The Year Of The Dragon

And so, as the year comes to an end, I finally finish my first run through of Skyrim. Remember back here when I talked about game length, well check this out for accuracy. I'll now wait for the creation kit to be released and see how the fans run wild before adding the best of their mods and playing through again. In the meantime I'll take a little break from gaming, maybe see the sun again...oh wait, is that Deus Ex on sale on Steam? Nevermind.

Quantum Confusion

It's a testament to how good this book is, that I was 2/3 done and still confused about many of it's concepts, but really enjoying anyway.

Ghost Legion

The help desk boys are going to be busy in the New Year.

Defending Christmas

A quiet Christmas for two isn't necessarily how we'd like to spend it, but we got to see my folks before and we'll be seeing the Atlanta Irelands after. Need to mix in some Huldens and Christensens one of these years. Still, we had a good time us two. Watched a days worth of Christmas movies from the classic of Wonderful Life to the horror of something made for the Lifetime channel. The obligatory yearly watching of A Christmas Story of course. Pictured here one of my favorite gifts, a nice donation to the Defenders of Wildlife.

Twas The Night Before Christmas

When all through the house, not a creature was cooking, not even a mouse. Mimi's on the other hand, provided a really good dinner, with their great muffins for breakfast in the morning.

Yule Log

You aren't a hard core Christmas decorator until your toilet looks like a chimney.

I Know It When I See It

The plan for today was to go wander the Asheville art district. We drove all over this sketchy looking neighborhood of empty factories and old train yards. Couldn't find anything open. And finally ended up here, on some street corner, next to the only piece of art we could find. As always we had a great time doing it, the four of us can make anything fun, even getting lost. Here's my folks with what we hope is a sculpture, and they took the same snap but with me and Mari. So, travel tips 2-4. 2 - Do the art tour on a Saturday, they're all closed on Sunday. 3 - Despite how the map represents it, the galleries are spread out in little clumps across a wide area so it doesn't necessarily feel like you're in one big artsy area. 4-I'm sure the neighborhood is perfectly safe, but it looks like you're in a graffiti strewn industrial ghetto (and not the cool, artsy graffiti, just tagging.)

Wineding Down

We went down the the villages too, including the on-estate winery. I must have been getting tired because I didn't think to take pictures of any of that, so instead you get a posthumous shot of some of the bottles.

Backyards And Yards

The view from the backyard.

Because Two Pools Is For Poor People

A side garden/walk area with three pools.

Take That, Tourist Trap

Here's the library. I got this off the internet so no credit to me, but no $50 book to the Vanderbilt coffers either. Anyway, the chess set there belonged to Napoleon. (Edit: Looking at the picture the chess set is hard to make out. It's in the foreground, in a plexiglass case on that tan wood table.)

Stairway To Haveland

Particularly liked the parallelogram windows of the stairwell. On the inside my favorite was the library (I know, shocker there. Too bad I can't show it to you, oh wait I can.)

Big Ole House

The biggest house in America. They strictly enforce a no pictures inside the house policy (the better to make you buy things my dear), so you won't be getting any. I guess just google Biltmore and you can see some if you're that curious. FYI, that line out front is only a small sample of the mass of humanity that was milling around the place.

Vanderbuilt

Today was spent at the Biltmore, the home built by the Vanderbilt family. It sits on a mere 8,000 acres, and besides the house has two small "villages" (read shopping areas) and a hotel. There's also a nice Starbucks right before you go on property so everyone was happy. You can spend a whole day here, and we did. But special travel tip, it's worth seeing but don't go around Christmas. As impressive as the house is, the Christmas specific decorations aren't that great and the crowds were crazy to the point of frustrating. Here's the front lawn.

Can't Sleep, Clown Will Eat Me

Our room at the Cedar Crest. That bed is amazingly comfortable but you have to climb a ladder to get up on it.

LD B&B

Headed over to Asheville, NC to meet the parents here for an early x-mas get-together. We thought it would be fun to forgo the hotel for a B&B, pictured here (the Cedar Crest.)

Slippery

You can never have enough slippers.

Wrap It Up

Hadn't gone to a movie in a while, didn't know on which side of the cheese line this would fall. Turned out to be really good, worth the price of admission. Though be warned they play a Justin Bieber video before the movie starts which will likely induce vomiting.

Getting Fuzzy

This is a reboot of a popular series done in the 1960's. I never read those so I have no reverence for the original material, that said this was really good. Invokes an interest thought about what makes a creature sentient, and what would have happened to us if some alien species had come down and mined all our resources. How would we have developed without bronze, iron, oil....?

And So It Begins

Xmas boxes are go.

WOTM

December's wolf.

The Foggiest

December kicks off with the foggiest day I've seen in Nashville. It was thick all the way from home to work. I learned later that mere minutes after we passed, there was a huge 45 car wreck with at least one fatality on Vietnam Vets. To think, a few different traffic lights and... (Update, a quick peek at News 5 site has it up to 55 cars, 18 injured, and the single fatality stands.)

Thanksaversary The 13th

13 years of wedded bliss. Also see here.

Loosely Related

We decided to take advantage of a before Black Friday deal and get this for each other in honor of our impending 13th anniversary. Now you might think that the traditional gifts for the 13th are lace or textiles. Well if you look closely you can see it came with a little cleaning cloth. So there's your textiles right there.

Turkey 2 4 2

We had already bought a little turkey before being invited over for Thanksgiving yesterday, so we cooked it up this morning and had Thanksgiving Part 2.

Turkey

Thanksgiving dinner over at Jim and Trish's house.

Man Cannot Live By Skyrim Alone

So we don't drink a lot around here, and when we do it's wine, but I picked this up to go with Thanksgiving. It's a good beer in itself, but mostly I like it because I tasted it for the first time on a certain rooftop, so it brings back memories of one of the best trips ever.

Dragon On My Back

Another Skyrim screen shot. The graphics are really something else, and the physics too. Those hazy bits are snow blowing around in the wind in a very realistic way. So, as you can guess by the lack of other posts I've been playing a lot of Skyrim. Lots of Skyrim. Skyrim Skyrim Skyrim....Skyrim.


Skyrim.

Pickup

Awaiting Mari's return from Oregon.

The Skyrim's The Limit

With Dead Island out of the way, it can mean only one thing. I am now free to delve into Skyrim. Everything I've heard says it's awesome. So far the graphics alone are, this is a screen shot of live gameplay not a trailer or cinematic. Amazing. It's also supposed to be a 100 hour game that never gets boring. For those of you not initiated, game length is given in estimated hours it'll take you to play through it from start to finish one time. Average is about 20, shooters around 10, most RPGs around 40...so you can see where 100 falls. Goodbye world, I shall emerge emaciated and heavily bearded sometime in the spring. I'd add pale, but I'm already pale.

Dead Tired

This was loaned to me by Mari's boss, Jim. It was OK, got a little repetitive. I might actually be tired of smacking around zombies. Who knew that could happen?

Oliver Twist

Mystic has taken to carrying her food dish around with her for some reason. Not sure when this trend began or if it's her subtle way of hinting at something.

Lie Like A Dog

Snoozy Sunday morning with two dogs on my leg.

Drake Can't Chart

Finished the 3rd installment of the excellent Uncharted series. Good stuff. Not as good as 2, but 2 was one of the best games of all time so the bar was set pretty high.

The Face Of Addiction

Been drinking gallons of this stuff lately, can't get enough.

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other

Mari's Vanderbilt dermatologist/wound care specialist told her to get this very specific kind of covering. We went to a pharmacy that shall remain nameless and the pharmacist wanders around, grabs something vaguely similar and says "Here it is." We had already looked it up on our phones, we knew it wasn't right. We left and got it quick shipped to us from Amazon. Pity the person who trusts that pharmacist with their health.

Final Gear

The final game in the trilogy, wrapped the story up nicely. It's such a popular series, will be interesting to see how they make more games now that the main plot has a definitive end. Prequals maybe.

Baseline 3

48 hour monitor. It being about 24 hours into the 48 at the time of this posting, I can tell you I hate this thing. It makes everything difficult because the wires get in the way, I can't take a shower, and I think I'm allergic to the pads that keep the wires stuck on because it itches like a mofo. Can you tell I'm annoyed?

Baseline 2

MRI. I couldn't bring my phone into the same room with it, but this sculpture thingy in the lobby kind of looks like a MRI machine. I'd never had one before, I started out fascinated, ended up bored. It took a while and all you can see is this white dome with a gray stripe about an inch above your face. They also gave me earplugs which added to the sense of isolation. I definitely see why they ask about claustrophobia before you go in.

Baseline 1

Full disclosure this was all yesterday. My baseline tests were at Centennial. First, the stress test, which was being wired up and running on a treadmill. I was most worried about this one, I'm not exactly in peak physical condition, but it went OK.

WOTM

November. Less spiders, more colors.

Reghosting

The pumpkin and the trick or treater ride again. And again. And again.

Graphic Content

I would have warned you about this picture, but seeing as how the picture comes before the text that's kind of a moot point. So, sorry if I ruined your appetite or anything. Here is Mari's probably a recluse bite. If you can imagine, it's looking great compared to how things were. You didn't want a picture of that. These events chronicled: Here 1st - Here 2nd - Here 3rd - Here 4th - And finally the link included in the text above.

Fallshield

All the leaves aren't brown, and the sky is grey. We went for a drive on a winter's day.

No. 2

Week three. Where did it come from, and when will it go? It's possibly load bearing.

Wake Up

 

Great plot, average gameplay.

Parting Shot

A short visit ends in the morning, Payton took this, I'm sure it has some artistic significance.

Sharp Collection

How can you tell Payton and family are coming up from Georgia? All the sharp and pointy things find their way to higher ground.

Wasted Space

Warp travel or Cardiologist's carpet? This was really annoying to me, I thought I was getting my baseline done. Instead I waited almost an hour so the specialist who will be looking at my baseline could tell me they needed to set up a day for my baseline tests. You couldn't just call me or something? Set up the tests and give me a day/time? I took off work for this. Anyway, someday I will be having a heart MRI, a stress test, and wearing a monitor for a day.

100.5-102.5*2

It's getting cold outside, finally. The dogs are conserving heat.