Current Distractions, January 2012 Edition

This month I've been on a sort of self-improvement binge. I feel like I've pretty much recuperated from the pneumonia I had in November/December, and now I'm trying to organize and be healthy and so on. I know how lame this sounds, trust me, but it is a thing that I'm doing right now and actually have been relatively successful with, so whatever.

I'm not all lame, though.

At the beginning of this month, I picked a convention to go to this year, and the rest of the month has been consumed with planning costumes. I've decided that I love costumes, and nothing you can say will make me ashamed of this fact. I won't reveal which con this is until after the fact, so that any crazy stalker-people out there can't track me down and murder me. So keep your eyes open for a post about it sometime in the next eleven months, or something like that. Whatever, dudes.

Back in April (although I guess I didn't mention it) I bought a PS3 for the express purpose of playing Portal 2. I'm not much of a gamer, but when I discovered that Portal is a puzzle game, I decided to play it and it pretty much changed my life, which is only a very slight exaggeration. So I was compelled to play Portal 2, with extreme trepidation, and fortunately it is also awesome. Anyway the whole point of this is that when I bought my PS3 I would've settled for just buying Portal 2 and no other games, ever (it's also a bluray player, after all), but the system came with Uncharted 2 and Metal Gear Solid 4. These games didn't catch my attention at first, and then somehow I found out that Uncharted 2 was made by Naughty Dog (the original developer of the highly excellent Crash Bandicoot games for the PS1) and has won pretty much every single award, so I figured I'd give it a shot. I started playing the weekend before last. And let me tell you, it doesn't disappoint so far. I still have no interest in Metal Gear Solid 4, but tell me if you've played it and think it's any good.

Possibly most importantly of all, though, I got a breadmaker for Christmas and I've been making bread every weekend this month, and it's super great.

Anyway, here are some tumblrs that I enjoy a lot:

• Dads Are The Original Hipster - Dads are one of humanity's greatest inventions, and this tumblr is a celebration of their kickassity.
  
• Before They Were Grandparents - A little bit like the previous one, but less sarcastic.
  
• Foul Bachelorette Frog - I can't relate to every single one of these, but I can relate to a terrifying number of them.
  
• Socially Awkward Penguin - I can relate to every single one of these.
  
• Brotips - A small number of these are douchey, but the majority are about just generally being a stand up dude, and they make me smile.