Hanna, video games, books and tennis
Sep. 7th, 2008 08:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hildy89And Saturday it rained. Lord did it rain. All morning and nearly all afternoon. Fortunately dear Hanna wasn't quite as hard-hearted as her Savannah namesake and spared us some of her fury. The DC types worked pretty fast to catch bad draining streets/alleys. I stayed inside, having done my groceries on Friday, and watched the US Open's men's semi-finals. Federer managed to get in his match, but Nadal had his match switched to the smaller Armstrong stadium. They didn't finished until today. Murray just wouldn't let him get comfortable out there. Part of me is thrilled for Andy, but part of me wishes it had been Tim.
Then last night I went over to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pinkpolarity's place for a belated birthday celebration. She introduced me to the magic of the Xbox. The last time I played video games was in the arcades or with the good old days of Coleco Vision. *wistful about cracking Zaxxon* And as I tried to explain to her, most arcade games have one controller and maybe two buttons, so the Xbox controller was really hard for me to master. The whole idea of "seeing and moving" (i.e. look around first and then move) was alien to me. She tried me out on the first KOTOR game which I enjoyed. It's a very forgiving game for beginners with nice reminders throughout. Then I hit a stumbling block called Battlefront. I just couldn't master it. We tried putting me through the first Halo's tutorial to see if it would help. The world was interesting, but it's not really my type of game.
I'm gearing up for another Avengers kick. Netflix brought me the extras disk off the Emma Peel Megaset. The "Case of the Missing Corpse" promo was delightful. The real revelation were the last remaining season one episodes with Ian Hendry as Dr. David Keel. Like Doctor Who, the Avengers is sadly missing some of its history because of the masters were taped over/lost/otherwise misplaced. Only the first act of "Hot Snow" remains and "Girl on a Trapeze" and "Frighteners" were complete. I actually quite liked "Girl on a Trapeze" more than "Frighteners", even though the former lacked Patrick Macnee as Steed. (I also liked Nurse Carol better than Keel's actual fiancee. She came off as smarter. Oh well.)
Somehow I've managed to get some reading done. I finished the latest Elizabeth Peters' mystery, Laughter of Dead Kings, the last Vicki Bliss mystery. I'll need to write up my thoughts on that one later, because some things bothered me about that book, especially compared to the earlier books in the series. I also finished the first Rogue Angel book Destiny, which is like Witchblade meets Relic Hunter, complete with Joan of Arc references. It's fluffy mindless entertainment with a fairly decent heroine. That she's nearly the only female character in the book is a little worrying. My mother must have sensed I needed a book to read. Either that or she magically senses my struggles with writing these days. She sent me Margaret Atwood's Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing.
Then last night I went over to
pinkpolarity's place for a belated birthday celebration. She introduced me to the magic of the Xbox. The last time I played video games was in the arcades or with the good old days of Coleco Vision. *wistful about cracking Zaxxon* And as I tried to explain to her, most arcade games have one controller and maybe two buttons, so the Xbox controller was really hard for me to master. The whole idea of "seeing and moving" (i.e. look around first and then move) was alien to me. She tried me out on the first KOTOR game which I enjoyed. It's a very forgiving game for beginners with nice reminders throughout. Then I hit a stumbling block called Battlefront. I just couldn't master it. We tried putting me through the first Halo's tutorial to see if it would help. The world was interesting, but it's not really my type of game. I'm gearing up for another Avengers kick. Netflix brought me the extras disk off the Emma Peel Megaset. The "Case of the Missing Corpse" promo was delightful. The real revelation were the last remaining season one episodes with Ian Hendry as Dr. David Keel. Like Doctor Who, the Avengers is sadly missing some of its history because of the masters were taped over/lost/otherwise misplaced. Only the first act of "Hot Snow" remains and "Girl on a Trapeze" and "Frighteners" were complete. I actually quite liked "Girl on a Trapeze" more than "Frighteners", even though the former lacked Patrick Macnee as Steed. (I also liked Nurse Carol better than Keel's actual fiancee. She came off as smarter. Oh well.)
Somehow I've managed to get some reading done. I finished the latest Elizabeth Peters' mystery, Laughter of Dead Kings, the last Vicki Bliss mystery. I'll need to write up my thoughts on that one later, because some things bothered me about that book, especially compared to the earlier books in the series. I also finished the first Rogue Angel book Destiny, which is like Witchblade meets Relic Hunter, complete with Joan of Arc references. It's fluffy mindless entertainment with a fairly decent heroine. That she's nearly the only female character in the book is a little worrying. My mother must have sensed I needed a book to read. Either that or she magically senses my struggles with writing these days. She sent me Margaret Atwood's Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing.
