Wow, the last few months have really flown by. Time for another recap entry! Among other things:

It was great having my dad and younger brother here. They spent 5 weeks with us, which seemed like it'd be a lot before they came, but by the time they were due to leave we were wishing they could've stayed longer. We visited Galena for a couple of days, got lost among the Iowa cornfields (who knew there was a place called Zwingle, Iowa?), gazed upon the mighty Mississippi, visited Lincoln Park Zoo at last, stayed in Petoskey MI, visited Mackinac Island, and travelled around the Michigan Upper Peninsula. The roof-rack came in very handy. My brother was quite taken with the new PC and spent many an hour blasting assorted monsters. They both finally got to meet Jack, and wished they could've taken him home with them. At some stage we'll have to visit Australia and give the little fella a tour of the land and catch up with friends and family. After their visit it took me several weeks to go through all the photos and burn DVDs of the videos we shot during their stay. It was a lot of effort, but I'm glad we've now got a record of their time here that we'll be able to show Jack in future years.

Jack has progressed from crawling to walking! He's been taking a few hesitant steps for months now, but in late November he finally started walking between furniture and now trundles all over the house. He seems to enjoy his newfound mobility. He certainly keeps them on their toes at daycare during the week, and he'll soon be moving to the big kids' room.

In early November I heard about a Walmart sale on HD DVD players, so I decided to poke around online and see what the prices on PC HD DVD drives were like. Since a HDTV is a long way off in our future and our PC is all setup for high-def, I figured a HD DVD drive would be the way to go to get an early taste of high-def movies. I was surprised to find a sale on XBox 360 HD DVD drives, which can also be used with a sufficiently powerful PC. The price wasn't bad, and it came with King Kong in the box, Heroes season 1, and a mail-in form for 5 free movies. How could I resist? Of course there's the raging HD format war between HD DVD and Blu-ray, but I figured it was too much of a bargain to pass up, even if HD DVD isn't declared the eventual winner. Since then I've added a few movies to the collection (Buy-One-Get-One at Amazon now), and I'm very impressed. I'm currently looking forward to the arrival of the 3 Bourne movies, along with the Blade Runner set.

Since my last update I've had little time for PC games, although I did sneak in a few hours of Portal. Quite a mind-twister, that one, and with a sinister background story to boot. If only I could figure out how to get past the security droids on level 16....

After some pestering from a friend Down Under, I joined the hordes at Facebook. On the plus side, it's got a nice interface, and I've caught up with some friends I'd lost contact with. As for minuses, it's an incredible time-waster, and it didn't take too long to get sick of the various animals and vampires thrown my way as part of the "Super-poke" feature. I tend to ignore these, so don't feel offended if you throw a cow at me and I don't respond in kind ;)

We're still watching The Sopranos on DVD, and season 3 does not disappoint. The Pine Barrens episode we just watched is a classic, and we're eager to see what happens in the final two episodes of the season. Thanks to Amazon's Black Friday sale, I picked up seasons 4 and 5 on DVD at a great price. Guess what we'll be doing this winter? :)

I wasn't too impressed with Spider-Man 3. We watched it last night, and while the effects were good, the movie itself was sort of meh! Knocked Up, on the other hand, was very good, and we also enjoyed 1408. The latter joins the canon of the few Stephen King movies that don't suck!

After finishing Joe Hill's collection, 20th Century Ghosts, I grabbed John Scalzi's Old Man's War from the pile. I've only read the first few chapters, but I'm really enjoying it so far. I've got a feeling this one's destined to become a classic, if it isn't considered one already.

I finished up with gardening back in November, and now everything is buried beneath 7 inches of snow. In addition to tearing out most of the remaining veggies and planting winter cover crops, I pruned the roses and prepared them for winter by covering them with straw and topsoil. We're eating the last few tomatoes from the harvest before going back to the bland store-bought variety. Carrie gave me a Bonsai as an early Christmas present, so I dragged out the grow-lights and I've been tending that now and then this week. Hopefully the cat won't destroy this one like he did the last one in 2005! Pretty soon I'll have to get the veggies for next year started in the basement, so that ought to keep me busy. While I'm at it, maybe I'll pick up some more seed-pods for the AeroGarden and grow some lettuce or something indoors like I did last winter.

Again, my fiction output has been non-existent, but I do have some good news to announce regarding the podcasting of one of my stories! I'll post more details once all the paperwork is taken care of.

I think that's about it for now. So how have you been keeping yourself amused lately?