Give thanks. Yes you.

This past week I went down to Madison for Thanksgiving. The long monotonous drive down was made 100 times more tolerable thanks to a new car and an ipod full of jams and extra nerdy podcasts...

It was kind of a whirlwind trip. I left directly after work on Tuesday and got into town at around midnight. Wednesday I went for a run in the morning before I met up with my brother and our friend and ate some food, talked some talk and played some games.


and met this lizard!

I met up with the rest of my family and we headed off to Thanksgiving meal #1 at my cousin's house. It's a cool house, and there was somewhere between 15-20 people there. Lots of little children whose names I'm expected to remember, but don't. Their house was out in the middle of nowhere and it was snowing/raining. I nearly hit a tree, and we got pretty darn lost. Like always. That place is like the Bermuda Triangle... we got back safe and alive, but very late.


some photographs were 'snapped' there, yes.

The next day I helped my mom with lots of computer stuff, then went to Thanksgiving #2 at my dad's place.


Katie's new baby is the main reason I went down to Madison.

Then I drove back to Minneapolis as fast as I could. I got back at 10 or 11 that night, excited to see Lindsay. She wasn't home, so instead I played a bunch of MW2. And maybe some Dragon Age: Origins.

We the better part of Friday, Saturday and Sunday doing some major moving and rearranging around the house and vacating the studio. Lots of work. We spent the rest of the time shopping for Christmas stuff, cooking and playing MW2, DA:O and Mirror's Edge. Yeah, Mirror's Edge. I just wanted something that wasn't epic or multiplayer a couple of those nights...

Speaking of brief gaming, I usually stay up later than everyone else when I'm home for the holidays and I was craving some Dragon Age: Origins. I brought my computer, and I remembered Dragon Age Journeys, a free flash game that unlocks items in DA:O.

I decided to give it a shot, hoping to get at least a sweet belt of awesome or something for my game, and it's actually a pretty fun little game in it's own right. It's similar to DA:O in it's leveling, classes, skills, items and inventory. But it's a turn-based, hex-based RPG instead.

I ended up playing it to completion, which was only a couple of hours, but that's damn good for a free flash game. And I unlocked EVERY item it had to offer. Sweet.

Oh yeah. While I'm at it, I should mention the new cat. Originally we took it in to rescue it from ending up the humane society, but Lindsay and I have both really taken a shine to it. And at this point, I think it's staying forever. I keep asking Lindsay if she found an owner yet, but she just kind of shrugs it off. So world... meet Oliver! Or maybe Charlie, or Cuddles, or Chuck. Or something else. We keep changing it.


don't ask...