Leisure Time

Avram brought a computer game with him, Civilization IV, since he could only bring a couple of role playing books, so that he would have some games to play. Avram hasn't played it very much at all (actually not at all), until on Monday, when he was getting him out, and I asked him if two players on the same computer could play, and it turns out they can, so we started a game together. I had him put on the Marathon setting (determines how fast or slow the game goes; marathon is the slowest setting).

Since Monday evening when this happened, I've spent the last five days almost incessantly playing Civ. IV. And I'd like to blame my husband for this, but I really can't. Yes, it's true that for the first time since I was in eighth grade, and spent my entire spring break playing Super Nintendo's Final Fantasy II as if it were a full time job, I'm addicted to a video/computer game. We're still only up to about 1523 A.D. (the game starts you out at 4,000 B.C). This sounds like we're almost done, considering the game only goes up to around 2200 A.D. (although there are many ways to win earlier), but after the 'middle ages' are done, which depends on your rate of discovery, so ours ended about a 1000 AD, the games slows down to one turn a year, as apposed to the previous 5-20 years a turn. So this is taking forever. I should have known; it said marathon, and it was right.

I was trying to finish our game before Matt and Sarah visited us, which is today (they're coming for a layover for a couple of days on the way to Qatar), but as you can tell, this simply isn't going to happen. And poor Lydia has been parentless. I mean, we feed her, and she likes to watch the game with us, and we don't play all of the time, but she does love to mess up the living room if we let her, and so every day we've had to clean up the remains of the Lydia tornado in the Living Room. Which is our own fault, or my fault, as Avram likes to remind me, because I'm the one who wants to play all of the time.

I make myself feel better by remembering that it is Christmas break, and there's time to do such silly things, but still. Anyway, that's why I haven't posted in a week; I haven't done anything besides sapping my brains out in front of the monitor. But we're not going to play again until after Christmas, so we can properly observe the season, so maybe my brains will come back.

Have any of you been addicted to games, so that way I can feel better about my shortcomings, since I hopefully have company?

P.S. I finished Lydia's stocking before this all happened, so that's done at least.