Mario, anyone???

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Does anyone know if there’s a way, either now or in the future, for me to play the new Super Mario Bros. game for the Nintendo DS on a screen larger than, say, three inches or so? I got a small taste of this thing while we were perusing Best Buy last weekend and had to come home and plug in the old Super NES to help quench my thirsts for koopas and walking mushrooms, and after seeing the new game and playing it for a few minutes, I’d love to partake in this new adventure, too, but I am getting “old” and just can’t stare at that tiny screen for hours on end. Any ideas if there are plans to go cross-platform with this title and offer it on the upcoming Nintendo Wii, or maybe something’s available where you can hook up a DS to one of the console systems, as I believe they did between the Gameboy and the Game Cube.

Help a brother out – I need my Mario and Luigi!

Kevin Smith comes to the Sunshine State!!!

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http://www.floridafilmmakers.com/Afternoon_KS/kevin_smith_index.htm

Finally … one of Kevin’s hilarious Q&A’s is finally coming to a venue within driving distance! I literally just found out about this today – Saturday, Sept. 23rd at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando – $35 / ticket. Sara and I are sooooo going to this!

pet peeve down by the pool…

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So Sara and I spent a little time unwinding down at the pool last night, which was nice because work and stress and more work these days have really taken a toll on the amount of pool time that we’ve been able to enjoy recently, but it also didn’t come without its taxes, either.

We got down there around 9 o’clock, so it wasn’t too late and there were actually other people still there (normally it’s much later than this, but it was a “school night”!). Anyways, the trouble began when we recognized the people as ones we’ve seen before – a couple of teenage girls and (presumably) their much younger brother. This kid can’t be much more than five or six, and at that you can probably already guess where I’m going with this one. Being the typical teenagers that they are, these girls want absolutely nothing to do with the kid and pretty much ignore him whenever they bring him to the pool, so he comes over and wants to “play” with us. Cute, because he’s a little kid, but totally not the time because we came down to relax and spend some time with each other, not babysit. So hoping that he’ll get the hint, we walk all the way back around the pool to the deep end and get in there.

Of course, it doesn’t phase him one bit. He’s young, and it’s not really his fault that he’s this curious.

Nonetheless, for the remainder of his stay he proceeds to bug the hell out of Sara and I, trying to hold conversations with whoever is closest to him, throwing rocks in the pool when nobody listens to him, etc, etc… At one point I told him not to throw rocks in the pool and that I was going to tell his parents, to which he gave me a really funny look. I mentioned that he really needs to go back by his sisters, who were now over in the hot tub completely unaware, but I got a really odd response out of him that left me wondering if a) his parents were the “not around, I don’t care”-type or even literally not around; or b) the girls he was with weren’t really as young as they looked and one of them was the kid’s Mom. Either way, I was getting pissed, and not at him.

If I were to make a top ten list of pet peeves, irresponsible parents would be right up there at the threshold, next to idiot drivers and idiot politicians (oxymoron?). I know it’s not simply limited to the current generation, but what makes these parents think that their kids can just run around doing whatever the hell that they want?! Just because they pay HOA dues doesn’t mean their kids have free reign of the place, too. It’s called community-living for a reason – try having a little respect for the rest of the people in the community. Not to mention the safety factors involved – the whole No one under 18 without a parent or guardian rule is posted for a reason. If that kid had fallen in when he was playing in the deep end and gotten into trouble, how long would it have been before his “sisters” had even noticed? Granted, I’d have probably done something if it happened while I was there, even though good samaritans get burned more and more these days, but what if it had happened while they were the only ones there? These people live right next to the pool, so no doubt he’s down there a lot – possibly even by himself sometimes.

Talk about a pain in the ass – it was disrespectful and unsafe to leave the kid unattended, it made me feel like kind of a jerk when I got to the point of just ignoring him, and it cut into what little time Sara and I had together for just relaxing. And all because Mom and/or Dad couldn’t get off their asses and come be parents. I don’t want to hear excuses about the sisters not doing their part to watch him – ultimately he’s still his parents’ responsibility and they should be aware of who they can and can’t trust to adequately supervise their child. I could go on and on, but I think you get my drift. Grrr…

…

Other than that, though, the water was great! Both of us came out rather prune-like, we each got to try out Sara’s new floating chair that she found on sale for $5 (a quarter of what it was when she wanted me to buy it for her two weeks ago!), and we did still have a rather good time just wading and talking. Good times, indeed.

a lazy, busy, yeah-yeah weekend…

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Where does the time go???

No, seriously – anybody feel free to jump in and throw a guy a bone here because at this point, I’m stumped! This weekend we were supposed to clean, and I was supposed to write, and Sara was supposed to get a bunch of her lesson plans done…and go figure, most of that didn’t actually happen. Instead we spent some time at the pool, watched House, The 4400, and Weeds together, I bought the new Jaws game for PS2 and wasted plenty of time last night, and Sara spent most of today sleeping on the couch with a migraine / stomach flu / I’m honestly still not quite sure what it was, but I do know that she wasn’t feeling well at all. Fun times, indeed…

So unfortunately, this has sort of been our pattern for a while and we’re still trying to make heads or tails of it. I feel bad because I think I’m just overwhelmed by trying to put too many things on my plate at one time, all the while I’m also feeling bad because Sara sometimes blames herself for my lack of productivity, even though I tell her that I was “this motivated” long before she came around – if anything, at least I don’t feel like I’m totally wasting my day when I’m spending time with her. On the other hand, she’s also feeling down because I did do at least some of the massive cleaning efforts that we had wanted to do this weekend, whereas she wasn’t able to do anything because she didn’t feel well pretty much all day, and I can see both sides of it – sure, it would be nice if she’d have been able to help me because we’d have made more progress, but likewise, she’s sick – there’s really nothing that she can do about it. It’s not like it’s her fault – I just know that it’s getting really frustrating for her because she’s still got another week before she gets to see the specialist that she scheduled months ago. I really hope they’re able to figure things out.

But on to happier news, a little smile was brought to my face not too long ago while talking to my Mom about our upcoming trip up to Northern Michigan. You see, as I had mentioned earlier, my final verdict from our trip to New York remains that simply put, I hope Sara feels as at home with my family as I did with hers (side note: yeah, yeah – I know I still haven’t posted pictures or stories about the trip yet … long story short, I’m still fighting with gallery to get all of my photos online and looking pretty, but they’re coming – I promise!). Anyways, I’ve got a good hunch that she’s going to get along just fine with at least the important members of the gang, but to add a bit of extra reassurance, this may sound simple but I found it comforting when my Mom mentioned that she needs to put together a list of what Sara likes to eat so that she’ll have the right stuff in the house for our visit. I know it may not sound like much, but Sara’s Mom had made it a special point to do the same for me before we went up there and it’s those little things that make a person feel welcome at the end of the day. Personalities are always going to be either a hit or a miss right off the bat, but gestures like this just show that our families really want us to be happy with one another and going the extra mile to ensure that comfort really means a lot to me.

Then again, if that wasn’t enough, Mom also was quick to reply with, “Oh, we’re going to get along just fine!” when I mentioned that Sara is an ice cream fan and to make sure she had some in the house, so I’m just looking forward to a lot of fun. It’s always good to see family, but even more so I just can’t wait to introduce everyone to the girl who makes me happier than I’ve ever been. That, and the fire-breathers at the luau should be interesting, too… 🙂

Why am I so tired?

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So today was our first full day back from New York, and between having to go back to work and all of the stresses found within, I think it’s pretty safe to say that we’re both sufficiently drained. Tonight was pretty much just spent sluffing through the grocery store because we had no food, then I stayed up to try to organize some photos while Sara went to bed early because her first day of school with the kiddies is tomorrow. I hope I can get used to partially waking up at 5:30am… 🙁

Anyways, it’ll be a couple more days before I can post an official summary of our trip, but here’s the cliff’s notes – spent one day touring NYC, another at the wedding, and pretty much all the rest just spending time with Sara’s family, and it was great. I’ve never seen the girl smile so much – it made my face hurt just trying to keep up! We had such a good time I’d take her back next weekend if it were that easy. Nonetheless, now we’ve only got two weeks until we fly up to Michigan so that she can meet my family – it should be a lot of fun. All I can hope for is that she feels as comfortable with my family as I did with hers…but more on that later!

Right now it’s very, very, VERY late…

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Ok, maybe not normally, but because of the fact that I have to be up at 3am, it becomes very-cubed late by default.

I probably shouldn’t even be typing this right now, as I should be in bed trying to capture whatever moments of sleep that I can, but I’m not.

I hope I’m not too much of a grouch tomorrow morning – that would be a lousy way to make a first impression on Sara’s parents!

I think once we get moving and start touring around New York City, though, it’ll all fade away, at least for a while.

I’m not sure if I’ll have any time to post while we’re up there, but I’ll at least be doing some moblogging from the city, so keep an eye on that for some interesting sights!

Goodnight…

Revisiting Downtown Disney…

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(Ok, so this post is actually referencing our Saturday trip to Disney’s vacation kingdom – I’m just a little behind!)

Yeah – we spent Saturday evening over at Downtown Disney pretty much doing exactly what the aforementioned post describes. We shopped and got some gifts for our trip up to New York in a few days, we spent a good healthy chunk of change on candy at Goofy’s Candy Co. (best chocolate-covered strawberries ever!), and culminated the evening with a bit of Clerks 2. We ended up really lucking out because it had been raining pretty much all day with no signs of stopping through the weekend, but magically it all stopped by the time we pulled in the parking lot and we never needed the umbrella that got left in the car once! Talk about luck.

Some notable points…

Too Many People / Too Many Grouchy & Rude People
The evening actually gave me a couple of really good topics for articles that I just haven’t gotten around to writing yet, the first of which being that basically, people in large groups are unbelievably rude these days. Granted, there were a ton of people there for a hot summer’s weekend night in July – as noted by how long it took just for us to find a freaking parking spot – but I still couldn’t believe how grumpy people could be! I mean, I know you’re hot and you’re tired and it’s been a really long day, but you’re at Disney World – deal with it! I have a little rule that I adopted that says you’re not allowed to be in a bad mood while you’re on vacation – period. It’s ok to rant a little here and there (which I do), but when you’re letting your grumpiness affect everyone else’s experience around you, that’s when it’s time for a nap.

I could go on and on, but I’ll save it for the column which’ll hopefully get done tomorrow night. My last request, though – two little words: “Excuse me.” That’s all I have to say…

Food Stuffs
I couldn’t remember food costing so much more than the standard Disney fare down there, but we didn’t want to wait for Planet Hollywood so we ended up going to the Earl of Sandwich instead. The menu sounded intriguing and I thought I was getting something that would be pretty cool (Hawaiian BBQ Ham), but the sandwich itself just left something to be desired. I typically hold even the counter service at Disney a step above your normal fast food just because you’re paying twenty bucks for two people instead of ten, but I’m just not all that impressed when I leave seriously thinking that I could do the same at home.

We also split a frosted sprinkle-covered brownie that looked a lot better than it really was – replicable with a can of Duncan Hines frosting and an Easy Bake Oven. Did maybe we just catch Earl on a bad night???

Candy
Now this was where my attitude perked up just a bit! I ended up going this one alone because Sara stayed back to find our seats at the theater and take a load off, and that’s not always the best idea because it’s very easy for me to get carried away in the candy shops of Walt Disney World! An assorted box of fudge, bags of jelly beans and chocolate-covered raisins, three chocolate covered strawberries and two Mickey Mouse peanut butter cups later, I returned to my woman with enough candy to pretty much negate any exercising that we’d actually done over the previous week. I’m not even going to tell you just how much I spent…but the peanut butter cups were delicious…

Clerks 2
And the moment that I’ve been waiting for all summer…

I don’t want to write too much here because I’m also writing up something on the movie as well, but just for the record and anyone who might want to go see the latest masterpiece of the great Kevin Smith, it was hilarious. Many know that I’m a huge fan of Kevin’s work, and this was probably his best film to date. The typical crude humor is enough to put you in the aisles with laughter, and I’m not ashamed to admit that the ending gave me that shudder of “Wow – that was good.“ that I don’t feel very often. For comparison, I felt it not long ago with Cars, but before then was probably Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Hands down, if you appreciate a good dirty joke…or fifty, your money will be well spent.

Also of interest, I felt compelled to pull up the box office figures to see how the flick fared and am happy to report that they landed at $9.6 million for opening weekend. While those certainly aren’t Pirates 2 numbers, this one also only cost $5 mil in production costs to make, so they’re pretty much already in the black on this one, which is good news because the film deserves to make some money on it. It’s also amusing to hear that apparently Joel Siegel (movie critic for ABC’s Good Morning America) caused quite a stink by walking out 40 minutes into the flick in a rather boisterous manner. Kevin proceeded to blog about it, then the press had a little fun, too – check out the article, then listen to the radio sound clip for even more hilarity!

A Dick in a Mustache is Still Just a Dick (from Kevin Smith’s blog, My Boring Ass Life)
http://silentbobspeaks.com/index.php?paged=4

The Opie and Anthony Show speaks with Kevin about “The Incident,” then calls a very confused Joel Siegel

Tomorrow night I’m supposed to be packing for New York, as we’ll be rising from bed promptly at 3:00am … I can hardly wait. We’ll see if I can get around to writing anything between now and then, and if not, maybe I’ll get some down time at the airport or something. Only time with tell – play safe until then…

A blog of blogs…

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So really, where would the fun be if I actually updated this thing every day, anyways?!

House
Easily my new favorite show right now, even beating out The 4400 – I think we’ve been watching at least one episode a night for the past couple of weeks – it’s kind of Sara and my’s unwind at the end of the day activity to share, and that’s certainly nice, too. Last weekend we bought the first season of DVD and so far, I certainly haven’t been disappointed! You might think that it’s the intellectual spin that keeps me interesting, but I think it’s probably just that for the most part, House is a jerk. A jerk, nonetheless, with a purpose who isn’t going to let society or process or any other interference slow him down from dealing with the problem at hand. Kind of reminds me of, well, me, and by God, we could use a few more guys like us around!

Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories
I’m finally playing the latest episode of the GTA series and I can’t tell you how happy I was to learn that Sony finally snapped out of it and released it for the PS2 (it was originally a PSP-exclusive). I bought it last weekend and have been playing it a little here, a little there, and so far I like it a lot. I always enjoyed the layout of Liberty City better than Vice City or San Andreas, so it’s kind of like returning to an old childhood town…only here I’m also running down people and keeping my ho’s in line. Good times!

Exercise
Yeah, so I really haven’t been doing too well with that lately, to the fault of my trying to do approximately 1,000,000 different things in a finite amount of time each day. This evening I did about 25 minutes on the elliptical and that’s probably the first I’ve done in over a week, so I know that I need to be doing better – it’s just a matter of making the time to do it. At this point I think I have just under two more months until my follow-up with the doctor and if I haven’t shown any improvements by then, he’s going to look at putting me on medication for my high blood pressure – I really need to make more of an effort in an attempt to avoid this. My current plan is to try doing a little every night instead of doing 45 – 60 minutes every other day, with the thinking that hopefully I can just knock out my time as soon as I get home and not have to worry about missing it anymore. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see if I can keep the schedule this time…

Stupid Cable Box
As of about last Sunday, it stopped working and I have no idea why. Worse yet, I really haven’t had any time to test it, so I don’t know if it’s just a problem with the box or if it’s actually my TV. For some reason it’s not outputting the video, but we’re still able to hear audio, so I’m hoping that just the ports on the box went bad or something. I tried hooking it up to the TV with just plain, old coax instead and got nothing, but I still want to try it on another TV altogether before I take it in to Bright House for an exchange. Cross your fingers in hopes that it’s the boxes fault!

Construction
The dude who lives directly below us has been doing massive amounts of construction…or something…lately and it’s really starting to get abnoxious! And I’m not just talking a little hammering or knocking things around here and there – consider buzz saws and saber saws and pretty much any other kinds of saws that you can think of that are really freaking loud. I had to go down and say something the other night because it was after 11pm and he was still going at it – he did apologize profusely, but at the same time had this look on his face like he was somewhat surprised that we could hear it from upstairs! My bet is still that they’re running some sort of woodshop out of their home instead of doing any remodeling, as this has been going on way too long and I didn’t really see any of that kind of mess when he opened the door, but even if that might be the case, how do you really approach something like that? I guess we’re just going to try to deal for now, but I told Sara that if it’s still going on come Christmas time, we’re going to have words… 🙁

Armadillo!
I saw an armadillo in the parking lot earlier this evening, and actually just about hit the little fella. I know it doesn’t sound like that big of a deal, but I’d never seen one before and I’ve always wanted to, so that was kind of neat. Had I not been driving, I probably would’ve made more of an attempt to moblog the event, but my luck, he’d end up being an overly-aggressive armadillo and I’d end up making the headlines for Guy Was Too Focused on Posting to His Website and Tried to Approach an Armadillo That Didn’t Want to be Approached. Oh well – maybe next time.

Disney
Sara and I will be going over to Downtown Disney sometime undetermined at this point so that we can get gifts to take up to New York next week. I look forward to showing her the LEGO store, finding some new refrigerator magnets, and hopefully seeing Clerks 2 at the theater.

Speaking of New York…
Exactly one week from now, we’ll be up in New York state visiting Sara’s family, which I’m both excited and a little nervous for…and I think this is normal. They sound like good people, senses of humor and all, so hopefully that awkward apprehension that comes from meeting your girlfriend’s parents will pass quickly and we’ll be able to just kick back and have a good time. It’ll kind of be like Meet the Parents, except hopefully without any references to nipples. Now that would be awkward!

Also, we’re flying into New York City and spending the day touring and whatnot, and since it’ll be my first time ever in the city, I’m pretty excited about that. I really didn’t have any preference to what we saw, so I’m pretty much leaving it to Sara and her Dad to do the leading – should make for some interesting moblogging!

And Also Along the Lines of Traveling…
It has been confirmed that we’re going to be able to make the trip up to Michigan for my Grandparents 60th wedding aniversary / luau, which we’re both pretty excited about. Since I’m going to meet her family this summer, it seemed only fair that she get to do the same with my crazy bunch and what better reason to make the trip up? (Well, except for Lori’s wedding, that is, but it was a little early at that point!) We’ll only be in town for a couple of days – pretty much just a day at the luau and then the other day spent doing something with my Mom, but I’m looking forward to introducing Sara to my family and letting them see in person just why I’ve been so happy lately…at least as far as relationships are concerned!

Anywho, that should be enough updates to tide you over for one night. I’s going to bed now… :O

stupid stuff…

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So it seems like Sara and I have been arguing a lot lately, mostly over what seems to be stupid stuff in retrospect. You know the kind of fight – where you both raise your voices and point fingers, and then feel like shit about fifteen minutes later after the other person leaves the room. Those arguments where you feel like you’re dealing with a tremendously important concern at the time, but really it’s just small beans that, for some reason, you’ve decided to rant about simply for the sake of getting another’s goat. It’s not really that important, but it is, and yet, no – not really. Just let it go already…

I think stress in general is a lot to blame for it; stress, and change in general. She’s now been officially living here for just under a month, and over two in reality, and that’s still a lot to take on for a guy who’s never really lived with anybody before, much less held a relationship that’s lasted out much longer than what we’ve got going now. Don’t get me wrong – I have no doubts that we’re going to make it — this is the best relationship I’ve ever been in and I couldn’t imagine it all going away tomorrow. We keep telling ourselves that these are just the growing pains that people go through when they do this thing, but that doesn’t make it any easier when the rifts actually take place. Ugh.

I need to go buy a rose now…

An unexpected quote…

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Sara: Hey, guess what – I found out how to make lesbians!

(back story – Sara’s writing a research paper for her psychology class on the origin of sexual orientation … so yeah, I’ve been hearing all sorts of “interesting” theories for why people are gay or bisexual all day…)