Monthly HapPENings: April

Okay, so it's May already. Let's all try not to panic. It's fine, it's cool, it's not like a third of the year is now over . . . except it actually is. F'real though, WHY IS IT MAY ALREADY???

Now to remember what kind of interesting life stuff happened. Oh wait, it's coming back to me. It's . . . nothing! Because we can't do anything these days!

. . . That's not entirely true. Interesting stuff did happen, and we can do some stuff. I just feel like I've had a lot less to say in this section for the past year. Here's to hoping that can change soon!

So what happened? My middle sister, my mom, one of my grandmas, and my "adopted" grandma all had a birthday, which meant there was a lot of celebrating going on. I also had a job interview that seems super promising, which I am ecstatic about. I've wanted to get a new job for a while now, but there's never been any opportunities that have jumped out at me. Maybe the reason for that was so that I could get this one. I'll definitely keep you all posted!

Oh yeah, my youngest two sisters and I also randomly decided to go out for supper one evening, and that was fun. You start to miss the simple pleasure of eating out now and then. We had two waitresses since one was in training, and we shared a lot of laughs. It was a very good time with delicious food.

Bookish HapPENings

I will finish a book this month. I will finish a book this month. I will finish a book this month. I will finish a book this month. I will, I will, I WILL!

(This is me psyching myself up to actually finish a book so that this section stops being boring.)

HapPENings on the Screen

Okay, so I've seen only one of the Mission: Impossible movies before this, and that was Rogue Nation. Its sequel, Fallout, not only builds off of it, but it does everything even better somehow. From the plot to the action sequences to the score, this film improves every moment while never forgetting the humanity in the characters in the midst of the crazy secret agent plot. I was blown away by it and am honestly already wanting to rewatch it. I haven't watch the first four movies in the series, but I can already say that they're worth seeing just to get to the latest two, especially this one.

I finished S2 of Psycho-Pass not long ago, and what an ending it was! It was different from how I thought it was going to go down, but that doesn't make it any less good. I did feel some parts of the last episode were a bit rushed; I wouldn't say it affected my overall opinion, though. I really don't know why people thought this season was worse than the first. To me, it was just as good, but in a different way. I'm curious how the movie is going to wrap things up with these characters, since S3 has entirely new ones.

I had added Noblesse to my queue on Crunchyroll quite some time ago, and now I'm finally getting around to it. Based off of a Webtoon, it's about a man named Rai who wields the power of the Noblesse and awakens after a 820 year slumber in the modern age. His servant Frankenstein enrolls him in a high school to hide him from his enemies, but soon they come knocking on his door. It's pretty good so far, but I wouldn't say it's great. Not yet, anyway. Also didn't help that I didn't realize you're supposed to watch a prologue episode that released four years before the main show, so I ended up watching EP1 and was confused about some stuff. I'll have to see where the show goes and report back as to whether it gets better or not!

Gaming HapPENings

I recently got this game called Shotgun Farmers after watching Markiplier play it and thinking it looked like a good time. I will say, it's surprisingly addictive. The gameplay is fairly simple: two teams of farmers duke it out, and their vegetable themed guns grow plants that give you more ammo or new guns if you miss a shot. There's a few different modes that get cycled through when you're playing online, and it's quite fun. I'm also not too shabby at it, which doesn't hurt. In one game, I even got six kills in a row, an achievement that only 11% of players have gotten. That makes me feel pretty confident in my skills as a fighting farmer.

So Preston and I decided to try out Zookeeper Simulator the other day, in which one person is a zookeeper trying to complete several tasks and the other person is an animal trying to kill them. You can have multiple animals, but not multiple zookeepers, which can get interesting. This game is . . . something else, I tell ya. It's got some very whacky physics and is broken as heck, but it is so, so hilarious. When I played with both Preston and Megan a couple of weeks ago, we were laughing pretty much the entire time. It was amazing, even if the game is not.

I've also been playing a translated version of Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth - Prosecutor's Path, and it's been a blast so far. A very worthy sequel to the first Investigations title, with some interesting cases. Then again, I expected nothing less from an Ace Attorney game. I'm waiting to see when the overarching plot is going to reveal itself, because from what has been shown so far, it's going to be amazing. Again, this is a staple when it comes to the Ace Attorney series. Have I ever mentioned how much I love these games?

Writerly HapPENings

Believe it or not, I have been doing a bit of writing recently. At my current work, in which we support individuals with mental and physical disabilities, we've been sending out a monthly newsletter to the people who can't come into work right now. I offered to write a serial story for it, which I started in April. It's called The Hunt for the Greatest Treasure, a story about a brother and sister (both adults) who end up stranded in the middle of nowhere when they go for a road trip. Fleeing people with unknown intentions, they wind up at a cabin where they find a map proclaiming it leads to a fantastic treasure. They grow closer along the way and end up realizing that their relationship is the greatest treasure.

The biggest challenge of this so far has been writing a story in a simpler language, which means I'm avoiding more complex words and expressions, while still keeping it adult. I haven't written much yet, but the first part seems to have gotten positive feedback, which is good. But if I wind up landing the new job, I'm going to have to pump out the rest of the story in the next two weeks. Wish me luck!

And that was my April! How did yours go? Anything noteworthy happen? What've you been reading/watching/playing/writing recently?