My Sundays are usually reserved for roleplaying. I’m part of a couple groups that alternate Sundays, so they’re almost always booked. My girlfriend uses that time to relax and catch up on any TV shows she’s into. Her and Jake usually spend the day sleeping in and watching Netflix in bed while I’m out and about. However, because of a schedule change at work, one of my friends can’t make our game today. In fact, our Werewolf Skype game appears to be on an indefinite hiatus – leaving my Sunday wide open.
It was 6 a.m. Sunday morning when I decided I needed to take a break from Skyrim. After five hours of quick-save reloading to bring my idiot traveling companion and horse back to life, I concluded that my time would be better spent doing something else. Don’t get me wrong, the game is mostly marvelous. Sometimes though, it really feels like it wasn’t beta-tested enough. From the random dialogue triggers with countless NPC’s to the horrible companion AI, it just doesn’t feel as polished as I had expected. I must of hit a rough patch last night, because, for the first time in my 30 hour play-through, I felt like taking a break.
Oh and take a break I did.
It was 3 p.m. before I woke up, trapped under five pounds of furry dead-weight. Jake had fallen asleep on my arm and, if I wanted to get out of bed, I’d have to wake him up and move him. It was then that I decided that I’d be spending my Sunday relaxing, girlfriend style. She was an expert at lazy Sundays and dammit, I wanted to see what all the rage was about.
So I went back to sleep.
I woke up again an hour later, this time, to Jake digging around in the covers for his squeaky red bone toy – I guess it was time to get up. My girlfriend was awake and I told her about my plans for the day. She warned me that getting out of bed would be tempting at some point, but to do my best to ignore that compulsion. “Just move your legs around if you get uncomfortable”, she advised. Then she suggested Netflix. Surely, somewhere in their massive library, there was some fantastic show I’d missed out on. That fantastic show turned out to be Halt and Catch Fire.
We got a couple episodes in before I got hungry and asked what someone does for food in this situation. According to my girlfriend, it is permitted to leave the house once, twice in extreme cases, for food and drinks.
I knew that I had a ton of leftovers from my crockpot bbq pork I had made on Friday, so I came up with a southwest scramble dish (recipe). One of the things I miss most about Texas is breakfast tacos and, minus the tortillas, this scramble was pretty damn close.
It’s now a little after ten, and I’m using a laptop to write this from bed. Jake’s curled up next to me and we just finished watching the new episodes of Veep and Silicon Valley. My girlfriend is taking a shower and I’m sure when she gets back, we’ll be heading to Westoros to find out what fantastic advice Tyrion has for Khaleesi this week.
Despite a tiny bit of stress caused by a lingering feeling that I should have gotten up and left the apartment today or socialized with someone, this was an extremely relaxing day. I like being reminded of how little it takes to recharge my batteries. Sometimes all it takes is a fluffy dog, breakfast for dinner, and a ton of television.
Richard Barrick 