This was supposed to be a big week in this
Typist’s life, a monumental, yuuuge, beautiful week, my friends, because this
is the week that Shadow of the Tomb Raider was released! I leaped out of bed
early on release day and, after some recognizance by Mr. Typist, decided to
download the full, ultra-deluxe, uber version with all of the bells and
whistles, and most importantly, extra
outfits for Lara! I got the game download started and I busted out of work
early to run home and play, and….no go. It
wouldn’t play. It wouldn’t play after updating my video card, adjusting all
of my settings, uninstalling and re-installing multiple times, and following
the tech support suggestions to the letter. Needless to say, this was
devastating. Devastating. I went
through the five stages of grief in under 24 hours, before finally accepting my
Tomb Raider-less lot in life. But, being an addict, I was unable to control
myself. To stop the shakes, I purchased an old version of Tomb Raider: Anniversary,
confident that this would load up just fine…but NOOOO. It crashed repeatedly
and was totally unplayable. This is when I hit rock bottom and re-installed
Salt, the world’s dullest game that takes literally no bandwidth. Sure enough,
it crashed within five minutes of playing. I finally stomped off to the living room
and declared to Mr. Typist that the Universe didn’t want me to play video games
this week and that I would have to resort to reading an actual book on my
Kindle. Oh, the humanity! I am now halfway through the Augusten Burroughs memoir
“Lust and Wonder,” which is delightful and sad and uplifting all at once.
But on the plus side, in “I’m Going to a Major
Conference in Chicago this Week and I Can’t Stand My Scraggly Hair Anymore”
mode, I went and saw this brilliant hairstylist today and showed her a picture
of Anna Faris with an adorable bob and said can you make me look like Anna Faris,
and without missing a beat, she was all like, “You got it, girlfriend!” and
after much snipping and gossiping and blow-drying and the sweeping away of
alarming amounts of hair, gosh darn, she actually did it! Okay, well maybe I
don’t look exactly like Anna Faris, but
I do have her haircut from that one picture:
I am hardly one to walk around trolling for
compliments, and I cringe at any positive attention, but I must say I was quite
uplifted to get exactly four compliments from the point of leaving the salon to
walking to my local drugstore to home. I’m almost fifty, and most of the time I
feel like I can barely pull myself together for public presentation, so this
influx of admiration was pretty intoxicating. As I was paying, the cashier at
the counter said that my haircut really brought out my “striking, soft blue
eyes.” Well, he works there, so I can’t put much stock in that, but then a lady
who was just standing around looking at lipsticks said I looked beautiful. I
immediately deflected this by stating that Tara, my stylist, was a genius and
got all the credit. Then, and this is the kicker…some dude on the sidewalk gave
me the Joey from "Friends" treatment! He looked at me up and down very
deliberately and said something along the lines of, “Heeeey. How’re you doin’?” I handled it coolly, (“Fine,
thank you”) but inside I was all like, “Oh my God, an actual man just flirted with
me! I still got it! Yes!” Then the lady checker at Bartell’s asked if I
got a haircut and said it looked cute.
I came home floating on a cloud of fresh-haircut
elation and immediately told Mr. Typist that a random man flirted with me. He congratulated
me, as is our tradition now whenever we have a tale of opposite-sex flirtation
to share, as we are coming up on seventeen years of marriage and we need to
keep each other’s spirits up about these things: “Aww, good for you, sweetie.
Congratulations!”
So, I am bereft without Tomb Raider. But I do
have a cute new Anna Faris bob haircut that may actually be magical. Maybe the
bob will somehow mystically influence Tomb Raider to fire up on my computer. It’s
a big unknown at this point, but I am determined to get Tomb Raider, any Tomb
Raider, going soon, or I am going to go into full-on withdrawals. I’ll keep you
updated. In the meantime, here is a taste of the glory I am missing:
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