tigey,
Oh no, it’s October, winter is coming! Again!
Entry #210 (Oct 05 2025)
Table of Contents
Ants in my…
à¶§Â Life
à¶§Â Games
à¶§Â Plushie of the Week #203
à¶§Â Dreams
Life
At the end of last week’s blog post, I mentioned finding a couple of ants in my bathroom. The good news is that I didn’t find any ants in my bathroom this week after the spray even though I was watching out for them like a hawk. The bad news is that on Monday and Tuesday, I found a bunch of them hovering around my kitchen sink instead.
Over the two days, I found about six or seven walking around the area around my sink and under the old, crusty mat that I put beneath my dish drying rack, one down on the cupboard door below the sink where I hang up the kitchen garbage bag, one on the right near a 1/4-full tub of honey (it had a lid, but the lid had a tear in it — I decided to just toss the entire honey tub since it was very old by now too), and two more down on the floor next to the base of the dishwasher, by a crack in the kitchen baseboard that leads into the depths of the house. They tried to cover up the lack of baseboard there with the dishwasher, I think, I had never noticed it until this week.
Anyway, this was distressing. I squished and flushed all those ants away, sprayed everything in that area of the kitchen on both Monday and Tuesday nights, and I guess that helped. Despite being in hawk-mode for most of the week, I saw no ants on Wednesday or Friday. I did see two on Thursday behind the sink faucet, and so I sprayed that area (and several corners and other strategic entry points) on Thursday night as well to be safe, plus one more ant around the same area on Saturday. They’re just ants, but that area next to the sink is also my food preparation area. Shoo, go elsewhere. I wonder where they entered my house from and where their home base is. There isn’t really a hole around the sink except from the sinkhole itself, but the sink is where I’ve been seeing most of them. I probably need a good, solid week of not seeing any ants before I start to trust my kitchen and lower my guard again though.
In a quick house search update, while I haven’t seen any that I’ve wanted to go out and see for some time now, and my agent hasn’t followed up or contacted me in any way either, I have been still watching the surrounding neighbourhoods on a more than daily basis. There are no houses to the north for sale where my last two attempts were, but there is one to the east that has been on the market for over two months now I think, it went off the market briefly then came back again. There’s also eight for sale in the neighbourhood to the west now, which is a nice residential neighbourhood, but only two of them are within my price range (at the top of it) and they’re both on the far side of the neighbourhood, a long walk from the train station and the amenities that I like the neighbourhood for. That neighbourhood was at zero house openings for a good chunk of last year though, so it’s nice to see all those houses just sitting there still.
This week, I wanted to go and order a pair of lenses for my new VR headset that I picked up last week, as wearing glasses with it is possible, but the headset presses on the glasses in an uncomfortable manner, plus there’s apparently a risk of the glasses scratching the lens. However, my old lens prescription was over two years old at this point, not to mention tucked away in a box somewhere. So I went out to the local optometrist on Tuesday, when we were off from work due to the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, and not only did a regular eye test for the prescription paper, but also decided to do the full dilation eye test instead of skipping it like I did the last few times I’ve gone to an eye test. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve done the dilation eye test since before I moved out from my parents’ place back in 2011. I was a little worried that doing this eye test would interfere with me being able to start Final Fantasy later on that afternoon, but the dilation and blurred effect was not very strong and it only really lasted a couple of hours.
My optician did say that like the last time I came here, there was stronger than normal pressure in/behind my eyes, which could be an early sign of future glaucoma like Dad is suffering through right now. He did not prescribe eyedrops for me this time, and I had completely forgotten that I had been given eye drops to use the last time I did an eye test (I stopped using them after I ran out of eye drops and had no idea where to get more from) until he mentioned it. Instead, he said he was going to check with an eye specialist who would either give me or them a call afterwards to let me know what he suggested — he said perhaps this might mean eye drops, or perhaps I’d have to come in for some additional precautionary tests or something, but as of the end of the week I hadn’t heard back from anyone about this still.
Anyway, armed with my new prescription, I skipped making a pair of eyeglasses for now (I will do this closer to my trip instead) but I went online and ordered a pair of VR lenses for my Valve Index using a site called VR Optician (local). I chose them after shopping around and plugging my prescription into a few sites, they had one of the best reviews for shipping to Canada and were about the same price as the other stores I tried, plus I could use Fedex/DHL shipping with them instead of Canada Post, which is a no-go right now due to an ongoing postal strike. I think I opted for Fedex in the end, and although it shipped from Germany, it will apparently arrive here next Monday. It did cost a bit more than standard because of my prescription, which I’ll attach here for posterity:
The right eye (OD) being -7.50 made the lenses cost $40 CAD more, whereas -7.25 or -7.00 wouldn’t have. I was tempted to just do a -7.25 one instead but decided not to play around with that in the end.
I also went to get a haircut this week from the Great Clips shop near the T&T Supermarket at South Park Centre. I was going to get it from Southgate Mall but I learnt this week that the cheaper barber shop in that mall, by the southeastern exit, had closed down. The only hair options in that mall now are two or three expensive hair salons that would have easily cost me over $100 for a trim. Great Clips, on the other hand, will still do my hair for under $40, so I took a nice 45 minute or so walk to get there, and then stopped off at the Chinese supermarket afterwards for some grocery shopping. It was nice to get a load of weight off my head, although the lady didn’t really do anything with my the strands on the side of my face so maybe I have to trim some more of that off myself.
While shopping groceries at that grocery store, T&T Supermarket, I saw a bunch of interesting-looking seasonings/spices on sale and ended up buying a random bottle to try something new. I like doing this, and the one I ended up with was called Xiangji Spicy Ferns (local). It oddly enough seems to be part of a numbered set of different seasonings that the company makes, I don’t know how many there are though, but T&T had quite a few, many discounted to a varying degree.
This one was discounted about 66% or something like that, though, and I figured out why when I got home — the label on the side said that the date on the bottle was the production date and the bottle was good for 1 year after that. And when exactly was it packed? 2024/10/23. Oh. I bought it 2025/10/02.
It’s *amazing* though, and it goes especially well on top of cooked white rice, so I’ll have no issues finishing it before too long, but really, T&T? Selling food this close to expiry? At least it was heavily discounted I suppose! And it’s the second week in a row I bought something Chinese-y I’d never tried before and found it great.
There’s lots of stuff that is getting backburnered right now — art, trip planning, scanning and backup projects galore, and so on. It’s just the way things are. Life is good though, I feel satisfied and full of hope and happiness right now and I hope this state of mind lasts as long as possible.
Games
I played a bunch with my new Valve Index VR headset this week, but only a little per day. There’s something about gaining your “VR legs”, particularly when moving around (but also a little bit about turning). The first day or two, moving around at all gave me vertigo, but that was fine after a bit. I used that time to go get a bunch of default cosmetic items from “quests” that were hosted in Valve example maps. Then I tried Half Life: Alyx, and I used teleportation to get around in game at first and that was fine. Then I tried actually “walking” (gliding) in that game, and got immediate vertigo from that.
But fast forward a couple days later and I had learned to move around slowly and also got gradually more used to it, and by the end of the week I could do streaks of 30-45 minutes or so with only minor grogginess afterwards. In fact, funnily enough, when I was going around T&T supermarket on Thursday, it felt a bit weird walking normally through the aisles instead of gliding!
Turning smoothly instead of at 45 degree jumps at a time still gives me issues though. But I think I will eventually have to learn that too. The reason that all this is necessary is that different VR games have different modes of moving I think, some support teleportation and some don’t, but in general walking/gliding is always there and is the one to “learn”.
Anyway, by the end of the week I was in Chapter 3 of Alyx and about 4.5 hours in. I don’t particularly like the game, though it’s more the setting I dislike (lots of gory monsters in cramped tunnels in an oppressed Eastern European country, an aesthetic I don’t like) than the game itself or its mechanics. I also don’t think much of the rest of the Half-Life franchise series though, so who am I to say. I do have both Skyrim and Fallout 4 in VR though, thanks to a bundle from Fanatical, and I’m sure there’s more to explore out there.
On stream this week, I played the Final Fantasy Tactics remaster, Chronicles of Ivalice. Hoo, this game is fun. It’s also a game I knew nothing about until I started it, but it’s very similar to another Steam game I’ve played a bit of in the past, Horizon’s Gate. Also to some extent Dream Tactics. I always forget the name of the first game though so I’m leaving it here so I can look it up in the future. I very much like levelling all of the different classes and mixing and matching skills from between them. Also the ridiculous cheese that some of the battles can involve is very fun, like purposely downing your allies so they don’t steal your experience once the battle is under control. And shenanigans that happen due to AOE targetting. And how corpses block squares. And the whole needing to stall the end of a fight to loot extra corpses and potentially even skills from defeated enemies.
In personal time, most of my week was spent with either Umamusume: Pretty Derby or Hades II. Hades II is so much fun, though I still haven’t beaten the third boss by the end of the week. I’m close though. Maybe this weekend?
Never mind, I beat it on Saturday evening after I wrote that but before I published that. Hah!
Plushie of the Week #203
I do have an anteater plushie in the box of unnamed plushies without backstories that I haven’t quite covered yet, and here he is! This one is part of the Ty Beanie Baby collection that we got from Dad‘s laundry shop after a fire at a customer’s house, and that’s all I know about him. Well, except that he has an official Ty name, Ants the Anteater (local). Wait, so are you pro- or anti- ants???
Side:
Other side:
Front:
Underside:
Tag 1 front:
Tag 1 back/Tag 2 front:
Tag 2 back:
Dreams
Sep 29 2025
- I was standing on the platform of an elevated train station platform with a friend, we both had planes that we could get into and fly off in using controls that were very simplified and similar to Outer Wilds, and we were using the train station as a parking area for those planes too.
- He saw a satellite or something going by in the cloudy midday sky above, leaving contrails behind it, and wanted to go check it out. It was also time for the two of us to fly off again anyway, so he went off first and I followed behind him a few minutes later in my own plane. I noted that the roof of the train station made it difficult for us to fly off and back as there was always the risk of us hitting it on the way out and damaging the plane, so I resolved to talk to him about a better place to park our planes later on.
- When we got back, however, we parked back on the platform and went to join a raid group that was being formed by someone from our class and was open to people from other classes as well. In this context, each class was akin to a guild in an MMO. We swatted away a few minor monsters down the corridor leading away from the train station platform and reached a turn in the corridor where everyone else was waiting.
- Past the turn in the corridor was a sleeping troll, and then a sleeping wyvern behind it. Those were difficult monsters that the raid group was being formed to defeat. when a bunch of people had gathered, someone went up close to aggro them even though our classmate leader wanted to wait for a few more people to arrive. Either way though, the waiting group was large enough to handle them, and everyone started attacking the monsters.
- A woman who looked too old to be a student but was nonetheless dressed in a student shirt and shorts aggroed the troll and then proceeded to kite it away into the group, much to the surprise and consternation of almost everyone else. She was apparently either part of a separate group or had dropped group from the main raid once getting aggro, and she was trying to kite it around while forming a group with people from her own class/guild to kill it.
- She ran into a classroom and skillfully kited it away from everyone else, sticking to the walls and going around in circles while other people chased her but were unable to catch her or steal aggro back. I had a differnt idea however, and I stood by the door, blocking it so that she would not be able to leave the room without bowling me over.
- She ignored me and continued kiting around the room, including past the door though, so the second time that she passed me, I instead flung the door open and slammed it in her face, letting her momentum carry her into the door and stunning her. The rest of the group caught up with her, pinning her against the door and annihilating the troll so she and her group got no experience or drops from it, before beating her up for good measure as well.
- Later on there was a minor squabble on a shared message board between people from her class being belligerent and trying to defend her actions, saying that they had the most representatives at the raid group with five or six students out of around twenty and so deserved something else, while everyone else jeered at them.
Sep 30 2025
- Snippet: There was a quest of some kind that a few friends and I were attending along with people in other groups. We could all equip and bring along one school of elemental magic as well, and most of the people, including everyone else in my group, chose to bring air magic. However, I either figured out that that was going to happen, or I was forewarned that some other school of magic would be better in there for some enemy type, so I went against the grain and brought a different type of magic as well, which turned out to be a big advantage for us in the end.
Oct 01 2025
- Snippet: All I remember is being on one of two separate teams along with a few other friends, and a large, curved stone room with a VR headset mounted in the center where we could enter a virtual world to compete against the other team in some game or contest. There were multiple people from each team in the VR world at the same time, but also a concept of taking turns as not everyone could be online at once.
Oct 02 2025
- There was a PvP game world that I entered into from a computer in my house. In the game I was stalking a scrawny looking young male with a backpack who was exploring a wilderness hut, I knew his food and water levels were low and his health was slowly ticking down, but he hadn’t healed himself yet because he was trying to optimize his resources as the health item that he had would heal him back to full.
- However, once he was below 20 health, I launched a surprise attack on him and defeated him. I then knelt next to his corpse, pulling up a list of items that he had with him. He had about 20-30 items in total, and I went through two different lists, his inventory and his equipment, and looted 6-8 items from him. I ignored crafting resources like pots and electronic panels, which he had a bunch of but which were heavier to carry. I then quickly slinked away as I knew that he’d respawn in one of three nearby towns and try to come back for his corpse.
- Outside the game, I was staying with Mom, Kel, and Jon, and Mom was recovering from her surgery. I had suggested that we get some new wooden benches for the house, to replace the plastic and rubber ones that we had, and Mom said that after coming back and using the benches she now realized why I had suggested that, something about because it was either less painful or easier to clean up after she sat on them. So she said she now agreed to my plan too.
- Kel was visiting us from overseas and she wanted a new pillow for her bed, and asked where I had gotten my memory foam one. I told her I’d bring her to the store on the weekend and that you could easily get one for under $20 there. Kel said that that was fine, none of her friends had arranged any outings with her on the weekend so we could go out together. I was happy about that.
- Mom expressed her doubt and said that that was too cheap, and that I had looked around for a year before finding my pillow for that price. I said that most of that time had been shopping at other stores though, as I had not known about the location of this one.
- Jon asked if it was the QE store in the mall to the east of our house, but I said no. I eventually mentioned that it was to the north, in a group of outdoor shops, and it used to be a QE store but was now some other mattress and pillow store. It was also the second nearest pillow store to our old Edmonton 4012 house, apparently, but we did not know it existed at the time.
- Lastly there was a scene where I entered a building via a bar or saloon, but one of the doors leading into the place became locked behind me, and someone else who lived in a room on the second floor of that bar or saloon could not get in. I went to the rotary telephone on the second floor of the building to let him in, as the lock was apparently controlled by telephone, but someone else managed to open the door and let him in before I could finish my call. I then went back down to the first floor and headed off toward whatever I was doing in here.
Oct 03 2025
- I had dinner with my work team where we discussed taking part in a game quest against a much larger guild. The game that we were playing was not PvP, however the zones were still competitive, and as they entered as a group they were going to be much faster than a smaller guild like ours who could only send a solo representative.
- We came up with a plan where they would use my character’s corpse as a decoy, putting it near the start of the zone with a formula that Ronnie had written on a piece of paper that looked like a legitimate ingame item but had a very obvious math typo where one of the numbers on the formula was an even number whereas it was obvious that it should have been odd. Specifically, there was a list of paired number like 1-2, 3-4, etc, and then the spell skipped a few numbers and did a “24 ?” which was impossible since the first number had to be odd. There was also an additional number behind the paper that was out of place. I thought Ronnie had made an error at first and was going to tell him that later on, but I realized after a bit that this was on purpose to arouse suspicion.
- The formula made it seem that when a precondition was fulfilled, my corpse would resurrect me. What this did was twofold. Firstly, they lugged along both my corpse and the formula paper with them, this was because they suspected that we had illegally put hacked items in to the game and wanted to see them go off so that they could report us. But nothing ever went off, since the formula spell was fake, and my corpse never revived. So they instead lugged both items along and moved a lot slower than normal to check whether my corpse had rezzed after each action.
- Secondly, because my ghost was tethered to the corpse, I was also able to “scout” them and report on their progress to my guild, especially to Jah, who was our guild’s representative moving through the zone. So he got an idea of where to go to stay ahead of the larger guild and not bump into them. In the end, we did win the quest thanks to our distraction plan.
Oct 04 2025
- Snippet: I was playing a game where I had to deploy one of twelve characters I had into a dungeon and the character would automatically complete the dungeon herself. Each character was represented by an orb, about the size and shape of a cut of half ham, in the world outside of the game, and the dungeon itself was just a machine that I slotted the orb into. I believe the machine itself was in a school setting, as I remember teaching someone else that the character orbs actually gained experience after each run, and got stronger over time, which they did not realize.
- Snippet: In a separate dream, I remember Tigey having his eyes both detach and drop off, though if I moved the hand that was holding him it still looked like he had eyes like normal since the crevisse below where his little orbs were was an identical shade of blue. Kel had saved both eyes though, and we took them to Mom, who took Tigey and went into another room to do some sewing. After a few minutes, she returned him to me with his eyes reattached, although they were both a little loose and secured by a thread that went up to his forehead. I also noted that this was the second time that his eyes needed to be reattached, with the first being in some past forgotten dream.
Oct 05 2025
- Snippet: I had a dream involving several walls that flashed in front of me that I had to interact with. Two of the walls had a bunch of interlocked gears of various sizes on them, and I had a hand crank attached to a small gear that I placed on the wall and then turned, which turned all the other gears too. Another wall had some sort of puzzle to solve that I forgot. Another one after that wasn’t a wall puzzle, but rather it opened up into a room where two girls were chopping onions at a table full of ingredients. One of them tossed an onion in the air and chopped it up mid-air.
- Snippet: I remember a specific scene where I was seated at a table, and on the left side, slightly above the left edge of the table, hung a dead ant entangled in a spider’s web. A young boy who worked at the establishment that I was at came by, and I requested that he removed the spider web and ant but he balked at the request as he was afraid of them.
- Snippet: In aother scene, I was approaching a bus which was stopped by a bus stop next to a curved, elevated road passing through a scenic valley. Just as I reached the back of the bus though, the bus revved up and pulled off without me, which made me angry at the driver. I remember complaining to someone else about it but not what happened after that.
- Snippet: There was a spammy game developer who visited my blog and posted on three separate blog posts of mine about his game. One of his posts, in trying to make small talk, also suggested that I make a review of the University that his game was located in, since I had visited it in the game, and since I had already made reviews of Sophia University and the University of Alberta. I told him that I only made reviews of Universities that I had actually studied at. I showed all his posts to Satinel and Trin at some point later on too.