JdotMI's LiveJournal

So today was my first day of vacation where I was home alone. satyr_mi had work again, so I got the place all to myself. Well, myself and two yowling kitties. Daniel was insistent something was wrong because I was home. He eventually calmed down and went to sleep for a few hours. I spent the day with Sims and minor housework. Sim for a couple hours, do dishes. Sim for a couple hours, clean the living room. Sim for a couple hours, vacuum. Sim for a couple hours, make dinner.

Now I'm gonna go Sim for a couple hours.

After getting out of work yesterday, I went to join satyr_mi at our friend's place where we partook in a new hottub, which was nice but it was way too cold out, and had a weird (but good) fake chicken (vegetarian) dinner. We also watche District 9, which was awesome (but not while eating) and one of the Futurama movies. "Bender's Big Game" I believe was the name. Either way, hillarious movie and well worth watching again. We wound up staying out way too late, so when we got home I had the munchies, which I took care of, and then promptly passed out (around 2am) until the kitties decided it was time for me to feed them at 7am. I was not amused.

In other news, my computer is dying a slow, apparently commonplace, death. It doesn't like turning on unless I disconnect everything, pop out the CMOS batter, and beat it with a dead chicken a few times. Apparently the symptom (yellow flashing power light) can mean the CMOS battery is going, the power supply is going, or the motherboard is going. Gotta love highly specific symptoms like that, eh? Well, when we get our taxes completed we'll use the money that doesn't pay off my old dell bill to buy me a new computer methinks.

Well, back to destroying the lives of Sims now.

You no can haz!

I might haz peectures later.

I know, I didn't post a single thing last week regarding my party (it was fun!) or what I did for the week following while I didn't have to be at work (other than a brief interruption on Tuesday when I had to go in to get my mid-year review).

Party was a success! margaras arrived quite unexpectedly, but we didn't complain! It was nice to see him again! And he got free monitors out of the visit. winterlady, bugfish, and kidlet came as expected, bearing gifts of fudge, pie, and a WoW time card! eligrrl and her boyfriend came. She even brought White Cheddar Cheez-its, which are one of the best snack foods EVER. oskaar arrived a bit later than everyone else, but it was nice to see him again, too. Non-LJ friend Steve also came over with his cheesy potatoes. And I made a vegetarian version of my crack-pasta dish despite fenwalker not making it after all. It came out great anyway, so I'm not complaining. Much. ;) We watched Jeff Dunham's Arguing with Myself, Clue, and Margaret Cho's I'm the One I Want.

The rest of last week was mostly low key. We went to have dinner at lilbearmi's place on Monday and watched The Producers (musical version). satyr_mi's sister took us out to lunch at TGI Friday's on Monday, too. We also exchanged our Xbox360 (our second one, that stopped spinning discs) and they let us keep the hard drive from the old one AND we got a store credit since the price dropped $50 since we had bought it. It also came with Marvel Ultimate Alliance and Forza 2. Seeing as how we already owned the latter that was amusing. Later in the week we used that credit to nab Apartment Life for The Sims 2, and I picked up Spark of Insanity, which is the Jeff Dunham DVD I didn't yet have.

Yesterday, lilbearmi skipped out on going to Fest (due to this thing called hurricane remnants coating the entirety of Michigan in torrential rain and causing Fest to close early anyway) and visited us and we watched I'm the One I Want again and the .Tivo file I have of Legally Blonde: The Musical. And I made taco-beefy-cheddar-penne. Yes, it's as unhealthy as it sounds. Yes, it tastes as good as it sounds. The visit did prompt a manic "clean the apartment in under 90 minutes" event wherein we did exactly that. And then had a brief argument (okay, slightly more than brief and slightly more than an argument) about keeping up with the housework. Heh. Granted, this conversation tried to happen in the middle of my Virgo Moment™ and annoyed me. :-p But it was ultimately productive and we all felt much better after. :)

And, now, I'm back at work. And now I'm going to get back to it. My inbox is positively freaking out.

So, I'm in a video game kick again. This is partially problematic. Lately, when I get in video game kicks I wind up playing a little bit of twenty different games and not getting anything done in any of them.

So, here's my current list of games I'm "playing" (or at least think I am).

Final Fantasy XII
I have this bad habit with this series. I buy the game, play it for a week or a week and a half, get 1/2 to 2/3 done, and then stop. For a year. Or more. I think in this case it was an "or more" situation. Normally I start over from the beginning when I get back into the game. Not this time. I picked up my save game right where I left off. So far, I play this puppy once or twice a week for about two hours at a time. Everyone's currently in their 50's and has tons of License Points. I'm sorta at a point where getting additional LPs is pointless until I advance the story some more and can buy the abilities and items that are unlocked, but hey. I had gone on a Hunt Club / Rare Game / Esper spree prior to stopping, so I was finishing up that when I got back to the game.

The only game in this series that I haven't pulled the above stunt with in recent history is Final Fantasy X-2, which I got 100% completion on in one play through. Of course, this means that there is an entire story branch that I did not see (you can't get 100% if you go down that branch), but still. Not bad at all, although quite time consuming. Especially the hours spent in the Lady Luck dressphere gaining double XP.

Beautiful Katamari
So, we just got our Xbox360 back. Or, rather, we got a new one. See, our old one died in the "OH HAI, I B0RK UR VID3O" sort of way. So we returned it to Best Buy and got credit to get a new one. We had moved all of our save games and downloads (except for Forza and Viva Pinata, which were too large) via satyr_mi's sister's son's memory card (how many of those 's did I really need? anyone know?). Oh, and apparently the day after we moved everything back to our new machine, their machine said "OH HAI! RRoD!!" and we went "phew!" and stuff. So, anyway, this ties in to the Katamari story, honest.

So we get our downloads moved over and... they don't work. Okay, okay, don't panic. Let's look it up. Oh! We can transfer licenses from one machine to another once per year. Phew! Lucky! Do that. What? Still nada? Oh, re-download all that shit again? Well, it's already on the drive, so just do that to be safe. Took next to no time since we had the files. Now all our games are shiny and happy. Well, other than Viva Pinata, which it's not like I had successfully acquired a Galagoogoo for my garden or anything, thus completing my collection of every single Pinata in the game. Nor had I maxed out my Xbox LIVE achievement points for the game or anything.

SO, yeah. I played two of the downloaded stages which I had never played before and they were fun and so I'll probably finish those up and try to get the rest of the cousins and presents at some point. And try to get more than 9 points at the Seadome, which is the WORST LEVEL EVER.

The Sims 2
It's not like this needs much explanation. We have the most recent expansion, granted another is coming out in like three weeks. It's Sims! They're fun! And dumb! And can be made to do silly things with little effort! Plus, killing them can be amusing. Mostly, I make them go to work, make friends, have freakish affairs, go to school, and whatnot. This one I play pretty much anytime I wind up in front of my computer at home and don't play something else. Which is either a lot or never (I've rarely had time this week).

Civilization IV
I really got into this when it came out, then lost interest, then the first expansion came out which was okay, but didn't keep my interest nearly long enough. The second expansion was a lot of fun, though. Again, didn't keep my attention long though. Now I've been playing it more than I've played Sims 2 lately. Heh. I keep restarting games and not finishing them, though. Ah well. I'm enjoying myself. :)

Blue Dragon
I sorta pulled that thing I do with the Final Fantasy series with this game. I bought it, played it for a week, didn't even get past disk 1, and then stopped. I just restarted it yesterday.

There are more that I'm going to be playing again soon, but that's all that is currently on my plate. Mass Effect and Phantasy Star Universe and Star Ocean: Til the End of Time and Final Fantasy IX are on the list of games I want to play. The only one of those I finished was Mass Effect, so that tells you something there.

Pushing Daisies continues to be the best new show we have on our Tivo. Seriously. It's funny, it's dark, it's light, it's fast paced, it's emotional, it's smart. It's Dead Like Me on crack! If you are not watching this show you are seriously missing out.

We're quite astounded with how much we have on Tivo that we don't want to part with. We've never had this many shows, especially this many shows we want to watch together, in a single season. Pushing Daisies, Bionic Woman, Reaper, Chuck, and Heroes. Five hours of television per week that isn't on HGTV that we watch together. Add to that my show (Smallville) and satyr_mi's shows (Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice, and Dirty Sexy Money) and you have a gigantoid segment of our lil 40 hour Tivo that is accounted for. Plus, carebear_flare likes to watch a few of these shows with us, too. It's psychotic!!

The problem is... we don't have a dual tuner. We need one badly. That way we can get Ugly Betty added to our list as opposed to having to wait for it on DVD or on marathons over the weekends. And we can also get Bionic Woman and Private Practice at the same time. Wednesday nights are particularly brutal for us. There aren't many shows on that we don't want to watch on Wednesday.

On a less TV related note, I paid the remainder of my rent yesterday, which only came out to around $8 somehow. I'm not complaining, but it means we've been overpaying somehow. We need to get that sorted out before next month's rent payment so we don't have it happen again. To celebrate being less broke than we thought, we all went out and partook of the Neverending Pasta Bowl at Olive Garden and we all proceeded to eat way too much food. A quick, and pricy, Meijer run followed, a drive home, some tv watching and sleep, and I'm still not hungry yet. Seriously!

I'm really excited about carebear_flare's new job at the Cage, and I'm hoping he can maneuver it into a permanent position. He even got a call from Borders for an interview in the AP department! When it rains it pours, I guess!

Well, I'm gonna go play something. Either Civ IV (which just got patched) or Sims 2 (which I haven't yet patched) or Blue Dragon (which I downloaded the Hard Mod aka New Game + for) or City of Villains where I'm slowly becoming addicted to a Brute.

Or maybe I'll go be a shameless flirt online. I've been known to do that.

Good phone call today on lunch. Makes me feel better.

Too much Sims 2 last night, though. I reinstalled a neighborhood I made and started playing them some more. Then I flipped back to Pleasantview and decided to play them instead.

I wound up going to bed stupidly early again last night (8:45ish) but didn't wind up falling asleep until 10.

Getting a shopping list together for Friday. Ugh. Not only is it groceries, but it's some cleaning supplies this time. Which means it's going to wind up being more than I want to spend again. Ah well.

We watched Heroes and Chuck last night. Not sure what I think of Chuck. It was okay, but it wasn't anything that made me go "I must watch this at all times". I'll watch a few more to see if it sticks. Heroes was good. Still waiting to see what's up with the rest of the characters, but I'll be patient for now.

I'm purposely not finishing Bioshock quite yet. I could probably finish in an hour or so, but I'm trying to not spend all day in front of the TV when I get home. So, I played Sims 2 instead after dinner and TV watching. :-p Because, ya know, that's such a better way to use my time.

Well, time to concentrate on more work, because I have a ton to do today.

I'm not dead yet! Although, several of you knew that since I'm still all commenty and whatnot on journals. But, anyway, I was on vacation last week (as evidenced by my last friends-locked post), and I spent the entirety of it trying to relax. I got myself nicely readdicted to Civilization IV (the new expansion has made the game a lot of fun), Sims 2 (another new expansion came out), and Blue Dragon. Yes, Blue Dragon is an XBox 360 game. Yes, we bought an XBox 360 Elite. ANYRATE, it's fun. And satyr_mi got me mildly addicted to Forza 2, but that's neither here nor there. He's addicted to Bioshock, but, really, can you blame him? I got into an alpha test for a game which is turning out to be pretty fun. It's hopefully going into beta soon and should be released by the end of October. If you enjoyed Diablo II at all you should really like this game. I sorta OD'd on it while on vacation, so I've taken a couple days to play other games now. I got back on the City of Heroes/Villains bandwagon as well. My Mastermind has had a bit too much fun in the Rikti War Zone and is now finishing up her story arcs so that she can hopefully hit 40 soon.

We bought Season 1 of Heroes and, just as I expected, satyr_mi is thoroughly addicted. The the point of watching two disks with me in one day. We rarely watch TV on DVD together, so this was nice. We do watch a lot of HGTV together. Design Star Season 2 is having it's finale this Sunday, and Kim better freakin' win.

In terms of work, I just had a glowing mid-year review (we do reviews based on the fiscal year, not calendar year) so I'm in a pretty good mood regarding that. And all of our training stuff has been set up so we can work on taking courses that will allow us to get actual certs, so that'll be nice to dive in to. Of course, right now I have to dive back in to work, so I'm going to post this and be on my merry way

Wow. It's been a while since I posted in here! I feel like such a bad blogger, except for that part where I don't typically blog so much as babble when I write in this thing. Still, it beats the mounds of memes that I used to post all the time.

So, what has my life been like since last I posted? Let us explore, shall we?

( Weekends off? Cool! Oh wait, there was money involved in that... )

( FullTimeJob needs socialization badly. )

satyr_mi has been going crazy due to end of the semester wackiness, and group projects where his group is non-existant. That's all done and over with and so far so good. He has this week off then starts summer term up next week. Here's to hoping the job hunt goes well, too.

I got bit by the spring cleaning bug. I got a lot done, but have a lot more to do. And I really want to keep it up this time. Granted, I say that EVERY time and it never sticks. I've got a bit more laundry to do, my desk to clean, and my bathroom to clean and then all of my areas are done. I should probably vacuum the apartment today or tomorrow, too.

( I don't watch enough TV. Honest. )

We still need to go visit lilacmoon5 before she and her husband move out of state. The move date got pushed back, so we have a little more time, but I want to do it soon™. Why, yes, I do want to get season 1 of Battlestar Galactica back so that I can watch it and then season 2 and then season 3 when we buy it and get caught up. I'm weird that way. :p And I wouldn't mind getting one last Shadowrun game in, either. Or a few games of Fluxx or Dalmuti or Crononauts.

( Sims 2 addiction much? )

I almost regret to say that I cancelled my City of Heroes account. We haven't played either Heroes or Villains in months, so it was a logical decision. Of course, Issue 9 was just released today. Fortunately, there isn't anything in Issue 9 that has me jumping up and down and going "I want it! I want it!" so it's not going to get me back.

( World of Warcraft babble )

nuadha_prime needs to have a card night again soon. Granted, more people need to show up for them, but hey. ;) And I need to get him back his copy of Kingdom Come. Reminds me, I need to pick up comics. I'm a little behind. Dropping Wonder Woman until issue 13, though, so that should help. Probably going to cut back a little bit more, but not sure.


Anyrate, I've spent 30 minutes typing this up. I'm gonna post it and maybe write more later. :p