![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
It has been another quite busy weekend, starting with the Brewdog Berlin online tasting session on Friday evening. This was over Zoom and conducted in German, with my language skills holding out reasonably well (although towards the end, I did start zoning out of the conversation). We were there to try three of their new Prototyp beers, which were all brewed in Berlin. With recent concerns about the quality of Brewdog beer, which has generally gone down due to their attempts to cash into the mainstream market, as well as issues concerning a bias towards the UK when it comes to latest releases, these three exclusive beers were very well received. They were also incredibly good beers - one mandarin and coconut IPA, one smokey beer which was not too overpowering and a final caramel Eisbock. It was also great to get to know, albeit slightly, the chief brewer and staff at the Berlin bar as well as some of the other patrons, with around ninety logging in from all over Germany.
It has been a pretty traditional weekend beyond that. We were up to the early hours of Saturday morning on VRChat, catching up with old friends and meeting some new ones too. It definitely has that con vibe, which makes it really exciting as paried with some beers, it definitely has that same sense of wonder and trepedation. We have also made a few really good friends on VRChat alone, having never actually met them in real life. Blacksnip and Lofto have largely been the catalyst to this, but the ability to bounce around and meet people makes it really good. The same was the case on Saturday afternoon, when I caught up with the SE Asian crew again. Indeed, over the last month, I have probably spoken more to them than I have done in the last 18 months, meaning there are some small advantages to the lockdown.
Yesterday was a reasonably nice day so I decided to do some geocaching, nabbing four of them in my local area. My success rate at finding them was over 50%, which is pretty normal for me. I was reminded about geocaching when I saw a bearded father and his kid looking suspiciously around a corner upon which there was clearly a geocache. Checking my app, I had it confirmed, so I went back to the house and picked up a pen with the intention of looking myself. It was really good as I got to see whole new areas of Berlin, with hopefully our first geocache meet in Berlin next Sunday, when it promises to be 25C.
Last night's Stray's Jackbox event started off incredibly leaden, but picked up once we played Gartic Phone, ending in a rather pleasant evening. We finished on Geoguessr, which became a little annoying due to Lynden's over-experience on the game, but it was 4am by this point and definitely time for bed. We ended up staying up later partly because we didn't eat until 10pm, with the takeaway taking two hours to deliver to us. I am assuming this was because it was a national holiday, something that caught us out as all of the supermarkets were closed. This saw us having to brave rush hour on Friday prior to the tasting session, eschewing two supermarkets as we refused to queue to get inside. We ended up in rude Rewe, which was absolutely heaving, and we did not feel comfortable at all. There was a mouth-breather in there we tried to avoid and the woman in front of us at the tills invited three of her friends along, which Wolfie expressed his displeasure over rather too vociferously, and thus uncomfortably for me.
Everything else is bubbling away I guess - I cannot get out for a walk right now as it's raining, while Pony Chat and cooking will consume much of the evening. We have a chicken tonight 'mit Innenreien' so God knows how we're going to get those out. Wolfie is away in Bremen all next week, leaving me to myself, while I am looking forward to the holidays we have booked later in the month. This week is a full working week, but the week after is only a three-day week. Indeed, after next weekend, we have a four-day weekend and a three-day weekend in succession due to when national holidays fall. I need a break, particularly as work isn't completely busy, while I also need to get my head together and discuss the pay situation, having heard nothing about the promised review in April. I am hopeful it'll come with the company restructure this month, but it's worth checking up on. I am not sure we'll be able to do much with our weekends off due to lockdown restrictions, but maybe things will have eased by then - the R rate and infection rate are both going down and with two million people vaccinated on Wednesday and Thursday, that's ramping up too. I'm still hopeful we may be able to sit in a beer garden before the month is out.
It has been a pretty traditional weekend beyond that. We were up to the early hours of Saturday morning on VRChat, catching up with old friends and meeting some new ones too. It definitely has that con vibe, which makes it really exciting as paried with some beers, it definitely has that same sense of wonder and trepedation. We have also made a few really good friends on VRChat alone, having never actually met them in real life. Blacksnip and Lofto have largely been the catalyst to this, but the ability to bounce around and meet people makes it really good. The same was the case on Saturday afternoon, when I caught up with the SE Asian crew again. Indeed, over the last month, I have probably spoken more to them than I have done in the last 18 months, meaning there are some small advantages to the lockdown.
Yesterday was a reasonably nice day so I decided to do some geocaching, nabbing four of them in my local area. My success rate at finding them was over 50%, which is pretty normal for me. I was reminded about geocaching when I saw a bearded father and his kid looking suspiciously around a corner upon which there was clearly a geocache. Checking my app, I had it confirmed, so I went back to the house and picked up a pen with the intention of looking myself. It was really good as I got to see whole new areas of Berlin, with hopefully our first geocache meet in Berlin next Sunday, when it promises to be 25C.
Last night's Stray's Jackbox event started off incredibly leaden, but picked up once we played Gartic Phone, ending in a rather pleasant evening. We finished on Geoguessr, which became a little annoying due to Lynden's over-experience on the game, but it was 4am by this point and definitely time for bed. We ended up staying up later partly because we didn't eat until 10pm, with the takeaway taking two hours to deliver to us. I am assuming this was because it was a national holiday, something that caught us out as all of the supermarkets were closed. This saw us having to brave rush hour on Friday prior to the tasting session, eschewing two supermarkets as we refused to queue to get inside. We ended up in rude Rewe, which was absolutely heaving, and we did not feel comfortable at all. There was a mouth-breather in there we tried to avoid and the woman in front of us at the tills invited three of her friends along, which Wolfie expressed his displeasure over rather too vociferously, and thus uncomfortably for me.
Everything else is bubbling away I guess - I cannot get out for a walk right now as it's raining, while Pony Chat and cooking will consume much of the evening. We have a chicken tonight 'mit Innenreien' so God knows how we're going to get those out. Wolfie is away in Bremen all next week, leaving me to myself, while I am looking forward to the holidays we have booked later in the month. This week is a full working week, but the week after is only a three-day week. Indeed, after next weekend, we have a four-day weekend and a three-day weekend in succession due to when national holidays fall. I need a break, particularly as work isn't completely busy, while I also need to get my head together and discuss the pay situation, having heard nothing about the promised review in April. I am hopeful it'll come with the company restructure this month, but it's worth checking up on. I am not sure we'll be able to do much with our weekends off due to lockdown restrictions, but maybe things will have eased by then - the R rate and infection rate are both going down and with two million people vaccinated on Wednesday and Thursday, that's ramping up too. I'm still hopeful we may be able to sit in a beer garden before the month is out.
