It's Christmas Eve, one of my favorite days of the year. We'll be flying off soon to see the in-laws and stuff ourselves with all sorts of delicious food, only to do it again the next day! Awesome ....

The laptop is all prepped and ready to go, so we'll be updating the site if anything comes in, but as expected, it will be rather quiet.

We are working on our Games of the Year 2009 feature, so hopefully we'll have that up and running in the next few days as well.

As Christmas approaches, we are getting ready for our little trip to the in-laws. Flying in on a one-way ticket (as we are driving back up) is always fun, since it as good as guarantees you to be pulled aside for a strip search, hopefully without the stripping. I guess travelers with one-way tickets have raised suspicion since 9/11.

Last week, the Christmas cards started rolling in, and we hang them up, so the first thing that you see when you walk into the office is a wall full of cards. Always fun.

Not much else happening today.We played some more LEGO Batman and CrimeCraft, and then we watched some episodes of Dollhouse.

A rather quiet day yesterday, which was quite welcome as I had a few things to tend to that had me out of the office for a few hours.

If you are into RPGs and you didn't get a chance yet, check out the Divinty II or Drakensang: The River Of Time (in German) demos. They might pique your interest.

We played some LEGO Batman that we found new at Gamestop for $19, and while the game environment seems rather dark (I know he's called "The Dark Knight," but this is a little ridiculous), the game is quite enjoyable.

Another weekend flew by!

We finally got around to decorating the Christmas tree, so that was quite fun. Every year, we try to buy something new to hang on the tree, and this time we found some cool jingle bell reindeer ornaments. We also get the Hallmark singing snowmen every year, but Hallmark decided to not have one this year.

We also watched Stander, Coraline and the latest episode of The Good Wife, so it was quite a productive day.

We finished most of our intended errands today, although we still did not manage to decorate our tree. Tomorrow is the day for sure ... really. I promise. Scout's honor!

We did pick up a new monitor, and they were surprisingly cheap. Well, there are still $300 models, but the one we picked was on sale for $139 and is looking mighty fine.

We were going to go see Avatar today, but the shopping delayed us a bit, and by the time we got to the movie theater, the 5:15pm IMAX showing was already sold out, so we went for drinks instead. *cheers*

Today is a big day with lots of things on the agenda! We have to decorate our Christmas tree that's been sitting bare in the living room, or else the 25th will come around and Santa will have nowhere to leave the presents.

A friend and I are going to drop by a few stores to check out new monitors, but I'm still debating on whether or not to get a widescreen since not too many games actually support that format anyhow.

A sad day at the office. :( This afternoon, the monitor for my gaming machine was literally fading to black, and even though I cranked up the brightness, it kept on getting darker, until the lights finally went out this evening. I guess I know what I'm doing this weekend: hunting for a new monitor.

Got some nice new reading material in the mail. Tor Books sent me the new Halo Evolutions novel, while earlier this week, Wildstorm sent me the first copy of the Dante's Inferno comic book.

We bought our plane tickets to visit the relatives for a few days during the Christmas break, and then we'll driving back up along the coast, making a much-anticipated pit stop in a town that has the "best barbecue in the world," according to Sunset Magazine.

I'm drooling already!

Hopefully over the holidays, I'll get in some time with the Wii,  my dual laser guns and some Resident Evil games. I somehow need to figure out how to fix the laser because it is not on target when pointing at the screen, but I'll have a week or two to jimmy that.

Sorry about the late start again. I went over to EA to check out Mass Effect 2, got back later than expected, had a late dinner, and tried to watch some Coraline with a full stomach, so about 20 minutes in, sleep got the better of me, and we woke up like four hours later. Talk about a food coma!

There's one more press trip scheduled, and that should wrap it up for this year. Then we are going to move on to the Game of the Year feature, which will run during the holidays, and the most anticipated games of 2010, which will run shortly thereafter. Keep an eye out for them ....

We were going to decorate our Christmas tree today, but when we got up this morning, the tree had shifted to the side. It looks like I'll have to saw some branches off the bottom of the trunk so that it'll stand up properly in the tree holder.

There sure were a lot of trailers released yesterday, mainly new announcements from the 2009 Video Game Awards, so that was pretty cool to see. I suspect from here on out, things will quiet down as the holidays are approaching. Most titles that are meant to be on shelves for the shoppers are already there, so there's not much to do until early next year.

Time for some eggnog!

Operation Christmas Tree accomplished: It's up and running! It's not decorated yet, but we have it sitting — and smelling — rather nicely in the living room. We'll probably get around to hanging up all sorts of trinkets tomorrow, and hopefully our reindeer decorations will be arriving shortly. Christmas has officially started over at the WorthPlaying digs.

In the next few days, we should be rolling out a few minor updates on the site, as well as putting up our contest page again, with some new giveaways coming up (games, laptop, etc.).

It's the weekend again, and with the holidays approaching, we're starting to make plans for the festivities. We'll be packing up presents for friends and relatives who live across the country or overseas, getting our Christmas tree and sending out invites for our yearly New Year's bash. There's plenty to do, and there's never enough time.

There's no more Stargate Universe on TV because it's the mid-season break until early next year. Instead, the Dollhouse series wrap-up (2 hours at a time) and a new episode of Bones kept us busy last night.

The past few days have been extremely cold. It's barely below the freezing point, but that's uncharacteristically for this area. Even the office, with all of the computers running 24/7, was barely warm enough to work in. It should get better by this weekend, but the forecast says that it'll rain the entire time, so it's not much of an improvement.

We watched some Dollhouse, and since the series has been canceled, you can sort of tell that they are rushing the story along to wrap things up in the remaining episodes. Too bad. Also caught up on the Criminal Minds backlog and watched the latest Castle. This weekend, we might watch a few Netflix or take a trip to the movie theater to check out 2012, Avatar, or maybe Invictus.

Not too much TV-watching going on these days. Most of our series are on mid-season hiatus, so that leaves some time to catch up on the backlog that we've been struggling with. We watched some Dollhouse and Criminal Minds, and maybe tomorrow, we'll catch Castle and a few episodes of NCIS LA. Then we can move on to some Netflix movies and season 2 of Flashpoint. Never a dull evening ....

My Wii Laser Light Guns are finally going to be put to some good use, as Capcom was nice enough to send me an extra copy of The Darkside Chronicles, and I've gotten Umbrella Chronicles off Half.com. I hear there's some dual-wielding you can unlock in House of the Dead: Overkill. Booya!

We're kicking off another week. Hope everybody out there had a great weekend. Very uneventful over here, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. We ran some errands, did some gaming (CrimeCraft, Borderlands, L4D2) and, of course, watched some TV. Checked out the latest episode of Flashforward and the season finale of The Amazing Race, even though our favorite team did not win.

With the holidays approaching, it will most likely start slowing down news-wise after the Video Game Awards until early January, but of course we will stay on top of the latest and report accordingly. Next weekend, we will be getting our Christmas tree and start preparations for the festivities and the obligatory year-end gaming features.

The Moroccan shindig was pretty cool. Wasn't quite certain what to expect food-wise, but it's surprsingly normal with loads of chicken and lamb ... and a bellydancer for entertainment, of course.

Didn't get much watching done apart from "Bones," so since we have nothing specific planned for tomorrow, we can plant ourselves on the couch and watch some movies (we got Coraline, Stander, and Notorious) and eat some Häagen-Dazs.

And here we are again, the weekend.

No big plans scheduled, apart from going to Adam's birthday dinner at some Moroccan joint and running some errands. Got a few Netflix movies to watch, and I'll try to catch up on a few episodes of Criminal Minds and NCIS LA.

It seems my new PSU and gfx card have resolved a black screen issue that I started having a few weeks ago, so I'm pretty happy about that. The only game that I couldn't run properly without chugging was Red Faction: Guerrilla, so I'll have to give that a whirl and see if it runs smoothly now.

Last night's Stargate Universe episode was rather good, especially the sweet ending. Eat it, Dr. Rush!

Now that the new power supply arrived, my big project of the day, apart from working, was getting my new GeForce GTX 275 into my gaming computer. I bought a Corsair TX 750W and apparently overestimated my needs a little bit since it has like 20 connectors for SATA, floppy, PCI-E and power, while I needed a mere 6. The problem is that my gaming machine is in a standard case, so it's quite small and the PSU's wires are huge, on top of the fact that the GTX 275 is twice as big as my previous 9600 GT card. It was no easy task cramming all of it in there, and I'm sure airflow isn't optimal, so the next purchase will have to be a bigger case. Maybe Santa will bring me something I can use ....

My new power supply arrived today, so tomorrow I'll open up my gaming rig and install the new PSU and check out my spiffy new Geforce GTX 275 card. It looks a little bit daunting, though. The PSU has a ton of wires, way more than I need, so hopefully everything will go smoothly.

For the past two days, we've had a sick person in the house, so quite a bit of time has been spent in front of the TV, bundled in blankies, watching The Good Wife, Sons of Anarchy, Young Guns, and a little CrimeCraft here and there.

Luckily, my office has remained a germ-free zone for now, so you'd better check those nasty viruses at the door!

Oh, boy! Somebody did not hear the alarm and wake up! Way overslept ....

I'll keep this short and get right to work. It'll be a long day of catching up.

My laser light guns for the Wii arrived yesterday, so we've been playing House of the Dead: Overkill a bit, and no, that's not why we overslept!