Late again.

I know the clock on the blog won't admit this because I still haven't set it to British Summer Time, but here I am, once again starting a post in the wrong day. The reason for this is that I spent the entire evening at the flat of my girlfriend, who we shall refer to by her beautifully geeky internet name of Eruntane. The entertainment to be had there consisted of watching her and her flatmate bake (but oh aren't cranberry muffins a great creation), discussing everything from Saint Saens to the troubles of UTIs (said flatmate is a medical student, sigh) and playing one of the greatest card games ever designed by the hand of man (we can only assume that God has some really great ones just waiting in a storage cupboard in heaven).
Ligretto is a very simple game that involves the usual amount of fastidious (but very unruly) card-based filing, by piling cards of the same color in numerical order at the same time as your competitors and usually losing several layers of skin in the process. It is exceedingly addictive. There should possibly be a general health warning on the box.
The rest of my day, prior to this card playing madness, consisted of acts of great restraint and air guitar (well peripheral guitar).
The restraint was required due to today's release of Tomb Raider: Legend. I am an avid fan of the TR series as a whole, being generally obsessed with exploring (see previous entry) and ancient civilisations. Combine the two together with dual pistols, lots of jumping and a sexy female lead who could eat James Bond for breakfast and you have a hell of a combination. Of course the series has been far from consitent. For myself I still think the original is the best, with The Last Revelation (4), 3 and then two following gradually after with Chronicles (5) and especially The Angel of Darkness (6) lagging very far behind. The series was clearly over commercialised, whored out by Eidos and generally rushed without putting a lot of thought into the later outings of the franchise. The hand over to Crystal Dynamics (creators of one of my other favourite adventure series: Legacy of Kain) definitely seems to be a good one and from the demo I've played, the reviews I've read and now the experiences of my friends, its seems to have worked. TR is back, with ore energy and imagination than ever and more coolness than Lara could carry in her infinite capacity backpack.
Sadly, as was possibly mentioned in an earlier entry, I have banned myself from buying any entertainment media this month, with a special nod to TRL. So I have to sit back and wait for May when neither Hell, high water or just University Work shall stop me from adventuring my little cotton socks/heart off/out. Until then I just have to resist it's lure as my flatmate bought it and it sits, an empty case (to aid my resistance) amidst his game collection, mocking my pitiful consumer's soul.
"But what of this guitar stuff you mentioned?", I hear you ask. Well amongst his other purchases, the flatmate bought Guitar Hero, an odd little game belonging to the hit-buttons-in-time-to-music 'em up genre (classical gaming theory would suggest all genres end with "'em up") but with the twist of being about guitar playing and coming with a nifty little guitar peripheral that will have you pretending to be Hendrix and May in no time at all. Sadly, fun though it was, it reminded me just how pathetically unco-ordinated I am. Practice is the key I guess, and without TRL until May, there'll be plenty of opportunity, but not next week, because:

II'm going home for a bit. Well actually I'm going back to lush green (read wet) Northern Ireland until wednesday with Eruntane and then heading down south to Somerset to visit her home until the weekend when I will have to shuffle back to the cold nerthern climes in time to return to a dull life of not-quite-working. Oh well.
We're planning a trip to the Giant's Causeway on Sunday so it should be great fun and will probably take me back to my childhood. And who knows, perhaps I can pretend I'm adventuring whilst I'm there...