Condolences. Look after yourself and those he loved.
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I’m sorry for your loss. Heartfelt condolences.
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Very sorry for your loss. Wishing you all the best during this difficult time
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So sorry to hear that. My condolences.
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Today was my last day of work for 4 days. It’s the only day of the year when the bosses have a hard “Everyone out, doors are locked” time (3pm). It’s always a bit of a struggle… we usually get 4-5 door runners, people who squeeze in for “just one minute”.
This year was a bit better, only 2 runners, and everyone was out and doors locked by 3:02.
I now have 4 days where I don’t have to wear a mask, wash my hands 8 times for lunch, or answer the same question fifty-seven times (“What’s the best game in the store?” “I have a friend/wife/husband/enemy who loves strategy games. What’s your best strategy game?” “I have a family of four. What’s the newest, hottest game for families?”).
I plan to spend the rest of the day today and all day tomorrow playing Ghosts of Tsushima, roasting a chicken (originally I was going to make goose, couldn’t find one, then duck, couldn’t find one, and I got the last chicken in the store today), and making a veritable mountain of mashed potatoes.
Saturday I start writing my next novel.
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As an occasional barman at beer festivals, I got very bored with “what’s the strongest beer you’ve got”.
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First Christmas after my divorce here and my first Christmas Eve alone in about 14 years. It’s not a great feeling but there are good parts. I feel a fair bit of loss but I can see different days ahead and improvement in my life from this time last year.
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Focus on the good parts and you’ll be onto a winner.
Best wishes and merry Christmas
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I’m so sorry. I lost my my mom, fuck, almost 9 years ago now, and I still think about her all the time. They say time heals all wounds, but that’s kind of a lie. So far at best it’s dulled the pain, but that hole hasn’t healed.
Hopefully you have a person/people in your life you can talk to or lean on, it makes things a bit easier.
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Just hanged the phone after two long calls to my family in Spain. Gosh, aren’t we lucky, they had to celebrate separately, which was not a big deal, as I think out of my family I am the one more into Christmas. Just chilling now, with my partner gone to the sales, while the girls are on their gadgets and new toys.
Just looking now at the static bike I gifted for my OH this year, and how much more I will have to jump on it the next few days to burn all the extra calories consumed the last 48 hours. 
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Ah, you have my sympathies.
Most of the time I legitimately don’t mind. The trouble is during the holidays I have 15 people all waiting to find things, or wanting to ask questions, and the longer I spend with you the less time I have for them. And even that, most of the time, doesn’t bother me, but this year of course I’m trying to keep the aisle from becoming too busy/crowded, and that’s its own set of problems.
The utter bewilderment people have when I ask them “Well, what kind of games do you like?” continues to amaze me. Yes, the games you are most likely going to enjoy depends a lot on the games you’ve enjoyed in the past…
“Oh, all sorts of games!” or “He likes everything!” is usually responded to with “Then I recommend everything” (with a wink externally and a groan internally).
“He probably owns everything in the store already” usually means “He has Scrabble, Risk, and either Ticket to Ride or Catan.”
“He likes deeply strategic games like Codenames or Risk” is usually responded to with “Neither of those are strategy games, but do you want something more like Codenames, or more like Risk?” (and that usually makes the customers blink a few times in confusion and say “Yes, like those.”)
Look people, this isn’t a competition, and I’m trying to help you. Help me help you. Even questions like “What’s kind of budget are we working with? Less than $20, $50, $500?” often gets a “Oh it doesn’t matter… oh, no, that’s too much. Oh, no, that’s not enough, something bigger…” until I ask again and then usually a “$30 or less, but something with a board” comes out.
In conclusion: be nice to the people who work in the service industry, folks. It’s a hard year for us out there.
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You have my sympathies. My professional life is spent saying, “is it better with 1 or 2?”
The amount of “yes” or “without” answers never ceases to amaze me. Although, “look to the left” also seems to be a tricky command
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Did you have a bottle of cheap vodka on hand for them? I feel like that’s the appropriate answer.
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No, I was usually on the foreign beer bar, so we did have stupidly strong stuff, but I usually tried to find out what their beer tastes were rather than just serving them something they probably wouldn’t enjoy.
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That reminded me of the Goodness Gracious Me sketch ‘Going out for an English’
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In a year where my father has lost his mother and his brother and my parents have lost two neighbours - tonight in the middle of a boardgame we found out that my godmother had passed.
We paused, offered our condolences and then carried on. It feels wrong to have typed that, but at this point I think we’re just so numb to it.
2021 can’t come soon enough.
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My dad’s neighbors, all two of them, both died, so he lives alone between two empty houses. One of them probably saved his life when she found him unconscious on the street at 4am last year.
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As of today, it’s six days since our water heater went out, and more than a month since the faucet handle on our bathroom sink broke off. There’s no indication of when the maintenance people are going to look at either. C and I have concluded that we need to start looking for a new place to live when our lease is up at the end of March; the management where we are doesn’t seem to care whether their apartments are livable. I’ve dug out the map I made a year ago and checked into the rentals I had listed on it . . .
So at the moment, not all that well.
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I’m frustrated at COVID restrictions on my time off.
Can’t get out to play games, can’t visit anywhere. Stuck playing a variety of good kids games (that I’ve vetted) and truly awful kids games (that I haven’t). My lovely wife us not a boardgamer so to spend time with her we’re just watching TV and when she goes to bed that’s it.
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So going back into lockdown for a month, so I’ve been preparing school work for the kids to do as it’s not clear if and when the schools will prepare any resources.
Forgot how bored I got writing out sums and times tables. Also weird how the random number generator of my brain isn’t so random. I often find that I’ve generated the same number two or three times out of the 50 numbers I’ve tried to pluck out of thin air.
Never mind, keep telling myself that it’s the right thing to do.
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