Between getting up early for my counseling appointment on campus and working until midnight, Thursday was a long day. I slept for 9 hours yesterday morning, which meant I woke up around 11:15 and didn’t get out of bed until about noon. After making chili in a slow cooker and getting dressed to leave the apartment, I went to the grocery store in the early afternoon and bought, among other things, 3 bottles of wine (which is 2 more than I’d usually buy at one time, but there was a 2 bottles for $7 sale on some dessert wine that looked intriguing). At one point I was wondering about starting a wine review blog, and then I more or less immediately dismissed the idea because, among other things, I feel like I lack the proper equipment (proper serving glasses, proper storage facilities, etc.) and I either have a high alcohol tolerance (being of English/German/Welsh/Irish descent and a male human) or I rarely drink in large enough quantities to get drunk.

Anyway, I tried Space Engineers this afternoon (Minecraft IN SPACE! is fun, until you neglect to consider gravity/physics), and I re-visited Europa Universalis 4 (a game made by the same company that made Crusader Kings 2 covering the years 1444-1820). Specifically, a game I have going in a mod where the American and Mexican states, and Canadian and Australian provinces, somehow wound up in 1444. As of this writing I’ve reached 1465, and Missouri has lost Kansas City and St. Louis (and most of its former territory north of the Missouri River) to Iowa as result of a war in which Iowa invaded Nebraska and Missouri came to the aid of its ally Nebraska.

At some point, this reminded me of previous ideas I had for writing something involving this mod, and more generally something set in the timeframe covered by Europa Universalis (1444-1820) as opposed to Crusader Kings (769-1453). I’ve have yet to get very far in a game of Europa Universalis, but that time frame sees the cutting edge of European military technology go from pikes and crossbows (or longbows) to flintlock muskets and heavy artillery, to say nothing of advances in more peaceful areas (the printing press! the industrial revolution!).

Who knows if, or when, I’ll find time to write even a portion of these, but here’s what I’m thinking of for game-related writing ideas at the moment. In a way, my old computer dying and having to re-install everything was both a blessing and a curse.

• EU4: California, either in narrative or “historical” format
• EU4: closer to history, and not the same as California. Portugal, maybe?
• telling about my current (or a future) CK2 game as the Dukes of Chariton in post-apocalyptic North America
• something for another CK2 game – Celtic, Norse, Finnish?
• another CK2 game different from the first two, in style as well as content

These, of course, don’t even include various other ideas I’ve had, or will have. I suppose what I should do is work on some of these, but organization and follow-through have never been my strong suit. I also feel like I should start reading for pleasure again, but at the same time I still have these college classes I’m currently taking, so I shouldn’t totally neglect those, and that whole “working to pay rent and bills” thing.