A bed of roses

It was nearly Rosa the Lost!

Even with a strategy guide, the Leviathan boss battle was tough. The third stage required split-second timing to ensure I got three Spitfires off in the time allowed. I didn't so much feel satisfaction when I won as relief. I must have had about 10 goes at it before I cracked it. There's a trophy for completing the battle on FF mode ;D.

The one that did give a certain amount of satisfaction was defeating the Tonberry King. All Tonberries give me the creeps. But... They're just trying to live their lives, like everyone else... Except that they feed off the pain and anguish of others. Who am I kidding? Slapping down a Tonberry King is ALWAYS good!

I wished I'd left Shula's second side quest to the end. The final conversation was definitely a leave-taking. At the moment, I'm thinking I'm unlikely to replay TRT, though, so that's now my experience.

I should have made the connection with Famiel sooner. I wonder if the dialogue changes if you play TRT before EotF?

The situation with Jamile and Havre got resolved - but I don't know how. I feel like I missed a conversation, somewhere. I think it's worth popping back to Haven before heading for Origin, next time I play. I loved that Havre referred to Jamile as his 'little canary' :) Cross-game references are always fun to spot.

I found 3 aquamarines but there must be at least 8 to find, plus some ageless oil - the other ageless items were quest rewards, I'm sure, but I definitely did all the quests. It's only for crafting accessories that I'm unlikely to use, though, so I'm happy to leave them unfound. But at least searching for them gives you a reason to explore Mysidia.

The music in Haven DEFINITELY sounds like the music from Besaid.

Jill - He's adorable!
Me - He is now!!!
Clive - He is now.
Me - >D

I wasn't expecting a 'gift' from Ultima, although I did know there was another ability set in the offing, now I think about it. I shall explore that next time I play.

A looong day spent entirely indoors - apart from hanging some washing out in the garden.

I don't think I achieved very much, other than completing TRT.

Liverpool beat Fulham to go joint top with Arsenal - Arsenal lead on goal difference. City have a game in hand; if they could lose that...

An early night - yay!

The other day when I was in the garden, I noticed the ground under one of the shrubs was quite bare. In a few weeks, there will be leaves and flowers aplenty and you won't be able to see the ground - but right now it needs Something. 'Primroses would be just the thing,' I thought. In Tesco today I bought two trays of primroses - one white, one pink! Weekend task is to plant them out.

Got a phone call from daughter asking if we'd like to baby sit grandson #2 for an hour on Friday. Normally we'd jump at the chance but I'm in the office on Friday because husband has appointments tomorrow and Wednesday, so I've had to switch my days round. :( She's going for her first scan for grandchild #3, just to make sure everything's progressing properly. Grandson #2 will just have to go along. He won't have a clue what's going on, anyway. And sil will be there, so at least daughter won't have to manage on her own.

Had a meeting with my spiritual director. Lots of church-talk, of course. They got me to think about what I want the new Rector to be like. The word that comes most to mind is 'open' - open to the gifts of laity, open to the gifts of diversity, open to the truths in the Bible, open to the facts of science. It was a helpful exercise.

Otherwise, I spent the day at my desk poking at the training materials for a PM qualification I'm going to take later in the year.

Oh, also got to watch Dave continue his journey with FFVII. He fought the Turks - Reno <3 <3 - and got to Cosmo Canyon. Absolutely the best music in the whole game! And he now understands Robs references to 'lifestream' and why he's wearing a blue cape and dark glasses :D Lots of people in the chat got upset with his pronunciation of Nanaki - he said it differently to how I read it but at this point, who knows? So, he had a bit of a rant, which was probably the purpose of the comments because he is VERY easy to wind up :D 

Dave chose Barrett and Red XIII, and then Cait Sith, for his party, so in Gongaga he met Zack's parents but didn't understand the significance. With Aeris in the party, of course he'd have got more story. But as Rob pointed out, he has to play it his way, which is how we all first experienced FFVII back in the day. I still aim to get through my first playthrough of any game on my own - and if I do look up one or two things, it's after I've tried everything I can think of to get through. I certainly don't use a full walkthrough unless I do a second playthrough. And it's a VERY long time since I did a second playthrough of anything because there's so much new stuff to play!

When I replay FFXVI I won't bother with a walkthrough. I had no problem getting through it the first time and I'm not trophy hunting, so there's absolutely no need.

No Fenyx tonight, and probably not tomorrow, either - but I think there's football on Wednesday, so I'm hoping to finish off Aphrodite's section then.

An early night wouldn't be a bad thing. I got woken up at some ungodly hour by the police helicopter, which sounded as if it was hovering right over our house, then again at 4am by police sirens. A nice solid night would be lovely!

What can I say?  I love a nice form.  And I like all my documentation templates to be clearly part of the same suite, which is why I have a document template template.  Overkill?  I think not!  I spent some time this week making sure all my templates had the latest version of the university's logo, amongst other minor aesthetic tweaks.  I also discovered that we have document cover templates - in dark blue, turquoise and white.  I immediately snagged the white one for my template library.

A few months ago, wannabe line manager suggested doing an end of year report - number of projects started and finished, identifying our biggest 'customer', that sort of thing.  Clearly, there was no point working on that in the middle of the year - and it's still a bit early, really - but I thought I'd put the current downtime to some good use and get a feel for the data.  When I mentioned it in my 2:1, said person asked in their 'sounds like a real waste of time' voice, 'who told you to do that?!'.  I tried (and failed) to suppress a smug grin as I answered, 'I think it was you, actually'.  There was an awkward moment but we all got over it.  Anyway, I've begun drafting the narrative for the report but I think I'm going to have a 'personal' version that's a bit 'warts and all' and a 'public' version that glosses over some of the challenges.  Only because this isn't an expose of the department, or a critique of anyone's ways of working, it's a factual report with numbers and pretty graphs - but it is quite cathartic to get the other stuff out!

Oh, and the report will have the white cover sheet, so it looks both pretty and official :D  And yes, this makes me ridiculously happy.

Right, really need to get on.  Bye for now, DW.