May 25, 2015

 I slept in a little bit this morning and then read textbooks. Reading about being a manager in a library setting kind of makes me want to be a manager in a library setting. Which goes against my feelings about be a manager. This is going to be an interesting semester.

When I was done reading I ran on the elliptical for ten minutes. Considering my current lack of exercise, that length of time surprised me. Not only for my lungs but also my legs, which generally suck. I wasn't going full-out, running as fast as possible but it was a decent clip. I'll probably be unable to walk tomorrow but I'd say it was a solid start. I created a spreadsheet (because I like spreadsheets) to keep track of my elliptical usage. I thought that maybe having something to fill out would keep me accountable and make me stick with it. So far I am keeping track of: the number of the exercise (today was one), the date, the time I started, the length of time I ran, the music I listened to (today was Skrillex), and the reason for stopping (today was because I hit ten minutes and my legs were tired). I may add some things in later but for now it seems like those categories can give me some interesting data.

This afternoon I went over to my dad's to hang out with my grandma for a little while. We all sat around and talked for a few hours and then I went down and played video games with my brother. We played the latest CoD: Advanced Warfare. Awhile ago we played a horde-type mode with waves of enemies but this time we just did team deathmatch. It started with just me against him because he forgot to add bots in and I obliterated him. To be fair, he was trying out the new pistol and I was using fully automatic weapons, so I had a major advantage. When we did switch bots on we were on the same team and he consistently got more kills than me. It was kind of fun to play a CoD game again. I think the last one I bought was CoD: Black Ops 2, which I liked but my wrists can't take much of the frantic FPS games with a controller anymore. They also seem to be getting a lot faster and adding in more verticality, and my aim is bad enough when I'm trying to track a player moving on the ground.

CoD games also take forever to drop in price and only rarely go on sale on PC, and even then it is down to like $40 instead of $60. The vast majority of the PC games I buy are after they have dropped down to the single digits. It is rare that I pay full price for a game and CoD games are no longer the type of game I would spend $60 on. As an example of the price, the original CoD came out in 2003 and is still $20 on Steam. For a game that old, it should be $2.50, maybe $5 on a good day. The first Black Ops, which came out in 2010, is still $40 and the DLCs are $15 a piece. That is encroaching on absurd. Black Ops 2 came out three years ago and is still priced at $60. It's like that franchise didn't get the memo of how video game prices work on PC. But it is still a ridiculously popular franchise, so they don't really have any incentive to lower their prices.

Tonight we had a family dinner. My sister's husband smoked a brisket, which I did not eat but it smelled good. I had a breakfast veggie burger instead. My mom made pasta salad and deviled eggs, and my sister made her ridiculously good coleslaw and a apple pie / apple crisp pizza thing. It was also pretty good. I'm still decent at making spaghetti, and a peanut butter sandwich.

I ate way too much for dinner and then spent the rest of my night watching YouTube videos and playing Minecraft. I added some new paths, collected animals for my barn, and laid out the basic idea for the location of my Nether portal and the path leading to it. I still need to find diamond so I can make a diamond pickaxe and mine obsidian to make a portal. I foresee that being the biggest hurdle at the moment. The next time I play I should probably focus on that endeavor and get it taken care of before going back to building.

It is now almost midnight and my eyes are feeling heavy so I am going to go to bed. I borrowed some bar clamps from my dad so I can finally glue my table together. Then I can put a clear coat on both tables, assemble them, and eventually get my computer area set up the way I want it to bed. It looks so good in my head, or a least very functional, so I would like to have it realized. When I finally have both tables I can have my scanner set up so I can get back to scanning my grandma's old photographs. I mention all this because the gluing of the tabletop is something that may happen tomorrow. We'll see how the weather is.