the end.

We woke up REALLY late on Saturday thanks to the impromptu party the night before. Probably 1:30 or 2 pm... I went to the gym, played some Darksiders, and then Lindsay and I went to Urban Bean to work for a bit. I finished up February's Super Awesome Art Challenge. I like it.

We left Urban Bean at about 11, and decided to go to Poncho Villa. Ryan lives like 4 blocks away, so we invited him along. The place was packed, for being so small and I didn't really think anyone went there. Consider me corrected...

On Sunday I really wanted to get out earlier and work on stuff at a coffee house... we went to the St Paul Tea Garden but it was packed. I absolutely hate it when that happens. We found some strange coffee house with super strict internet usage policies instead, and remained slightly annoyed. Whatever, though. I decided my Boxing Bunny needed shoes so I redid that part of the illustration. Eventually, the limited internet expired and we came home.

I pretty much wrapped up Darksiders, kind of. I'm right before the final boss, where there's a large, world-spanning fetch quest. I'm going to do it, but I might mop up any exploring / secret searching I might want to do before the game ends.

I tried to play Heavy Rain, but the Playstation Network went down for about 24 hours due to some sort of calendar malfunction. The internet slightly reacted, calling it the ApocalyPS3... but it was only a slight over reaction. In reality, it is totally unnerving to know that if the PSN goes down for some reason, everyone is unable to play a single player game like Heavy Rain...

It really makes me question what happens in the future. I am well aware of multiplayer servers being shut down. I know someday I won't be able to play multiplayer only games like Battlefield 1943 or Warhawk ever again. But is it to the point where I can't go back and play single player game 5 years from now? 10 years from now?

That's a scary thought. Some people are very forward thinking, always looking for he newest thing. But I like to pop in something older every now and then. And it scares me to think that, just like that, it's possible that these new classic games could just be 'shut off'.

It was an accident but I have to wonder, why was that even able to happen at all? Why couldn't I just pull out my network cable and ignore the problem? It's all a bit worrying.

But I did get super far in Darksiders thanks to the PSN outage. Much to Lindsay's chagrin...

And much to my chagrin, the outage erased all my Heavy Rain trophies, so now it looks like I magically started the game half way through. It's annoying, but no big whoop. I'd probably care if it were achievement points, though.

Impromptu Party.

oliver wanted to hang the most.

I was pretty tired on Friday, but we had made plans to 'hang' with Bryan. That's cool. I had enough energy to entertain conversation with one other person. But people kept calling and it quickly snowballed into something slightly large.


alert twink, cynical ryan.

I just told people to come by our place, and we didn't have any real plan. I went home and fell asleep on the couch. Ryan was the first to stop by and wake me up. Soon Francesca, Lindsay and Bryan arrived. A little later Chris C and Jesse stopped by.


twink's got to make the rounds, he's one popular dude.

Our living room was pretty full.


what a special guy. he's our little drummer boy.


a concert!

We ordered a huge stack'o'pizza, grabbed a couple bags of kettle chips and some big-ass cupcakes and played Rock Band. I wrecked my voice right away by doing a set of Nine Inch Nails and System of a Down. By the time I was finishing up the night with Janis Joplin, I couldn't even get the game to register my voice anymore.


lindsay rocks so hard francesca falls out of focus!


ryan serenades Jessie to no avail.


multi-tasking!

After that Ryan and Chris C took turns being ridiculous at Geometry Wars 2. Ryan played (and beat) Weapon of Choice, and perfectly flew threw Shoot 1UP. Both of which are such hilarious games that it was pretty darn entertaining...


weapon of choice


shoot 1UP

People started clearing out at 1:30 or 2, but Ryan stuck around. We handed MAG off back and fourth, and we just talked until WAY too late. It had been a while since we'd seen him more than just in passing so he had a lot of stuff he wanted to talk about.

We finally just kicked him out at 5:30 am. Jeez, I already started the night totally exhausted...


chris loves to jam.,

Crossing my fingers.

I left early yesterday. We were going to meet the people from the TV show about remodeling our house. Just a get-to-know-you meeting with some questions about our house and a screen test. They canceled and rescheduled for next week...

That was cool, because I was freakin' tired. I took a short nap and played a bit of Darksiders. Then I sat down and started drawing for a little project. But our Realtor called, and we ended up leaving the house at around 7:30 to meet him at his office in Uptown.

We spent the next 4 hours drafting up a offer for a condo in the downtown-ish area... A sweet mother-effin' condo that is awesome. We basically sat in his office from about 7:45 until midnight, talking options and signing papers.

The deal is questionable, thanks to the bad economy this is another short sale property, so even though er pretty much gave them what they were asking, it was still listed as less than what was still owed to the bank, so it's really the bank's call... We just have to play the waiting game.

But we were pretty aggressive and put in multiple add-ons to the contract to ensure this process be as expedited as possible. With any luck, we'll have a brand new studio within 60 days...

We did take a little break at 9:30 to grab a salad from Punch Pizza and some candy bars from the drug store. Well, Lindsay and I took a break, while our Realtor drafted the papers for the Short Sale Addendum or whatever. So we brought him a candy bar, too.

When we left I was pretty drained. Listening to contract stuff for 4 hours is pretty boring, even when it's for something as exciting as a swanky downtown art studio. I was ready to crash, but when we got home I had to give my new copy of Heavy Rain a try.

I played through the intro and first chapters of the game. I stopped right when I switched characters for the first time. So far, I guess I like it. I got the same vibe from the demo, good for the most part, but the voice acting can range from ok to embarrassing, and the occasional, awkward, mo-capped animation makes me cringe. The biggest offenders in both cases are the children (so far).

I think I started off a little cold to the whole thing, but by the time I was finished, I could see potential. Basically, the darker and more tense the game got, the better it seemed to be, and the more willing I was to forgive the faults that were so obvious...

I'm excited to see where it goes, I hear it gets pretty 'effed up.

Random Musical Impulse.

I felt like we were constantly on the move and productive on Saturday. Sunday, not so much.

We did clean some more, and we wanted to make some Waffles but were out of pretty much all of the ingredients. Lindsay has also been fooling around with her guitar lately, and decided she wanted a Viola. So we went out in search of waffles and a Viola.


rockstar.

What we got was a Banjo, a Jug and some Punch pizza. Missions accomplished? Maybe not technically, but I'd say yes, it was. We spent most of the day having a jamboree, sleeping, cleaning and playing games.


twink's got some pipes.


atari wishes there was some moonshine in here...

Since I'm finished Mass Effect 2, then returned to it again and finished the crap out of it, I've been kind of bouncing around thinking about what to play. I've got a stack of games sitting there, pretty much untouched. From old stuff like Bionic Commando to brand new stuff like Bioshock 2.

I'm really looking forward to the upcoming Heavy Rain, which is totally heavy on the story/drama, so I don't want to get too invested into something that is hugely narrative, like Bioshock 2.

I've still playing MAG but it's a multiplayer game so it's a little intense when I just want to chill. I finally decided on Darksiders. And so far I'd say it's a great choice.

I was turned off by the art style at first, but that sort of melted away after the first hour or so. Technically speaking, the graphics are pretty good. It's a good looking game. Environments are big, colorful, and varied. The animations are weighty and satisfying. It's just the character design that... hmmm... looks like it was made for a 13 year old boy who loves World of Warcraft and Spawn?

But the game is pretty great. The fighting is fun, the exploration is open but not too vast, the environmental puzzles are just about right, pretty easy, but every so often you do have to put a little thought in. I like it a lot. Lindsay thinks it's pretty much the dumbest thing ever, though.

I switched over to Mario towards the end of the night, which I'm glad I bought. Playing that with Lindsay easily makes it a great game. Even if the greatness really just comes from the fact that we can play together.


fish gets in on the action!


look close.


zoom. this one is for jesse.

I hope this is it...

Yesterday I left work and headed to meet our Realtor. We looked at a couple properties, one which seemed pretty much perfect, another that was... not.

We left pretty excited, almost certain we would put an offer down. Score.

We headed over Chris S' for a video game/taco party. There was about 8 people, and we all played Halo (the original) and New Super Mario Bros for the Wii. Both were actually a blast. Halo slightly less so, because Chris And Chris were old-school masters, and myself and Joe had never played Halo multiplayer (the original, that is, I've played plenty of Halo 3 and ODST).

New Super Mario was a ton of fun with 4 players. I knew it would be hard, so I went in with the plan of being the jerk, before anyone could out-jerk me. Needless to say, between both games there was plenty of shouting.

And tacos.

We came home and I wrapped up Mass Effect 2. It's true, I had beaten it a couple weeks ago, but now I've got through and explored every planet, did every sidequest, and found pretty much everything there is to find. I'm sitting t about level 28, so I could probably start a New Game+ and hit 30 in no time. But I think I'll just wait for some worth DLC... what ever happened to those promised Hammerhead missions, anyway?

Today we continued cleaning the crap out of everything. It's probably the cleanest it's been (in certain areas) since we moved in 5 or 6 years ago...

We got some lunch, changed in 100 dollars in spare change that had been sitting around, and dropped boxes and boxes of crap off at MCAD. And when I say 'crap', I mean 'the best crap the free shelf has ever seen'. There was some awesome stuff that I kind of feel bad for giving away, but hey, space is at a premium these days...

We met up with our Realtor and saw a couple more properties. We got the bad news that the place we wanted was a Short Sale, which basically means it's selling for less than what the bank is still owed, so there's more of an auction quality to it. They aren't under obligation to take one offer at a time, and they also have no motivation to make it quick. It would be 2-4 months before we would even FIND OUT if they would accept our offer. And then another 2 months to close. We don't really have that time...

But that's ok, because we found an AMAZING place that makes all the other's look like vomit from an ugly monster... Maybe that's over doing it, but we were sold instantly. And this one is a regular sale, so we need to find out a few more details, but if they all pan out, I think it's ours... And I'm pretty excited.

We went shopping for food, air purifiers and vacuums. We also went to pick up a package from Fed Ex. Which was a slightly tardy wedding gift from a friend. Which was a couple paintings he did just for us, and they're amazing. Hopefully he'll post some high quality version of it somewhere on the internet and then I'll link to it. Because it's totally awesome...

Seems like a no-go.

Well, it seems as though we didn't get the property we were hoping for. Apparently, someone made an offer 2 weeks ago. Which means we've been sitting around twiddling our thumbs for no reason.

I don't know why nobody told us sooner, although I've pieced together the basic gist and the whole thing kind of stinks. The buyers left town immediately after making an offer and haven't been heard from since.

The people selling it seem like they have doubts about whether or not the buyers will actually follow through, so they're still showing it, but kind of on the down low. At least, that's the impression I get. So there's hope that we could still get in, depending on how all of this pans out.

Until then, the search is back on in full effect. We've already lined up another 3 places to look at, once seems amazingly promising.

Chris C came by last night. We got some pizza and played some MAG. Lindsay came home and read some Tarot cards. I played a tiny bit of Demon's Souls, but it was too hard, and I was too distracted by the fortune telling that was happening next to me, to get anywhere. Atlus is running an event in Demon's Souls for Valentine's: the first 1/2 of the week changed the World Tendency to White, the second 1/2 it gets changed to Black...

For those not in the know, White World Tendency makes things easier, and opens up events, characters, locations that are otherwise inaccessible. The drops are worse, and the souls (or XP) collected are less. You can probably figure out what a Black World Tendency is. World Tendency is something I've yet to wrap my head around, my world is normally right in the middle, and I'm not sure how, or if I even want to, manipulate it. Maybe someday I'll actually take a long hard look at the Demon's Souls Wiki. World Tendency is a strange, complicated beast. Just like Demon's Souls in general. .

So I played The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom, the new Xbox LIVE Arcade game made by The Odd Gentlemen, instead. It's a mind bending platformer, similar to Braid. It plays with time and brain-busting puzzles, it's got a great art style, and awesome music. But Winterbottom takes itself WAY less seriously than Braid. And that's a good thing. Basically, you're out to ruin time and reality itself for the sake of nabbin' some pie. At least, so far that's what it seems.



It's a cool little game. I played the first set of levels and really enjoyed it. There's a healthy mix of stumping your brain, then coming upon the solution, but actually needed the skill to pull it off. It's not hard, but you better be sure you solution if pretty air-tight unless you want a lot of trial and error and repetition.

Nuka Cola? No thanks.

Our Realtor has gone MIA. Everything was going swimmingly, but all of a sudden he kind of disappeared. We left daily messages tying to get a hold of him, but last night I finally just got the 'this mailbox is full' error message.

I had to write him a concerned letter thing morning because there's just no way to contact him, and we need to keep this process moving, and fast. Our loan will expire and we'll have to re-apply, the place could be snatched up before we get the chance, plus we'd like to be into the studio before the remodeling starts. The clock is ticking... Hopefully he's ok, hopefully he'll get the letter, and hopefully things will kick back into gear. Like, today.

Our house is pretty clean, at least. That's awesome. It seems much bigger I don't feel grumpy and claustrophobic. As much. The 5 cats constantly in my face trying to grab food from me kind of ruins the good vibes, sometimes.

I wrapped up the Point Lookout content for Fallout 3 last night. There's still a ton I haven't seen, I'm sure, but that's Fallout for you. I finished all the achievement based quests besides 'visit every location,' so I'm out stuff to do, besides just wandering. Which is cool and a bit appealing. But what makes it unappealing is the Ghoul Reapers. Those guys suck.

I eventually figured out that plasma weapons worked much better than ballistic weapons, but you get 2 or 3 of those guys in your face, and it's just frustrating... and it seems to happen a lot in Point Lookout's backwater swamps.

It was cool, and now I think I might be done with Fallout 3. For ever. I've got some quests in my quest log, but they seem to be really crappy. Like the Nuka-Cola Challenge. Find 30 Nuka-Cola Quantums? At this point in the game? No thanks. Maybe if I got that quest 60 hours ago, and could have been grabbing the rare Quantum I saw instead of ignoring it as dead weight...

Whatever It was a good run and a fine game. I'm glad I came back to it as much as I did. And who knows? Maybe in 6 months the mood will strike me again. It seems more likely I'll go back to Fallout 3 than to get invested in Fallout New Vegas. Maybe. Especially since I'm already sitting at a very low level 28, and the cap is 30...

Home stuff. Game stuff.

We've been cleaning and organizing the house pretty constantly lately. It's a good thing, too, because it was starting to get bad.

We found a condo to buy to use as a studio, and we're just waiting on some final answers before we decide to put in our offer. But in the meantime, we're starting to get our 'studio-stuff' back in order and ready to be moved.

Also, we had an offer to submit some stuff to a TV show about fixing up people's homes, specifically kitchens. So we did what they asked, and we've made it to the next round, an visit to our home and a screen test...

We want our kitchen fixed up, and if we don't get it done on TV we'll have to do it anyway, so despite my anxiety about being on TV I'll take the offer. So we've been making the rest of our house presentable. Things sounded very, very promising until yesterday, when it came out that the host is allergic to cats, and we have a lot of them...

We're still talking about it, but now it's a little less likely, I guess. We'll see though.

After I beat Mass Effect 2, I was a little exhausted from the dense story and awesomeness of it all. So although Bioshock 2 came in the mail, and Dragon Age is still sitting there 1/2 played, I can't really bring myself to play anything too narratively driven. So I've been enjoying some MAG.

I've leveled up to 20 now, and it is a damn fine game. The shooting is fun and satisfying, and the graphics are... tolerable. Although going back to Modern Warfare 2 or Battlefield Bad Company 2 instantly make you realize how much it's lacking in looks and feel. But MAG has a lot going for it that the other two don't, so I'm alright with that. I did 'apply for leadership' for my first time this weekend, even though I've been eligible for 5 levels now. It didn't go well. But I it was more to do with my squad than my skills. I was giving out sound objectives, but my squad was busy doing their own thang. Or course, it could easily be said that a bad squad could be the fault of the Squad Leader... but nah.

I've also been playing the XBLA game Vandal Hearts here and there. I'm a fan of the Strat-RPG genre, specifically those that followed in the footsteps of Final Fantasy Tactics. I've never been a main-line Final Fantasy fan, but the offshoot Final Fantasy Tactics is easily one of my favorite games of all time. Vandal Hearts is a light, easy take on the genre, but it's got depth and customization to boot. I also like leveling systems that reward how you play, Oblivion-style (use swords, your sword skill goes up), instead of just auto-leveling, or giving you points to assign to arbitrarily to your skills. It's good, and I've had quite a bit of fun with it. Despite it being pretty ugly. The game itself it just kind of poor, but the cutscenes and character portraits are downright awful.

I've just been dipping in and out of those games. A match or two in either is plenty for one day, so I've also found myself going back to slightly older games that I put aside temporarily.



I got back into Demon's Souls, and boy do I love that game. I really do need to invest myself into beating some more of that game, because it's fabulous. I was able to play around with the co-op aspects, which was a bit daunting, because there's not tutorial or even explanation of how the system works. But I figured it out, and just knowing the option is there makes the game much more approachable.

Now I've gotten my body back (I've played the game 15 hours so far, and only about 1/2 hour was spent "alive") so I'm actually looking forward to having someone invade my game to attack me. Even if I lose and return to Soul form and lose all my souls, that's OK. I'm cool with that. Bring it on!

And finally I decided to wrap up the very few remaining quests in Fallout 3. I've beaten the game, and the Broken Steel expansion, but there's a number of named quests that you can get achievements for that I haven't done. My quest log was empty, so besides exploring hoping to find a quest, there wasn't much for me to do. So I'm going though, actively seeking those out with the help of the internet.



I also had bought the Point Lookout DLC, so after wrapping up a couple quests and getting back into the combat and mechanics of the game, I went off to complete that content. So far, so good. Fallout 3 is still great. But it seems glitchier and harder than I remember... I've been running into a lot of enemies that I'd never really encountered through the entire course of the game, even though I beat it, and did at least 50 percent of the side quests.

And since starting it up a couple days ago, I don't think I've done a quest yet where I haven't had to consult the internet about some weird bug of glitch. Most annoyingly I can't have any of my followers join me, because they all say I'm already traveling with a follower.

I'm not. I'm alone. You ALL say someone's already following me. That means ONE of your should be. But you are NOT.

It doesn't really matter now, though, since no one can accompany me to Point Lookout anyway. Maybe when I get back they'll change their tune.

Fire!

Holy crap! Tonight was crazy!

Well, one part of tonight was crazy. Lindsay and I were sitting on the couch together. I was quietly playing a strategy RPG, she was studying up on Tarot Card reading, and we heard a light "pop" come from the kitchen. We figured a cat might have knocked something over, but that's common.

Lindsay got up to check, and a second later shouted "Oh no!" Usually that means someone puked, got stuck, broke something or made a mess. I got up because the next words out of Lindsay's mouth are usually "come help!"

I was into the kitchen before Lindsay could say anything else, and I turned the corner right as she shouted "fire!"

And there was a fire, right on top of the kitchen stove. And it was pretty big. I guess Lindsay had a pot of tea and it was too close to the rice cooker, which was plugged in. Something happened, and the rice cooker went up in flames. I could see the plastic front rapidly melting all over the stove, which instantly reminded me of the face-melting scene from Indiana Jones, and the fire spread really quickly.

Lindsay grabbed a fire extinguisher and handed it to me. I looked at it confused, because I'd never really thought about how to actually use it. I realized it MUST be super easy, so I just did what seemed like it made sense. I pulled a red pin, then hit the top.

Bam. Fire out. I grabbed the melting rice cooker and threw it out into the snow, and we opened the doors and windows to get rid of the smoke, as well as the fire extinguisher and burning plastic smells. Too late avoid the smoke alarm. It started blaring, pets started freaking out, and it was a mess all around.

We spent the next 2 hours airing out the kitchen, cleaning up the fine white power and scrubbing burn marks off appliances and dishes.

Then we went to Urban Bean and worked for a couple hours. I wrapped up some things for my brother, which was good. But I guess he's out of town, anyway, and won't be looking at them for a while. Oh well.

Mass Effect 2 rules.

I beat Mass Effect 2 last night. It was pretty amazing. The amount of tension I felt in the final hour or so of the game was outstanding...

I knew going into the game that it concluded with a suicide mission that was indeed dangerous. It was totally possible for some, if not all, of your party to die. Forever. And in the Mass Effect world, that actually carries some weight. All of my decisions from the first Mass Effect carried with me to ME2. Who lived and died, who I had a relationship with, who I helped and who I hurt. So whoever I lost on this suicide mission I would not be seeing in Mass Effect 3...

And I wanted (pretty much) all of them to live. After 30+ hours Lindsay and I both had built up strong feelings towards some and at least a modest attatchment to all. Even those I didn't like from the get-go I learned to like quite a bit (Miranda) or at least a little (Samara) thanks to their Loyalty side quests (except you, Zaeed. You can go to hell for all I care).

So knowing each one could be gone forever and it would be my fault made me a little tense, and forced me to really think about each decision I made. It felt great when I felt like I obviously made the right choice, but a couple times I wasn't so sure.

Thankfully it all ended well. I was left feeling a huge relief. I had a blast with the whole game (minus some mining, which was a drag, but I needed those upgrades!) and the end just really drove that home.

I can't wait for Mass Effect 3.

All in all, I'm done with Mass Effect 2, I think. I might wrap up a couple achievements, and maybe start a New Game + just for kicks. But playing it again seems unnecessary. There's a lot of different outcomes, but I don't really want to see them. My Commander Baby Jiff Shepard is mine. Her story is somewhat unique, and the outcome and been decided and I am happy with that. Playing it again in a different way would seem wrong. That sounds more dramatic than it is, though.

I started replaying the first Mass Effect with a new character after I beat it. Just for an hour or two. Commander Baby Jiff Shepard is a slightly duck-faced, super nice hero who would do anything for anyone. I played an angry, mean dude the second time around, just to see, and I hated every minute. So I probably won't do that again.

Oh, and if you hear on the street that slow, old, cranky Jesse beat it before I did, that's a half-truth...

He did technically finish it a few hours before me. But my running time was a good 5-6 hours less. And he lives 2 time zones a head of me, so there's that. And he started a couple days before I was able to put it in the system. And I got way more achievements, so I beat it harder. Plus, he didn't even 'romance' any of the characters (I did and believe me, I had my pick of the litter. I was turning fools down left and right), so I think we can all agree he really didn't even play it, where as I conquered it.

Just to clear that up.

Foot in the Door.

I got an email this weekend urging me to submit something to the Foot in the Door 4 show at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. It's a huge show they do every ten years, where tons of Minnesota-based artists show work.

I thought it would be a good idea, even though I found out a the last minute. So I put something together this morning and finally went to drop it off at 4:00. The submission deadline was 4:30...

We got there and there were signs up saying they were done taking submissions. Apparently there was a 3 hour line inside, and they had to have everyone through and out by 5:00. Shoot.

But we went into ask anyway. There were other people with the same idea, all carrying art and had a sad look on their faces. But right as we were about to leave, a set of curators set up shop in the entrance and started taking the submissions. Down and dirty.

We got in the line about 10 deep, but within 15 minutes the line was more than 100 people strong. Right before we got up to the curators, they announced no one else could get in line. By now the wait must have been an hour long for anything in the back, at least.

It sucked, but Lindsay and are both in. So huzzah!

Thrilling Conclusion.

I realize I never concluded my amazing story about a non-functioning receiver. Maybe it was so boring that I fell into a coma until now.

Here's the end of that tale: it came. It works. It's bad ass.

I actually went home straight after work on Friday to hook it up. It took a bit of time to set up everything but I finished up and had to try something out. What is loud and bombastic and awesome? How about the Battlefield Bad Company 2 demo?

That game is intense. I thought it was crazy when I could feel the helicopters going overhead and rockets exploding near me. Then I got killed with a direct hit from a tank. The walls shook. Twink jumped off my lap and ran straight out the door. It's awesome.

We went out to grab a couple wires to finish off the set-up, and had diner with Adam and Ghandi Mahal. Mmmmm...

We spent most of the night and Saturday cleaning. And on Sunday we went Condo shopping. We saw one that was amazing, two that were pretty good, and two that were awful. Not bad.

I felt really sick the whole time. Aside from my sore throat, coughing and sneezing, I felt really nauseous. Like, I didn't tell our Realtor because I thought he might not allow me in his car. But I managed.

Monday I was still feeling sick, so on my way home from work I picked up M.A.G. so I could just veg out to that while Lindsay was at class. I got a sweet deal on Amazon, but it wasn't coming until Tuesday and I was jonesing to give it a shot that night. So I grabbed it from Target, played it, and returned the Amazon one to Target a couple days later. Silly? Maybe. But I gave back exactly what I got, so no harm done.

MAG is fun. I like it quite a bit. I haven't even leveled up enough to get into the full 256 person matches, but I think it's pretty great so far. It's not as smooth, gorgeous and tight as Modern Warfare 2 or anything, but hey, it's got a lot going for it in other areas.

Went looking at round two of condos Tuesday night. We found two great ones, that trumped the previous winners. We'll be looking more, but we might be seriously close to making an offer.

I can't decide which is better, but either one would be great. That's all that matters, I guess.