In the United States, we celebrate Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November (hence why the day after that is called Black Friday). For my family, we keep things mostly simple, just a small turkey and a small number of side dishes (green bean casserole, mac & cheese, etc.) and, having grown up catholic, give thanks for the food as well as the circumstances and quality of living I enjoy each and every year. It's a humbling holiday and one that gives us time to reflect on the past and to look toward the future (also to avoid going out on the day after lol). My family is mostly just my brother and our father and I, so just us three - the rest of the extended family is too far spread out across the U.S. to even get a gathering together.

I've been playing FFXIV since around patch 2.1-ish I believe (so the first major patch of A Realm Reborn). Ever since, I've not really been playing WoW except for when BC Classic came out fairly recently, but I've been taking an extended break from WoW with everything going to hell in a handbasket with Activision-Blizzard.

Going back to the food thing, yeah, our federal govt. thought it'd be a good idea to start mandating the vaccine. With how volatile the way the pandemic has been handled (i.e. extremely poorly compared to the previous admin), people have essentially been caught in the political crossfire all over the country, with hospital staff, truck drivers, etc. have been getting laid off (read: fired) from their jobs for not getting the vaccine (some even being told they'll not be allowed medical or religious exemptions). That, coupled with the fact that the ocean ports in California have essentially bottlenecked everything. It's gotten so bad that the eastern coast state of Florida has offered to allow cargo ships to unload their cargo in their state. Everything here is a mess, yet there's a good chunk of people who think "everything's fine" as the country continues to spiral into increasing food prices, product shortages, and shipping bottlenecks. That's just there bare-bones explaination, too. There's just too much going on too quickly for the average person to keep up with it all, so it just feels like everything's imploding here in the States. There was a small election held in various states for various positions (governor of Virginia, president of the State Senate in New Jersey IIRC, etc.) and it was a complete sweep for the republican party. Needless to say, people are starting to get angry about how things're going in the U.S. at present, and rightly so.

Getting back on topic from that mini-rant, FFXIV has been great ever since I started playing it a few years ago. I don't really do any hard-core raiding, but I don't really miss it since i'm mostly playing it for the story. It's extremely refreshing to play an MMO that values my time. Wish I felt the same for WoW. Maybe one day, WoW will go back to being a fun game instead of being treated as a job. :(

As for the life update, not really much has been happening with everything going on in the world right now, so finding those nuggets of joy, while increasingly becoming rarer and rarer, are still worth finding, IMO.

Black Friday is the Friday immediately after Thanksgiving in the U.S. where people "traditionally" (and I mean traditionally in a loose sense) go and rush to get their Christmas shopping done. It's essentially become memeified where people will joke about how they have to beat up people or survive the War of $18.12 or some other euphemism for getting their shopping done when everyone is vying for the same toy or sale as you. It can be a brutal day, so I tend to avoid it altogether and do my in-store shopping the following week, if any.

I used to not like Thanksgiving dinners much since most of the time it'd be (in my opinion) bland food, but now that I've gotten older, I sorta appreciate just having food at all. Plus, bland food can easily be remedied with herbs and spices and the occasional gravy (I don't tend to like gravy much).

At this point, I've just really stopped caring about the pandemic anymore. It's endemic and might as well be treated like the flu at this point, to me. Actually, come to think of it, I find it hilariously absurd that I've been ushered into so many stores in DC that have those "masks required" signs slapped onto their windows and doors. I even had someone at a pop-up halloween store in Tyson's Corner (which is in the Washington DC Metro area) tell me that the signs are just there for show and they don't enforce them - makes sense to me, honestly. Doesn't make sense to open yourself up to a wrongful discrimination lawsuit, and I'm sure a lot of small businesses are extremely hurting for cash in this increasingly hostile environment.

As for my mood, it's gotten increasingly bitter over the past few weeks - mostly because in the U.S. things are getting increasingly worse. Prices on almost everything keep inflating higher and higher than I can keep up with, so it's becoming harder and harder to, for example, shop for groceries where I don't spend over $300+ USD just for a weeks worth of groceries. And that's just on basic things like milk, eggs, butter, vegetables and fruit - raw ingredients, essentially. Hell, just like I mentioned in my original journal entry, we spent $50 USD just on an 18-ish pound turkey! Last year it was hovering around $20 USD, so that's almost a 2.5x price hike. And from Walmart, of all places (which usually has competitively cheap/reasonable prices on some things), too! So that's what I mean when I say that finding those increasingly-rare "nuggets of joy" are kinda keeping me going.

And no prob on replying. Honestly, it helps a bit get a few things off my chest, so if anything, I should be thanking you. So...thank you. :)