I am looking forward to my vacation.

This weekend flew past me before I even realized it had started. While it felt short, it was productive to a point. I have finished the majority of the time-intensive food preserving. The only thing left is pickled beets. The recipe is less complex for them, and I've got the flow to a point where prep is a breeze. I also got some work done on the ten years of Paddleboats video. Since restarting, I have written up a structure after going through the recorded footage. I'll likely just hunker down this coming weekend and get it finished. I will likely take this Friday off to get the rest of it finalized. I think that the bare story outline should make it easy enough for me to finish it. I'm trying not to overwork myself this time around, unlike the last two major video releases. At the time of writing, I also have to make a Dwarf Fortress News video because that small beta patch was released as I write this, but I'm hoping that won't affect things much.

There is another reason this weekend sailed past me. I went camping, the same place as last time, but this time my little sister joined the group. Unlike last time, we did not bring the inflatable boats. It was cold enough that we thought it would be smart to avoid any chance of getting dunked in the river. I was able to get some fantastic shots on the way in, and my friend got some horrifying photos of me with his night vision camera.

Here are some shots of the area; it’s in Golden Ears Park, and it is called Hikers Beach. I'll attach a link to AllTrails if you're interested. We did need to cross two bodies of water to get to the camping area. The creek was overflowing onto the beach and was knee-deep. Same with the normal rock-skipping session you have to complete to get to the campsite itself. The water was way higher than we expected. Since it had rained the week before, we'll have to take that into account next time we head out there.

These past few weeks have been a bit of a hurricane for me. Lots of rather exciting stuff happening behind the scenes. At the same time, I'm staring at some rather scary possible life changes in the next six months or so. I'm excited since these are likely extremely positive changes, but it is stressful in the short term. I will be taking October 18th–28th off work. I'll write for this blog during this time and edit any time-sensitive videos. Aside from that, I'll be gone during that time.

I have also been on the brink of some massive burnout for a while. Summer tends to have this effect on me. Most summers end with me going to TwitchCon. I skipped that trip this year in exchange for the vacation in October. I was originally only expecting to vanish for a week, but thanks to last week's sub gifts, I have the confidence to take an additional week. I'm looking forward to this since I've needed it for a while.

As I stated above, this week you'll see me live on Twitch and YouTube from Tuesday to Thursday. The fort is in an odd spot and might get a pause for the Halloween special. I'll talk with chat this week and figure that out.

I have not been uploading shorts since last week. I still pulled off 82,577 views this week. Slightly lower but comparable to last week. Streams on Twitch had an average of 171 viewers. Yes, it is down from last week, but still within acceptable margins.

Since I did not manage to get anything out on the main channel this week, here is a video uploaded by the one and only Hoodiehair. Great Dwarf Fortress content that I can't recommend enough.