Blah Summer Blah.

School got out about a week ago, which was a bit of a shock to the system, really. When you're used to being so frenzied, it's really, really hard to just wind down. I'd find myself sitting on the couch and thinking "I need to do something." I went home and saw my mom etc. Ended up doing some chores she wanted (like sweeping the birch crap off the drive way which was completely futile since it thunder stormed and blew even more down the next day than there was originally... thanks, mom.) I celebrated my birthday a little bit with two new games I've been eager to play: The Orange Box and Viva Pinata. If you don't care about games skip the next two paragraphs.

The Orange Box is interesting in that it contains a LOAD of games: Half Life 2, Half Life 2 Episode 1, Half Life 2 Episode 2, Portal, and Team Fortress 2. I wanted this game solely for Portal, which it took me about... 3 hours to beat? Maybe 4. I'm proud of myself because I didn't cheat by looking online for anything . The days of the 8-year-old me, taking 3 weeks to beat the first part of the Infocom text based Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy because I didn't know what an analgesic was are long gone... these days not using the net to crack a puzzle it takes me longer than 5-10 minutes to muse over is a serious exercise in will power. Portal is EXCELLENT, hillariously dark, yet creepy in a way that still leaves room to be playful. It was witty and unlike anything else out there.

The other game, Viva Pinata, can mostly be described by saying that its target audience is probably...8 year old girls. Your goal is to make a garden and improve it with the sole purpose of attracting pinata animals, which you can either coerce into doing the "Romance Dance" to make more pinatas (giggady giggady) or beat them to death and watch in horrified glee as all the other pinatas eagerly devour the insides. I particularly enjoyed naming my pinatas things like PSYCHO DESTROYER and Mr. Gnads. I know, I'm really really mature.

Other neat things I got - the book "House of Leaves" which is supposed to be a very good read, the first bit of Transmetropolitan (a comic I've been hearing a lot of buzz about) and Penny Arcade's Dark Mantle.

I also set up a flickr account with a bunch of my art uploaded, mostly stuff I've done for classes. I'm working on locating a copy of dream weaver and setting up a site as a summer project.

Anyway, my do-nothing woes are decidedly over. For the next 3 weeks I'll be attending classes from 8-5 Monday through Wednesday, having exams on Thursdays and working tech support every possible hour in between. Farewell free time, Hello writhing agony.

It's okay, it's dark and I like it in here.