Updates: Memorials, fossils, sewing, dressmaker, and other stuff....
A big chunk of time and energy the last month was taken up by a trip back to my hometown in Indiana for my mother's family memorial service. (The second one, we had one for her church community in Florida, but most of my remaining blood family live between Chicago and Evansville.)
Back home again in Indiana isn't back home again, or is in some ways. This was the first visit back where I had an opportunity to revisit some old haunts. Some were better than I remember, some were worse. Bloomington now has a community LGBTQ center to complement the university LGBTQ center. It's named The Front Door, which I'm told is not at all connected to the remaining gay bar, The Back Door.
The ceremony was held in the United Methodist church I grew up in. And while I respect the long-awaited schism and affirmation of LGBTQ people it's not something that's about me anymore. Marriage was not the only reason for my leaving that church and I found a different path.
Was hoping to get to Hoosier National for some fossil hunting but didn't really have time. But it's limestone country and you can grab a crinoid, bivalve, or coral fossil from just about any local gravel. Fossils have been an important part of my spirituality since my teen years. You touch any wall made with local stone and feel the bones of animals that lived before mammals. Limestone is a tangible memorial of deep time.
Isolation from my sewing machine coincided with the release of Dressmaker, a cozy sewing game and visual novel. I'm struggling to overcome inertia after a year of failures trying to get a pattern that works for my body. Dressmaker has helped there. I'm amazed at the level of detail, attention, and content in a game that explicitly rejected a microtransaction model. The dresses are modular: bodice, skirt, sleeve, and collar. Add to that a bewildering number of fully-textured fabrics and accessories, and you have a design sandbox with a massive number of combinations.
The visual novel aspect comes through commissions with a set of characters. As with a lot of games in this genre, the player character serves as a friendly ear while customers work through their own problems. I've only played through the "good" path of giving each customer what they requested. I might try an "evil" playthrough of sabotaging commissions.
Overall it was a good chillout activity for downtime in a family trip while away from the tools of my hobby. At $15, it was a good purchase and getting some continued and repeated play from me. There were a few interface issues with touchpad that hopefully will be cleaned up over time. It might help to get me over my shirt design malaise.