Oblivion!

That's right, it's my first video game review. I'm now - officially - a complete nerd. Although I suspect everyone who reads this already knew that.

My boyfriend Keithen and I were hanging out in a video game store the other day, and he said to me,"You you wanna get an Xbox 360?"
I replied, "No. I'm hella broke."
So he said, "Yeah, but I have money, because even though we have equal salaries, I'm not a compulsive buyer like you. And don't say 'hella'."
So about two hours later we left with our new baby, our beautiful little Xbox 360. When we chose our first game for it, we got Oblivion, because I figured there was no way we would finish it before Christmas and we would save ourselves from having to pay $60 for Bioshock.

So we got Oblivion. I spent many long, lonely hours with it's prequel, Morrowind, on our first Xbox (now acting out for attention from the dusty bottom shelf of our TV stand). Now I realize that Morrowind was widely acclaimed and a bit of a landmark for it's genre - which, if you don't know much about video games, is the genre of Super Nerdy I-Totally-Just-Scored-a-Plus-Seventeen-Hit-Point-Mage's-Staff-and-Now-
I'm-Gona-Go-Kick-Some-Dwarf-Ass-With-It Nerdified Nerddom.
But Morrowind kind of sucked. I mean, I liked it alright, except for the really bad character designs (for some reason you can only give your female character a receding hairline) and the fact that you have to wander all hell-and-gone over the whole entire countryside anytime you go on a mission. It was a beautifully animated countryside, but that shit gets old.

So when I learned that the sequel had come out with improved character designs and and a fast-travel option, I knew I had to have it.
Yeah, that was a year and a half ago. I'm not sure if we're late adopters, or just poor.

So my initial thoughts on Oblivion. (I haven't finished it yet. I have to make it last until Christmas, remember? Oh yeah, and I have a job and a life.)...(OK so I obviously don't have much of a life. But I do have a job.)...(OK technically I'm an intern. Shut up.)

Oblivion is like a big fat "fuck you" to Morrowind. For some reason my female character still has a receding hairline, but that's the only thing they didn't fix really, really well. I was kind of disappointed that there's no big floating jellyfish (just look it up), but there are cute little deer frolicking around in Oblivion's wilderness. And deer are cute.

So Oblivion gets an 8 out of 10 from me. Woo video games!

Green Tea

So I started this new job where I have to... um... wake up early. Yeah I know. I'm almost like a gown-up now. Well, they have coffee here, and a little coffee maker, and I have to wake up early. So I've been drinking a lot of coffee.

But then I found myself coming home at night and talking really fast and staying up until midnight and making Keithen say things like,"Thea. SHUT UP SO I CAN SLEEP," and using lots of run-on sentences and talking really fast and repeating myself a lot.

So I bought a little box of green tea to keep in my cubicle. It has all kinds of health benefits, and I figured it would have enough caffeine to ween me off coffee, but not too much to bring back the old talking fast problem. I go to the little place in the office where the UV-filtered water cooler is, press the little steamy mug button, get myself a nice steamy styrofoam cup o' hot water, and put my little green tea bag in it.

It doesn't really do the job. It does solve the problem of coffee-breath. Green-tea breath is much less offensive than coffee-breath. But it doesn't do the job the way coffee used to. I don't know what I'm going to do.

But I do like green tea. There are many kinds of green tea and the one I bought from Walgreens is really basic cheap Bigelow green tea. If you've never had green tea before, it tastes a little bit like a partly-cloudy spring day. All the new leaves are out, but only some of the flowers are starting to bloom.

Just in general: 9.9 out of ten. Green tea is full of anti-oxidants and it's delicious even when it's 99 cents for a giant box in Chinatown.

As a substitute for Coffee: 5 out of ten. There just has to be something with... more coffee in it. No - no, don't say the "D" word. Just don't say it.