Once again, I have been horrible at keeping up with my updates. Between school and writing reviews, I've been really busy. Also, just recently, we found out that Cathy is pregnant. Yes, that's right, I'm going to be a dad. It's really weird to think about, but I'm totally excited. But it's driving me crazy because I can't tell everyone right now. Cathy doesn't want to tell our friends until we go to Veronica's party this weekend and we don't want to tell our families until we them for Christmas. Keeping this a secret from everyone is making me very anxious. It'll be great when we finally tell them, though. Anyway, now that the big news is out of the way, I'll touch on some random things here and there that have gone on in the last month...

11/17: Finally finished Puzzle Quest, which was a ridiculously long game. I kinda miss it at times, but I can still play the spin-off and the sequel is in the works, so I'll be okay. With nothing else to do, I started playing Gears of War 2.

11/18: My monitor exploded. Literally. Well, almost literally. I was in the middle of doing some work when the screen went wonky. After a few seconds, it started to fix itself and then there was a loud bang, everything went black, and smoke started pouring out of the top. So, yeah, I think a vacuum tube blew out. Whatever happened, it left me without a monitor, which I used as an excuse to not do any work for a couple of days.

11/19: Finished up Gears of War 2, which was much easier than I expected. Piece of cake compared to the first game. There were certain things I didn't like, but for the most part, I think it was probably better than the first. It definitely had a much better story. Peggle Nights finally came to Xbox Live Arcade, so I downloaded that and played it for a couple of hours. I still need to go back to that and finish up the challenges and whatnot.

11/20: Received a new Axe deodorant scent to test. I'm not actually supposed to know what it is, but I use Axe, so it's pretty obvious to me. Same container, same ingredients, same kind of smell. It's nice, though. That's all I'm going to say about it, though, because I don't want to get in trouble; I've been threatened with enough lawsuits this year. I won a couple of the Wallace & Gromit games from contests, so I bought the ones I was missing and started playing through those. And I finally watched A Boy And His Dog, which wasn't as good as I had hoped.

11/21: There was an early birthday party for Milyssa, so we spent most of the day celebrating that with Cathy's family.

11/22: I hung up a bunch of hooks under one of the cupboards in our kitchen so Cathy can hang mugs from them. It was a painful process and I still have some minor injuries on my hand, but it made her happy.

11/23: Finally got to start playing Assassin's Creed 2. What little bit I played wasn't particularly impressive, though.

11/24: Went to the thrift store down the street and bought a monitor for $5. It's big and old, but it works. Sadly, that meant I had to start working again too. Oh well. They brought 1 Vs. 100 back to Xbox Live and with achievements, so I played that for a bit. I tried playing Assassin's Creed 2, but something happened to my game and it kept freezing, which really bummed me out. But on an up note, Cathy got a nice a big turkey for free from work.

11/25: Figured out a way to fix Assassin's Creed 2 (by installing it to the Xbox 360 hard drive) and spent most of the day not being able to play it because I had work to do.

11/26: Thanksgiving went pretty well. We first went to my family's house and ate a ton of food with them and my aunt Jeri, uncle Mitch, Andrea, Bill, and Casey. After a few hours, we went to Cathy's family's house and had a smaller meal with them. Her mom made some Bridgford biscuits, which were amazing. I couldn't stop eating them, and simply talking about them gives me cravings... After eating, we picked up our laundry from my family's house and headed home.

11/28: We spent a large portion of the day wrapping our Christmas presents, which was a pain, as always. I had a couple of Amazon gift cards, so I went ahead and bought a copy of Dragon Age: Origins for $5.

11/29: We went out and bought a nice big Christmas tree for about $30. It's about seven feet tall, I think, and it takes up a lot of room and the smell kinda gets to me because it's so close to my desk, but it's nice to have a real tree this year. After getting the tree home, we got some pizza at Papa Murphy's and then bought a few random Christmas things from Pier 1 Imports.

11/30: I'm not entirely sure what caused it, but I was unfortunate enough to become quite sick.

12/1: Deposited a bunch of survey money at the bank and then bought some medicine and had lunch at Quiznos. While Cathy was at work, I finally got a chance to continue playing online co-op Gears of War on Insane mode and I died a hell of a lot of times. It was frustrating, but fun.

12/2: Dragon Age showed up, but I didn't get a chance to play it. Very uneventful day. I did play a lot of Assassin's Creed 2, though.

12/3: We finished up Gears of War and moved on to the Insane mode of Gears of War 2, which was massively easier. We got through at least half of the game in just a couple of hours.

12/4: Finished Gears of War 2 on Insane and wrote a bunch of WiiWare reviews. Learning With The PooYoos is surprisingly cool.

12/5: Aside from doing a bit of shopping at Winco, I spent the majority of the day working on a database for school. After hours of trying and failing, however, I decided to give up. Normally, I would stick to it because it's important for me to get a good grade, but I did the math and realized that without turning in this section of our class project, the absolute worse grade I could possibly get is a C. That was enough to convince me.

12/7: Awesomely rainy day. As soon as I woke up, I got started on my Database final. I didn't do as well as I had hoped, but I got a B, which isn't too bad. I can live with 89%. My overall grade for the class ended up being a B. I would've loved to have earned an A, but I think I prefer keeping my sanity. After the test, I got online and played through the Gears of War 2 deleted scene with my XBL buddy. It's weird, but I kinda miss playing with him. I don't even know the guy's real name, but it's nice knowing there's someone out there who will play games with me. It's almost like actually having a friend come over. But, you know...I can be naked without it becoming an issue. Anyway, afterwards, I then took my Anthropology final, which went surprisingly well. My grade for the test and overall grade for the class is an A. And on top of that, I finished Assassin's Creed 2, which was rather satisfying. I was a bit iffy about the game at first, but it ended up being fantastic and probably the best game I've played this year. Very good stuff. I can't wait for the next one. For now, to occupy myself, I am playing Dragon Age: Origins.

12/8: Cathy's mom took us to New Saigon for lunch. We've been curious about it for awhile, so I suggested it. The both got beef stew and I got Saigon rice, which included crab, shrimp, squid, and possibly something out. It looked disgusting, but it was actually pretty good. They weren't too pleased with their food, though, so I have a feeling we won't be going back anytime soon. Afterwards, Cathy and I did a bit of shopping. A racing game called F1 2009 showed up in the mail, so I played through it for a few hours and wrote a review. Not a very fun game, but hey, it's easy money. Later that night, I also wrote a review for an indie game called Globe Clicker.

12/9: I've been trying to get an Xbox Live Arcade game called Space Ark, but it has been pushed back to March, so I can't get a copy of it yet. The developers have basically promised me one, though. And in the meantime, they have asked me to have a Q&A session, so I sent them a series of question. I'm still waiting to hear back from them, but I think it's cool that they asked me to do that. I almost feel like an actual journalist. Almost.

12/10: Cathy had taken a pregnancy test earlier in the week and it said that she was pregnant. However, it was just a test from the dollar store, so we decided to get an actual test from Target. On this morning, she woke me up to inform me that this test had also come back positive. Scary and exciting news, but I tried not to think about it too much because there's always a chance that these things can be wrong. Later that afternoon, we went to PetSmart and bought Vlad a heater to keep him from freezing to death. He had been extremely lethargic, but he's much happier now.

12/11: Got an advanced copy of a game called Mole Control, which is quite fun. However, it is still in development, so it was only part of the game. They're going to send me the full version in a couple of weeks when the game is ready for release. Telltale Games sent me a universal code that allowed me to download all of the Tales of Monkey Island games, so I played through those so I could write a nice in-depth review of the newest and last game of the season.

12/12: Cathy had never had a tostada bowl before, so we went to the Don Perico down here for lunch and each ordered one. I may not like Mexican food, but those things are freakin' awesome. It was one of the few times I actually left a place full.

12/13: We have a quince tree in our backyard and the fruit is just about ripe, so Cathy decided to make some quince jelly. I have no idea how it tastes yet, but it looks like it turned out pretty well. I'm almost afraid to try it because she worked so hard and for so long just to make a couple of small jars. We went to Panda Express for dinner because she was craving chow mein, and I registered for the last two classes that I need for my degree. One of them has a waiting list, though, so I'm nervous and frustrated about that. If I have to take two more semesters instead of one, I will kill myself. It's already bad enough that I wasn't able to finish up with this semester.

12/14: We went to Planned Parenthood and it was confirmed that Cathy is indeed pregnant. It's a very surreal thing for me to think about...it's so weird to think that I'm going to be a dad. It totally freaks me out. But at the same time, I'm pretty excited. And so is Cathy. It's crazy that it only took us about a month of trying to actually get pregnant. I know people who have spent months and even years, so I guess we should consider ourselves lucky. As such, Cathy decided that we should get lottery tickets.

12/15: Spent most of the day cleaning and listening to new music, neither of which I have done in a long time. We had made an awesome pizza a few nights ago, so to reward myself, I used the leftover sauce to make pizza sandwiches. Aren't sandwich toasters amazing?

So, yeah, that's been my month. I play way too many video games, but I get paid to do it, so why not? It may not be a lot of money, but I know plenty of people who would love to be doing this for the free games alone. With the money I'm making from this and surveys, I can buy a Nintendo DS and I will soon be able to buy a PS3. Then after that, I have to start saving. Thankfully, I've been working out everything with my grant money, so I should get a check in March and I hope to buy a nice crib. Our next tax return should also be quite nice, especially thanks to the stimulus package. I'm totally excited about Christmas and I'm even more excited to tell everyone that we're going to have a baby. Cathy's mom is going to cry and we're going to be the center of attention this holiday season. That's not the exciting part, of course, but it's a nice thought, albeit somewhat petty. But hey, it has been a great month for us so far and I think we deserve to enjoy it. And now I must get some sleep because we've got an appointment with WIC in the morning.