Time Wasters: October
For those of you that know me well, I tend to have an almost obsessive tendency to burn through things that peak my interest. For example, I’ll get a video game and play it non-stop for a weekend until I beat it. I may not play another game for months, but for that weekend I’m glued to the console and am only pried away by pleas to feed my family or some emergency yard cleanup when the dog finally catches the squirrel he’s been after for days. So I thought I’d start a series of blog posts describing how I’ve spent my time being non-productive (but having fun!).
1: World of Warcraft
I had stopped playing for over a year, but for my son’s birthday he asked if he could start playing WOW and I said yes. We set him up with an account and I reactivated mine. I spent a couple of weeks getting my character up to level 70, but it hasn’t been a lot of fun playing when everyone else knows exactly where everything is and what gear to have. It’s hard to get a group going to do quests when everyone else has finished them months ago. So I’ve taken a break for a while, but may start back up again when Wrath of the Lich King comes out. Everyone will be new to the 71-80 content, so I may have a better chance of not feeling like a complete newb.
2: Rock Band 2
I can kind of justify the time I waste on this one because we play together as a family and it’s fun. We usually play a set or two a couple of nights a week. I put the years of violin lessons to use playing guitar, Troy plays bass, and Tobias rocks the microphone. We have the drum set, but none of us have wanted to put in the practice needed to be any good at it, so it sits in the corner and gathers dust.
3: True Blood and the Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries
True Blood is a new series on HBO about vampires. I was a Buffy fan and tend to enjoy watching vampire movies (Dawn Until Dusk, Underworld, etc.), so when I saw the show on HBO OnDemand I decided to give it a try. After watching the first episode, I started watching all the extra features and learned that the series is based on books by Charlaine Harris. I went to the bookstore and got the first book which didn’t take me long to finish. Over the course of a week, I had read through the entire series (8 books) and can’t wait to read the next one which doesn’t come out until May.
The main character of the book is a waitress in a bar named Sookie who can read peoples minds. She lives in modern day society where vampires live out in the open. This is made possible by the Japanese invention of synthetic blood that supposedly fills their nutritional needs and makes it possible for vampires to “live” without feeding on humans. Sookie meets a local vampire who is trying to “mainstream” and live among humans. She’s attracted to him because she can’t read his mind and they eventually fall in love. How sweet, right? Not really. Vampire Bill is a suspect in a series of local murders, and Sookie’s woman-crazy brother is also added to the list of suspects leading her to start using her ability to try and glean from people’s minds who the real murderer is.
Through the course of the books, Sookie gets involved in a series of events and relationships where she learns there’s a lot more out there in the world of the supernatural than just vampires. The books are funny, romantic (a little graphic at points), violent and have a lot of plot twists and turns. The TV show is turning out to be pretty good as well. There are a lot of scenes in the show that aren’t in the book, but I enjoy seeing the extra things that could have been happening but weren’t described in the books. True Blood seems to be following the main plot points, so it’s nice to have some surprises thrown in for those that think they already know what’s going to happen. If any of you are following the show or reading the books, please let me know. Despite my nagging encouragement, Troy’s not interested in the show or the books and I’m looking for someone to discuss it with.