Adventures in Sanctuary

So, Diablo IV has eaten my life for the past couple of weeks. Though the game isn't perfect, it is definitely a time sink. The graphics are stunning, and the ability to customize the characters' appearance is remarkable. The story is darker than I prefer, and a lot of the quests are super depressing, but that's the aesthetic they're going for intentionally, so in that they are succeeding quite well.

One of the niggling things that bugs the heck out of me is how illogical some of the default keybindings are. (Q for healing potions and not the Quest Log? WHY???) Fortunately, keybindings can be changed. The game also introduces mounts for riding across the countryside, which is great...except the enemy monsters set up roadblocks across the paths, forcing you to dismount at intervals. Ugh. Again, why? On the other hand, the new ability to teleport to any activated waypoint from anywhere on the map is outstanding.

At this point, I've finished the main campaign quest line and unlocked the "Nightmare" Tier 3 difficulty level. I'm still questing at Tier 1 easy mode, though, because I'm not a great player. My reflexes are terrible and I don't min-max my skill tree. I just enjoy running around Sanctuary (the Diablo world) picking various herbs and decking out my character in pretty armor. (The game now has herbing and mining for materials, like in World of Warcraft. I wish it also had fishing.)

In other news, I'm steadily working on losing the weight that I put on while I was a supervisor. It helps to be working my dog again, because that's a lot of exercise. The other thing I'm doing is refraining from eating all the doughnuts and cookies that people bring to the office (which is hard, because the snack distribution table is literally right next to my desk). I've only got about 2 pounds to go to get back to what I was in January.

My garden is in the height of loquat and raspberry season at the moment. I'm running low on freezer containers again and will probably have to resort to plastic freezer bags, which I try to avoid, but glass takes up so much space (and occasionally cracks). I'm trying some salt-fermented loquats to see how well that works for preservation. (Umeboshi is super popular, so why not other fruit?) I'm also making loquat miso as another experiment. I bought more canning lids, so I'm going to make a bit of raspberry jam, though my jam/pickle cupboard is still pretty full.

The drip irrigation system that my dad installed for me is doing a great job so far, particularly for the raspberries, which are much happier this year than they were last year.

A neighbor from a couple blocks away happened to be passing by my house and saw that I had a kale plant gone to seed. She asked if she could have some of the seed pods, and I said she could when they were ready. She came by last week to take some and brought me a few tomato seedlings (varieties unknown) and scallions from her garden in exchange. I also said she could take her pick from my rooted fig tree cuttings. It's nice to have neighbors who are into gardening.

One of my volunteer potato plants set a bunch of fruit last year, so I harvested a lot of seeds. I planted a bunch of the seeds out in a tray on my porch to see what kind of tubers they will produce. Something (probably a squirrel) stepped in the tray and disturbed the soil a couple days ago, but I don't think it did too much damage. The cool thing about potatoes grown from true seed is that each individual plant could be considered a new variety, since it can then be propagated through the tubers as clones in perpetuity.

Just one more month to go before my summer vacation. My neighbor across the street has said that she should be able to feed my dogs while I'm gone.