It snowed yesterday and the snow stayed and now it's winter and you'd think it's been winter forever already with all this snow and ice and people falling over and trains running late and I'm not happy about it. At all. This is the time of year when I wish I lived elsewhere, like Borneo. Or maybe somewhere they don't eat people - like Gibraltar or Sydney. California would be all right. Chances are, however, that I'll be wearing thick socks until, oh, May? I don't foresee a lot of opportunities to take time off in sunny climates between now and E3.

There are too many games to play this autumn - too many great games - and I'm at a point where the pile has grown so tall, I don't know where to begin. There's San Andreas, which I've only played for seven or eight hours. There's Fable, which I've fallen in love with and definitely want to finish. There's Halo 2, which I started on a week ago, and I've gotten maybe a third of the way through. There's Half-Life 2, which I bought yesterday and I've played through the opening chapter. There's (phew) Burnout 3 and Jak 3 and Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal and EverQuest II - and soon World of Warcraft - and The Sims 2 and still - still! - DOOM 3 to finish, and Katamari Damacy and Colin McRae 2005 which I've barely had time to unwrap and, God almighty, it's the best autumn in gaming history...and I don't even have time to play! It's awful, it really is. I've decided that, this weekend, I'm going to hunker down and spend some quality time on the couch. It's about time to get my priorities back in order. But why-oh-why can't publishers spread their releases out more evenly? It'll be another two or three years until we see a line-up like this one again, so why couldn't someone just hold back until spring or next autumn? Well, to be honest, it'd be sort of nice if everyone stayed away from next autumn...  ¶ 23:22