Jessie

It's finally happened.

I finally snapped and bought myself World of Warcraft last weekend.

I like the game play. I like the colorful world. I like that the community actually talks and interacts with each other.

I'm enjoying myself.

I'm a hypocrite. I've gone to the Dark Side.

Sorry, world. I know you'll forgive me someday.

So, my new computer arrived on Tuesday. My old one crashed on me one too many times (apparently it was just a hard drive issue), and I needed an upgrade anyway, so here we are.

I ended up getting a bad stick of RAM with it (which the company is sending a replacement for), but still, I love this new machine. I'm on Windows 7 now, too, which runs like a dream. I like how organized everything seems to be; even Paint looks awesome. :P

The machine was purchased from CyberPower PC for around $1,500. It's a very good computer for the price, and without all the proprietary crap that other PC companies pile on. Highly recommended.

I finally got around to playing and beating Portal. That game is easily one of the best games I've played in a very, very long time.

I think I was put off by it at first because of the whole "OMG THE CAKE IS A LIE LOLOLOLOL" meme that was floating around the internet when the game was first released. Yeah, it's a fun little bit in the game, but really, it's not as hilarious as people thought it was; there were other quotes that were far more humorous. Oh, well.

I'm glad I finally played it, though. I highly recommend Portal to anyone. A+.

On an unrelated note, Ness told me yesterday that he ordered my birthday present and it'll be here in a few days. I'm a bit WTF about it because my birthday isn't until December - why so early? I have no idea what it could be, either... he's not giving me any hints.

Speaking of birthdays, I still need to figure out what to get him for his birthday. Argh.

My aunt, uncle, and cousins are visiting from South Dakota/Minnesota this week, and they encouraged me to grab a Facebook account in order to keep in touch with them. Considering that I only get to see them maybe once a year, I decided to give it a go and reactivate my old, never-before-used account.

I am so lost.

I don't think I've ever felt lost on the internet before.

... does this mean I'm no longer rad and hip?

There have been quite a few things going on the past few weeks, most of which are of the Not Good variety. Awesome.

Most recently (and most important), my grandma was admitted to the hospital on Wednesday. Apparently her doctor found water in the sac around her heart and had her taken to the local hospital here. They kept her overnight, were unable to treat her (big shock), so they transferred her to Spectrum's heart center in Grand Rapids. She'll probably be there for a few days, but the doctors are taking good care of her; she's improved a lot since being transferred.

Random L4D fun-time thing: When we got on the elevator to go to my grandma's room, Ness turned to me and we had this lovely conversation:

Ness: "We've been immune so far, but if I start to turn, promise you'll shoot me."
Moi: "What if your beard starts to turn? Can I shoot that?"

... yeah. We've gotta stop playing Left 4 Dead. But anyway...

The other major thing going on is that my sister is getting a divorce. She found out earlier this month that her husband had been cheating on her for about a year or so. I don't know all the details, but she's a mess and it's causing a lot of stress for everyone (mainly because her soon-to-be ex-husband convinced her to drop out of high school [twice!] and insisted that she stay unemployed). The real mess starts next week in court, since all the adoption crap for my niece has to be started again. I'm just glad I'm not directly involved.

It hasn't all been bad, though. Ness and I drove around on Wednesday and found this nifty little miniature golf course/arcade in Newaygo that neither of us knew about. We thought about stopping to play, but it started raining (with hail!) so hard that we could hardly see the road. Instead, we (slowly) drove over to the Hesperia Variety Store to see what goodies they had for cheap. I found a metric shit ton of yarn on sale, so I picked a bunch up for future projects. I bought four skeins of Lion Brand Jiffy for two different shawls I have to make, along with a bunch of cotton so that I can do some pot holders and hot pads or whatever.

The Baby Food Festival also started this week. I really didn't want to go to that thing, but the library was having a used book sale and I couldn't pass that up. We got a few books on Thursday, but we went back again this morning to pick up a few books for my grandma to read. I'm glad we did, too, because apparently today is the end of sale and they dropped their prices on everything. They were selling plastic grocery bags full of books for only $3.00, including antique and hardcover books. We didn't get as many books as we wanted, but we walked out with quite a haul.

Oh, and still no luck on the lost engagement ring. :(

I would continue, but I think I've rambled enough for one day.

After whining for weeks about not having a good multiplayer game to play (I canceled my LotRO subscription until I'm sure we're actually saving money each month), Ness finally got me to break down and try Left 4 Dead.

I think I'm now an addict.

Despite being an FPS (and I suck pretty hard at FPS games), I'm having a hell of a lot more fun with Left 4 Dead than I ever did with most MMOs that I've played. It's refreshing, simple, easy to play, and it's always a different game each time, thanks to the AI director.

I think one of the main reasons I like it so much is that a lot of teamwork is involved in playing the game - you can't be the hero. MMOs are about teamwork as well, but, from my experience, it takes a lot of solo play to reach a point where your character is useful in a group (and if you're a dime-a-dozen DPS class, good luck finding a group). Even though I'm pretty new to it, I feel like I'm still contributing in some way, even if it's just healing a teammate or running away from a Tank so that everyone else can kill it.

I also like the fact that there's a female character in this game, and she's not sexualized like most female game characters are (I'm looking at you, Ivy... and Lara, and Rayne, and the entire cast of Dead or Alive). It may be shallow, but playing a female character helps immerse me in the game, so I'm happy to play as Zoey. My favorite character is Francis though (because he's a smart-ass), but Zoey is a close second.

My only problem is that I still have some issues going through doorways. I'm used to a third-person perspective, where I can actually watch my character go through openings and avoid any obstacles. First-person is taking a lot of getting used to, but frankly, I'm having so much fun with the game that I don't care if I suck or not.

But yeah... Left 4 Dead is fantastic.

I finally got around to messing with my journal layout. I found a nice one over at dreamwidthlayouts, so here we are. There were a few problems with Photobucket, but I got it all figured out. I like it a lot, so yay.

Putting in the layout also gave me a chance to look into how Dreamwidth does their specific HTML tags; nice and easy to remember! I always get confused with LiveJournal's system, since I never remember which tag uses dashes or whatever (lj-user vs. lj user, for example).

Mother's Day came and went, and while I never did manage to make anything for my mom, I did find a few things at the store for her. I ended up buying her The Pursuit of Happyness, along with a movie theater-type bucket of pop-it-yourself popcorn and a pair of fuzzy aloe-infused socks. She liked it well enough, but I'm hoping to actually give her something handmade next year, though I honestly don't know what. Sigh.

This week has been pretty uneventful. My computer is partially borked due to something that managed to make it past my anti-virus, causing it to be unable to update and error randomly (which causes my browser to stop responding until I restart my PC). I also can't open my registry, and Google searches get randomly redirected to ad sites. It's a bit of a mess, but it'll hopefully get taken care of soon. As for now, my anti-virus is uninstalled and that's taken care of the issue temporarily. I can't say that I'm too comfortable with that, though. I feel like I'm running around naked on the internet.

Oh! I also picked up Grand Ages: Rome the other day. It's a pretty fun game, though definitely more of a city builder than RTS. The graphics are lovely, and I love being able to zoom right down to street level and watch my citizens go about their daily lives.

I'm also playing catch-up on Animal Crossing: City Folk. I barely played the second half of April and all of May due to the grass deteriorating so quickly. This week I caught myself up to May 1st by doing a log in/log out for a few game days, and then running around collecting fruit and stuff to sell for a game day (along with writing letters to everyone). I made sure to play around on the game's holidays; Bunny Day was a waste, but at least I made some extra cash by selling the furniture. I'll probably catch myself up the rest of the way this weekend.

I received my invite code on Friday morning, so here I am on Dreamwidth. Yeah.

To be honest, I don't really know what I'm expecting by being here. I don't really want a "new beginning," though I do like the idea of a clean slate, at least as far as journaling goes (I'm not even sure if that makes sense). I do want to update more often, which is something I've been neglecting to do on LiveJournal; I'm not entirely sure why, either. I also would like to try getting more involved in the communities. I've always been a lurker, so maybe that will change as well.

As far as Dreamwidth itself, I do like what I've seen so far. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next. In the meantime, though, I have a layout to mess with and icons to search for (if I can still find my hard drive from my old PC...).