Late to the Dance

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Yesterday for whatever reason was extremely rough.  I felt like I spent the entire day sleep walking, so when I finally got off work I came home and took a nap.  Naps are such glorious things at times, I wish I had known that back as a child when I tried to actively evade them.  When I got up I cooked dinner and while still extremely groggy settled in for a bit.

Elite Ready

One of the things I have been attempting to accomplish over my lunch time gaming break is to finish all of the Ashora and Steppes daily quests in Rift.  Usually I manage to chew through Ashora, but rarely do I make a significant dent in Steppes.  However yesterday for whatever reason I seemed to be able to do both without much issue.  This put me fairly high on the daily infinity stone count, and creeping close to that piece of gear that would tip me over 300 hit. 

After all was said and done, I was sitting at 2 stones away from the gauntlets.  Last night I went back out to the Steppes and wandered down along the coastline.  I knew I had left a carnage quest partially finished down there, and as a result I pushed through those last few stones rather quickly.  Still feeling pretty worn out, I decided to go ahead and port back to Tempest Bay and purchase my upgrade.  While I knew I did not have the juice to do any random elites last night, I at least was Elite ready for the grouping tonight.

Late to the Dance

Since redoing the loft I have found myself playing around on my PlayStation 3 a good deal more.  Quite honestly, the loss of my gaming loft as viable space pretty much marks the end of me regularly playing console games.  I simply did not have a TV that was dedicated to gaming, and I never wanted to monopolize the tv downstairs in case my wife wanted to watch something.  So as a result I have essentially been a non-console gamer during this current generation of systems.

As a way to catch up, I went ahead and signed up for a years subscription to PlayStation Plus, as this gives me around a dozen games immediately to play around with.  Namely there were a bunch of titles that I had wanted, but never really had picked or played… namely Sleeping Dogs, Darksiders, The Cave, Ratchet and Clank All 4 One, and Little Big Planet 2.  Since they release new titles for free over the network on a regular basis, I figured it would be an excellent way to passively acquire titles.

Darksiders

I knew this game would be right down my alley, but for whatever reason over the years since its release I have never actually played it.  Big dude, in bigger armor, carrying an even bigger sword really is my ideal game archetype… and this game does not disappoint.  Everything controls extremely well, and it feels a lot like a modern golden axe at times.  I had heard this in the past compared to Legend of Zelda, and I can kind of see the similarities but to me it feels more in line with the old school final fight style fighting games.  I played this for quite awhile last night before my ADD kicked in, but I am sure I will be devoting many hours to running around as a badass horseman of the apocalypse.

Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One

Since I was pretty tired still, my gaming wanderlust was in full effect… also I had a whole stack of games I was wanting to try.  The next on the list was Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One.  I remember being a big fan of the Ratchet and Clank games on the PS2, so this was pretty much a no brainer for me to try out.  I went into it knowing that this was basically a streamlined experience designed to be played with four players.  I was okay with this, and while the world was not nearly as intricate as the ones I was used to from the PS2, it still retained all of the enjoyment of the earlier titles. 

My only takeaway is that the game seemed really easy with Ratchet and Clank as an AI controlled bot.  Clank seemed to always be targeting and taking out the mob types that were difficult for me to get with my wrench.  All of the controls were essentially the same as before, so I regained my ability to play the game rather quickly.  I did not play terribly far but I thought the “driving a space taxi” sequence was extremely fun, with me steering by moving to one side of the taxi platform or another.  Should be a great game to return to and give it more time.

The Cave

The last game I went on a tour of last night was The Cave, and I did so on a very cursory level.  I fired it up, and selected a team of the Knight, the Monk, and the Twins.  Each character feels extremely interesting and has some special ability… that I have yet to really figure out what it is for.  Right now the game seems like it is going to be a puzzle and exploration game.  Essentially you have three characters to control, and various puzzles will require one or more characters to solve.  It has the interesting and humorous writing that is trademark of Double Fine games, so given the time I am sure I will get into it.  Having not played it terribly long, all I can really say is that the world is gorgeous and full of interesting visuals.

Crashing

At this point I was past going, so I decided I needed to head to bed.  I still have Sleeping Dogs downloading as well as a couple others.  Having access to a fresh font of games will definitely make the ps3 feel more useful.  Also having access to a place to set it up, on a dedicated tv… with a comfy love seat to sit on will make it that more likely to get used on a regular basis.  It was absolutely glorious sitting up there with a fan on me happily playing away in our newly renovated loft.  I am going to have to try and resurrect my long red-ringed xbox 360 and get started back playing those games as well.

I have a ton of things to deal with, and today is trash day… so I bid you all goodbye.  I hope you have a great day, and that you survive the rest of the week.  I will be heading downstairs myself to take out the trash, and try and deal with the front door that appears to not be wanting to lock.  It is always something…

Nature Sucks

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This morning being coherent feels like I am running some kind of cruel race.  Honestly being coherent any morning is rough, and the fact that I can string together multiple words into sentences is pretty freakin amazing.  This one is particularly rough because it feels like I did not actually get much of a weekend.  Between yard-a-palooza and furniture moving on Saturday, and the mothers day visiting marathon yesterday I feel like I just need to sleep forever.  I keep reminding myself that sleep is for the weak, and myself keeps giving me the middle finger.

The End of a Ploy

Over the past few years, my wife and I had decided that for mothers day we would divide and conquer.  I would go to my places, she would go to her places, and we would theoretically meet back at home in a shorter amount of time than normally needed.  Apparently my wife realized that she was getting the shaft, and while I also had two people to visit… those two people could be easily coaxed into being at the same location. Whereas her two people were in completely separate towns.

The divide and conquer meant that usually I was back home by 1 or 2 in the afternoon, and could chill out and relax and enjoy the rest of my Sunday.  That said, my wife would roll in around 4 or 5 and have the rest of her day as well… which is still better than going together.  However since we were both exhausted, she was determined that we should go together this year, if nothing else than to try and keep each other from falling asleep at the wheel.  Reluctantly I agreed knowing that Sunday as a whole was a completely gone day for both of us.

Mommy-ball Run

So yesterday got up with our horribly annoying alarm from 1988 going off at 7am… me rolling out of bed, showering and setting down to blog as rapidly as I possibly could.  I grew up catholic, so we had to get up that early to be able to attempt to meet my mother for breakfast immediately after mass at 9 am.  My mom has always talked about going out to eat with a “group of friends” after church, so assuming this was still the case we grabbed a largish table when we got the the restaurant shortly after 9.  We had no clue that it would just be Mom and Grandma, and that they would not be showing up until closer to 10 am.

Our original plan was to eat breakfast, and then go back to Grandmas house and chill out for awhile.  We did not however take into account that if given the choice between talking and eating, my mom will always choose talking.  As a result it took roughly two hours for her to finish her veggie omelet, and by then we needed to start getting on to the next house.  We gave our hugs to mom and grandma, made sure grandma got safely into the car and then moved on down the line to then next house.

All Roads Lead to Bernice

We travelled the almost hour to the next destination, my wife’s mothers house.  She was happy to see us as always, and hugs were exchanged, however she had an agenda.  Over the last few months my wife and I have both gotten into photography, and one of the things we had been searching for were old timey rickety metal bridges.  My wife’s mom thought she knew where a few were… 8 or 9 years ago… so we set out on an adventure to find them.  One of the things we quickly learned that a short distance means something completely different to her than it does to anyone else.

Over the course of the next few hours we drove along the backloads of Craig County in search of the illusive “old metal bridge”.  The first candidate was in a place that kept sounding like folks were saying “Car Salami”, but once we got there we found out that at some point recently it had been replaced with a very spartan concrete bridge.  The river still looked cool so we got out and snapped a few pictures, and played dodge the oncoming cars while doing so.

The next candidate was in what felt like the exact opposite end of the county, honestly maybe 10 minutes from where we started our journey.  We started backtracking with furious vengeance, all the while my wife’s mom telling us tales about what used to be there and who used to live where…  all of which were a super confusing tapestry of references that neither of us actually knew.  We arrived at our destination and low and behold it was a real live rusty metal bridge.  A placard on the bridge announced that it was built in 1913, and while extremely cool it was bizarre how every so often the bridge would shudder and sway.  We had been on the bridge a few minutes when my wife noticed that on one end it was being held together by only a few pieces of rebar… as you could see all the way down to the river below through a crack with only little toothpicks of iron rebar holding it together.  Yeah… we totally drove across it anyways.

The Final Leg

After finding the goal of the mission, we needed to be getting on the road to our last destination.  We travelled the 20 minutes there and at this point we are both extremely sore and tired.  We had a good visit with my wife’s step mom and her dad.  Also got to see my brother in law and his significant other, which was pretty awesome.  We have not seen them much since they moved away from Tulsa.  We talked about my wifes mothers addiction to the kindle, and just how many books she has read.  Her dad showed off his new tablet, that he purchased entirely for playing games on.  It was a pretty chill time of just hanging out and talking, which at that point was roughly all I was capable of doing.

As we headed back home, we had run the marathon for yet another year.  Four people to see, three households and it took roughly 12 hours to accomplish it all.  So this is why I am exhausted this morning, and why no amount of sleep would satiate me at this point.  We had a good time all around, but overall it just wears you out to run around and visit that many people in one day… attempting to make sure that no one feels slighted in the process.  So instead of me getting home around 2 and my wife around 5… both got home at 7 pm.

Nature Sucks

The big take away from the weekend is that nature hates me and is trying to kill me.  After all the yard work, dusting, and running around Sunday, my allergies are declaring war on me.  I have sneezed more in the last 48 hours than I have in the last 4 to 8 months.  As I write this blog entry, I am clearing my throat constantly and praying that the Allegra kicks in without bringing me into an allergy medicated coma.  It is going to be a crazy busy week, but at least I can enter it knowing that a ton of things got accomplished.

I hope the mothers out there had a great Mothers day, and I hope the children out there survived it.  I managed to get in a little bit of Rift last night before collapsing in bed, and the highlight was getting a friend of mine guilded with the Catari Honor Guard.  I will go into my debate over the positives of Alea Iacta Est and Catari Honor Guard another game, but I brought him into the Cats for the simple reason that we have the ability to invite people there.  I hope you guys have a wonderful day.

Double Shower Day

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This morning I am barely capable of movement.  Essentially we worked our little butts off yesterday but I will go into more detail below.  Also I am groggy as shit, since I am having to get up way earlier than normal on a weekend morning so that we can get up and around and try and intercept my mother when she goes to breakfast after church with her friends.  I am not a huge fan of holidays in general, but since mothers place the utmost of importance upon this day I try my best not to disappoint.

The Trash Pile Grow-eth

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Over the week we had decided that the project we were going to tackle was getting the gaming loft back in order.  Essentially for the last several years it has been unusable space.  We had robbed the entertainment center of its television when we started RVing.  When we got Sugar Gliders, the cage needed a relatively dark location, and the loft is habitually so.  In addition all this clutter made its way out there, so without comfortable seating options, and a viable tv it just stopped getting used for anything at all.

The problem with cleaning the loft is that we needed to clear a path through the backyard to start a trash pile.  We had an entire year of leaf litter and random debris that had accumulated back there, so my wife decided that we needed to start the day by clearing a path.  The scope was relatively small at first but we went well beyond the intended stopping spot.

Red Tipped Laurel

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With the help of my brother in law we got the hedges and trees pruned back.  Previously the hedges had overgrown to the point where you could not walk along the backside of the pool at all.  Now the pathway is mostly clear, or at the very least passable.  When the pool guys hooked up the cover to winterize it, they were not able to hook up one of the tethers because it was underneath the hedge.  In our normal fashion, it just took us ages to actually get around to seeking someone with the equipment to trim them.

The other huge surprise is that our trees have flourished.  Not sure why but this year is the first year I have noticed just how big they have gotten.  When we moved it they were half that height and there was a clear delineation between each of the individual trees in each cluster.  All this time we had thought they were just sickly, since every few leaves was a reddish brown color.  According to my brother in law who is a borderline arborist, these are red tipped laurels, and that color mutation is on purpose.  Apparently the trees are excessively healthy.

Winter Debris

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The main thrust of the backyard outing was to clear away all the leaf litter, and assorted debris that had collected over the winter.  Honestly I wish I had taken a before shot, because the backyard was a mangled mess of junk everywhere.  We had gathered leaves at a previous time, but neglected to collect the bags… and over the winter they had disentigrated.  So those were an extra pain to clear.  In addition all the furnature, and pool toys were strewn around the yard.  The majority of pool toys are not even ours, but one of our good friends keeps bringing them over and leaving them.

That is actually the story of our yard as well.  There were so many things just left in the  back yard that we didn’t even recognize.  There was a stereo that had been left out over the winter, and now had little bugs crawling in and out of the back.  There were what felt like a couple dozen cups in various shapes and sizes that once contained a drink.  All of this basically is the assorted debris accumulated by the kid that does our lawn.  He is extremely forgetful, and just leaves things laying around constantly.  We used to get home and find his bike just sitting in our yard for no apparent reason.

Enter Junkman

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This would be disturbing to most, but we’ve seen  him grow up and are used to it.  We are as close to these neighbors as humanly possible, and they have listed us in the past as emergency contacts.  Nonetheless this added up to a bunch of junk that we had no idea what to do with.  We had looked into getting a dumpster rental, we have done that in the past when we knew ahead of time there was going to be an excessive amount of crap we would be throwing in it.  However that is always a pain, and you feel that your time is ticking down since you only get it for a short period of time, and when one is in your front lawn… all sorts of random things seem to show up in it over night.

I had looked into the Bagster, which is a portable dumpster that you pick up at home depot, and then just call Waste Management to pick up when you were done.  However while reading the reviews on Amazon, someone mentioned something they do instead.  Basically they pile the stuff up in their yard and then call a junk and debris company to come get it.  After a quick google I found the Junkman service, and that idea stuck.  Basically you pile your crap up, and then they come load it up for you charging you based on volume.  The cool thing about their service is that they will clean the area to the ground, and try to recycle everything they possibly can from your stuff.  Seems like a win in all possible directions.

To the Loft!

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We did not shower in the morning, since we knew we would get filthy working out in the yard.  So both of us went in, showered, put on relatively clean clothes and went and got some lunch.  My wife ended up taking a cat nap, and I ended up getting sucked into a couple of relatively quick bots matches in League of Legends.  When we got started again we tackled moving the stuff out of the loft that we had intended to… namely these three weird doctors office seating chairs we had picked up ages ago.  We thought the little unit was interesting, but they never really were comfortable, especially for long gaming sessions.

In addition the chairs were massive cat hair magnets.  We corralled the cats into the bedroom, and carried them out one at a time, adding them to the junk pile.  In addition we took out to my Jeep an old HP LaserJet 4 printer that was sitting up there, waiting to be donated to good will.  We had an old male cat that was given to marking everything, regardless of what we did to try and stop him.  So initially we had thought the entertainment center would be in extremely bad shape.

Turns out for whatever reason he had barely touched it.  This combined with the fact that it was extremely well made, which means extremely heavy… we modified our plans and decided to just use the existing center.  We cleaned it off completely, and changed the orientation, to make hooking the cable up easier.  The loft is extremely screwy to be honest.  You have a power outlet on the side behind the loveseat, and it would be near impossible to run cable over there, since that is the side that backs up to our rock chimney.

Loveseat Juggling

The last major chore was trying to figure out a way to get the loveseat up our very narrow stairwell, and into the loft.  This involved so much odd maneuvering, and brute force that I am certain it is the cause of the majority of our aches this morning.  It is amazing how something so relatively small looking can be such a pain in the butt to maneuver.  There were several times we managed to get hung up and stuck on walls, banisters, railings etc.  The final push to where it rests today essentially involved me pulling and lifting with all my might, while my wife got under the other end and lifted it almost straight up in the air.

To be a gentleman, I had tried to grab the end of the loveseat where Mac had sprayed… and even though we had cleaned several times it was still absolutely permeated with the stuff.  As a result once we managed to get the loveseat upstairs and everything arranged… I took my second shower of the day.  I was absolutely filthy from the dusk and cleaning up fermented cat urine.  At this point the sunburn from working out in the yard, combined with the soreness in places I am not sure I even had… left me in a rather catatonic state.  However it was all worth it, when I was able to hang out in the loft and play PlS3 last night in comfort.

Happy Mothers Day

I am needing to wrap up and get on the road.  Going to meet up with my mother after she gets out of church and meet her at the local watering hole for breakfast.  In addition after that, I need to see my grandmother, then travel an thirty minutes and see my wife’s step mother, and ultimately another thirty minutes to see her mother.  It is going to be an extremely hassled day, and as sore as I am right now I am completely not looking forward to it.  However it is Mothers Day, so what are you going to do.  I hope you all survive the madness as well, and for the mothers out there… I hope you have the happiest of Mothers Days.

Almost Elite

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This morning has already started off to be super amazing…  and I am trying to say that with as much sarcasm as I can muster.  In my gathering of breakfast, I had to go to three QuikTrips to find 2 jalepeno sausage rolls.  On top of that I had another wonderful night of NDA restricted activities, so there is not a whole lot that I can really talk about today.  However in keeping with my promise to myself I am going to make something happen anyways.

Almost Elite

I did manage to play a little Rift over lunch yesterday afternoon.  Essentially there are three of us at work that bring our lunch, and laptops and go find a quiet conference room in which to relax and play games over the noon hour.  I think it’s a pretty awesome plan, and it gives us all that mental break we need during the day.  Since our work wifi is laggy as shit, I try my best to do something pretty relaxing.  Traditionally this is some EQ2, but since I have most recently reignited the fires of Telara…  it was some Rift.

While I am loathe to do them for long, I have been focused on getting as many daily quests as I can both of the adventuring and crafting variety.  They are good money, and also give me the sweet sweet infinity stones that I crave.  Yesterday it feels like I made real progress, as between crafting three new items and obtaining another infinity stone item I have replaced all of my greens and pre-60 blues.

Essentially by swapping out two items with infinity stone items, I will be able to get my hit rating up to the suggested 300 for doing elite dungeons.  I am really looking forward to doing some random elites.  As much as I dislike pugs, that reaction seems to be reserved for when I am tanking.  If I am playing a DPS, like I am right now… I seem to be able to just blend into the background and watch the events of the pug unfold around me in a completely stress free fashion. 

I guess when I am dpsing, I no longer feel responsible for the success or failure of the instance.  I am hoping over the next week I can get in enough adventure dailies to be able to start running the instances.  Our little four man team I believe is getting close to being elite dungeon ready as well.  The more gear I can get before that point, the easier it will be for us to break into elites as a team.

Double Fine Bundle

Every so often Humble bundle comes out with an unbelievably good deal.  This time around it is all of the double fine games in one neat and price what you want package.  Essentially they are offering Psychonauts, Costume Quest, Stacking, Brutal Legend and contributor access to Broken Age their kickstarter game.  The kickstarter game requires a $35 dollar donation to unlock, and brutal legend $8 but for 10 bucks you can easily walk away with four really good story driven games.  Definitely worth checking out if you are so inclined.

Backyard Blues

Over the week we managed to get really good deals on two televisions.  One is now hooked up in the bedroom and the other is awaiting us to finish setting back up my game loft.  As a result we will be focusing on that today… since tomorrow will be entangled with mothers day madness.  We are starting out in the backyard first to clear a space to start piling up the old furniture.  Since my wife is now pacing back and forth, I need to cut this short for the day.  I hope you all have a great morning and afternoon and if so inclined an awesome Mothers Day.