The Emperor and I took another journey to Big City East of Here for a little Christmas shopping and some time away, and we had a pretty good trip. Normally, the combination of major holiday, travel, big city, and shopping would not thrill us to the core, but for some reason we hit all the right notes and came home with what we set out to find, or at least I did. The Emperor is getting a new Nook for Christmas, plus the obligatory hand knit socks and a political campaign t-shirt I ordered a while ago from Berkeley Breathed (yes, the guy who draws Bloom County). I don't know what the Emperor has in mind for me, but he's notoriously bad at picking presents. I won't let him forget about the bird-gutting knife tool he put in my stocking once. I didn't even know what it was, let alone ask for it, and sent him go get his (considerable) money back for it. I am not complaining! I just think it's really funny that such a sensitive guy is so bad at this.
Since we're not going to Sis's place, I'll get our Christmas stockings out of storage and put them up on the bookshelf. I don't know about having a tree -- I did pick up a tiny poinsettia plant yesterday that is brightening up the room. I've got some treats to put in the Emperor's stocking, some noshes for Christmas day, and a "spruce" candle to add some green scent to the air. There will be a small ham, my sister's recipe for spicy sweet potatoes, fresh peas, and a mince pie. Other than that, really, we're not going to get wound up about the holiday.
We didn't do anything to mark the solstice this year.
It's true confession time. A few weeks ago I finally found where to get the "Downton Abbey Mysteries of the Manor" game app for my iPad. At first glance, it didn't look like it was too interesting, but then I played it a few times and got seriously hooked. It's a progressive game. You have a few "diamonds," some "gold coins," and some "energy" and then you go through the various rooms in the manor, finding objects and building inventory to use to unlock more rooms and more objects. The storyline is that someone broke into Downton and has thrown all of the rooms into chaos, and you've been asked by the Earl of Grantham to help find things and solve the mystery. As you find things, you can sell them to Mrs. Hughes, or craft them into other things with Carson, or use them to upgrade the different rooms and unlock more things to find. At any rate, I've hit the highest level and still have plenty to upgrade, find, unlock, and collect. The good thing is that you can't play it constantly for hours (or I would have finished it last week!); you need twenty-two energy credits to enter a room to look for items, and you can only rack up a total of one hundred credits to use. It takes one minute to acquire one energy credit, so if you use them all up, you have to wait twenty-two minutes to play again. If you start with your full one hundred credits, you can play four times before you have to set it aside and wait for more credits to build up.
Playing the game helped keep me on task with my end of semester grading, if you can believe it. I sat down at the big table in the department workroom/library and played my four games, trying to get a brown teapot to unlock something. Then, I turned my iPad to music and started grading. When I had finished the first and second sections of one class's final exam, I opened my game again, played my four rounds, started the music again, and went back to work. My reward for each task was another search for the damn teapot. I spent most of a day at it, but finally found the teapot and got the exams graded. Right now, I'm waiting to build up enough energy to search for a fan, and then an "ornate brush" so that I can upgrade a bedroom, unlock a teddy bear, find that four times, and find a doll three times so that I can unlock a mystery room. These tasks will take me all day to accomplish; I have a list of chores to do while I wait for my next waltz through Downton Abbey.
One way that you can build up energy credits is by watching 30-second advertisements for other game apps. I don't really watch them, but just let them play and collect my ten credits. One advert was for an adult coloring app, and it looked kind of interesting, so later on I went looking through the app store and found that there were a bunch of coloring apps. I found one that was free, but had a "magic pencil" allowing you to use all of their colors and giving access to all of their "books" and since it was less than two dollars, I went for it. Oh my gosh, what fun! You can do a little or a lot, and save your work and come back to it later. Many of the line drawings are actually quite beautiful. Some are simple, and some fill their space with zillions of tiny elements, and you can fill each element by touching a color on the palette and then touching the space.
One thing that has me pretty excited is that Ian Anderson, of Jethro Tull, is bringing his rock opera Jethro Tull to Kansas City in April. Using existing music from the band's playlist, plus a few new songs, he has constructed the musical story of the eighteenth-century Industrial Revolution agricultural pioneer Jethro Tull. This is exciting stuff! When I first heard that Anderson was developing it, I really wanted to go, but for a while it didn't look like it was coming to America. When it did come earlier this winter, the closest venue to us was Chicago, and although we toyed briefly with going, decided against it. When Anderson announced the Kansas City date, I bought tickets and will now figure out how to seamlessly work the dates into my semester.
As for the knitting, it continues. The Staffordshire Mittens are finished, blocked, and in my knit accessories box. I have worked on the Lavender Leaf Lace scarf, but put it aside when I started making mistakes; I will pick it up again soon. Meanwhile, I've picked up the White Caps Cowl and have done a few rounds on it of an evening. I still pick up the front band for Jupiter and rib until I can't stand it anymore, then move on to something else. I will not start a new project until at least Jupiter and the Lavender scarf are finished. Or, at least that's the plan.
No comments:
Post a Comment