While I have actually been married for almost two years now, last weekend was my wife and I’s actual ceremony, and I have to say this: it was worth the wait. People came from as far as Utah to help us celebrate here in Indiana, and I will never be able to thank my friends and family enough for all of the love and support they’ve given us.

I love the presents too, of course.

The front of our wedding invitation envelope

My wife actually had me draw something for the front of the envelopes. I also drew the RSVP cards as well, and my wife laid everything out and printed them at her job. Conveniently she works for a printing company, so that worked out very well. We had way more people RSVP than we thought we would, and we like to think people couldn’t resist all the adorbs we wrapped up in the invitations. Probably it was the catering though.

No one warned us how much food we’d have left over. Even after giving away generous portions of each type of dish, we still have a giant aluminum tin of chicken, two plates of delicious cake, a vat of vegetables, and a tub of bottled water and various sodas. I’m excited at the idea of no grocery shopping for awhile, but I’ve been assured we can’t simply eat chicken every day. I’ve not been given adequate reason why, however.

In other news, I’ve jumped headfirst into Final Fantasy XIV. If you’re following my Tumblr you’ll have seen a few of the screenshots of my character Izmo, a name I’ve used in most every game I’ve played, starting in D&D 3.5. I’ve tried a few classes now, but I’ve settled on the Arcanist, mostly because I can’t stand to be away from Carbuncle. He and I were pretty thick back in the days of Final Fantasy XI, and now that I’ve got a chance to ride or die with this stone-cold G again, I can’t possibly say no. I plan on moving into Scholar and Summoner once I hit 30, and I’ve already got the classes leveled up that I’ll need to do this, so I’m looking forward to that. I don’t have a lot of time to play, and as such most of my friends have already moved into the Jobs of their choice, but I’ll catch up eventually.

My wife also surprised me with Grand Theft Auto V, but I have a love/hate relationship with that game right now so I don’t pick it up as much as I should. It’s funny, because the way I play a game like FFXIV is completely different than the way I play GTA V. Here’s an example:

Last time I was playing XIV, I was having a conversation with some people in my Free Company (XIV’s version of a guild) when I got a message from somebody asking me if I could give them a Raise. I quickly summoned my Chocobo (Rupert, a steadfast companion if ever there was one) and took off towards his location. I jumped from the back of Rupert and quickly got to work resurrecting this fallen soldier. He was a Summoner, and we got to talking about what I have to look forward to. We quickly became friends and I asked him to send a message my way if there was anything I could ever do for him. I made my way across the world via an expensive Teleport, and a few minutes later my new friend sent me a message. He’d fallen again in battle and needed my help! I announced to my friends that I was needed elsewhere, jumped off Rupert as he rode away into intangibility, and quickly Teleported as fast as I could, as close as I could, to his location. From there I rode as fast as I could towards the Summoner’s body again. Before I could get there he apologized in another message and let me know that he’d already gotten a Raise. I laughed, told him I was just glad he found help, and wished him good luck. All was well and I was happy that he was simply on his feet again.

Flash over to my time in GTA and you will see a different story.

I walked out of the hospital, having just been shot down by cops in a vicious shootout that I was convinced wasn’t my fault. I walk by a gentleman who might have made a rude comment towards me. I turn around and bring chest-to-chest on this punk and stand there, waiting for him to say anything. He tells me he doesn’t want trouble, and I actually shout at the screen “then why you all up in THIS?” and I punch him to the ground. After a thorough foot-stomping I walk out into the street, pull a shotgun out of my pants and shoot wildly in the air. A car drives at me, attempting to play hero, and I shoot the driver in the head. The car spins out of control and crashes into a building, hitting a few pedestrians on the way. The cops show up and start shooting at me, even though I’ve put away my weapon and am trying to play the peacemaker here. It doesn’t work, so I jump into a nearby car, drive it into the cops, jump out, take cover, and shotgun the rest of this Police Academy squad down before I take a cop car and become the Law of Los Santos. Twenty minutes later I have a three star warning, a pile of dead bodies on my conscious, and I’m barreling through the countryside on a stolen crotch rocket, cursing at the clear racism these cops are displaying at the moment. Another ten minutes later and I’m driving through pedestrians, turning sidewalks into cemeteries, while Phil Collin’s I Don’t Care Anymore fills my heart with a tribal calm that lets me transcend from common criminal to an artist working in the medium of Genocide. It doesn’t end until I take a wrong turn into an inflexible wall that sends me flying headfirst into literal street-justice, as my body bounces off the pavement, giving me the long-overdue message of “Wasted” as the screen fades out.

I guess I like each game for different reasons.

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