Well with exactly one week to go until christmas I feel precisely ZERO christmas spirit and I don't know why. For some reason this year just isn't doing it for me, maybe last year was the last time I'll ever experience the christmasy feeling until maybe I have children and go through it with them. I'm not depressed or anything, just can't seem to get into this year.

Anyway, games. I've been playing Call of Duty 4 online in stints, pushing myself to get to the ultimate unlock that I want, the Baretta .50cal Sniper Rifle and also the Desert Eagle. I want to run around with a gold desert eagle blasting people until they shutdown the COD4 servers. I've also been continuing on Project Gotham Racing 4. That game just has the sense of speed and fun perfected. The controls and handling are just right for me. I recently spent the weekend at a friends where we blasted through Guitar Hero 2 & 3 on the 360. Unfortunatly on HIS profile, so I didn't unlock any new achievements from that.

I did however get 10 new Xbox Live Arcade games free thanks to the 10 free games offer Microsoft where running. I can't remember them all, but I know they included Small Arms, Bomberman, E4, Sonic 1 and a few others. So I've obtained a nice few achievements from that. I also need to revisit Assassins Creed and pick up the achievments I'm missing for pickpocketing knives, throwing poor people around, fighting for more than 10 mins and fighting over 25 peeps in one fight. Then I'll be done with that game as I sure as hell am not collecting all the flags or templars, what a waste of time.

I've been reading Mass Effect: Revelation, the prequel novel to the Mass Effect game. I don't read too much as I don't really have the time, but this book is pretty good. I played the first 5 or 6 hours of Mass Effect so far, but I've decided to hold off continuing until I finish reading the book. Then I am planning on starting again. Its been a while since I started playing and I'm already forgetting what I've acheived, so it should be good to redo things with a better knowledge of the Mass Effect universe and how things work within it.

My plans for the holidays have been thrown into chaos. I was supposed to be paid twice this month, once at the begining and once nearer to christmas, but what has happened is that the company I'm currently freelancing for have decided they'd merge my cheques into one and pay it at the later date, Dec 21st. That is this friday. Now if I get that into the bank that day, its going to take 5 WORKING days to clear, so thats maybe the following friday, so I'm not going to have ANY money until then. My mums birthday is on the 19th and I am supposed to be going out for christmas eve with friends. So now I may not be going out, no-one is getting any presents. What a load of crap eh! Welll at least I'll have my christmas dinner to look forward to and at least I don't have to go christmas shopping with all the packed crowds.

Well I wish everyone a happy holiday and hope that you all have a great New Year, I'll be back on Gamespot next year.