Little Rocket Man Achievement...achieved...

Can't say how I'm feeling, now that I've stuck the garden gnome in the nose cone of the intercontinental ballistic missile, and sealed him in behind the hatch.

I'm nearing the end of Half Life 2, Episode 2, from The Orange Box for Xbox 360. The requirement's been met: the plaster-Plus (as in indestructible) and jolly'painted little old man I'd found at the start has adventured along with me to this moment when we will part ways. I go to fight the deciding fight against the enemy: perhaps to die and re-spawn over and over, 'til I get it right. Then He goes...where no garden gnome has gone before.

30 points. But what have I achieved, really?

Perhaps I expected I'd feel changed, emboldened even, like Amelie's retired papa seeing the point when his globe-trekking garden gnome returned home, took again its position, a still-life in his managed garden.

Perhaps after he's gone, one hundred miles high, I'll see it, and clearly. The point. I can't play too late tonight, though; can't stay up late, searching for meaning: another workweek begins come morning.