Christmas with my family up in Utah was great!  I got back home to Prescott safely last weekend, although I did have to traverse nearly 200 miles of snow and ice-packed roads.  Nothin’ like a white knuckle ride to get ya’ goin’ over the holidays.  I only saw two accidents – both were big rigs.  One had gone off the road and tipped over on it’s side, only one cop car was there, so it had happened shortly before I drove by. The other was just the burned out remains of a load of oranges – it appeared that this had happened the day before or so…

Anyways, I’m glad to be back home and getting ready for the whole New Year’s shin-dig.  I’m not sure what I’ll end up doing, but I think there’s something going on at the town square – if not I’ll probably just hit one of the local bars or something.  Luckily I live within walking distance to all of those things!

As for gaming – I’ve cancelled WAR and LOTRO for now.  I’ve been doing a little bit of Wizard101 but I’ll probably be heading back to EVE over the weekend.  I’m sure that will only last a couple months or so – that’s about as long as I can take EVE, but I always go back for the occasional shot – it’s kind of like Cuervo I guess. Kind of hard to describe.

I’m sure I’ll end up going back to WAR too, I really like the game.  I just don’t have time for it anymore.  I’ve got way too many other projects on my plate right now, so gaming is taking a major priority hit.  LotRO is just too big of a grind monster for me to get interested in it again.  I tried, but alas, I didn’t even get one level over the past month of casual gaming. That’s just sad, and not very fulfilling either – and my character is only in his low 40’s – I can’t imagine how awful the grind is once you’re in your 50’s! UGH!

Wizard101 was looking interesting, but I think I’ve maxed out what I can do “for free.”  I’ve got a character up to level 10, but I can only run around a few of the areas.  All of the other “doors” are either locked or require a subscription to get through. I don’t have anymore quests I can do in the area, and XP is way slow just grinding mobs.  It’d be nice if you could XP on the “carnival games,” even if it was as low as the mob XP, at least you could change things up a bit.  So I may take the subscription plunge – it’s pretty cheap ($5/mo for a 1 yr. commit) and I’d like to see more of the world.  Besides I really like the card-battle mechanic.  If MTG were ever made into an MMO, this is how it could be done.

Hope y’all have a great New Year’s celebration!  I’ll see if I can’t do some kind of wrap up for 2008 and predictions for 2009 over the next couple days.  Enjoy!