Photos, Games, and Shopping

Had a pretty nice weekend.

Friday we went to see a couple movies with romeoa. First was Inside Man. Interesting movie, but really crappy musical score. It was so bad that it became distracting. Second movie was Ice Age 2. Fun enough movie, but it felt like many different short movies put into one. It didn't have a cohesive feel to the story. Of course, the Scrat is the funniest part of the movie, and it never even interacts with the other characters.

I brought home work's new Canon EF 17-40mm Ultra Wide Angle Zoom lens for the weekend, so I made sure to get some pictures of our Saturday morning playtime with the dogs on the newly de-snowed from yard. Then I played with the new lens again when we went over to Don & Dan's for game day. I thought that it would be interesting to get pictures of the lake behind their house before all the foliage had grown back. Usually you can barely see the lake. The pictures are ok, if you like bare branches and dry reeds. Though I did find a interesting little garden sculpture in their yard. Turns out Don made this back in seventh grade. I'm calling it Little Metal Head, not to be confused with bigstonehead. (See new icons pics below.)



The rest of Saturday I just played games at Don and Dan's, while Joe went over to the MISFIT Trivia thingy for a while, and FINALLY got us registered for CONvergence.

Sunday didn't go as planned at all. The missing hour kind of sucked. Then Joe got called into work because of the time change not working correctly on some of the systems. So I went into the gym and did my Monday Arms & Back workout since I'm going to be busy this afternoon with Kinney's Oncology appointment. We had planned to go out to a Home Remodeling Expo, but cleo and romeoa scouted ahead for us and reported back that it sucked. Instead we joined them at the fancy Edina Perkins for lunch. It was really nice to visit with them again. It's great to see them when they're both feeling outgoing.

After lunch, Joe and I shopped at Target for a while. Among the usual supplies, we spent a bit of time looking at Yoga mats. They had some ok ones there, but I felt the need to look around a bit more. After Target Joe was feeling tired, so I drop him off at home, and went on to shop at REI for a bit looking for Yoga mats. I couldn't find them anywhere, but thanks to bitbear and his husband, who I ran into on the way out, they pointed out where the mats are. Sadly, its the same mats that Target carries.

I was going to go look at Sports Mart next, but I got distracted by Best Buy. I walked into Best Buy where I spotted a huge pile of X-BOX 360's. I was SOOOOOO tempted to buy one, but I finally realized it wasn't a good use of $600 (System, game, wifi-adapter, extra controller). Instead I went over to the PC game area and finally bought SIMS 2. 

I  spent the rest of the night playing SIMS 2. (See next post about my SIMS 2 experience).

One night with Sims 2

SIMS 2... what can I say... it's to darn complicated, but once you start getting the hang of it its kind of fun.

My first family was WAY to big. A started with two male lovers, their child, the mother of one of the lovers, her daughter, daughters roommate, and their love child. I quickly realized this was WAY to big of a family for a starter house! Where would they all sleep.

Then I tried playing with one of the existing default families. My goal was to turn the husband gay and to kill off one of the daughters, but they weren't cooperating.

Then I made another family, starting much smaller this time. I made Tyler Thom and his senior father Morrie. They live in a modest little two bedroom in Pleasentville (or what ever they call it). Everything was going pretty good, but they were both having problems staying properly socialized. Finally Morrie was so unsocialized that the Social Bunny appeared (Picture Harvey). Only Morrie can see the Social Bunny, and has long conversations with the Bunny. I wonder how long it will stay.

I tried to get Tyler closer to the neighbor Tony, but Tony isn't coming over enough.

I kind of wish that I didn't have to manage so much of the minutia of their lives. It would be so much easier of I could just setup everything on a schedule. Wake up at this time everyday, shower, eat, go to work, come home, pay bills, eat, socialize, clean, go to bed... repeat. Then I could work on the more interesting aspects, like exactly who they socialise with, when entertainment they have available.

I also miss the big natural disasters from the old Sim City games. I'd like to send a tornado through Pleasentville. Or maybe a flood, which is all in vogue right now.

I haven't even started looking at all the crap you can download and add to the game. I do remember a cheat for the original Sims game that gave you unlimited money. I could use that for Sims 2!

Over ingestion

Ugh... why did I just ingest a 20oz iced mocha from Dunn Brother's??? I don't need all the sugar and caffine! A small would have been more than enough. Stupid eyes! Why can't they be small like I want my tummy to be.