Return to Normalcy and an Unwise Action

New Zealand officially hit 0 cases of COVID-19 a few days ago (June 8th). That was after weeks of 0 new cases and one poor person who remained as the final ‘active’ case for almost as long. There is always of course the risk of silent spread still occurring, but with the rate of community testing remaining widespread there was a certain comfort in allowing people to go back to work across the board.

We’re now down to ‘Level 1’ restrictions which means, for all intents and purposes, life is back to normal. Except of course that international borders are still closed down. For how long? Your guess is as good as mine. There is a push toward opening a line of travel with Australia and possibly the Pacific Islands early and allowing at least some tourism to resume.

The end result of all this being that offices are beginning to fill with people once more. The CBD is beginning to repopulate, losing its ghostly air of the past months. And as life begins its stumbling march back to normalcy, so to comes…

Traffic.

Ugh.

I had forgotten just how heavy a toll the two hours of commute (round trip) each day can take. Being able to roll out of bed to work had a certain appeal. Being able to log-off from work at the other end of the day and be ‘home’ already had much more. I can tolerate that loss of extra sleep in the morning. (I had been trying to wake up earlier anyway.) But that end of day drive… :(

Long story short — very tired at the moment while going through the readjustment.

But as much as this might sound like a complaint (OK, I guess it kinda was) I’ve also really enjoyed getting back into things in person. Talking to people. And in the last week — returning to actually using face to face meeting rooms! Who ever would have suspected that would be something to miss? Not me, that’s for sure! I had to actively dredge out of memory how to even look up availability and book one.

… Anyway. End result being; a lot less time to game. Or blog. Although the latter mostly followed the first.

But you know what you probably shouldn’t do when struggling to find the time to play much of anything at all?

Satisfactory in particular I know I’m going to spend a lot of time with. Eventually. But that time is not now.

Rather oddly, for me, I’m not done with Cities: Skylines yet. Odd because of the longevity of the strength of the desire to keep at it. I’ve had maybe an hour each night to play something — and without question, each night — that something is Cities.

This is my current project.

I still have plenty of space to expand out out to the northwest, but I’d been putting it off to carry building out this space. Since this screenshot was taken I’ve extended the little community above the eastern highway. I think the realities of traffic are going to start spreading me builds out soon though, as I’ve still only connected to the single point of highway access so far. It’s uh… Really starting to get busy.

Anyway! During the last monthly journal I noted as a challenge for myself to start a ‘Blogger City’ as it were, with districts and ‘things’ loosely titled and themed after the members of our community.

I feel like I might at last be half-way competent with the game. Enough so at least that I’m willing to start this project and see where it goes, even if still not remotely close to the skill’s on display by the likes of T4rget. Seriously, I have learnt so much from this guy! If you’ve ever had an interest in learning how to play Cities: Skylines, I cannot recommend his videos enough.

In fact… I’m going to leave you with the first video of his new series (kicked off just this year, 9th April). :)