A Long Trip, To Visit Mom

See this map on Google Maps! Credit embeded with the file.

Bags are almost packed, plans are made, credit id ready: I'm leaving on a complicated trip to visit my mom in Corsica. To be honest, this trip couldn't have been planned at a worse time. I'm in a transitional phase at the moment, which means I'm very vulnerable in most ways. On top of that, this trip looks like a wild goose hunt.

A couple of hours from now (5:30am, today) I'll be on the Intercity to Bucharest. After a few hours at the Bucharest Grapefruit office, I'll be on the plane towards Rome, landing on the Fiumicino airport around 8:30pm. I get to spend about a couple of hours in the grando aeroporto de Italia, before taking the train to Livorno, via Roma. The funny part is that the train arrives in Livorno at 3am, and the ferry leaves to Bastia at 8:15am. Umm... Not funny!

I sure hope I find some late night non-stop shop where I can spend the rest of the night, while I wait for the ferry. Perhaps some McDonald's? After four hours on the ferry, a couple of friends of mom's will come and pick me up from the port, and then there's one or two more hours before I meet her.

It will be worth it, no doubt... But when I come to think the amount of work I leave behind... The amount of work I have to come back to...

Well, you can follow me on Twitter if you're interested, as I'll keep it updated via SMS and IM. (Actually, please follow... if there's trouble, I'll also post there.) I'm also planning on taking that Flickr account off the dusty shelf.

Crash like I haven't had in a while

It all started with a headache a couple of days ago, which of course I ignored, carelessly continuing my daily taks. So I wake up next morning with a lesser headache, but a painful swollen neck. "Eh, I'll just have some hot tea at the office, maybe a Coldrex and it'll go away." But little did I know...

By the time I got to the office, my headache was completely at home again, and the neck situation had gotten worse. I drank the hot Coldrex, but the coat back on a started reading my mail... So at this point there's this struggle: I had a lot planned for yesterday, but if I stayed at the office or, worse, if I had ran through town to complete my deeds, it would have been a disaster. So I take the day off, call for a cab and go home. I stopped by the pharmacy to buy a couple more Coldrex.

Yesterday was a nightmare: I had no apetite, although I constatly felt the need to eat, my head was pumping like a boom box, I puked blood, had so much medication I can still taste it in my mouth... Not to mention the wild actual nightmares about weird folk insinde my body/head/mouth/whatever fighting for territory, which war caused my pain. By morning, though, things felt better, but not enough to get up and resume my humble life.

My neck is still swollen, I still have a mild headache, and I have to wear a blanket on me around the house, or else I'm shaking like crazy.

Will someone remind me to get a flu shot next year?

Chaos before spring break

It's been a tense couple of weeks, and I nearly started to lose grip there. Looking back I can't even realise why that happened, but the good thing is that I'm back on track now. I didn't have much time to update, so here's quick tour of what went on.

No sure verdict on LOTRO

I played LOTRO with 3 character so far: an elf, a hobbit and a dwarf. I like the game, and I must admit it gets a little addictive. To be honest, after playing it for a while I see it with new eyes: it's not the grind-loot-grind type of MMORPG that Lineage II got me used to, nor the boring PvP-less MMORPG that beta tasted like. The game is quite relaxing: there are lots of nice quests, some even innovative.

What I love most about this game so far is grouping. In LOTRO I found grouping that really proves useful. It's amasing to see how a fellowship's power grows by the number of people joining, farther than just adding up! The way the characters are build makes for very nice fellowship combos.

More on these in a soon to come review.

Magic: The Gathering Morningtide release

This weekend marks the release of the Morningtide expansion set for the Lorwyn block. Not give then time nor financial resources I couldn't attend the release events in Bucharest that took place yesterday. However, judging by what I did at the pre-release, maybe I should just play some more before showing up at a new sanctioned tournament.

Diesel and I played 5 of 6 rounds two weeks ago at the pre-release event. I didn't win any rounds. Diesel, however, won just one—the one agains me, lucky bastard! Anyway, we didn't go there for anything: I can had the Morningtide pre-release card, plus three more complimentary DCI folied cards.

More on Magic: The Gathering soon, I hope.

TV broke half-season

No, it's not my TV set that broke... It's the TV in general. With the writer guild on strike it's only now that we can see the real effects of what happened back then. Mid-January is usually half-season for TV, and there are after-holiday comebacks. And there were comebacks: there was 30 Rock with a pretty nice episode, there was Family Guy with a nice episode, and there were there were a handful of Prison Break episodes. Alas, some of them hit season finale prematurely, like Heroes and 30 Rock. Prison Break will still run for a while, and will hopefully have a decent season finale. Family Guy seems to have a lot planned ahead, but will it commit?

I feared that Lost might get canceled aswell, but it seems it hasn't: Lost season 4 is underway. There are 13 webisodes that aired during the downtime, and I'll watch them all soonish. A special episode and the season premiere have also aired last Thursday, so there is hope.

More on TV soon to come!