It was a long wait, but it finally arrived. World of WarCraft: The Burning Crusade arrived right around the time I wrote my last blog. Right around that time, my dad, by “coincidence” dropped in for the weekend. We ran the Boys from Stormwind around Azeroth for another solidly unproductive weekend. Dad’s convinced high-speed internet is just around the corner in his neighbourhood, so it won’t be long before the addiction takes its stranglehold on him.

While I’m talking about it, I might as well give my two cents worth. This expansion pack is pretty cool, from what I’ve seen of it. The first thing you notice is that 10 minutes of questing in outland drops green items that are superior to blues that took a week of running dungeons for. It’s pretty nice to see that XP bar growing again. We’ll see how much time it steals. I have to get dad on VoIP, though, because he is as of yet typing un-tutored.

Then, for further distraction, I bought myself a pretty excellent flight controller for Microsoft Flight Simulator X. I picked up the Saitek X52, which I’ll go ahead and recommend to anyone looking for such a device. This thing is outstanding! More buttons than I need, and very precise. It’s absolutely essential to have something like this to have ultimate control of the aircraft. Trying to fly the helicopter with the keyboard feels much like the typing tutor my dad never installed. It’s great to be able to look out a window, engage airbrakes, control flaps, and use reverse thrusters and spoilers on landing without having to touch the keyboard, or even adjust my grip. It also adds a nifty blue glowing ambiance to the room.

Also in there was a trip to Ottawa for my cousin’s wedding, the other highlight of the trip being a family visit to tour the parliament buildings. The greatest spectacle on the journey was the newly refinished library, which is absolutely breathtaking. I recommend to every Canadian that you make a pilgrimage to the capitol at least once in your lifetime. It’s very powerful to stand in the house of commons, or the senate where our country is run. Or to see the brass bar–the history: after entering the house with 200 soldiers to arrest representatives who were not going to vote in accordance with his wishes, the king was usurped, and ultimately beheaded for the intrusion, and the brass bar erected as a symbol of the limit of monarchy’s power. The word awesome is overused, and people try to replace it with awe-inspiring to try to recapture the word’s eloquence–but being at Canada’s capitol was truly awesome.

So all in all, this sums up to a few consecutive weeks of worthy distractions from my creative hobbies. Now back to the studio!