We just finished watching Cars 2 and enjoyed it thoroughly. Some friends had seen it earlier and claimed that their kids didn't quite get it, and that feedback seems justified, as the many James Bond references and intricate plot were probably too much for youngsters. Love Larry the Cable Guy, though. He's hilarious.

We have no plans for this weekend apart from catching up on the DVR recordings from the holiday and trying to get back on our regular sleeping schedule. Maybe we'll go to the movies if anything strikes our fancy because you can never watch enough movies, can ya?!

Space combat in The Old Republic is AWESOME!

We had put a few movies and TV series on the laptop to watch during our downtime from visiting friends and family during the holidays. Since we are NCIS fans, we decided to check out Mark Harmon's Certain Prey, based on John Sandford's Prey series (21 books and counting). You'd figure those references would make for a good TV movie, but alas, it was a horrible 120 minutes with stiff acting, a weak plot, and boring segments all around. Definitely not worth seeing.

Now that we're back home, I've been playing a bit of The Old Republic and enjoying it. So far, I'm grinding through PvP to rank up, but there are lots of story missions to get through. You've also got extra-hard PvP sections (Heroic stuff) that are optional but of course give good rewards, and those are best done in a group setting.

While we're trying to deal with the unavoidable jetlag, the first leg of our flight back was quite pleasant mostly due to the fact that the fairly new Boeing 777 was equipped with personal monitors and your own private cinema. The nine-hour flight passed by rather quickly since we were able to watch Colombiana, Contagion, 30 Minutes Or Less, as well as Only in America with Larry the Cable Guy, all back to back and free of charge, even in economy class.

Just watched Attack the Block. It's not a bad flick, but it had a little too much social commentary and an overload of pop culture references. While poking fun at all of the above is quite enjoyable in moderation, the non-stop barrage of it stopped being fun about halfway through the movie (and that's being generous).

Aaaannnnndd we're home again ...

After a whopping 15 hours of flying, with an additional five-hour layover in Washington, D.C., we're back at the homestead safe & sound (OK, maybe just safe).

We had a great holiday vacation, lots of food, drinks, and being merry with friends we hadn't seen in a few years. Good stuff.

Now we're going to do a little bit of catching up and see about shedding a few pounds we magically seem to have picked up along the way. Who knew?

The entire WorthPlaying team wishes everybody a Happy New Year! We hope everybody had a safe transition from old to new, and may 2012 be even better than last year. Thank you for sticking around, spread the word, and let's make things even better!

The entire WorthPlaying staff would like to say "MERRY CHRISTMAS" to our readers all around the world. We hope everybody has a wonderful holiday, loads of good food, and a joyful time with friends & family. May Santa bring you all the games you wished for, but above all, stay safe! Our news coverage will not slow down, but the news itself might be lacking. If there is anything worthy of your attention, you can be sure to read it here ....

Last night, we went to an advance screening of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and while the movie itself is not bad at all, if you've seen the original Swedish version, then this remake/adaptation is not really worth seeing. Daniel Craig is great and the rest of the cast all do a great job, but it all comes down to why there is a "remake" of a movie that's only a couple of years old. Staying true to the original, the movie it set in Sweden, same locations, but the balance is totally thrown off by English-speaking actors who try to mimic an accent.

In a few hours, we're heading to the airport for our overseas flight, so preparations are hectic. Making sure we don't forget anything, and crossing off all the chores on the checklist.

Today the packing starts in earnest so we can be ready for our 14-hour flight tomorrow, which takes off at noon. Got to make sure we got the iPods fully charged because you know there is going to be a crying baby on the flight.

Called friends and family to make sure everybody knows we are going to be in town and even started planning some festivities. It's been three years since our last visit, so it'll be fun to catch up.

Yesterday we watched Bridesmaids and Lions for Lambs, both good movies, and played some Gatling Gears while trying to download my SW: The Old Republic early access client, a massive 25 frikking gigs big....

Our ambitious plans of hitting multiple Christmas parties fell through as we were having so much fun at the first one that we never made it in time to the second one. Public transportation sure is hard to get back into once you are used to being able to drive everywhere. the fact that it's getting quite cold sure doesn't help when you have to stand around waiting for the bus, if it arrives on time at all. Food was eaten, drinks were plenty, and new friends were made, so it was a good time.

Today we're going to run our errands, relax a bit (AKA watch DVR) and start packing for our Tuesday flight.

The countdown has begun: one week until Christmas weekend.

Today we have two Christmas parties to go to, and with no car to get us around it'll be an interesting public transportation juggle.

The last of our presents arrived, so now we got to figure out whether we'll be able to pack it all up and bring them with us on the flight, or whether we should simply FEDEX ourselves a box and save us the headache.

We were waiting for a friend to show up so we could watch the new Homeland episode, but since she was a no-show, we checked out the newest NCIS and Psych episodes instead.

We recently bought a crock pot (slow cooker) and have been checking out recipes. Being impatient as we were, we tried out a pot roast recipe that came with the crock pot, but it turned out a bit bland, so we got ourselves a real cookbook, Slow Cooker Revolution, and apparently blandness is a common side effect of cooking stuff for hours. Really looking forward to preparing a slab of ribs in there. Now THAT's got to be good stuff.

Not a lot going on this weekend apart from getting everything ready for our Euro trip. Need to do laundry, dust off the suitcases, pack, clean out the fridge, and hopefully squeeze in a few TV episodes from the DVR.

Lots of movie action going on for the holidays! Adam saw Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows earlier this week, we saw Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol last night, and next week, we're going to an early showing of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Keep an eye out for our reviews if you are interested in either of those. Maybe when we have some spare time, we'll check out The Darkest Hour or The Adventures of Tintin.

One of the things I always liked about the holidays is receiving holiday cards. I put them up and they make the office look festive, but with everybody "going green," these e-mail cards just aren't cutting it.

The Holidays are creeping closer, and we've been doing some shopping left and right, but it's been a struggle to find "fun" gifts. Most of the things are most likely only enjoyable for about five minutes, but at long last, we've found a few cool things, and I'm actually looking forward to trying out the Wall Coaster Ultimate Marble Run.

Nothing too extravagant going on these holidays though, as it looks like we'll be buying a car to replace our Camry, and with our Europe trip, there's not much left anyhow.

Water and crackers, that's what's for dinner!

Another weekend has gone by, and we're inching closer to Christmas and New Year. We're planning an overseas trip to visit friend and family for the holidays in about 10 days, so preparations are beginning.

Since we'll be out of town for a little while, we've been cleaning up the DVR and watched the entire season of The Amazing Race, right in time for last night's finale. We also watched Chuck and Bones, bringing our DVR down to about 30%, the lowest it has been in months.

Been playing a bit of Battlefield 3 multiplayer over the weekend, ranking up and unlocking lots of goodies.

Last night, we saw Joe Bonamassa, and we knew it was going to be a good night when the venue was playing Iron Maiden's "Two Minutes To Midnight" before the concert even started, only to be topped by Joe playing an amazing rendition of Gary Moore's "Midnight Blues." Speaking of the venue, we'd never been there before, but it's hands down the classiest concert we've ever attended. No patdown, no backpack search, the interior was amazing, and they served hard liquor and even gave you beer in bottles.

No other plans for this weekend apart from playing some games, running errands and watching DVR!

Last night, we tried to get into the Metallica 30th Anniversary concert. They have booked a local venue for the entire week to celebrate, but unlike Monday's gig, they were not releasing any additional tickets at the door. After waiting two hours in the cold, we were sent home. Maybe we'll try again on Saturday ... maybe.

No concert meant we were home earlier than expected, so we watched the two-hour Sons Of Anarchy finale. So much good stuff in there, so much happening, many questions answered, but still tons remain. Finally a change of scenery, which is perfect timing as the old guard was starting to wear on me.

We met up with our friends from Kalypso last night, checked out Jagged Alliance and Demonicon, had a good time, a few drinks, and then a quick nap turned into a night-long snooze fest. So much for that ...

So (bad) luck has it that my Metallica fan membership ran out earlier this year, making me miss out on the fan-members-only notification that the band was have a week-long concert at a local venue in celebration of its 30th anniversary. With tickets only costing $6, it's of course been sold out for months, but we just found out that they are still letting people in that show up at the door without tickets, so we're going to chance it tonight.

Keeping my fingers crossed!

After promising comments from friends and family about insurance coverage regarding our hit-and-run accident, our hopes and dreams were dashed when the adjuster denied our claim.

The "uninsured motorist" clause does not take effect since we don't know who the other person is, so we don't know whether he is insured or not. If we had managed to get the full license plate, even if the car was stolen, we would have been golden. Since we do not know the identity of the other party, our insurance company cannot get its money back from the other party, so they are hanging us out to dry. Apparently they don't understand that a "hit and run" means the other party flees the scene.

Basically we're to blame for not causing the accident ourselves (then we would have been covered) or for not risking our lives to get the full license plate.

Tomorrow I'll be finding out what our insurance is going to do about our hit-and-run accident, so hopefully we can get it fixed and be back on the road.

The "accident" was made of stuff that you only see in the movies.  To give a recap, the car in front of us was signaling to make a left turn, so I switch to the right lane. Suddenly, the other car makes an abrupt lane switch to make a right turn instead. It was unavoidable, so we slammed into his right rear as he is making the turn, but that doesn't seem to slow him down. I give chase to get the license plate, but it turns out the street is a dead end, so as the perp is turning around, his passenger jumps out of the car and flees.

The dead-end street is rather narrow, with cars parked on both sides, so I pull into the middle, forcing him to stop. Alas, that did not discourage him as he slams into me again, pushing me back down the street about 20 feet, and hitting a parked car to wedge himself between and speed off.

Figured anybody insane enough to pull a stunt like that has something to hide and is more than likely to whip out a gun, so I let him go.

That was some crazy sh*t!

Hit-and-run accidents suck.

That is all.