Post a Comment On: Coast of Araska

Well there were a number of things I mentioned way back here, that I really really meant to comment on. Some of them are drafts; some of them have not being started; and others I wrote in a righteous fury, only to find my fury was petulant, and my righteous was petty. So I may never get to them, or maybe I will, but I wanted to say something today...

Work, hey I said I wouldn't talk about work when I started this way back when, but I want to say that I have never been so busy in my life at work. I guess this is good and bad. Good because I find myself at the end of the day without even noticing it went by, bad because there is so much stuff to do I seriously consider, heaven forefend, staying late. . . Fortunately, such madness hasn't sunk in, yet.

The house, wow the house is an exciting place these days, and by the house, I hope it's clear I mean my house. Erin and I went a little paint crazy, mostly because RONA had such a great sale (buy three get one free.) One of my few complaints I have had about this house is the builder paint. I suppose when the builders are 99% good, you have to let them slide now and again. The builder paint is shit, problems with the builder paint include it being super absorbent, and non-washable. You can imagine the predicament when you are making pasta sauce and the sauce blortches (you know makes a sort of boiling geyser of molten hot tomato.) This leads to little red splatter on the wall, in a moment of urgency, one attempts to clean the sauce, What happens instead is a three step scrubbing process of escalating mess.
1. Sauce spreads
2. Dye from what ever you are cleaning with, including pure white bleached paper towel, leaches into the wall.
3. paint is stripped from the wall revealing scummy dry wall.

I imagine there is a forth step in which continued scrubbing results in fists sized holes in said drywall, but we have been lucky enough as to avoid those.

Now the kitchen is the king of this sort of mess, and the wall looked awful, but in honesty we have/had no idea what style we wanted to do the kitchen in, so we started with the main bathroom, since water / humidity cause's similar issues.

So we have since painted the bathroom what turned out to be a great colour, as it is an off white -> tope it's hard to describe, but it looks great, and matches the boarder we wanted to put in the downstairs bathroom, but couldn't because we picked the wrong colour (oops. :) The walls themselves look reborn, smooth and silky, and coated in a high quality, mould resistant, washable latex paint. We were so pleased with the colour, that we decided, what the heck, and painted the kitchen with it too.

Now in the kitchen we painted the problem spot behind the counter as we didn't have enough for the whole room. It was intended as an interim solution until we install a backsplash, but it looks pretty great for now.

Moving on in the paint madness is the master bedroom. We decided to do something a little crazy in there, so we are painting three of the walls one colour (again a non-threatening, but coordinating tope) and the last wall we are painting RED! Not "red.", but "RED!". The colour itself is a rich, deep red, something a King might drape about his shoulders when leading his troops into battle from the back of his noble warhorse, while bedecked in his resplendent plate mail. We actually haven't pained the wall this colour yet, but we got a two ounce sample of paint and test painted a square of wall, and I must say it looks exciting. So exciting I may just arm myself with a sword while painting, just in case I need do battle. We are going to start the bedroom Saturday morning, which means bedroom cleanup, and taping are tonight!

Speaking of battle, takes me to the ye olde Xbox 360.

I've recently added two titles to my collection of games, the first was Ghost Recon 3: Advanced Warfighter, or as the cool kids call in GRAW. GRAW takes you into the near future (2013) where you represent a non-GMO super soldier. To replace the typical super solider mutations you have technology.
Light weight armour
High tech on board tactical Intel, including a HUD, and thermalesque vision
Weapons!
R/C Recon Drones
And a similarly equip squad of soldiers to command.

You also get the occasional support of ground combat vehicles, or air support. The game story isn't the most enthralling, but it is sufficient to motivate the game play, and that is what is amazing. Your command over your character, your squad and you toys allows unprecedented immersion into the environment. The levels are huge and open, but you don't get lost. The experience is quite enjoyable, and the level of difficulty makes it a challenge without being frustrating. I'm sure the leet kiddies play the game on its hardest difficulty, but those days are behind me.

Next up in the game department, hot on the heels of one great game, came Oblivion, no it's not the end of the world, it is the latest instalment in the Elder Scrolls series. This game deserves a lot more then I am willing to put into it right now, so I will just say that I am very impressed, immersed, and addicted to this game! PC users who just got amazing upgrades so their wives could finish their term papers, and who sometimes have some free time may consider playing it, but only after negotiations with said wife have yielded a mutual agreeable terms of game usage and house tidyage (You know who you are!)

Well that's all for now folks just ran out of train time, and battery life.