Yeeee Haa!!!

The semester is finally over. This one was more grueling than the previous two, for some reason. Especially December. Since Thanksgiving, until yesterday, we never had a day to spend together as a family. I had to take every available moment to go to the library to work on papers for one class or another. But, now I can take a break.

Over the last few days I've made the rounds to the local game stores (video, not board) and picked up a few tidbits to keep me occupied until I return to classes in January. I bought Star Ocean, Dark Cloud 2 and Bard's Tale for the PS2. So far, Simon and I are both enjoying Dark Cloud. It has a very cartoony feel to it, but also very deep gameplay on both a story and mechanical level. Along with fighting your way through dungeons and moving through the plot, the main character also has a camera with him which he uses to document "ideas" which are then used to "invent" new items that you use in the game. It's quite well done. I haven't had the chance to try the others yet. It is nice that he and I can play games like this together now. It's a single player game, but we can take turns with the controller. He likes to explore more than he likes combat, but its a blast that we're enjoying the same hobbies.

Also, based on my attorney's recommendation, I sneaked out alone last night to see the new Will Smith movie, I am Legend. I'm a big sucker for last-man-on-earth movies, and also zombie movies so I couldn't resist the combination of the two. I was a bit annoyed by the hokey religious element at the end, but overall I quite liked it. To sum up, I liked that it was introspective and was more about humanity than about zombies. I liked how the struggle to save humanity was mirrored by the protagonists personal struggle to stay sane and I enjoyed implication that the zombies were somewhat sentient. The basic story element to save the zombies was also a nice change from the usual plot to kill them. Good stuff.

I should probably re-rent 28 Days Later, and I've never seen its sequel, 28 Weeks Later. I'm also kind of interested in 30 Days of Night, just because I also like vampires and Alaska, but I have a feeling any fun in these films will be primarily on a visceral and not an introspective level.

All in all the holidays are off to a good start. Good games, good movies and more time to spend together as a family. Also, we're planning a big board gaming day at our house on the 29th and it is looking like we may have 10 or 11 players going from noon until we all pass out from gaming-related exhaustion. Woot!

Oh, and lest I forget, Simon has been saving up for 10+ weeks to buy a Lego X-Wing fighter. It was on backorder but it arrived in the mail at the same time that he saved enough of his allowance to buy it. We finished assembling it together yesterday before I went out to shovel. I always wanted an X-Wing when I was a kid. I'm overjoyed that my son is willing to save for months to buy toys that I've been wanting for 30 years.

Like I said, "Yeeee Haa!!!"