The Long Weekend

It's odd to have this long of a rainy spell in Denver. Things are starting to feel like the Pacific Northwest. I'm not complaining, though. The moisture is much needed, and everything smells so fresh and clean and the plants popping up and into bloom are gorgeous. 

Through the moist weekend, Jen and I spent a lot of time together. On Saturday we met in Boulder and got together with Scotty, who will be DJing our wedding. We took a gander at the sound equipment and then went to get some lunch. Unfortunately the Tea House, our primary lunching target, was closed for a private event so we hit up Connor O'Neils for some Irish food and brews. Later that night was Jen's bridal shower, so I came back down to Denver and made some cookies.

The cookies were for our lunch with Isaac and Elsa the next day. I made some oven baked chicken with peaches and biscuits, and we followed it up with the cookies. Their daughter Katie is our flower girl, so she tried on the dress we had got for her and looked positively adorable. We played some games before they bid adieu, and then Jen and I watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which left us underwhelmed.

Monday we had planned on going hiking, but Jen had a bad cold and it was raining, so we slept in thoroughly, played games, and lazed about in general. We went out for a walk and look at some amazing houses and the fresh green gardens ringing them. Later that evening Jen went home to her Bible study and I turned my sights on a project of mine: a tiling framework intended to eventually help in making tile-based games.

All in all, it was a good weekend. The rain was dressing on top of the weekend.

Impressions

I was excited to see that there is a trailer for a Sherlock Holmes movie. I didn't even know there was going to be a new Sherlock Holmes movie. At first, I thought "Robert Downey Jr. as Sherlock Holmes? Awesome! This will rock!" And then he gets kicked in the nuts by a woman in lingerie. And handcuffed naked to a bed and left for the help to find. And jumps away from an explosion. And is evidently pitted against a vampire or something. That's ... disappointing. Okay, the last point would be all right. Who's directing this thing? Jerry Bruckheimer? Oh, Guy Ritchie. Wait, this shouldn't suck if we have Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law as Holmes and Watson directed by the man behind  Snatch and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. And yet it looks like it does. Sherlock Holmes is not a Jason Statham character. Grrrrr.

I also finished Galactrix last night. It's the follow up game from the people who made the excellent Puzzle Quest. It was pretty disappointing. I was excited for the hexagonal board that really changed the way you had to think. That was good. However, the story was pretty horrible, with inexplicable direction changes. For instance, at one point you have to fight the refugees you helped relocate at their urging earlier in the game. You can't ask for help or have them give you what you want out of gratitude for your earlier help. You have to blow up a ship of refugees. Laaaame. Also many of the missions are just milk runs. You have to go to destination system X to click on planet Y and then return to the planet you started. Many times you have to go to planet X, then back to your starting place, then to planet Y, back, and then to planet Z and back again. Wheeeeee. This is not interesting game play. There's a lot of time spent on mind-numbing mini games opening up leap gates just to get where you're going, and not much in the way of actually fighting enemies, which was more interesting. The enemies are highly limited in variety, too. And once you get the right set of weapons, all enemies fall with disappointing ease. For instance, there's a weapon that keeps your foe from being able to replenish their sheilds. The AI keeps stubbornly trying to replenish them, wasting energy and turns on something that will have no effect.

It also is just clunky. You spend a lot of time waiting for your ship to plod its way across the screen from galaxy to galaxy or from planet to planet. It is needless and boring waiting. The interface can be a pain, as menus blink, you can't sell cargo at shops where you buy things. 

It's a shame, since the original Puzzle Quest was so awesome. This should have been great, but instead I'm left feeling that this was a slap dash effort by the junior B team at Infinite Interactive. What the heck, guys?

Rides

Wednesday night, as I was leaving for my last Aspen Grove home group meeting, a car in the parking lot for my building caught my eye. First, because it was illegally parked in the handicapped spot. Second, because it was a Maserati. You don't see much of that make around here, nor its trident logo. I entertained harassing the person inside about parking in a handicap spot when other spots were available, but figured someone who buys a car like that and parks like that is about as likely to listen to admonishment as Bin Laden is likely to attend a bat mitzvah.

Later that night coming home, I saw several cyclists riding down the lefthand lane of Lincoln. One of them appeared to be clad in naught but a white bathrobe and flip flops. The next morning riding into work, I spied a guy I see every once in a while. His bike is done up like a chopper, complete with ape hangers, iron crosses, and a noise maker generating motorcycle noises. People are just really weird. But y'know, he just looked like he was having so much fun, I really can't fault him for it.

Anticipation

Well, it is only 47 days left until I get hitched. I am so excited to be getting married to such an awesome woman. The planning is getting more intense, but Jen and I have been moving along at a good pace before now, so the planning that is left is not too daunting. We just have a lot of little things to do; a wave of minutiae.

The invitations for the wedding are out in the wild and making their way around. We're watching the RSVPs come in on our website. If you've got an invitation and haven't replied yet, please do! It is exciting to see the guest list take shape.

Olla

On the ride home tonight, I saw the night heron for the second time. I guess he's back. I checked in my parents' bird book and found that some of them are non-migratory (like African swallows), but evidently this guy is.

Also along the trail are segments of a thick (1.5 feet) black pipes. I'm not sure where they're planning on putting it, as another crew has been laying down sod. I hope they're not going to just immediately dig it up to bury this pipe. It's the same pipe that has a lane closed off on Speer heading towards Cherry Creek. Hmmm.

I watched the season finale of Lost last night. Good stuff! Many mysteries have been unveiled this season, but this episode introduced a whole bevy of them. Man, I can't wait to see what the final season will bring. I only have to wait until January of next year. Well, one more reason to live. ;)

Sunday's for the Moms

This weekend was pretty good. Jen and I stuck stamps on the invitations and got them ever so close to being ready. We also went up to Boulder and had lunch with Josh who will be officiating at the wedding. Filled with British food, we toddled over to a park and laid under the sun listening to the thunder of boys playing Frisbee and the shrieking of kids. We spontaneously decided to go see the new Star Trek movie. Even though the showing was after 5, we magically got in on matinee prices. We barely did. They announced the theater had been sold out, and afterwards, when we left, there was a line waiting for the next showing. 

Without giving too much away, this was a clever reinvention of Star Trek that looked good and worked well. I even got over knowing Zachary Quinto as a homicidal psycopath from Heroes and let him be Spock. It was a good flick, and pretty clever in a meta sort of way.

For Mother's Day, Jen, her parents, and I gathered down at my parents' place where they are campground hosts. The weather was a bit too chilly for eating outdoors, but we enjoyed a good meal, some pear ginger pie from yours truly, and watching model planes flown at the 'airfield.' The guy we watched had a model Messerschmitt and a big bomber. It was a good weekend, and Happy Mother's Day!

Pictures From Mexico Sans Swine Flu

Finally I was able to get the pictures from my trip to Mexico up. They are in my gallery as usual. The trip was great and we had a blast. Other than seeing some people in masks and having our temperatures taken at the airport, the threat of swine flu didn't affect us. We got in on Monday, having left the 4 inches of snow in Denver. We flew into Cancun and then made our way down to the villa in Puerta Aventuras.

The next day some people went out fishing in the ocean, and some of us went and did a Mayan adventure tour that took us to Mayan ruins, an amazing beach, zip lines, cenotes (underground pools and rivers), and a really bumpy van ride. On another day, the group went out on a catamaran and went to a reef where we snorkeled and to another area were we floated in calmer waters. It was also a great time.

Other activities involved eating, drinking, swimming, beach football, dolphin encounters, drinking, eating, reading, drinking, eating, games, eating, drinking, and a little more drinking and eating. It was a good time.

The stressful moment came when we left. After a harrowing shuttle ride back to the airport, we got stuck in the slowest moving line ever and had to sprint to the gate to make our flight. In addition to this, my bladeless multi tool, which I have traveled with for years, finally got confiscated. I didn't have time to plead my case. We barely made it on the flight, but we were glad to do so, even though it meant leaving Mexico. Thanks to David and John for giving us this great vacation! Go RealEyes!

Odd

The other day, the management of the Tower of Odd Smells left two notices on my door. One was a memo warning residents to be aware, because car break ins are at an all time high in my neighborhood. The other was a notice beseeching me to change my mind about leaving and offering me clean carpets or furniture if I signed a new lease. Ummmm. There's some mixed messages.

This morning, I was riding along to work and saw a man in a husky mascot costume kayaking through the rapids at Confluence park. He was with several other kayakers, so I'm guessing it wasn't a lone looney. 

Odd.

A Fortunate Chain of Events

Yes, yes. Pictures are still coming. I'll talk about Mexico soon. What I want to talk about now, is blackberries. I had a nice chain of happy coincidences that God blessed me with that ends with blackberries ... in my mouth. I drove to work today in order to pick up some envelopes and because I felt a little bit sick. On the way home, I saw that I-25 was a bit slow, so I headed home on Speer. I had been working on a grocery list, so I stopped at the King Soopers along Speer. I also was strangely craving soft tacos, so I bought some nicely discounted ground beef and saw that there were blackberries. Ten cartons for ten dollars! Holy moley!

It's been a long time since I have been able to buy blackberries. Part of it is that they're so expensive, and the other part is that I grew up picking crates of these things from the roadside for free. But today presented me with an opportunity to bring some summer into spring, and I snatched up 4 cartons out of the few that were left. I should also note that when I checked out, my beef, which had been half price, came up as full price. I asked the cashier and he gave me one of them free and one of them at the sale price. Score!

I came home and got some rockstar parking right in front of the Tower of Odd Smells. I came up and made my soft tacos and then enjoyed some blackberries in vanilla yogurt. Sooooooo good. Of course they have seeds the size of small puppies, but they taste sooooo good ... the berries, not the puppies.

Stateside

Okay. I'm back from Mexico and flu-free, as far as I can tell. It's now going to be a day of laundry, TV, and catching up with the life I put on hold to enjoy some relaxation in paradise. The trip was great, and I'll have some pictures and a narrative up soon, but first I gotta get caught up.