In a few hours will begin the best time of the year. We’ll be celebrating with a movie marathon and a ton of food that will last more than 2 days. Tomorrow, we’ll be binging the fourth season of The Witcher while opening our gifts. Most importantly, we’ll be celebrating for the first time in our house and in a place we love.
A year ago, at the same time, we were wondering where we would be for Xmas 2025. If I could send a message to our past selves, I’d say this: “Don’t worry guys, you’ll find the house, you’ll get out of that hell hole of a town and everything will be fine”. For those who know us (and I wonder how many really do), they’d know that we’ve been through a lot while living in Brussels. Being here now, for this time of the year, is more than just a real estate move, it’s life starting to feel right again, finally at home.
We wish everyone all the best for this year’s Christmas. Enjoy!
A year ago, we were living in a hell hole (Brussels), we were miserable and we were hoping that, some day, we would break free. A year later, we’ve moved to a house in the country and we couldn’t be happier. This year’s Halloween is a bit special for us since it’s also the first weekend that we can enjoy our house, we’re finally done unpacking – even the PCs are back online (more about that later). Soforah has been cooking her traditional pumpkin pastas for this evening and the movies are ready. Tonight, after the neighborhood kids’ trick or treating, we’ll be watching Halloween (1978) and V/H/S Halloween.
We’ve been living in city apartments for 20 years but we always had the idea to move to a house in the country. After 3 years of research, we finally found a house we could call home. Since January, we’ve been very busy purchasing the house and selling our apartment, hence the lack of posts on the blog. It’s been the busiest February of both our lives, and it’s only starting… There’s still an entire moving to organize.
Beside working on our relocation project, we’ve been playing Enshrouded and Grim Dawn. Two fantastic games without any subscription, cash shop or microtransactions, it feels good to be free! I will probably write a post (some day) about our growing hate for monetization.
I just found out about the Wayback Machine, an internet crawler that saved more than 916 billions web pages over time. They saved the pages of our old blog “Dark Heaven” from when we were fans of Goth stuff. Such a flashback!
The first version was darkerDark gothic ones, ROFL!
I also found a thread on the Quake subreddit about mapping. I remember when I used to make maps a map for Quake 2, it was based on a train station converted to a concert/party place called The Soundstation. It took me 6 months and it was really fun. Internet was in full bloom, everybody thought that they were “cyber”, we used to live in movies in our heads and it was so cool.
I have the feeling that the world became much more serious than it used to be. Orrrr, I’m just surrounded by older folks who have lost their illusions and who live in a world that is much too real. Resist, folks! Play games and believe that there is more than jobs, bills and mortages.
Goodbye, 2024, you’ve been quite a ride, But let’s be honest, we’re not teary-eyed. The shows were bland, the movies fell flat, And gaming? Well, let’s not dwell on that.
Too quiet, a bit of a bore, We hoped for so much, but you gave us chores. We’ll leave you behind without much regret, And look to the future with hopes freshly set.
Here’s to a new year, fresh and bright, 2025, come make things right!
Soforah is busy cooking the delights that will light up our evening while Christmas movies are playing streaming (Hot frosty is actually quiet good)… In a few hours, we’ll be binging Rings of Power for two days while stuffing ourselves and opening our presents. It really is the best time of the year.
We wish you all a great Christmas Eve. May you all have a dreamy one!
And yes, I still say Christmas! Not that many people with offendable sensibilities read this blog, but I still like to make my point. Here, at Spacewocket, we will never stop to say Christmas!
Soforah’s alcohol free tiramisu, the companion of all our celebrations
As if turning 50 wouldn’t be hard enough, this year’s birthday was also the first time that I would celebrate my birthday without a beer or any alcoholic beverage. I have a problem with alcohol, but not what you would think…
On top of our allergies and intolerances, Inge and I are both very sensitive to histamine. Diamine oxydase (DAO) is the enzyme that helps the body get rid of histamine. Alcohol is very armful to DAO. Which means that when we drink alcohol, histamine isn’t properly eliminated and we get all sorts of reactions from rashes and flare ups to anxiety.
Throughout the years, we’ve tried to ignore it, we still drank beers on Fridays and celebrations. Even with a reduced quantity (2 or 3 beers), the consequences on our health worsen. We noticed how better we would feel without alcohol. For many years, we’ve tried to quit it entirely but there was always a good reason to make an exception.
But, that’s not all… While we were reducing our alcohol intake, we noticed that we were actually having a better time when we were keeping 100% alcohol free. We were more enthusiastic, more motivated and, generally, happier. The other day, Soforah asked me: “If your memory was a hard drive and you’d be reaching maximum capacity, which remembrances would you keep?”. Surprisingly, none of them would be a time when alcohol was present in my life.
I don’t say that it should be the case for everyone. I’m a big fan of letting the people choose whatever makes them happy and this isn’t an attempt at converting anyone. But, in my case, on top of my Histamine problem, I think that alcohol always took too much space. I’ve been drinking enough in my life to know exactly what my world looks like when I let that door open, and I don’t like it.
No filters were used in this picture!
So, here I was, a few weeks before my 50th birthday, trying to come up with a plan for the celebration. I can tell you, it has been hell and I’m not sure I would have made it without the help of my sweet wife. Thanks to her amazing support, planning and cooking skills, we both had an amazing time. We visited the Christmas village, we went to a restaurant and we ended up eating the dessert at home while watching the movie Abigail. Everything happened fantastically and entirely without alcohol. The rest of December should be a breeze because Christmas and New Year are not really linked to alcohol for us, so no pressure… I hope to make another post like this in December ’25, celebrating a complete year without a drop.
Meanwhile, we both wish everyone an amazing holiday season!
In a few hours, we’ll be celebrating our favourite time of the year. As I’m writing this post, Soforah is cooking our traditional Pumpkin Pastas and a delicious Tiramisu to keep us going through our horror movie night. The apartment is decorated, the tree leaves have the right colour and The Headless Horseman is once more riding the skies of Azeroth, all is good… So here’s our program for this year’s celebration:
We’ll first be collecting as many Tricky Treats from the Candy Buckets of The Dragon Isles and Khaz Algar. Then we’ll be watching the Family Guy’s Halloween Special and the latest Simpson’s Tree house of Horror (from season 35, do you believe that?!) while the Gratin will be in the oven. During the dinner, we’ll watch the original Halloween movie then we’ll be stuffing ourselves with the dessert while watching Longlegs.
While coming back from groceries shopping this morning, I found this flyer in our mailbox and it made us incredibly happy to see that Halloween is still kicking, even in our neighbourhood.
If you wonder why I’m using this illustration of Brand New’s album cover for the Halloween post… Well, it’s because The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me is probably the most iconic album for this season. Since the day we first heard it at Caroline music (Liège) many years ago, this album has been the embodiment of all we love in this season, from the album cover to the excellent “You won’t know”.
Finally, I’ll leave you with this timeless gem from internet:
Another hot summer week has come and gone. From people exhibiting their ugly flip-flop feet in the streets to the heat preventing me to game on my PC, this really isn’t my favourite season. We’ve almost watched five seasons of The Rookie in a few weeks and, while I really like Nathan Fillion, I could take a break from the LAPD and find back my life, which in normal times is absolutely great.
In other news, one of my Instagram accounts has been disabled. Not my main account, but a side one I was using to post World of Warcraft stuff. It’s not a great loss as there were only 5 posts but the way it happened confirms everything I always thought about social networks: you’re not controlling anything.
I woke up this morning to my account being deactivated with the possibility to appeal, which I directly did. After having provided many security codes and a video of my face tilting in every directions, I received a mail to tell me that, after review, my account was permanently disabled. My only way to get it back would be to go to court.
Apparently, the moderating AI identified my account as a bot and its decision is final, even after providing proofs that I’m a real human. I don’t really care since it was just an account to check other people’s World of Warcraft screenshots.
However, the way it happened makes me think that I shouldn’t put any effort in that platform anymore, since an account can be deleted without any form of appeal. Already being a social networks hater, this may be the final push to get me permanently disconnected.
So, starting today, instead of posting my pictures on my main Instagram account, I’ll post them here, as a blog post. Ultimately, after a few months, I’ll deactivate all my Instagram accounts and I’ll be entirely free from social networks. Long live blogging!
10 years ago, Soforah and I started Spacewocket but we’ve been blogging for much longer than that…
When we’ve met, 22 years ago, we started to write a blog called Darkheaven. However, after a few years, our enthusiasm for gothic culture faded. Since then, we’ve had all sorts of blogs but only Spacewocket lasted, probably because we’re very passionated about the main topics of the blog: playing WoW and watching horror movies.
10 years ago, we decided to move to Brussels to minimise the commute times. Despite our best efforts, we never managed to feel 100% in this place but Spacewocket was always there for us, our corner of the world.
So, here’s to a place on the internet, far from grey cities, electric scooters, autotune, hobos, drug addicts, alcohol, boring jobs, overheated summers, sunburns (don’t ask), soccer, sports on TV, politics, noisy neighbours, bad plumbing, contractors, internet dances, influencers, huge eyebrows, whitened teeth and photo filters. A place where people still believe that pizzas, video games and horror movies are the ingredients for a cool life.
