Sept. 2nd, Labor Day!

Okay, so I planned ahead with the post for yesterday since I knew I'd be out of town/away from internet on Sunday, so I used the schedule thing on Blogger to post my post for me, but I found out today that it didn't work! I still count it as on-time, because I was done with it a full day ahead of schedule. Moving along....

Today is Labor Day, here in the USA, and since I work for the city, I get the day off! Because of this, I spent the weekend at my happy little cabin on the mountain where I was blissfully lazy and enjoyed myself immensely. My parents were already there, and the beautiful rain storms kept us mostly indoors, so we watched movies (including a ton of MacGyver episodes - a cabin staple) and I played Nintendo and read and caught up on some TV shows I had saved on my iPod. What a perfect weekend!

Anyone who's ever read anything on this blog knows that I'm a life-long Nintendo fan, especially the Zelda franchise. Even though I really love Zelda 64, I never could get into the sequel, Majora's Mask. I think there are 2 distinct reasons. The first reason is that the "prologue" takes a player, like, at least an hour to figure out (all the while paranoid they're gonna run out of time and everyone in the game will literally die) and must be played in one sitting because - reason number two - saving in the game is a bee-otch. I'd started Majora's Mask probably three times on the 64 and after the prologue and figuring out the time travel and wanting to save but not quit yet etc. etc... I was burned out before I ever even got to the first level (or temple/dungeon).
ANYWAY, at my cabin, I decided to play the emulated version of Majora's Mask on my computer, and I actually really enjoyed it! I got all the way through the first level and killed the boss, and invested a few real-world hours into the game. Then. It. Crashed. I tried to save with the program's save states, but no luck. I had to close the program and open it back up to see the damage. The damage was this: nothing was saved. Literally, it was as if the last few hours hadn't happened. I remained calm since my parents would have made fun of me for caring about a video game that much, but I felt like this:

This is a way freaky mask seller in the game when he's upset.

So, instead of ever trying the emulator to play the game again, I dug out the old N64 and the shiny gold cartridge and the best controller we have left (it's grimy and has a masking/duct tape combo holding the cord together, and the joystick is limp and sad) and brought it to my apartment to finally play the way it was meant to be played. Wish me luck! The moon is gonna kill everyone in 3 days if I don't succeed.

Coming up soon, TV show reviews and opinions, what I'm reading, and how I feel about poetry. See you tomorrow!

Sept. 1st, My Roomie's Birthday!

Ok, So here I go, kicking off another month-of-blogging thing. I've started making a list of the stuff I'll write about, and so far I have only one thing besides today.
Today is Sunday the first, and since I was a wee lad, I knew that if the first of the month fell on a Sunday, then I could look forward to a Friday the 13th. I was a strange child.

Play this video as you read the rest of this post. It will set *quite* the mood.

Well, today is my roommate's birthday, and even though he was one of the very first people I met when my family moved to our current town 11 years ago, I struggled to think of an appropriate gift.
I'm one who tries really hard to be thoughtful and fun when it comes to gift-giving (hopefully the recipients agree), but I finally came up with something. A little background:
10 year ago, in a small suburb of a small city, I was sort of new to town and my friend circle was also small. My family had a Nintendo GameCube and few games. The games that we had were largely due to the games we'd played and liked at our friend's houses. Anyway, my one friend, who is now my roommate, introduced me to a little gem called "Animal Crossing." It was a fun game with happy creatures and no real end goal. Sounds childish and boring? IT WASN'T. My brothers and I spent way too many hours over the course of several years playing that game and paying off debts to a greedy raccoon and furnishing our little houses and digging up fossils and shaking trees and running away from bees. Lots of fun.
Forward to the present, I decided a couple weeks ago that I'd make my friend a little gift-bag of Animal Crossing stuff in happy memory of the world he introduced me too. Lame? Useless? Potentially awkward? Yes, yes, and yes. But also: NOSTALGIA! I'll put up a picture of my little creation (and hopefully someone in the internet world will see it and post it to spritestitch.com and lead me to gamer-crafting glory)...

I hand-made it all! I used felt for the Fossil, Pitfall Seed, Bell (coin), and the Leaf. I crocheted the Bells Bag. Everything fits inside the bag too! I also made a letter (that I forgot to get a picture of) that looks like this:

Except it's made of paper and actually letter-sized.

I hope the gift if well-received, but regardless, I had fun making it. I wonder if I put too much effort into this kind of stuff....

Okay, Here I shall conclude the first post of 30. If you have an idea for a future post, comment below! I read every one!

Not Very Exciting News

To keep myself busy and to keep this blog from slowly dying of neglect, I've decided to once again do a "blog everyday of the month" thing, starting this Sunday the 1st. Until then, I'll try to make a [mental] list of things to blog about, but also, dear reader, take this chance to comment on possible topics for me to wow you with. My knowledge is vast and my imagination is psycho and I can make up very interesting facts if necessary. The posts may be dull, they may be repetitious, blah blah blah, but I'm doing this for funsies and for myself, I guess, and you can be a passenger along the way.
Also, my 100th post will be coming up shortly, so that should be epic, I'm sure.
Here's a video I found on YouTube. I'm not saying I love it or hate it, I'm just saying I found it on YouTube. Enjoy it if you want.

See you Sunday.

Nothing in Particular - and a Piano Piece!

Ugh, I need to write a decent post... I've had a really great (if expensive) summer, along with a few unhappy surprises, but where do I begin? I'll have to just write a few posts about the different things that happened.

So anyway, the here and now...
Summer's basically over since school has started. I'm not even in school anymore and I still feel that way.
The past week we've had plentiful rain and temperatures in the 60s even (!), so it felt like autumn had come early. I LOVE autumn so much, I was really enjoying the weather. I wore a long sleeved knit shirt, and it was so comfy.

I wrote a little ditty a few months ago, and yesterday I finally put it to pictures and posted it on YouTube. It's super short, but here you go! What do you think?

I don't know who reads my little blog, or how many, but feel free to leave comments regarding stuff I can blog about -it will help me to keep up with writing! 'Til next time.....

Moving Out!

It's been a few weeks since I've written anything here, but not that much has happened until more recently...
About two weeks ago I went to Idaho with friends to another friend's wedding. Many hours were spent in the car to get there and back, but it was fun being with the old gang just like in times of yore. The wedding was nice and I even got to be a stand-in for someone's husband who was unable to make it to the reception for photos. I mean, my face will be photoshopped out and replaced with the real guy, but NEVER will that family forget it was I who really stood with them in that picture.
After the seemingly-long weekend, I was back at work on Monday when I got a phone call from Momsie saying that Dad was in the hospital. That's never news you want to hear. I left work and met them at the ER after they'd been there for a while. The doctors were doing all sorts of ultrasounds and blood work on my dad to see what the problem was. After an entire week at the hospital and lots more tests, my dad had a pretty bad case of pancreatitis. It was also discovered that his gallbladder was to blame, so they're gonna tear that thing out one of these upcoming days.
I went to my cabin last weekend, and even though my parents were at the hospital, it was nice to be able to relax away from home. There was a bit of rain and the weather was cool. My Mom's sisters and their families were there, and it was nice to catch up. We colored psychedelic animals with fancy prismacolors and watched Watcher in the Woods, a "scary" movie disney released in 1980. It's especially fun because one of my aunts is named Nerak, so... yeah, it's a special movie.
Amid all that, I finalized plans to move into an apartment in town, and today I took the first small batch of stuff over. Being a grown-up, it's high time that I leave this nest (again). The room is a little smaller than the small room I have now, but the layout will work better for my stuff, I think. I took over my books and winter wardrobe, stuff that I won't need in the next few days. I even got a house key. I feel so independent!

Well, this short post has taken me like 3 hours to write because I get distracted too easily. I've watched part of Brother Bear, played that Candy Crush game (which makes me feel like a drug addict while waiting for more lives), ate some chips'n'dip, and even bought myself a half-birthday present - a Kindle!! Sometimes you just have to treat yo self!

As my life goes on and more adventures happen, I'll keep writing. Come back for more!

Babysitting!

My brother and his wife had their first baby about 2.5 months ago, and tonight I get to babysit!

She's such a cute little girl and not very fussy, though she started crying about 8 seconds after I took the picture. 

I hope that as she gets older she'll like some of the same stuff I do, like kid-appropriate scary movies and stuff so that she doesn't grow up to be a wuss. I'm sorry, but if a grown person says they can't watch 'Return to Oz' or 'Little Nemo' because it scared them as a kid, I just want to make fun of them. My niece will not be one of those kinds of people if I can help it!

I'll also teach her how fun it is to play tag in the dark when she's older and how to swing a feather pillow to floor her opponents. 

Anyway, she'll grow up to be awesome!

Something Wicked

I was in bed trying to sleep when I felt something on my arm. 

I flicked it away and turned on the light and saw an earwig scuttling down the side of my bed.

I'm sleeping in the guest room now.