Tastefully Odd Blog Entries

Last day of my vacation and I’m sick. Good thing I’ve got some ammunition to give this cold a beatdown.

Tyler picked up the Wii yesterday and the afternoon was spent playing some Wii sports with Jim, me, Tyler, Lisa, Francie, and even my parents who stopped by to give me a hand-me-down sweeper. Tyler, Jim, and I were all upset at Lisa beating us at bowling with her unnatural bowling motion, but I’m glad she, Francie, and my parents were all able to pick up the game so easily and enjoy it.  The three of us who are actual gamers had problems keeping from getting a left spin on our bowls, but were able to fix it somewhat as we practiced. (At least there’s always the granny approach if we’re struggling. )  Tennis was a lot of fun, although I don’t think any of us were able to put any finesse on the ball with any consistency.  Trying to consistently swing with the right amount of power in golf was an exercise in frustration (think the martians from sesame street… so many yips), but then I’m not too good with that in real life. I did manage to do well in the putting practice somehow though.  Baseball’s only two players but it’s pretty fun.  Plus you can always switch people in after each inning if you have more people. You just gotta be careful about moving too much inbetween pitches or you might swing/pitch too early.
Of course, there are always playa’ haters.

Isaiah Triforce Johnson. You can’t make stuff like that up. Kudos to Jason for the Wii link.

As I mentioned the other day, I’ve started playing the latest Final Fantasy. I’m really liking it despite it’s odd insistance on licences for clothing.

As Pine explains, the big difference separating this edition of the series from the rest is a lack of random encounters. This makes large parts of the game much less annoying. The funny thing is, instead of using this to avoid battles I actually fight more monsters than I would otherwise because I don’t have to wait for the battle screen to load and unload. I don’t have to explicitly select something simple as attack all the time either thanks to the gambit system. I was wary of this control scheme as it didn’t come across this nicely to me in the demo I got with Dragon Quest 8, but now I get it and I love it. Pine only shares my love of the classic theme music and the lack of random encounters and is frustrated by the gambit system, which I can understand. (HP < 70%? What the hell am I supposed to do with that shit?) But as I commented on his blog, I find setting up and tweaking gambits far more fascinating than picking a character's options every turn in a battle. I'm definitely glad I didn't pass on this game.

now if only I could relate to the characters

Well, this quarter’s finally over. Took my final exam today and I think I did pretty well. Time to relax with some Final Fantasy XII.

final

Sweet, sweet science

The scale read 180 this morning. I’ve been cutting back on calories the past two weeks, bringing it down enough to bring me below the 183 wall I was hitting. We’ll see how the weekend affects it, but for now this puts me back on track towards my goal of 174 pounds. This quarter will be over in a week (besides the final exam) so I should have time for exercising twice a week again.

time for celebratory quiznos