Here in Canada the first weekend in August is a long weekend which is there to celebrate "Heritage Day", which in theory you are supposed to spend doing cultural events depending on what you family background is.
Here in Edmonton we help celebrate this long weekend by having "Heritage Days" which is basicly a big showcase of any/all cultural groups in one of our larger parks here in the city. Its one of those things that you always want to check out but never get off your ass to go do it, my friend James participates in it every year with his Kenjistu class who does a pretty impressive demonstration of their skills (I get to see the VHS copy of this every year, its pretty awesome). OK well I sort of side tracked things here explaining why we have a long weekend, so I hope it was a bit of an educational experiance on why Edmonton is North America's "Festival City" (which is because we have something major going on pretty much every weekend of the summer).
Like I said I didn't check out Heritage Days, instead I spent much of the weekend goofing off with friends and family. On Saturday we did a LAN party as a sort of "stag" for a friends brother who is highly religious and is marrying into an even more religous family, so that meant no booze, no shenanigans and worse yet no strippers or even a strip club. No this was a 100% dry geek stag going from Noon to 2am. To make matters worse summer decided to come and visit Edmonton this particular weekend, which normally is great news for a long weekend, just shitty if you are trying to do some gaming in 32C weather. Over this course of time we played a variety of games including Starcraft, Warcraft 3, Enemy Territory and Swat 4. Swat 4 is an interesting game made by the same guys that brought us the much maligned Tribes Vengeance and also uses the Unreal engine. What makes this game intersting is that its very polished in some areas (ie. overall nice levels, nice art, pretty solid code) but in others its pretty nasty (ie. many of their game types are pretty boring or just dont make sense, some of the worst UI I have seen in a game since MOO3, unreal netcode that allows you to shoot through doors, poor lighting). The coolest thing of Swat 4 is that its basicly Rainbow 6 but sexy, it made for some interesting LAN play though.
Sunday I ended up heading out to the in-laws cabin to go golfing. It was the first time that I had hit a ball all year and I shot a nasty 123 over 18 holes (73 on the front and 50 on the back). Needless to say I reenacted some of the scene from Happy Gilmore out on the links with my poor play and bad luck, but I had fun so thats all that counts. One odd note was that the golf course was infested with grass hoppers who decided to go and sit on the greens most of the day, you kinda got used to bug guts and using your putter to clear a path to the hole but after a while you kinda got used to it.
Monday amounted me remaining out at the lake and enjoying the fine weather with my wife and her family. It remained ungodly hot, as in still +30C, so we stayed in the shade, though we were wishing that we had put the boat in the water this year.
Overall though it was a pretty weekend of relaxing and doing absolutely nothing in particular. Its time to get back to the grind though and ensure that Realm Wars will be ready for LoreCon plus do some additional work for 21-6 on their latest project.
