I just had a chance to checkout the first gameplay video from Zelda Twilight Princess. I am impressed. Realistic graphics, lots of time on horseback, new items and functionality, and some sweet looking gameplay. I’d say the extra wait will probably be worth it.

I’ve been pretty busy lately. Our Christmas trip started last Tuesday night when we headed out to Des Moines after work. We made it to Albion mid-afternoon Wednesday and started taking care of lots of wedding details – marriage license, photographer, florist, meeting with the priest, cake, reception – you get the idea. We also had Christmas with Amber’s parents and her dad’s family, plus a little wedding stuff included. All of her dad’s siblings got together to get us a Kitchenaid mixer (like this reconditioned unit on Amazon, only new). One of Amber’s aunts set up a Pampered Chef party just for us that I was pretty excited about (can you feel the excitement sarcasm?). Needless to say people were overly generous and we had to find a way to spend over $600 without buying any big ticket items like cookware or dishes because we already have some picked out at Bed Beth and Beyond. It was a little frustrating because we ended up buying a bunch of stuff we don’t really need instead of being able to apply that money to things we really wanted.

We were in Andover mid-afternoon on Christmas Eve for some time with my family. My parents decided to go for quantity and gave us tons of less expensive gifts which was fine with us. Of note are our new crockpot (the biggest), an old Beta video my mom had put on DVD, and a slideshow movie of my life from birth to 22 that my mom and sister weren’t quite able to finish because of old computers. Monday morning we got up early and made the trip back to Madison in 10.5 hours (fastest yet).

I decided to put part of my Christmas bonus towards a GPS unit so that Amber and I could start a new hobby – Geocaching. I did some research and really couldn’t decide what unit wanted. There are basically two brands to choose from – Garmin and Magellan (Magellan gets props for a cooler looking website). We finally found this Garmin bundle at Dick’s and it seemed like a really good deal (we got it for cheaper than the price on the website). For those who don’t know what Geocaching is and are too lazy to click the link, it’s a sort of large scale scavenger hunt in which players use GPS coordinates to find little treasures hidden all over the place. Each cache has a log book to sign, and some have small trade items/trinkets in them.

We decided to try our luck at Geocaching first in Albion. We put in five different Waypoints and spent a few hours looking. We found our first one without much trouble, but because of the snow on the ground and a lack of proper attire to be venturing into treelines and digging in the snow, we finished 1 for 5. We decided to try again in Andover, this time with my family along and had much better luck. In about 2 hours we found 5 of 5 caches and with any luck we got my parents and sister hooked on it. We haven’t had a chance to check out any caches around Madison, but it’s only a matter of time. I’ll try and get a few pictures up of our Andover adventures. I’ll also try to get back in some sort of posting routine. Until next time.