mizarchivist

I started playing Pokemon Go last Saturday (red/valor!). I was initially not remotely interested and snorted about it all. And then asciikitty started playing. And then Jaime started. I felt left out! I realized it was silly to find all the reasons not to play (never was into it before, it's just so trendy and I'm cantankerous, I don't need one more thing, I don't think I'll be good at it/it'll be hard to learn, I've already expressed my derision publically, therefore I'm not allowed to change my mind)

Well, no.
So, here I am, I'm playing. It's fun! Incentivizing moving around? I need that. Having something low stakes to talk about with housemates? YES please. Also? It's just FUN. Further, it appears we convinced fubar to also join the collective as of yesterday, so now we can all geek out about this together.

It's also SUPER fun for me to wander though the Common as I'm wont to do on a weekday at lunch and see the clusters of people jabbing at their phone (too) trying to catch an elusive creature. I will occasionally ask if someone's playing and what team they're on. But only occasionally, since you can literally trip over players at the moment.

If anyone wants to go on a Poke-Adventure, lemme know.

- thought I turned off my alarm, only to have it go off (probably for the best since I'd fallen asleep again)
- made coffee! Yay!... then forgot that I'd made and brought with me to drink at work and made another cup here.
- I have 2 meetings this morning
- - -
OK. that could be a lot worse, but it doesn't bode well.

Other thing: Yahoo Games tech/customer support determined that Alchemy and Windows 7 are just not compatible. I have been offered the alternative of Some Other Game offered by Yahoo to download in its place.
I loved Alchemy. Loved.  Features of excellence:
-not forced to do a timed game
-can walk away and pick it back up
-some strategy
-patterns
Do you, LJ-Land, have a favorite game one can get via Yahoo that has similar features?

Definitely digging Beatles Rock Band- We had Robin over to get a full Fab 4 thing happening. We did a bit of the chronological storyline, but I  at least was a bit too impatient to wait for my preferred later works. I will have to practice drums by myself until I get the muscle memory down, but I switched off with Robin and quiet_elegance with the mic. I hope my mom can visit soon so she can help with the singing. I think she'd love it. As soon as q_e has gotten over the worst of post surgery, we'll definitely have to have some parties. The big TV does justice to the OMG graphics. I don't want to alarm anyone, but I think the band was on Druuuuuugs! For that matter, some of the graphic designers probably are, too- not that there's anything wrong with that.
There was general awkwardness over the oh, yeah- this is mostly blues. I have problems with the blue/red chord. I tend to gravitate towards bass, but purple_terror and I switched off a bit. I'm still amazed at how intuitive the progression was. And I wish I could remember which one had a walking bass line but it was in the Liverpool part of the story. :) 
After about an hour our eyes were crossing so we watched dancing auditions and Glee, so a performing arts sort of night. Yay :)

Thank you, Harmonix! Thank you badlittlemonkey !

My trip to the Poughkeepsie area to see my family there was uniformly lovely. I had a good enough time I left an hour later than expected. I hadn't realized exactly how quiet things are 'round here most of the time and I'm enjoying some tranquility. And shortly I'll be enjoying some parfait.

Major wins: Cousin Charlie enjoyed Monty Python and Zombie Fluxx games so well, I left them in his possession. Cousin Katherine and Aunt Wendy loved - adored- rhapsodized- about some necklaces I made particularly for them. This is quite pleasing.

I want a murphy bed. The one I slept on there was really comfy and in exceptionally attractive furniture.

The return trek was gloriously uneventful and low stress to the point where I realize I need to go visit more often.

People - again- keep asking me how are things, what's going on and all- Stuff? Not much? And yet- lots.

Snippet 1: I've been hungry pretty much all day. I ate the same amount of yogurt/granola (etc) for breakfast and by 10:30 I was gnawingly hungry. This might have something to do with my trend this week to ride my bicycle to Alewife and then once in and gym-ward, do machine-y weighty things. Oh..., hi, metabolism. Did you just wake up or something?! Feh.

2: After several months of ignoring, I started playing Guitar Hero again. I'd been toodling around at beginner and couldn't quite bring myself to the scary of middling/medium. Silly. Everyone is awful when one changes levels- I don't get a free pass on that. It was hugely gratifying to see major improvement from first song to last. There will be more music-based game playing in the coming weeks. See, there's this version of GH that features this band that quiet_elegance  sort of likes. You know, Metallica? Additionally, since badlittlemonkey  is now firmly in my acquaintance, there's a mandate to compare/contrast GH with Rock Band. It was inevitable, given The Beatles version comes out on 09.09.09. But still. No harm in getting used to the format beforehand. :-)

3. Worky-work stuff. Hm. ( This sort of got really long. I guess I've been busier with this than I thought )

4. New quests- So, when I was in Cancun with quiet_elegance , we thought about where we might want to go next now that he has a valid passport again. Hm. Somewhere in Europe. Somewhere gorgeous. Perhaps somewhere that requires a new language to be learned. Hm. Italy! So, I bought a copy of Rosetta Stone for Christmas, but until yesterday hand't installed it onto a machine. That done, I've now gotten as far as the second lesson. I call it a win thus far! Major emphasis on intuative learning- visual-vocal associations and... yeah. So far, I entirely recommend. Why the blazes couldn't learning German be this fun?!

5. Old quests- There was just a flurry of crafting done over the past week. I may continue with that. This weekend will be spent traveling as much as possible on 2 wheels. (or 8 if they're skates)- I have a picnic, a concert, and a movie to look forward to. Oh, and the socializing that goes with all three.

Maybe I should update more often.

So, Guitar Hero has featured all weekend. I want a chick-rocker version, but I don't think it exists. We are looking forward to the Metallica one that comes out in March. quiet_elegance  has a mandate to kick our asses.  We've unlocked some great songs- today's was Santana's Black Magic Woman, which is damn hard.
In the meantime, I have a very sore bunch of tendons, little colorful dots running past the back of my eyes, Aerosmith stuck in my head, and every time I listen to the radio, I evaluate if the current song would work in the game.

After purple_terror  recovers a bit more from his tender belleh, we'll have to break out the DDR