Enjoying the silence

The house has been pretty empty these last couple days. The girls are off at camp and G has been in and out with friends. Ah blessed silence. Lovely wife has managed to tidy up G's room to some extent. Who knew he had a floor in his room?!

We've watched a couple B grade action movies these last couple days. The Numbers Station with John Cusack and The Double with Richard Gere. They were serviceable action/thriller movies. Not great, but not horrible.

I finished reading You by Austin Grossman. It was a lot of fun. Similar in some ways to Ready Player One and different in others. It tends to cover the history of video games as opposed to the future, but they both deal with people that let their lives revolve around them or the industry. Pretty fascinating. I've read some negative reviews by people that had issues with the point of view changes and so on. I think they're idiots. It's not that confusing. Admittedly 2nd person does take a little getting used to if you've never read something like that before, but it makes perfect sense in this context as Grossman is discussing a medium that is all about player interaction.

Apparently G is scared by Betrayal at the House on the Hill. This could have had something to do with the fact that he ended up getting selected as the traitor, or it could be that he just finds the game spooky. Not sure. The girls still love it though.

Random things we've noticed recently: chocolate chips make pretty much all breakfast foods better, home made ice cream is still really good, grilling on a serious bbq grill is pretty awesome, serious bbq grills still have problems with odd hot and cold spots.

I should also mention that I rode a zip line.

Cliffhanging

Finished off season 2 of Haven. It was quite good and that last episode was quite mean. I want to see season 3 pretty much right now... So many niggling questions.

We also finished season 1 of White Collar. Also quite momentous. Fortunately we could watch the episode 2 season opener the next day.

Over the weekend we watched Brewster's Millions (still holds up) and Zorro the Gay Blade (what on Earth did I just watch?!) We were really hoping to watch Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins but the tape is MIA. We also played Smash Up (some interesting ideas that after a couple plays will probably gel a little better. It seemed to go on a little longer than it needed to, but I think that will tighten up once you know the cards and the factions a little better.) and String Railway (a clever little area control sort of game where you build railroad lines using strings and small tokens. It was pretty brilliant actually.)

G had his first Pinewood Derby. A couple second place finishes and a couple third place finishes. He had fun though so that's great. And he did pretty much the entire car by himself. McK has obtained the role of Pirate in the Jr High's upcoming Pirates of Penzance performance.

I finished off Bioshock. It's a pretty interesting game. Certainly some disturbing themes and moments. Also some pretty unique choices on offer. After I finished the game I watched a couple of the extra videos that were available. I was completely uncreative in my methods of dispatching enemies apparently. I tended to just bludgeon things with my wrench. Less ammo used that way... Figure I'll play Darksiders since it looks completely silly and goofy and then head back for Bioshock 2. (Not so much on the silly and goofy in that one.)

There's a lot of snow around here...