I've mentioned it before on here so I may as well post a little more about it. I'll be going to Wacken Open Air this year, they have a fair few bands I'm unfamiliar with alongside a few which I really do love seeing live. The week after thee festival, the buddy I'm going with wanted to go to Poland. We might be changing our plans up as a supergroup we both really love (and assumed we'd have to go to Europe to ever have a shot at seeing), Avantasia, is going to be at the Helsinki Metal Festival. Said festival is the Thursday to the Saturday on that week we were planning on Poland. I also noticed some names I've enjoyed: The Amity Affliction, Beast in Black, Insomnium, and Swallow the Sun. Replacing random sightseeing in three cities with semi-slowly vibing across some Nordic countries and then having two more days of good music, a few bands I know and a few more to experience for the first time? I'm in.

On the idea of concerts, last week I went to Cleveland to meet up with my friend Noelle. We went to a two-act show, Cyanotic and KMFDM, and good gosh that was more than worth the ticket price. Both acts put on a great show, the crowd had an amazing vibe, and the merch was pretty sick as well. If you have a shot to see either, I'd recommend 'em. (We also went to a pretty sick German resturant and I finally re-homed my good PS/2 55SX that I just don't really use, it was a really solid day overall.)

A good friend of mine reached out the other day, he's a real cool guy who's back around town after a few years of working jobs that were up to a good twelve hours away, and he wants me to come play airsoft with 'em in May. A year-ish ago, I pretty much swore the sport off because I wasn't happy with a lot of the communities. Big ones were toxic hellholes, small ones weren't much better, niches are extremely heavy into gatekeeping knowledge, a lot of respected figures seem to not actually respect anything but their own ego, scams were everywhere, and I just couldn't find any chill groups to play with. It was an old hobby to me at that point, I had something like eleven years being heavily into it, and I just didn't want to keep going if I wasn't going to find the social side fun. Part of swearing off the sport was selling basically every non-collectable replica I own and at this point I think my "best performer" is a Shoei G43, a rifle which I really don't want to try running on a field. All that said, this isn't "I'm alone in terms of locals so I'm trying to fit into any other group I can". These are people I know. They're people who I like, they're people who like me, and they're people who I could see myself actively wanting to run around with. It would be a fun group. I think, to a much more casual and "doing it may way" extent, I'm going to give things another shot. I won't try to push into any Discord communities or forum boards, I won't get sucked into goofy-ass media drama, I'll just act like it was the good 'ol 2013-2017 days. Casual games with the boys once or so a month, maybe one or two events a year. After a year of that, say May of 2025, I'll see how I feel. Do I like the sport again? I'll keep it up. Am I just not into it? I'll sell my gear and call it quits for good.

Another "old" thing to talk about, Reddit. I have two accounts, one that's something like seven years old and another that's five. I've used the site for longer, I just never had a reason to have an account in the past. Now that I'm trying to sell some stuff, with friends telling me r/gamesale is a good place to go, I decided I'd go make a po-- oh right, I need to meet the arbitrary karma requirements before I can use half the site. I get that they don't want bots and whatnot, that's fine, but man oh man does it kinda suck trying to farm internet points. I post things I actually love, try to give helpful replies, and get a mediocre response. I shitpost some lazy pictures, I get a great response. I don't really care for social media but whatever, a few more days of trying to make my account look "cooler" and then maybe I'll be able to offload some junk.

One last thing before I wrap up, in like six hours after I finish writing this post there's going to be a big 'ol thing delivered to the house. There's finally going to be a table in the dining room! It only took multiple years. Whoops. I'd like to get some tabletop games going again and I'm quite the fan of this idea I brainstormed while chatting with some buddies like a week or two ago so maybe, just maybe, I'll find a few people around town who are willing to come out and help me break in the new table with pizza, soda, and dice rolls. That would be pretty sick.