Free health care, one of the best things about being a Canadian (they give you free maple syrup, dontchaknow).  I cut open my elbow playing hockey the other night (bunch of hosers) and after 2 days, my wife had enough of looking at it and sent me to the clinic.  Cold season is in full swing up here, lasting the traditional 11.5 months of the year, so the office was slam packed.  I put my name in the hat, got called 2.5 hours later, with a dead cell phone no less, and after less than 10 minutes of consultation, they gave me a prescription for anti-biotics.

So, the good part of this is that the doctor who saw me was upbeat after a clearly grueling day.  I guess you have to be in order to not go over the deep end…Anyhow, she looked at my elbow, made funny faces, insulted my hockey abilities (touché), googled (or webMD, who knows) the exact dosage needed and agreed I should take care of it.  She also politely explained how the pills can bring on diarrhea and I should stay away from white pants.  Noted.  Perhaps I’m just lucky in that regard but I’m batting near 50% in the serious/clown doctor business.  It doesn’t make the wait any less annoying, but you leave with a smile, so there’s that.

Well, that and not having a $1,000 bill helps too.

Options

The October/November time of the year is like Christmas for gamers.  Back when consoles were the king of the hill, you’d have near half of the games released in that part of the year – enough to get people going crazy just before Black Friday.  Now with the interwebs and Steam sales, it’s certainly less impactful but still noticeable.

There are MMO expansions afoot.  Wildstar is my drug of choice currently, but SWTOR’s early access for their expansion is out.  GW2’s expansion is this week if I recall, Overwatch Beta next week, Devilian closed beta, FF14’s patch 3.1 is soon, Neverwinter had one a few weeks back, EQ2 has a ToT expansion… just tons of options.  Consoles too mind you, with Assassin’s Creed 72 (Syndicate) coming out and Fallout 4 in a couple weeks.

I still play Black Flag from time to time, for the pirate ships.  I’m rather done with the “follow him for 5 minutes, get caught once and start all over” gameplay.  Funny how Ubisoft has taken up EA’s old mantle of worst company in the world.  I guess people need someone to dislike.

I know Bethesda, so I know Fallout 4 on release is going to be a buggy mess combined with tons of joy.  I think I’m going to wait a few weeks after release to pick it up, enough for a kitchen sink patch to be deployed. (It’s a sad statement of the gaming world, where the above previous statement can be applied to 90% of games.)

So for now, it’s Wildstar or bust.  Maybe, just maybe, I’ll dip my toes back into SWTOR once the general release of KotFE comes out.  Who can say no to lightsabers?