Bad news: at 25GB to go, the PS4 dumped the progress on patch 1.02 and started downloading 1.04, which was ... 45GB. It just finished. Spouse did not play 2077 over the weekend. Good news: it didn't wait until we'd wasted 3 whole days downloading 1.02 to start 1.04? We've been discussing what kind of character we're going to play. Initially I thought no to corpo and street kid, but then nomad seemed a gimmie, so maybe corpo is the right answer? It sounds like the least fun, so maybe it's the MOST fun. Logic.

Spouse and I are really deep in each other's back pockets at this point since the pandemic. It's ridiculous. I never thought I would be one of THOSE married people, but here we are, unable to go grocery shopping without the other one, arguing over flavors of cheese stuffed olives and grading the free hand sanitizer at stores ("Weirdly slimy, don't like the smell, dries nice though: C+"). Who knew: marriage is like being in a dumb joke duel to the death.

Since we weren't playing Cyberpunk or using the internet I prodded spouse to figure out Christmas gifts for the family. We have our 2 sets of parents, 5 siblings + their partners with combined minimum of 17 nieces and nephews. I like the nieces and nephews but dang are they hard to shop for. You can't get gifts for one sibling's kids and not buy for the others. Two of the siblings are touchy and would definitely make a stink if their kids got "lesser" gifts, and those two are of course the ones we have the least contact with. But there's SEVENTEEN kids, so the gifts end up being lower cost and generic because we're limited by the quirks of the parents and because we can't keep mental lists of what the 17 kids already have and are into - I barely remember all their names. Spouse got motivated on Sunday; we ended up in walmart shuffling around like sad tranq'd herd animals on Wild Kingdom and now we have a mountain of $10 throw blankets. Better than knives, I guess - no joke, spouse was looking at cheap knives and I had to shoot that idea down. The only thing more dangerous than a gift knife is a cheap gift knife. Last year he sent them wooden swords from the ren fest and that was pushing it. I want to get them titanium sporks but that's probably not any better. (Titanium sporks are cool though, right? They're almost indestructible. You can eat rock hard ice cream!) Nobody gets excited over a throw blanket, but it can't break in shipping, there's no sizing issue, it can't gouge an eye out, and anyone regardless of age gets the same amount of use from it.

Yesterday I beat the hell out of the amazon search engine trying to find better options that were 1) sorta crafty but not TOO crafty, 2) $20 or less, 3) in stock and would arrive in time, 4) wouldn't get confiscated by parents for being rude, noisy, threatening, fire, medical bills, etc, 5) would be interesting/useful for more than 5 minutes, 6) didn't require extra people or certain weather conditions to be fun, 7) nothing solar powered, worthless in Alaska, 8) meets my own standards for a good gift. These kids are normal kids, not weirdo nerds like I was. That's an extra layer of difficulty.

Anyway, it's very challenging, especially with a $20 limit. For the older girls I found a flower shaped pendant light kit where you assemble the lightshade yourself (search: lotus flower lamp shade kit). For the older boys I found a papercraft mounted wolf bust (search: low poly paper wolf) that looks similar to the GOT Stark wolf. I don't think their parents let them watch GOT but that wolf is sweet anyway - I'd put it on my wall. For the younger girls I found a fairy lantern craft kit (search: fairy lantern kit). I did strike out on the younger boys so far. Option 1: an EL wire kit - let them deck their bed out with an underglow light or turn it into a fake neon sign. That's cool, right? The only bummer is I have trouble finding one that is wall pluggable, not battery powered. Option 2: paper airplane book, but the star wars one is out of stock.

There are some really cool wooden model kits that are like puzzles to put together. Some of them have elaborate clockwork elements. They look so beautiful and interesting but usually the less expensive ones are sold out by the time I remember to look.

So I have to paint a lot of wooden ornaments today, and make cards. Each kid gets a throw blanket and an ornament. For the adults we try to get unusual local food items, so I'm going over to the corner shopping center to hunt for Old Bay cheese puffs. It's supposed to rain later today and snow tomorrow. First they said 6-9" and now they're saying 3-7" so we'll see. I still say, there is no snow in the land of crab.