chrimbo break

I always get this feeling towards the end of a holiday of "what have I actually done?"

Well, unless it's a proper holiday where I've been away, I mean. If it's one of my less exciting "not going to work, but staying at home" holidays I'll almost inevitably have made a great big to do list.

These are like my normal weekend to do lists, but on a much bigger scale. Where the normal lists are basically just notepad files with a big list of stuff to do, these will be done in word, and have a colour-coded table mapping the days and what I'm planning or have to do.

It takes anal retentiveness to a whole new level.

Anyway, despite this level of planning there's always a bunch of stuff that I put down as more general things, like watching DVDs and reading books and stuff, with the idea that when I tick off the appropriate stuff on the timetable, I can do these.

And I think it's these that produce the "so what have I done" feeling, because I don't tend to kill them off in the same way. So even though I did loads of stuff like cleaning my cupboards in the kitchen (I've been there 5 years and never done them once - the grime was thick, to say the least), the fact that I made no real impact on my pile of unread Empire mags means I feel like I've not really been doing anything.

Which isn't to say I didn't do anything on that front. I mean, I even watched some anime. Admittedly, it wasn't much, but it was something.

Actually, the only thing I totally failed to do was any scanning. It's gotten to the point of being stupid now - I've a stack of more than 6 months worth of anime mags and considering I buy 4 a month (plus Nyan type whenever I can find it) that's a lot of magazines to scan.

That also means I've not been watching fansubs. I've now reached the stage where I've started on a new season (it's a half season really) and so I've downloaded all the episodes of loads of shows without watching a single one of them. There must be about 20 shows I need to watch the fansubs of, and that's not thinking about all the stuff that's available on crunchyroll too.

If truth be told the big problem here is Anno 1404 - I'm still playing it obsessively. My ray of light here is that I've resolved to turn the current sandbox map I'm doing into the definitive article. Indeed, I've actually reached the point where I only have 1 item I need to unlock for both the occident and orient and then that's it. Plus the world is relatively well planned out, so I don't feel like abandoning it.

I'm basically thinking that if I can 'complete' this world then I'll be able to put it down for a while. Well, until the expansion pack comes out in April anyway :/.

But on the brighter side I did make some progress in terms of watching US TV series. For example, I've watched all of 30Rock season 1 and am half way through season 2. Plus I've come out of the holidays with nothing stacked up on my PVR - that's definitely a good thing.

So mixed bag for Christmas really - did quite a lot but also didn't do everything I set out to. So a typical holiday, then.