"Played any new good games lately?" asks Friend Brian as we're queueing up our 215th hour of Borderlands 3. Sadly, the answer is "no."

I spent most of the spring and summer playing the fantasy-genre tactics game Unicorn Overlord and loving it. (Considering that I spent more than 100 hours 100-percentiing that game, you won't be surprised to hear that I rate it a 10 out of 10!) Finding a worthy follow-up has been a bigger challenge than the game itself.

Part of the problem has been that I've been trying to get by without spending a lot of money. Like everyone else in America, I feel that everything is too expensive, but saying that I'm saving money because of the post-pandemic economy has put a squeeze on my income would be an exaggeration if not an outright lie. I'm really just a cheap bastard. (If I could be sure a game I bought was going to give me a hundred hours of entertainment, sure, I'd pay up. But there are only so many Unicorn Overlords and Borderlands 3s out there.)

Because I pay Xbox (current Gamerscore: 161,005) for the ability to play online with friends (proving that I have more money than brains, as very few of my friends even have an Xbox), Microsoft offers me access to some games for free. Using that program, I tried Snow Runner. It belongs to the genre calling themselves sims: virtual duplicates of real world situations with a minimum of added gamification. Imagine an application in which you manipulate only one digitally rendered straw of hay a time while you look for a single pin and you'll get the idea. Heck, that would probably be more fun than Snow Runner.

Snow Runner is a game in the same sense that pushing a single Tonka truck back and forth through a mud puddle is a game. Like any competent drug dealer, Snow Runner gives you a couple of trucks, but the rest you have to explore to find for yourself (or outright buy to unlock). By "explore," I mean "trudge very slowly into deeper and damper quicksand from which there is no escape." If you google Snow Runner, you will find many comments from players admitting they expect others will find it boring and bemoaning what it might say about them that they find enjoyment in it. All I can say for sure is that apparently there are a lot of masochists in the world.

The fifth time my truck got stuck in a ditch (forcing me to reset to my distant garage) was enough for me. I grew to hate this so much that the main reason I'm posting about video games today is so that I can tell the world how much Snow Runner sucks. I think Xbox gives it out for free to punish people looking for free games. I'm starting to get the message.

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The 2020 NFL playoffs: a perfect confluence of football, Covid personal protective equipment, and Star Wars.

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Jacob stood in the deserted street and looked up at the large, faded sign.

He had been sent to live with his aunt in Wyoming when the outbreak had started. It was for his own safety, his parents had said. What with the riots and looting and hand-sanitizer made by state prisoners, not to mention the virus itself, the city was just too dangerous.

We'll be back for you just as soon as the shelter-in-place order is lifted, said his mother from behind her n-95 respirator mask. His father gave him a comic book, one of the last printed before the country's last comics distributor had shut down. Then his parents had fist-bumped him goodbye and driven away.

His aunt died from the virus two weeks later. (If only they'd tested her!)

Faced with the dreary fate of slowly starving until he was reduced to eating his aunt's massive, unused toilet paper stockpile, Jacob made the only decision he could. He carefully wrapped his few precious possessions in a hobo bindle and set out on foot.

It was a harrowing journey. The wasteland was a wild and unforgiving place filled with roving gangs of self-driving Teslas fighting over solar energy charging stations. At night, Jacob struggled to sleep under a brilliant sky filled with the reflected glow from SpaceX's Starlink satellites.

It took nearly a month and all of Jacob's determination, but he finally made it to a place where he wouldn't have to grow up, a neverland without end. The sign in front of him said it all. "TOYS R US."

Jacob couldn't wait to see what wonders lay behind the darkened windows. He made camp in the lonely parking lot and waited for the first employee of the day to come and unlock paradise.

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A birthday card for friend Brian, whose birthday was yesterday.

It's you who is the shit, Brian.

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Here's your housewarming present, Keith.

Now I have to get to work on a present for Coop's new baby. I wonder what a baby wants on its phone lock screen.

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It's poo! It's a unicorn! It's a Poonicorn!

What will they think of next? I hope I don't find out.

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I must be earning a reputation. I now have friends sending me pics of poo whenever they're spotted in the wild.

Thank you, Brian. If anything ever deserved to be on clearance at Wal-Mart, it's a toy based on everyone's favorite Caddyshack scene.

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What I did on St. Patrick's Day:

Jacksonville Icemen 5, Georgia Gladiators 4.

Minor league ice hockey might not sound an Irish way to pass the time, but they fight like true drunken expatriates. Saint Patrick would be proud.

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Back in September, I had planned to take friend Michael to his first UGA game. That plan was disrupted by Brian's wedding. Today was the make-up date.

Mike had never even been in Athens until arriving for today's game. He's not much of a football person, but he tells me that he had a good time watching the #1 Bulldogs running over the Gamecocks, 24-10. I'm inclined to believe him. I had a good time myself.

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Today was a UGA home game. The Bulldogs played Samford in Sanford Stadium at 7:30pm. However, I wasn't there to see it. Instead, I had to spend the day on Tybee Island with Mom.

Don't get me wrong. I love Tybee. (And I love Mom.) Tybee is a charming coastal town with some fantastic scenery. (And Mom is Mom.) I'm happy to report that most of the island survived Hurricane Irma just fine, though plenty of scars from last week's storm were still visible everywhere. But it wasn't Tybee's beauty or Irma's wrath (or Mom's Momness) that brought us to the Georgia coast. No, we were here to attend friend Brian's beach wedding in the shadow of Tybee's historic lighthouse.

Mom rented a wonderful house at 117 Cedarwood Drive, and she, Audrey, July, and I used it as a base of operations for our weekend stay. Mom frequently visited the beach (just a few hundred yards to our north) to collect shells, each time leaving Audrey behind to rue Tybee's draconian "no pets on the beach" policy.

Sadly, I somehow managed not to take any pictures of the groom or bride, Veronika. For that matter, I don't have any pictures of groomsmen friends Ken, Keith, or Michael, either. The wedding party didn't show up on the beach until after the wedding officiant warned the attendees not to take pictures because that was the wedding photographer's job. Instead, you'll just have to be satisfied with this screen grab from the lovebird's official wedding website.

In fact, the only picture I have of the wedding was taken by friend James. (James was one of my few friends in attendance who wasn't actually in the wedding party. Matt was the other. Why was I not in the wedding party? I'm sure it had no small part to do with my vowing to Brian after Keith's wedding that I would never wear anything dressier than jeans to a wedding again. "Except mine?" Brian asked. "Even yours," I answered. That's what I like about Brian. He listens.) James couldn't resist disobeying the order not to take any pics, but he somehow still managed not to get the wedding party. (Reminder: "Never do what James does.")

I haven't attended a lot of weddings. I don't like them. Yet I found this one left an especially bittersweet taste for many reasons, not the least of which was that Brian was the last of my single friends likely to get married. From this point forward, we're all more likely to reunite at a funeral than another wedding. That's an uncomfortable thought, though it's better than imagining the possibility that I may have to sit through yet another wedding ceremony.

Good luck, Brian and Veronika. Do me a favor and be so happy together that we don't have to do this all over again, ok? Thanks.

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