Buffy...

Alright everyone. Excuse me while I geek the hell out for a moment.

Those of you who see me often/are my facebook friends know that hubby and I recently watched all 7 seasons of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" over the course of about a year, churning through seasons 5-7 in maybe two months, but probably less time, because we were obsessed with it.  So, I figure I have to give Buffy some love, since I adored the show and am still mourning the fact that we've now seen every episode.

For those of you who are thinking, "What the hell? That show sounds super dumb!" I completely understand where you're coming from, because I thought the same thing, back when it was on in the late 90s-early 2000s, and what I still thought when one of our good friends (shout out to Shawn!) suggested that we watch it, courtesy of his DVD sets.  I was....reluctant.  Especially since the first season is pretty bad.  But we hung in there, and by season 2, I was completely enamored by every character, was loving the ones I started out hating (Cordelia) and hating the ones I would later have a huge crush on (i.e. Spike.  *swoon*)  And by the end of the show, I was/am a HUGE fan and want to know everything there is to know about this show, and want to tell everyone to watch it, because it is AMAZING.

It makes sense that I would love Buffy, because it was created by Joss Whedon, who is one of my favorite people on the planet, both because he is the creator of Buffy, Firefly, Dollhouse, and Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (if you haven't watched Dr. Horrible yet, stop reading this and follow that link and watch it right now!), and because he is just awesome.  So it stands to reason that I would love the creation that started it all, and is full of the kind of humor and drama and sarcasm and wit that, in my opinion, makes for damn fine entertainment.

Now that we've finished the series proper, Shawn swears that we have to watch all 5 seasons of Angel now, to get the full experience, but I think that also means that I can't continue the Buffy story (which is now continued in comic book form over at Dark Horse Comics) until we do that, which is pretty annoying, since, so far, I find Angel to be loud and not as good, and kind of stressful.  So, to tide me over until I can get my hands on the comics (wow, I never thought I would say anything close to that sentence ever in my life!) I found this book on Amazon.com, which I am now fanatically enjoying on my Kindle.  (I'll just let you click through to see how obsessed I really am.  Why spoil the surprise? :p)

Below is one of my favorite episodes, from Season 3, called "Doppelgangland".

a breather...

oops! I can't believe it's been almost a month since I've posted!  My bad.  This week I'm back at my parents house, visiting with my mom who's recovering from back surgery, which mostly consists of sitting around with her and watching movies (and becoming obsessed with Ancestry.com, which I'll most likely post about later), so I have no excuse not to do an update!

The biggest news is that internship hell is over, and has ended wonderfully for me, as, after much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth, I got my first choice (yipeeeeee!) and will be working at an awesome site in Manhattan starting in September.  Woot! I am thrilled.  And not just because getting that placement meant that I could....

...buy my Kindle!!!  That's right, I am now a proud, completely infatuated owner of a Kindle 2 and she is glorious.  And very pretty.  See?

I'll save my excessive gushing about the Kindle for a later post...

So, the timing of my trip home was both good and bad, as two days before I left, our basement flooded, knocking out both our furnace and our water heater for several days, which was, in a word, miserable.  So, it was good that I got to escape our freezing cold house and the need to go to a friend's house to shower, but bad in that I had to leave hubby to deal with cleaning up the mess on his own.  :(  I felt bad about that.  But he took care of it like a champ, and now everything's dry and working again.  *whew*  We thought we would have to buy a new water heater, and had already started researching tankless water heaters (which you mount on the wall and are therefore impervious to flooding, for the most part), but luckily we don't have to deal with that.  Awesome.

Now, if you will allow me to be dorky for a moment, I'm also really happy because the afore-mentioned friend who lent me her shower also gave me her old iPod!  A 30GB video iPod to be exact! I know! Sooooooo awesome.  And not because otherwise I would probably never ever ever own an iPod, but because (**warning: supreme geekery ahead!**) now I can listen to/watch my favorite podcast, 'The Lost Podcast with Jay and Jack' complete with easter egg photos!  (For the non-initiated, "easter eggs" are little details and clues that show up in each episode of Lost that you can usually only catch if you have a DVR and are obsessive.)

That's it.  That's why I'm so excited about this iPod.  I know....I can feel you shaking your head :o)

The Sims 3...

Okay, so I'm breaking the geek seal right at the start, and admitting that, yes, I play The Sims. I've played this ridiculously addictive and admittedly dorky game since the first version came out long ago. And I love it. So there.

So, why do I love the newest iteration, The Sims 3? Well, for one, I can actually play it on my laptop, which has less to do with the game and more to do with the fact that I finally have a decent laptop. Aside from that, they've gotten rid of those heinous, slooooooooooooow loading screens that used to make playing the Sims a great thing to do while trying to get boring reading for school done, as most of the time playing the game actually involved waiting for the game to load. But no more! Now the whole game loads at once, and then it's seamless game play. Good dorky times.

This new version also goes to the next level as far as being able to create really life-like sims, with very interesting personalities. You can pick up to 5 traits for your sims to have, and the unique combinations result in them doing alot of wacky things of their own accord that make the game much more an experience in voyeurism this time around than ever before. Very entertaining. The sim I modeled after myself, for example, is a "mooch, light sleeper, friendly, flirty couch potato" and when left to her own devices, all she will do is watch TV. So true to life! But with a little prodding (i.e. telling her to stop watching TV) she's turned into an avid gardener! (Okay, so that's sooooo not realistic, as all I can seem to grow are weeds, but I do wish I had a green thumb, so...close enough. Hmm, and I should probably explain the "mooch" trait. I picked it b/c I really do enjoy getting stuff for free, I mean, who doesn't? So I thought that trait would represent that part of me...instead, it means that my sim likes to steal food from people's refrigerators. *sigh*)

Anyway, Sims 3 is also really cool because there's "The Exchange" on the sims website, where you can download characters and houses that other people have created and plop them into your game and let them carry on with their little sim lives and interact with your sims and lots of funny stuff happens! This is possible because of another new feature in this version of the game called "Story Progression" which means that while I'm playing as my simulated self, gardening away, other characters in the neighborhood are falling in love, having kids, breaking up, moving out, and sometimes even pining after my sim! I just so happen to get a lot of calls from the sim I modeled after the hubby and plopped into a bachelor pad in the neighborhood :o).

But I digress. The coolest thing I've found so far, and the thing that actually tipped the scales and forced me to buy the game (wink, wink) is an experiment a girl named Robin is doing about homelessness using the Sims game. How cool is that? She created two characters named Alice and Kev, plopped them in a dilapidated "park", took away all of their money, and pressed play, and has been watching how they survive in the game without a home. It sounds a little lame, but believe me when I tell you, it is fascinating. Admittedly, I'm very interested in how people behave and interact, which is why I think this game is so much fun to me in the first place, but I think the idea of using a game to "watch what happens" (Bravo, anyone?) to people in really shitty circumstances is awesome. Plus, you can download the characters Robin created and have them wandering around in your own game, which I of course did. Sometimes I invite Alice over for dinner, and she ends up falling asleep on a lawn chair in the backyard before I can invite her to stay the night and sleep in a bed. :( If you want to check out the experiment and the story of Alice and Kev, click here.

Well, there you have it. I'm a big dork. :o)