I’ve been busy both at work and at home, so the updates have been thin of late. Here’s a quick re-cap of what’s been going on. I’m honestly shocked that Atlanta was able to even up the series at 2-2 with my Boston Celtics. I knew coming in that they had some phenomenal young players, but I figured my boys would be able to turn it on in the playoffs after being in 2nd gear for the past two months and just roll them in four. While I’m still confident we can win this series, it looks like it’ll be a fight to get out of it and a mighty struggle to get out of the supposedly weak East.

The Philadelphia Flyers have been a welcome surprise, though I don’t want to get too confident because a 2-1 series lead doesn’t mean it’s a lock, particularly after they almost blew the 3-1 lead against the Caps. Still, it’s been awesome cheering them on and I’m hoping they can continue to play great and make it to the Eastern Conference Finals against Malkin, Crosby & the Pens (assuming they continue to dominate their series).

On a more personal note, I’ve been experienced what I’ve self-diagnosed as kidney pains. It might just my back muscles, but the signs and symptoms point more to the kidneys. I have a doctor’s appointment today, so I’ll find out more later this afternoon. Shit hurts, though, and really makes it hard to concentrate.

Luckily, amid the kidney pains that started Saturday afternoon after downing 12 diet Pepsi’s in 10 minutes and the struggles of the C’s and the stress of watching the Flyers get big leads, blow the leads, then either win or lose at the end, it was really nice to be able to release some stress killing random people in GTA IV. God, I love this game and this series.

I’ve only played a couple of hours of the single player (going through some really boring parts) and had a lot of fun playing with other 2K guys online multiplayer, but I can see why it’s gotten all the 10s. There’s just so much good too it. So much that you can forgive all the flaws such as the horrid animations, sloppy camera angles, god-awful AI, fucked up targeting issues, etc, etc. It is easily the most-flawed “best. game. ever” that I’ve yet played. I could probably write an IGN-esque 25,000 word review just bitching about the game. Then again, I could write as many praising the hell out of it. In the end, I’m sure the good will mightily outweigh the bad and I’ll love this as much as the previous games in the series and quite possibly more.