Day Six, No Observable Change in Behaviour

I've been hermiting. I think the last time I left the house was... last Tuesday. Don't get me wrong, as I've said before, I do enjoy being at home, but I do sometimes enjoy, y'know... other things.

I did have a lot of fun last Tuesday. Sort of. I went to Trinidad on the Ferry, which wasn't fun, so that I could go to the dentist, which was even less fun, but then I spent the afternoon with my Mom which was very fun indeed. We went down to the Port and hit up the Hyatt and I got a Mojito that was just delightful. Minty minty goodness.

We even got to watch Dad come in on the boat! Boats really aren't that exciting.

And so yeah, since then I've... pretty much just sat here. I read 1984, pondered that for a few days, completed the main story for Arkham Origins, cleaned some stuff. It's certainly been relaxing. Too relaxing?

My brother also surprised me with The Amazing Spiderman on steam, which is surprisingly really good! I think the last Spiderman game I played was Spiderman 2 for the gamecube, or possibly PS2- rest assured that you can still attach web to clouds and swing through central park! But I should be fair, that does happen far less frequently and most of the time there is an effort to attach the webbing to buildings, which actually makes you swing at a weird angle that kind of makes it really easy to get turned around and confused. My theory is that maybe that's more realistic, because when you think about it, from Spiderman's perspective he is just constantly flipping and going upside down and what have you. Either way I'm quite liking the game. The fighting mechanics are enjoyable, but repetitive, and I am comparing the game to the Arkham series in that regard. Spiderman always seems to use the same move to slam enemies heads into the pavement, 'knocking them out'. The other thing I noticed is the weird difficulty settings. I set my game mode in the beginning to "superhero" which is their version of hard mode, because I'm hardcore like that and they presented it like a challenge. But instead of the enemies being more skilled or tougher to take down, it feels like Spiderman is just incredibly weak. He takes a few hits and bam, he's dead. There is a kind of silly health regeneration to balance that out, but I can't help wondering if this is their version of higher difficulty. But, on the plus side, the game looks great, feels very expansive and the story seems cool so far. There also seems to be a lot of different ways that you can go about using Spiderman's powers, which I really like.  The most impressive thing to me is that it really doesn't feel like a video game based on a movie. The story actually takes place I think a few months after the movie and many of the characters are in very different situations than before. Overall I'm enjoying what I've seen so far, which is I think around two hours of gameplay.Impromptu first impressions review!

X-MAS 2013 - A LOW DOWN.

BOOM. Christmas 2013! It happened. I made cookies. In response to my last post, I think I rose to the challenge pretty darn well and have officially regained my mojo.

THEY'RE BEAUTIFUL. Bonus points if you can name them all. I got carried away once I mastered the Star fleet uniform.

Overall Christmas was a success! Like last year we ended up hosting the Christmas party thing for my Dad's work. That's always kinda fun and kinda boring. It was better than last year in that there were fewer people and it was less party hardy and more relaxed in atmosphere. I actually quite enjoy entertaining because I like preparing for things and I can (rarely and when the occasion requires it) cook, so it's always fun helping out Mom with this sort of thing. The fact that Mom really loves doing it is also a huge plus. Whatever makes my mother happy inevitably makes the rest of us happy as well, even just to see her enjoying herself. WE LOVE YOU MOM.

I also spent most of Christmas playing Batman: Arkham Origins, which was a truly fantastic early Christmas present. Those games are just so wonderful. From start to finish- pure joy. This is the first game in the series where I've been taking my time with completion of the story, mainly because whenever I'm home I always worry that I'm not spending enough time with the family, and while I don't mind playing games in the living room with everyone, sometimes it can be a little distracting. It affects my immersion, man! Escapism! Anyway I might talk more about the game once I've completed the main story, until then I'm officially reserving judgement (unlike the Knight... badum-tiss).

So after all that Mom and I flew out on Boxing Day and headed up to Ottawa to break-in the new year with the boys. Here are some shots of the skies over Ottawa and two very sleepy travelers about 16 hours into their journey.

Blurry because I haven't mastered the focus on my phone camera yet. Lolz! It was very cold when we arrived. I kept warm via selfies.

The boys actually had lots of presents waiting for me under the tree, which was a lovely surprise! I'd been utterly content with Origins, but I feel that Yoshi slippers are always a plus. And more selfies!

Hilariously a lot of those presents are actually wrapped up empty boxes because Colin likes to fill up the tree with presents. But that's cool, right? If it works for the stores it works for the home! We've also started the tradition of wrapping everything. Everything. If you ask someone to pick up some coffee that's on sale it'll go under the tree for Christmas. Unwrapping things is fun!

It's been nice seeing my brothers again. Kevin's actually moving out soon, so he's been busy getting ready for that. It's strange. Until now I feel like every change that's happened has done so because it had to. We all moved out to go to university, and when both of my brothers came to Ottawa they got an apartment. It's different this time. Tensions are high. Adult life is odd.

I got my marks back from last semester! My best yet, I'm very very very pleased to say. One thing that's always fun about Dad's work gatherings is that I get to hear how he talks about me to his coworkers, and a little parental gushing is always a nice treat. All evidence indicates pride in their daughter, so it would appear that I'm doing my job there. And I finished a short story! Wild, I know. I finished my most recently started story, too. But don't get too excited, it's not really done done, just technically done in that all of the bits are written, but I'm not nearly convinced that they're written WELL yet. You'll never guess what it's about. It may involve androids, space travel, genetic engineering and discussion on the concept of humanity. Like I said, it's really rough around the edges right now but if I can finagle it into saying what I want it to say then I think it'll be something for me to be proud of. Accomplishment!

Overall: a successful Christmas.

As for New Years I have no photos and not really any stories to tell? Not a bad thing! I had a night in with the fam (or most of it). We played Catan, ate lots of food, played Animal Crossing and watched Ace Ventura. It was great! It's possible I'll have more to say about New Year's Day as it continues, but I'm hoping it'll shape up to be just as blissfully uneventful.

Good Job, Bruce.

I applied to my first ever real-live (part-time) job today! I'm still not entirely sure whether or not I'll have the time for it what with school and Batman: Arkham City, but I finally decided that if I didn't take the plunge and give it a go, then I'd never have any money for my entire undergrad. So wish me luck!

Something that's been bugging me lately: poorly written textbooks. They cost so much money, and involve so much work, to have to cause so much pain as well? Now that I'm in my  second year of university (I'm in my second year of university!) I've been exposed to enough good and bad textbooks to know that the fifth edition of Vertebrates: Comparative Anatomy, Function, Evolution doesn't need to be the walls of text made of up of endless pages of big, dry terms that it is. It could be exciting. It could have colour! They could even plan out the formatting so that some of the figures and diagrams are on the same page that they're referenced on.

Sometimes I feel like I should be on Facebook more. I like the idea of being able to look back on these undergrad years when I'm livin' it up at 45 (totally gonna be livin' it up at 45) and see exactly who I was. In saying this, I'd like to mention that every time I go on Google+ and see how pretty/cool it is, I desperately wish people used it. So come on, people! Get on Google+! It's like totally super more prettier than Facebook!

Aaaand speaking of life updates, I went to the Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Godessess concert at the Sony Centre in Toronto last Saturday, and it was totally boss. I got this entirely cute blue dress for it over the summer; it had little butterflies on it. Pictures will be happening at some point. Back to the concert, not only did we get three encores (screw Montreal!), but the awesome Irish conductor used the WIND WAKER to conduct the wind waker songs. My friend and I spent most of the show trying to find an alleged Groose cosplayer mentioned on Twitter, whom we eventually spotted at the bottom of the escalator. After fighting through hoards of fans to get at him we were way too obvious about how excited we were to finally find him and I made the brilliant move of telling him we'd been talking about him on Twitter. I'd post the picture of the guy (t'was a grand cosplay), but I think I freaked him out enough already. Also I got hundreds of hits on streetpass, for realz. You can't really see it, but everyone in that picture is sitting there on their 3DS.