Jen FitzGerald

Maybe you've heard of Minecraft, maybe you haven't. It's a video game and one that Sonshine spends a lot of time playing.

It's a cross between Legos on steroids and the Sims meet the Stone Age. The description according to WIKI: The creative and building aspects of Minecraft allow players to build constructions out of textured cubes in a 3D procedurally generated world. Other activities in the game include exploration, gathering resources, crafting and combat. Gameplay in its commercial release has two principal modes: survival, which requires players to acquire resources and maintain their health and hunger; and creative, where players have an unlimited supply of resources, the ability to fly, and no health or hunger. A third gameplay mode named hardcore is the same as survival, differing only in difficulty; it is set to hardest setting and respawning is disabled, forcing players to delete their worlds upon death.

It's like watching girls playing Barbies--and it both cracks me up and tickles me to death. I'm sure there are girls that play, but it's fun and amazing to watch my son and a handful of friends get together in various worlds and create. They work together build communities. In fact, this past weekend, they thought up a constitution for their little world.

Here he is with the headset, talking to his friend, discussing the inventory on the alchemy store they've built.



This is his character on his home game.
If you look close next to the head, there's a lighthouse he built.

In other news, poor Kitty got fixed and declawed Monday. She came home yesterday looking pathetic and having to wear a collar so she can't lick her paws or her belly stitches.



She wanted to clean herself so badly she finally took to licking the collar with her body going through the motions beneath it. It was funny in a pathetic sort of way. And she has to take this horrible pain killer that tastes nasty and makes her foam at the mouth. It was not fun trying to get that into her.

She should be right as rain in a few days.

I think my generation was the first to have in-home arcade games. Do you remember Atari and Pong??

We've come a long way baby!