We had a great weekend with lots of eating involved. On Friday, Judy and I went out to dinner for no particular reason, and on Saturday, it was our friend's birthday, so we took her out for a movie (Hugo in 3D, not too thrilled about it) and then a fancy dinner. Fine dining for two days in a row means we'll be eating yogurt and salad for the rest of the week.

We're having a contest to give away a Darksiders II "Death Mask," so if you are a fan of the franchise, it might be worth tossing your hat in the ring. I hope I can mooch one off THQ for myself. The thing is pretty sweet and would fit perfectly with the rest of my gaming memorabilia.

Browsing the Internet, you come across a lot of weird, creepy stuff that makes you shake your head. On the flip side of the coin, some things make it all worthwhile, like this awesome LEGO Captain America clip. If you're squeamish, don't bother looking because arms get ripped off, there are plenty of headshots, and there's plenty of splatter & gore to go with it. Two thumbs up for whoever made that one!

Speaking of awesomeness, it's not that I'm a fan of the "Glee" TV show, but sometimes you'll watch when they are covering iconic artists. The most recent episode was dedicated to Michael Jackson. "Thriller" was an awesome song back in the day, and so were "Billy Jean," "Beat It," and even "Smooth Criminal," of which they did an amazing rendition. Don't really care about the vocals, but the two cello guys are insane. If these two guys aren't fans of Apocalyptica, they ought to sign them up on the double. It's off the hook!

There's a new teaser out for Joss Whedon's The Avengers movie, and yes that means it's an advertisement for an advertisement. Whedon also revealed that there will be no Spider-Man cameo in the movie, which suits me just fine.

A new trailer for The Cold Light of Day looks quite interesting, starring Bruce Willis, Sigourney Weaver, and the new Man of Steel himself, Henry Cavill. I'll be keeping an eye out for that one later this year.

We got ourselves a new fryer and we may give it a test run this weekend to see if the charcoal filter actually works. Then maybe the house won't smell like fries for two days afterward.

Opening day for Act Of Valor draws near, and you can bet I'll be there to check it out, especially since Red Tails is turning out to be a bit of a dud. I'm jonesing for a good war movie, and what's better than seeing some active duty Navy Seals in action?

We watched the pilot for Kiefer Sutherland's new series, Touch, and while it is quite similar to 2009s' Knowing movie with Nicholas Cage, it's still quite good. We'll have to check out a few more episodes to see where this is all going, but so far, so good.

We didn't go see Red Tails, nor did we watch the Australian Open men's final (won by Djokovic over Nadal in an epic 5-hour, 53-minute match). Suffice it to say that we got lazy.

Instead we ran a few errands, popped some pork chops in the slow cooker for dinner, and watched Alcatraz, House, Fringe, Russell Peters: Red, White and Brown, and Leverage.

There was also some The Old Republic in there, and I have to admit that Balmorra is still my favorite planet (on Tatooine now).

Not sure if we're going to be watching any tennis this weekend now that our favorite Kim Clijsters has been ousted. We watched the Federer vs. Nadal match yesterday, so that highlight of the tournament is also over with, and we're definitely not watching the two biggest squealers in the sport play. My ears are bleeding just thinking about that match.

Guess we'll have a nice relaxing weekend, watch some Netflix, DVR, and maybe go check out Red Tails.

If you haven't yet, check out our Most Anticipated Games Of 2012 articles. Personally, I'm most looking forward to Max Payne 3 and Ghost Recon.

Our Australian Open rooting has come to a screeching halt, as Kim Clijsters lost her semi-final match against squealer deluxe, Victoria Azarenka (they really ought to limit that annoying shrieking). At times playing brilliant tennis, Clijsters lost the first set with some flimsy tennis, pulverized Azarenka in the second set, but crumbled in the latter half of the third, handing the victory to her competition on a silver platter. Disappointing ...

The Walking Dead returns for the second half of season 2 on Feb. 12, so let's hope the writers learned some lessons and made the new content more similar to the early episodes. A third season is already confirmed, so let's hope they are packing it with good material and not like the first half of season 2, which dragged on for way too long.

We also rolled out the Most Anticipated Games of 2012 feature, so be sure to check it out!

The Australian Open is in full swing, and today was a nail-biter with Kim Clijsters going up against Li Na, a match reminiscent of  last year's finale. The match started off pretty well, but it went downhill when Clijsters twisted her ankle and needed medical attention to get her foot taped up. An abysmal first set, but lo and behold, she fought her way back in the second set to force a tiebreak. Even though that also started off badly, last year's champion managed to turn the tide and scraped her way back into the game when all seemed lost. That broke her opponent's spirit, and Clijsters breezed to a 4-0 lead in the third set, only to break down and let Li Na come back to equal the final set. In the long run, Clijsters' tenacity prevailed, and we're onto the next round! Man, that was a tense match!

So much for our next movie choice, we were kind of interested in seeing Haywire, but Adam returned from last night's press screening with a, let's say, less than favorable impression. Check back later this week for the bashing ...

So The Old Republic should be getting new content today, excellent. Not that I'm max level just yet (level 26 Imperial Agent) but it's always good to see the developer adding new content early on, and not waiting a year to finally kick into gear.

Received a few scale model airplanes as promo material for City Interactive's Combat Wings: The Great Battles of WWII. I need to get me some glue, quite excited, I haven't made one of those in decades.

We didn't get to go to the movie theater this weekend, but we sure made a good dent in our DVR recordings. We managed to watch Blue Bloods, Bones, The Good Wife, Kitchen Nightmares, Leverage, Once Upon A Time, Supernatural, and the strangely addictive Storage Wars. Damn, I'm impressed...

This week, Adam gets to see Haywire a few days early, so if you've been debating on whether it is worth seeing, check back later this week for his write-up.

DC Comics sent me a new comic book called ADD, which doesn't mean Attention Deficit Disorder, but Adolescent Demo Division. And yes, it's as weird as it sounds ...

We get the joys of an extended weekend, as today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Not quite sure what we're going to do; it all depends on how many companies are actually open for business.

The Australian Open has started, and our favorite Kim Clijsters has recovered enough from a recent injury to participate, so we might be catching a few games of that.

We watched Rango yesterday, which was quite good. Not quite a cartoon for kids, with all the creepy little critters, but quite entertaining for the more adult audience. We also watched the latest episode of Castle, which recently won the People's Choice Award for Best Crime Drama.

This week has been a bit whack with us trying to get over our jet lag. It's never been this tough, and not sure if it's a result of that, but I couldn't figure out what day of the week it was. Glad it's Friday. Hopefully, some good sleep over the weekend will put us back on track.

No particular plans, but with the DVR back in working order, there will be quite a bit of couch time involved.

Looking forward to the upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic content update, but more interested in the new "Guild features" mentioned for one of the future patches.

Beware of the boogeyman, today is Friday the 13th!

Yesterday we watched the Tintin movie, and it was quite enjoyable. It's really amazing to see how far cartoons have come; the characters look so life-like that it's almost creepy. It pleased me that there were a lot of little hints and nods to iconic items from the comic book source material.

Our DVR also decided to see the light, as our recording schedule has finally caught up with upcoming airings, so hopefully, we won't missing anymore new episodes.

We caught up with the latest episode of "The Good Wife," which does a good job of keeping you interested with its cases, but also doesn't linger too long on the overall story arc.

I have no idea what we did yesterday. There was a little bit of this, a little bit of that, but apart from groceries, I have no clue as to what we did to make the day go by. I'm sure there was some The Old Republic involved, though ...

About to whip up some breakfast and then off to go see the TinTin (or Kuifje) movie for a noon show.

I might just plop myself on my beanbag and lose myself in the dozens of comic books I brought with me from our Euro trip. I can think of worse ways to spend a Sunday...

Our plan to watch some shows on the DVR fell through. For some reason, it didn't record anything after the new year. Everything is in the "to record" schedule, it simply didn't trigger any of the new episodes. Tried to reboot it, but no dice either. Oh, Comcast!!!

Tomorrow, we might watch TinTin in 3-D. Since I was a childhood fan of the "Kuifke" comic books, I'm wondering how true it is to the source material.

That is, after I play some more The Old Republic ...

We just finished watching Cars 2 and enjoyed it thoroughly. Some friends had seen it earlier and claimed that their kids didn't quite get it, and that feedback seems justified, as the many James Bond references and intricate plot were probably too much for youngsters. Love Larry the Cable Guy, though. He's hilarious.

We have no plans for this weekend apart from catching up on the DVR recordings from the holiday and trying to get back on our regular sleeping schedule. Maybe we'll go to the movies if anything strikes our fancy because you can never watch enough movies, can ya?!

Space combat in The Old Republic is AWESOME!

We had put a few movies and TV series on the laptop to watch during our downtime from visiting friends and family during the holidays. Since we are NCIS fans, we decided to check out Mark Harmon's Certain Prey, based on John Sandford's Prey series (21 books and counting). You'd figure those references would make for a good TV movie, but alas, it was a horrible 120 minutes with stiff acting, a weak plot, and boring segments all around. Definitely not worth seeing.

Now that we're back home, I've been playing a bit of The Old Republic and enjoying it. So far, I'm grinding through PvP to rank up, but there are lots of story missions to get through. You've also got extra-hard PvP sections (Heroic stuff) that are optional but of course give good rewards, and those are best done in a group setting.

While we're trying to deal with the unavoidable jetlag, the first leg of our flight back was quite pleasant mostly due to the fact that the fairly new Boeing 777 was equipped with personal monitors and your own private cinema. The nine-hour flight passed by rather quickly since we were able to watch Colombiana, Contagion, 30 Minutes Or Less, as well as Only in America with Larry the Cable Guy, all back to back and free of charge, even in economy class.

Just watched Attack the Block. It's not a bad flick, but it had a little too much social commentary and an overload of pop culture references. While poking fun at all of the above is quite enjoyable in moderation, the non-stop barrage of it stopped being fun about halfway through the movie (and that's being generous).

Aaaannnnndd we're home again ...

After a whopping 15 hours of flying, with an additional five-hour layover in Washington, D.C., we're back at the homestead safe & sound (OK, maybe just safe).

We had a great holiday vacation, lots of food, drinks, and being merry with friends we hadn't seen in a few years. Good stuff.

Now we're going to do a little bit of catching up and see about shedding a few pounds we magically seem to have picked up along the way. Who knew?

The entire WorthPlaying team wishes everybody a Happy New Year! We hope everybody had a safe transition from old to new, and may 2012 be even better than last year. Thank you for sticking around, spread the word, and let's make things even better!