Yodeller

Our larp, Odysseus, ended almost two weeks ago. Last week we spent tearing it down and packing everything worth saving ready for storage. It's eight weeks since we started building our spaceship.

Today we hauled all the props to our storage. The final mission after we can say everything is done (except some paperwork). Now only thing left is throwing a party to our amazing crew. To celebrate our accomplishment and move forward.

Already last time this was a big project. Back then we didn't know everything it would take, but we did it anyway. This time we came better prepared and things went more smoothly. There is still room for improvements for the next time (if there will be next time).

I'm happy and sad at the same time: it's a relief that all the stress is in the past, but it feels an emptiness that needs to be filled with something new.

It's been a long time since I have written code as my dayjob. Haven't even written much of any code for any reason lately. I used to be good at it. I wouldn't say I ever was a rockstar level coder, but still I would say I wss pretty good at it.

While I might bot be up to date with all the latest language versions, libraries and frameworks and it might take a while to get up to speed writing proper code again (even with the help of all the new A.I. coding assistant tools) I can still easily read and understand code.

I think that has always been my strength - understanding complex systems. I can follow through the code and quickly get a grasp of what's it doing.

This came apparent this week when I had to jump in investigating a weird issue in one of our customer's services. As most of our staff is still on vacation there wasn't too many people available to look into it so I had to give a second set of eyes trying to figure out where the issue was.

At the end my help wasn't that useful as it turned out the issue was outside of our systems. But it did give me an affirmation that I can still be useful in hands-on situations too.

Past few days the weather has been cloudy. The sun has hardly shown itself. But the weather has been extremely hot still. The humid air only males it worse.

At least when it's sunny and hot you can stay away from the direct sunlight and seek some coolness in the shade. It might not be any cooler there as what ot has been recently, but at least it feels that way when you compare it to the heat of the direct sunlight.

Now it has been equally hot everywhere. There is no escape from it. It gets everywhere. It's just deceiving when you look outside and see cloudy skies, expecting a bit cooler weather, just to be hit with the temperature the moment you step outside. It's just like in spring, but the opposite, when the sun os shining in the clear sky but the temperature can still be near zero degrees.

The lunch time is one of the highlights going to the office. Getting a chance to spend some off-duty time with my colleagues is nice, even though often the topics tend to steer towards work related matters. It's also a chance to get good food served to you without the effort of preparing it myself.

Yesterday, my first day at work after vacation I didn't go to the office. I would have wanted to - wanted to meet my colleagues. But as it's the prime vacation time there wouldn't have been anybody there.

Still, I wanted to feel at least a bit of good sides of returning back to work. So I decided to order food. Another reason was that I didn't have anything at home. Forgot to buy the main ingredient for the dish I was planning to do and didn't bother dropping by at the grocery store in the middle of the day.

I rarely eat delivery (or pick-up) food at home. I think this was the second or third time I have done so since I have been living alone. I usually do my own food. I like making food. Sure, sometimes it might be something I can just heat on the microwave, or toss in the oven, but usually it's something that requires a bit more effort than that. And living alone it's hard to mak just one portion, so usually there is food for at least a couple of days.

We already got a lot of recognition in all the Finnish major news media as well as many smaller ones, but during the weekend at Ropecon we hit the jackpot: we won the "Deed of the year" award. The award is given yearly by the committee to a person, group or organization that has done remarkable work within the genre.

I'm sure we are about to receive many more awards, but this one is truly the grand prize. It's not only for larps, but all tabletop- and roleplaying and related activities that are evaluated. The committee credited us most of all making our hobby more visible and well known, making it more mainstream.

I'm sure our exposure and fame will attract many more larpers to the genre and also thanks to our many builders and players from abroad, the finnish larps will be more well known there as well.

If I would have known this I would definitely have gone to the gala.