Winter is Coming

The last month blew by fast.  Work has been fine, the kids good, no major illnesses or home repairs.  Megan had her fall break last week, so I took two days from work and we went to the Great Wolf Lodge, a hotel with an indoor swimming area that sports lots of water slides.  The kids had a blast.  Took them trick or treating Monday night too; Megan attired herself as a 80s valley girl while Ian was a bipedal cheeseburger.  They scored lots of candy, of which mom and dad have been availing themselves.

I have the collector's edition of the fifth Elder Scrolls game, Skyrim, pre-ordered from Amazon for next week, the auspicious date of 11/11/11.  I can't believe it's been almost 18 years since I played the first game back in early 1994, a year that saw me at age 29, delivering pizzas, working through grad school, and still living in the apartment on East High St in Springfield.  But Skyrim is my official 47th birthday present, I warned Melissa not to spend any other money for it since the collector's edition is a whopping $150.  A foolish nerd and his money. . . .

Spoke with my old high school friend Bill Giffels for over four hours on the phone last week.  We hadn't talked since 2001, haven't seen each other since 1994, and naturally had lots to catch up on.  Ended up sending him a Core i5 750 processor I never tested or used as an upgrade for his aging home computer.

Melissa has been hitting me up for a laptop as a Christmas gift for her and Megan.  Market analysts are expecting the tablet incursion to drive laptop prices down quite a bit this holiday shopping season, so I'll keep an eye open for a good deal.  The bad part of the purchase would be the wireless router I'd have to buy; my old 4-port wired Linksys has been going strong since 1998.  I can't imagine how many gigs of game demos, videos, movies, drivers, patches, Windows updates, apps, and porn I've downloaded through it over the last decade, but it's refused to die.

Starting to get chilly outside, winter is definitely coming soon.  We took a family walk after dinner last night, strolled down to the neighborhood playground to let the kids frollic for awhile before heading back home.  Been having some small problems with various neighbors, one trying to dump her kid off on us as a daycare facility, another letting his child play unsupervised on our backyard playset without asking permission, and another letting their dog do its business in our yard.  Nothing that a zombie infestation wouldn't solve.