Elite Geekdom

It's been a recent tradition that my friend Igor comes to visit us over Thanksgiving each year. He's one of those close friends that can stay in your home (a one-bedroom apartment in our case) for an extended period of time without causing any real disruption to life -- the kind of friend that Marjorie doesn't feel the need to clean for. I'd guess there are maybe two other people on the planet that fall into that category, and I'm only certain about the identity of one of them. The other, if he/she exists, may be some sort of dirty ghost.

So when Igor is here the whole visit manifests as a sort of festival we call Geekend. I took off the whole week of Thanksgiving and basically spent ten days drinking beer and playing games. It might come as a surprise to some that Marjorie not only tolerates Geekend, she encourages it. I think it's because it keeps me out of her hair while providing a steady stream of carry-out restaurant food. Everybody wins.

I played through the single-player campaign of Call of Duty: World at War, continued my progress through Fallout 3, and abused myself again and again through the fast-zombie slaughterfest that is Left 4 Dead. This is just on the heels of finishing Gears of War 2 online with Tyler and barely scratching the surface of Fable II. This has been one hell of a season for games, perhaps the densest I've experienced.

I started writing tonight with the intention of reviewing one of those games but it's later than I expected. I am apparently prone to digression in writing as in speech. I'll get to some game talk tomorrow.