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Finally the last major holiday for ’08 is done. This whole season always starts off great and by the end it’s like a freaking anvil hanging from my neck like some Jacob Marley bling. Seems like this was kind of hum-drum for a lot of folks. Not a lot of Christmas cards sent out and not a ton of merriness. At least, that’s what I gather from the people I talk to. Speaking for myself, this New Year’s Eve was about as good as they normally are. It’s not that I’m a grinch or anything, but I never bought in to getting dressed up and then plastered because it’s time to put up a new calendar. Kind of seems like one of those Hallmark Holidays that’s just an excuse for a party. The way I see it, if you want to throw a party, why wait for an officially-sanctioned excuse? [edit- ok, so maybe I was a bit of a grinch when I wrote this. It's been a long holiday.]

Not that my wife and I are party animals. We brought in the New Year with a continuous flow of appetizers, a movie, and flipping around to the countdown shows on TV. Appetizers included Spinach and cream cheese puffs (excellent), mini hamburger pizzas (awesome), dill dip and rye bread (better than it sounds), buffalo cheese sticks (fan-f’ing-tastic), and some honey apple wine (every bit as gross as it sounds…we had it laying around and thought we’d pop it open for a toast…ugh). The movie was Wanted (Great action, but the premise of the original comic book was better. A secret band of super villains is just cooler than assassins. Still…Angelina Jolie = eyes glued to screen. Very cool movie!). As for the countdown shows, did anyone see the one on Fox where Robbie Kenievil jumped over the volcano at the Mirage? The network thought they needed to keep our interest by working up all sorts of computer animations displaying worst-case scenarios for the jump. “This one shows what happens if the pyro is triggered too early” – roll down ramp, jump, catch on fire, tumble, tumble, crash, die – “This one shows if his engine fails before he gets enough speed” – roll down ramp, jump partway, crash into other ramp, tumble, tumble, pain, agony, die – My personal favorite was, “Here’s what happens if he doesn’t get enough speed and falls into the volcano” – rolls down ramp, flies a little way, lands in fake casino volcano, flails, kicks, burns, screams, flails, kicks, burns some more, flails some more, dies- Very odd. When he made the jump without a hitch, the commentator didn’t even try to hide his disappointment.

Enough with the sleigh bells already

The Great Holiday Expedition of ’08 is finally complete! That’s just a lot of fanfare for two trips taken nearly back to back. The first was the Southern Flight into the Land of Mickey which was already documented here. The most recent was the Overland Excursion to the…uhhh….Kingdom of the….screw it. We drove down to St. Louis to see the family. Sorry, I kind of got caught up there.

The wife and I had a lot of fun. Megan’s sister was very accommodating by putting us up for a few days (thanks Jenny). It was also great to see everyone else and (as always) the food was excellent. We also paid a visit to a branch of my own family tree. Hi Mom & Bob!!! This trip was done in 3 tiers. First, we stayed a few nights in a comped suite at the Ameristar Casino just outside of St. Louis. Very festive, but Santa didn’t see fit to give me the jackpot I asked for. After that, it was a cozy Christmas Eve with a Mom-cooked meal. Then, we made the city rounds to Megan’s relatives. I guess they’re technically my relatives too, since we’re married and all, but you know what I mean. On the gift front, Megan made out like a bandit with clothes and a bracelet and all that. Me? I got some electric slippers! No, that’s not the name of a progressive synth band from the mid-80’s. They’re battery operated slippers that massage your feet. Very cool. And, using some gift cards, I finally picked up a box set containing all the Led Zeppelin CDs. Before now, I’ve had to make do with every album on cassette (for the younger ones out there…cassettes are plastic squares with tape in them that play sounds when placed in a big player. The last one I had was made by Magnorocks. HA! See what I did there? Instead of Magnavox. Like the Flintstones!! Maybe I’m still loopy from all the driving). Anyway, it’s great to hear Zep again without having to delve into an electronics history museum that includes mix tapes I made in high school entitled, “Jus’ the Good Stuff” volumes one through nine.

According to my ticker, there’s less than a month until the release of Skinners #1. I’m still very nervous, but in a good way. Some of our holiday gift cards were for Borders and Barnes & Noble, so we were wandering through the books and picking stuff out. Naturally, I drifted toward the fantasy / horror / sci-fi sections and wondered how the hell my book would keep afloat amid so much competition. Not only is there a lot of other stuff out there, but it’s a lot of great stuff! I guess I’ll just have to wait and see. I’ve already got my first signing lined up (as you can see in the newly-added section above the blog posting). Also, the local newspaper will be reviewing Blood Blade and interviewing me. I’m nervous about that as well, but they’re usually kind to a local boy like me. No matter what, I’m sure my stomach will be in a constant knot until release day. After that, it’ll probably be in several knots.

Hard-wired response

So I'm watching Poker After Dark the other night. Snow's falling outside. A LOT of snow. It should only amount to about 3-6 inches and the ice should be cleared away in time for our road trip this weekend. Fine. Then, I see something roll across the bottom of the screen that triggers something in me that I didn't realize was still in there.

Schools are being closed.

MY old school district was closed...on a Friday!!!!!

That means 3 DAY WEEKEND!!!!! Right before Christmas Break!!!! It's like a present before getting more presents!!

YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm hip-deep into my thirties and I was getting genuinely amped up about my school being closed. The more I thought about it from a nostalgic point of view, the more excited I got. Then I had to remind myself that I'm not in school and I don't even need to drive to work. In fact, I still need to work today when I should be out throwing snowballs and watching The Price is Right during regularly scheduled Homeroom.

You know how I sometimes say that working at home is cool, but has it's drawbacks? This is one of 'em. No snow days. That just blows.

Game stuff

I took the last two days off in between the writing and editing phases of a current project. Needless to say, I did some gaming. First of all, just to make me feel special, Epic launched a new map pack for Gears 2 right when I had some time to try it out. It's pretty cool. Normally, I feel ripped off by most map packs...ok...Halo map packs. This is nothing to do with the quality of the maps. They're very cool and I really want to play them. I bought the last two, jumped into online multiplayer and got the same freakin' three maps over and OVER again!! Not even new ones. The same three we've been playing since launch. Then, when one of the new ones do come up, it gets vetoed. Admittedly, this is due to my lack of online friends than anything Bungie or Halo related. I've only got 4 total friends and one of them (my wife) doesn't like Halo. That makes it tough to form my own matches and pick whatever maps I want. The great thing with Gears is the ability to put bots into multiplayer matches. That's an answer to a prayer for losers like me who never played Gears 1 multiplayer online because I actually had to try and work with obscene, racist little kids who are even more socially awkward than me. Anyway, the new Gears maps are great. One of them has a wave of immulsion (basically, gold lava) rise up to cover some of the map. One match where one of my few friends and I were already dead, we watched as our AI partners crippled the last two opponents and then stood back to watch as the immulsion slowly rose to fry the crawling bastards to a crisp. I was laughing too hard to take a screen pic. It seemed really funny at the time.

I've also gotten a chance to sink into Fallout 3. Everything's already been said about this game. "Classic" "Masterpiece" "Amazing" All of it's true. Even the music is great.

The biggest surprise was just how much my wife has gotten into Left 4 Dead. First of all, she always said how much she hated 1st person shooters. Second, she is freaked out by zombies. I naturally assumed it would be a hard sell to get her into a 1st person shooter/zombie game. Turns out she loves it. In fact, she was the only one to survive one of the campaigns! It was one of those moments where I looked over at her and thought, "Damn, I'm lucky!" I got killed about a minute before the rescue chopper arrived---knocked off the top of a building by one of those huge tank dudes. Not knocked off the edge, mind you. One second, I was looking down the turret of a mounted machine gun and the next, I was seeing a view of the side of the building from about twenty yards away in empty air. Yowza!!! That was pretty funny at the time too. Jeez, I've got a weird sense of humor.

Played some more Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe. Cheesy, sure. Still, very fun.

Now, it's back to work. Still, I can't stop thinking about how much more I want to get back into Fallout. I miss that bleak, ravaged wasteland. But I'm used to that sort of thing. I live in Nebraska. ZING!!!!!!!!!! Nothing personal, prairie. Just look at the other garbage I thought was funny.

Fresh Snow & Instant Karma

We finally got our first real snow of the winter. YAY!!! Woke up this morning and the cars were all covered. The air is quiet, cold and calm. Everything feels cleaner. Can you tell I like snow? Anyway, I drove my wife around for some errands and such. During that time, I saw all the usual dipshits who don't bother to scrape off their windows, slow down on slippery roads or adjust their steering in the slightest due to the new white stuff covering the ground. It was a great day out. We went to Panera Bread for some french onion soup in a bread bowl (Best parts of that = big, fat croutons and scraping up the sloppy bread from the bottom of the bowl) and topped it off with a cookie. On the way home, we even saw some moron in a sports car speed through a red light and slam into an SUV. It wasn't serious. The SUV maybe got a dent, but the sports car got just enough damage to screw up his bumper. Ahhhhh. Sometimes you just need to stand back and wait for the dipshits to punish themselves.

Let the winter fun commence!!

You mean I could do this all along?

Every day, I need to flip through the DVR menu of stuff to be recorded so I can make sure overlapping shows don't push out things I want to see. I also need to make sure I have enough space on there to record anything at all. Yeah, there's about 50 hours available and I'm low on space. I watch a lot of TV. It's a problem. I know. Anyway, I saw Heroes was ready to tape and I got the familiar "ugh, I need to watch Heroes today" feeling. Then, I highlighted it and pressed "Do Not Record".

The DVR asked if I was sure I wanted to cancel that recording. I thought it over. Dare I make that leap? It's a big one. Then decided YES. I was SURE. I pushed OK and Heroes disappeared.

It just disappeared! Like magic. Out of my life. Poof! That felt good. I intended on giving it a chance when the new story arc picks up, but I don't know anymore. That felt SO GOOD to just dismiss it like that. Kind of like realizing there truly is an off switch to that annoying little brat who screams through movies or that jerk who parks in front of the apartments across the street, just so they can impress the neighborhood with the distorted bass coming out of their junk heap of a car. One press and...GONE!

My grandfather used to say some things were like pounding a rusty nail into your foot: They're worth doing just because of how great it feels when you stop.

Heroes = rusty nail.

Me - nail = happy!

Brrrr. That's more like it!

Ok. Now I’m in the spirit. The temperature dropped about 40-50 degrees and is in the single digits. It’s gray and a little snowy outside, while it’s warm inside. The tree is up and lit. The Santa stuff is hung around the house. It feels good. Last night, I went to a Christmas party thrown by my wife’s work and had a good time. All in all, a complete turnaround from yesterday’s blahs.

I’ve been reading about the recession and how it’s supposed to hit the entertainment industry. There’s an actor’s strike upcoming, which seems like very poor timing on that union’s part. When the whole industry is expected to cut back anyway, this isn’t really the time to threaten to walk away on purpose. Closer to home, lots of publishers are making layoffs and cutting down. Since I’m not an executive or any sort of power player (I don’t even own stocks), all I can do is sit back like everyone else and just keep doing my job. Being a writer doesn’t exactly have much stability in the best of times, so we’re always half-expecting to get cut back or sized down or whatever other term is used for not having a contract anymore. It sounds depressing, but that’s just the way it goes. There’s not much to do about it but keep chugging along and hope for the best. It sounds like that’s pretty much how it’s going to be the story for most everyone for a while. Keep working. Keep hoping for the best. Keep dealing with what comes our way.

In better economic news, I snuck one by The Man today. Had a coupon for $20 off Mercenaries 2 for the Xbox at Best Buy. It went on sale and the coupon wasn’t supposed to work in addition to the sale price, but would still be a good deal if taken off the normal price. Lo and behold, I checked out and got $20 off the SALE price! YEAH!!! Take that, Recession!!!!

Hey, get your thrills wherever you can.