It’s done!
Well I just had my eyes lasered less than an hour ago. I can't see much but most of that is probably from the dilation. I'll probably be pretty functional once that wears off. I just put in some eyedrops they gave me and that crap stung. They said I'll be in the most pain tomorrow so we'll see how that goes.
Lasers
In about six hours I'll be on my way to getting my eyes lasered. I'm not nervous yet though I might not sleep well. I think one of the worst parts is anticipating how I'm going to spend my week off. Misery is a given but what will I be able to see? Will it be stumbling around the house because I can't see a damn thing or will it be bored out of my mind because I'll be able to see but everything will be too blurry. I think the worst would be being able to see distances and not being able to read. That puts books and video games out of the question and that would really suck.
For the sake of comedy I'm leaving an entry open so I can give my first impressions as soon as I get home, regardless of if I can see or not. I don't need to be able to see to type.
Birthday aftermath
Katie's birthday went well. Probably better than to be expected because I somehow managed to not screw up the cupcakes. Some might have even called them tasty. I got her The Omen collection on DVD and the Leisure Suit Larry collection. Mom got her a big skillet thing and some cash for her to get some glasses, which is exactly what she wanted. We went to Nashville with the intentions of seeing The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3D but she had a headache from the sugar and we forgot to bring the directions to the theater with us so we wandered around the Coolsprings Galleria and found out that Suncoast was still there and I had an awesome burrito. Overall I thought we had a good time.
It’s getting quite out of hand
And by it I mean my pop-tart addiction. The best pop-tarts, the only pop-tarts really, are the frosted brown sugar cinnamon variety. Frosted cherry and frosted smores are edible but nothing compares to the frosted brown sugar cinnamon. I've eaten two boxes of 8 within the last week. That's sixteen individual pop-tarts. It's all in the technique. I eat them in pairs. They come in pairs and that's how I eat them. Two at the same time. It's a double dose of flavorful love in my mouth.
Important note
Everyone who doesn't wish Katie a happy birthday tomorrow will never get a chance to find out how awesome my cupcakes are. Really. I'm making a list.
It’s my turn to update.
That's what Katie tells me.
I've recently discovered a ton of music I've been missing out on for basically the last year. Specifically Panic! At the Disco, Heavens, The Hold Steady, and The Draft. They've all been totally up my alley musically and I had no idea. Especially Heavens, where the fuck have I been? Matt Skiba singing stripped down Trio songs in a low vocal range? I hate myself for missing out on this for so long. Panic! At the Disco is way better than I expected.
House inspection tomorrow. Four more days till the weekend. One week till the surgeons zap my eyes out.
Here’s a list of games I’ve played recently and why I haven’t beaten them.
+ Messiah
This one sounds like fun (play a cherub, possess people, solve puzzles) but getting into the game it becomes real apparent why this one never took off. The controls flat out suck and not in the interface way. Everything feels real sloppy when it comes to camera control and movement. It's old and barely playable. Uninstalled.
+ Sacrifice
This one had okay controls and I played through the tutorial and lost all desire to play a third-person RTS. Uninstalled.
+ Painkiller
It's like Serious Sam except not so fun. I played through the first two episodes (of five) and got stuck and bored in one of the levels in episode 3. It was just the same thing over and over, though the level variety and cool physics kept me going in the beginning. Uninstalled.
+ Gunman Chronicles
Ah the Half-Life mod to be commercialized that wasn't Counterstrike. It hasn't been updated to the Steam version of Half-Life so it's pretty rough on graphical options. Once the game got started I remembered why I never finished this one. I was at the last level, the last boss, and the game shafts you into fighting off hordes of the little bad guys you spend the whole game fighting to stop them from killing the NPC who's fighting the super bad ass last boss for you. You play next to no part in the ending of the game. Lame. Uninstalled.
+ Heavy Gear 2
This one was oh-so-promising. Big robots blowing stuff up, small unit tactics, decent if a little dated graphics. And then I couldn't finish the fourth mission due to a nasty crash-to-desktop bug at the end of the level. I'm sorely disappointed. It's games like these that drive people to consoles. Uninstalled, with a broken heart.
+ Homeworld 2
Hey, why don't I remember ever playing Homeworld 2? Oh yeah, my copy is bugged and the install never finishes. Install aborted before it could finish.
+ Tron 2.0
I've beaten this one before and it's totally awesome. It's what I'm currently playing and it still looks and plays great.
There you have it. These have all been within the last two weeks. What I typically do is grab a handful of games that pique my interest and stack them on the right side of the desk. Once I play and get bored with the one on top I put it on the left side and take the next one off the top of the right stack. Currently the right stack has the following in waiting:
- Return to Castle Wolfenstein (for the bazillionth time)
- Postal 2
- Mechwarrior 4 Mercenaries
- Ground Control 2
- Master of Orion 2
- Apache vs Hokum
In some countries, I could be executed for what I’m about to say…
But I'm really enjoying My Chemical Romance's "The Black Parade".
Stupid tanks
I'm finally getting around to playing Heavy Gear 2. It's an old mech-ish game that Activision made with Dream Pod 9's Heavy Gear property after Activision lost access to the Battletech/Mechwarrior universe. I say mech-ish because although you're a person inside a giant robot, the gears are only in the range of 14' to 20' tall rather than 200' mechs. It's also got a better focus on stealth, maneuverability, and posture since a gear is more or less man shaped and less of a walking tank than a mech.
Anyway. I'm running buck wild through an enemy base, blowing up buildings, chasing down infantry, whatnot. I come to a choke point in a valley and come across one tank, like many others I'd blown up. Except this one was rather close before I spotted it and blasted me in the face with missiles and my gear blew up. And then Heavy Gear 2 crashed because it's buggy.
Now I'm on the internet whining about it.
Edit: Fuck this enjoyable buggy game. I beat the mission twice to be greeted with a crash to desktop.
Boxes full of history, forgotten
On one of her trips home while I was in Iraq Katie brought back some of the stuff that's been stuck under the stairs in my parents' basement for about three or four years. On a whim I decided to find out what was in those boxes tonight.
The easiest stuff was the toys. Opened and unopened. Covered in dust. Hopefully I can make some shelf space when we move and I can get them dusted off and out of the boxes.
Then the sentimental stuff. A cedar box from a trip to Lake of the Ozarks with mom when I was 10 or 11. It was locked by some tiny locks with keys long missing so Katie went to work at opening them while I was looking through the rest. There was another box that was some kind of jewelry holder with my confirmation ring (worn once I think) and a ton of movie ticket stubs. When Katie got the cedar box open all it had were some fancy stones (hematite and something else), some foreign money, and a magnifying glass. Apparently I had plans to become some international geologist. Or European rock investigator.
Then there were pictures. Old pictures of people whose names I can't remember and ex-girlfriends. And some girl who's playing my gameboy. After those was the yearbook from my junior year. I only have yearbooks from my freshman year and my junior year because I was new at Springfield High in my sophomore year and still didn't know anybody by the end of it and I graduated early in my senior year and never picked up my yearbook at the end. Lots of people in there that I had forgotten about.
Finally there was the sketchbook and flimsy folders crammed full of papers. That's where the pain was hiding. I was a depressed kid. I was angst incarnate. I'd forgotten about that too. If I had done something stupid and people were to psychoanalyze what I just found, I might have been institutionalized. I had no idea I was so melodramatic.