Getting through February with retroactive New Years Resolutions

February has been a slog. Absolutely the longest 28-day month in the calendar. Up until February hit I had been at least getting out now and then to walk or cross-country ski. But then the formerly mild Minnesota winter suddenly went all Frozen Logger ("at 1000 degrees below zero / It froze my logger love"). And then, for absolutely no reason at all, my right knee went out. I wasn't doing ANYTHING except occasionally getting up from my computer to go downstairs and play phone games in the big leather chair or hiking up to the attic to watch some especially dismal specimen of Peak TV. But apparently I went up and down the stairs one time too many, and my knee started clicking and then manifesting a weird sharp pain across the top of the kneecap and I sank into the doldrums.

So I gave up on even pretending to be healthy and started working on New Years resolutions. This year's was to get the number of photos on my phone down below 1000 (starting at about 2500). This was actually kind of a fun activity, since it involved reviewing hundreds of beloved pictures of past vacations and adorable shots of my grandchildren. Last week I finally hit 999!

Then I went back to my 2020 resolution, which was one I had really thought would be easy, but somehow I didn't keep: play more computer games. See, I have a large collection of mostly vintage PC computer games, maybe 60% of which I have actually played (but not necessarily finished). Most of them won't even run on a  modern computer. But all is not lost. Steam, the Internet-based game distribution service, has been industriously remounting and remastering classic games for years now. Initially they charge rather a lot for these refitted games, but if you wait long enough they go on sale and then even more on sale and when they reach bargain bin status I impulsively buy them. So now I have not only a dusty stack of classic games in boxes looking at me reproachfully, I have a lengthening list of the same games in electronic format. So I figured it was time to tackle some of them.

First I warmed up by playing some modern story games that were on sale for as little as $.90 and don't involve anybody shooting at you (Tacoma and Oxenfree). Then I gathered my courage to take another swing at Bioshock, one of the great story-based First Person Shooters of all time. My son-in-law gave me a hard copy back in 2008, promising me that it was the next best thing to Deus Ex (my favorite game EVER). I installed it, watched the the jaw-dropping cut scenes at the beginning, and then chickened out when it came time to remember how FPS controls worked. Every few years I try again and lose my nerve. The last time I played an FPS all the way to the end was 2003, and my reflexes only get slower with each passing year. But I fired it up one more time to show Richard the beautiful introduction to Rapture (the glorious underwater city founded by Andrew Ryan, the Mad Objectivist). And since R was mildly interested, I ventured out of the underwater elevator this time and started exploring the tutorial level, with Richard helping me navigate.

Turns out that if you set the play level to Easy, it's not really that scary! Just follow the advice of the helpful guy on the other end of the 2-way radio and explore everywhere, picking up health kits and Pep bars and magical glowing syringes. Oh, and kill everyone you meet and ransack their corpses. Seems a little harsh, but civil discourse in Rapture has apparently gone seriously downhill in the last few years. And whatever you do, don't accidentally turn the play level up to Medium. That happened by accident at one point, and it was no fun at all. 

I made it through the "Welcome to Rapture Level" and I think I'm finally ready to open the door to the mad Nazi doctor's lair. Wish me luck!