Surprise!
First thing I should probably mention is, Vix and I are coming back to streaming on Sunday August 3rd, at 6pm British time. We are planning to do a mix of chaotic virtual burger-making, and ghosts. But anything could happen, because when you put us together, sense goes out the window. Vix wasn’t able to game for some time due to her computer breaking again, but it’s back now and I’m excited for our reunion.
I probably won’t stream full time again yet myself, will try Sundays for now, and maybe either Wednesdays or Fridays, depends on if Vix fancies a game of anything also. It’s really all up in the air, except August 3rd.
The next thing I should tell you is . . . WE GOT A DOG!
“But Letti!” I hear you say, “since Freya and Joop died, you said you’d wait to get more pets until you and Will finally went on your honeymoon! And that you’d get a cat first!”
Yep. That was the plan. Korat kitten and then Cardigan Corgi puppy. But, God is laughing at me, and he’s the one in charge of the save file of The Sims that is our universe.
We had 10 days’ notice that we were getting another dog. So, recently, Will’s mum adopted a dog all the way from Ukraine, called Phil. We haven’t met him yet but he seems sweet. Dear Ozzy has been gone for a year now. The circumstances seem to be that Phil was basically living in an outdoor pen in Kharkiv, near active warfare, and didn’t know what a house or toys were. He was born to a dog that was found on the street pregnant. My mother-in-law adopted him and he arrived in the UK at 4 in the morning apparently!
All well and good. Well. Will came home from seeing his friends one evening and said “Try to think rationally about this” as he gave me his phone.
Phil had a brother, called Bruno, who was living in that same pen in Kharkiv, and who had been up for adoption for 6 months with no takers. He was now a year old.
Will impressed upon me that we weren’t ready for dog yet, and the only reason he was considering this was because it was Phil’s literal brother, and they would be able to see each other again in the UK. Obviously, I was on board. Yes, I would have ideally done things in a different order. But Will and me have always done life in a weird order, and it worked out.
Now, there was the small matter of his name. Bruno didn’t sound quite right and didn’t look right on him. It seemed to be that, as dogs that looked practically undomesticated – but friendly with humans – they weren’t actually being addressed with or called by these names, but that they were more for social media purposes and getting them adopted. I might be wrong. But he’s still almost a baby and should be able to learn a new name regardless, we reasoned.
Now, you may remember our original Stardew Valley dog. This is going all the way back to 2016. The automatically-generated name for our farm dog was Naboo, and I loved it. It struck me as a good name for a Corgi, for some reason. Looking at this new dog, I realised something. Nondescript breed, maybe a bit of Labrador in there, maybe a bit of Shepherd. Blonde coat. Floppy ears. Raised tail. He looks like the Stardew Valley dog!! We realised this was our Naboo.
So, welcome our son. We assumed we would have a whole month to prepare for him, because that’s how long it took for Phil to arrive in the UK, but we actually only got 10 days. Freya has been gone for 3 years, so I’ve fallen out of all my dog-owner habits. But hopefully I’ll pick them up easily again, since I used to be a dog trainer.
He was utterly terrified when he arrived and has spent a lot of time in a corner. In true fashion I managed to drive my wheelchair off the path and into a slight ditch instead of helping the dog out of the van in any way. And, we finally got thunderstorms here after weeks of warnings, right when our dog who dislikes booming noises turned up. But he’s a sweet babe and hopefully he realises he’s home soon.
In other news, here’s how my surgery healing is going. It’s been nearly 2 months! My right hand is still much weaker than my left, and I push myself too hard sometimes and cause a lot of pain, but I’m definitely trying to get back to normal.
In other news again, I finally got a proper leather ring protector for my Filofax! It’s actually designed for Moterm organisers, but it fits my Filofax Malden perfectly. I got a teal protector for a nice contrast against the purple leather.
Also got some lovely new dividers from Etsy a while ago, and got these gold labels to stick on them. For a few years I was using plastic dividers with designs on them that were OK, but weren’t very me.
Here are some more misc recent pictures.
And finally here’s some gaming screenshots, for this blog that is meant to be mainly about gaming.
I’ve had a bit of a gap in video editing again; it’s not like my pre-surgery energy levels were fabulous, but I haven’t managed to get even those back yet. But I’m just tired, there’s a lot of big IRL stuff going on for us too, and now we suddenly have a new dog who needs to learn to do everything from scratch! But I love him.
- It is autumnal - October 30, 2025
- The Naboo update - September 19, 2025
- Surprise! - August 1, 2025