Third task complete

Pokemon Go again - completed the third of four tasks: get 100,000 Stardust. Only took a few days, it ticked over this morning.

One more task left, 200 super effective charged attacks. Current count is 16, a bit short of the 200 target! But I'm not in a rush as it's going to take me a while to earn the XP needed to level up. Now at just over 800k, need 9M.

Staying off the phone ... here we go!

 Well, not doing too bad so far - 3rd of Jan and making okay progress.

Today I cut up and sanded some wood for the quotation project, we'll see how that goes. I think the acetone method will give better results but I'm going to start with the mod podge method seeing as I already have that and may as well use it up before buying more supplies.

Also made a couple of apple pies, they'll be good for freezing. Unless they get eaten first!

New Year, New Me

 Or not. Maybe just polish up the old me, make a few improvements here and there.

I'm pretty sure I've posted the old joke here before, where I said years ago that my New Years Resolution was to not make any more New Years Resolutions! So I don't really do them, but I do try and improve myself where I can.

One thing I did notice late last year (actually a few days ago!) was that I am spending way too much time on my phone. Brilliant devices, great that they help us out so much but it's become my default activity. It's depressing seeing how much time I waste staring at that stupid little screen.

So one of my goals this year is to spend less time staring at the phone. Tied to my ongoing goal of trying to do more creative stuff. We've got a stack of great machines like the new Cricut plotting cutter which is fantastic for some craft projects like sandblasting and metal etching. And for Christmas my awesome wife got me a bunch of tools which I can't wait to start using.

And the big goal for the year is to get onto our property - going to be so liberating to be have a workshop or shed that we can use for creative projects!

On to 42

 Whee - more progress - hit level 42. And remembered to get a screenshot this time!

The challenges this time are:

• Earn five Platinum medals (already done)
• Catch five Legendary pokemon (easy - just need to open a Meltan box)
• Earn 100,000 stardust (part of the grind)
• Use 200 super effective charged attacks (ummm...)

The stardust I should just pick up as part of normal play. Need nine million XP for the next level so getting the stardust will just happen as I go along. The super effective charged attacks... well they'll depend on how many raids I do. Which normally isn't too many. Took a few months to get the 7.5M XP for this level, so I expect the 9M to take until around March or so, so no rush.

Kitten's latest game

 We have two new kittens, and it's endless fun watching them play.

They're now old enough (and big enough) that they can climb onto stuff, so we have the ongoing training of where they can and can't climb. One of the places we're trying to train them not to climb onto is the dining table.

So of course, they find it a great game to climb up there, run across the top and jump off before we can tell them off! Cheeky little kittens!

Epic battle

 Had a frustrating time on today's walk.

When I can, I take the doggos out for walks and I play Pokemon Go while I'm at it. There's a new gym nearby that's right next to a main road and I've noticed that it is highly contested - I just didn't realise how contested!

Was walking past it, there were four big ones on there already so I decided to take over the gym. Battle, battle, battle - took a bit of effort but managed to knock them all off. Tap on the gray gym (neutral), select my critter to drop down - nope! Got a "you can't put that there" message. Gym was now another colour as someone else had put their critter in before I put mine.

There's meant to be a 30 second or so window after winning a gym where the gym winner has priority to put their critter down, so I felt quite ripped off. What I assume happened was that they came along and joined in the last battle and we both "won", so she/he/they got to put theirs in.

So I started bashing theirs, I'd fought for that gym and had taken out the four big ones that were there before. "It's the principle of the thing". They may have still been in the area because they kept reviving their critter while I kept bashing it. So I used it as an excuse to help add hearts onto my Buddies and kept cycling through them. I managed to get through about eight before I managed to kick their usurper off (or they got distracted long enough to stop reviving theirs). On the plus side, the doggos got a good break in the shade - I think I was there about half an hour or so in total!

Having successfully vanquished an upstart but expecting them to circle back to kick mine off, I just chucked an average one on there and walked away. Got about a minute or three down the road and mine was returned after being kicked out, as expected. But I had a look at the gym on the map and it was actually a different team! There were three on there from the original team that I kicked off, but not sure if it was the same players or a different set that happened to be walking past.

Very high turnover, that gym.

41

 Yes! Hit level forty one and now can start doing the challenges.