That's right – the End of the Year™ is upon us once again!
And just like usual, I don't have anything of actual note to say, but I'm still writing this anyway for reasons I have yet to figure out.
I'll start my story on the 4th, where I went out for a Christmas dinner, along with a bunch of others from where I volunteer, and then we went bowling afterwards! It was really fun. Even if I kept bowling into the gutter.
On the 8th, having tried and given up a couple of days earlier, I started Minecraft anew, with the goal being to actually (for the first-ever time since I started playing Minecraft nine years ago!!) defeat the boss and "beat the game" (for a given definition of "beat", seeing as it can go on for as long as you like.)
The next day, on Monday the 9th, I went for my annual diabetic eye screening – once again, no signs of retinopathy, so long may that last!
On Wednesday the 11th, we took a trip to a phone shop to look for a new phone for my Christmas present – we soon picked out the one I wanted, but since I wasn't sure about a couple of things to do with my old phone, we put it off for another week.
That day, on Thursday the 19th, Dad & I went up to visit Grandma & Granddad (as well as drop off their Christmas presents) – all seemed to be going well!
After we made it home, we bought my new phone, and put it away until Christmas Day.
On Saturday the 21st, I got up early with Mum and Maia to go out shopping with them (when I may or may not have bought a certain Christmas present – that being Dad's!) I also bought some sweets, except they were "fizzy", ie covered in citric and malic acids, and so eating them either a) made my tongue sting, or b) didn't make my tongue sting but did make me sweat semi-profusely. I just couldn't win at that.
Not to mention the over-twice-the-size pack I got as a Christmas present… my extremely stupid decision to eat the whole thing in a single sitting made both problems happen.
For Christmas, I got my new phone (as planned) and I also went on a walk around the local park with Mum, because I'd previously downloaded the game Pikmin Bloom to my phone, so we walked around and I grew Pikmin while Mum played Pokémon GO, which was fun!
I also got Super Mario Party Jamboree from Maia!
On Boxing Day, I went out for a walk around the park again, this time accompanied by Maia – with her multiple years of experience playing Pikmin Bloom, we were able to plant loads of flowers, and we got loads of fruit (an important collectible in-game) as rewards!
As for Minecraft, I've been hard at work on that one world since the 8th, and so far I've managed to link my main house with an outpost eight times faster than normal thanks to travelling through hell! (Please trust me when I say that makes sense in context.)
My next goal is to create the ultimate pickaxe, self-healing and super-lucky, so that I can gather as much material as I can to help me face down against the boss for the very first time!
…and so, we reach the end of 2024!
It's actually been a surprisingly good year as far as game releases go, which is funny because the first half of the year was utterly devoid of game releases – but the second half, with Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom and Mario & Luigi: Brothership, was very strong.
I'm looking forward to next year, too! The successor console to the Nintendo Switch will be announced by the end of March, and Pokémon Legends: Z-A will be out next year as well – though I'm especially looking forward to 2026 for Pokémon, because that'll be its 30th anniversary, so I'm hoping they'll go all out for it!
Anyway, that's all from me for now, so enjoy the celebrations, and I'll see you in 2025!
Happy New Year!
That's four colds this year – more than last year – and there's a non-zero chance that this most recent one (which is ongoing, by the way) has mutated into pneumonia, considering the serious chest pain I've had all day today.
Or, to put it another way… to hell with me, I guess.