December
Early December was fairly routine, with a certain amount of flailing about connected to shopping, wrapping, packing, and worrying about being behind on all of the above. Fairly little e-gaming, and largely spent keeping up a minimum presence on FF-XI and doing the holiday-themed quests. Office and VTSFFC Christmas parties were pleasant, with much good food and minimal drama.
The focus of the month was the trip down to SC, as my brother's family was going to be in country for Christmas, and we all gathered at his wife's parent's place. My nephews are 7 and 2, and I really enjoyed spending a lot of time with them. The weather was unseasonably warm, and we spent plenty of time outside playing catch with oversized flying discs, driving the neighbor's golf cart, etc. Indoors, we built and decorated a gingerbread tree which came out remarkably well. I also helped my brother and his wife shop for and then learn to use a HDD digital camcorder and editing software.
Christmas Eve candlelight service at their church worked out well... I've always appreciated that sort of experience. Several other evenings I was the last one up, and would turn out almost all the lights except for the Christmas tree, put on one of the Mannheim Steamroller CDs, and take a few moments to recharge.
After Christmas, I spent a lot of time on the floor with my older nephew, assembling together the considerable quantity of Star Wars Lego he'd gotten... over several days we got together 3 of the 4 sets he'd gotten, nearly a thousand pieces. I'd pick out the pieces for each step, and he'd put them together, occasionally with some help and much repetition of "hold it like it is in the picture" and "build what's in the yellow boxes first". This was complicated by only being able to build when the 2-year old wasn't around to "help". The current X-Wing is a lovely model and comes with a nice selection of mini-figs, but is a tad fragile for zooming around play... bits kept coming off. The Tie Interceptor is less visually interesting, only comes with the one pilot, but is much sturdier as a toy to play with.
On the receiving end, the main theme on my end ended up being DVDs, filling out several Muppet and classic Disney movies I've been missing, and a copy of Gideon - Tuba Warrior, which for those of us that were serious high school / college marching band geeks (especially low brass) is a hilarious take on the classic story. Hard to go wrong with animated vegetables playing tubas, really :) I'm particularly looking forward to see how the "Most Wanted Edition" of Robin Hood looks and sounds, as it's been a long time since I've seen the anthropomorphic classic from a good copy.
Once I got back into town, I got a nice wake-up call when, on my first day back at work, Friday at 4:50pm on New Year's weekend, I get an email saying one of the machines in "my" range may be involved in a bot-net. Joy and holiday feelings all round :/
Saturday 12/30 was a fun reunion game of our old Crosswinds fantasy campaign, with the Pawtowskis in town for the weekend and several other players dialing in. With 6 players and the GM in my living room and 4 remote players, it was the sort of larger-scale gaming we don't get to do as often these days. I was also presented with my most visually impressive gift of the year, a matched set of three Japanese-style blades in classic shirasaya-style mountings. Despite technically being storage mountings, I've always liked the clean lines of this style, and it gives me an incentive to work on my wrist strength with actual steel.
New Year's Eve was a small but quite enjoyable event over at kittenchan and vond's. Other than the considerable amount of food, including a yummy peanut-marshmallow bar cookie kittenchan made, the star was kathleenroberts's Wii. This was the first chance most of us had to try out the motion-sensing controls, and while some of the sports games were mildly interesting, I was surprised to enjoy Excite Truck.
The first of the year was spent in a haze of insufficient sleep and allergy meds catching up to me, and despite good intentions of earning some comp time I slept a lot and played some FF-XI and some FF-XII.
The focus of the month was the trip down to SC, as my brother's family was going to be in country for Christmas, and we all gathered at his wife's parent's place. My nephews are 7 and 2, and I really enjoyed spending a lot of time with them. The weather was unseasonably warm, and we spent plenty of time outside playing catch with oversized flying discs, driving the neighbor's golf cart, etc. Indoors, we built and decorated a gingerbread tree which came out remarkably well. I also helped my brother and his wife shop for and then learn to use a HDD digital camcorder and editing software.
Christmas Eve candlelight service at their church worked out well... I've always appreciated that sort of experience. Several other evenings I was the last one up, and would turn out almost all the lights except for the Christmas tree, put on one of the Mannheim Steamroller CDs, and take a few moments to recharge.
After Christmas, I spent a lot of time on the floor with my older nephew, assembling together the considerable quantity of Star Wars Lego he'd gotten... over several days we got together 3 of the 4 sets he'd gotten, nearly a thousand pieces. I'd pick out the pieces for each step, and he'd put them together, occasionally with some help and much repetition of "hold it like it is in the picture" and "build what's in the yellow boxes first". This was complicated by only being able to build when the 2-year old wasn't around to "help". The current X-Wing is a lovely model and comes with a nice selection of mini-figs, but is a tad fragile for zooming around play... bits kept coming off. The Tie Interceptor is less visually interesting, only comes with the one pilot, but is much sturdier as a toy to play with.
On the receiving end, the main theme on my end ended up being DVDs, filling out several Muppet and classic Disney movies I've been missing, and a copy of Gideon - Tuba Warrior, which for those of us that were serious high school / college marching band geeks (especially low brass) is a hilarious take on the classic story. Hard to go wrong with animated vegetables playing tubas, really :) I'm particularly looking forward to see how the "Most Wanted Edition" of Robin Hood looks and sounds, as it's been a long time since I've seen the anthropomorphic classic from a good copy.
Once I got back into town, I got a nice wake-up call when, on my first day back at work, Friday at 4:50pm on New Year's weekend, I get an email saying one of the machines in "my" range may be involved in a bot-net. Joy and holiday feelings all round :/
Saturday 12/30 was a fun reunion game of our old Crosswinds fantasy campaign, with the Pawtowskis in town for the weekend and several other players dialing in. With 6 players and the GM in my living room and 4 remote players, it was the sort of larger-scale gaming we don't get to do as often these days. I was also presented with my most visually impressive gift of the year, a matched set of three Japanese-style blades in classic shirasaya-style mountings. Despite technically being storage mountings, I've always liked the clean lines of this style, and it gives me an incentive to work on my wrist strength with actual steel.
New Year's Eve was a small but quite enjoyable event over at kittenchan and vond's. Other than the considerable amount of food, including a yummy peanut-marshmallow bar cookie kittenchan made, the star was kathleenroberts's Wii. This was the first chance most of us had to try out the motion-sensing controls, and while some of the sports games were mildly interesting, I was surprised to enjoy Excite Truck.
The first of the year was spent in a haze of insufficient sleep and allergy meds catching up to me, and despite good intentions of earning some comp time I slept a lot and played some FF-XI and some FF-XII.