I had to drive out to my mum and dad's place after work Friday to pick up my son's cheque from his corn detasseling work. It's an hour's drive from London in the tiny town of Dresden, Ontario.
At this time of year the prevalent stench out there comes from the waste water being sprayed onto the fields behind the tomato cannery. The aroma is accompanied by swarms of tiny flies that get into everything.
My dad is alone right now which is a bad thing. He keeps the house at 27 degrees celsius and still complains that he's cold. He said he wanted to put the heat on but luckily I talked him out of that. It must have been the beads of sweat dripping down my face. :). I guess it's the alzheimer's that messes him up. He's fairly lucid a lot of the time but right out of the blue he'll say or do something off the wall.
My mum is off on cruise down the Eastern seaboard. my sister went with her to keep her out of trouble. Mum is in her 80's but luckily much younger than that mentally. It must be where I get it from. Hopefully my twilight years will be more like my mum's. It scares me to think about it sometimes.
Realizing that the time I have left before my dad doesn't recognize me anymore is short, I decided to visit with my dad and came home Saturday morning.
The rest of the weekend was spent on much more cheerful endeavors. I bought Gothic II last week from GOG for $2.50 and became irate when it would not run at all on my Windows 8.1 laptop. Luckily I have a 4 year old Windows 7 laptop sitting around doing nothing so I fired it up for the first time in eons.
As you may have already surmized firing up any Windows device that has not seen service for any length of time means PATCH HELL! It was a good hour before all the patches were in place. Not only were there Windows patches galore but Java and Adobe decided to get in on the fun too.
Anyway, the final result is that Gothic II installed and ran without any tweeks at all. I even got it to work with my 360 gamepad. Now if I can only figure out how to stab things with my dagger. I can draw the fekkin thing I just can't use it.
Now that my PS3 is out of commission I have been distracting myself with Tales of Vesperia. I played a lot of it over the weekend. I only remember bits and pieces from the last time I played it so it's almost a new experience.
I've also read 31% of American Gods according to my Kobo reader. I like it. The surreal nature of the story reminds me of Richard Brautigan for some reason. He's one of my favourite authors and he loved to write about bizarre shit.
Anyway, this has gone on a lot longer than I intended it to. What did you guys do this weekend?
My apartment has to be cooled down to 82 degrees Fahrenheit. Doing this makes my electricity bill astronomically large.
Holy shit that's warm. I don't think I could stand that kind of temperature for very long. Especially here in Ontario where the heat is accompanied by very high humidity.
Luckily, Fall and Winter a co ... oh wait, heating bill. 
What a weekend. Glad you were able to visit your dad. I need to do that more often too. I tried this weekend but he was off roofing O_o
I'm shocked that you were able to get patches for XP. I thought MS killed all support ofr the XP altogether. Hope that game was worth it. Enjoy your 360. I'd add you to my friend list on my system but I don't see your info anywhere.
It's a Windows 7 laptop not XP so yeah they're still patching away. My Xbox Live Gamertag should be visible on the right hand side of the screen. If not it's AthantosElder.
I hope your dad's gonna be ok with you not there, Peter.
He'll be fine. We're going back on Friday and staying until Sunday. He's got frozen meals until mum gets back so he doesn't have to cook. He used to be a great cook but he's forgotten how to make most things but he can still make toast and a cup of tea when he has to.
I'm hoping mum stops going away after this trip because eventually she won't be able to leave him alone.
Alzheimer's is hard on the whole family, for sure, brother.
Hoping for the best to your dad Peter.
Glad to see someone on the American Gods bandwagon. I also love its surreal tone.
Hi Peter,
my grandmother had altzheimer's before she died. she was ninety when she got it and had lived a long full life though so it wasn't so bad. It was hard on my mom though those last few years.
Now my aunt has it and she's seventy (not related to my grandma, married her son) and has been steadily deteriorating for a year now. She hides at home and my uncle just kind of lives in a vacuum and deals with it. they have no children. He says he's going to move out here to be with us because he won't be alone, and plus since we live in a retirement area, there's good facilities for altz patients. But I don't see how he's going to travel with her, etc. The bad part is, with her and my grandma, they get really nasty spirited once their personality kind of disappears. I guess because they're mad they don't understand where they are, etc. I don't think that is the case always, but it was for us.
Anyway, I hope things go ok. I know how hard it can be.
American Gods is one of the many books in my 'to read' pile, my brother already read it and liked it so I'm sure I will too.
American Gods is a great book. I have not read it in years but I think Gaiman was working on a sequel or it may already be out. Anansi Boys is really good too and plays on the same concept of gods incarnate.
Tales of Vesperia is one in the handful of games that would make me buy a 360. Wish they would go back to cell shaded look again.
That kind of craziness is why I gave of gaming on PC a long time ago. lol
I didn't do much other than watch a lot of netflix; Firefly, Movie # 47,and Psycho Pass. It was raining all weekend and its still hot as hell. Probably got another month of hot humid funky weather.