One week in

Worked for the week, contributed to society, left my baby with someone else five days this week and I'm still alive. It's going to take a while to get a morning routine that works, but once Silas starts sleeping through the nights better, I think we'll be ok.

I was driving to pick him up after work on Friday and Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" came on the radio. Music is crazy. I completely relate songs to past memories, and that one is firmly positioned to playing the original Diablo with my dad and sister. Specifically, even, I can picture the dungeon levels and the way that the creatures you'd fight in there had a burning animation when they died.

I also remember that friendly fire was always on in that game. Not like some of the fancier, newfangled games where you could click a button in "options" and then shoot your companions with nary an ill effect. My dad played the sorcerer character and, I'm not going to lie, he was probably a lot better at the game than us. But his chain lightning spell - that could clear out a room. And me, if I wasn't watching where I was going.

You know how parents do that thing where they act like they're playing a game or sport normally but somehow are just about at your skill level? And then you grow up and realize that actually they were just pretending and could have beaten you in any game? Well, my dad was really great about finding a way to play video games with us that weren't overwhelmingly hard on us but (I'm assuming here) that were still entertaining to him.

Growing up we had between four and five computers in our basement, which I just thought was how things worked. It was a pretty foreign concept that a household might have only one computer for everyone, or maybe even no computers at all. My dad's job - a computer programmer - might have skewed things technologically for us. I must have talked about this before, but I really enjoyed LAN gaming with my family to the point that online gaming (save for WoW) is a bit too much of a culture shock for me.

Anyhow, I've been trying to write my NaNo novel but it's not coming along at all. I thought last year was tough with my grandfather's funeral at the beginning of the month but having a baby to care for sort of saps up those little moments I could be writing.

Well, actually, I am writing right this moment, technically. I guess I prefer to update my blog when I have writing time these days. I guess I feel like more people read it and that it means more to me. But there's still a competitive edge in me somewhere that feels like I'll totally get it together and write 50,000 words still.