Well tomorrow is the big day I attend my first classes at a University (well the first ones I signed up for at least). Today, after this post, I'm going to be posting pictures of summer to facebook, so expect to be tagged, unless you did not hang out with me this summer. Now that I think of it, that is very few of you. Oh well. Well anyway, my September has been pretty nice so far. A lot of my major time drains (not to say I didn't enjoy them, just that they sucked down a lot of my free time this summer) have "dried up" so to speak, leaving my schedule wide open. It did allow me to have some fun adventures however. First though, I'll get the usual things out of the way.
Gaming:
This past week though, I have been mainly playing 360. I got some new DLC for Mass Effect 2 and spent a lot of time playing that again on the hardest difficulty. I also got my two new games from goozex, Kane and Lynch as well as Fallout 3. I was really disappointed with Kane and Lynch, but the game was super short, so I guess that was nice. It's going right back through goozex once I get some envelopes to send it in. Right now, I'm into Fallout 3. It's really great because it handles just like Oblivion which I am very familiar with (the same company made them after all). It's pretty scary, but not as bad as Bioshock so far, so that is nice. Also, while I'm talking about goozex, I got a special game in the mail. I used goozex to track down a copy of Mission: Impossible on NES, a game I have been looking for since I discovered a functioning NES while cleaning out my grandpa's house. It had most of the collection I had when I had my own, but Mission: Impossible was one of the big names I remembered that I was having trouble finding. I have played it and I have no idea what is going on when I play. I couldn't be happier as that is about where I left off when the game left me so long ago.
As far as the PC goes, I've stayed off it except for business things (checking emails and things like that). I did get on last week between finishing Mass Effect 2 and starting Kane and Lynch. I decided to marathon an Imperial Campaign as Egypt in Rome: Total War. I played to get every single settlement and I was reminded why I never really do that in one sitting. It takes forever. I don't know how long it's been since I've played Starcraft 2, but I think I'm going to start again soon. I guess this is a sure sign I probably won't get addicted to it ever (if I can just randomly not play it for almost a month), but I'm going to start having a lot of free time if I'm on campus for several hours without homework 3 days a week, so I think I'll get back into it once the quarter starts up.
As for the other type of gaming (tabletop), I have not heard from my Warhammer friends since I last played with them in mid-August. They planned to have something last Wednesday, but I never heard from them. I know one guy's wife had a baby, Steve is starting school tomorrow as well, and I'm not sure what the others are up to. I think though that it is safe to assume I won't be hearing from them for at least another month. I did have fun playing and I would like to play since I invested a good chunk of time and a bit of money into it. I'm sure I'll play in the future sometime though, so I'm not too concerned. In the meantime, I'll enjoy the extra free time that it has left me.
Beach trip and other Grandpa related things:
I still hit up Costco about once a week with Grandpa. I'm kind of getting into that schedule of going once a week which is what I do when I'm in school. It's Tuesdays this year because it's one of the days I have off and it's the one I don't give horn lessons on. The weekend after I got Davis over to EWU, I went on a little weekend trip out to the beach with him, my aunt, and Kathryn and our cousins. It was pretty fun. On Saturday, Grandpa rode in the go-karts at Ocean Shores. Getting him out of the karts was much easier with 3 people. This past Sunday, we had his 87th birthday party as well as his 1 year anniversary of moving into his new place party. He clearly has made a bunch of friends in the place in that one year because the apartment was crowded with other residents. My cousins and Kathryn and I went out of the room (since it was so crowded) at one point to play the golf simulator down the hall. We were not hitting it very far and soon, this 80 year old guy walked in. My cousin hit the ball and the screen said it went 30 yards. The guy walked up to see if the sensor was messed up and he was like "oh, I'm not warmed up or anything" and he doubled my cousin's hit on his first swing. On his second, he tripled it.
Taking Davis to EWU:
The Tuesday after PAX, I went to Davis' house to load up as much stuff as we could in the truck before we set off the following morning. We left around 9:30 and after a rather uneventful drive, we got to his apartment at about 3:00. I got to meet his super conservative complex manager. After that, we began moving all the stuff into his place with the help of one of his neighbors at one point. I enjoyed the looks of confusions on people's faces when we would introduce ourselves (since our names are so similar) and then seeing the look of relief on their faces when I would tell them I was not going to be around more than a day. After getting his stuff more or less sorted out, we went up to EWU for a tour and for him to look into a couple things. We went all around the campus which was actually really nice. I took a lot of pictures for mom. I'll put some up in my album on facebook. Like I said, it was a very pretty campus and there are some really cool views in places. We went to go have dinner and get groceries after that, so we hit up Carls Jr. then this small grocery store Davis had heard about. After that, we went back up to the campus to hang out with one of Davis' friends. She was one of the ones that is really into DnD, so that was pretty cool. I got no sympathy for Dirk's death from her though. After that, it was late, so we went back to Davis' apartment and then we went to sleep.
The next day, we got up and hung out around the apartment for most of the morning. We went up to the campus for Davis to get something signed for work while I explored Tawanka commons at my mom's recommendation. After that, we came back to his place so I could pack up and leave. And thus began my amazing adventure. I headed up to Spokane because I knew of a Costco (that was a lot further from the freeway than I remembered). Upon getting the gas, I did a calculation and found the truck getting just under 22mpg. Pretty excellent for an 18 year old (almost 19 now) pickup. Now instead of going back on I-90, I kind of spontaneously decided that I wanted to epicly detour and check out Grand Coulee dam before going back to I-90. I wasn't thinking at the time, but it would have been better not to get back on I-90 after doing that, but I thought the dam was much further south than it was. It turns out, it is about the equivalent of detouring all the way down to the tri-cities from I-90. If I had known that, I might have stuck on highway 2 all the way back, but I did not. In the end, I am glad I did not because the drive was really spectacular and I do enjoy driving.
So until I got on I-90, I was just going 60 or whatever the speed limit was. I was not expected at home until late at night, so I was in no hurry to get anywhere. For the first leg, it was mostly just rolling hills and grain fields. Very pretty stuff. After about an hour and a half, I turned to take a 20 mile road up north to the dam. When I got there, I checked out the dam and enjoyed the scenery for a while before wondering what the best way to get home was. I had no signal, so I was flying blind this whole time. I decided I could probably take highway 2 back, but I knew I-90 much better, so I decided to find my way back to that. It was rather challenging because you change on and off and across about 4 different small highways before you finally start seeing signs for I-90. Fortunately, the sun was in the sky and as long as I could tell I was heading south and west, I was doing fine. As I drove, I eventually came by a place called dry falls. I quickly hit the brakes and pulled into the viewpoint parking lot because the sight was really amazing. I stuck around there for a few minutes before getting back in and going on my way. The rest of the drive to I-90 was really uneventful but pretty. I was going along a big river most of the way and there were cool land formations as well as settlements there. While I was driving along, I pondered ways to make a Mass Effect version of DnD work and I came up with some cool ideas, but nothing too serious as I was focusing mainly on this cool scenery going by. Eventually, I wound up on I-90 several hours behind schedule. I took it the rest of the way home, only stopping for about 20 minutes in the pass to wait for ROCK BLASTING!!1111 Unfortunately, I didn't get to see any actual blasts, but on the plus side I did not have to wait very long in the line. I finally got home at 10pm. Going on I-90 from Spokane to my house gets me home in 4-5 hours. I planned on this trip taking 5-6. It took 8 hours in total. For over 7 of those 8, I was behind the wheel driving the truck along. It may seem ridiculous, but I really had fun because I like driving, especially driving past new places. I think I'll take the same detour next time I wind up in Spokane (who knows when that will be though).
Well, that concludes my past few weeks. I guess now it is time to go post some pictures to facebook and then get to bed somewhat on time before school tomorrow. I'm attempting to change how much I sleep, but that will be addressed in the next post. Until the next post (which will be in October), peace out.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Monday, September 13, 2010
Preceeding PAX Pics
So the PAX pics are below in case you didn't notice. They are of course in backwards order, that's why we start with making the costumes we wore. Just as a reminder, you won't see a new post on the blog until the 20th or 21st (most likely the second date) and after that, I'm going to drop to posting every other week or less frequently depending on how busy of a life I lead. I don't know if it will matter, but I felt like I should tell you just in case you are still reading and/or checking this blog regularly. Enjoy the pictures. Don't forget, blogger is silly and you have to hit "Older Posts" at the bottom of the page now to view the next page of pictures.
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