Sheep Guarding Llama

Today is Labor Day and I have the day off.  Whoo hoo for a three day weekend.  The family slept in late and basically took the day off to do absolutely nothing all day.  No shopping, no traveling, no nothing.  Time to just zone out.

My big project, continuing from yesterday, was playing Dragon Age: Origins Awakening which is continuing to be really good.  The expansion is definitely very buggy in comparison to the main game but my game is playing better than Dominica’s did as there have been several bug fixes released since she played through the expansion pack.  Dominica is planning to play the expansion pack again, though, because she was not happy with the outcome of the first time that she played it and she wants to have better success playing it a second time.

It was great having an entire day with just nothing at all to do.  Of course, it wasn’t completely nothing but it was a good approximation.  There were some issue that came up that demanded my attention but they were few and far between.

We were very lazy today and neither of us felt like going anywhere so we decided that since it was a holiday that it would be good to just order in from Domino’s and go all out.  Liesl loves when pizza gets delivered and does her “happy pizza dance.”

I managed to make it through the bulk of Awakenings today.  I was probably about fifteen hours in by the end of the day.  I am far enough along that I was wondering around the game pretty extensively trying to figure out what I might have missed and trying to tie up any loose ends that might exist.  I don’t want to miss very much and am trying to be as thorough as is reasonable.  Dominica was not that thorough and was quite disappointed.  Awakenings is much less forgiving than the main DAO title was and if you don’t make good decisions, bad things can happen!

It was a very nice, very relaxing day.  We had a nice time just hanging out together as a family and doing as little as possible.

We got up at five this morning to see Aunt Gayle and Gwen on to the road.  They were up very early and managed to get out of the door by seven after five.  That will put them up in Kentucky, their driving goal for today, in very good time.  Liesl even got up and came out to see them off.  She loves having company.  She wishes that they could stay.

We all went right back to bed and slept in nice and late today.  Huzzah for holiday weekends.

Once we got up I drove to Panera and got breakfast lunch.  I was trying to get breakfast but, for some odd reason, they decided to not serve breakfast as late as they normally do on a holiday weekend.  But we managed to get leftover suffles.  Yum.

Today’s project is to finally complete my game of Dragon Age: Origins.  I got DaO for Christmas but did not get to play it for quite some time.  Long before I got a chance to start playing it, Dominica played it all the way through, then played the expansion, then started going through it a second time!  Then I got to play it but never managed to quite complete it.  I got stuck at the final, massive battle and went so long without getting a chance to pick it up again that I was so out of practice that I felt that I could not make it through the final battle.  So Dominica said that she would do that for me.

I ended up spending a bit of time working with Brian on an OSX server today.  That was pretty cool as I have not had a chance to work on OSX’ server edition previously nor have I had a chance to play with Snow Leopard, the latest release of OSX, so it was a good learning experience for me.

Dominica was able to complete the final battle pretty easily – I did have a very powerful party, I was just out of practice with the controls.  Once she completed the battle I went on and finished the remaining game elements.  Overall the game was awesome.  The amount of story delivered in the eighty-two hours that it took to play through the game was truly amazing.  The Dragon Age franchise is definitely pushing the envelope in terms of video game story telling.

The ending of the game was not a let down and it hinted at exciting new chapters in the game to come in the future.  We already know that DaO2 is slated for release in March and, of course, Dominica will not allow us to wait at all for that.  I am sure that we will have it pre-ordered and will pick it up on release day.

It only took about forty-five minutes to wrap up my DaO game.  Then I popped in Dragon Age: Origins Awakenings and kicked off playing through that.  I managed to get several hours into Awakenings this afternoon which was nice.  I have not started a new game in quite some time.  Awakenings is really a continuation of the first game and is not a stand-alone title but an extremely large expansion to DaO.

I managed to get deep into the storyline already today – which is easier to do as there is really just one storyline and it feeds off of your decisions, choices and accomplishments in the first “game”.  There aren’t six different characters to choose from, each with their own life story to get into.  This dives straight in doing a great job of taking over where the original game left off.  Anyone who plays the first game really needs to play this expansion as there is tons of great stuff in here.

It was a very relaxing day.  I am extremely glad that I got time to relax and game for a while.  So seldom that I manage to pull that off.  Liesl spent a lot of the day either sitting on Dominica or my laps or just playing with her toys in the living room.  Oreo spent the day on the sofa right beside me snuggled up.  It was very sweet.

After I couldn’t take playing Awakening any more we watched G.I. Joe, the new big-budget movie remake of the 1980s cartoon.  It was awful, as you would imagine that it would be.  Dominica actually liked it.  I was less than impressed.  Now, to its credit, I did not watch the cartoon as a child, ever, and had no idea about the characters and which parts were cool nods to the old television cartoon so I am sure that there was a lot of cool stuff that I did not catch.  Still it was an extremely weak movie with very little going for it.

I have tomorrow off from work.  We have no plans whatsoever tomorrow so most likely I will dive into Awakening and see how far I can get.  It is not a full-blown game and I want to get it wrapped up as quickly as possible.  Then I will be able to get back to Oblivion.  I try my best to just focus on one game at a time, or two at most.  I learned some years ago that if I start a lot of different games at the same time that I will just lose interest because I don’t get deep enough into any one of them.  So I try really hard to focus on just one and complete it before moving on to the next now.  Or maybe two, so that I have one in Liesl’s room (Oblivion) and one in the living room (likely going back to Fable I: Lost Chapters) so that I can play depending on which television is available for my use.

I had to get up at a quarter till seven this morning so that I could get logged in and do some morning work.  Pretty normal for a Saturday for me.  I put in a few hours before anyone else got up which worked out pretty well.

The weather was really nice again today.  My family is really fortunate that they came down this weekend.  They managed to avoid the incredible heat and get to see the DFW at its best.

I ended up having just tons of work that needed my attention today and got very little free time during the day.  Late in the morning, everyone went down to the pool to swim while I watched the dogs and worked.  I was planning to wrap some stuff up and head on down to the pool myself but just before I was able to do so Liesl was brought up because she was exhausted.  So Liesl slept and I worked and watched her and the dogs for several more hours.

At least the day turned out to be very productive.  I got just tons of work done.  And Liesl got a nice nap and the dogs did not have to be lonely.

Dominica, Gayle and Gwen came up from swimming around three thirty.  We visited for a while and then everyone showered and got ready to go to La Cima for our six o’clock dinner reservations.  Even when we have plenty of time it always seems like it is a rush to get ready and to get out of the door.

Dinner was excellent.  There was a wedding at the club tonight so we dined in the Lakeside Room which is neat because it has views of our apartment and my office.  This was Dominica’s first time ever having dinner in Lakeside.  Nicki and I ate there once previously.  It makes a nice change from the Skyline Dining Room where we normally eat.

After dinner we headed back to the apartment and turned in early.  Aunt Gayle and Gwen are hoping to be on the road very early tomorrow and want to be up around four in the morning which is pretty crazy.  I was the first to go to bed, however, as Liesl was upset and not feeling well and needed me to stay with her or else she would cry a lot.  The upside is that I was able to go to bed nice and early and get some real sleep for a change.

This morning when I left for work Liesl called out “I Love You” as I headed out the door.  She is so sweet.

Very little going on today.  I’ve been feeling pretty exhausted all week.  Some more interviews today.

After work we went out to do some shopping.  We hit the storage unit to drop things off from cleaning around the house.  From there we went to McDonald’s for dinner.  We discovered that Liesl loves McDonald’s Filet-o-fish sandwiches and playing in the McDonald’s playground.  She had great fun playing on the jungle gym.

We also went to Kroger and did our grocery shopping.  It was a busy evening.

At home we just spent the evening cleaning and preparing for our guests tomorrow.