stress-sick

 i'm feeling somewhat better this morning, but the whole of yesterday i was literally ill with anxiety and depression. i didn't get through the things i needed to (aside from an efficient shopping with gd in the morning), and sheer disappointment with life occurred just as we were about to say kiddush when my pager went off and i had to spend the next half an hour to an hour figuring out what was wrong, fixing it, monitoring it all while doing everything in my power not to ask for help.

i was successful, at least.

i managed to join my family for the end of matilda: the musical, and i have to admit i really enjoyed the adaptation! they really did the book justice even if they went significantly off script.

which reminds me - we read james and the giant peach a little while ago, and i was thoroughly disappointed by the movie adaptation. they made some weird decisions, and some deeply upsetting ones, the two main ones being the decision to not kill the horrible aunts and the incomprehensible switch between live action and stop-motion. either one would have been fine.

after everyone went to bed i decided to try and get snow bros running on my windows machine. i haven't used that machine in so long i had lots of accumulated housekeeping to do, and then i went through a variety of emulator software (probably picked up some malware along the way, hopefully not) before realizing that mame is still the best of breed. so i downloaded the snow bros rom and configured it to work with our joypads.

this morning, in spite of minor trauma caused by mr smear thinking i was telling him how to draw when i was explaining what i'd need from him to convert his drawings into sprites, i managed to draw him into a game and we a) had a great time together and b) finished the game for the first time in my entire life!

having infinite credits helped, certainly, but that doesn't take away from the satisfaction of finally having seen the closing credits of a game i've been loving (and still love) since i was a kid.

mr smear's now back into gravity rush, which we discovered yesterday evening once his playdate was over. it's fun, and clever, and beautiful.

...

i've been a huge fan of steve hofstetter for ages, and yesterday i listened to the recipe. i've heard a lot of the elements of these stories in various bits, but he's put his special together in such a wonderful, powerful way that aside from its sheer hilarity it's also a provocative emotional rollercoaster.