Cars, Crysis2 and Crops

The word of the week is serendipity- who knew?

March 28 - Finally Farscape

If you watch long enough and are patient enough, sometimes you are rewarded - such was the case this week when the complete Farscape TV series finally went on sale( briefly )on Amazon.com. Thanks to an at-par US dollar, I was able to pick up the set for half of what it is retailing for locally in Canada; even online it's not that much cheaper. I'm ecstatic, as I've been wanting to watch the series for years now from the beginning; like Babylon5 and Stargate:SG1, I consider Farscape one of the touchstone scifi series of the past two decades. I was disappointed to find that when I tried to save the episodes to my PC for easier viewing that the conversion process caused a lot of artifacting issues. So, I'll have to experiment with various programs until I find an acceptable convertor; in the meantime, I'll enjoy each DVD in order - yay!

March 29 - Crysis2 ?

This week has dragged in some ways, due to the stress of car hunting. I blew off a little steam today after work with a few games of Crysis2, but I found myself gravitating back to playing rounds of Battlefield: BC2 again due to the unrelenting pressure( and swift succession of deaths )in Crysis2. It's a good game( C2 )don't get me wrong - it just plays a LOT better with friends. At least with BF:BC2 one can jump into a decent game in a style you're used to; with C2, I'm still learning how to manage the suit powers and that makes me easy meat. Bleh.

March 30 - Dark Tower Lives!

In some ways, little things from your childhood will stick with you, whether you think they're supposed to or not. Case in point: a boardgame called DarkTower, which was one of the first 'electronic' games on the market. I though it was the coolest darn thing imaginable: a boardgame that plays along WITH you as you move your pieces. It was also rather expensive and nobody I knew had the thing, which was a shame - I'd have given a lot to have played it as a kid. Now I have the chance to play it as an adult, thanks to the wonders of the internet and flash programming - DarkTower online awaits you!

Maybe this spring I'll get out and join a local boardgame group, as long as they don't play Monopoly...

March 31 - A New( used )Car!

It was a bit of a rush morning today due to doctor's appointments and my working later on... perfect timing for buying a car, of course! We were at the local Mazda dealer a little before 9am to take the Mazda5 for a test drive and negotiate a price for the Mazda3... which went better than I had thought. I didn't manage to wrangle an incredible deal, but I did feel that we came away from it with a decent deal - not bad for being stressed, nervous and paranoid about possibly missing some important little detail. As it turns out, I was less than impressed with the cost of a 2012 Mazda( read: NO DEAL )so the salesman did what I can only describe as pulling a rabbit out of a hat: He pulled up a 2006 Mazda5( highly rated! )that hit ALL the right tick-boxes AND for a reasonable price. PLUS it only had 35K on the odo! We gave it a brief test drive and a very thorough inspection, then sat down to make the deal happen. It works out to another 3 years of lower payments WITH a solid warranty on top of that that will let me sleep at night... which is all about not wasting my money on a lemon needing constant expensive repairs. So now my mom has access to a car that she can get into / out of easily, with far more room for moving things AND it drives just like the previous one - plus it looks great! How's that for a deal?

April 1 - Fool Me Not?

For some reason, April Fool's day snuck up on me... but didn't end up getting me, in any way, which was a bit of a letdown. I remember from previous years all the jokes I've seen in the media, including one memorable one in the Toronto Star back in the 80's about the spaghetti crop in Italy failing, promising to spike the cost of spaghetti worldwide - I loved seeing the picture of a dozen trees draped in pasta as workers stood on ladders to harvest it. The Top 100 Greatest April Fool's Jokes is one list that I really recommend reading, as it goes back decades and is eye-opening as to how humans can be so easily cajoled into making fools of themselves in usually harmless ways;  some things will never change. I particularly like how #47 keeps getting recycled over the years...

April 2 - Timing and Teamwork

Talk about timing! I JUST read today that the cost of Japanese cars is set to skyrocket shortly, due to the problems in Japan with supplying parts due to the recent disaster. I could not have timed my car purchase better, I think -I believe the cost of my purchase would have gone up by 10 percent or so if the dealer had known about a shortage in parts availability before the deal was signed. Sweet! I took the afternoon off early from work to try to recover from the week - a few hours spent blissfully at the Bean and an afternoon nap( unusual for me )prepared me for an on-off evening online playing BF:BC2 with a stellar group of hardcore high-level players I seem to have fallen into this past month. They're a friendly bunch who are deadly in-game and seem to delight in showing me their secret methods for victory. Huzzah for me NOT sucking in-game enough to keep up with them AND prove helpful!

April 3 - Recuperation

It's been a long week; buying a car and having my District Manager replaced with a new, even MORE perky one has taken its toll. Thankfully, I had a decent day at work and returned in time for a fun NWN session that saw some interesting plot developments involving an evil emperor and time travel - sweet! Not much else to say about today; I've been enjoying watching Generals At War on TV as I write the blog tonight, to finish well before midnight so I can hit the hay - I'm exhausted. I definitely need to get going on some regular exercise outdoors soon, now that the weather's cleared up to be bike-friendly, as I can really use the energy boost that comes from being more active - stair sessions don't count. Adios!

I'd say I'm looking forward to sleeping with the windows open, but there's the little matter of the frog pond just over the other side of the courtyard. Those little splashers sure do love to sing at night - ALL night, and they've already started. Fresh air and earplugs it is, this spring and summer...