Respite

It’s been an

exhausting weekend. My schedule showed three barbeques in three days, and I almost accomplished that much. Friday night I went to Pete and Bec’s for her birthday, and despite an enormously rude faux pas near the end of the night (I was drunk, there was a baby calendar, I said some stuff, it was their cousin) it was a really great night overall. Those guys sure know how to cook a spectacular amount of meat, and do it damn well.

Saturday I nursed my hangover by sleeping in and then heading over to Paul and Debbie’s to soak up the remaining alcohol in my system with yet more meat. Honest to God I think I got drunk again on protein. That reminds me that someone told me you can kind of get drunk on meat. Not drunk exactly, but some analogous reaction. Must look that up. Again, the BBQ chef (Paul) was amazing and everyone just about fell asleep before Dino urged us all inside to play another game of Settlers of Catan. Really like that game, despite the very real danger of losing friends because of it. I think its the trade part of it that really gets people aggro. Playful aggro, and it’s all in the name of fun to have a bit of smack talk at the table.

Today I had my family get-together which excluded me from two of the proposed barbeques. I have to say that I’m kind of thankful for that as my stomach was groaning with the weight of two massive meat meals. Might go the vegetarian option tomorrow and give my system a chance to recover. Amber is as gorgeous as ever, and we had a good time playing with some duplex-type blocks and trains together. As Mum says she’s a parrot, repeats every word you might say to her. Case in point: she was at the door, telling me how it was closed but she could still see birds through the fly-screen. All of a sudden she tilts her head up, points to the pneumatic door hinge and asks me what it is. I tell her truthfully that it’s a pneumatic door hinge, which she considers before scrunching up her face a bit and repeating ‘nemah door hidj’. Ten points for trying. :D

And now I’m here, typing this while I wait for Louise to come home so I can go to bed, get up, and try the whole Thesis-with-a-capital-T thing again. But she isn’t yet, so I’m going to talk about video games I’ve been playing. I have now completed Borderlands for the first time, and while I wait for my good friends Tim and Pat to finish their exams so that we may ‘pwn’ some ‘badass psychos’ together, I have started playing Dragon Age: Origins. I haven’t been gripped by a game’s storyline like this since I first played Baldur’s Gate. This is no coincedence, as the guys that made that also made this. The game is gorgeous, with a lot of effort obviously having been made to convey the smaller details in just as much volume as the larger ones. The controls handle well, and the menu system is well-equipped to handle the huge amount of information that such western RPGs are apt to contain. My first character has played out well so far, though the archery tree isn’t quite as exciting as the more tanky classes might be. Still, there’s more than enough variety with the ability to control any one of your companions in real time. Ultimately though, I vew all the statistics and skill trees and optimisation of gear as just a necessary action demanded by the game as payment for the progression of the incredibly well-realised story. If there was ever an argument for games as an artform on par with books and comic (er, sorry, ‘graphic novels’) then BioWare are the people I would put on the dias to stake the claim.

Alright, she’s here. Time to hit the hay.

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