Looks like I didn't win the chance to throw $200 at wizards. Ah well, maybe next time I'll win the lottery to spend money.

It's a general thing most of the time. We have a limited time here, doing what we do. I can handle that...

What I'm currently dealing with is not my own mortality, but that of my wifes. She has congestive heart failure and schizophrenia (among plenty of other issues). She doesn't think there's anything wrong with her as her body slowly fills with excess water that's literally currently accumulating in her lungs because it's filled every other point up to that height. She has a constant cough to clear her airway and can barely stand as her feet are so full of fluids that it hurts to do anything other than lay down. She's been to the hospital for this before, was given all the warnings, life changes, and general rules to literally live by. She decided not to adopt any of those changes. I've done all I can reasonably do as I sit here listening to her pain and suffering. There is nothing I can change on her deathmarch other than some vague level of comfort. How is anyone meant to deal with this? I've attempted to compartmentalize it as much as I can to section off those feelings, compared it to a train wreck is slow motion. I can see all the moving parts, but realistically I can't effect change that would do any lasting good. I feel lost.

Worst update imaginable. She's had not one, but two strokes. The first one knocked out her right side mobility, the second might have impacted her ability to speak and seems to have given her some level of aphasia. I won't know her new baseline until she's able to breathe on her own, but the bare minimum at this stage is looking like nearly full time care needed for the rest of her life. The doctors found a third heart clot that's threatening to make things even worse.

It's been about a week since the last update. She's gotten somewhat better. She can not use her right side much and has a lot of trouble coming up with the words she wants to use for anything. The hospital is talking about sending her to rehab. It's going too fast, but this is the american health system. Built to barely work and keep things moving.. and they're doing a stellar job on keeping things moving. At this point the realization of what my life is going to look like in around a month hit me very suddenly tonight when she was completely unable to express anything meaningful in the two short hours I can visit her after work. If everything works out well, I can get the help I'm definitely going to need when she comes home. Sadly, I feel like they're going to force a bare minimum in rehab and just push her out into the world again, before I've had a chance to do anything meaningful to prepare for her needs. I'm expecting to have a very bad time.

Three strokes in and things seem to somehow be holding steady. This was the first day I've had away from everything to just sit and enjoy a bit of my own life in awhile, only to be interrupted by people who cannot think their way out of a wet paper bag. I get that the glucose monitor beeps sometimes.. when the persons blood sugar is either stressingly high, or dangerously low. Having to explain why it should not be "shut off" overnight so it doesn't disturb anyones sleep was not the conversation I was expecting to have, and at this point I'm a bundle of highly stressed and coiled steel.. I'm ready to snap at the slightest pressure. Is it wrong to be thankful to be going back to work so I can have a solid 8 hours of relative normality in my daily routine? That's how I feel about it.

For now the game of life is "look at this person every day and see if their levels of broken are higher or lower than they were the day before". That's about the only way we're going to know if there has been yet another stroke.

It's probably been about a month since the last update at this point. I have completely lost track of time. Any sense of my own time has been long forgotten as I've had to come to terms with the fact that my other half has settled on the mentality of a small child, somewhere between 4-7 years old. We're just going to be buying diapers for as long as living continues to happen. My mother in law has proven to be barely useful as she can seemingly only handle the most baseline health help and food prep needs. Anything else I have to go do myself, which also now juggling a full time job to pay all the bills.

Violent thoughts have been more prevalent in my mind these past weeks, I have had to hold myself back from completely losing my shit on multiple occasions and there isn't a place anonymous enough for me to actually dump many of the darker feelings into words. I'm still waiting to see if there's any opportunity for any kind of government help for someone who has been reduced to a toddler mentally, while also being in incredibly poor physical health.

She's started to crack around the seams from all the "healthy" eating. It's not really all that healthy, but it is leagues better than what she had been doing. That being said, she's latched on to the meal supplement Boost drink.. at a meager $2 per 8oz, I've watched her drink away at least $12 in a day. Today marks the second day in a row she's thrown a tantrum like a child and ended up on the floor, which also happens to be a place I literally have to help her up from or she'll be stuck there.

I don't get time to myself. I don't get days off. I don't get to rest, or relax, or heal. I just get to watch the culmination of someone elses failures slowly eat away at them one shred of humanity at a time until all that's left is a screaming mass of incoherent cries. I don't want to live this life. I don't want to be the one who deals with these things. I don't want to be forced into a situation that has no happy ending, or even some kind of reasonable conclusion. The only thing waiting now is a slow and painful death followed by deep levels of despair and loneliness that will take the better part of the rest of my life to sort through and attempt to recover from. Not to mention my living situation might need to completely change when that does inevitably happen. I don't know when the end will be, but considering the unhinged random fat/sweet binging that keeps happening, I think a year is optimistic, two will break me, and anything more won't matter.

I don't wish this on anyone. I don't think I'll need to update this at all after this point. The only thing that's going to happen to make things worse is the loss of health insurance in a few months because I was out of work for long enough that I don't have the hours to continue my usual coverage. but that's just going to happen and there's nothing I can do about it. I can't say that I care at this point. I'm trapped in a financial pit that has no end. I don't even get the chance to escape it a bit anymore. It's just work, bills, and medications.

And so I hopped on and deleted all the comments on that one too. Thanks random password request!

Still smoking regularly in my dreams. I quit 4 years ago and haven't turned back.. But it still seems an indelible trait my mind hasn't let go of yet.

It's not the main focus of the dream, just a noticeable part of my 'normal' self while dreaming.

I still use my first ever made email address, at this point it's pushing 28 years old. However I have a major problem. I can rarely log into it anymore. There are so many attempts to login to the account daily from whoever out there that wants to gain access that the login is normally locked out for a period of time. At this point I've moved everything of financial value off of it as someone did get access once, but there are still plenty of random little things I'd like to hang on to it for.

I know I can just make a new one and ditch that one as a quick solution, but I figured i'd ask a wider community if they had any insights I might not have. It's a Microsoft account, and my windows is tied to it, but I'm pretty sure I can just migrate that to something new.

I finally wormed my way to the second type of ascendency trial last night, and after a good rest I'm ready to properly vent about both of them.

The first trial is a rogue like dungeon crawl in which getting hit too many times regardless of life totals ends your run. Across the various times I've run it, the stages themselves are not bad. You get to choose your path and hope everything works out with the positives and negatives of the new rooms you come across. The various challenges are also interesting.

However, the final boss is absolutely abysmal to fight against. In a mode where the term honor is used, this thing has several area of effect attacks that aren't visually telegraphed at all. Even it's normal slam attack has a decently sized area of effect.

Whats worse are the various and random effects it also has that spew projectiles all over the place. If you're not fast enough in killing the thing, the battlefield basically becomes a bullet hell. My first clear I spent more time looking at my character to see where safety was than the boss. It feels not great for the first encounter of this system to include what amounts to rng damage pings from out of no where.

The second trial (and currently only other) trial you're introduced to is based on the ultimatum league from path 1. You choose a modifier, go into a space, and do the challenge. Finish that and you go to the next, stack a new modifier, and do the next challenge. It's fairly straight forward and some of the modifiers are terrifying but manageable... Until you get to the boss.

The boss doesn't so much fight you as it does flop around the area farting annoying elemental effects everywhere. I'm glad I'm playing a ranged character so I can just not be near the damned thing.. But this is where those modifiers come in big. If you chose any of the mods that cause the ground to get more area of effect effects on it, good luck. The boss bounces around so much you will have to chase it down while also keeping an eye on any poison, ice, fire, or electricity on the ground.. And whatever other effects might be problematic. I probably died a good 4 times on the boss alone, and twice to the challenges before due to not minding my modifiers. (do NOT dodge roll through death bubbles.. They body block you.)

I don't really feel cheated by either of them even after all of this is said and done.. But I do feel that they are incredibly poorly chosen for their respective trials and would really benefit from being moved to either later bosses, or elsewhere in the game.

Figured I'd ask how everyone is carrying on in a new game.

Personally nearly all my deaths are boss related, a majority being purely based on a one shot kill, or a mechanic I failed to manage/know how to stop.

Outside of bosses, it's just been getting body blocked by the hordes a few times.

Out of all of it, I only felt two of my deaths felt unfair/completely unexpected.

I've died about a dozen times so far and just made it to act 3.

It's been a long time coming, but at least with it's final act it'll help bring new life.

In accordance with the rules of news, I have updated the headline to reflect the headline on the website.

I feel like the article is extremely subjective, so I figured it'd be more fun to post your own top 10 good/bads.

I'll start with mine.

• Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle
• Dark Gathering
• Ya Boy Kongming!
• Great Pretender
• Summertime Rendering
• Miss Shachiku and the Little Baby Ghost
• Diary of Our Days at the Breakwater
• Uncle from Another World
• Digimon Adventures (2020)
• Muteking the Dancing Hero

I tried thinking of anime that I'd suggest to friends who are already fairly active watchers, but for some reason or another had them slip through the cracks.

I mean.. In-N-Out burger at #2.

Borderlands 4 has been announced for 2025. For a multitude of reasons, I'm more than happy to sit idly by and wait for a discounted game of the year edition or similar that includes the entirety of their dlc collection because you know there will be paid dlc. It's borderlands.