Where Have I Been?

Hi all! Yet another long gap between posts. I'm going to do my best to stay on schedule in the future.

Some updates in the life of Jiya. I just finished my second term of study in Computer Science and am having a blast. The last two weeks were more stressful than any since high school, but it was worth it. I pulled a nice fat 3.5 GPA this term, and I'm going for a 4.0 next term. Considering last term was 17 credits and this term will only be 14, I think it's definitely do-able!

Over the break I played a lot of Minecraft. I purchased the game in September and played a lot at that time, then took a long break from it. Now my wonderful house-mates are playing again on a server my roommate is running. It's wonderful because we've also got some of my friends from Seattle on the server now, which is a wonderful way to keep in touch. The world we're in has huge pillar-like mountains, which we have each claimed one of, and have an increasingly intricate network of bridges connecting them. It's wonderful!

Other games I've played over the break include Civ V, which I probably played for almost 24 hours straight after downloading it. Lots of fun, but I've already gotten a bit bored with it. I am on a big sandbox game kick, so I tried out both Wurm Online and Dwarf Fortress. Wurm's interface and graphics are so clunky I don't think I can keep with it, though the ideas and the sheer detail of the system are intriguing! Dwarf Fortress has a dauntingly steep learning curve, but my roommate is helping me learn the ropes. Lots of fun, but I'm such a stickler for polished graphics and UIs that I probably won't be able to handle it.

This sandbox game kick has got me thinking about making a sandbox game of my own, but I'm not sure if I'll follow through. I've jotted down all the ideas I've had so far, though - just in case!

I may or may not have downloaded the first season of the Pokemon TV show... Re-watching the cartoons of my youth is excellent fun!

I've also gotten to pursue my love of cooking over spring break. I've been able to cook a nice meal for myself and my house-mates almost every day this week, and it's been awesome. Spending more time with my house-mates makes me so incredibly grateful for the wonderful home we've been able to make together. When I came up with the idea for the Geek House, I never knew it would be such a success! For those who don't know, when I moved to a new city in September for school I used craigslist to find a group of nerdy people to live with. We managed to find a huge, wonderful, quirky 5 bedroom house 10 minutes from downtown in a lovely and very safe neighborhood, and crammed 8-9 people into it (one doesn't technically live here but is around probably about half the time). It's awesome always having people to play board/card/video games with.

Finally, I've been working on a D&D campaign for my house-mates all break, and we'll be starting it up this week. Should be all sorts of fun. It's great having so many creative outlets!

Well, that's an update on what I've been up to while I've NOT been blogging. Back to the normal schedule tomorrow!

NOTE: I'm changing my Thursday post  to be a personal update post, rather than gaming news - it just felt like a chore to search for something to blog about there, and this isn't a news blog, so I feel the news post is unnecessary.