A little over a month since my last entry… Some movies I have seen worth noting: Saw, Finding Neverland, Garden State, The Grudge, The Polar Express (IMAX in 3D!), Ray, and Primer. Some of these are harder to find than others. All of them have my seal of approval, but, your tastes may vary.
Did the Pumpkin Carving dive — lots of fun, as usual. No dives specifically planned but I hope to travel somewhere to dive in the March timeframe with some ZiaDivers members. Am considering starting Dive Master certification, not sure yet.
Spent the Thanksgiving holiday in Atlanta with my wife’s sister’s family. This was my first trip to Atlanta. The city seems large and urban (more so than Albuquerque), but nice. We visited the World of Coca Cola and the CNN studio tour. No Christmas travel plans, but, thinking about going to the upcoming CES 2005 in Las Vegas.
Looking to maybe buy a new car or SUV. Most likely contenders right now are the Toyota RAV4 or Highlander. Also considering the Nissan Xterra. Have ruled out Jeeps, Kia, and a few others.
I am playing Halo 2 for the XBox which impressive but mostly seems like more of the same — not vastly different than the first Halo. I am also playing Half-Life 2 for the PC which is incredibly impressive… Half-Life was previously my favorite first person shooter, this is even better. The gameplay is awesome the graphics are unsurpassed. Half-Life 2 is the game of the year — guaranteed.
I picked up a Nintendo DS (this is the season’s hard to find toy — I happened upon one at Wal Mart) and Super Mario 64 DS. This is a better than perfect conversion of the original Super Mario 64. I saw better because it is a bigger game, more stars, more love. It is absolutely stellar. I have two complaints with the DS: the first is the lack of an analog controller. You can use the touch screen as an analog controller, but, … The second complaint is lack of GOOD games; it appears the only good launch title is Super Mario 64 DS. Oh well, SM64DS is huge and great. The “demo” Metroid Prime that comes with the Nintendo DS is very impressive and I cannot wait to play this game.
Games on the near horizon (over the Christmas holiday?) are likely to be the new Prince of Persia and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2.
Finally, Taekwon-Do is going well. I am testing for green belt this Saturday. After spending several evenings this week with final preparations I fell confident I will do fine. Since I last wrote my wife also took up Taekwon-Do and will be testing for yellow belt this Saturday as well.
Until next time…