New Year's Weekend in the Present Tense
Last Friday we went to Value City Furniture to pick up some new pieces we'd ordered - two video chairs, and four small storage cubes, which we've arranged in a coffee-table-like square. Two of them now hold extra game controllers and accessories; another holds a large fuzzy blanket. I don't know what we'll stick in the fourth one. They look great though.
Saturday, 12/29
John comes over! We do Christmas with him (Worms Open Warfare for DS and Riviera PSP for Aaron, a Gamestop gift card for me, Jeanne D'Arc, Grandia 3, and Grandia Xtreme for John), then drive to Columbus for the pawnshops and lunch. At the pawnshops, we picked up a GBA SP for me (light blue) for $33 (we'd gotten one for Aaron, dark blue, back in the fall from another Columbus pawnshop). We drive around and do some other shopping, such as stopping at Disc Replay, where I saw that they're selling used individual seasons of Seinfeld for $11 each (retail is $40).
On our return home, the mail has arrived - a package from my parents containing the stuff we got at Christmas at my grandma's house (we were not in attendance for this chaotic event). Highlight is the money from Grandma. ^_^
After John leaves, Aaron and I go to a craft store so I can spend some of my Christmas money and use a coupon. I buy two small scrapbooking punches and an oval cutter. Yay!
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Sunday, 12/30
Andy comes over! We do Christmas with him (we paid for part of his new PSP and gave him Tales of Legendia, he gave us Disgaea PSP and a pair of plush Prinnies). We go out to shop for a while. I play "Orange Crush" on Gamestop's Rock Band demo unit, because it is like the only song I know in the entire game. Also, a new craft store coupon is now valid, and I use that to quickly buy some scrapbooking adhesive. We also stop at Disc Replay, where I spend the remainder of my Christmas money on a season of Seinfeld. Then we go to Best Buy, hoping to find something to spend our Christmas gift cards on. We fail, but Game Fund buys us an on-sale copy of Orange Box for 360. Woo.
We return and eat tasty nachos, then screw around with the 360 for a while, largely with Arcade and Eternal Sonata. Andy leaves around 6. Aaron and I go to Blockbuster to use our last rental on his 52 free rentals card. We get the Order of the Phoenix movie. Then we go to Kroger to get some stuff for New Year's Eve.
This day marks a year since we got engaged. Aw.
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Monday 12/31
I work for several hours on preparing treats for New Year's Eve. I leave a note in Aaron's LJ that we've got plenty of food and if he wants to invite Andy over, to go ahead. I also find an amazing sale on scrapbooking stuff on the internet, and fill my cart with about $29 worth of stuff, except the actual retail value of the stuff is somewhere closer to $160. (And I could have saved 90 cents if I'd looked a little harder, but still.) Shipping and tax made it $40, but it's still insane.
Aaron arrives home around 6:10 to find me playing Half-Life 2 and an attractive array of food and snacks on the dining room table. Andy shows up around 6:20, and I'm still playing Half-Life 2. Over "dinner" (pasta salad, veggie tray, summer sausage, etc.), we watch the Densha Otoko movie, which Aaron and I had picked up for $1.50 back when some local Movie Gallery rental stores were going out of business. It was very very much worth the $1.50 and very funny, and we enjoy it very much. I can't wait to see it again. ^_^
Later we eat a graham-cracker cake that I made in the late afternoon, a recipe Aaron's mom passed along back at Christmas.
It has begun to rain and thunder and be very windy. Andy goes home around 9:30. Aaron and I spend the rest of the evening mapping our way through an optional dungeon in Eternal Sonata and eating more treats. We take a break of about half an hour while I make my "Year in Games" post, then return to Eternal Sonata. We watch about the last forty-five seconds of the Times Square ball dropping, drink some sparkling cherry juice, and head back to Eternal Sonata for another hour.
---
Tuesday 1/1
Big shocker: we play more Eternal Sonata and finish off the food from New Year's Eve. We watch the Order of the Phoenix movie and deem it to be largely terrible, but with a couple fantastic montage sequences that went well. In the very late evening, we finish Eternal Sonata, and the Eternally Stupid ending is terrible. Really, the plot was pretty good up through the first 75% of the game. Then it got stupid and pretty much none of the plot threads got tied up. We will still be playing the enhanced second playthrough, but I think we'll be skipping all the cutscenes.
---
Wednesday 1/2
Aaron calls in sick with an early-morning headache. By afternoon he is fine and we go do some shopping - namely, getting the Sam's Club membership my parents gave us. We wander the aisles for a while and get paper towels and some foodstuffs we need, and also a two-pack of Xbox 360 controllers for $75. Now we have four, so full-on multiplayer Carcasonne and Eternal Sonata are actual options now. Then we go to Meijer for laundry detergent, and I pick up some clearanced Christmas stuff, including a roll of red, gold, and green camouflage-patterned wrapping paper. :D
Also, after panicking about it all weekend, I finally find my long-missing MP3 player. Woo.
---
Today I have put away most of the Christmas decorations, except the tree and ornaments, which we'll take down together, and I will be making awesome chili for dinner, because I am awesome.
Saturday, 12/29
John comes over! We do Christmas with him (Worms Open Warfare for DS and Riviera PSP for Aaron, a Gamestop gift card for me, Jeanne D'Arc, Grandia 3, and Grandia Xtreme for John), then drive to Columbus for the pawnshops and lunch. At the pawnshops, we picked up a GBA SP for me (light blue) for $33 (we'd gotten one for Aaron, dark blue, back in the fall from another Columbus pawnshop). We drive around and do some other shopping, such as stopping at Disc Replay, where I saw that they're selling used individual seasons of Seinfeld for $11 each (retail is $40).
On our return home, the mail has arrived - a package from my parents containing the stuff we got at Christmas at my grandma's house (we were not in attendance for this chaotic event). Highlight is the money from Grandma. ^_^
After John leaves, Aaron and I go to a craft store so I can spend some of my Christmas money and use a coupon. I buy two small scrapbooking punches and an oval cutter. Yay!
---
Sunday, 12/30
Andy comes over! We do Christmas with him (we paid for part of his new PSP and gave him Tales of Legendia, he gave us Disgaea PSP and a pair of plush Prinnies). We go out to shop for a while. I play "Orange Crush" on Gamestop's Rock Band demo unit, because it is like the only song I know in the entire game. Also, a new craft store coupon is now valid, and I use that to quickly buy some scrapbooking adhesive. We also stop at Disc Replay, where I spend the remainder of my Christmas money on a season of Seinfeld. Then we go to Best Buy, hoping to find something to spend our Christmas gift cards on. We fail, but Game Fund buys us an on-sale copy of Orange Box for 360. Woo.
We return and eat tasty nachos, then screw around with the 360 for a while, largely with Arcade and Eternal Sonata. Andy leaves around 6. Aaron and I go to Blockbuster to use our last rental on his 52 free rentals card. We get the Order of the Phoenix movie. Then we go to Kroger to get some stuff for New Year's Eve.
This day marks a year since we got engaged. Aw.
---
Monday 12/31
I work for several hours on preparing treats for New Year's Eve. I leave a note in Aaron's LJ that we've got plenty of food and if he wants to invite Andy over, to go ahead. I also find an amazing sale on scrapbooking stuff on the internet, and fill my cart with about $29 worth of stuff, except the actual retail value of the stuff is somewhere closer to $160. (And I could have saved 90 cents if I'd looked a little harder, but still.) Shipping and tax made it $40, but it's still insane.
Aaron arrives home around 6:10 to find me playing Half-Life 2 and an attractive array of food and snacks on the dining room table. Andy shows up around 6:20, and I'm still playing Half-Life 2. Over "dinner" (pasta salad, veggie tray, summer sausage, etc.), we watch the Densha Otoko movie, which Aaron and I had picked up for $1.50 back when some local Movie Gallery rental stores were going out of business. It was very very much worth the $1.50 and very funny, and we enjoy it very much. I can't wait to see it again. ^_^
Later we eat a graham-cracker cake that I made in the late afternoon, a recipe Aaron's mom passed along back at Christmas.
It has begun to rain and thunder and be very windy. Andy goes home around 9:30. Aaron and I spend the rest of the evening mapping our way through an optional dungeon in Eternal Sonata and eating more treats. We take a break of about half an hour while I make my "Year in Games" post, then return to Eternal Sonata. We watch about the last forty-five seconds of the Times Square ball dropping, drink some sparkling cherry juice, and head back to Eternal Sonata for another hour.
---
Tuesday 1/1
Big shocker: we play more Eternal Sonata and finish off the food from New Year's Eve. We watch the Order of the Phoenix movie and deem it to be largely terrible, but with a couple fantastic montage sequences that went well. In the very late evening, we finish Eternal Sonata, and the Eternally Stupid ending is terrible. Really, the plot was pretty good up through the first 75% of the game. Then it got stupid and pretty much none of the plot threads got tied up. We will still be playing the enhanced second playthrough, but I think we'll be skipping all the cutscenes.
---
Wednesday 1/2
Aaron calls in sick with an early-morning headache. By afternoon he is fine and we go do some shopping - namely, getting the Sam's Club membership my parents gave us. We wander the aisles for a while and get paper towels and some foodstuffs we need, and also a two-pack of Xbox 360 controllers for $75. Now we have four, so full-on multiplayer Carcasonne and Eternal Sonata are actual options now. Then we go to Meijer for laundry detergent, and I pick up some clearanced Christmas stuff, including a roll of red, gold, and green camouflage-patterned wrapping paper. :D
Also, after panicking about it all weekend, I finally find my long-missing MP3 player. Woo.
---
Today I have put away most of the Christmas decorations, except the tree and ornaments, which we'll take down together, and I will be making awesome chili for dinner, because I am awesome.