Finally got the mighty GR Corolla back from the body shop! Way back in early December, a pheasant flew out of the ditch, struck an oncoming vehicle, then point-blank, rapid-fire spiraled into the engine bay of the aforementioned Toyota. Even though it took almost exactly two months to get it fixed, it's good to finally have the car back without a smashed-in front end.

I have a dinner coming up on February 20 with multiple deacons, and other men who are considering becoming one. I need to start kicking up prayers for discernment up a notch. I'm at this juncture where I'm trying to decide what to do for this chapter of my life. There are reasons to suspect that permanent work-from-home positions like mine are in jeopardy, broadly speaking-- what then? Does the diaconate have some role to play in that future? Or will I need to relocate back to the Twin Cities?

I've had the flu since last Thursday, finally feeling a bit more "over it" this morning. I was able to go to Mass yesterday, but not much else over that period. I laid in bed a lot and played "Kingdom Come: Deliverance" on the OLED Steam Deck. The battery life on that system is so bad, I just leave it plugged in the whole time I'm playing. But the game looks very modern, and performance is great! It's cool to see something like that running on a handheld.

It's really neat having a living, breathing, fully-Catholic world in a video game, with zero percent wokeness: just pure history. The codex entries discuss the liturgy, complete with liturgical terms I still use with priests while preparing the Mass in 2025, like ciborium, paten, and monstrance. All of the buildings in the game are modeled after the real things, and it was incredible for me to wander into a Catholic church in the year ~1400, and be able to compare and contrast it with my real-life church from 1916.

As a game I'm of mixed opinions: on the one hand I installed the "Monster Hunter Wilds" beta on PS5 and found the lack of realism-- the fantasy elements-- to be ridiculous and off-putting; so "Kingdom Come" makes it difficult to play other games now. On the flip side, the latter is a very fussy game; not being able to save anywhere is fine, makes it feel like "Shenmue", where you have to plan your day out-- but many times deaths feel a bit random or unfair, sometimes due to bugs, sometimes due to strange quest designs or other odd happenings.

I'm a little worried about the sequel: apparently there is a gay sex part, plus there is a woman soldier on the cover art. Did the developers cave and ruin the good thing they had going?

"Monster Hunter Wilds" is interesting. I'm not sure I like it. The game looks and plays fine on the PS5 Pro. The artwork is so-so, not sure it's as pretty as "Rise". Does the game not have a proper hub town? I don't like how the mounts run on their own, was fishing for a setting to turn that off completely, but couldn't find one. No wirebugs either? Instinctively I kept trying to use them to recover after a knock-down, and nothing would happen.

I think I'll still buy it, but overall I think I like the gameplay, art style, and music better in "Rise". Maybe I'd have more fun just buying the "Rise" expansion on Switch, which I've never played? Oh well, better get to work.