Well, after six months of living in Modesto, I am officially no longer in possession of a valid Florida’s drivers license. We put it off and off and off and off, but finally this morning I went down to the DMV, filled out the forms and took the test. So now I’m formally a California driver.
This whole “summer” concept is going to take me some getting used to. Cool weather all the way up to about a week ago, and then suddenly BOOM, a hundred degrees. But even at 100+ degrees, it just doesn’t feel hot to me, because I associate heat with not breathing. 95 degrees in Florida is August, and it’s not hot: it’s a humid, muggy, swampy hell. Bugs. Sweating and not cooling off. Hot muggy 24 hours a day. And then, after you’ve managed to survive yet another year of sweltering misery, you get to goosestep your way through hurricane season.
So I know it’s the beginning of summer here, and I can look around and see all the signs of summer, but the desert air is throwing my body’s thermostat completely off.
Work is slowing down for both of us. For me, business generally slows down in the summer and then picks up hard right after Labor Day; I can see summer starting to set in. Kristi meanwhile has another couple of weeks left before she’s on summer break, and (not even including her back pains) she’s got some serious school fatigue going. So we’re both getting ready for a slow, lazy summer of sleeping in, goofing off, occasionally doing client work and of course getting married.
I can already guess one favorite summer activity this year: the Playstation 3.
I do love this gadget; it’s an impressive piece of engineering, not just as a game system but as a central multimedia hub for the whole house. We got it to play Grand Theft Auto 4, and we’re both hopelessly addicted to blowing the crap out of other online players in Liberty City. (Kristi’s not-so-secret joy is knowing that most of the people she’s running over with virtual fire trucks happen to be the same 14-year-olds that drive her crazy at work. Little do they know that not only are they fighting a girl, but they’re fighting an adult woman, and they’re fighting an adult woman high school English teacher. And now that my brother Chris has the game, the two of them are enjoying tagteaming online enemies in running street firefights.)
Meanwhile, my inner geek is still looking for new ways to exploit the PS3 beyond its role as a game system. Recently I managed to get it talking to the other machines on our home network, and to stream video and music from the office server. So it’s now a game system, stereo, MP3 player, DVD player and video jukebox and ties all our house multimedia tech together into a single A/V delivery system.
So I’m sure we’ll find something to keep us amused on those slow, lazy, hot but not humid summer afternoons.
As for the PS3, you might consider Rock Band, too – our friends come over and play at least once a week. And hubby suggests Portal for Rob.
I LOVED Portal. Orange Box was the first PS3 game we bought (I wanted HL2), GTA4 the next day. I started out thinking, okay, this is kinda unique and cute – saw it basically as a proof of concept kinda thing. Didn’t pay much attention to the little details, the things the computer said, etc. until I suddenly realized that the game had gotten way weird and I missed important cues in the early chapters. By the time the closing credits played (while I laughed my ass off) I was thinking that Portal was one of the most original, unique, twisted games I’d ever played.
Kristi hates it. The AI voice grates on her nerves, and the endless portal-opening sounds just drove her batty. So I had to wait until she was at work before I could finish it. 🙂