The new Muse single "Knights of Cydonia" doesn't inspire the distaste in me that the operatic oohing and ahhing of "Time Is Running Out" and "Stockholm Syndrome" did. They've toned down that insufferable wailing, but instead the band seems to have become Mansun at their most prog-rock, Queen phase. It's an improvement, but i'm still not sold. Dunno if i'll be listening to the rest of it. iTunes random play, i leave it to you to acquaint me with it further if you, in your infinite wisdom, deem it suitable.

Didn't know head Manic Street Preacher James Dean Bradfield was recording a solo record, but here it is. Not bad.

What am i holding? What's the deal with the psycho kids? WTF?!?!

I got in some time with Prey from Friday through Monday. That game is messing with my head. In a good way. At the outset, it's a relatively straightforward story of a regular Joe who is abducted by aliens and has to fight his way out. But as you penetrate deeper into the massive alien spaceship, things get weirder and weirder. One of the game's innovations is that gravity is no longer a constant. In other words, the floor is not always the floor. Certain lighted tracks allow you to run up walls and across ceilings, while you also encounter switches that when activated shift gravity so that whatever wall the switch was on is now the floor. The game has given me motion sickness a few times now, but i'll gladly suffer for an experience this unique. Suffice to say, it's very weird having a gun fight with enemies who are standing on the ceiling. The plot is getting decidely bizarre as well ... the aliens seem to be harvesting humans for food or some other resource (the word "protein" occurs on many of the spaceships' placards), but i've now encountered several ghostly childlike wraiths that have me wondering how they figure into the aliens' plans. Another of the game's advances is the spirit walk, which your Native American protagonist can use to cross force fields and solve puzzles. The developers took this one step further however. When you deplete your health, instead of dying and going to a "Game Over" screen (and reloading and continuing from wherever the last save point was, etc etc), you are whisked to a spirit world where you have about 15 seconds to shoot phoenixes with a bow and arrow. After this period, you start the game where you left off, with your health and spirit energies refilled based on how many phoenixes you hit. Very cool ... removes that annoying "try this, die, restart" dynamic that slows down many other titles.

As discussed previously, V and i bought Rockstar's Table Tennis at Best Buy on Sunday, but we haven't given it a go because of our home improving. I'm curious to see how the Grand Theft Auto developer handles a simple sporting title. By all accounts it's a good game ... the cashier at Best Buy didn't stop fawning over it for the three minutes we spent paying. He did get us a $5 discount though so i'll let it slide.

Astute readers will have noticed the chain links in the menu bar on the upper right (actually, REALLY astute readers will have observed that i beautified some of the menu icons). I've added a links page, after generating one for Ana's forthcoming site. Not much on there yet, but they're coming. I drew the chain links myself in Photoshop ... not bad, eh?

My weekend was consumed by that most mundane of tasks, the beautification of the house. A necessary evil, yes, but being required doesn't make the process any more stimulating. On Saturday morning i awoke around 10:30am and set to masking our newly yellow walls in the back room, facilitating subsequent painting of the trim and wainscoting. Allowing for a brief trip down to Menlo Park to pick up brunch at Stacks (where i was temporarily seduced by the idea of forgoing home improvement to attend a street fair on Santa Cruz Ave.), we completed painting by early evening. This included the wood frames in between the panes of glass in the window and door, which are a particular pain in the butt. We enjoyed some down time, during which we both took late showers to remove a day's sweat and paint, and i watched the mostly lame Adam Sandler remake of the Longest Yard, funny mainly for its plethora of NFL cameos past and present (Brian Bosworth?!?!). We then had a late late dinner at Gordon Biersch in Palo Alto, where i barely remained conscious to the end of my mushroom swiss burger.

Content that our painting chores for this back room were completed, we awoke Sunday with a new to-do list consisting of completing the renovation of this space into our new entryway (intending to make better use of our back door that opens towards the driveway). This list included buying a new ceiling light fixture for the room, replacing the two or three light switches and plates, getting new knobs for the cabinets, and putting up blinds on the window. Veronica also managed to include a trip to Nordstrom's anniversary sale and shopping for a new bed at Crate and Barrel. We tackled the shopping chores after brunch at the lovely California Café off the Stanford Shopping Center. We were unable to find a new bed or any shoes or clothes worth buying at Nordstrom, but did emerge with four nice glass knobs from Restoration Hardware, a new light fixture, blinds, and light switches and plates from Home Depot, and ... an unplanned copy of Table Tennis for the Xbox 360 from Best Buy, as V wants to try playing something on my new system.

Returning home, i immediately stripped off my shirt and set to work in the oven that is our well-insulated house. First up, remove the old light fixture. Easy enough. First problem though ... the old fixture is wider than the new one, meaning there's a ring that will now be visible that hasn't been painted in a while. As i have no idea what color the ceiling is or where the old owner might've hidden the paint, that meant ... dammit ... we had to paint the ceiling. For now though, we decided to just prime and paint around the new fixture, allowing me to finish the job after getting the new light up. That took an hour (paint dries fast in the heat), during which i replaced two light switches and shocked myself once. I turned off the breaker that controlled the ceiling light, but apparently the other switch that controls the outside lights is on a different circuit. While unscrewing the power connection i noticed my hand trembling, then got a nasty shock up my arm to my shoulder. Eek. That scared the crap out of me. I then resolved to switch off all the breakers. Smart move, Einstein. After finishing that job, i returned to putting up the new light fixture. However when positioning the new bracket, i succeeded in pushing it through the ceiling drywall, creating a three inch hole extending out of the circular hole for the light mount. Fan-f@$#ing-tastic. After Veronica talked me down from my fatalistic malaise, i regrouped and set about putting up the fixture, deciding to worry about the hole later. However, the not-so-good folks at Hampton Bay don't seem to understand the physics of mounting a ceiling light. Or i'm trying to place blame somewhere other than myself. After screwing a mounting bar into the ceiling mount and connecting the wires (no shocks this time), the fixture then attaches via a threaded central rod that inserts into a hole in the mounting bar. Inserts, mind you, not screws. I heaved and pushed to get the thing in, but only succeeded in dislodging the mounting bar. At this point i chose to take the whole thing down and go to Home Depot to get some nuts to reinforce the whole apparatus, but this threaded rod is only meant to go one direction ... in. It took me two wrenches and a lot of torquing to free the fixture.

V again calmed the raging beast within me, and we took Tara for a 9pm drive up to Colma and the only late-hours Home Depot in the area, followed by fetching dinner at In 'N' Out. Arriving home once more, things went relatively smoothly and i managed to complete the @#$&% installation. It's interesting though, i needed that hole in the ceiling in order to hold the mounting bracket in place while i forced the fixture in. So perhaps everything happens for a reason. The two of us then managed to get the blinds up with significantly less fuss, the only notable problem being a short-lived inability to release the pull string.

I awoke Monday morning and wandered through the back room, but was mesmerized by the hole in the ceiling. Not able to ignore it until the evening, i climbed onto the step ladder with a piece of cardboard and a can of spackle and closed it up. When i got home from work at 6:30pm, the only thing on my mind was completing this @$#!^ %$@&% room. I stripped down to my boxers and set about priming the ceiling, which was accomplished in 30 minutes with me drenched in sweat. Shifting gears, i put a second coat of white on the wainscoting, which Veronica had noticed was a bit uneven. I then again climbed up to the balmy ceiling and put on a coat of white, finishing by 8:30pm. Egad. V got home late from work and we had a dinner of chicken and potatoes from Whole Foods, then i wrapped up my domestic evening by doing a couple loads of laundry and tidying the living room.

Tonight i'm planning on continuing my domestic renaissance in a more leisurely fashion by washing some of the pile of clothes, towels, and sheets in the laundry room. Also, now that the back room is completed we're going to move a side table in there, forcing a reorganization of the bedroom the piece is exiting.

I will live in a tidy house one day. Oh yes.