Day off!

I had a pretty good day off today... I've felt better, but I was pretty relaxed for the most of it.

I played a bunch of Brothers in Arms this morning, and it was a lot of fun... great storytelling. I also played some Company of Heroes, Half-Life and Rock Band 2, and a little bit of WoW.

I don't really know what else to day right now, so...

Couch Gaming

I've spent two evenings with my two new games, Rock Band 2 and Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway, and while I feel it's too soon to actually write a "review" or whatever, I think it's safe to give my initial impressions (knowing that they may change as time goes on). I'll start with the easier one...

Rock Band 2 is basically an expansion pack with a few added features that should have been in the original game in the first place. Same look and feel, same characters, new songs. I'm actually a bit disappointed by the lack of a real career mode like the first game had. Instead of having a Career mode, where you pick your instrument and difficulty and make your way through the increasingly difficult tiers of songs, playing each one once, one at a time, in a linear fashion, now you have to create a band that is capable of holding up to four real people, and just play that "Tour" with you as the only member. The thing is, when you switch instruments, you continue your tour from where you left off, so say I started the tour on guitar, played the first four or five songs on Expert Guitar, and then wanted to try drums. When I come on as drums, those songs will already have been completed, and my next songs will be the same as if I was still on guitar. Obviously I can go back and play songs on drums that I already completed on guitar, but it's difficult to keep track of which ones I've completed on both because the main reason for playing the game is to set high scores on each instrument, so I want to make sure I play each song on each instrument at least once. That's my main complaint so far... oh, and playing the Tour mode can get pretty boring since much like the World Tour in the first game, you play the same songs over and over again constantly, it gets really repetitive.

Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway isn't quite working out to be what I wanted it to be. To really be specific about it I'd need more time and patience, but basically, the game is set up so you can set your fire team to surpress the enemy behind a wall or hedge, so they can't move or they'll get shot, and then you and your assault team sneak around the side, flank them and shoot them from the side where they are open, however in this game, at least so far, they seem to have forgotten to put in any way to flank the enemies, so every encounter is just a draw. They're behind a wall shooting you, and your behind a wall shooting them and it's a long and boring process of poking out and hitting the top of their head and popping back in. The entire satisfaction that the first two games brought to table was that feeling of awesomeness when you successfully flank and slaughter a bunch of nazis. Right now it just feels like Rainbow Six: World War 2, and not in a good way.

Tomorrow is WoW night, and I'm looking forward to that.

I'm going to put on Iron Chef America and lay in bed.

Games!

On my way home from work today I stopped in at Blockbuster and bought Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway and Rock Band 2, so I've been playing them this evening.

I'm currently watching SNL but I think I'm going to go play Brothers in Arms after a bath.

I'll talk more about the games tomorrow perhaps.

Dentist Aftermath

All I'm going to say about work is that it was slow and decent, and I didn't have any problems.

I had a dentist appointment at 4pm, and my Mom drove and picked me up at work at 3:30 and drove me there (I had her buy me a PC lasagna because that's what I eat when I feel sad) and we got there around 4pm.

I'm pretty good at the appointments now... I don't really get scared or uncomfortable, but today's was especially painful and not very comfortable. Even after three freezing needles, I could still feel pretty intense pain during drilling, but he had to finish it, so I just suffered through it. Afterward, it was throbbing and painful, and even after taking a T3 it kept on going.

I've taken a total of three T3s tonight, and it feels okay now. I can't touch the area, or move my lip to the point where it may use those specific muscles, but I'm not in pain just sitting here.

I did play a bit of WoW this evening, but I also sat down and played Super Mario Galaxy finally, I managed to get three stars, which is about doubling my progress (sad, I know). Tomorrow I plan to play some Half Life 2 and Mario Galaxy, and probably some WoW, although I'm not really sure what I want to do.

I'm really tired... like reeeally tired, and it's only 12:10am, I usually go to sleep later than this on a day where I have to work the next day, so I feel like it's wasting time, but I guess today was especially traumatic, so maybe I should just give in and go to sleep.

Oh yeah, I'm really thirsty.

A Longing

I've been wanting to play Super Mario Galaxy lately (and a few other things) but I find myself always sitting down and playing WoW, even when I feel like I want to play something else.

I think that might be a kind of bad thing...

I'm off to bed, work tomorrow and then a dentist appointment right after work, then 50/50 chance of having Thursday off. It could be a day off, or it could be a first aid class thing at work where I don't have to actually work, but can't really play games so it's not that cool.

Wish I didn't have to sleep yet, I could go play Super Mario Galaxy! Bah...

It's a day off!

Work went well yesterday as it was a pretty relaxed day, so I wasn't stressed out or upset or anything. It went by quickly, and there isn't really anything noteworthy to mention.

I spent the night playing WoW with Ben as we always do on Monday. We did a bunch of quests in Terokkar, and Michelle, Ben and I three manned Mana Tombs up to the first boss, then invited two others to come and dps for us for the rest of the place. We ended up getting up a full level, Ben respecced Destruction and I think we made a good amount of progress.

This morning the WoW servers are down for maintenance so I'm forced to do other things with my time. I played some Geometry Wars 2 and Half Life 2, and a tiny bit of Bioshock (on hard) and now I'm just listening to 1Up FM and waiting a few minutes to go on and play WoW.

Work Tomorrow

I feel how I always feel the night before I have to go to work after having a day off. I played WoW, woke up late, was really lazy, and now my heart is pounding, my stomach feels like it's going to explode and I really don't want to go to sleep because that makes work come faster.

I've been thinking a lot about what's been making me uncomfortable... uncomfortable seems to be the best word to describe the feeling, and I think I really need to force myself to deal with these things, to take action instead of hoping it'll stop bothering me. It's affecting me, and perhaps adding to my general anxiety that I feel on a day to day basis.

I woke up late tonight, so I'm not really tired. I should go to sleep, but I can't, so I won't. I'll be really tired tomorrow, and maybe nap before my WoW night with Ben. I have to wake up at 6:15, so if I went to bed at 1am that's 5.25 hours of sleep, or 2am would be 4.25 hours... both I could deal with I guess.

It's Late

It's time for bed, but I thought I'd do a quick summary of the day.

I woke up this morning to find out there was nothing to eat for breakfast, so I pretty much went the entire day (5:40am to 4:30pm) without eating anything. I got a really bad migrane (jeeze, I wonder why), and it was so bad that I took a couple tylenol 3's after eating dinner and fell asleep for a long while.

I got up around 8:30 I think, right around when Michelle got home, and I watched the season premier of The 1Up Show and then played WoW for a bit, now Iron Chef America is over and it's time for me to get into bed.

Tomorrow is a 9 to 5 shift and then I get Sunday off, so hopefully it'll be a good day, and if it's not, who gives a shit because I don't have to deal with it until Monday!

Goodbye GFW

Over the last two and a half years I've been listening to the 1Up Network's series of podcasts, 1Up Yours, GFW Radio, EGM Live/1Up FM, Retronauts, Legendary Thread and the 1Up Show, and I've grown quite attatched to the writers, editors and staff there, and today was the very last GFW Radio, my favorite podcast, and it's actually pretty upsetting. Every week I look forward to Wednesday night and hit refresh waiting for the podcast to download, and on my way to and from work I usually listen to an episode, and I know the guys on the podcast better than a lot of people I know in real life, so they feel like friends in a weird way.


Jeff has decided to move on after 17 years and has moved to EA to work on the Sims brand, and Shawn has decided to begin work at 2K Boston with Ken Levine (Bioshock). Earlier this year, Sean Malloy left GFW to work at Blizzard on WoW, so... now that Ryan is the only one left (not to discount Chuf Love or Max Chill) I can see why the podcast has to end, but it still makes me sad. Think of it like how you feel when a tv series you've watched for years has come to an end, it's that same feeling.

It will be missed, and I'll be listening to "reruns" for a long time to come for sure.

Today was a day off, and I of course played WoW a lot. Michelle and I rarely do anything together anymore at all, so I went out of my way to create a situation where I could get her to do something by playing my mage who is on a level near one of her characters, so I got her to come on and we played together for a bit, and the rest of the time I played my hunter. It was a lot of fun, and I really, really wish I didn't work tomorrow.

Tonight is one of those nights where I feel really nervous and shitty about having to go to work tomorrow. The bad shit that went down inside me last work day is still there and I just hate that place right now. That place is fucked up and I deserve way better, but I'm too scared to look.

So I'll spend the rest of the night nervous and tapping my leg uncontrollably, maybe have a bath... I woke up later today, like around 10:30am, but I have to wake up at 5:40am, so I really should be in bed by around 11:30, and asleep by 12, but we'll see if that actually happens.

I made a badass stir-fry for dinner, and... yeah, that's about it.

Addicted to Good Food

Another weird/good/angry day at work, I'm just going to try to forget that place exists for now so...

On my way home from work I had to stop at the grocery store, as I always do when I have a day off the next day, you know, to stock up on chips, pop, make sure I have a lunch and dinner for the next day, so that I can stay in my pijamas and never leave the house.

It's important to understand that the appearance of beef tenderloin in Value-mart is a very rare thing, and one should act when given the opprotunity. I saw they had about three or four beef tenderloin steaks, so I just couldn't resist. I picked one up, grabbed a couple portabello mushrooms, and the other stuff I came for and went home. So I had a great dinner of tenderloin, green and yellow beans, broccoli, mushrooms and onions on top, and mashed potatoes.

Now I'm eating dessert, strawberries and raspberries and a blueberry yogurt. Mark just got here but I can't really hang out with him for the whole night since I've made plans already! Nerdy ones but still.

For the history books

This is mainly for Michelle to see, because I doubt she frequents the 1up editors blogs.

http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=8874678&publicUserId=4561231

Good Morning

I've got a day off today, that's why it's 11:35am and I'm just crawling out of my warm, grey cat filled bed. I figured now would be a good time to write something, you know, before getting settled into my day of relaxing and doing nothing (in a good way).

Writing here is somewhat bittersweet for a few reasons, mainly because I know that no one is going to see it, maybe just Michelle and myself, but I know that deep down the reason I've been writing all these years was just for my own personal record keeping, so in twenty years I can look back and see how much of a pussy I was, and so with that in mind I can keep writing and not really mind that no one is going to see it.

I know that if anyone does eventually come here they're going to be really lost as to what exactly I'm up to in my life, as I've not really communicated with anyone for about a year thanks to having a full time job and how tiring that can be, but instead of writing about the last year, I'll just pick up from like... yesterday, that should do. I mean it would just take so much effort to catch everyone up on a year of.. oh wait, I can do it. I went to work, came home and played games. There we go, we're caught up.

Yesterday I worked at 7:00am to 3:00pm, so I woke up at 5;40am and had my normal breakfast of a glass of juice and two pieces of toast with apple butter, got dressed and watched a few minutes of Breakfast Television, and got my backpack ready by putting my broken piece of crap Logitech Revolution mouse in it. At 6:15 I left and walked to the bus stop at Wellington and Grey. While standing at the bus stop, I realized I had forgotten the backpack with the mouse I was returning after work, and I wasn't going to put it off another day, so I literally sprinted back to my house as fast as I could, ran inside, grabbed it, and sprinted back. The funny part is, I still missed the bus, so I could have casually walked. Anyway, it was a really big mistake to run that fast, for whatever reason, I'm not sure if it was because of how early it was, how much I had eaten or just how horribly out of shape I was, running that fast made me almost throw up, I couldn't breath and it just sucked. The majority of the morning at work I just felt like I was going to throw up... big mistake.

I'm not sure if I really have anything to say about what I did at work... it was work. I was in a pretty bad mood about everything that's been going on, and I've just found myself thinking about sad or upsetting things lately even though I don't want to. I ended up punching the wall and cutting my hand at work, but don't tell anyone.

After work I caught the bus going north to Masonville and went to Best Buy to exchange my mouse for a second time. I made the nice customer service girl test out the new mouse on a computer behind her before I would take it, and she was nice about it. The mouse moved, so that was an improvement on the one I currently had, so I took it and thanked her and went home. I was off work at 3:15pm but didn't get home until 4:30pm or something, so that kinda bugged me, not a lot, but I just value my time away from work and it seemed like an unneccessary waste of time... fuck you Logitech!

Once home I cooked myself and Michelle dinner... grilled chicken breast on a croissant, with a side of green olives, pickles and cottage cheese (all seperate thank you very much). It's a pretty standard dinner that I make myself, it's quick and easy and tastes great. As per normal, I watched Jon and Kate plus 8 while eating (the best show on tv) and it was nice to sit down and not feel like death for awhile.

Monday night is the designated World of Warcraft night with Ben, since he's back in school and needs to.. you know, succeed, World of Warcraft and it's unending addictive nature needs to take somewhat of a backseat, so we play every Monday, and then any day where he's completely caught up and sick of studying. So after dinner I gave him a call and we hopped on Ventrillo and played WoW all evening, but like a lot of the time, WoW is more like something we do in the background and what we're really doing is discussing space time, and math problems. In WoW, our characters are: Panello, my level 65 Restoration Druid, and Defiantbliss, Ben's level 65 Demonology Warlock. For about three hours we just did the same "kill so and so Naga" over and over to get me reverred with Sporregar, so we barely paid attention to the game and just talked about random human mysteries. Around 9:30, Michelle came on and we three manned a five man instance Slave Pens in order to get a quest completed. We had no problems, and doing those dungeons with just us three is one of the most fun things I do in WoW. The amount of thinking, effort and strategy you need, as well as teamwork is just so different to everything else, it's a lot of fun. That took us to about 10:30pm or something, and Michelle went to bed, and Ben and I did a few quests in Terokkar before we were both pretty tired and Ben went to bed around 12:30am or so. I pretty much stopped at that time too, finding myself quite tired having got up at 5:40am and running a fucking olympic event on the way to the bus, so I got into my pijamas and went to bed, and I fell asleep almost instantly.

Today I'll probably play as many games as I can, eat a lazy and horrible but awesome lunch, and maybe make a stirfry for dinner, and just enjoy not being at work as best I can.

It'll be a good day.

Very Tired

I'm very tired now as it's the end of my day... today ended on a good note, so that's very nice. I didn't have the best day at work, and I had to go out of my way to Best Buy after work so that made me get home over an hour later than I had to, but I ended up getting a mouse that's worked all night (so far) and I played WoW with Ben for our weekly session.

Thought I'd update, even if it's just a small one.

I may or may not write another tomorrow! It is my day off after all.

Deep Breath

I haven't felt like this in years... it's weird, and I don't like it one bit. I feel heavy, it's difficult to breath, and I can't concentrate on anything. My thoughts keep floating back to sad or upsetting things, and I can't seem to get away from it.

I've been suffering from a string of bad luck it seems, buying a mouse, it not working, returning it, getting a new one, it not working, losing my webspace (fucking pricks), having to use a peice of shit mouse that fucks up every five seconds (it seriously drives me crazy).

I just need to take a deep breath and feel better, but it's difficult.

Ugh, shoot me in the face.

So... I'm in a horrible mood, I don't want to write, and want to be left alone.

This seems to be my new home online... never thought it would happen, but yeah, I'm too lazy and drained and not creative enough to figure out an alternative.

I didn't lose all my writing or anything, it's all on my harddrive, but I've lost the webspace because of some huge fucking douche bag working at the webspace company. I asked for information on where I would go to cancel my account and he just cancelled it and was pretty fucking rude about it.