I've been playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City a lot for the past couple of days. It's highly addictive. I rarely buy games, but Diablo II was getting a bit old, so I felt it was time to find a new mostly-mindless diversion. There's something very satisfying about riding around on a Vespa with a sub-machine gun in your polygonal hand. Mmm, simulated violence. Heather's been playing Sim City 3000, which we got from Susan a while back, but hadn't really played with much until now. So we've been recreational this past weekend. Which was fine, since I felt no particular urge to think, or be articulate, or be productive. It was relaxing. We did manage to clean up the house (Heather tackled the bathroom, while I took on the kitchen), and we framed some of our pictures, including the print of the cover art from Little Gods. We spent a good part of Saturday out running around, actually. We went to see Love Actually, which was good fun, a nice romantic comedy (Heather says it's her new favorite Xmas movie). We saw it at Grand Lake, which I think is probably my favorite theater. Good seats, good sound, nice-sized screens, actual balconies...

Afterward we had coffee at Javha House, a wonderful café with good drinks and a lovely atmosphere. It's very African-American-oriented with a political bent (they have a fairly steady schedule of readers and speakers who address such issues), and the patrons are predominantly (though not exclusively) young, hip, and black. Heather and I felt a bit out-of-place at first, feeling conspicuous in our mostly-apolitical total whiteness, but we ultimately didn't feel at all unwelcome. Heather and I talked later about how odd it was to even be aware of our race in such a context. I think I'll be going back there, perhaps frequently -- it's nearby, keeps decent hours, the coffee was really excellent, the upstairs almost unbelievably cozy, and it's also a wine bar, so how can you go wrong?

Otherwise, there's not a lot going on. Got rejections from Alchemy and Sci Fiction. I'm reading Ramsey Campbell's collection Told by the Dead. Looking forward to the day-after-Thanksgiving dinner at my boss's house next week (he's an incredible cook). And, of course, looking forward to my vacation. I'll just have to remind myself that I'm taking time off to write, not to play Vice City...