I have some things coming up next month that are going to leave absolutely zero time for games, so I have been ignoring virtually every other project on my “to-do” list in favor of trying to finish Tokyo Mirage Sessions#FE.

It’s kind of embarrassing, because I was getting so much yard work done earlier this summer and I have a Raspberry Pi project that I was full-steam ahead on for a while, and putting a video game ahead of both of those is really hard to justify.  I excuse it because it is a heavily story-driven game and I don’t want to take a couple of weeks off from it and be in a situation where I have to remember exactly where I was and what I was doing.

In retrospect, I really should not have started a 60+ hour JRPG when I did, but it was my last WiiU game and I thought I could power through the main story and keep from getting too distracted by side quests etc.  I was wrong, of course…

It turns out that the “side quests” in TMS#FE aren’t “side quests” by the typical definition.  You CAN ignore them, sure… but if you do that, you are going to be in really awful shape, because the side quests reward a lot of the most useful combat skills.  So that plan sort of fell by the wayside, and I’m doing all of the individual character stories in addition to the main plot, which is a wonderfully bonkers story about the world being invaded by invisible enemies and the small band of idols who are the only people standing in their way.

But, wonderful or not, it has a heck of a lot of talking.  So much talking.  Hour after hour of watching characters talk to each other.  I don’t like to think of myself as being particularly hyperactive, but it was really getting to me.

So.

For a couple of months now, I’ve actually been using the gym at work.  I have to put “actually” in there, because, well, we all have free access to the place, and it’s a very well-provisioned gym, but I had to get over the typical gym inertia where it takes me ages to go in the door for the first time.  Anyway, I’ve actually managed to make a habit out of going in and using some of the machines and weights, which is always the hardest part of any exercise.  I mention this only because it inspired me to actually put a dumbbell set next to the WiiU, and this has been making the constant breaks in gameplay for expository dialogue MUCH more tolerable and making me feel a lot better about myself.

Of course, I can’t exactly get a full-range workout in, so it’s all arm work.  I have the traditional fat-guy legs of steel thing going on, so right now I’m in the less-than flattering state of having good leg definition, starting to have some good arm definition, and everything in between is made of marshmallow fluff.  But, hey, the marshmallow used to start at the waist and go all the way up, so it’s an improvement. 🙂

A side note; I had a bit of sticker shock when getting these.  I had owned a cheap pair of adjustable dumbbells that could only go up to 20 lbs a side and that always made me worry that the plates were going to fall off on my feet, but fixed-weight dumbbells can be super expensive if you get the spiffy rubberized ones etc.  Thankfully, Dick’s Sporting Goods will sell you no-frills hunks of metal for not very much money.

They’re also useful for maintaining a secret identity.