Definitely No Resolutions This Year

I never stick to them. In a couple of days I'll be off to Suffolk to see in the New Year, so thought I might as well do a review of the year/look forward to next type thing now. My overall impression of 2011 is that's it's been....twelve months. Not much more to say. My crazy idea was indeed crazy, and I failed to actually write to most of the places I intended to. It's pretty much impossible to exist on paper without picking a binary gender, but i think we knew that anyway. Maybe one day I'll have more spoons and can try again to raise awareness. Until then I'll just keep being female when it matters and maybe start flipping a coin when it doesn't.... My other plans went pretty much nowhere too. I did try the writing thing again but, ugh. Same old problem of not being able to focus and force myself to write something I know isn't good. And lack of plot. Plot is useful for stories. And even blogging fell away as you can probably tell. I suspect I shall largely not be bothering in future. Unless I really can think of something I really want to say and think people might actually want to read. So probably not then. As for the rest of the year...stuff happened. I found out my ex had died. Other people died too, including my SO's grandma. People were born too, and that's much happier to think about. I had a job, for a bit, and my SO jumped through more hoops for the NHS. It's possible I've forgotten some really important event this year, but that's really all I can think of right now. And I'm expecting 2012 to be much the same (although we could do without the deaths and losing of jobs). So - no resolutions. I have no idea when I might update this again, if ever. Hope you all have a good new year and indeed a good future in general.

Return to Vvardenfell

Dragons, schmagons. Silt striders and skooma addicts are where it's at. We've been having computer troubles for some time - our main PC died a sudden death and not having the cold hard cash to buy a new one, we've just been coping without. We have our own laptop/netbooks for internet access, the back-up desktop works just about for that too, and the Wii keeps the Terror occupied gaming-wise. Then 11/11/11 happened and, not being able to move on the internet for reviews, progress blogs and general Skyrim-related chatter, we began to feel a bit left out. At this point my clever other half pointed out that my laptop ought to be able to run Morrowind. It was, actually, one of the reasons I bought such a high-spec laptop when, ostensibly, it was only needed for work: mostly text-editing. So she went ahead and installed WINE, Morrowind and both expansions, and found, to delight all round that it did indeed run. Until you got into combat or tried to load a saved game at which point it crashed. Fortunately, that was easily solved by downloading the latest version of WINE instead of the stable version, and, despite occasional problems with sound, it mostly works fine. Of course, that now means all three of us are fighting over my laptop - because now the boy is old enough to be able to play with only minimal help. He can read and understand most of the dialogue, he has no problems with the controls and when he gets the hang of finding quests for himself he'll be away. Currently he seems to be hung up on creating new characters - he's got four now, different races and classes but all fighters and all barely out of Seyda Neen - but hopefully he'll settle down soon and get deeper into the game. He's been watching me take on a Dwemer ruin with some fascination, so maybe he'll try and head there at some point. Maybe I'll prompt him in that direction. And, gee, but I'd forgotten how much I love this game. Even though I've played it so much in the past that I doubt there's much "new" left for me to do, I keep finding things I'd forgotten all about and just wandering round and doing things in a different order is being fun. And the alien environment of Vvardenfell appeals to me much more than the more Earth-like greenery that was, admittedly, so stunning in Oblivion. I also much prefer the approach to the main storyline - you can and indeed are encouraged to ignore it to start with - something that didn't really feel possible in Oblivion what with the end of the world happening and all that. Not that it's a perfect game by a long shot, but it's currently being enjoyable and the fact that I - hardly an accomplished gamer - have managed to complete it and most of the side-quests I've attempted is definitely a point in its favour. It's feeding our family's craving for Elder Scrolls action for now, and despite the arguments about who's turn it is, it's bringing us together by giving us a common current obsession. All of which means that I'm quite happy to put off buying a new computer until after Christmas, when we should hopefully be able to afford it. And I probably won't be dropping it immediately to rush off and play Skyrim instead. Although the dragons do look very cool....