The holidays are over ...

The year 2006 has expired and we've slipped into 2007. The activity at work tends to wind down at the end of the year, so I usually augment the days I'm given off with some vacation to allow for some continuous time off.

Family time

We spent a large part of holidays with my parents and my sister. They visited for several days over Christmas. Fortunately, the weather here in KC was extremely mild (~50 F), which is a nice break for them, as they hail from the tundra-like environs of northern Illinois. It was nice to spend time with them. My sister is mega-pregnant. I assumed her baby would be big, but wow.

Gaming

A majority of my time off (at least in my mind), was spent playing video games. When I could get Dani off of the Wii, I clocked in as much time as I could on Zelda TP. According to my quest log, I've put in about 25 hours and I think I'm only have way complete. The game is enormous.

Dani and her sister love Wii Sports. We spent the waning hours of 2006 playing each other in tennis and bowling. Dani has been bragging to everyone that she has a new high score of 235 in bowling. I think part of the appeal is the personal characters, the Miis. Dani and Tres have already had to make multiple modifications to theirs.

I also downloaded the Internet Channel trial for the Wii. Web browsing on the Wii is little more than a novelty at the moment. It isn't the killer app by itself, but there seems to be enough buzz to eventually produce one.

One of my Christmas gifts was a Wii Points card. I quickly cashed that in and downloaded a couple games for the Wii's Virtual Console. I picked Zelda (the original), Super Mario Bros and Sonic the Hedgehog. I loved these games on their original consoles and they are still great via the Virtual Console.

Another chunk of my gaming time was spent playing the re-imagined Final Fantasy III for Nintendo DS. I love the old-school NES RPGs, like Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy I, which I've been replaying in their Gameboy Advanced re-released forms. Final Fantasy III has the same playing style and I believe the exact same storyline, but the graphics and interface have been completely redesigned and they are a perfect fit for the Nintendo DS. I'm especially fond of the cutesy character styles where everyone looks like a 10-year old. It's definitely preferable to the square blobs of the originals. Hopefully the game won't take too long (12 hours already), I have two more portable games in my queue I need to get to, Final Fantasy V Advanced and Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin.