Here’s hoping all of you (whoever you are) had a wonderful holiday break. I can’t necessarily say that my break was relaxing, but I can say that I’ve come through the other side feeling almost like a changed man.
See, Thanksgiving is simultaneously the holiday I look forward to the most (since I get to see all of my family), and also the holiday I end up getting the most stressed out over. There’s lots of travelling (which can stress me out), lots of food I can’t eat very much of (as I’ve got some annoying food allergies and a pretty sensitive GI system, generally speaking), the requisite family drama (which I’m sure everyone else has, too), and my day-to-day schedule is usually so busy that there’s hardly any time to chill out and relax and digest. (I’ve got 3 different family units to visit, is the thing.)
This year’s edition was doubly stressful because I was also picking up my first car, a process that had already been stressing me out for the last 2 weeks as I dealt with epic DMV hassles and endless forms and insurance companies and such, and this car-acquiring process was going to end with me driving this car back to my apartment in Brooklyn, a process that necessarily involves driving through New York City. I have lived in NYC since 1993, and the prospect of driving here has never ceased to freak me out. (I have, in fact, driven in the city a few times, and even had a shitty moving van stall out and die – three times! – on a crowded, uphill onramp to the Queensborough Bridge, and I am still alive.)
And yet, even though the holiday was busy (as predicted) and there was drama (unfortunate), the food I did eat was quite delicious and didn’t kill me, and in general my stomach was quite cooperative, and it was wonderful to see everyone, and the drive back to the city on Saturday night was shockingly easy and stress-free, and we even had time to build a bureau for the baby’s room on Sunday AND go bowling in the afternoon with friends AND watch the first half of the Giants game before totally passing out from exhaustion. This was a good weekend.
Conquering the drive, though; that was big. That was the thing that was stressing me out more than anything else, and it turned out to be easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy. I’m already dealing with general anxiety disorder, which has made me somewhat of a recluse in recent years.* Medications have helped drag me out of my apartment, but sometimes you just have to face your fears head-on if you’re ever going to conquer them. And let me tell you, when I finally pulled into our parking space, a part of me really wanted to hear the Achievement Unlocked! sound.
In any event, I’m back in town.
Not a lot of gaming stuff to report. I’ve been more or less successful in avoiding the Steam sale, though I did buy a few things last night on steep discount (including Hotline Miami). (And, as I write this, I see that there’s a Flash Sale where Tropico 4 is 80% off. I suck at strategy games, and yet I’m close to pulling the trigger on this.)
One other bit of non-gaming news to report: the Kindle Paperwhite is fantastic. My previous Kindle was old and losing its charge pretty quickly, and the Kindle iPad app can be hard on the eyes at night (and is also too full of distractions to be truly useful as a reading device). The Paperwhite, though, is super-easy on the eyes, rests very easy in the hands, and has gotten me back into a heavy reading rotation. (I may end up doing a little Books of 2012 post here, as a matter of fact; my personal blog, where I usually post stuff like this, is more or less defunct these days, and I’ve been thinking about expanding this blog’s topical range anyway. Hope that’s OK with you!)
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* That being said, being a semi-agoraphobe has also meant that I play a lot of videogames, and is a large reason why this blog even exists in the first place.
Shouts From The Couch 