The Temple of Dysonism

Raindrops

Evening everyone, and welcome to another late night edition of the Temple of Dysonism. How are you all? Assuming the answer given was a positive response - good! Glad to hear it. I’m not too bad myself.

It’s been a funny few weeks as of late, for no great reason or event, but just in general. I’ve been to Portsmouth, spent way too much money on games, have dressed up three times in the past 3 weeks (which pretty much doubles my lifetime record for dressing up - ever), celebrated a milestone, and have started working with a team three times the size of usual thanks to the influx of Christmas temporary staff we’ve had start at GAME. Shall we talk about these things? Let’s.

I was lucky enough to get one of the final holiday weeks of the year booked off and as usual, made another trip down to Portsmouth to see both “Lewis and Co” and “The Girls”, splitting the time available right down the middle. The night out with Lewis and Co was one that ended in the best way possible - with us eating a full Indian meal at a curry house we discovered was open at 2 in the morning. The drunken desire of craving any type of food was satisfied by what was one of the nicest meals I’ve ever had. Why settle for a kebab on a rainy street corner when you can sit in a heated restaurant, with comfortable seating, epic food and banter? I look back on that happenstance rather fondly.

The second half of the Portsmouth visit comprised of walking to The Girls’ House, chilling for a few hours as usual and then I proceeded to dress up as a giant pumpkin. As you do. This was kind of a big deal for me, though I didn’t mention it at the time, I’ve never been much of a costume party person generally due to the effort required in putting a costume together that’s only going to be used once - twice if you’re lucky - before either being discarded or forgotten about. This costume (which looked absolutely ridiculous by the way) was one thoughtfully provided by Chloe, and I loved every minute whilst I was wearing it. It may have been hot (especially if you consider we plumped the suit up with wannabe-cotton wool) but if nothing else, I’ve taken one thing away from the experience: if me and Zoe were ever to break up (heaven forbid), I know I could go ahead and pull any girl simply by wearing a silly outfit, as the amount of hugs and pictures taken with random club-goers and me that night were in the double digits. I have yet to understand why being a giant pumpkin turned out to make me a chick magnet, so I think I’ll chalk that one down to one of life’s great mysteries.

Speaking of me and Zoe, I’ve never really written anything about us on my blog before. It’s been quite a strange one. I’ve always said to myself that my blog is written from my brain to the page as it comes; and there are rarely any exceptions. But I’ve always had a mental block when it comes to writing about my relationship. I guess it’s something that’s really very personal to me and Zoe and it hasn’t felt right to put anything out there, but at the same time this blog is all about me, and she plays a huge part in my life.

So why not? The milestone I mentioned earlier was quite a big one, as we recently celebrated one year flying by since we got together. I can’t believe it’s been that long.. it seems like only a couple of months ago I was introduced to this girl who I then decided I wanted to get to know a bit better, so what gives? I guess it’s kinda taken me by surprise a little bit.

Friends who know me from back at college and the later years at school will know I used to be quite jealous of other people simply being in a relationship and having that feeling of being close to someone; and not being able to do anything about it or so it seemed. I used to have long chats with ‘The Girls’ (pre-house) and some others (Nicki, Ryan and Mark to name a few) and would often get frustrated at my lack of a partner. It was never something that came to me naturally like it did with others my age, so I felt a bit behind, and that I was missing out.

This has been my first girlfriend to speak of, and our relationship has lasted a year with very few hiccups. It feels as if it’s been too easy to an extent, as if after waiting so long for what I was looking for I got it too easily. I guess through listening to my friends’ experiences I had expectations of rocky periods of time and other elements of our time together that simply haven’t occurred. I’m taking it as a good thing of course (it’d be silly to complain that there are too few complaints, right?) but it’s merely an observation! So yes - congratulations to Zoe and myself for making it to the one year mark unharmed. Here’s to another year :)

If there’s one thing me and Zoe disagree on it’s games. It goes without saying that I’m a big, big gamer and as such it generally takes the forefront of my mind when it comes to working out what luxury items I may want to purchase with each payslip. The new Call of Duty perhaps? A new Rock Band instrument? Or how about I really push the boat out and buy a Kinect? These are all questions I weigh up and decide on pretty frequently, and I’d like to think I’m rational when it comes to making the final decision (2 out of 3 ain’t bad going - not got my hands on a Kinect…yet…) but this past month or so has been crazy, and I’m feeling the burn a little bit.

For the first time in a good year or so I’ve got way too many games to play. This is on most accounts a good thing, having so much choice open to me. But the big issue is the lack of time I have these days, what with seeing Zoe, working in a retail store in the run up to Christmas, working out trips to Pompey to visit mates, and keeping myself social everywhere else. I just don’t have as much time to pump in to gaming as I used to, and it’s at this point where I think I’ve finally twigged on to the concept of ‘growing up’.

About 14 months ago I was unemployed and able to do whatever I wanted with my days as I had very few obligations to anything but myself. I could sit down and play Fallout 3 for a few hours, then some Rock Band 2, and then something else and be good. Now, with my time being restricted, I have a smaller window to fit in just as many games. To give you an idea of how many games I’m working through right now, here’s a small list of the games that are getting a good rotation on my systems:

• Call of Duty: Black Ops (Xbox 360)
• Rock Band 3 (Xbox 360)
• Fallout: New Vegas (Xbox 360)
• Halo: Reach (Xbox 360)
• Super Meat Boy (Xbox Live Arcade)
• Minecraft (PC)
• StarCraft II (PC)
• Team Fortress 2 (PC)

These are the games that I’m playing at any one time right now. Not to mention the two sealed games for my Xbox 360 that I bought on the cheap (Wolfenstein and BioShock 2) and my increasing desire to get back in to World of Warcraft at some point, as well as play through a backlog of DS games, there’s a lot on my gaming platter that I just can’t spend enough time with.

At some point in the next few weeks I’ll summon up the energy to write a bit more about the gaming side of things as I’ve just seen the time and would like to wake up whilst it’s still light on my day off, so I’m gonna leave it here for now. I’ll be back soon though, don’t you worry. In fact, I renewed the www.dysonism.com website for another year earlier today so I plan on sticking around for at least another 12 months. Thanks for reading over the past two years, whoever you may be, readers. I appreciate it. I’ll see you soon.