What I've Been Up To Lately

The last several weeks have been interesting to say the least with a few various challenges and changes for the family.  One change -adapting to new daily routines.  Youngest son obtained a Presidential Scholarshop for HVAC schooling out of the clear blue and left for six weeks in Texas.  It happened within just a few days and he was gone.  Daughter in law and oldest son obtained jobs needing us to keep the granddaughters after school (oldest early in the morning as well).  And dealing with another aging dog and issues that come with that.

With all the changes, I haven't exactly been in the art mode so as a change of pace (or escape), I've been playing Pokemon.  Yes at almost 60 I like the Pokemon games.  My youngest son, husband, nephews and I all play these games.

Almost two years ago I started Omega Ruby finishing the main game and collecting all the game's pokemon to fill the region pokedex.  Then I concentrated on completing the National Pokedex that has over 700 pokemon (a collection from all the games to date).

Note:  One of the primary reasons I was determined to fill the pokedexes was to obtain what is called a Shiny Charm in order to make shiny hunting odds a little more favorable should I decide to attempt that (more about this below).

When I learned that Sun and Moon would be coming out this Holiday season marking the 20th anniversary of Pokemon, I decided to get Alpha Sapphire and work it.............also completing the game pokedex and the National on it.  To complete the National, I needed to go back and finish my Pokemon X game and worked through Pokemon Y until I reached the area for a legendary I needed and traded with family for the rest.  I still needed about eight legendaries total and most were provided to me by my youngest Nephew.

I had heard about and read so much about shiny hunting that I decided to try my hand at catching the rare shiny pokemon.  One needs a lot of patience to continuously search for particular sprites until a shiny shows up.  Shinies are nothing more than different color pokemon from the normal colors (what might be a normal brown pokemon might be all green, etc.)  No special abilities or anything.  But because they are rare, people find it exciting to hunt and actually come across one.

Although I haven't been much into the art mode, I did record my achievements in my Paperblank journal.  As you can see, I've been quite successful.

It started out I just wanted to catch one to say I'd caught one.  In the first day, I caught three.  After that when I didn't have anything better to do, I'd pick the game up and hunt for others.  As of today, I have nine.  It can be addicting :-)

Summary Sheet I put together from my journal pages and other notes I had scribbled while hunting.  

SL stands for Search Level or how many encounters it took for me to finally get a shiny of a particular pokemon (you decide on a particular pokemon and then repeatedly perform a search for it.).  As you can see, a few took awhile and a lot of patience/perseverance.  :-O