Monday, December 10, 2012

Donuts n Drifts

What a fun weekend! I had a chance to catch up on loads of movies, gaming and most importantly had a real blast with the kids. Saturday morning saw the three of us head to the shops where my daughters proceeded to buy their own choice of Christmas trees and decorations. I had told them that this year they get to make their own Christmas trees up, being able to choose everything. The results were surprisingly good their choice of colours all matched and were actually quite tasteful. The trees they decorated look fantastic! My house is starting to feel very Christmassy indeed and we are all getting in the festive mood.

Gaming wise saw some real progression in DIRT3 and I’m pleased to say I’m getting offers left right and center from racing Teams to join their squads. I am having some problems though. The Gymkana stages are a huge amount of fun, but I have to say I’m distinctly average at it. I just can’t seem to get the hang of it. Yes, I can do the donuts and spins and drifts, but not with the precision required and it does take me a few precious seconds to get a donut or spin started in the correct zones. When you’re doing a time trial run those seconds are incredibly important. The highest medal I have achieved so far in those stages is a Silver. If you know me and driving games, I’m a bit of a perfectionist and my inability to grasp the intricacies of this particular part of the game is driving me round the bend! (excuse the pun). Practice makes perfect. I’ll get there I’m sure. 

Monday, December 3, 2012

Free Weekend

There are plenty of negatives to it, but I'm a glass half full kinda guy. One of the bonuses of having my marriage break down is the spare time I have all of a sudden been gifted. I'm sharing custody of the kids, and that means every other week I get a free weekend. Totally free. No one to please but me. It's been years since I have had that kinda freedom. So, what did I do with my free weekend?

Normally such freedom would mean me heading out on my motorbike to enjoy the stunning scenery and mountain ranges in the general locale, but that's not possible since someone knocked me off it a couple of months ago and she still sits on my drive with a hole in the side of her engine waiting for the Insurance company to pull their finger out. There is another reason I didn't do that this weekend, but that's down to me being a wuss. It's bloody cold here. Especially in the mountains. Well, relatively. I have been in the south of Spain for 6 years now and my blood must have thinned enough for me to start feeling the relative cold. It's only about 10 degrees here, which isn't 'too' bad when in the UK, but here, it's nippy. So that kind of confined me to the house aside from a couple of strolls down to the port to grab some take away food.

In order, my weekend went like this. Friday evening it started with the gathering of munchies, collation of booze and tabletop Call of Cthulhu roleplaying. A really fun session that saw the return of my burly woodkeeper ' Cutter' to the fray. Although he didn't actually get up to much as he is very much more the brawn than brains of the group and it was a particularly cerebral session. He seemed to be in the background a bit as a result, but he'll get his time to shine again soon I am sure! He did get to use some of his legendary tracking skills though up in Derbyshire, where he was hunting what we think may turn out to be a Werewolf. I'm sure there will be some chances for him to get physical though soon, the session was left in a real cliffhanger! That session ended late (I'm an hour in front of the rest of the players), so I logged in to EQ2 for about an hour, then watched some TBBT and went to bed.