๐ Week Notes 044
๐๏ธ // Oct 26, 2025 - Nov 1, 2025
Very busy Halloween week at our house with gets working feverishly to complete their costumes in time. The Hollow Knight series was the inspiration for four of our kids with S going as Hornet, Houston as one of the toughest bosses from Silksong (I'll go back and find out specifics later), and L and J too of the other characters. Nathan did a clone trooper, but with his longish sandy blonde hair and his helmet off looked like Luke Skywalker sneaking around the Death Star.
๐ป The boys really leveled up their costuming techniques with foam, contact cement, and spackling this time around. They also did almost all of the work making the swords, masks, and then painting everything that needed it as well.
๐คง Mary was pretty sick at the beginning of the week, but bounced back strong by Halloween and even dressed up as a bee with a cute striped sweater for work and little plastic bees around her usual beehive hairstyle.
๐Fall weather really reared its head this week with highs in the low 50s ยฐF almost every day. I'm definitely in wear long sleeves and/or a zip up vest or sweater over a shirt every day now.
Playing
โฝ๏ธ๐ฎ Lots and lots of FM26 beta. The final version comes out next week, but I'm not sure what that really even means in a world of Steam and updates. There are definitely bugs, but it's pretty stable on my main Mac and runs fine in a reduced graphics mode, but I do want to try it in a few other scenarios.
โฝ๏ธ๐ฎ My beta save has been as the Wrexham women's team. I wanted a team where I knew some of the players, but I was also starting out at a lower level as a brand new coach. My coach is a new incarnation of Gladys Daystrom, the character I came up with for Bang Average football. My big disappointment was that I couldn't do her distinctive bright green hair so I went with natural red hair and cool glasses.
โฝ๏ธ๐ฎ We won the Welsh Cup in pretty epic come from behind fashion. A late equalizer got it to 1-1 to go to extra time and then we won 5-4 on penalties when our 18-year-old goal keeper, Chloe Anker stopped their final shot. I switched to playing her full time when I realized she's basically just as good as our 26-year-old keeper.
Reading
- ๐ฆธโโ๏ธ Batgirl Vol. 4: Wanted ๐๐ The girls were clamoring for me to finish so they could read it, and I really appreciated Barbara's personal struggle after thinking she had killed her serial killer brother James Jr, and the ongoing conflict with her dad, the justice obsessed Commissioner Gordon who considers Batgirl a murder for most of the arc.
Listening
โฝ๏ธ๐ I enjoyed the first episode of the new WFM Podcast focusing on women's portion of FM 26 and I was hoping the second one would come out this week since the beta's been out for a week now, but it's been complete radio silence so far about their planned release schedule. I'm completely fine with fortnightly or monthly, I'd just like them to set an expectation and stick to it.
โฝ๏ธ๐ The FM Podcast covered their reactions to the first week of the Beta and were generally positive and simultaneously baffled somewhat flumoxed by the state of things and expressed it all in their usual humorous manner.
Projects
๐ Mary's car seems to be running fine again this week so fingers crossed that it will continue to hold up when we get more rain in the days ahead.
๐ก Lots of winterization stuff to do around the house. Finally disconnected all the hoses and started rolling them up. I may need to do some faucet repair if they're leaking too much as we head into freezing temperatures.
โฝ๏ธ๐ฎ I've been recording my match highlights and I want to play with putting together some storyline videos about the Wrexham Women's season, but I have yet to clip up everything and try to put it together in a coherent way. But I'm more intrigued to try this kind of thing than my Spurs game reactions lately.
โฝ๏ธ๐ฎ I'm also thinking about putting together a dedicated FM related blog since I can do it for free on Bear Blog. I've had the itch to write about my experiences with the game and just in general.
Watching
๐บ Slow Horses S5E5: Circus ๐๐ Lots of twists and turns that I enjoyed even if the IT hacking elements left me cold. Looking forward to the finale next week.
๐บ Chad Powers S1E6: Sixth Quarter ๐๐ Lots of juicy dramatic confrontations this week and a great choice to go for a short 6 season run. I think one more season to wrap things up is about perfect and I'm more intrigued to find out if Russ Holliday can become the best version of himself and find happiness than I am about finding out if Chad Powers can actually take the Catfish all the way to a national title.