kill vehicle

So, the new Splinter Cell is out.

On a whim I stopped at the hateful EB Games the other day to see if they possibly had it. After the guy behind the counter got off the phone with his friend, it turned out he actually had copies to sell me. Weird. I declined his offer of a super-expensive strategy guide (Thanks, but if I get stuck I’ll use the internet for hints. You may have heard of it.) and game insurance (What? No, seriously, what? Who buys that?) and eventually had my prize.

The reviews gush about how this is the best Xbox game ever. The box even helpfully points this out. I was expecting a lot.

I played through the single player a bit. It’s really really beautiful, prettier than I’d expected, but otherwise it’s still Splinter Cell. That’s not a bad thing, but really I’ve already played that twice. I guess I’m happy to have more, especially now that the stupid save-point system is gone, but still it’s not leaving me overwhelmed with joy. It’s all well-done, but at this point I’m more or less feeling underwhelmed. All that hype, and it’s just pretty good. Bah.

Then I tried the cooperative multiplayer. Anything I said about being disappointed?

I TAKE IT ALL BACK.

More later, assuming I don’t get distracted by coop.

Writing about food is generally Laura’s thing, but I am currently in love with Cafe de Olla, a spiced Mexican coffee. There appear to be about a million different preparations, but this is the one we’ve been making, and I adore it.

Cafe de Olla

• 5 cups water
• 1/2 cup coarsely ground dark-roast coffee
• 4 oz. piloncillo (Mexican dark brown sugar)
• 3 2-inch sticks of cinnamon
• 5 whole cloves
• Peel from 1/3 of an orange, without pith

Bring four cups of the water to a boil in a saucepan, and then add in the coffee, piloncillo, cinnamon, cloves, and orange peel. Stir them in and enjoy the nice froth of the coffee, and then lower the heat until the mixture is simmering.

Stir occasionally if you want to make sure the piloncillo dissolves, but you can mostly leave it alone.

After five minutes, take it off the heat, and mix in the remaining cup of water to cool it down a little.

Cover it and let it sit for another five minutes, and then strain and serve. You won’t need any milk — just serve it black.

I like to pour it into a french press after the simmering so that it’s easier to strain and serve, but the pouring can be messy if you’re not careful.

Traditionally this gets made in little earthenware pots called ollas, but I bet you don’t have any. Make this anyway — it’s great even if it’s not perfectly authentic.

One of the downsides of the obscure gamertags in Xbox Live is that sometimes I’ll get a friend request and have absolutely no idea if I know the person who’s asking to be my very special friend.

Anybody want to fess up to being “FlyawayOneshot”? Or even knowing who it is?

I figure it’s either someone I know who has strange taste in names or it’s another of the desperately lonely people who tends to send friend requests to random strangers. It seems kinda odd, but there are a lot of them around. I guess getting shunned inside a videogame is the double-extra-special geek ostracism. I mean, it’s bad enough not finding someone to eat with in the lunch room.

This morning I had five cats.

Now I have four.

Today we took our oldest cat to the vet.

She’s 19, blind, mostly deaf, and crotchety as hell.

This weekend she stopped eating and drinking. The vet thinks her kidneys, which have been impaired-but-okay for quite a while, have finally started to shut down. He gave her subcutaneous fluids, which could theoretically help her, but nobody’s very optimistic.

We have another vet appointment tomorrow, after which I expect I will have one less cat than I currently do.

My current coping mechanism is gin. It’s working okay for now, but I suspect that tomorrow will suck a lot.

Bah.