I am still enjoying Silksong and I will continue playing, but for now I need to put it aside. I'm getting way too stressed out, and since I usually play in the evenings, that's right before bedtime. I've even been taking my Garmin off when I play because it senses the rise in heart rate when I'm in these arena battles or boss fights. Tonight I'm going back to South of Midnight, which I was playing before we left on vacation. I was enjoying that a lot - good story, good gameplay, very engaging, likable player character, giant talking catfish.

I understand the why of Silksong being as challenging as it is, but I also don't think I need to keep banging my head against it every single night. I appreciate the reasons, and I enjoy a difficult game - I did Hyper Light Drifter at 100%, got most of Owlboy, Hollow Knight's Path of Pain, etc. I need a break :D

In other news, the replacement power box for the tower should be here today. We'll take down the dented one and if everything goes as planned (LOL) we'll only be offline for an hour while we swap over all the equipment. We'll need to run out to Home Depot tomorrow for bolts and anything else we might wind up needing, but with me assisting, it should go pretty quickly.

My neighbor now has one more chicken, making five. She keeps apologizing to me for how they roam into my yard, but I enjoy watching them scratch around, and they aren't hurting anything.

And I have noticed the weather station nearby that was reporting negative amounts of humidity has either been repaired or, more likely, replaced.

I have had the great misfortune to learn about Barbie Botox. Apparently a procedure that started as a way to help patients with neck and shoulder pain, as well as some kinds of headaches, people are now getting it to ... uh *checks notes* make their shoulders look slimmer. Kim Kardashian has been airbrushing her traps out of photos for a while now, in order to make her shoulders slimmer, and her neck longer, basically like a Barbie doll, which we all know is a perfect paragon of realistic female embodiment. I also want to point out that everything I've ever learned about Kim Kardashian has been entirely against my will.

As a palate cleanser, enjoy Nemo's Dreamscapes. I love a good soundscape.

Uneventful vacations are the best. Basically, overplanning and trying to have Maximum Fun every day is a sure way to burn out, get home exhausted, and remember much less about your trip. I see this with families on a big, once in a lifetime Disney trip - they pack too much in, trying to see and do everything in the parks, and wind up dead tired with crying kids and angry, stressed out adults. Everyone has a meltdown and no one enjoys themselves. I know that trying to get everything in on a trip you may only make once is very tempting - what if you miss something? But don't let FOMO rob you of the chance to have good memories of your trip later. Type B Travel for the win.

Mugolio syrup - the expensive pine cone syrup you can easily make yourself. I had never heard of this stuff until reading this article. According to other articles on it, you can also use Bald Cypress nuts. I might try making some but it's not really the right time here for young pine cones. We have a lot of Longleaf Pine and the cones are enormous.

I am still in the process of cleaning up the camper and everything from our trip, on top of which I get very sucked in to playing Silksong, which I'm enjoying immensely. I was going to finish the camper up and lower the roof, but we decided to air out the "rug" we like to spread out around the camper steps. Apparently it was much wetter than we thought when we put it up, because the compartment it was stored in was full of stinky water after just a few days. I thought an animal had somehow gotten inside and peed in it, but there's a LOT of liquid. Those woven plastic outdoor carpets must hold a lot more water than you'd think. Anyway we pulled everything that was wet out, hosed it off, and we're letting it dry in the sun.