Today marks the first day of my own Christmas break, which'll continue through the day after New Year's (I'm not even thinking about how little I want to return to work).

My small early Christmas present to myself was the new nine inch nails EP. It's great on my first listen-through, if teasingly short (only about 20 minutes long). It's definitely more upbeat than what he usually does, closer to With Teeth mixed with HTDA. Not going to lie, I'm kind of tempted to invest in a record player for the vinyl remaster of The Fragile, which is for me one of the greatest albums of all time. Depending on how much I spend all told (doing my last shopping later today), a Dance With the Dead album or two may have to happen as well.

So yes, a little last-minute Christmas shopping today. We're going to run by a couple places in Carytown for my brother. One of the spots on my list is an awesome retro game store that we discovered a couple months back. They commission local artists (Richmond has a big art scene) to do video game posters that aren't super expensive, and other nick-knacks. But their big draw is tons of games for every old console you can think of (I even saw a few 3DO discs), plus the consoles themselves. I admit I was super tempted to pick up the New Super Mario Bros. Wii-U bundle they had there for $100.

Also on the games and money front is of course the Steam Winter Sale (fuck my wallet). I'm going to wait and see if I get any Steam gift cards for Christmas this year, but trying to cull my wish-list down to something manageable. Currently I'm looking at:

> Planet Coaster

> Killing Floor 2 (anyone on here play this who might be interested in joining me?)

> Slime Rancher

> Undertale

> Orwell

> Stellaris

> Sunless Sea

> Darkest Dungeon

Also, if you haven't picked up Kingdom: New Lands yet, I quite like it. It's a nice, simple building game that may be a little slow-paced for some, but which I find enjoyable. They also do cool holiday updates--for Halloween, they added a spooky horse for a few days and put jack-o-lanterns all over the place, and they're adding some stuff for Christmas too. Further recommendations for cheap, low-system-requirement games that are great: Gunpoint, Papers Please, Don't Starve (I have the MP version too, if anyone wants to join...), Ultimate General: Gettysburg, Teleglitch, Dustforce, and Prison Architect.

Ok, done with that.

Today is also spent with some end-of-the-year kung fu stuff--teaching the last class of the year for the youngins tonight, and I have a private lesson with my sigung (teacher's teacher) earlier in the afternoon. I'm a little intimidated by the latter, since this is a guy with 35+ years of experience under his belt, so there's very much some feelings of unworthiness or whatever. But just gotta suck it up.

Also on the shopping list: a decent-size bottle of bourbon for time with the family.

I'll be around most of the next few days (Internet addict that I am), but have a good run-up to the holiday!