"Poker After Dark?"

Why, I barely met her this morning!

Ha-ha! Get it?

I'm back at work and basically procrastinating doing some writing as my programming goes automated for most of the rest of my shift.

(If you don't know, Poker After Dark is an NBC show that airs after Carson Daly.)

So, I didn't get any writing done yesterday as I spent my last day off rereading Michael Crichton's TIMELINE for the I-don't-know-how-many-th time. GREAT friggin' novel! I swear! And if you've only seen the movie, you have NO idea what you're missing! The flick Jurassic Park managed to get a lot of the DNA info and dinosaur info from the book into the movie (though they could only squeeze, like, a third of the action into it) but, say, Sphere was able to fit almost all the story and suspence into the flick while losing the one aspect that makes the novel so incredible! So TIMELINE is more like the movie version of Sphere than JP in that it does a pretty darned good job of squeezing most of the action into the film, but it leaves out the science stuff (quantum mechanics and actual history about Medievil times) that really makes the novel mind-blowing.

So if you get a chance, read the novel! It's one of Crichton's thicker works, but it is sooooooo worth it!

I sort of threw my sleep-schedule off finishing the novel, though... Or, you know, failed to get it back on track... I finished the novel around midnight Tuesday night (or Wednesday morning, rather) and had nothing left to do until 7:00 am.

So I started watching a Romero zombie trilogy of Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead and Land of the Dead... And fell asleep before Night was over, lol. :( I woke up somewhere toward the end of Dawn and promtply fell back asleep, and slept right through Land.

I know, you're like, "Um... Couldn't you have done some writing unstead of falling alseep to old zombie flicks?" But I just didn't have any rocket sauce in me, I swear! The creative well was dry. I find that when I'm physically tired I just can't muster the mojo.

So anyway, I woke up around 11:00 am and tried to fall asleep to Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, but I ended up watching it all the way through.

THEN I remembered that Cenimatic Titanic just released their riff on Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and I suddenly had to download it. Then I burned it, then I watched it with Brian and we had a great time.

And by this time, naturally, I was well awake.

So later tonight I'll most likely be struggling to keep my eyes open here at work. :( Oh well.

OOH! OOH!!

AND...!!!

Okay, for the LONGEST time I've been stuck on Level 8 of Tomb Raider: Anniversary... The Big Boss(es) of this level are these two centaurs who are nigh-impossible to defeat! Now, I'm not a hard-core Gamer in that I have NO problem buying a game, playing most of it, and when I get stuck before the last level or three just going back and replaying the levels I can get through over and over again for years and years to come. I haven't finished a Resident Evil game since Resident Evil 2 and, really, Tomb Raider games are the only ones I've completed. (All but Chronicles which I've never owned, Last Revelation which I only own on Sega Saturn and the Saturn doesn't work anymore, and Angel of Darkness which looks pretty great but maneuvers like a lead brick.) So Tomb Raider games are really the only ones I sort of feel compelled to -- eventually -- finish.

However, there was a point when I was playing Legend where I couldn't get any further and just replayed the levels I was already familiar with whenever the need for some TR took me.

Then, not long after Anniversary was released (or perhaps just before; I'm not quite sure), I picked up the last level I had left off and actually struggled through the rest of the game.

So for several months, this has been the case with Anniversary. These centaur guys are right bastards, and the game programmers were obviously feeling REALLY insecure about gamers maybe being able to complete the game too easily. (This is evident not just with the end of this level, but also the beginning of the next level, too!)

HOWEVER...

There is sometimes this thing that happens when I'm playing a difficult game and my li'l bro is watching, cheering me on... I don't know if it's his will power, or maybe just his moral support, but several times I have been able to push through an impossible level or Boss with him there that had seemed insurmountable when I was playing all by myself.

And today was no different! The juju was workin' and I NAILED those centaur bastards, and even proceeded to press on most of the way through Level 9!!!

This is WAY-significant, because completing Level 8 also completed the Greece section of the game, giving me 4 MORE LEVELS ("St. Francis' Folly," "Coliseum," "Midas's Palace" and "Tomb of Tihocan") that I can replay at will!!! :D Earlier this weak I found myself in a Tomb Raider Anniversary sort of mood and I could only replay "Peru - Mountain Caves," "Peru - City of Vilcabamba," "Peru - The Lost Valley" (which kind of sucks when you get to the T-Rex because he's one of those insecure-programmers-making-a-Boss-unecessarily-invincible type foes, so I rarely bother replaying the last half of the level) and "Peru - Tomb of Qualopec". But even if I don't finish these next 3 Egypt levels, I still have 8 LEVELS I can play through when I'm just in a jumping around, solving puzzles, killing vicious animals kind of mood! :)

Geez! Three and a half hours until I get off work and I am SO jonesing to climb back into TR Anniversary now, lol!

Anyway... I'd say that my Thnksgiving vacation has been great up until, and including, coming back to work!

How badass is THAT! :D

Okay, I should get back to work for now.

SHOUT-OUT TO MY GNOMEY-GODDESS!!! xoxoxo

And to everyone else:

PEACE, LOVE & HAPPINESS!!! :D