2020 was the first Christmas in my entire life where I wasn't at home with my parents in Belleville. So it didn't feel
especially Christmassy.
Ellen and I closed on our new house earlier in December. It's going to be a while before we move in, as there's
significant renovation work ahead. A bunch of my focus over the break was just getting over there and trying to get a
feel for what we've gotten ourselves into and what needs to be done. In summary: a lot.
Given that Ellen and I just bought each other a house, we didn't really go in for gifts or anything. Her mom cooked a
turkey, which was nice, but didn't feel much like Christmas dinner. She'd stayed up all night cooking and had to go to
bed and left me to carve in the morning. I took a plate over to Ellen later. We're not really set up for family
gathering, even between the three of us.
I have a group of friends (originally from CTRL-A) who, in the before-time, would get together every week at the
Princess Cafe for coffee. We've managed keep that going via Discord, which has been helpful in maintaining a modicum of
sanity in these unprecedented times. We've taken to also watching an occasional movie together with voice chat.
We watched Die Hard together for Christmas. And we decided to do another movie night last night as a shallow substitute
for our usual New Years Eve party. We watched What We Do in the Shadows, which was pretty great.
Afterwards, Ellen and I rang in the New Year over the phone, Ellen watching a rotation of TV New Years specials and me
celebrating Countdown with my Animal Crossing villagers.
So here we are in 2021. New possibilities lie ahead. Our five-year housing search has finally borne fruit. It's not
over, and home-ownership type stresses have replaced previous will-we-find-a-place type stresses. But at least there are
new problems for us to deal with, along with a clearer path forward. 2020 was a pretty shitty year in most regards, but
it gave us that, at least.
Oh wait. I guess I never actually blogged about doing this. I've been putting together a Christmas mixtape every year
since 2017.
All my mixtapes are up on Mixcloud. But for the first time, you can listen
to this one on Youtube Music! Mixcloud
says they pay royalties, but I have a feeling Youtube Music is probably the better one to use if you want to support
the artists (even a little bit). They don't have a nice WordPress widget tho.
I was inspired to do this partly by DJ Riko, but also by the fact that we can access very nearly
every song ever recorded now and it seems a waste not to take advantage of that to trawl for ridiculous (and
occasionally sublime) Christmas music.
The last couple blog entries were really cathartic and I thought I'd keep doing them, but, well, here we are. A lot's
happened in the last few months. And not happened. But I'm going to elide all that and talk about Animal Crossing.
Animal Crossing: New Horizon came out almost the exact same time everything shut down and I held out a week or so, but
seeing as a bunch of my friends were getting into it and I had a switch, I figured why not?
I hadn't played the previous Animal Crossing games, mostly because I was turned off by the idea that it was a real-time
world and the animals would get mad at you if you didn't show up all the time and clean up the weeds. Buddy, I got a
job. Nobody's got time for your weeds.
I have time for weeds now.
And really, they removed pretty much all of that in New Horizon. There's pretty much no negative consequence to
abandoning your village. This, however, has not been an issue for me. According to my switch profile, I've logged
something like 700 hours in this game. Mind you, I'll just kind of leave it running sometimes to have the music playing
in the background (the soundtrack is awesome). But I do check it every day. What prices
are turnips selling for? Who can I give gifts to? Who's visiting my island today? How are my hybrid roses coming?
The ridiculous animal neighbours with their cookie-cutter mad lib dialog actually brighten my day. They'll say funny
things. They'll tell me they appreciate me. They'll get really excited about things I did. You'll catch them talking to
one another and they'll ask you for advice. They'll throw me a birthday party. It's very sweet.
https://youtu.be/BgEnbXPZX4s
What's more, it feels like being part of a society that cares about you. In a way that's difficult to find in the real
world right now. I can do the trivial little jobs it gives me to do and feel better about myself, and make my virtual
fantasy island a little bit better along the way, one day at a time.
