Weeknotes are a long-standing IndieWeb / small web tradition that I have yet to indulge in. On an older website of mine, I did monthly recaps (a similar idea) that were quite rigidly formatted. I enjoyed writing them initially, but they started to feel like a chore after a while – mostly because of that aforementioned rigid format. I found myself forcing myself to write something under each heading every month, and then apologizing when I had nothing of substance to offer … which sort of defeats the whole purpose of this exercise!
My weeknotes will have no such set-in-stone format, and will likely vary from week to week. Sometimes I’ll share links to interesting blog posts I’ve read, sometimes I won’t. Sometimes I’ll share thoughts on recent life events worth talking about, sometimes I won’t. My goal here is to simply keep the ol’ writing pump primed without any added pressure, especially during stretches of time when I don’t feel like composing traditional blog posts.
And so, without further ado, I give you my first weeknote:
Summer is Winding Down … Just After it Started
I live in a part of Canada that has incredibly unpredictable weather for much of the year. We don’t really get spring, and summer often feels far too short. This summer in particular has been a major source of frustration for me… While seemingly every other corner of the world has been buckling under droughts and heatwaves, we’ve faced long stretches of rain, drizzle, and sub-20°C temperatures. We basically had two hot weeks in July with one day when I thought “maybe we need an air conditioner,” and that was it. Moderate temperatures otherwise, plus some downright unseasonably cold days here and there.
I know I shouldn’t complain about our lack of droughts and heatwaves, but speaking as someone who originally hails from a country that is much hotter for most of the year, the climate in this province has become increasingly difficult for me. My husband and I usually try to travel somewhere warm every year to make up for our lack of spring and our mediocre summers, but the Trump administration’s idiotic spat with Iran (and the subsequent rise in jet fuel costs and air travel) meant we couldn’t afford to do that this year.
The inevitable drop in temperature and mostly overcast skies over the last couple of weeks has been really getting to me – this past week especially. I’ve had limited motivation to do much of anything, and have mostly been splitting my time between picking up shifts at work and escaping into video games for several hours at a time. I nearly wept when I came across a gorgeous beach towards the end of Horizon Forbidden West… I just parked Aloy on the sand and spent a long time looking out at the waves, and the sun, wishing I was there.
Games I Played
Speaking of gaming, here some thoughts on what I’ve played over the past week (ugh, what an awful segue – sorry). Caution, this section of the post contains mild spoilers!
I finished up Horizon Forbidden West (HFW) on Thursday, save for some side quests and busy work I didn’t really feel like doing. According to my PlayStation stats, it took me around 33 hours to get through the game. I’ve generally been gravitating towards shorter games over the last few years, but I don’t mind making my way through longer open world games like this one from time to time, provided that the story is good.
… and HFW’s story is, fortunately, very good! I only vaguely remember the events of Horizon Zero Dawn, which I last played in 2018, but the main quest did a good job of bringing me up to speed again. I really enjoyed the process of seeking out GAIA’s subsystems, which was way less repetitive than I worried it might end up being. The Zeniths and their Specters proved to be interesting villains, and I especially enjoyed the final showdown with Tilda. I was a wee bit disappointed that the story ends before GAIA really gets a chance to do anything, given that Aloy and company spend literally the entire game getting her back online, but hopefully those loose ends will be tied up in the next Horizon instalment.
Visually-speaking, HFW was utterly jaw-dropping on my PS5 Pro. There were times when I just stopped what I was doing to take screencaps and appreciate the beauty of what I was witnessing on screen. One of the highlights for me was coming across that stunning beach I mentioned earlier, as well as discovering the ruins of (what is most likely) the Golden Gate Bridge in San Fransisco.
After clueing up HFW, I moved on to the old HD remaster of Resident Evil (RE1). Sadly, I didn’t get all that far into the game before giving up in frustration. I bought it during the PS Store summer sale for less than $10, so it wasn’t like it was a huge loss or anything like that… I had been looking forward to playing it, though, so it was a bit disappointing to end up deleting it after less than an hour.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved playing games on my original PlayStation back in the 90s, but I can’t handle clunky PS1-era controls in 2026. Aiming was so imprecise, and I just could not for the life of me keep my impatience at bay every time I tried to walk through a door and had to sit through a cutscene of the door. And dear god, the voice acting! Blockbuster AAA games from the last decade or so have really spoiled me; I’d almost forgotten how stilted and distracting the voice acting is in some old games.
I’ve never played the Resident Evil games before, and I really want to play them in order … so perhaps I will just wait until the rumoured remake comes out to give the series another go.
Anyway, I started Alan Wake (AW1) on Thursday after uninstalling RE1 from my PS5 library. I’m not finished yet, but I have to admit: it has been a bit of a slog so far.
The combat is infuriatingly clunky (not quite RE clunky, but you can definitely tell the game was originally released in 2010), and Alan has got to be the slowest runner in any video game ever. Listening to his loud, monotonous huffing and puffing after three seconds of sprinting makes me irrationally angry. Like, I know he’s supposed to be an author and all, but would it kill the guy to put in a few cardio days at the gym?! The number of times I’ve said “hurry the fuck up, Alan!” to my monitor over the past couple of days…
In all honesty, if it weren’t for the story, I probably would have deleted the game after the second episode. I almost wish I’d just watched a walkthrough… I hear Alan Wake 2 is a lot better than its predecessor, though, so I’m just going to power through AW1’s mediocre gameplay as best as I can to finish the story and move on to the next one.
Shows I Watched
On Tuesday, my husband and I finished up the third season of House of the Dragon. Since I’m thinking of possibly writing a longer post about it, I won’t say much here. What I will say is that I enjoyed this season so much more than the previous two seasons! Things are finally getting interesting in Westeros again.
We also finished watching the second season of Succession and immediately moved on to the third. Succession is quickly becoming one of my all-time favourite TV shows. The writing is brilliant, and the cast’s ability to make me loathe their characters while sympathizing with them is second to none. I still can’t quite get over the second season finale (more thoughts behind the spoiler tag).
“Spoilers, Sweetie!”
Kendall seemed utterly demoralized by his father; I thought for sure he was going to play the meek and obedient fall guy, following the company-approved script as planned. To see him deliver this statement instead was nothing short of spectacular. That faintest little hint of a smile on Logan’s face when he realizes that he did, in fact, raise a “killer” speaks to just how brilliant of an actor Brian Cox is. To convey all of that with the tiniest twitch of his lips...We’re now five episodes into the third season, which is so far proving to be almost as entertaining as the second. If you haven’t seen the show yet, I highly recommend it!
Books I Read
My reading habits have really fallen to the wayside over the last few months. I’m not entirely sure why that is, but I know I’m probably not going to reach my goal of reading fifty books this year. Oh well, there’s always next year!
I’ve been trying to get back into it this week by returning to A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin. I’d abandoned the novel about halfway through earlier this summer. It’s not like I wasn’t enjoying it, or anything like that; I think I just ended up getting distracted by all the things that needed doing around the house and in the yard.
I’m really enjoying A Wizard of Earthsea so far – much as I expected I would (I’ve read several of Le Guin’s science fiction novels, so I’m quite familiar with her gorgeous prose and the depth of her imagination). I finished up the “Hunting” chapter today, and have two more chapters to go. I’ll probably get back to Mick Herron’s Slough House series after I finish reading this one, but may move straight on to The Tombs of Atuan. We’ll see.
That about wraps up this week. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep up with these posts in the weeks to come; writing this post has been quite rejuvenating, given my lack of motivation recently and the feeling that I haven’t really accomplished anything.