Greetings from sunny (well, it *was* sunny… now it’s dark. I hate daylight savings time…) Mississippi!
Having loads of fun with family, and the Wii has been a big hit! It’s nice, too, to have a break from remodeling the kitchen.
Also gotten a ton of great feedback on the grad school app. Very exciting!
I’ve never been much for Valentine’s Day. Most often, it’s nothing more than another day for us. This year, however, we had a fabulous V-Day thanks to some friends who organized a retro-gaming night. They pulled out every gaming system the could get their hands on, and much fun with ancient coleco-visions, segas, nintendos, and other systems I’d never even heard of was had. Most of the games were terrible, particularly when we tried to play with 2-players (or more). It was painfully clear that many older games had very haphazard systems for implementing 2-player action, as if it had been merely tacked-on to give the game more marketability (hmm, I think things have changed very little…). On the other hand, even games that were purposefully designed for 2 or more players (*cough*gauntlet*cough*) were terrible in their execution. Funny how they could pull it off in the arcade, but the experience just isn’t the same at home. To give ourselves some respite from the awful nostalgia, we took on the hordes of undead with some 4-player Left 4 Dead (after stuffing ourselves with pizza, of course). Now *that’s* some pretty cool multi-player action. I was amazed at how little I was bothered by the split-screen and, although I suck at console FPS gaming, how much fun it was. Now there’s a Valentine’s tradition I could get used to.
…and all that jazz.
Not much to report here other than on-again-off-again snow, work, holidays, college football, and lots of movies.
In addition to the traditional Christmas Season viewing of Die Hard, we took in Kung Fu Panda1, Tropic Thunder2, Get Smart3, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog4, and the first season of Bones5. Also on the docket is Stardust, as well as the first season of Battlestar Galactica6.
Gotta love the holidays!
2 – Could have been worse. I was expecting worse. Also kept me interested for the duration and at least made me curious enough to sample the commentary. Briefly. 3 stars.
3 – Not bad. Not great either, but – for someone with no familiarity with the original work – entertaining. 3.5 stars.
4 – Saw this when it was originally released online. Love love love. Watched almost all the supplements (including both(!) commentaries). 5 stars.
5 – A favorite of mine. 5 stars.
6 – Taken in the mini-series so far. Well done and engrossing. 4 stars.
Obviously, our internet access has been restored. As I suspected, it was not due to the snow. Rather unexpectedly, however, it was lost as a result of vandalism. How lame.
In any case, it’s back. I used the non-connected time well, I think. I finished a book I’d started a month or two ago, and breezed through another. Drank a lot of tea, cleared out a goodly number of shows from the TiVo, watched a few movies (Hancock – reviewed yesterday, The X-Files: I Want to Believe, and the classic Grosse Pointe Blank), wrapped some gifts, listened to some of my backlog of podcasts…
While digging through iTunes, I came to the realization that my collection of holiday music is woefully small. I shall have to rectify this situation.
Both physically and site-wise.
I am approaching wellness, albeit slowly. I am once again grateful to live in an age of technology. Almost all of my Christmas shopping is done, thanks to the intarwebs; in particular, Amazon.com and what has turned out to be a fabulous investment: Amazon Prime. Having hardly left the couch in over a week, and being thrown into spasms of coughing by the cold winter air, I am happy to be so close to finished with the crass consumerism portion of the holiday season.
As my health improves, so to does my mental concentration and thus, ability to watch complicated films and television shows* and, blessedly, read! I’ve nearly finished one book and have assembled my next pile from the backlog.
In addition, I have nearly completed the back-end portion of Part 1 of my site plans. It’s mostly personal stuff, with only tiny bits leaking through to the public portions, but still quite exciting for me and my minimal coding skills.
So there you have it. Improvements.
Also, go Sooners!
I hate being sick, especially on a holiday. And even more so on a long holiday weekend. Completely unfair.
For 24 more minutes…
The most Halloween-y Halloween I’ve had in a couple of years: buddies, booze* and bad survival horror video games.