Rocking Chairs and Zeds

Adulting Happened

Rocking Chairs and Zeds

The temperature is warming up here in Oklahoma, the birds are singing, the trees budding… and with all of this comes the desire to get the hell out of the house and do something.  This is essentially the second nice weekend we have had and with it the desire to get out and sort out the mess that is our backyard.  As a result the day unfolded through a masterwork of killing so many birds with one stone.  Essentially it had been quite a while since I had seen my folks, so I knew this weekend we probably needed to meet up with them for a meal.  Additionally we had a bunch of things that we had been wanting to purchase, but the lack of a good means of hauling it home was problematic.  So we proposed that I met my folks for a nice meal… and then potentially abuse the use of my Dad’s truck for the purpose of hauling a few things home from Lowe’s and Sams Club.  In theory some of this could have been done a single chair at a time, like we hauled home the resin rocker to decide if we liked it last weekend.  Other than that we really needed a new deck box and for the longest time Sams Club has had this excellent looking one for a very reasonable price, that has hydraulics to hold the lid open while fiddling with stuff.  So we set forth on the mission to eat a nice meal… and gather up a bunch of stuff.

Rocking Chairs and Zeds

We tag teamed a good portion of the day, while I was wandering around trying to find the things we needed with my father, my wife was back home filling up four big black trash bags full of debris.  The end result of our adulting is that we have a great little patio off the newish bedroom door for us to sit out there and rock and enjoy the shocking amount of peace and quiet we have in our back yard.  I also finally got some wind chimes… something I have always wanted since I was a small child.  My grandmother had them and I used to love listening to them on spring and summer afternoons.  We might have to adjust where they are hanging because they honestly don’t get a ton of wind, but that is something we can fiddle with over time.  We took the older, smaller deck box and put it around side the house under the cantilevered bit that sticks out from our stairwell.  We figured that would be an excellent place to store to pool cover and any covers for lawn furniture and such during the summer months.  It is my mission this year to actually enjoy our back yard more, and we are even contemplating opening the pool a little early since it seems like we are now through the cold weather.  Adulting is one thing… but having something to show for the adulting is a completely different thing.

Kovak’s Survival Guide

Rocking Chairs and Zeds

Another thing that I have been fiddling around with over the last few days is How to Survive 2.  A good friend of mine hooked me up with a copy, and I have been poking my head around in it.  While I am not exactly sure if I am ready to write a proper “impressions” piece I did want to talk about it a little bit this morning.  There is still a lot of the game that I have not touched, like there is an entire online component that I have largely ignored.  For the most part so far I have been playing the local single player, which is more or less a series of missions.  The premise is as with many other Zombie Survival games… to scavenge the wastes to find useful stuff and then craft it into more useful stuff.  The game itself has this entire old school fallout feel to it, where you are plunked down into limited maps to go exploring while doing the missions.  It reminds me of all of the various city maps from Fallout 1 and 2, and this is where my explorer bit kicks in.  During these missions you are asked to do a limited set of objectives… and as soon as you complete them you can tag out and leave the quest.  However I cannot ever seem to bring myself to leave an area until I am absolutely certain I have killed everything and gathered every possible resource.

Rocking Chairs and Zeds

The world appears to be procedural generated and every mission seems to be repeatable, with a difficulty slider of sorts allowing you to ramp up the number of encounters.  Last night I did a few missions on a higher level, and I have to say the number of zombies increases quickly.  I went from having one or two stragglers here and there… to having small hordes to deal with by simply bumping it up by a single level.  The game play is really fun, in that you move through the world with WASD and click to attack with Q/E cycling through any items you have like medicinal herbs.  The mouse wheel works as a way of scrolling through your available weapons.  I’ve found quite a bit of ammunition but so far I have not found any guns, so I am curious as to how the zombies interact with hearing a gunshot.  Generally speaking I am largely a melee only guy when it comes to the zombie genre, because it allows me to get in… and get out without alerting the entire mass.  Admittedly while playing this game… I keep expecting to see a Vault Dweller because it is so reminiscent of the way I used to feel playing Fallout.  The only thing that is a bit frustrating at the moment is that I have reached a point where I need to be level three to continue the story missions.  However at this point I am not even level two… so I am not exactly certain how I am supposed to be leveling.  I am really hoping that the answer is not “grind the first missions over and over”.  I will ping my friend and pester her to see if there is something I am missing in all of this, and hopefully there is.  However I have been enjoying myself just wandering around looking for cool stuff and smashing zombies in the head with my upgraded baseball bat.