#I'm home for the weekend for my grandads' birthdays

[adventure-showdown]

I am still planning on posting matches today, however it may not be achievable just because of how long it takes and I wasn't able to sort any of it last night like I typically would

if I can't manage it I'll hopefully do a double set of matches at some point to get back on schedule

[iycedrem]

How it's going:

Came home from work on the morming of the 16th and noticed that some things were moved around that I don't remember touching. (A shelf under my bed and some stuff on my coffee table)

I had a wedding that I was attending that afternoon, so didn't really have time to look into it and just kinda chalked it up to maybe I just like knocked them out of place by accident at some point and just didn't notice. Immediately went to bed.

Woke up and immediately left to go to the wedding. Had a wonderful time, drank a good bit, and got back home around 8pm.

Now noticing things aren't just moved. Somethings are missing. Snoop a bit further and find purposeful damage to a piece of furniture and signs of forced entry on my basement back door. Someone broke into my house.

Notably and weirdly nothing valuable was stolen. My PC, TVs, Switch, Monitors, Tablets, etc. were all fine. To the best of my knowledge they stole: A Bluetooth speaker (annoying but not the worst thing to lose), a knife my Grandad gave me before he died (the one thing i actually really hate that I lost), a half used pack of AAA batteries (rude, also why?), and a junk box I kept behind my computer monitor that was 90% full of old birthday/ Christmas cards that I just couldn't bring myself to throw away. (???)

After filling a police report, proceeded to order brackets to reinforce my basement door, better locks, and some outdoor security cameras.

The problem is, that stuff isn't showing up for a few days and I'm due back at work tonight for one last night shift before a long weekend and I'm worried this might have just been a casing break-in.

So the plan:

Step 1: reinforce basement door.

Not a prefect solution, but trying to force the lock and deal with the wedged 2x4 isn't going to be easy, they'd have better luck breaking the glass, which I'm hopeful is too risky to try.

Step 2: Create the illusion that the house is occupied.

External lights and most internal lights are on. Ace up my sleeve though is the 11 hour VOD of Jerma playing Seaman on my living room TV. It's long enough to cover the entire duration of my shift and it's mostly just audio of someone talking with very few sound effects.

(Note the damaged record console, spot that hid the sound bar was sliced open by whoever broke in)

Step 3: Call upon "The Boys"

My wonderful amazing friends agreed to help watch a livestream of my Webcam to keep an eye out for movement. (A special thanks to @nermish @cefpodoxime @admiralpickle among some other non tumblr mutuals)

Step 4: finishing touches.

A) Set up an alt account on discord so I could watch my own camera stream from work on my laptop.

(Shout-out to @cefpodoxime for this amazing alt pfp that he slammed out in record time for my new laptop account.)

B) Since the camera doesn't have great view of the entire living room decided to rig a noise trap to alert the stream if some one comes up from the basement.

Ended up adding another 4 or 5 cans after this pic was taken and stacked them taller to ensure a good clatter noise. Tested how it sounded on the stream and it was definitely distinctive.

And C) Nermish asked if we could rig up a mirror so the stream security could watch Jerma in the reflection.

So, I give you the final view:

Note the absolutely miniscule reflection coming from the couch in the next room. There's your jerma stream. Combined with the muffled audio that accurately sounds like Jerma is in the next room. This is easily the worst best way to watch a jerma stream.

At time of writing I am 4ish hours into my 10 hour shift and so far no sign of trouble. Will update if something happens or not. But honestly the absurdity of this set up has made the entire ordeal easier to stomach.

[emma-radfemcanu]

I visited my grandparents this weekend which was really nice :) but I always feel sad when I see them now because they look older every time

And of course that's just how time and aging work but I feel like it's been so much more noticeable the last few years. My grandad is 81 and is physically fairly robust tbh, it was my grandma (who is 77) where I really noticed it- she was putting out plates and her hands were so shaky, and also the way she walks although tbf she has had both a hip and knee replacement lol

When my mum was driving us home afterwards she mentioned it and I'm glad it wasn't just me who noticed. But she said about wanting to see them more often because, at the risk of sounding a bit morbid, objectively they are pretty old and you never really know what's around the corner. This is all true and it's not even the first time I've thought this, but for some reason it's upset me a lot more this time

I'll be 24 in a few weeks which is very young still, but to me that is now 'mid 20s' instead of 'early 20s' and it feels like a huge distinction even though it isn't really. And I often get upset on my birthday (and Christmas too) because I get very melancholy about time passing and you feel it more then- my other grandma and one of my aunts died a few years back and knowing that I'll never get another birthday card in almost unreadable writing 😢

So this birthday feels like a bit of a milestone and I think that's why I'm feeling it so much now. All the time I could have spent with them and didn't- or rather wasn't able to (this is a whole story in itself but genuinely is one of the biggest reasons why I'm so resentful of my father), and I can't get any of it back and there might not be much of it left. And I just feel very sad about it

(Alexa play Traveling Song by Ryn Weaver)

[comfortableinthesilence]

So much for a productive weekend! Woke up to having no internet at home and BT can't get an engineer out to me till Wednesday! Great! Had the day booked off as its my birthday but now spending it waiting for a BT engineer to come 🙄🙃

To add to my day just had another unpleasant conversation with my grandad! He's been told he can't buy presents for the carers (staff) on an individual basis. It's the rule of the Carehome that any presents bought for the staff is as a whole, like a box of chocolates etc. Here is is buying presents for his 3 favourite carers, after already being warned by the Carehome manager he can't. When I say presents I'm not talking like socks etc, he's buying necklaces, earrings, football shirts etc. He seems them as friends which is lovely but they are there to do a job and part of that is being friendly! He doesn't understand where we are coming from at allt the point my mum was in tears! It's just frustrating as he thinks we are trying to control his spending and doesn't get its inappropriate and against the carehome rules!

Ughhhh! So much for a chilled and productive weekend! Got some snacks, got movies downloaded on my IPad, a data sim in my wifi dongle and I'm off to hibernate in bed for the afternoon!