Monday, December 26, 2005
Merry Christmas to you. Merry Christmas to you. Merry Christmas dear Jesus, Merry Christmas to you.
I’ve been in Juneau for a few days now, and it’s been a nice little vacation, all around. Here, we will document the highlights.
My first day here was pretty short, I got in around noon, saw the family, did lots of hugging and some catching up, and settled in to the house.
Second day was more exciting, I pretty much just played a lot video games all day (Hey, it’s *my* vacation) but in the evening, I went out with one of my good high school friends and his brother. We played some at his house, and then picked up another high school buddy and hit the bars. Now the neat thing about Juneau, for those of you that don’t live here, is that there is only one high school. Just one, everyone goes to it. So barring some ‘move outs’ and ‘move ins’, there’s a good chance that you know everyone within a certain age group. Everyone. Plus, there’s only a few real bars to hang out in, and there all within spitting distance of each other.
We hit up the first bar, the Imperial, instantly saw some people I recognized, chatted it up for a while, and then strolled off to the next one, where we saw more people we knew and listened to a pretty awful guy play the guitar while his buddy hit a bucket with some sticks. That’s classy stuff, for you non-Alaskans out there. But yeah, great time catching up with old friends and seeing people and having a durn good time all around.
Next night was Christmas eeeeeve, so we got some things ready, ate some food (I made Krub again), and then hit up midnight mass. A nice service, punctuated by some excellent choir directing by…MY MOM…and excellent singing by…MY DAD…and…MY SISTER. Saw some more people I knew, shook some hands, came home, sat around the tree and chatted for a little while, and then wonked out something fierce.
Next day…was…CHRISTMAS! Woooo! Got some awesome things, including a food processor, for my budding food-preparation hobby, and this really cool game with magnets called polarity. I’ll throw up some pictures of it later, but it’s a lot of fun to play with. Also some interesting books, games…stuff…things, you know. Christmas stuff! A lot of it has been eaten already. Heh.
J(5) and I previously exchanged gifts, and she wins the prize this year for BEST WRAPPING JOB EVER. She gave me a knife set, but she wrapped them all individually and hid them all over the house, and each of them had a note telling me where the next one was hidden. One would be ‘this is my favorite place in the house’, and I’d go to the shower, and then it would say, ‘the most comfortable thing I own’, and the next one would be in her robe, and on and on and on. It was a ton of fun to do.
My favorite given gift this year is that I got myself photographed by a professional photography troupe at my Tae Kwon Do school doing various action kicks, punches, and the like. I’ve scanned the pictures, so I can post them in a second (once I work on putting this up on the web) and we’ll see how they look, but some of you, especially family members, can look forward to receiving some of them in the mail, once I figure out what your snail mail addresses are, and how to send these things without them getting all wonked up in the mail.
After the bonanza of the present opening, we did another of our little Christmas traditions and did up a puzzle. We just finished it today, it was a pretty tricky one. But at any given time, there’s usually a couple people working on it, so the progress is pretty steady. It’s a fun little tradition.
Today, less excitement. I cleaned out my dad’s car (that was my present to him. His vehicle is a bloody mess. *Was* a bloody mess, rather) and played some games. It’s a low-key, low energy time. Just fine by me.
Upcoming stuff? Not much. Just planning to do some of my favorite hobbies, rest up for my nice little vacation week, and then enjoy a life completely free of any traces of school. That, my friends, is my Christmas present to myself.
-N
I’ve been in Juneau for a few days now, and it’s been a nice little vacation, all around. Here, we will document the highlights.
My first day here was pretty short, I got in around noon, saw the family, did lots of hugging and some catching up, and settled in to the house.
Second day was more exciting, I pretty much just played a lot video games all day (Hey, it’s *my* vacation) but in the evening, I went out with one of my good high school friends and his brother. We played some at his house, and then picked up another high school buddy and hit the bars. Now the neat thing about Juneau, for those of you that don’t live here, is that there is only one high school. Just one, everyone goes to it. So barring some ‘move outs’ and ‘move ins’, there’s a good chance that you know everyone within a certain age group. Everyone. Plus, there’s only a few real bars to hang out in, and there all within spitting distance of each other.
We hit up the first bar, the Imperial, instantly saw some people I recognized, chatted it up for a while, and then strolled off to the next one, where we saw more people we knew and listened to a pretty awful guy play the guitar while his buddy hit a bucket with some sticks. That’s classy stuff, for you non-Alaskans out there. But yeah, great time catching up with old friends and seeing people and having a durn good time all around.
Next night was Christmas eeeeeve, so we got some things ready, ate some food (I made Krub again), and then hit up midnight mass. A nice service, punctuated by some excellent choir directing by…MY MOM…and excellent singing by…MY DAD…and…MY SISTER. Saw some more people I knew, shook some hands, came home, sat around the tree and chatted for a little while, and then wonked out something fierce.
Next day…was…CHRISTMAS! Woooo! Got some awesome things, including a food processor, for my budding food-preparation hobby, and this really cool game with magnets called polarity. I’ll throw up some pictures of it later, but it’s a lot of fun to play with. Also some interesting books, games…stuff…things, you know. Christmas stuff! A lot of it has been eaten already. Heh.
J(5) and I previously exchanged gifts, and she wins the prize this year for BEST WRAPPING JOB EVER. She gave me a knife set, but she wrapped them all individually and hid them all over the house, and each of them had a note telling me where the next one was hidden. One would be ‘this is my favorite place in the house’, and I’d go to the shower, and then it would say, ‘the most comfortable thing I own’, and the next one would be in her robe, and on and on and on. It was a ton of fun to do.
My favorite given gift this year is that I got myself photographed by a professional photography troupe at my Tae Kwon Do school doing various action kicks, punches, and the like. I’ve scanned the pictures, so I can post them in a second (once I work on putting this up on the web) and we’ll see how they look, but some of you, especially family members, can look forward to receiving some of them in the mail, once I figure out what your snail mail addresses are, and how to send these things without them getting all wonked up in the mail.
After the bonanza of the present opening, we did another of our little Christmas traditions and did up a puzzle. We just finished it today, it was a pretty tricky one. But at any given time, there’s usually a couple people working on it, so the progress is pretty steady. It’s a fun little tradition.
Today, less excitement. I cleaned out my dad’s car (that was my present to him. His vehicle is a bloody mess. *Was* a bloody mess, rather) and played some games. It’s a low-key, low energy time. Just fine by me.
Upcoming stuff? Not much. Just planning to do some of my favorite hobbies, rest up for my nice little vacation week, and then enjoy a life completely free of any traces of school. That, my friends, is my Christmas present to myself.
-N
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Hey, looks like this works! So this is J(5) and me, at Halloween, looking either adorable or mysterious. Let's see what other pictures I have lying around here...
Rice Crispy Treat Throwing Stars! Woohoo!
Here's everyone in costume for Halloween. Small picture, I know, you can click on it for a slightly larger version, or e-mail me for a MUCH larger version, if you want.Well awesome buckets, then, I can upload some pictures now. I should get the ones from New Mexico on my computer soon, but I'm leaving for AK tomorrow, so it may be a while before everything gets posted. Happy Days to all!
-N
Monday, December 19, 2005
A summary of neat things that have happened over the past few weeks:
I’M DONE WITH MY MASTERS DEGREE! I took the last final a week ago, went pretty well, and while it’ll be a while before I’m, perhaps ‘officially’ done with school, the part where I have to do work is over. So that’s pretty much the best news I’ve had all year. I had what many would consider to be a ‘very festive beverage’ when I left that last final too, and so I hung around school for a while to eat dinner while my ‘festive beverage’ ran its coarse. Then I went home.
No, technically I didn’t drink for a week, as I threatened to do before, upon completing my final. In fact, there really wasn’t that much alcohol at all. The day after my final I went to a work-friends wedding. A lovely ceremony, a delicious reception, and then dancing and festivities. All without alcohol! Cool! Here’s my wedding story:
So I’m on the dance floor, and they’re playing some funky-cool music, and I’m quite digging it. I start working in some of my techno-dance moves, cause I can, and cause that’s really the only kind of dancing I’m any good at. Yes, I look like lemur on muscle relaxants, but I do it with authority, confidence, and I like it, so it’s good dancing. Well at this party was another guy, someone I’d never met before, who was really good at dancing. He was in the wedding party, looking quite dapper, and busting out moves on the floor that demonstrated either a lot of time on a dance floor, or perhaps a degree in dance. Either way, he’s pretty good. So after a while, he comes over, and we start working off each other. He’ll do something, and I’ll try to mimic it, or the other way around. It was a lot of fun. Well after a while, I decide to rest and grab a tasty beverage, so I shake the guys hand and thank him for the good time. That’s when I hear applause. As it turns out, we two were the only two people on the dance floor, and pretty much everyone had been watching us tear it up for quite a while. I don’t think I’ve ever had my dancing applauded before. It was a pretty great-fun time. So just remember that next time, kids. You can get away with anything—ANYTHING—on a dance floor, as long as you do it with confidence.
So stayed at the dry wedding till it was over, had great time with everyone, came home, went to sleep.
The next day is the big party. It’s a ‘housewarming’/’graduation’/’early Christmas’ party. Three in one! It was a housewarming party for The Chef, who had just bought herself a condo. It’s a pretty nice place, with a big ol’ kitchen, so it’s just right for her. There were graduation festivities too, for both myself and Bon Bon, who both graduated this semester. And there was a gift exchange, too. I got a duffel bag, which will make a great upgrade to my current Tae Kwon Do carrying bag, which is currently held together by duct tape. It had some bleach spilled on it several months ago, and I didn’t know, at the time, that bleach in it’s undiluted form will EAT RIGHT THROUGH YOUR CLOTHES. Luckily, it only got the bag, but let that be a warning to you. Bleach is tough stuff.
So the plan was to go drinking. I was supposed to get really hammered, celebrate my graduation, and then sleep it off on Sunday. But remember, this was a celebration for the Chef, too, which means she was cooking. And the Chef is an AWESOME COOK! So the first thing I did when I got there was eat a bunch of her food, because it was totally and completely delicious. But then I was too full to drink. And then every time I would digest some space back into my stomach, I’d walk back into the kitchen and this would happen: over here would be Alcohol, which isn’t that tasty even in it’s best moments, and over here would be delicious Chef food. And so I’d go for the Chef food. So I didn’t get a lot of alcohol, but I did get a lot of candy and chicken and fondue, so It was hardly a loss.
Then Sunday J(5) and I went out to get some post-party breakfast at a café down the street from her house, and as we get there, we see people setting up for something. Well as we get closer, J(5) recalls that there’s a Holiday parade on this very day along main street and so we grab ourselves some breakfast, sit down with our tasty beverages on the side of the street, and catch a totally unplanned showing of holiday floats. I got to see various El Segundo council people, some cheerleading and drill teaming, and even a live band on a trailer. They were quite good.
Then there was a work week, work stuff happened, not nearly as interesting as the weekend.
So now we’re caught up to this weekend, which I just returned to from a nice little vacation out to New Mexico. One of my pairs of friends (married) who we will call ‘Kits’ and ‘Kilts’, have found themselves transplanted to New Mexico, which, as my research has shown, is a pretty neat little place to live.
So! In order to better explore all the experiences this world has to offer, I, with J(5) by my side, decide to take the train to New Mexico. This turns the whole weekend into a sort of double-vacation, alternately either checking out ‘being on a train’ or actively goofing off in New Mexico, Albuquerque, to be exact.
Here’s my review of trains. Coach class gives you a first-class-on-a-plane sized seat for a dangerously small price, but the trip takes a LOT longer. I wouldn’t recommend coach for any trips over a day in length, because sleeping in those chairs, with everyone else around, isn’t really the most restful of experiences. For somewhat shorter trips that you just don’t feel like driving, though, trains are awesome on coach. Scenery is great. Good stuff.
On the way up, though, I got us a two-person sleeper car. My recommendation: take sleeper cars for any trips over 1 day in length. Having a private room and the twin-sized sprawl-space makes the entire trip much more bearable. We had a great time just poking around at things, having our free meals (sleeper cars come with all food included!) and all of this for a price right around what a plane ticket might have cost.
Think of it this way: plane vs. train on sleeper car. Essentially you’re trading speed for leisure. If you’ve got the time to get there, and the season doesn’t make the sleeper cars too expensive, I heartily recommend them. Makes your vacation start as soon as you start traveling. Good stuff.
And ABQ itself was a fantastic place. We took a tram up top of a nearby mountain to see the whole city sprawled out in all of its glory, we went to a Christmas light show at the botanical gardens, went to the atomic museum, read some comic books and watched some movies, and did more eating of food than any human being has ever done before. Concerned parents will be quite happy to know that J(5) and us usually had to debate which one of us would pay for dinner for our hosts on pretty much every meal. Kit got us once, but only once. We didn’t let many slink by our ‘kindly guest’ force-field. It was a great time.
So now I’m back, having dovetailed my first experience traveling by train with my first experience traveling by metro rail through LA. It’s a pretty civil way to travel, as long as you accept the fact that a certain percent of people in LA are crazy, and a certain percent of those crazy people ride metro, and so you may have to listen to some of the most ridiculous posturing and angry yelling you have ever heard.
Quotes!
“Why you put your elbow in my face? Why you put your elbow in my face. You don’t just put your elbow in someone’s face. That’s being rude to women. Don’t put your elbow in my face. You put it in my face.”
“I’m not gonna fight you, you got your man and baby with you! You meet me here next week!”
And several other jewels unfit for civilized ears or keyboards. This all came from an argument between a somewhat crazy lady and another angry lady, neither of which had the good sense to just calm down and try not to make themselves look like absolute idiots in front of everyone else on the train. It makes for a good story, at least, and I was ready to leap between J(5) and danger should the argument have come to blows (It didn’t), despite being unable to move, pretty much, because of my bit-o-luggage for the trip. I think everyone’s first experience with metro has to involve a crazy person, though, perhaps even by public statute.
Voof! Finally, an update. So give that a good read, discuss amongst yourselves. I’ll be seeing several of you coming up very soon now. So good Christmas-stuff to all of you. Ta!
-N
I’M DONE WITH MY MASTERS DEGREE! I took the last final a week ago, went pretty well, and while it’ll be a while before I’m, perhaps ‘officially’ done with school, the part where I have to do work is over. So that’s pretty much the best news I’ve had all year. I had what many would consider to be a ‘very festive beverage’ when I left that last final too, and so I hung around school for a while to eat dinner while my ‘festive beverage’ ran its coarse. Then I went home.
No, technically I didn’t drink for a week, as I threatened to do before, upon completing my final. In fact, there really wasn’t that much alcohol at all. The day after my final I went to a work-friends wedding. A lovely ceremony, a delicious reception, and then dancing and festivities. All without alcohol! Cool! Here’s my wedding story:
So I’m on the dance floor, and they’re playing some funky-cool music, and I’m quite digging it. I start working in some of my techno-dance moves, cause I can, and cause that’s really the only kind of dancing I’m any good at. Yes, I look like lemur on muscle relaxants, but I do it with authority, confidence, and I like it, so it’s good dancing. Well at this party was another guy, someone I’d never met before, who was really good at dancing. He was in the wedding party, looking quite dapper, and busting out moves on the floor that demonstrated either a lot of time on a dance floor, or perhaps a degree in dance. Either way, he’s pretty good. So after a while, he comes over, and we start working off each other. He’ll do something, and I’ll try to mimic it, or the other way around. It was a lot of fun. Well after a while, I decide to rest and grab a tasty beverage, so I shake the guys hand and thank him for the good time. That’s when I hear applause. As it turns out, we two were the only two people on the dance floor, and pretty much everyone had been watching us tear it up for quite a while. I don’t think I’ve ever had my dancing applauded before. It was a pretty great-fun time. So just remember that next time, kids. You can get away with anything—ANYTHING—on a dance floor, as long as you do it with confidence.
So stayed at the dry wedding till it was over, had great time with everyone, came home, went to sleep.
The next day is the big party. It’s a ‘housewarming’/’graduation’/’early Christmas’ party. Three in one! It was a housewarming party for The Chef, who had just bought herself a condo. It’s a pretty nice place, with a big ol’ kitchen, so it’s just right for her. There were graduation festivities too, for both myself and Bon Bon, who both graduated this semester. And there was a gift exchange, too. I got a duffel bag, which will make a great upgrade to my current Tae Kwon Do carrying bag, which is currently held together by duct tape. It had some bleach spilled on it several months ago, and I didn’t know, at the time, that bleach in it’s undiluted form will EAT RIGHT THROUGH YOUR CLOTHES. Luckily, it only got the bag, but let that be a warning to you. Bleach is tough stuff.
So the plan was to go drinking. I was supposed to get really hammered, celebrate my graduation, and then sleep it off on Sunday. But remember, this was a celebration for the Chef, too, which means she was cooking. And the Chef is an AWESOME COOK! So the first thing I did when I got there was eat a bunch of her food, because it was totally and completely delicious. But then I was too full to drink. And then every time I would digest some space back into my stomach, I’d walk back into the kitchen and this would happen: over here would be Alcohol, which isn’t that tasty even in it’s best moments, and over here would be delicious Chef food. And so I’d go for the Chef food. So I didn’t get a lot of alcohol, but I did get a lot of candy and chicken and fondue, so It was hardly a loss.
Then Sunday J(5) and I went out to get some post-party breakfast at a café down the street from her house, and as we get there, we see people setting up for something. Well as we get closer, J(5) recalls that there’s a Holiday parade on this very day along main street and so we grab ourselves some breakfast, sit down with our tasty beverages on the side of the street, and catch a totally unplanned showing of holiday floats. I got to see various El Segundo council people, some cheerleading and drill teaming, and even a live band on a trailer. They were quite good.
Then there was a work week, work stuff happened, not nearly as interesting as the weekend.
So now we’re caught up to this weekend, which I just returned to from a nice little vacation out to New Mexico. One of my pairs of friends (married) who we will call ‘Kits’ and ‘Kilts’, have found themselves transplanted to New Mexico, which, as my research has shown, is a pretty neat little place to live.
So! In order to better explore all the experiences this world has to offer, I, with J(5) by my side, decide to take the train to New Mexico. This turns the whole weekend into a sort of double-vacation, alternately either checking out ‘being on a train’ or actively goofing off in New Mexico, Albuquerque, to be exact.
Here’s my review of trains. Coach class gives you a first-class-on-a-plane sized seat for a dangerously small price, but the trip takes a LOT longer. I wouldn’t recommend coach for any trips over a day in length, because sleeping in those chairs, with everyone else around, isn’t really the most restful of experiences. For somewhat shorter trips that you just don’t feel like driving, though, trains are awesome on coach. Scenery is great. Good stuff.
On the way up, though, I got us a two-person sleeper car. My recommendation: take sleeper cars for any trips over 1 day in length. Having a private room and the twin-sized sprawl-space makes the entire trip much more bearable. We had a great time just poking around at things, having our free meals (sleeper cars come with all food included!) and all of this for a price right around what a plane ticket might have cost.
Think of it this way: plane vs. train on sleeper car. Essentially you’re trading speed for leisure. If you’ve got the time to get there, and the season doesn’t make the sleeper cars too expensive, I heartily recommend them. Makes your vacation start as soon as you start traveling. Good stuff.
And ABQ itself was a fantastic place. We took a tram up top of a nearby mountain to see the whole city sprawled out in all of its glory, we went to a Christmas light show at the botanical gardens, went to the atomic museum, read some comic books and watched some movies, and did more eating of food than any human being has ever done before. Concerned parents will be quite happy to know that J(5) and us usually had to debate which one of us would pay for dinner for our hosts on pretty much every meal. Kit got us once, but only once. We didn’t let many slink by our ‘kindly guest’ force-field. It was a great time.
So now I’m back, having dovetailed my first experience traveling by train with my first experience traveling by metro rail through LA. It’s a pretty civil way to travel, as long as you accept the fact that a certain percent of people in LA are crazy, and a certain percent of those crazy people ride metro, and so you may have to listen to some of the most ridiculous posturing and angry yelling you have ever heard.
Quotes!
“Why you put your elbow in my face? Why you put your elbow in my face. You don’t just put your elbow in someone’s face. That’s being rude to women. Don’t put your elbow in my face. You put it in my face.”
“I’m not gonna fight you, you got your man and baby with you! You meet me here next week!”
And several other jewels unfit for civilized ears or keyboards. This all came from an argument between a somewhat crazy lady and another angry lady, neither of which had the good sense to just calm down and try not to make themselves look like absolute idiots in front of everyone else on the train. It makes for a good story, at least, and I was ready to leap between J(5) and danger should the argument have come to blows (It didn’t), despite being unable to move, pretty much, because of my bit-o-luggage for the trip. I think everyone’s first experience with metro has to involve a crazy person, though, perhaps even by public statute.
Voof! Finally, an update. So give that a good read, discuss amongst yourselves. I’ll be seeing several of you coming up very soon now. So good Christmas-stuff to all of you. Ta!
-N
Monday, December 12, 2005
Okay, this post was supposed to go up two weeks ago, but it never got put up. I'll update y'all on further good news soon. Ciao!
****************
Woof! Thanksgiving! Food! Eat stuff! Blargblargblarg!
As is traditional, I went up to Las Vegas to visit my Aunt for thanksgiving. A fun time was had by all. My uncle was actually off work on Friday, so we decided to postpone the actual construction and consumption of turkey until Friday, which meant that Thursday was open for one of my other favorite thanksgiving activities, the voodoo lounge!
The voodoo lounge is a lounge on top of the rio, which is off the strip, and it’s got one of my favorite views of vegas, cause you can see the whole strip and all the lights and it’s just gorgeous. Well, myself, cousins, and other associated friends met up there, had some alcohol, did some dancing, and all-in-all had a pretty fantastic time.
Also, Crub (Krub?) was made, another fantastic tradition/meal. It came out quite well. And, of course, there was the thanksgiving meal, with all the pretty standard eating-stuff. Delicious all around. My uncle was a bit worried about his waistline, because he’s been on a diet of late, and has been, by all reports, quite good on it. So good, in fact, that there were a bunch of pants that he was planning to give away to goodwill since they weren’t even close to fitting him anymore. And now they do. So yay for healthiness.
After the turkey was consumed (and after I took a serious nap), Uncle, my cousins husband and myself all rolled off to Gameworks, which is great, nerdy fun. You go there and buy a card that lets you play any game you want for X number of hours. And they have alcohol upstairs, too. I wasn’t drinking, but I just like the idea of an arcade/bar so much. Gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside.
Saturday I went to the indoor swap meet (another tradition) and picked up my yearly influx of incense. (I don’t use it that often, but it’s nice to have.) And afterwards stopped at a GameStop place (they sell video games) and played around on the new, fancy, Xbox 360. My initial impressions: it’s neat, but I’m going to take my time on this one. The new consoles, it seems, will really need a new HD TV to take full advantage of the graphics, and it’ll be pretty near impossible to get an Xbox until the initial fervor drops off. It looks neat, and there’s some cool games on the way, but I’m going to wait until prices drop a little more, a few more games show up, any kinks in the hardware are worked out. As with most technology, I’ll wait until it’s refined a bit and made a bit less expensive. I’m in no hurry, I have a *lot* of games to play before the end of the year.
And, happily, the trip back home from Vegas was wonderfully uneventful, though it’s time for me to get my car serviced again.
Two lectures and one final remain: yay countdown!
-N
****************
Woof! Thanksgiving! Food! Eat stuff! Blargblargblarg!
As is traditional, I went up to Las Vegas to visit my Aunt for thanksgiving. A fun time was had by all. My uncle was actually off work on Friday, so we decided to postpone the actual construction and consumption of turkey until Friday, which meant that Thursday was open for one of my other favorite thanksgiving activities, the voodoo lounge!
The voodoo lounge is a lounge on top of the rio, which is off the strip, and it’s got one of my favorite views of vegas, cause you can see the whole strip and all the lights and it’s just gorgeous. Well, myself, cousins, and other associated friends met up there, had some alcohol, did some dancing, and all-in-all had a pretty fantastic time.
Also, Crub (Krub?) was made, another fantastic tradition/meal. It came out quite well. And, of course, there was the thanksgiving meal, with all the pretty standard eating-stuff. Delicious all around. My uncle was a bit worried about his waistline, because he’s been on a diet of late, and has been, by all reports, quite good on it. So good, in fact, that there were a bunch of pants that he was planning to give away to goodwill since they weren’t even close to fitting him anymore. And now they do. So yay for healthiness.
After the turkey was consumed (and after I took a serious nap), Uncle, my cousins husband and myself all rolled off to Gameworks, which is great, nerdy fun. You go there and buy a card that lets you play any game you want for X number of hours. And they have alcohol upstairs, too. I wasn’t drinking, but I just like the idea of an arcade/bar so much. Gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside.
Saturday I went to the indoor swap meet (another tradition) and picked up my yearly influx of incense. (I don’t use it that often, but it’s nice to have.) And afterwards stopped at a GameStop place (they sell video games) and played around on the new, fancy, Xbox 360. My initial impressions: it’s neat, but I’m going to take my time on this one. The new consoles, it seems, will really need a new HD TV to take full advantage of the graphics, and it’ll be pretty near impossible to get an Xbox until the initial fervor drops off. It looks neat, and there’s some cool games on the way, but I’m going to wait until prices drop a little more, a few more games show up, any kinks in the hardware are worked out. As with most technology, I’ll wait until it’s refined a bit and made a bit less expensive. I’m in no hurry, I have a *lot* of games to play before the end of the year.
And, happily, the trip back home from Vegas was wonderfully uneventful, though it’s time for me to get my car serviced again.
Two lectures and one final remain: yay countdown!
-N
