A Little More Warning Would Have Been Nice

The Good: I seem to be having a five day weekend for the Fourth of July.

The Bad: Because the state government has given my office mandatory unpaid furlough days Friday and Tuesday. Which means I lose three days pay instead of one this pay period.

The Good: Fortunately this is a three paycheck month for the household.

The Bad: But thanks to the poor warning, we're just going to be spending five days hanging around the house instead of going somewhere.

The Good: But if I get too annoyed, I've got chaypeta's marvelous gift art to stare at for now. (Warning: Has a guy looking very self-confident in a dress)

Now I want to go on a driving tour, THROUGH FRANCE

So for Father's Day moonshadowed bought me Gran Turismo 5 for my PS3. Like GT1 that I had for my original PS console, it's a reasonably realistic driving game with a really large list of cars. A large list. To the point that it gets rather goofy, especially with the idiosyncratic purchasing system.

For Ex: The list of available races include a European Classic Cup, which means you have to race in a car built prior to 1968. But get a car that old for a reasonable price, instead of going through the list of car dealers, you have check through the used car listings, which change on a daily basis. The first Classic car car I found and bought was a '49 Volkswagen Beetle, which can be best described as "0 to 60 MPH.... Eventually". Fortunately I did find a '61 Jaguar XR this morning, which I snatched up and then washed, changed the oil and overhauled the engine.

Let me repeat that. I did critical maintenance on a car that doesn't actually exist except as numbers in a hard drive.

So I ran it in both races in the Classic Cup and won them handily, whereupon I was rewarded with some credits to buy more virtual cars and improvements, plus a freebie car. Usually this is jsut a generic compact of some sort, or occasionally a concept car that never went into production in the real world. This time around I was given a 1944 Volkswagen Kubelwagen, the German equivalent to a WWII Jeep. A car which is probably slower than the Beetle and absolutely useless in all of the races in the game.

But...

Ich habe ein Kubelwagen! Es ist sehr gut!

My tweets

• Wed, 21:37: Rufus looking sexy and self-confident. VERY self-confident, thanks to Peta responding to my crack fic http://t.co/FN8QxfI
• Thu, 03:51: A Little More Warning Would Have Been Nice http://j.mp/jHc1w1
• Thu, 07:21: Now I want to go on a driving tour, THROUGH FRANCE http://j.mp/lvFL0s