Well... My birthday came and went. And it was... Okay... Meh. I didn't really feel like celebrating anyway. I mean, the presents were nice and I FINALLY got to see ~metalfighterriku for the first time outside of work in MONTHS but... I dunno... I just haven't been very happy in the week since my birthday... :\ I'll spare you guys the details but I guess I'm just feeling like my life isn't going anywhere... -_- Anyway...

From ~StaciNadia I got Dragon Quest 5, for whenever I finish Dragon Quest 4, Donkey Kong Jenga which we already played, and The Sarah Conner Chronicles, which I haven't started yet but should since I already finished off Firefly and Cheers... From my mother, we got a gift card to Bahama Breeze which we used a while ago... And... Clubhouse Games which I already have so... I have to go to Best Buy when I wake up to exchange it. >_> And ~metalfighterriku has pledged a Yoko picture which I'm sure will VERY lovely. Oh, and the some of the people at work gave me a gift card to Steak and Shake too. And we went to Long Horn for my birthday too. Not bad at all, but it's just the passing of time that's making me sad, I think... -_-

Moving along... I started a nude Rydia picture since a certain artist that'll remain nameless never followed through on their end (granted, this person has been through a lot lately, so I'm not going to be rude and press them, plus, I'm hoping one day they'll remember) of a trade so... I'm doing it myself. A friend of mine, whose DA name escapes me completely right now, recommended I do the picture as an odalesque (sp?) when she caught me trying to find a good reference for a reclined pose. I came up with one eventually but later scraped it because it wasn't reclined enough (it was more of a seated pose and it made her look like the Queen of Sex which isn't quite right) so I made a new one. Problem is, I've been getting stuck on drawing Shiva properly in the foreground (she's supposed to be holding Rydia's hand) and caused me to not want to work on the picture so... I dunno... I do want to finish it though, and make it SO GOOD, that even ~metalfighterriku will want to fav it! But for that, I have to draw Shiva at the right perportions... ;_; I suck...

But, I guess it's not ALL bad news here... I did manage to do ONE good thing this week... I FINALLY finished Ultima 1: The First Age of Darkness! For those of you not familiar with the series, Ultima is one of the oldest RPG series in PC Gaming. It's also known for not playing by normal RPG conventions or mechanics, which can be both confusing and irritating at times. Anyway, I always heard good things about the series and back in my golden days of PC Gaming (you know, way back when you didn't need to rebuy your computer every six months to play every new game), I collected lots and LOTS of games, especially games that were vintage even back THEN! Sadly, most of the time, I could never finish most of these games because I would get stuck somewhere or didn't really understand how to play. Of course, now with resources like GameFaqs, it's a lot easier to steer through old games like this one!

Now, despite actually owning the great majority of the Ultima series, the only ones I ever really played a lot and eventually beat were Martian Dreams and Ultima: Exodus (NES Version)and those victories were YEARS in the making! Especially Exodus! Anyway, since I was feeling really crumby this week, I decided to take a whack at maybe finishing the first game and thanks to GameFAQs, I did.

In the end, it wasn't as long or as annoying as Exodus though I do wonder how people were supposed to get through the game without a FAQ... There weren't many NPCs in the game and they were short on details. In the end, though the game was far simpler than it seemed and the final boss battle wasn't as epic as the FAQs made it sound either (they recommended that you maxed out ALL your stats first and had NO LESS than 6000 HP going into the fight and the best weapon, the Blaster!--I went in with only slightly over 1000 and a bow and arrow with normal stats and beat Mondain senseless in 5 minutes. ) but it was a tad LESS anticlimactic than the final battle in Exodus. That said, having patched up Ultima 2 (the version I have had a fatal bug that made the game unwinnable), once I finish reading it's manual, after locating a decent FAQ, will launch into that one next! Perhaps doing this will allow me to catch some of Mr. Garriot's pioneering fever and get me off my butt and back to working on important things again.

Anyway, that's it. I go sleepy now.