I realized most of you haven't seen what I look like in AGES! So, here are a couple of pictures for you. These ones show off a new outfit that I really like, as well as my new haircut!







Life goes well! Hopefully my Mom will be coming to visit really soon, which would be great. Danny has the day off today, which of course is fantastic and he also has Thursday and Friday off, so we're going to the aquarium and the Museum of Science and Industry. It's shaping up to be an excellent week!

If y'all want, post some pictures of yourself lately!

1. Check it out, I've got another Casual Gaming Review up. I gotta say, this is a really fun column to write, and is useful while I'm jobless because it encourages me to find more games to play and entertain myself with during the day.

2. Speaking of jobs, still nothing new on the job front for me. Sadly. I did apply yesterday to a really great looking job at a medical office that provides general medical office training. It'd be really interesting, I think. Hopefully something comes from that. To be honest, I am not particularly ambitious career-wise, and if I suddenly came into a large sum of money I'd prefer not to work at all and would just spend a chunk of my time volunteering instead. But if I had a job Danny and I would be doing damn well, so I'm hoping it doesn't take another several months for me to find something.

3. I'm excited because Danny has two days off in between ending his current job and starting his new one. That means we'll be able to take advantage of some of the Chicago Free Museum days.

Happy 2011 everyone!

We got back from our vacation in Aruba last night! We were lucky to get there when we did, I think, because we left last Sunday just as airports all over were starting to shut down because of the snow. We were late out of Chicago, missed our flight in Charlotte, and had to get to Aruba through Miami and didn't get in until almost 1am (which meant we had been up for almost 24 hours). We also didn't get our luggage until Thursday. But the vacation was fantastic!

We spent most of our time either relaxing by the pool or playing in the water at the beach. I rediscovered a love for strawberry daiquiris, and anyone who knows my drinking habits will know that's impressive since I haven't really been able to enjoy any hard liquor for several years now, even in mixed drinks. I also gained an appreciation for Aruba's local beer. The beach near our resort was beautiful, the weather was pretty much perfect the entire time, and Daniel and I spent some great time together and some great time with his family. We also had lots of good food, though the best by far for me was the steak I had that had been marinated for two days in bacon and lard. It was delicious! I'm spoiled now and am sad to go back to cold weather and less interesting food.

In other good news, Daniel got a new job offer with a much better salary! Hopefully he'll get good news about their benefits and other details and will be able to accept this week! He's moving on up. Next I hope I get something as well!

So 2011 has started out pretty damn well so far, I've got to say.

This is one of the best things I've ever read in my life. She started out offering gift cards to those in need, and ended up raising $42,000 to help people for the holidays. Warning: this will make you cry. In a good way.

I am regularly absolutely disgusted by human behavior, and sometimes get to thinking that the majority of humans just aren't very nice. But then when I hear something like this, a little bit of my faith in humanity is restored and it makes me very, very happy.

1. Hooray, the holidays! I got Baldur's Gate II from Good Old Games (they are having an amazing Christmas sale right now) from Daniel, and that makes me very excited. Those of you who know me well know how obsessed I've been with that game for years now, and how often I've replayed it. I had to immediately go and download my favorite mods. I remember last time I played it I downloaded about 16 different mods, so I was proud of myself for cutting that down to 7 this time around. Anyway, it'll be fun to replay.

2. I'll have a sad reason to have time to play it tonight, though: Daniel will be away at a sleep trial overnight. It's always sad trying to sleep in the apartment without him.

3. I am both LOLing and angry at Feministing, as I usually am. They posted a pretty offensive article about "How to Dress to Go Through TSA" (something along those lines) which included a suggestion that women should be sure to wear bras, because they don't want to "make it too fun for those agents" and a suggestion that women should always wear cute panties, but they especially should to go through the new scanners so they can be "proud of their image". For a minute after reading it I thought it was satire, but if it was it was really poorly written, and the history of posts from the OP made it clear it wasn't. When I went to bed last night four people had left justifiably angry comments about how dismissive the article was of the genuine issues people have with the new TSA policies (and believe me, for the new Feministing four comments is a ton), and instead of actually addressing anything, they just deleted the post overnight. Very brave and respectful of your readers, Feministing.

I don't know why I bother reading there anymore except for sometimes it's good for a laugh. As far as I'm concerned at this point Feministing is second in line on the list of Sites That Say They Are Feminist but Really Aren't, right behind Jezebel. Jezebel gets top listing because most of the time it seems actively ANTI-feminist to me.

ETA: To add further brilliance to the stupid, I tried to contact them to express my disgust with the article and then with simply deleting it without explanation, and their "contact us" form isn't working.

4. Aruba next week! Holy crap!

Welp, our computer died this week. We got a new one (obviously) but there's so much stuff I'm missing now, it's kind of depressing every time I go to the computer. Lots of music. LOTS of movies. Lots of video game saves (all of my Dragon Age saves are gone, for example). And, most importantly, I lost my entire "Books I've Read" list that I've been keeping since New Years last year.

I realized that today as I finished three comic trades in a row and then immediately realized I couldn't actually add them to the Book List. So depressing. And I really wanted to know how many books I read this year, too. I guess I can estimate going back to the last time I updated here about it.

In much better news, soon Daniel and I will be in Aruba. So I guess I can't complain that much about life if the worst that's happened this week was a broken computer.

1. It's been an interesting week so far and should continue to be. I had a doctor's appointment yesterday, one today, and another tomorrow (nothing to be concerned about, just routine stuff). Later today I'll be having an in-home interview for a psych study about charitable giving. Tomorrow night I'll be sleeping alone for the first time in a long time while hawkorhandsaw stays overnight at a sleep study.

That all sounds boring but it's pretty busy compared to my usual unemployed routine. I just got back from the eye doctor. Best eye doctors I've ever seen, seriously. First, they were EXTREMELY thorough with their exam and found out I have dry eyes, which have been causing a lot of my issues wearing contacts. They also give me new multifocal lenses for my right eye and much better lenses for my left, where I'm astigmatic. I have really poor vision (as in I am pretty much helpless beyond reading something right in front of me) without my contacts/glasses so having almost 20/20 vision for the first time since I started wearing them is pretty awesome. AND because I mentioned that money was tight they set up a really good deal for me with a year supply of contacts at just above $100. So yeah, for Chicago people: I highly recommend Visionary Eye Care. I've been seeing eye doctors once or twice a year since I was 10 and I've never had such good service.

2. I've been kinda-sorta re-watching all of Nip/Tuck, in that I like background noise so when I'm Internet surfing during the day, I play episodes in the background. I forgot how fucking ridiculous (in a hilarious way) that show got. I think I kept watching because each new crazy thing actually shorted out my brain a little bit. What's weird to me is that the plots on Dexter sometimes get equally ridiculous, but they still feel more believable. Perhaps because Dexter as a show kind of exists in it's own little bubble world whereas Nip/Tuck includes more of the outside world in it's plot. I have no idea.

3. I've been watching lots of movies lately as well. I watched Aftershock last week and while cheesy at times it was touching. On a completely different route, I watched Martyrs, which managed to hit all my squick points for horror movies, to the point where I was actually cowering on the couch with my hands over my eyes. And this is coming from a person who loves horror movies but is rarely very scared by them. A movie not for the faint of heart, visually or emotionally, but a good one.

4. Can't think of much else to report. In less than two weeks I'll be in Aruba with Daniel and his family. I'm nervous about going through TSA but really excited about visiting my first tropical area. And getting away from the cold!

That is all.

1. I'm thinking I might do that whole Casual Game Review on a regular basis here. I tend to download the hour-long trials of various casual games at least 5 times a week, and purchase the better ones to play through. With the hour trials you can usually get a fairly good feel of how good a game will be. So for those of you who enjoyed the reviews, look forward to more of them in the future.

2. Had a mixed week. It was nice to have Daniel around for an extra day for his vacation time. I had finished re-watching all of Six Feet Under so I started re-watching all of Nip/Tuck. Honestly it's more fun to re-watch because now I don't take it seriously and get consistently amused by how absolutely ridiculous it gets. So that's been fun. Thursday was extra-nice because we got a St. Nick's package from Daniel's mom. She got me two swimsuits for the upcoming Christmas trip to Aruba (I still get touched when I think that she bought a ticket for me too. Makes me feel like part of the family), lots of wonderful LUSH stuff, LEGO Harry Potter, and comfy winter PJs and socks. Daniel also got some comfy clothes, a video game and other goodies. His mom is friggin' awesome!

3. I did however have a pretty miserable couple of mini-breakdowns about not having money and not having a job. I ended up having a pretty extreme crying jag about it and finally got out just how frustrated and stir-crazy and miserable it makes me feel to not be bringing in any money and to not be able to spend even three bucks of my own money. But after I got out all that crying I felt a lot better, and of course Daniel was there to help me feel better.

4. Watched Pontypool last night and really enjoy it. It was a nice night in general, Daniel and I drank some Two Buck Chuck and just enjoyed each others company. And tonight is Awesome TV Night, so that's always good.

Tonight I'm going to going to do a Morgan Special: A review of some of my recent favorite casual games!

Don't get me wrong: I love "Serious Games". If you look at my top ten here (which probably needs an update) there aren't a lot of games that could be classified as casual games. For a definition of casual games, check wiki. But I also reject the idea that casual gaming somehow makes a person a less serious gamer or that it is inherently silly. I think one would be hard pressed to refuse to admit that occasionally it's fun to play something that is entertaining and engrossing but that doesn't require big time/strategy investments. To that end, I check Big Fish Games and Jay is Games daily to see if there is anything new I want to check out. Here are the top three casual games that I've been playing recently, and that I highly recommend.

1. MovieCat! for iPhone, iPod Touch, and soon to be for the iPad. The MovieCat! website can also be found here. This is a movie trivia game with a twist: the trivia questions are asked to you by cats, and cats take the place of major players in some scenes. On top of that, this isn't the average movie trivia game that one can download: it has many interesting categories spread through each five-round game, and while it focuses on more modern movies, it has a pretty vast array of movie trivia questions. OtherWise games has done a great job making this app and I look forward to anything else they put forward. On top of that, their customer service is terrific. I had a minor problem with the app, and a member of the team was extremely helpful in offering potential solutions and was extremely professional. Because of this, it's at the top of my list of highly recommended Games I've Been Playing Obsessively. Oh, and it's well worth the very low price both for the game and for the expansion packs.

2. PocketFrogs, brought to us by the company NimbleBit. This game is absolutely addictive and completely adorable. The premise is that the player can collect and breed many species of frogs. You can also earn awards for creating specific breeds. You can exchange frogs with friends, see what friends on the Plus + Network are up to (including over Facebook), challenge yourself to create weekly "sets" of frogs, and many other options. It might all sound rather silly, but once you start playing the game you will find yourself hooked. I got this game months back and have had no access to the extra features that come with having a wifi/Internet connection on my iPod Touch, and I still play it for a total of an hour or two daily because it's just that fun. Also, it's FREE! Those who may become particularly addicted to breeding frogs rapidly may have to put out an extra .99 here and there, but otherwise this is a cheap game that brings lots of fun and never seems to get boring.

3. Haunted Hills: Green Hills Sanitarium from Big Fish Games. A lot of people do not enjoy Hidden Object/Adventure games, and I understand why. Often they are put out at an astounding rate and most of them are not well created. However, this game breaks the mold. With it's Lovecraftian/generally spooky undertones, it creates a unique atmosphere you don't see in most games of this genre. On top of that, instead of using the formula many hidden object games employ where you are sent to random rooms to find objects that seem completely unrelated to the plot, the areas you are searching and the items you are searching for are useful in the end and important to the game. On top of that it adds a Myst-like element wherein you have to remember areas of the game you were in ages ago when you get a new item that might be useful there. It adds a great level of complexity that I don't usually see in Hidden Object/Adventure games. Plus it has more hours of gameplay than most of these games have. Along those same lines, I'd also recommend: Drawn: The Painted Tower and Robin's Quest: A Legend Born, which nicely turns the gender roles on Robin Hood around and adds interesting gameplay.

4. Kitten Sanctuary. I don't think there's anything more that needs to be said here. I don't even need to write a review. The title of the game should be enough. The only thing I'll say is that it is a Match 3 game with a particularly adorable focus.