Tag Archives: sarajaye

All quiet on the Christmas front

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For once, I stuck to my guns and didn’t make a wish list specifically for Christmas this year. Even with my meager salary (which should change very shortly, as I return to my old clerical job next week) I can buy pretty much any game I want, even if it’s not always when I want.

However, my brother was kind enough to send me Rhythm Thief and the Emperor’s Treasure, which I had on my Amazon wish list long before Christmas came around. The best way to really describe this one is “Elite Beat Agents meets Professor Layton”. In other words, there are a bunch of rhythm-based games interspersed with music-based puzzles, from typical “Simon Says” puzzle to capturing sounds and playing them for other NPCs to advance. Though the very obvious Layton parallels (including the flippin’ title) may turn away some gamers, it’s actually quite good.

In return, I gave him Hitman: Absolution. The only game in the series I’ve played so far was Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, and couldn’t really get into it. Stealth games seemed more up my brother’s alley, so I bought it in hopes that he would enjoy it. I have no real idea whether or not he’s played Contracts or Blood Money, so I’m not sure where Absolution fits in with Hitman canon.

Lynn sent me the third collection of the Archie Comics Mega Man series, wherein Mega Man fights the Robot Masters from Mega Man 2. It definitely feels a lot faster than the previous two sets of comics, most likely because there’s a full suite of eight bad guys for him to fight. My guess is that collection #4 (if it isn’t out already) is going to feature baddies from Mega Man 3, as well as the debut of Proto Man!

Her gift from this not-so-secret Santa was the first season of Adventure Time on DVD. I myself haven’t seen that many episodes of the cartoon myself, but I hear it’s very funny. Maybe I ought to take a few Mondays away from my video gaming to actually check it out on a regular basis.

Satisfy-your-sweet-tooth Saturday

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Yesterday was kind of a weird one. After suffering from a power failure that knocked out my cable, TV and internet access for all of Friday, it came back on at around 8 AM, four hours before Lynn and her mom were to arrive for our shopping trip to the King of Prussia Mall. It had rained all morning, so I was prepared to bring an umbrella along in case we needed it, but by the time we actually reached the mall, it stopped.

While we were in the mall, we did quite a bit of shopping and general geeking out. At the Yankee Candle store, the buttercream-scented candle caught my attention right away, just for how powerful the candle’s scent was – you can really smell the cream without even having to light it or hold your nose really close to it.

We also checked out a store that sells a whole bunch of “As Seen on TV” products, including the memelicious Slap Chop (just…look it up on YouTube; you’ll see what I mean).

There was also a store in the Plaza that dealt in really old video games, from NES on up. I thought of picking up one of the NES console clones, but I decided to hold out until I could get a better deal on eBay or something.

As for the other stuff we got, well…we had plush toys, trading card (MTG for me, and Pokémon for her), and sweets. Lots and lots of sweets.Bags of candy from Sweet Factory, a few boxes of candy from Five Below (the same size you get in the movie theaters, but just for $1), and some cookie treats from the Mrs. Fields booth. One of the items there was a cookie sandwich – two large chocolate chip cookies with cream in the middle. After eating one of those bad boys, I felt like I had to brush my teeth twice this morning.

Lynn’s aunt came down along with her mom that day, and they did some shopping in the Philly area while we were traipsing around in the mall. I didn’t get a chance to introduce myself, as I only actually saw her when they were getting ready to leave. Even though we’ve decided to simply remain friends for now, my parents expressed interest in visiting her house one day.

Captain Plan-It

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Evidently, this summer, and the few weeks leading up to it are going to be for “doing things”. We haven’t yet talked about a possible date for the annual family vacation, but I’m almost certain that it’s going to happen. Before that does, me, my brother and a few friends of ours are planning to attend the TooManyGames convention. It’ll be the first time I’ve ever visited a gaming convention, and the first time in a while I’ll have visited anything this big. From what I hear, there’s gonna be card games, video games, tournaments, music, cosplay — the works. I’m going to try and most likely fail to make some headway in some of the tournaments they’re holding (namely Mario Kart Wii, Puzzle Bobble 2, and, yes — Pong), but I’m most interested in getting some good pictures of the event.

In non-video-game-con news, I’m in the midst of making plans to meet up with Lynn again sometime in mid-July, for our first meeting since last September. I’m hoping all goes well, and that there aren’t any major schedule conflicts. My combined excitement level for these two events is…somewhere very high on the excitement chart, to be certain.

Once upon a time up in Jersey, yo

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And so, I did go on my journey to North “Joisey” to hang out with Sara for the weekend, and we both saw that it was good.

Getting there from Philly was a bit of an adventure. I’m used to getting my SEPTA tickets or tokens from the people at the booths at 69th St. NJ Transit trains have automated ticket booths at every station. So if you’re going to purchase a ticket that makes a connection at a different stop, you’ll need to buy them at the first stop instead of getting two separate tickets (I had to do that going into Ridgewood to get to my hotel, and then again from Westwood coming home on Sunday). With the connection times so close together and the on and off tracks at Secaucus Junction a few minutes of walking apart, I wondered if I were going to miss one of my trains and wind up late. Luckily, everything worked out in the end, so I’m happy.

We spent a lot of the day watching the first half of Season 2 of Avatar: the Last Airbender, making it roughly to the part where I had paused my Netflix viewing of the show (“The Great Library”). I got a chance to meet and talk to her parents at dinner. After that, we watched some Nostalgia Critic videos, a few of which I hadn’t yet watched before. The one that got me laughing the most was the anti-drug PSAs list. Honestly, you have to wonder whether or not some of the folks making these commercials were taking drugs themselves. How else would you be able to explain Paul Reubens, completely in-character as Pee-Wee Herman, talking deadly serious about the dangers of crack, while still doing the Pee-Wee voice?

I spent Saturday night at La Quinta Inn in Paramus, waking up feeling like a king. I had originally booked a room with a queen-sized bed, but at least one room with a king-size was available, so they let me stay in that room at no extra charge. Wasn’t really interested in watching TV, so I tried playing some Etrian Odyssey before going to bed I didn’t have enough strength to get past the Fenrir…I need to remember not to let my Landschnekt use his War Cry ability, even with his defense buffed to the max, or the Fenrir will surely tear him a new one.

I woke up the next morning close to 6 AM (I’m an early bird, see?) and had a hearty breakfast of waffles, cereal, yogurt and orange juice. I wonder if their waffle makers are sold in stores, because I want one so badly now.

Back at Sara’s place, we took a little tour of the stores on the street. Most of them were closed on account of it being the Sunday before Labor Day, but the good news is that she doesn’t have far to go if she ever needs a particular item. It was hot and humid outside, so we went back inside to watch The Neverending Story for the first time, and had a rematch in Pokémon Black and White (she won again, but I actually had a fighting chance because our Pokémon were auto-balanced to level 50, and only lost 6-4 as a result), finally ending by messing around with some of the functions of the C-Gear that I hadn’t tried yet. I also wanted to do a joint Entralink trip, but for some reason we couldn’t make a connection. Eh…that’s life, I guess.

If I were to give this weekend a report card-style grade, I’d give it an A-. The only thing preventing me from giving it an A was the wait I had to getting home. I really should have planned that out better. Other than that, I had a wonderful time, and I hope to meet up with her again one day.

Irene, Catherine and Sara

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Hurricane Irene barreled its way up the East Coast over the weekend, and as is typical of fierce storms that threaten the Philadelphia metro area, there was a lot of rain and wind, but not to the degree of devastation that some of the coastal states got. It started out as a Category 3 storm, but was downgraded to a Category 1 by the time it reached the mid-Atlantic. I’d imagine a lot of people were disappointed when they didn’t see flying cows miles and miles of smashed windows, but I’ll bet some of them changed their tune when they saw their cars submerged in 4-5 feet of water. My town always seems to avoid the worst of it, except for one part that’s maybe only a few feet above Darby Creek. Of course, it got flooded, but most of the floodwaters washed away on Sunday anyway.

Luckily, I had enough time to finish Catherine before things got really ugly. I had trouble getting through the last few levels of Stage 7 and had to resort to video walkthroughs to figure out just what the hell I was supposed to do. 7-4 is deceptively easy-looking, as you only have to climb up four stories to reach the exit, but the block configuration is extremely tricky. Stages 8 and 9 after that were easy in comparison. I expected 8 to be a pain in the ass, since it’s an escort mission within a boss battle. Luckily, the escortee is smart about climbing, even if she is a bit slow. The black hole blocks that appear in Stage 9 suck up anything and everything above them, so you have to be smart enough not to try to climb onto one if you don’t want to die. I finished the game with the “True Lovers” ending, because I was determined throughout the game to not make Katherine want to kill me.

In much less depressing news, I’m going to pay a visit to Sara’s house for the weekend. I’m excited because I’m finally going to get to meet her face-to-face (we’ve talked to each other on a regular basis since the beginning of the year, and exchanged pictures and phone numbers and all that good stuff), but I’m fairly nervous because it’s a long way from Philadelphia to her home in norther New Jersey. Since the trip requires me to take multiple trains, I need to make sure that all of the arrival and departure times sync up properly so that I don’t miss one and wind up being late – in the words of the White Rabbit, “for a very important date”.