Ooo it’s a dragon…age

I adored Dragon Age: Origins. It was one that kind of snuck up on me, but once I got it, I was very happily obsessed. I loved the story line, the characters, the look, the gameplay – everything. It was one of those games that not only did I go around telling people they needed to play, but if I’d been able to, I’d have dragged along a cart with copies of the game to push onto people.

Hmm okay, maybe not quite that obsessed, but close.

So it was a no-brainer when I heard about Dragon Age 2. The only reason we waited so long to place our pre-order, was because Jared and I were in the middle of packing and moving and wanted to wait til we got moved up here. We still got the Special Edition pack, so all was good. The night it came out, Jared was coming back home from work, stopped at the GameStop to pick up our copy, and we started running the downloads for it overnight.

We both played obsessively for the next few days. But after a while, I started not playing as much. Part of that was having sinuses that were messing with me, so I wasn’t playing anything, much less DA2. But part of it was getting to a point in the game where it just went… meh.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still an enjoyable game. And I’ll go back and finish it, but not right now. But this time, I’m just not as caught up in the story as I was with DA:O. The characters are all nice and all, but none of them really feel like the boon companions that I had in the first game.

The gameplay? Well they certainly shifted it around. There are more skills that I want to use and less fluff. It’s faster paced, and I like the leap into action that your character does when it’s near to the enemy. But to some degree, it almost feels like “Random Fantasy Game #1285352″, and I’m not sure why.

And then there’s the art. They cleaned up the models a lot from the previous game. not that the art in DA:O was horrible. But the art style, at least on the faces, is a little too painterly and polished. I mean, sure it looks nice, but it’s almost too clean, if that makes any sense. Then again, it could just be me being insane, which is always a viable possibility.

So last night, instead of playing DA2 and being distracted by odd-to-my-eyes art and not having a storyline that’s gripping me and characters that I just want to sigh at and not in a good way, I restarted Final Fantasy 13. Slick and shiny art? Sure, but it’s not trying to be anything other than slick and shiny. Whiny characters? Yep, but I just ignore Hope and focus on the baby Chocobo. (Baby Chocobo rocks.) And right now, it’s working for me.

Later today, after I run an errand in town, I’ll come home, poke the art supplies again, and possibly even knit. Somewhere in there, I’ll put out more feelers for jobs, and tonight I’ll commit carnage in Final Fantasy. Go me.

It’s Spring!

Okay, so the official start date of Spring is a few days away yet, but it’s still Spring here, dammit. Mom and I just got done with planting more flowers in Mom’s yard, while Jared was raking dead grass off the trying-to-grow-gasp grass peeking through it. Every so often, he’d find the baseball that’s floating around in the yard and toss it, sending the dogs racing after it, who would then ignore the ball and just chase each other around the yard in sheer joy of running. The amusement of watching them be lunatics in the yard made up for yelling at them for peeing on the plants that Mom had yet to plant in the ground and for digging holes in the ground to catch moles. Cole was the peeing culprit and Lexi is the one that caught the mole. She did that before we left the house today. /sigh

Today wasn’t what I had thought it would be earlier this week. Earlier this week, I was thinking we might head into town on Friday, which is Jared’s day off, have lunch out, hit GameStop, hit Mom’s store, and just relax the rest of the weekend. Instead, Friday was spent calling a nearby Firestone an hour away (the closest one to us), finding out they were out of our size and brand of tire that we had a warranty on, getting a callback from the manager saying he’d tracked on down in Memphis and he’d have it delivered to his store Saturday and he’d call us as soon as it came in.

So today was spent waiting on a phone call that they had our tire, getting over to Mom’s store, getting the keys to her minivan, loading our dead tire into her van, driving an hour to the Firestone to have the tire changed, eating lunch, then driving back to Mom’s store so Jared could put our tire on and Mom could get her car back and we could all come home. BLEH! Not the day I wanted, especially as nice as it was today! At least we had some time with all of us out in the yard dealing with the yard while the cats meowed in the windows at us.

And while we were at Mom’s store, I did something I’d been thinking about for the past few weeks, as the weather’s been getting warmer and I feel like I’m waking back up: I bought art supplies. Not a ton, mainly cos we can’t afford it. But enough that I can actually do something. I’d been itching to get back into doing something more artistic than knitting (which don’t get me wrong, I adore and am still doing). Amusingly, while running the art store, I didn’t have time to do anything artistic. So while I’m unemployed, I might as well get back into it.

One of the things I’d gotten when I’d worked at the store was a set of Pelikan Transparent Watercolors. It had arrived with the case broken, so couldn’t be sold to customers, and when I reported it to our vendor, they gave us credit for it since it was busted. I’m not about to turn down free art supplies, especially something as nice as these! So today, I bought a sketchbook (I have one, but it’s packed up… somewhere), Ebony pencils (again, packed up in some box), watercolor paper (hey! I didn’t have that!), an eraser (prolly had one but you can never have too many), a plastic palette (didn’t have one of those either!), some artist’s tape (to hold down the watercolor paper to the board I’ll be painting on), and some brushes (any I had are long dead). Mom dug out her box of colored pencils (my box that’s identical is, say it with me, in a box somewhere), so I have plenty of materials to get me going. Now I just have to figure out what I want to do with them all!

But at least it’s nice out, I have fresh supplies to do something with, and a fresh batch of sweet tea to enjoy. And later tonight, I get to go outside and stare at a giant moon in the sky. Even with the trip to Tupelo, it’s been a decent day. Yey Spring!