Like a Kid in a Candy Store
The past few weeks have been so insanely busy for me. I know I’ve said this before, but I really don’t think I’ve ever had so much to do in my entire life. I’ve been working so much that I actually grew intolerant to my chair. I would sit down and immediately stand back up. Just couldn’t do it any more. And since this chair is home base for work and play, I found myself in need of a new avenue for entertainment. Since selling my Xbox back in July and Hannah claiming the GameCube as her own, I’ve only really had my PC for gaming. For whatever reason, I haven’t been into watching movies for months now and we might have rented a handful of movies since the summer. Deanna and I used to watch a few movies a week, but for whatever reason, that just stopped. I decided it was time to re-establish some old relationships with my DVD player, GameCube and even picked up another Xbox. And that would be a regular old Xbox, not a 360. Even if I wanted to get an Xbox 360 right now, I couldn’t as they’re still, 2 months after launch, hard to come by. Now that’s just fuckin’ ridiculous!
I scored an Xbox for $100 CDN on eBay last Sunday and it arrived Wednesday. I hit the video store that night and rented Far Cry Instincts and Burnout Revenge. I’m not too big a fan of the Burnout series. They’re fun for a bit, but get a little out of hand. Deanna on the other hand, just loves them! I can hear her playing in the next room as I write this – “Whooo! Burnnn!” She’s crazy good at it too. We were just playing for a bit and she totally smoked me in every race type. I’m having fun with Far Cry. It’s actually quite a bit different from the PC version and looks absolutely beautiful. I’m really stoked on having an Xbox in the living room again. It’s a great console and I never should have gotten rid of it. Now, time to mod it!
We pulled the GameCube out of Hannah’s room and blew the dust off it. Started playing Resident Evil 4 again from the beginning. Man, what a great game! Definitely one of the best I’ve played. Deanna and I have played it through 3 times already and still finding things we missed or didn’t notice before. I rented Super Mario Strikers for the weekend. Figured it would be a good family game. Tons of fun as you’d expect from Nintendo. Hannah and I kicked Wario’s ass just before dinner.
Speaking of Hannah, she’s been pretty into a few PC games lately. Kids games of course, but they won’t run on Deanna’s computer so she has to use mine, which I don’t have a problem with. She does however, since I’m on it 24/7. She really got hooked on a couple games around the end of December and when I went back to work after Christmas break, she hardly had time to play them. Since we live in a small, crowded apartment, there’s not really a whole lot to do. I could watch TV or read. I hate TV and just about all I read these days are feeds and design books – which still gives me the feeling that I’m working. I picked up Metroid Prime Pinball for Nintendo DS. Hannah’s Nintendo DS. I always thought the DS was too gimmicky, but that game is great and so addictive! The dual screen makes it so much better since there’s no scrolling. You can see the whole table all the time. Really neat!
Since I’ve hardly watched any movies over the past few months, there’s lots I haven’t seen. We’ve been renting quite a bit again and I really enjoy it. It’s nice lighting some candles, grabbing a fresh cup of coffee and chillaxing on the couch being entertained. I almost forgot what it was like.
Working at home is great. It really is. No commute. No stinky, busy city. No douche bags in suits running down the street, yelling on their cell while trying not to spill their $5 coffee. But it’s really easy to get wrapped up in your work when you don’t physically separate yourself from it. I found that out the hard way. Often enough I get the feeling that I should get away from this screen, but will justify it by doing something that’s not work related. Reading feeds or checking up on my site. I’ve only recently started classifying time I put into my site as ‘work’. Otherwise, the 4 hours I set aside for work on a Sunday turns into 6 after I’ve spent 2 hours on my site that I didn’t count as work time. Kind of sucks having to spend a bunch of money on ‘toys’ to entertain myself. But with it being the middle of Winter and spending so much time at home, I feel it was needed. Otherwise, I very well could have worked myself into a comma. And I have to admit. I do feel like a kid in a candy store with all this new stuff to keep me busy. Please, by all means, entertain me!