A blog by James: Gamer, Father, Geek.

So, that was the summer holidays then. I actually really enjoyed them. I know in previous years I’ve got bored, but not really this time. We didn’t go out much, Me and Kat went to London for 2 nights. Saw Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, which inspired me to get a move on with the books. I managed to read books 2-7, averaging out to one book a week. Read the 7th in about 3 days and it was brilliant. We took a trip to Skegness, the first time we have all been together. Hannah liked the beach!

Hannah  is continuing to develop well. She has two bottom teeth and a third on the way. She can’t walk, but she can walk if she’s holding onto something, so for all intents and purposes she can get anywhere she wants now. This past week she’s started to form new sounds, ‘ma’ and ‘na’ have crept in and it looks like she’s starting to use her tounge to go for a ‘th’ sound too. She’s slipped a bit with sleeping in that she tends to wake up once a night on average for a feed, but she’s very good and it only takes a few minutes of feeding and she goes back to her cot without a fuss. Actually getting to sleep is much better now. She cries for only about a minute most days once we put her in and she’s away, some days she doesn’t cry at all. This means 99% of the time we know we have Hannah-free time from 7pm onwards.

Games wise I’ve pretty much just been playing WoW. Despite my previous post, Kat didn’t get round to trying WoW. A shame, but never mind. Rob has got back into it and we’re enjoying playing together. My Druid is much more effective when all the damage is going to his Paladin.  We’re both poor this month so I have just cancelled my pre-order for Batman: Arkham Asylum. I played the demo and it was brilliant. I’ll still be getting it, but will have to wait for pay day.

Comics wise I’ve just been reading the usual. I’ve got the 8th Preacher installment to read. My comics subscriptions have pretty much run out and I’m not too keep on renewing. The cost is the main issue. I get paid less than when I first subscribed and due to the exchange rate it’s not as much of a bargain. Added to that is the fact that trades are cheaper in the long run. It’s difficult. Overall quality of the comics is actually just average. I haven’t really enjoyed Captain America in a while. I like Bucky Barnes, but the constant need to have him relive his WW2 days is a bit of a bore fest. It looks like they’re bringing back Steve Rogers which although I am excited about, it is a massive copout for him to be alive. All the claims of him being properly dead, it’s stupid. I don’t believe the whole ‘we planned it all along!’ crap either. They shoe-horned the ‘forshadowing’ in. Astonishing X-Men has been a big dissapointment since Warren Ellis took the reins. I loved the Whedon run, but the writing and the art work for the series now is utterly, utterly terrible. New Avengers has been it’s usual self, just constantly average. I love the idea of the Avengers more than the actual series I suppose. Dark Avengers has been ok but still, the problem I think is having Brian Michael Bendis seemingly write all of the major Marvel titles and he’s spreading himself to thin. He can be good but he’s just spreading himself too thin right now.  I’m tempted to catch up on Iron Man, I got the first trade of the new series recently and the second is out in hardback. I’ll see how much it’d cost to get the individual issues on eBay and then perhaps subscribe from Page45 in Nottingham. Funds are tight lately though so maybe not.

This month we also did a cooking challenge, spawned from my ponderings for many months about how much we spend and waste on food. So we adapted the idea (initially it was just about cost) so we each bought food and cooked for everyone for a week. Points went for lowest cost, least waste, best quality, healthiness and best 3 course meal. Overall I won, but only just. Although it was tiring towards the end to be doing all the cooking, I did enjoy it because it forced me to try new dishes. My asian chicken noodle broth, crunchy garlic chicken and chocolate brownie cake all went down very well. All thanks to Jamie Oliver’s book ‘Ministry of Food’. If you can’t cook, get this book. It’s all very simple stuff.

I won’t talk about work here for obvious reasons, let’s just say certain things are worse than they were before the holidays.

Oh well. Overall life is still good. Can’t believe Hannah is 1 in just 3 months! I’ve got my next OU course starting in a couple of weeks. Workload this year should be slightly less as I’m doing a 20 point course first then starting a 30 point in Feb. But the work should be harder so I don’t know what’s worse. I shall try to keep on top of it though. I had brilliant assignment scores in my last 2 courses ruined by average exam marks. I think the system is very unfair given the subject matter (there is NO programming done in the test, you write code on paper…yeah, that’s a really good reflection of how things work practically in the real world!)