I was pretty shaken up after all the flight troubles a week and a half ago. For a few days, I did wonder if coming back to Cardiff for a little while longer was the right move, but it's been good and I'm pretty alright with how it all went down now. Of course, I always enjoy a little more time with my Caby, but more than anything, I'm just happy to have left vacation mode. I've spent enough money and eaten enough fast food—let's just stay in and draw for a bit.
To dust off the journal in prep to head back home next Saturday, let me get you up to speed with what we've been up to.
Refund!
First, a bit of good news: I did get word of a refund from United after I canceled the replacement flight, and the amount I'm being given is about twice what I thought I'd get from them and just about covers the entirety of the original flight! That was some lovely news after I dumped way too much money into this new flight home (which is funnily enough a Lufthansa flight operated by United). My mom offered to cover the rest of the replacement too, which was very sweet of her. She's been lonely without me, and I have been gone from the US an awful long time.
Finishing up this year's Art Fight
I'll have a full post on my thoughts about this year's fight, but it's been really good. I faced what scared me about it, it's been way more relaxed than 2024's fight, and I was rewarded with some seriously lovely attacks both from strangers (often whose revenges I'm working on as I write this) and from friends (you all are terrific).
Honestly, I just wish I could've drawn more! Being in another country away from your art setup and sharing one with your girlfriend tends to disrupt your flow, but still, I think I challenged myself a lot and came away with some of my favorite drawings of this year, so far and possibly period. If I can knock out all three drawings I'm working on in the time left, that'll be ten total, a perfectly respectable amount of attacks if I do say so myself.
Those are Biscuits, not Cookies
The other thing that's been distracting me this Fight: Cookie Clicker! After coming back on a coach miserable on the 20th, I needed something engrossing and very familiar and comforting, and in the Welsh hills was Cookie Clicker. My last run was, if I recall, at the end of last decade, and I think I intentionally ruined my save because it was proving too addicting.
And y'know what, it still does that.
This is another one where I'd like to write a full journal post about it, but I've been doing a lot of reading about optimal strategies, which Heavenly Upgrades to buy when, and trying to make chains of Golden Cookie buffs happen through upgrades and wizard spells and all that to produce ungodly amounts of cookies. This has gotten me into the quattuordecillions in about eleven days. It was quite literally all I did yesterday! I eventually had to set it up for basically forced idle play (Golden Switch + Shimmering Veil + Holobore) just to get myself off it for a bit. I have about three trillion Heavenly Chips waiting for me when I ascend next and that's still rapidly growing.
Aside from it just being fun, seeing all the familiar sprites and flavor text, memes and in-jokes about 2010s culture I was there for and are still in there to this day, and then digging into all the new shit has been a big comfort, and I'm glad I started this run. I'm excited to bring it home with me and see if I can't one day 100% Cookie Clicker. (And get the Steam version, because I like to support indie devs.)
The 2026 trip diary!
And finally, on more constructive news: I already have the 2026 trip diary structured and well underway. This one is going to be a lot simpler than the 2025 trip diary, with just some curated photo galleries of the places we went and then I'd like to sketch out a bunch of my favorite memories of me and Caby spending time together to go on the index.
I have a system for generating an HTML photo gallery with links using lists of file names and some simple regex, so actually building the galleries is thankfully very simple. I also have a batch image resizer for generating the thumbnails. All of this has made things very speedy indeed to put together, and it just needs my rambles to hang it on.
I've been very impressed with the PhotoCam this trip—given it took me six years to get hold of a working one, the image quality isn't too bad for an early digicam, it handles extreme light and dark in the same image just fine, and battery door aside, it's held up well despite being taken everywhere for two months and change.
