Just a quick howdy

Lovely wife seemed to think that I needed to post something as it was Thursday. I remain unconvinced. At any rate Christmas was lovely in spite of the lack of snow. I am typing this up on the big Christmas gift - an iPad. It is truly brilliant. Kids made out like bandits and the rest of us did fine as well.

We had a good visit with lovely wife's dad and are now enjoying some quiet time until New Year's. I picked up a new card game Dwarf King and we've played it a couple times. It's a nice little trick taking game with a random scoring element for each hand.

Hope you all had a fine holiday, more as I can be bothered to talk to you lot.

Initiate internet silence protocol Delta Echo

Chances are I will have little to say over the next couple weeks. Mostly as I'll be spending time with family and enjoying Christmas and playing with whatever new toys/games/gadgets make their way to casa del 'd'. So let me wish you all a Happy Christmas here and now and hope that you have the chance to spend at least a little of it around family and also around kids. There's very little better than watching kids around presents on Christmas morning. Especially if it's like 5 AM. Oh yeah, Christmas starts early.

Lovely wife and I both read Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs and liked it. I have heard rumors confirmed facts that there will indeed be a followup title so the open ending is less of a concern. There are some truly great photos spaced throughout the book that help tell the tale. We both knew very little about this book going in (it was recommended to me by a friend at the Library) and I think that was actually a plus. Although lovely wife gave me some idea of what was going on as she read it first. So, if you're in the mood for something a little off kilter that's funny and spooky and interesting, give this one a shot.

Because everything is better with Muppets, I present this without comment.

And, really, that's about all I've got. Again, have a great holiday filled with love, joy and laughter. Because that's the third greatest gift you know.

Christmas time slip

I got nothin'.

Had a lovely conversation with K the other day. Although I forgot to direct her to the Doubleclicks in case she missed that post. It was good catching up. I still think you should stake out the vanquished squirrels as a deterrent.

Castle season 3 continues to trundle along. I've mostly given up following the plots and just enjoy the banter.

Uncharted 3 also continues. The spider/scarab/evil bug things continue to freak us all out. Speaking of creepy spiders, I recommend you all read I'm a Shark. Because it is awesome. Almost as awesome as the shark.

And really that's about all I can think of. I should really contemplate some sort of seasonal wrap up. We'll see. If nothing else I hope you're all having a wonderful December.

Something about a goose getting fat?

The Christmas bug has arrived at Casa del 'd'. The kids seem to think there will be presents or something. I have no idea why they have that impression. They've been little hellions all year. I think we'll go the coal route next year. Certainly cheaper. Theoretically. Maybe we'll give them "get your own coal" IOUs attached to a pick or something. We're pretty close to the end of the foraging for bits and bobs. Honestly I think we're just down to lovely wife and I to shop for. Which has been more of a challenge than it should be.

We're currently wandering through season 3 of Castle. It's been fine so far. I hear it gets a little silly towards the end. Too many fake deaths. We shall see. I still enjoy the banter between Castle and Beckett though so that's good. And how adorable is his daughter? Seriously adorable.

Letter 'r' gave me the Leaders expansion for 7 Wonders so we'll see how that plays soon. Looking through it leads me to believe it will offer some pretty intriguing choices while playing. That's good. Have had the desire to play more boardgames lately, but not been able to accomplish it. Castle and Uncharted are the main obstacles...

Hope you're all having a wonderful holiday season. Now if I can just get the kids to stop putting together all the lego advent figures. It is seriously my turn...

December? Already? Who let this happen?

And so the week that was the letter d's vacation came to a close. Drucon was a rousing success with Fortune and Glory, Gang of Four, King of Tokyo,  and a couple plays of Elder Sign making up the day. We learned to never play Gang of Four against Kim. Ever. Under any circumstances. We managed to prevent one Elder God from arising only to be devoured by Cthulhu itself the next time. Some might say we barely eked out a victory that game, but I prefer to think that we were horribly destroyed. Fortune and Glory was indeed quite a bit of fun, if a touch long. It should speed up some next time provided we play again some time soon, so we can remember how things work. I like the push your luck aspect of the challenges even if I invariably failed somewhere along the way and lost all my glory. I did manage a stellar go at the zeppelin where I snuck aboard, fought the guard and made off with all six fortune markers. It was pretty brilliant.

I decided to take a wander through some of my childhood favorites and re-read The Phantom Tollbooth and The House with a Clock in its Walls over the break. They were still great. Glad to see that. M is currently making her way through Tollbooth and lovely wife braved the house with the ticking clock. If you've never read them, you really should.

This is mostly for the letter K, but the rest of you can feel free to check it out as well. The Doubleclicks are awesome. Two girls, one ukulele, one cello and some seriously catchy geeky music. Their Thing a Week album that you can try out for free is suitably spectacular. It made the trip to Arizona a lot more tolerable. (Seriously, what is up with that drive? People complain about Kansas being boring, but it's got nothing on that stretch from Kingman to Phoenix... Admittedly it probably smells better than western Kansas. Hmm.)

Speaking of the trip, we did indeed brave the "road" down to Arizona and spent Thanksgiving with family. There was a lot of good food, a family picture and the Muppets. Two out of three... I will now gush for a bit about The Muppets. It was great. I loved this movie. I worry that it's too squarely aimed at my age group and thus will not appeal to kids enough to ensure a resurgence of the show. Because when you leave, that's what you want - the Muppets back on the air doing what they've always done. The soundtrack is catchy and heartbreaking and hilarious. The jokes are fun and the cameos were well done. This movie has probably the second best cameo after Zombieland. The first part of the movie is a touch slow compared to the last section (where they're putting on the telethon) but it does contain some wonderful moments, so it's ok. (Seriously, that Pictures in my Head song... It still gets to me)

I managed to get a little Black Friday shopping done online. Snagged Harry Potter 7.2 for $7 thanks to Best Buy and my sister's iPad. I really enjoy not having to go to the stores.

G is engrossed in Skyward Sword and I've fallen down the Uncharted well. Both great games. Man this time of year. I want to try Skyrim too and Disney Universe and... Heh.

So a big thanks to family for helping celebrate my birthday. Littlest sis gets points for making the yummy Boston Cream Pie/cake. In spite of false starts and horrible directions it sure tasted good. And the turkey and everything else was great as well. Little sis will have to send K'''''' up here to do hair. That was seriously the funniest thing.

Now to prepare for Christmas...

If you listen close, you can hear it

That would be the sound of Thanksgiving. Yeah, that holiday that stores pretend doesn't exist between Halloween decorations and Christmas decorations. It's my favorite. And that's only partially due to it's orbit around my birthday. At any rate it draws nigh.

Theoretically this weekend is Drucon. The weather and outside circumstances are doing their best to thwart that notion. Oh well, I've got the games and the t-shirts. That's right, t-shirts. And they are awesome.

You know what else is awesome? Watching the first eight Friday the 13th movies over the course of a week. Well, except for that last one. Manhattan? Really? Flooding the sewers with toxic waste every night at midnight? Whatever. And the psychic chick in the seventh one. What was that all about? But the rest were varying degrees of successful. Except maybe the third one. In spite of the 3D. And we wore the glasses. It was occasionally spectacular and mostly eye strain inducing. It was actually pretty interesting to watch them all like that. The first two are certainly the best, the third was a gimmick, the fourth-sixth were definite products of their time (80s slasher films), the seventh was the weird one until the eighth one came along, and the eighth was both weird and horrible. We've not seen the 9th one yet and Jason X is a silly guilty pleasure. There you go. The body counts reflected a nice bell curve peaking around  5 I think it was. There was also a strange continuity from 4-6 that started with Corey Feldman. Weird. And that possibly explains a lot.

Isle of Blood, the third Monstrumologist book by Rick Yancey, was decent. I think I liked it a touch more than the second one and am still interested in following the series. I'm still amazed at how gory these books can be (considering they're YA) but they are pretty fascinating. I like the characters quite a bit and there is a decent amount of humor and wit woven through.

G is very excited about the upcoming Zelda game. The demo for Disney Universe is also pretty cool. It's pretty similar to the Ratchet & Clank game (competitive co-op if that makes sense) just with a Disney skin. I suspect you only need one, just pick the one that appeals to you more. The Disney game has an added Little Big Planet vibe in that it looks like you're sort of a sackboy character wearing different Disney character outfits. Cute.

I've started reading 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. It's interesting so far. Been a while since I've read him. Looking forward to seeing where it goes.

At any rate, family get together soon. Shindigs. Possible Black Friday shopping. We managed to convince the kids to start throwing together wish lists so we'll probably toss some Christmas shopping in there too. Yup, it's the end of the year...

Pop Pop

Lovely wife and I finished season 2 of Community. This show is worth watching for the paintball episodes alone. Although the first half was better than the second half. (Paintball eps, not season). I am slightly sad that I can't actually watch this when it's on, alas. At any rate, I appreciate the geek factor of the show and the humor.

G has re-visited King of Tokyo and declares it much better with fewer people. We've since played a couple more games and he had a pretty good time with it. It's more fun when you're not constantly waiting for your turn to roll around. If you're seven. I suspect we'll be introducing this one to family over the holidays and smacking each other around Tokyo.

Rick Riordan's second book in the Heroes of Olympus series, Son of Neptune was fine. By the end I was ready for the book to be over, but I mostly enjoyed it. I still find this series more engaging than his Egyptian books. I kind of wish they'd make more movies...

I recommend checking out the Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One demo for the PS3. It's a co-op R&C game and is pretty fun. G and I played part of the demo yesterday. Might have to snag this one. Uncharted 3 is currently on my dresser, mocking me as I wait for my birthday. Lovely wife's Dad was generous enough to get it for me. I really really want to start playing it... Need to check out Skyrim as well. Might hit the redbox for that one.

Other than that things are quiet for a bit. Drucon looms closer, lovely wife's Dad is with her sister for another day or so, we'll be around family for the holiday. So things are in the works, but for now we can take it easy. That's nice.

And a good time was had by all

Goodness, it's been quite a week. Horror movies, Community season 2, Halloween, family in town, birthdays, games. I barely know where to start. The kids enjoyed themselves on Halloween. We had a tiger, a water fairy and a mummy. I leave it to you to sort out who was what. They got far too much candy and had far too much fun, but then, that's what Halloween is for, so I reckon we'll call it even. There was a trunk or treat with chili, haunted hallways and a trip around the block. I held down the fort and answered the door for the few brave souls we had. It was good we didn't have that many as we just about ran out of candy at the trunk or treat.

G is now 7 and had quite the birthday. A trip to Arbys (his choice) and some pretty good presents. A couple wooden Duncan yo-yos, a Hot Wheels Nitro Racer rc car (that insists on going in circles at high speeds, I suspect we'll try exchanging it since the steering alignment buttons don't seem to actually accomplish anything) and the board game King of Tokyo. We gave that one a try last night. His initial impression (with 6 players) is that it wasn't fun as it took too long between turns and he didn't have enough to do. He does want to try it again with just lovely wife and I. My take is that for a first game it went fine and he does have a bit of a point about that many players. If you don't keep the turns moving, it can drag a little. But the game itself is pretty fun. You play a giant monster (think Godzilla) intent on destroying Tokyo. It's pretty much a battle royale utilizing dice and some cards. Plus it only takes like 20 minutes if that. Nice little filler game.

Have had a good visit with lovely wife's Dad thus far. I believe he and lovely wife managed to get some gutter guards installed and have run around a touch.

I had heard of Kate Beaton's Hark! A Vagrant a while back but never got into the webcomic version. The Library recently got the book that collection and I gave it a go. It's hilarious. Beaton studied history and uses that knowledge to create strips based on real people/events with pretty amusing results (there are some not so historical people included as well - Spider Man, Nancy Drew etc.). And in case you are not a history major, Beaton includes helpful explanations which are often just as hilarious. I did not stop laughing. Just ask lovely wife or McK.

So yeah, Community season 2 is pretty hilarious.

I'm probably forgetting a bunch of stuff. But it's been a busy week, so there you go. Bring on November!

The Horror!

Have consumed a fair amount of horror films lately. And still have quite a few to go. Let's see, watched Carpenter's version of The Thing, The Child's Eye (by the Pang Brothers), the bulk of the Resident Evil movies (2-4 as I'd seen the first one not too long ago), Thor. Wait. That one might not count. Or does it? Hmm.

Still have Trick 'r Treat, The Boogeyman and The Sentinel on tap plus some other stuff. I also finished off that second book in the Monstrumologist series, Curse of the Wendigo. So there's been a fair amount of horror filled goodies to fill out this October. I am pleased. Lovely wife might be a touch burned out (she opted to fore go The Child's Eye last night) but that's not gonna stop me. Horror will go on. Much like Jason or Freddy. Down, but never out for the count.

Most of it has been pretty decent. The Thing is still a classic and holds up. The Child's Eye (I guess it's theoretically the third film in the Eye series) was kinda odd (dog-headed kid). But the Resident Evil movies... Look, the first one is great. It's both a decent zombie flick and a nice tribute to the games. After that the series just gets weird. Psychic powers, clones, monsters... I don't believe most of those show up in the games (I've only played bits and pieces of a few of them and all the way through 4) so I have a hard time reconciling those differences (other than some character/creature names). And honestly after that first one, maybe the second, the zombies are just kind of there. It's more about the Umbrella Corp. Which I suppose is fine. I almost think they'd have been better served if they weren't RE movies...

Hard to believe October is just about done. We'll have some more family in town soon, plus some birthdays. And Drucon looms near. Time to start sorting out the Fortune and Glory rules. That one looks pretty exciting.

G and I have been making our way through the Scott Pilgrim video game lately. It's been pretty fun. We're up to exes 5 and 6 the Katayanagi twins. That should prove to be rather difficult. And I'm drooling over Uncharted 3. Can not wait to play it. Alas, I'm trying to hold off on purchasing it to see if it crops up in any Black Friday ads. Here's to hoping I can avoid spoilers. I hear there are some real twists and turns in this one.

M is recovering nicely from her tonsillectomy. She's even managed to start talking again. There was a lot of finger spelling at the beginning of the week. Which was pretty useless where I was concerned. No matter how many times she tried to do it, I still don't read sign language.

I have no idea what the kids are going as for Halloween. I have no idea what I'm going as. Maybe I'll throw the lab coat on, grab a potato battery and claim to be a scientist for Aperture Science. Speaking of, I really liked this. I think I'm going to have to grab that song off iTunes when I get home. Apparently it makes an appearance in the game in one of the Ratman's hideaways. It was absent from the soundtrack Valve was giving out. But it will be mine. Oh yes, it will be mine.

Hope you all have a perfectly horror filled Halloween.

Wandering through October

Had a nice visit with family while they were in town. Attempted to fight off one of the Great Old Ones in a game of Elder Sign, but didn't quite manage a whole game due to starting a little later than was wise. And lots of kids running around. That game can play in around an hour, but not easily when you have a larger group and when the rules are still new. Fun was had though, so that's the important thing. It's probably just as well we didn't finish - the dice really weren't with us that night. I suspect we'd have all been devoured. As it was my poor character was driven insane, but was replaced by someone probably more prone to handling the situation we found ourselves in.

Lovely wife and I finished watching season one of Supernatural. I really liked that first season. Lots of varying monsters and not too much focus on yellow eyed demons or Sam's burgeoning psychic abilities. I'm pretty sure that's what killed later seasons for me.

We also had a good time celebrating lovely wife's birthday. She managed to convince me to take a small hike up one of the local canyons in an effort to see some of the changing leaves. There really weren't that many that had changed (surprisingly for this late in the year) but enough to have made it worthwhile I guess.

M is currently suffering the loss of her tonsils, but in spite of that seems to be doing well. Not exactly how I'd want to spend my Fall break, but that's ok.

Well, we've officially started the slide through the holiday/birthday season. Hopefully we manage to make it through with our sanity. I have my doubts.

Ready Player One

I finished Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, handed it to lovely wife and then watched her devour it over a couple days. Yeah, it's that good. It is indeed the book I've enjoyed reading the most so far this year. It concerns itself with a treasure hunt. World has gone to pot, everybody spends their time in OASIS - think WoW mixed with Facebook and a couple other things. Guy that created it kicks the bucket and leaves behind an easter egg somewhere in the virtual world. You need three keys to find the egg. Commence searching. Oh and the guy that hid it? Totally loved the 80s. So the search becomes a road trip through everything 80s nostalgia. So good. Now, if you didn't live through the 80s and more to the point aren't a geek to some extent, you will probably only like this book. He does a fine job of explaining most of the references (leaving a couple for the reader to suss out) so you're never completely lost, but if you fit those criteria you are in for a real treat.

Redbox now carries videogames. So as I was curious about Demon's Souls back when it came out and the spiritual (heh) successor Dark Souls is now out, I thought I'd give it a go. $2 is certainly a better try it out price than $60. It's an interesting game. They're both known for their difficulty - you can expect to die a lot. No really, a lot. No, more than that. Keep going. A little more, there you go, that's about right. You choose a fantasy based character type, start the game off dead and then proceed to become more dead. Except for those times when you manage to come back to life. But you'll die again, don't worry. Enemies are tricky and out to kill you. They succeed. So, why do people play this? It's an interesting question. I think some of it stems from the absolute rush you get when you manage to make it past them. Every so often you will find camp fires, they serve as checkpoints of a sort. If you rest at them, you regain your health and refill your flask that lets you heal while out and about, but it also resets all the enemies you killed. So it becomes a kind of tug of war - do you press on, knowing you might die, but hoping to get just that little bit further, or do you heal up, knowing you've got to fight your way through?

Honestly the most intriguing thing about the game is listening to people talk about it. For example, I was stuck in the middle of Undeadburg trying to fight my way to the next camp fire. I'd managed to learn how to make it to a tower. Climbed said tower, got super lucky when the guardian must have fallen off or something - I sure didn't kill him, and then was confronted by a dragon guarding a bridge with a stair case going down about halfway across the bridge. I was certainly in no shape to fight the beast. I got barbecued a bunch of times trying to make it to that stupid stair case. Not to mention the numerous times I still died just getting to the dragon. Curse those guys and their spears! But I'd done it. Made it to the stair case. Started poking around a bit and there it was. A camp fire. But wait, it looked sort of familiar. That's right, it was the same camp fire I'd been starting at, I'd just kicked a ladder down to it so I could access the bridge under the dragon. I'd gone in a huge circle. I didn't know whether to laugh, cry or punch a hole through the tv. I seriously thought about returning that disc to the redbox snapped in half. But those moments when it goes right... I might have to pick it up when it gets cheap. For those times I feel like wondering why I ever play games.

Little and littlest sis are in town along with the rest of the crew. We sort of attempted the corn maze the other night. Between the rain making the ground a little too spongy and a late start causing it to be too dark to really see, we made it about halfway through before deciding bed time was the better part of valor and re traced our steps. The pig races were as enjoyable as always. G managed to win himself a pig nose thanks to Faith Squeal I think it was. We will get together some tomorrow and possibly again over the weekend for lovely wife's birthday shenanigans.

We've also been making our way through that first season of Supernatural. It really was pretty great. I liked it back when they focused on the monster a week formula. We shall see if it continues.

Fall arrives in force

It's been a pretty rainy couple of days, finally driving the temperatures down where they belong. If you were unsure where Fall was, you don't have to wonder any more. There are even rumors of snow. Winter is coming indeed.

Caught the remakes of Nightmare on Elm Street  and Friday the 13th. We'd seen the latter before. I'd actually forgotten how gruesome it is. I wonder if they're going to bother continuing it or not. As for the former, it was fine. Lovely wife didn't care for the new Freddy's voice, but after the initial shock I adjusted to it. I like Jackie Earle Haley and thought he did well. The story was a touch darker than the original, but mostly because they insisted on spelling a few things out. Freddy's ultimate plan for Nancy was certainly creepy.

I am this close to finishing Ready Player One. It is awesome. Probably the book I've enjoyed reading most all year. And that might well be including Wise Man's Fear. Admittedly part of it is due to the fact that the book is pretty much tailor made for me. Ok, a lot of it is. But it's still great. In honor of awesome 80s nostalgia, I present to you Zork. We called it a text adventure. You wacky kids today refer to it as interactive fiction. Either way, still awesome. And frustrating. Beware the grue.

Psst. There's free Portal 2 dlc available. More co-op levels and challenge mode for both single player and co-op. Oh and the entire soundtrack is available here.

I remember thinking when Steve Jobs left Apple that it would be interesting to see how they would fare without him. I thought he'd still be around for a few months. I was shocked yesterday to learn he had passed away. He will be missed.

Are you ready

I could follow that up with "For Freddy?" but we'll get there.

September is rapidly drawing to a close. Letter 'r' gets to test out the waters of that last year in the 30s for a couple months before I take the plunge. I suspect it feels remarkably similar to things now.

Lovely wife and I watched Hanna last night. That was one intense little movie. I actually didn't know too much about it going in and I think that really made a difference in my enjoyment level. I knew she was raised as an assassin and that the Chemical Brothers did the soundtrack. Honestly part of the reason I watched it was to hear the soundtrack as there were people claiming it was as good or better than the Daft Punk Tron Legacy soundtrack. I'm not sure where I weigh in on that one. I did like it. I think Daft Punk gets the nod though. It would be interesting to hear the Hanna soundtrack divorced from the film. I think it might be odd... Anyway, if you haven't seen it, it's worth checking out.

If you have any love for the 80s, you need to read Ready Player One. I'm about halfway through it and loving it. It's awesome. Radical even. (Totally) It'll appeal a touch more to those with 80s geek cred, but I think anybody who lived through the 80s will find something to latch on to.

So, October approaches. I have several horror movies waiting for me on the hold shelf downstairs. At the moment I'm going with a remake theme. Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Let Me In all fall into that category. (The editions I snagged) I also have Monster Camp which is about LARPing and supposed to be good. We shall see. Will probably watch The Grudge when little sis is around. Still plan on Constantine and I may just snag the Paranormal Activity movies again. I've heard good things about the third one. Yay October.

McK and I managed a quick trial run of Elder Sign. It looks to be pretty good. Will go into more detail once I get a couple more games under my belt. I still need to mock up some bleach designs for t shirts. I want to make a couple horror themed shirts and maybe some game related ones as well.

So Amazon has announced their new tablet, the Kindle Fire. I am somewhat intrigued. I think I'm a little too tied to iTunes to really enjoy something that isn't an iPad but at $200 it might be worth looking into once I hear more about it. Especially as the Library is now loaning Kindle books. Speaking of, I played around with that and read Found the third Magic Thief book. It was good. I really enjoy that series. It also marks the first book I've actually been able to complete on a Kindle. I still don't find the reading experience that enjoyable on those things, but I see where they could be useful for traveling and so on. I will admit the whole checking a book out from the Library on the Kindle is pretty darn cool. I'm curious to see what happens once the checkout period is reached.

Title, title, who's got the title?

Finished reading Jaws the other day. I read that book a long time ago and remember thinking it was different from the movie, but not much more than that. Reading it this time I mostly found it depressing. First, for a book about a shark, there's very little shark. Until the final Moby Dick-esque final act. It focuses mostly on the town and the people in it and they ways they cope with this threat to their town and livelihood. It's not really that pleasant reading about their lives and marriages falling apart. Although it does serve as a decent reminder that life is pretty fragile and all it takes to disrupt things is a giant man-eating fish.

Now I want fish tacos...

I've also made it through The Monstrumologist. I haven't decided what I think of it yet. It was much more gruesome than I was expecting. But good. Certainly a nice prelude to October and horror movie season.

Introduced the letter 'r' to Rivals for Catan over the weekend. He concurs that it is indeed a fine game. I'm really looking forward to some serious boardgaming in the next couple months. We got the shirts for Drucon all made up. They look pretty darn good I must say. I think I may have to start making some bleach shirts with patterns and what not on them. I really liked the way these turned out.

Mom's birthday was this past week. She is missed. And thoughts and prayers go out to little sis.
Also, lovely wife and I might test an old maxim about friendships in the next couple months.
We finished off the anime version of Supernatural. I suspect we're going to try watching the regular version now. Also we watched Season of the Witch an odd little movie starring Nic Cage and Ron Perlman. It was kind of silly, kind of fun. Oh yeah, The Mentalist starts back up tonight. That's grand.

Zombies and stuff

Deadline Mira Grant's sequel to Feed was another fun romp through the zombie apocalypse. No campaign trail this time. But still plenty of conspiracy and banter. I think I liked Feed a touch more, but this one is good too. Wasn't real crazy about the twist at the end, but we'll see what happens in the final book in the series. Whenever it's out...

So I heard rumblings about an anime version of Supernatural a while back. The Library got it in and so lovely wife and I have been watching it. It's decent. I suspect we might end up watching the actual show again. It's a mix of revamped episodes from the first couple seasons and some original content. They actually got the guy that plays Sam to do his own character's voice. Dean is different for the bulk of the episodes, but the actor shows up for the last couple I believe. The actors do an intro for each episode that is part interesting, part goofy.

I've been listening to The Dice Tower podcast to get my boardgaming news fix lately. They have made some rumblings about a Top 100 list. It sounds like they're going to take user content to build a list as well. List your top 10 favorite board games kind of a thing. I thought I'd contemplate what games from my collection would constitute a top 10. Let's see: 7 Wonders, Blue Moon City, Coloretto, Dominion, Forbidden Island, Galaxy Trucker, Mansions of Madness, Pitchcar, Rivals for Catan, Ticket to Ride are the titles that would most likely make up the list. Not entirely certain how I'd rate them as far as a numerical order. I suppose it would also depend on whether I was going for how I felt about them or how often they get played.

I managed to snag a copy of Elder Sign before they all vanished. Depending on how it goes that might alter the face of the previous top 10. I technically snagged it for the upcoming Drucon, but maybe I can coerce lovely wife to let me get it out when family shows up in a month. Got to work those kinks out you know?

Speaking of family a birthday shout out to littlest sis and Grandpa. Got to talk to both of them on their respective days of birth. Sounds like a decent time was had by all. So yay them.

G informed us the other day that he wanted a little brother. I forget the exact reasoning behind this declaration but remember thinking it was amusing. Lovely wife can remind me in the comments or something. We informed him he was out of luck.

Here's to hoping I can avoid whatever plague lovely wife and McK are trying to start in our house. Gotta love going back to school...

Waiting for Fall

And we're a week into September. It needs to cool down now and commence Fall appropriate weather. I'd really like the grass to stop growing and so on. Maybe if we start eating Fall sorts of foods we can encourage nature to take the hint. I recommend some good soups and stews and so on. Mmm. Chili!

I also recommend planning out horror movies for October. It will be here before you know it and you don't want to get caught unprepared. I'm trying to decide what to watch this year. So feel free to send in suggestions. I think I'll watch Constantine again simply because I find it a fun sort of film. Not scary, but fun. I think The Woman in Black starring that Radcliffe kid of Harry Potter fame looks pretty good. Oh, and Apollo 18 looks fun as well.

We had a decent Labor Day. After a false start or two we managed to grill some burgers. McK decided she wanted to play Mansions of Madness so we took a few hours and did that as well. I once again managed to kill off the poor party of investigators (this was actually a pretty gruesome encounter as I think I managed to kill three of them before it was over) with a horde of zombies and a Mi-go. Had they been a little more united in their searching I probably wouldn't have managed a victory. As it was they almost held out long enough to force an everybody loses scenario.

We also played a few older games - Tsuro and some Catan Dice and so on. It was a good weekend for relaxing and taking it easy.

Bleak outlooks

Feed (the Mira Grant book this time) was quite excellent. In fact I've got the sequel waiting for me at the moment. I wasn't sure a story about some bloggers following a potential presidential candidate on the campaign trail in a post zombie apocalypse world would be that interesting, but it really was. It's actually a pretty good page turner. I really enjoyed the banter between the main characters. It'll be interesting to see how the sequel compares. Take that as an ominous warning if you will. I was a touch annoyed with the driving force behind the main villain (not the zombies, we know what drives zombies) but I can't honestly say I'm surprised by it.

Lev Grossman's The Magician King is something of a quandary for me. I really enjoyed the book up until the ending. And that ending... This might well be one of the bleakest books I think I've read in a long time. When he originally wrote The Magicians it was with the idea of doing Harry Potter/Narnia for grown ups (yes this is a generalization). This time I think he's just out to make sure that nothing good ever happens to anybody. I'm not convinced he's trying to place realistic outcomes on fantasy tropes so much as seeing what would happen if everything that could go wrong does. Again, I really did enjoy reading the book, this one's a page turner as well, but if you don't like depressing endings, stay far far away.

I like John le Carre's espionage style stories. We've started watching the BBC version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. I'm hoping it picks up a little as the first episode was a little slow. I realize that's sort of par for the course when it comes to espionage (as opposed to spy thriller) but still, a little more plot a little less set up.

Oh and one more for the bleak files. This is both beautiful and heartbreaking. Haunting, really.

The baked good count is now at 1. (And there have been threats of more!) Just saying.

No new tales to tell

Apparently, out here at any rate, the coverage of Earthquake '11 was handled by the MadTV crew. Lovely wife said it consisted of one sad chandelier swaying gently as if stirred by some otherworldly breeze. Her Dad managed to survive the ordeal, simply mourning the fact that he had to pick up a book that had fallen off the microwave. I suspect that was more fraught with danger than the earthquake. The letter 'r' did pass along a lovely commemorative photo.

13 Assassins is the best samurai period piece featuring a village of death and bulls on fire. And if that doesn't convince you to watch it then nothing I can say will.

So, school has started back up and the kids are now safely ensconced all day. I have not noticed an increase in either cats or baked goods, so lovely wife must still be awestruck by it all.

A local toy store was having a "store relocating at some point in the future" sale, so I took advantage of a nice 30% discount and picked up Rivals of Catan - a 2 player card game version of Settlers of Catan. It's actually really nice. I like the mechanics of the game and the way that the various resources are handled. There's a base version to introduce you to the way things work, three theme decks to add different types of play and a final no holds barred use everything you've got variant. So that's nice. It would be nice if more people could play it, but it is a really nice 2 player game. It captures the Catan feel quite nicely.

Not really much else to say. My sisters apparently think running is a bright idea and are training for a couple 5ks. On the one hand I wish them luck. On the other, they're nuts. But that's ok, someone in the family needs to be and I'm glad to be able to let them handle that. I have actually managed to exercise some lately, but not really in significant enough quantities to achieve anything other than a lack of sleep. Which is also partly why I've not been able to get a lot of exercise in. 5:00 AM arrives early enough as it is.

The short version

Ok, I have now had Blogger eat a post. There was a rather lengthy (for me) discussion of the far too many books I'm currently reading, a couple movies we've seen and M's birthday party. I am not up to typing it in again and I can't seem to find it in my history. Bad Blogger! Here are the highlights. Sorry.

Wireless - short story collection by Charles Stross. Features one story in the Laundry universe (Hi Bob) and other sci fi confections. I liked it.

Rule 34 - Stross's new novel. May not get finished. Like the big picture plot, not crazy about the details.

The Magician King - sequel to Lev Grossman's The Magicians. It's brilliant so far.

Feed (Mira Grant version this time!), Monstrumologist, White Devil, Ready Player One all waiting in the wings and chomping at the bit to be read. Too many books all at once. And this from the guy at the Library. Yes. Stereotype or Irony or whatever you prefer.

Insidious - from the guys that brought you Paranormal Activity. I liked it, lovely wife refused to watch it based on the trailer. She missed out. In spite of being three horror movies shoved into one, it worked.

True Grit - quite good. Nice acting/storytelling, breathtaking landscapes and cinematography.

M's birthday party - Letter 'd' does not pretend to understand the minds of several tween girls, but in spite of the karaoke on the PS3 they seemed to have a good time. Why would they do that to the poor PS3? Also, who let M turn 10? I do not approve of this.

And I think that catches me up to where I was. Sorry for the lack of detail.

Portal's Lament

So the lovely wife and I have Saved Science. Yes, the capitals are important. Which on the one hand is good - we completed the co-op campaign in Portal 2 and it was suitably brilliant. But on the other that means there are no more puzzles to do. And that is bad. I may have to play through it again to try and snag some of the trophies I missed and actually the commentary track was interesting, so I might do that too. I have heard that there should be some more content soon, so here's to hoping. Also, I need one of these. And I wouldn't mind a few Portal related bits of fun.

At the Library we send out notices to let people know they have overdue books. Quite a few of them come back undelivered as people have moved and so on. I got one in yesterday that had a large amount of handwriting on it informing us that the person was no longer there. And that we should try looking in Hell. They did express sorrow that we were cheated out of a book (most likely How to Live on the Streets and Steal from Other People). And then offered a couple suggestions on where else to look. It was quite amusing.

Also Dad has informed me that he tried his best to set himself on fire at work the other day. He is now distinctly lacking in body hair. I told him I did not recommend that course of action. Actually I think I said things more along the lines of "OHMIGOSH ARE YOU OK?" I suspect they get to reset their days without an accident counter... Fortunately he got away with a only couple first degree burns.

We had a lovely game day on Saturday. There was lots of yummy food and several games were played. I managed a rather stunning victory in Dominion as I tried out a chapel deck. It's an interesting strategy alright. Lovely wife proved to be quite the racer at Pitchcar and we managed to eke out a photo finish victory on Forbidden Island. (Honestly the movie version of that game would have been amazing - the heroes lifting off from the Island as the last bits of land sank into the ocean - truly epic.) I really enjoy game days. I think we're going to make some bleach shirts for DruCon this year.