The Queue: November is the best month

I always enjoyed the quote from Anne of Green Gables where Anne says she’s glad she lives in a world where there are Octobers. I will admit October definitely holds its own, but I’d guess that the mood Anne likes so much is more like November in my latitude.

This is The Queue, our daily column where you ask us questions and we’ll supply the answers while sitting in a comfy chair wrapped in a cozy blanket, with a warm mug of something.

I’m not. I don’t have time. While I totally understand the role of Remix in making a bit of content which is new and refreshing for some people while they wait for the next expansion, there are so many WoWs on the slate already. I still have a ton of stuff to do on retail.

Some of that is real life stuff. Without getting too deep in the weeds, we’ve had a lot of fairly serious life-altering crises happen for people in our extended family, which has meant we have had to pick up a good amount of slack. While our day-to-day hasn’t changed per se, we’re taking on a lot of admin, paperwork, research, the kind of thing which is just very time consuming and tedious, but relatively urgent.

Some of my reluctance to play Remix is just work stuff. Risking an air of Marie Antoinette, I have alpha access so I’m spending a lot of my work day in WoW already. It’s less what I’d consider playtime and more hunting down little specific things, confirming, double checking, taking notes, becoming more and more unhinged. Engaging with WoW additionally in duplicate (well, triplicate when you also include the live retail server busywork I’m also not really doing) it becomes not just tedious but an extension of work stress. No cool transmogs can tip that scale, unfortunately.

I’m confident it’s coming eventually, so maybe not as dire as ASOIAF, but I’ll be pleasantly surprised when the final episode for The Long Dark‘s story mode comes out. Their story is deeply interesting, and the subtext about caring for each other in a wild naturalism scenario resonates just as much as it did with Crane’s The Open Boat in 1900. But at this point there’s so much to wrap up, so many loose ends and new stuff, plus they’ve already announced The Long Dark 2, so when it releases it’ll be fun and enjoyable, but.

Also, I’m shocked I’m the first person to mention Elder Scrolls 6. I understand the way funding goes, they had to come out and say that they’re working on it well before it was due to be a reality, much like Blizzard’s Unannounced Survival Game (which I’m still bitter about, by the way). And I also think that, even if the ES6 they were developing when they made that announcement is currently completely dead in the water, they will likely at some point release and develop some kind of ES6. The brand is too profitable, and Skyrim is still printing money, as is the Oblivion remaster. But come on.

I grew up rural, so I didn’t get a lot of fun out of Halloween. It was less a candy smorgasbord, and more driving a half mile or more between houses for a roll of necco wafers. I did enjoy dressing up, but because we were in Upstate New York (and upstate enough that we didn’t actually call it upstate), pretty much all costumes were ruined because you had to wear a thick coat, since it was already literally below freezing most years. I had a really neat Tinkerbell costume one year. Try to explain “I’m Tinkerbell” to somebody when all they see is a coat and pants and a little yellow spraypainted hair peeking out from under a beanie, and I couldn’t wear wings because I had to get in and out of the car all night.

In fact, one of my most formative trick-or-treating memories was the year I thought I’d finally cracked the code and busted the system. I decided to go as a ghost. I could wear literally anything under a sheet, and still be recognized as a ghost! Unfortunately, there was already wet, slushy sticking snow on the ground, so after the first house, the entire bottom of the sheet was soaked, and wrapped around my ankles the entire rest of the night. Not only was I constantly tripping on the sheet as it flapped, and got heavier and heavier my ankles were incredibly sore and icy. It’s a good thing I didn’t get frostbite.

We try to go the day after Halloween for cheap candy, and we have our favorites, but most of them were gone this year. My daughter was especially put out because she loves swedish fish, and they didn’t even stock the mini pouches for distribution at all. We also picked up a bag of mallowcreme pumpkins and one of candy corn. Weirdly, the one thing that was still in stock, but I figured would go instantly, was the midsize Snickers. The tiny postage stamp size ones were gone, and all the multipacks containing Snickers, but the midsize bag of only Snickers was one of the few things left on the shelf.

Also, I did not get any Almond Joy this year, which is usually my go-to “what child would choose this over literally any other candy” Halloween spoils theft target. What child would miss an Almond Joy?

I could buy it, but I don’t actually want a whole Almond Joy.