Dream of Waking

I’ve spent the last 4 hours playing Oblivion. I don’t really want to stop persay but my batteries on my mouse are dying and need to be charged.

Christmas was good to me this year, though anything over spending it in Iraq like I did last year would be a major improvement. Got some awesome stuff, Katie got me seasons 5 and 6 of Seinfeld, two new sweaters, and Ayn Rand’s “Atlus Shrugged”. Mom and Frank got me X-Files season 2, a new shirt and pajama pants, the Resident Evil Archives book, Call of Cthulhu for xbox, a Far Side desk calendar, and Coheed & Cambria’s “In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth”. Lauri and Matt got me Contact and Event Horizon on DVD. Jim drew me in the secret santa exchange and got me Children of Mana for DS. Everyone else got me cash. A pretty sweet haul if you ask me.

While we were in Springfield I made a stop at Game Exchange. They’ve always got an awesome selection of Playstation 1 titles and some decent prices. I managed to score all three Colony Wars games for less than $20.

Now we’re back home for a long haul. I’ve got some painting to do and a lot of work related stuff coming up.

I’ve been doing a lot of gaming recently. Namely finishing up Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, getting back into Guitar Hero, and starting a fresh game of Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. My fingers are all stretched and sore in my left hand from Guitar Hero and my right hand is taking on that mouse-using claw shape again. I’m going home for christmas looking like some kind of hand cripple.

If no one got me Guitar Hero 2 for christmas I might have to choke Katie.

Day two of my 18 day vacation. Kicked it off yesterday by doing absolutely nothing but kind of picking up around the house and spending the night out with the guys from work.

I did a lot more today. First Katie and I raked and bagged more leaves. Then we went to Home Depot so I could get a box of CAT-5 cable and when I found that a 1000ft of CAT-5 costs about $80, I just got a home repair book instead. When we got home I fixed the switches in the bedroom so now my bedroom has power and lights again. I’m beyond proud of myself for that one. Hooray for a simple diagram in a $15 book to send me in the right direction.

After that we bagged more leaves and called it a day. Tomorrow is Car Repair Day. I’ll probably take A Storm of Swords with me because there’s a few things that need fixed and I’ll probably spend all day running around to get them fixed. I’m halfway through with Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin.

I have a goal of spending less time on my computer. No set limit or time or anything, just “less”. To that effect I plan on watching the Lord of the Rings Trilogy within my vacation time, painting my office, and finishing A Storm of Swords. So far it’s going okay. Castlevania has been a good distraction and I setup our old TV and my PSOne so I can play games in my office and I’ve already finished BRAHMA Force: Assault on Beltlogger 9 and I’ve started sorting out what games I want to play. I might bring in the PS2 just to get some of those games out of the way. Less.

Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin might be even better than Dawn of Sorrow. It’s amazing.

I’m stuck on PC gaming. I’ll play something for 10 minutes and delete it. It sucks. I was playing Halo 2 on xbox for a while but then I got to the part where I got bored last time and I don’t feel like finishing it for a second time.

I’ve got two weeks off coming up in a week. It’s about time.

That (P) means promotable. Promotable means I survived the promotion board; a half hour of the top enlisted soldiers in your unit grilling you on topics you’ll never remember after the board. Oh and you have to do it in the monkey suit known as your Class A uniform. It wasn’t bad. I was the fifth man in the chute out of ten and I was the second guy to go for his E-5. The first three were going to E-6 and they took forever. The guy ahead of me came out scared that he failed. That was about the time everyone else started shitting their pants and bum rushing the guy for what questions he got asked and how he screwed up so they can do better. I’m not a pants shitting or bum rushing kind of guy so I kept my cool a little better. I flubbed a couple questions but I was pretty confident that I did well and lo and behold I find out later that I passed and got 140 out of 150 points. Good enough for me!

This has been a major source of underlying stress for the last week and I’m thrilled that it’s over. Now I just have to concentrate on collecting up more promotion points so I can get my E-5 in February/March. And I get to spend my night goofing off and playing games instead of pouring over study guides.