It’s been some time since my last entry (an obviously true statement, if ever there was one).
After Fenella, Tim and the junior Oatleys departed, there was nary a moment to spare before we, ourselves, embarked on the annual Christmas pilgrimage to Providence, to celebrate Yuletide with Sarah’s folks. Well, when I say celebrate, I’m talking mostly of Sarah; I’m more of a spectator, really. Christmas isn’t really my bag, atheist and purist that I am.
We’ve been here for two weeks and are leaving tomorrow, bound for Iceland, where we’ll spend five nights before returning home to Amsterdam. I’m looking forward to soaking our bones in Bláa Lónið and eating lots of skyr.
Sarah’s new T60 Thinkpad turned out to be very unstable and had to be returned to Lenovo. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough time to order her a new one and have it arrive before we have to leave. Bummer. Since you can’t order Lenovo products on line in The Netherlands, I’m not sure what we’re going to do now. I hate the prospect of having to settle for an inferior, more expensive machine, such as the Sony Vaio, but it may come to that. Waiting for the next time we’re in the US isn’t really an option.
We’ve been blasting through the sixth series of The Sopranos this week and I must comment on how great it has been. For me, series five represented something of a slump, but the sixth series is back on form with a vengeance. In fact, as far as my recollection goes, it’s one of the best seasons of all six. We’ll be watching the twelfth and final episode tonight, after Eloïse goes to bed.
Speaking of the small, red-haired one, she’s had some kind of stomach bug over the last few days, which resulted in diarrhoea. This, in turn, led to a nasty case of nappy rash, which caused some sleepless nights for the whole family, but she seems to be getting over it now. Thank goodness. It’s truly hellish when your child is sick, in pain and distressed, yet you can’t do anything to help.
What else?
Lumines II for the PSP came out and managed the rare feat of being a sequel that surpassed the original. This is even more laudable, when you consider how good the original was.
Lumines II keeps the magic alive by not trying to reinvent the game. Essentially, the game play is identical in this new title; the differences are in the details. The game has been jazzed up with lots of new skins, a new soundtrack and a bunch of music videos providing animated backgrounds. The only problem with this is that some tracks are vastly better than others, but since one is caught up in the frenetic game play, one scarcely notices the pop videos behind the playing field.
And that’s it, really. Our lives really are quite dull and predictable these days, but we have nothing to complain about.
I hope that 2007 will see us travel a little more extensively than in 2006. Although we had a fabulous two month trip in the summer, that was pretty much it for our European travel last year. I’m hoping we’ll be able to travel to a few more destinations this year, if Sarah’s inburgering allows.
Anyway, Iceland, here we come! This will be Eloïse’s 12th country.
I’m typing this on an (admittedly IBM branded) T43p. Got it from work of course, but maybe you should be looking for the IBM versions instead of Lenovo? I assume it comes from the same factory.
Lumines II is pretty damn good. Told ya. 🙂
IBM doesn’t make or brand laptops any more. That whole business has gone to Lenovo, who almost certainly use the same factories. All of the laptops are sent from Hong Kong; that much I do know.
I’ve been using Thinkpads for the last seven years and have had few problems with them. Dead drives have been the biggest hassle, but I don’t compile as much as I used to, so I’m not as hard on them now (and drives are generally more reliable, anyway).
Sarah’s T60 was just a bit of bad luck. It wouldn’t even matter, if Lenovo had their act together enough to do on-line sales to Europe. They’d evidently rather have no sale than a European sale. All they offer in Europe is sales through their dealers, which in The Netherlands means dealing with a bunch of no-hoper dinosaurs with shitty Web sites and a bunch of overpriced out-of-date stock from years gone by. Pathetic.
I’ve only managed to play about five games of Lumines II so far. I think my high score was around 265,000. I’m stuck on a skin where the blocks fall very quickly, but the clearing bar crawls across the screen at a glacial pace.
I’ve really got to learn to rotate blocks anti-clockwise, too. Three clockwise turns is impractical when the game play gets fast.