Finn made out very well for Christmas. She got a Fuji Instamatic camera (I am insanely jealous), a pike of Pokemon cards, and a programmable LEGO robot. One of the things that didn’t make it to her pile under the tree were any XBOX games, as we limit her devices to weekends, and generally there’s not a lot of time to play with her on weekends anyway. Over the break she tired of the games on her Kindle, and she didn’t get the Nintendo 2DS she asked for, so we leaned on the XBOX.
We have three multiplayer games for our console, Super Lucky’s Tale, LEGO City Detective, and Plants vs. Zombies 2. Super Lucky’s Tale is OK but the mechanics are terrible and the camera doesn’t track with the game well. It’s like jumping on a trampoline with a cardboard box over your head. LEGO City Detective is decent and has a giant open world to explore but the game does a terrible job of teaching the player game mechanics, so often we’re wandering around the same location trying to figure out what we have to do to advance the story. And the story itself is filled with a terrible attempt at humor, so it gets annoying quickly. Plants vs. Zombies 2 is a complete piece of shit that I haven’t been able to get working; it requires an EA login (besides the XBOX login) and continually fails to connect to the EA server, so we’ve never actually seen it running.
Finn and I sat down and made a list of multiplayer games she’d like, and I stuck them in an Amazon list. On the way home from running errands the other day I had a bright idea and stopped at the library, where I checked out three games for us to try: LEGO Star Wars TFA, Portal Knights, and Star Wars Battlefront 2. The first two were on Finn’s list; I was hoping LEGO Star Wars was better than City Detective, and so far it is. We like it much better because even though we’ve been stuck in a few places it’s much easier to track what we’re supposed to do, and YES SHE CAN PLAY AS REY. Portal Knights didn’t load for us because the disc is damaged, so we’ll need to swap that for a better copy.
The third disc was for me: Battlefront 2 is beautiful and addictive and different from what I expected it to be; the original Battlefront on my old XBOX was a simple jump-in-and-shoot title that was actually pretty limited in terms of gameplay (as a single player). This one includes a single-player storyline as well as an AI controlled set of battlefields, as well as online multiplayer, but I’m happy to play it on my own. I think LEGO TFA and Battlefront 2 will be the next games I purchase now that I’ve played Fallout 4 mostly to its end: I got a year out of that game, and it was worth every penny.
Update: I got an XBOX360 copy of Dead Space 2 at the Five Below for $5. It installs and plays on my XBOX One even though it’s 8 years old, and it doesn’t look half bad!
We had dinner and drinks with the parents of one of Finn’s friends on Friday night, leaving the girls with her older sister. Taking full advantage of the situation, we adults hit a restaurant downtown and ordered cocktails and generally had a fantastic time having adult conversations. Among many different topics, we talked about firewood, and they mentioned they had five chainsaws, and did I want one of them? Sure, I said, I’ll take a chainsaw if it allows me to chop up the four huge rounds we’ve had sitting in front of our woodpile since the trees came down. We stopped in for a last cocktail and R. found my present in his basement. It’s a Makita DCS 430, manufactured somewhere around 10 years ago, with a 16″ bar. It’s in excellent shape, but needs a fuel system flush and some new chain oil. I’ll look it over sometime in the next couple of weekends and see if I can get it running, and maybe I can clean up the backyard over the Christmas break if I’m lucky.
Saturday Finn and I were up and out early to head over the bridge for a Dickens of a Christmas, a holiday-flavored festival in Chestertown. We met up with Karean and Zachary at Brian’s house and the six of us rode over the bridge into town to see the sights. The festival isn’t as sprawling as the Harry Potter event they put on in the fall, but it’s still a blast, and everyone there commits to the era-specific details: the number of people walking around in tophats and bustle dresses and greatcoats almost outnumbered us normal people. We wandered the streets, playing games, snacking on food, and looking at the exhibits. As always it was great to hang out with friends, and we stayed out as long as we could in the cold before packing it in.
Sunday I slept in to recover from the previous two days while the girls went to church. In the afternoon we drove in to Baltimore to fulfill our advent calendar activity: ice skating in the Inner Harbor. There’s a wonderful rink built right between the two buildings that’s perfect for an afternoon skate, and it was just warm enough to be comfortable (well, that and the bike tights I was wearing under my jeans). Finn and I did a bunch of laps around the rink and I tried to get her to learn the proper way to skate. When we’d had our fill of that, we exchanged our skates and walked down the pier to the Christmas Village, a German-themed market set up right on the water. We’d been told the latkes were good, and that there was a big tent where we could get warm, and there were, and it was, and it was good. We strolled through the market and got some excellent German beer and a bunch of latkes and listened to a live band playing. By 4:30 we were ready to call it a day, and headed back home to get warm in our own house.
The Weasley twins were returning from their Quidditch match. We saw Fred and Molly as well.
Finn chased the Golden Snitch.
This is her scary face. I think it works.
Walking back over the bridge, we got to see the sun set over the river. Not a bad day at all.
Jen’s birthday was back in August, and I completely dropped the ball on her. I didn’t have anything planned, and at that point I was still on a limited diet so she didn’t see the point in going out for dinner anywhere. I should have come up with a Plan C but completely failed her, and I’ve felt terrible about it ever since. I decided I’d try to make it up to her in some small way by arranging a spa day someplace fancy, and enlisted Karean to help me with a recommendation. We agreed on About Faces in Annapolis, and I arranged for a four-hour treatment with lunch for the two of them. In the meantime Finn had a double-header soccer day, because they missed a whole weekend on account of the rain.
I packed Finn off in her soccer gear and Jen left for the spa. The Purple Panthers kind of got their asses kicked in the first game, but Finn had one good half before she ran out of gas. There’s a mixture of fourth, fifth, and sixth graders on the teams so the skill levels are wildly different and the younger girls are generally much less aggressive than the older ones. As we got in the truck to head home between games, she asked me if we could skip the next game because she didn’t want to play. I did my best to buck her up and pointed out that her teammates were counting on her to come back. Then I reminded her that all I wanted her to do was have a good time. Then I sweetened the deal with a donut–to be eaten only after the second match.
The second game was mostly a repeat of the first, but the score was a little closer. She stuck with it and made some good stops on defense. As I ran across the field to hand her water bottle over at halftime, she called back to me, “I’m having a good time, daddy.” That made me feel better, and the parents on the other side of the field with me all smiled as I walked back over.
Returning home I farted around with some small repair stuff on the Scout and around the house, then rustled up some dinner for the ladies when Jen got home. Apparently the spa was a hit; she came back relaxed and feeling good.
Sunday morning I hit the lawn early and hustled to clean up the yard so that I wouldn’t embarrass us in front of the father of one of Finn’s friends, who asked if I could show him how to homebrew. After the lawn was done I set up a table in the backyard, dusted off all of my equipment, got a new propane tank, and cracked a beer as he was unloading his car in the driveway. We got his turkey fryer repurposed to cook wort and fired up the burners by about 2. His burner took a long time to come to a boil, but the staggered timing worked in our favor because I could show him what I was doing with my kit and get it chilled while his was starting. When mine was done we moved his kettle to my burner and finished the boil. By about 6 we had the gear packed up and were shooting the shit over our final beers, and he took off to get dinner. I humped my carboy down into the basement and let it cool off overnight before adding the yeast. It’s another grapefruit IPA I meant to brew for the summer, but time and the summer got away from me. Actually, during the boil I realized that the last time I brewed beer was the day Rob passed.
After dinner, we put Finn to bed and I walked over to the neighbors’ to watch the Ravens beat Pittsburgh on the big screen in his backyard. That was an excellent way to cap off a great weekend.
