01

Christmas in Easter

Now, the last post I mentioned that I was going to be incommunicado for a while. Not in my wildest dreams did I anticipate it would be THIS long between posts. (Though to be honest my wildest dreams tend to not be about blogging – I’m more of traditionalist – spiders, wailing babies, being stalked through dark corridors, realising I’m naked at school, realising I am naked at school being stalked by wailing, naked spider-babies…)

But I am back. And I have news.

Remember the scavenger hunt-style competition I entered way back?

Well, I won. Yep. 40 free games.  It was even announced in the mainstream media.

So that’s pretty much the rest of my year taken care of.  Did I mention one of the games I won is “World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King”? Well, it is.  So clearly I have no choice but to reactivate my WOW account. But I shall endeavour not to retreat entirely into Azeroth to the detriment of blogging/personal hygiene.

As of this post I have only received a handful of games but PCPowerplay assures me the rest are coming, so I figured I might post some mini-reviews or 1st impressions of the games as I receive them. Many are titles – and indeed genres – that I wouldn’t usually go near, so it should be an education.

Stay tuned!

P.S. During my absence from the blogosphere I also completed “The Witcher” in its entirety. Coincidence? I think not.

4

Post-Postage Post

I did it. Pictured below is Theo for number 11 and I think he was definitely the best thing in the package. It was hard to part with him actually.

I couldn’t find the raw cane sugar single serve packet so I made a custom Kane-from-Command & Conquer version.

The whole competition entry consumed a surprising amount of time. But it was great.

And just think how many hours FORTY COMPUTER GAMES could eat up? I do so hope I win. It felt like a bit of an anti-climax sending off all the stuff knowing I probably won’t hear a peep from the magazine. Ah well. I did my very best, this I know to be true.

Also – I now have practice extracting myself from a Public Meeting at a Jehova’s Witness Kingdom Hall. Who knows when that might come in handy?At one stage I didn’t think they were going to let me get through the door without leaving my contact details. They were very nice though. As was the man at the post office. I think he thought I was a bit weird, but that’s just because I freaked out at the last minute and had to re-open the package, and put a number label on a a tiny plastic spoon.

I labelled all the objects and included a legend.

And this is the answer to the question at 12 in case you have a burning need to know…

2

Manicurists Beware – I am coming for you…

I’m not really big on entering competitions. I usually read the details, raise my eyebrows at the offered prizes, then forget to actually enter. Anyway, I usually figure the odds of winning are too slim to bother. Unless of course the competition is judged rather than just randomly drawn – then I am a little more likely to give it a go.

(I tried so hard to win a G.I Joe colouring-in competition as a child. I spent hours and hours on my entry, I used everything I could get my hands on pencils, textas, crayons, glitter – I even glued on a sheet of transparent plastic so I could add my own gun-sight modification. And I won. My prize was a giant G.I. Joe vehicle – somewhere there exists a photograph of me being presented with the oversize box of American military propaganda plastic, an improbably wide smile on my face…)

Anyway, I recently came across a competition in PCPowerplay that got my interest, firstly because the prize is FORTY computer games. That’s right, you heard me, FORTY. I could spread them all out on the floor, lie back on them and make a Game Angel. No, I WILL do that. But first I have to win.

Here’s what I have to do…

So far I have the train ticket and the party hat.

(Orc Raider included for scale.)

There is about a week until the competition deadline. I need to get moving. Number 3, the cane sugar one, worries me, I don’t spend enough time in coffee shops to know if such a thing is going to be easy to obtain. Number 7 SHOULD be easy, but where are those Jehovah’s Witnesses when you actually want their literature? Nowhere in my neighbourhood, that’s for sure.

And I guess Number 12 is going to be the clincher so I’ll need to start thinking about that.

If anyone needs me I can be found in my local grocery store looking for something priced $1.59.

Wish me luck!