December 29, 2013

This morning I got up and around 12:30PM I went and picked up my sister and we went over to my dad's house for the last Christmas thing of the year. My aunt, uncle, and grandma were already there and lunch was ready shortly after we got there. I had vegetable soup, a cheese sandwich, coleslaw, a bunch of vegetables, and a couple strawberries.

After lunch we opened presents. Rather than opening one and moving to the next person, each person opened everything they had before moving onto the next person. It worked. The most awkward moment of the afternoon was when my aunt face-timed my cousin. I figured the family would just be in the background or she would just show the room and we'd all wave or something. Instead, my aunt started passing the phone around so we all had to talk to my cousin. We are friendly and talk with her when she is present but we don't really have the kind of relationship that involves face-time, if that makes any sense. It's hard to explain. So it was awkward on our end because we were all supposed to have an individual conversation with my cousin while everyone else in the room was just staring at whoever was talking. And it had to be awkward on my cousin's end because she probably didn't want to be having individual conversations with everyone. It eventually ended but none to soon.

The rest of the afternoon was spent sitting around and talking. After my aunt, uncle, and grandma left, I sat and talked with my dad while my sister and step-mom went down and watched my brother play Wipeout on the Kinect. My dad and I had a really good conversation covering all sorts of things. The best kind of conversation. I mentioned something similar to this yesterday I think in reference to hanging out with my friend, but I miss good conversations. I don't get beyond smalltalk and superficial conversations very often. Kind of sucks. I need to engage more with the world around me.

Tonight I watched some YouTube videos and almost played Skyrim. Instead I finally played a bit of the Battlefield 4 campaign. At some point I need to jump into the multiplayer but I am still a bit gun-shy after all the lag issues with the Beta. And from everything I have heard the multiplayer is still broken so that doesn't provide much incentive. So instead, I'm going with the campaign. With everything set to High, it looks really freaking good. I find myself forgetting to pay attention to the combat or dialogue because I have wandered off to stare at textures. Gameplay-wise it feels just like Battlefield 3, or at least how I remember Battlefield 3 playing. How it is all put together I get the sense they were going for an 80s or 90s action movie kind of feel. Not in the over-the-top sense necessarily but I just get a vibe. I keep expecting a montage to start.