Jeez. I went two whole months without a new journal entry. Time to fix that, I guess.
My holiday was pretty low key, but relaxing. Hung around the house the first couple of days, visiting briefly now and then with my parents (who fixed my toilet while they were at it). Played Tabula Rasa for pretty much the entirety of Christmas Eve. It may be dying soon, but it's a damn fine diversion for the price of free, and a significant improvement from beta. Then had an excellent Christmas dinner at the home of some friends of my mom's husband's family. Stayed over at his parents' former home, now mostly furniture stripped in preparation for eventual sale, so that we could leave quicker the next day for Iowa, and watched "Scrooged", Bill Murray's take on A Christmas Carol. Very 80s, (right down to the VHS cassette) but fun.
Iowa turned out to be having a minor heatwave as we got down there, with Friday reaching a high of nearly 60 degrees. Perfect for creating a freezing rainstorm the next day that coated everything in ice and made my grandparents' driveway decidedly treacherous (it slopes steeply downwards). We watched my bootleg of "Let the Right One In" down in a somewhat dusty basement, since it wouldn't play properly on the living room HDTV, and my parents at least seemed to enjoy it.
Saturday (ice day), we gathered all the Iowans in the family for the big Christmas present session and subsequent informal meal. I didn't really get anything terribly noteworthy, but everything I did get was appreciated, especially with budgets as tight as they are this year. It's always interesting seeing the family after that year's timelapse. My older cousin Nick's girls are another year grown, Maya still the perfect little princess, but bigger, Alli a decided handful. Middle cousin Chad's fathered a hefty baby boy, Henry, the first boy of their generation. And my little cousin Trevor, who I tend to think of as the hyper-energetic goof he used to be, is now a strapping young Marine, taller than me and married to his girlfriend of the last few years, Kasey. (There is some general family disapproval of both his joining the Marines - he'll be going to Iraq later this year, as he wanted - and marrying Kasey, who's...well, not the girl they would have picked for him. I don't know her well enough to say, but she seemed like someone I might have gone for, in his place, so I take that with a grain of salt.)
Sunday we saw the last Des Moines showing of Monty Python's SPAM-A-Lot, which is about the only Broadway musical I've had that much interest in seeing over the last year or two, and I'm glad I had a chance. It cribs a fair bit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, of course, but the songs and new dialogue are quite funny and there are a lot of fun little touches (for example, the three page fake play credits, for a musical about Finland's rapid economic development, staged entirely in a sauna, with intermissions every two and a half hours.).
Monday my parents headed off to Davenport to take care of a few things and have dinner with their former neighbors before eventually getting back to their new home in Newport. I stuck around and spent a bit more time with my grandparents before catching the bus home on Tuesday.
In game-related news, I am very excited about a Russian FPS some of you may have heard about, entitled (in English) Cryostasis. The American release is still some ways off, and I would not want to rely on the translation (or probable English voice-acting) being up to par, but in the original Russian with helpful fan translation of the subtitles (patched into the data files), it's quite something. Gorgeous, with a palpable sense of cold and some of the best water effects I've yet seen. Dreamlike and unsettling, with frequent visions of things past, sometimes transforming into present menace. A visceral fist-fighting system (which I nonetheless expect will give way to guns before *too* much longer). And a very distinct sense of mood. The first major sojourn into past events I've undertaken was an incredible set-piece, drifting through a darkened, flooded cargo hold in a vulnerable little life raft, beset by an unkillable undead menace. It's still early days (the second level, in point of fact), but this could be a major must-play.
My holiday was pretty low key, but relaxing. Hung around the house the first couple of days, visiting briefly now and then with my parents (who fixed my toilet while they were at it). Played Tabula Rasa for pretty much the entirety of Christmas Eve. It may be dying soon, but it's a damn fine diversion for the price of free, and a significant improvement from beta. Then had an excellent Christmas dinner at the home of some friends of my mom's husband's family. Stayed over at his parents' former home, now mostly furniture stripped in preparation for eventual sale, so that we could leave quicker the next day for Iowa, and watched "Scrooged", Bill Murray's take on A Christmas Carol. Very 80s, (right down to the VHS cassette) but fun.
Iowa turned out to be having a minor heatwave as we got down there, with Friday reaching a high of nearly 60 degrees. Perfect for creating a freezing rainstorm the next day that coated everything in ice and made my grandparents' driveway decidedly treacherous (it slopes steeply downwards). We watched my bootleg of "Let the Right One In" down in a somewhat dusty basement, since it wouldn't play properly on the living room HDTV, and my parents at least seemed to enjoy it.
Saturday (ice day), we gathered all the Iowans in the family for the big Christmas present session and subsequent informal meal. I didn't really get anything terribly noteworthy, but everything I did get was appreciated, especially with budgets as tight as they are this year. It's always interesting seeing the family after that year's timelapse. My older cousin Nick's girls are another year grown, Maya still the perfect little princess, but bigger, Alli a decided handful. Middle cousin Chad's fathered a hefty baby boy, Henry, the first boy of their generation. And my little cousin Trevor, who I tend to think of as the hyper-energetic goof he used to be, is now a strapping young Marine, taller than me and married to his girlfriend of the last few years, Kasey. (There is some general family disapproval of both his joining the Marines - he'll be going to Iraq later this year, as he wanted - and marrying Kasey, who's...well, not the girl they would have picked for him. I don't know her well enough to say, but she seemed like someone I might have gone for, in his place, so I take that with a grain of salt.)
Sunday we saw the last Des Moines showing of Monty Python's SPAM-A-Lot, which is about the only Broadway musical I've had that much interest in seeing over the last year or two, and I'm glad I had a chance. It cribs a fair bit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, of course, but the songs and new dialogue are quite funny and there are a lot of fun little touches (for example, the three page fake play credits, for a musical about Finland's rapid economic development, staged entirely in a sauna, with intermissions every two and a half hours.).
Monday my parents headed off to Davenport to take care of a few things and have dinner with their former neighbors before eventually getting back to their new home in Newport. I stuck around and spent a bit more time with my grandparents before catching the bus home on Tuesday.
In game-related news, I am very excited about a Russian FPS some of you may have heard about, entitled (in English) Cryostasis. The American release is still some ways off, and I would not want to rely on the translation (or probable English voice-acting) being up to par, but in the original Russian with helpful fan translation of the subtitles (patched into the data files), it's quite something. Gorgeous, with a palpable sense of cold and some of the best water effects I've yet seen. Dreamlike and unsettling, with frequent visions of things past, sometimes transforming into present menace. A visceral fist-fighting system (which I nonetheless expect will give way to guns before *too* much longer). And a very distinct sense of mood. The first major sojourn into past events I've undertaken was an incredible set-piece, drifting through a darkened, flooded cargo hold in a vulnerable little life raft, beset by an unkillable undead menace. It's still early days (the second level, in point of fact), but this could be a major must-play.
otoki:
Damn. Thanks for the in-depth answer.