tetris attack

It's a good thing I've never tried cocaine--with my addictive personality, it only would have taken one dose for me to throw my life away and start selling my body on the streets to support my habit. Perhaps this is an exaggeration, but given all of my good intentions for the weekend, and compared to all of the hours I have spent playing Tetris instead, I feel that this is not completely beyond the realm of possibility. I'm still not done with some of my peer reviews; while I'm closer to being done than I was on Friday, the entire weekend has been an exercise in procrastination. I need to get better about procrastinating by doing other things that I should do instead (such as write my romance novel), but instead I played a lot of Tetris. In my defense, I hadn't played it much yet, and it was a Christmas present from my parents; then again, I requested it, and I knew when I put it on my list that I was courting disaster.

It turns out that Tetris for the Nintendo DS is pretty much the best game ever, if you discount 'Civilization' and if you don't like to play shoot-em-up games. It has the same old-school Tetris that I learned to love on the original Nintendo, plus five or six other completely different and shockingly fun versions. Some of the versions make use of the Nintendo DS's touchscreen; others are more puzzle-oriented and require logic to solve, rather than the constant-dropping madness of the original Tetris. As an example of how addictive it is, I turned on my Nintendo last night with the intention of playing one game of classic Tetris to clear my mind before working--but I cleared my mind so effectively that I came out of my tetramino-induced trance three hours later and decided to go to bed instead. Between Tetris and Meteos, the Nintendo DS is my new best friend. Appropriate, since I won't have any other friends if I don't put my time to better use and get my work done, since guilt at unfinished work keeps me from hanging out with people, even though I then use my alone time to play Tetris instead.

Yesterday, after I blogged about the stuff that arrived from Ireland, Terry called and wanted to hang out, so she came over and ended up staying for six hours. We talked for a few of those hours, and then I needed to work on my reviews, so she read a book while I worked. She started to get antsy, and so ordered and picked up a pizza, which we proceeded to eat before she left around eight. That's when I picked up Tetris, and you know the rest. This morning, I woke up, played Tetris (ha), ran some errands, ate lunch, came back and alternated between playing Tetris and writing reviews, then took a shower and called my parents.

I had dinner tonight with Claude; it's clear how little I was online this week and how infrequently I've been making my plans with my friends, since she took the unusual (for her) step of checking my blog to make sure I was still alive. We were going to go to our favorite Thai place, but instead went to Mike's Cafe Etc., which is a couple of blocks from my apartment. That restaurant is fantastic--why it's located behind a hardware store, I have no idea, but the food is some of the best around. We both ordered one of their evening specials (Claude had salmon, and I had this amazing skirt steak with garlic mashed potatoes), and followed it up by sharing a bread pudding that was out-of-this-world good. Although I don't know why good things are characterized by 'out of this world'--for some reason I can only picture Sputnik when I think of out of this world, or exploding supernovas, and while both of those things are cool, neither of them are particularly safe or welcoming for humans. Anyway, dinner was nice, and it was good to catch up w/Claude. Then I came home with the intention of working, but you can guess what I did instead. Actually, I was also looking at furniture online; I think that I want to buy a chest of drawers or an armoire to upgrade the stack of Rubbermaid tubs currently taking up precious real estate in my bedroom, but I'm not sure where or what type to buy.

Tomorrow, I don't have any choice about finishing this crap for work, and I can berate myself for not doing it earlier and therefore leaving it hanging over my head the whole weekend. I also want to at least start brainstorming a story for my class tomorrow, or work on my romance novel; either is acceptable, as long as I do one of them. Finally, I had made tentative plans to see 'Pan's Labyrinth' tomorrow, but I'm not sure if that will still happen, so we shall see. Then, it's back to the grind--but it's another short week, so hopefully it will go fast. Now, it's time for bed!