Here’s the tentative schedule I had in my last post:
Tomorrow – Recap last year’s epic shenanigans
Tuesday – Recap this year so far
At least every other day after that – Log my notable (to me, anyway) activities
Once a week – Backlog recap; what have I gotten through and what’s left?
Once a month – Drafting ideas for long form opinion pieces and/or fiction stuff that’s been rattling around my head for a while.

I am going to alter it slightly because I am equal parts capricious and lazy and a year long recap sounds like a lot of work. I’m gonna save the recap of last year for later (though I’ll be keeping notes so that I don’t forget anything). I’m gonna jump ahead to this year. So, what have I done this year?

Well, I finished off the tail end of the annual SyFy (ugh, what a spelling) Channel’s New Year’s Twilight Zone marathon. I absolutely love that show and I love watching the marathon every year on New Year’s. A lot of people don’t really get it when I tell them that this is how I spend my New Year’s Eve and Day. “You mean you don’t go out? What about New Year’s parties?” As if I’m some kind of wild party animal. While I grant that since 2009 I’ve certainly done some living, at least in terms of catching up with the drunken debauchery I’m told was supposed to occur in high school and college, I’m not really some sort of party animal or social butterfly. Even people who know me are shocked that I stay in on NYE, and these are people who should know me the best! I guess NYE has that effect on people? I don’t know, people confuse the fuck out of me at times. Anyway, this year the marathon was really great because instead of running for just the eve and day, it ran from Wednesday into Sunday! They decided to show ever episode in order and there are a lot of episodes. It was a really great time. Also, I got good and hammered on NYE with a bunch of Absolut Mango and Gulden Draak. Drunken Twilight Zone is pretty awesome. I also ordered a pizza from the place across the street, which was delightful because there’s nothing like NY pizza! Trust me when I say that, I know it from painful experience!

Moving on, I saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens on the 2nd. The United Artists theater on 110 just put in an IMAX screen and has those super comfortable seats that recline. Unfortunately the seats in the IMAX auditorium don’t recline. I’m thinking that’s so they could fit more seats in there because the reclining seats do tend to take up a lot of room. Still, it was pretty nicely done and quite comfortable. The movie was good too. As you may know, I’m not really a Star Wars guy. I never saw the magic and amazingly wondrous world that others seem to see in these movies. I will say that they do manage to do one thing really well: create a believable, lived in universe. Unlike a lot of sci-fi, everything isn’t shiny and new and clean. I can see this universe as one containing used space ship dealerships. The various planets all have varying degrees of economic success, which reflects in the infrastructure and local cultures and societies. You have the core worlds of the Republic that are well kept and bustling, but you also see the desert worlds where every protagonist ever to exist in the series grows up. These later worlds all have markedly different infrastructure, economic health, and just the feel of the place is so different. I like the fact that the galactic society is somewhat stagnant and decayed. Its a facet of the Star Wars universe that has been really well done. Oh, and lightsabers are fucking awesome.

My laser printer is acting up. When you print more than 1 page, the image from the previous page ghosts onto the page after it. Its fucking annoying and from everything I can tell, I have to take it apart to fix it. If that doesn’t work, its likely I have to get a replacement part that is nearly as expensive as a new printer. While the printer is a few years old, it doesn’t have a very high page count, so I’m not really thrilled with its longevity. I just printed a test page and the results were not good. I should probably figure out what I’m gonna do with that thing.

I’ve also played a lot of Terraria this year. I’m building a skyway… I feel like I should have a cool name for it. I gotta say, those fucking harpies that live up there make it a real pain in the ass. I was gonna make the skyway a simple row of blocks across the sky with openings periodically to points of interest on the ground so that traversal across the world would be simple and quick, but the more I work on it, the more I want to do. For example, I’ve installed mine cart railway across the length of it and once the entire thing is complete (its about 95% done now), I think I’m actually going to put up statues with numbers on them for exit signs (maybe with names too, as you can now make statues in the shape of letters), and also lay down an overhead row of blocks to keep the goddamn harpies out. In fact, I think I’m gonna google up some videos on how to take apart my printer and then work on my skyway some more.

One more thing! I got my TV mounted! Now I have more room for my consoles and have freed up space to be able to put up some shelves so that I can finally have all my books and DVDs and games unpacked and displayed!

Mounted TV