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So here I sit at 1:15 AM, wide awake. I actually crashed early, around 10:30 or so, after finishing my book. It may be a long weekend for some, but I've had to work the whole thing, including tomorrow? today? Whatever. I got woken up by a terrified fifty-five pound dog landing in my midriff, and once I was fully awake, I realized that we're in the middle of a pretty decent thunderstorm. He hates thunderstorms. So does the cat. I love 'em, but spend most of them soothing terrified pets. And now I'm wide awake, and I was sleeping so well, too. One of those really deep, restful sleeps. Oh, well. Maybe later.

Since the subject of women and gaming is all over the internet these days, I figured “what the heck, why not?” and I'm going to weigh in on it once and for all.

Seems like I'm always one of the last people to play a game. Mostly because I don't have the disposable income to buy games when they release. By the time I get around to playing a lot of games, most of my friends have been done with them for a couple of years. So I decided to start a blog series called Late to the Party so that I can rave about games that everyone else played years ago.

Ah, August! The month when everyone suddenly realizes that summer is winding down and they need to frantically fit as much as possible into the next few weeks. And they take their frustrations out on park staff, store clerks, and other hospitality service employees. I have been very busy lately, of the go to work, come home, walk the dog, shovel dinner down my throat, and fall asleep in front of the TV variety. I did do some fun stuff in the last week or so, though. My mom came up to visit and we just hung out for the day, did a little shopping at Target, Reny's (local chain of discount department stores - they're awesome!), and I slipped into an independent gaming/comics store. The Gamebox has comics, current gen games for purchase and rental, a fine selection of retro games for all systems, and table top gaming. They also run table top games in the back of the store. The staff was friendly, helpful, knowledgeable, and relaxed. I will be shopping there in the future for most of my gaming needs. They also repair most consoles and some handhelds. I see myself shopping there for most of my future gaming needs and desires.

I have this love/hate relationship with the Animal Crossing series. I love the game, but I can get obsessed with it and I hate that. When I start feeling like I have to tune in every day and I start buying everything in sight trying to fill collections, it's time to stop and I go cold turkey. For a while...

Today's blog - how an international folk music forum grieves when one of their own dies.

I love good point-and-click adventure games. This, unfortunately, is not one of them. It wasn't a bad game, but it wasn't a good game, either.

Friday evening we had a fierce thunderstorm that wreaked havoc in our area. I was, of course, ankle deep in water doing the weekly swab-down of the toilet building. After it was over, I mentally congratulated us for only having one giant pine tree explode and fall over a trail. Little did I know... Saturday afternoon, Andy, the park manager went down to the shore to take a swim after we cut up and removed the downed pine tree. I wasn't scheduled to have been in that morning but had gone in to get the tree taken care of and then went home for a nap and a shower before returning for closing duties. I got a phone call from Andy while I was still home telling me that the osprey nest on the island sanctuary had been blown down during the storm. There were three chicks in the nest and we pretty much wrote them off. Andy went out to the island once I returned to work, just in case any of the chicks had survived. And one healthy, uninjured chick was found. We were happy, because the chances of one surviving had been pretty low and it was nice to have one survivor when we didn't think we'd have any at all.

It's been a while since I've done a random update. Life's been interesting, to say the least.

Dear Ms. Sarkeesian,