Pretty good weekend.

monstersocks and I went out to Southdale on Sunday to see The Nightmare Before Christmas- In 3D with some old friends. We also showed off the house. Things at home are definitely coming together, but we need to work faster as it appears we've drawn the "host Thanksgiving" straw this year.

Saturday we went out to Jarrin's halloween party and had a good time. He'd dressed the house up with a Half Life 2 theme as Ravenholm along with a motion activated fireball machine. Lots of good costumes, and I'll maybe even have mine online sometime soon (unlike the pictures from nicholay's housewarming party or billmurray8's birthday party or other events I've forgotten). Speaking of billmurray8, she either had an amazing costume or skipped out on the party.

I haven't played the Half Life games but Rebecca's costume was quite good, as was the non-game related Soy Clan and the Kaylee. We thought about bringing cake or blue and orange cupcakes (attempting a Portal reference) but settled on cupcakes from a local bakery (that were quite tall) with a Portal related inscription. We also brought carob covered vegan doughnut holes, because we care.

Having watched a lot of Mythbusters of late, I thought I would try a Jamie Hyneman costume. I think it worked out pretty well:

- Jarrin got better pictures of me than I did, unsurprisingly. He also got them online faster than I did, also unsurprisingly.

The most expensive (and authentic) part of the costume was something I already had lying around. Fortunately the combination of liquor and lasers didn't blind anyone (that I know of). One thing I did learn- if you thought hat hair was bad, it's nothing compared to beret hair.

In other news I've been playing quite a bit of Crackdown lately. It definitely borrows a lot from the GTA series, except it tries to be more socially acceptable since you play a cop instead of a thug. Plenty of addictive qualities (a wide open sandbox to play in, gradual advancement, the constant acquisition of new toys). Unlike GTA where I spend a bit of time driving I haven't done much driving at all in Crackdown. I've also avoided the foot races. I appreciate that you can advance pretty far without having to try out all the things you can do. Achievements are also fairly seductive, Microsoft definitely got something right with that. We'll see if Sony can actually follow through on their vague plans for similar functionality.

I think the only thing that's really lacking from Crackdown would be OCP.