Just thought I'd drop a note here.
-= Part 1: The Weekend =-
-= Saturday =-
Saturday my parents and sister came into town to do family photos. The kiddos behaved about as well as kids can when you're asking them to stand in the same place for 5 minutes. Had to let the lil little one run around a little bit when he started doing the 'I know you want to hold me , but I don't want to be held so I'm going to arch my back and contort my body as much as possible so you don't get the satisfaction of me being held' thing.
After the photo shoot, the parents dropped by the house. The Mrs and I took the opportunity to go out and get lunch and run around. We ate at Crazy Burritos which was pretty tasty. My lunch special shrimp fajitas (for $6.75 no less) was awesome. I'd certainly go there again just for that. After that we hit a consignment place that Mrs wanted to go to. There wasn't much there (other than some used carseats. I guess they didn't get the memo on it being illegal to resale used carseats.) After that we attempted to go to Goodwill, however there literally were no parking spots. It's on a corner and there literally are 4 parking spots for the store... two of which are handicapped. There was also no parking on the street around the store. I'm not sure how they expect anyone to shop there. :-/ After that we got some ice cream at a place called Old Farmhouse I think. It just recently opened. I got Peach and it was fresh and tasty.
After that fun, we came back to the house and attempted to tackle the basement. When we moved, we took a TON of stuff to my sister's house. So, lately, when she's visitd shes broght back a box or ten and it was soon becoming clear that we were going to run out of room. So, we decided that it might be time to unclutter our stuff and make some 'DONATE' and 'GARAGE SALE' piles. We really did get threw quite a bit which was nice. I let go of quite a few things, which for me is hard since I feel like I'm a border-line hoarder at times. I like things. Collections of things. Things that might be useful (and sometimes they are). But does one really need 5 extra keyboards? Does one really need those VHS tapes with three episodes of 'Behind the Music' on each of them? No. Not really. I have hung on to alot of stuff that honestly, I just don't need and that likely will not be of any use any time soon.
-= Sunday =-
Sunday I got to vacuum the whole house.
I also got to hang out with Ian. We went and ate at the Rusty Bucket in Worthington. It was tasty. We both got an order of the deep fried pickles. They were tasty, but the volume was a bit much. I got their coney platter which had two dogs covered in chili, cheese, onions and mustard (I told them to hold the sweet relish since I'm not a huge sweet relish fan... i like dill relish... not sweet relish) and some fries. It was a bit much. Ugh. I could have done without the second dog. The chili dogs were pretty much the cheapest thing on the menu at nearly $8. I'm a cheap-skate, so paying anymore than $6 makes me cringe unless it is REALLY good. This was not really good. Good. But not really good. I think my Pepsi was like $2.75. I should have just had water. Maybe then my bill for just me wouldn't have been $20 (another thing that makes me cringe).
After that we headed up to the OSU campus. After driving over one of the many bottles left in the gutter by one of the many college students (the tire was fine), we went to Used Kids. It feels like one of the few things that I can still recognize since I've been there. The Buckeye Donuts shop had a complete facelife. The Arbys and Stop n Rob have been bulldozed and replaced with a CVS. The Bike Source and Jousters bar have been bulldozed and replaced with a giant BW3s (which means one of the original BW3s places has been... bulldozed or facelifted. South Campus with all of its bars was bulldozed and now houses a whole complex of eateries, a theater and who knows what else. Even Used Kids techincally has changed. It was in the basement, but they had a fire some time after I left and had to relocate next door, to the second floor where there used to be a place called 'World Records' but that happened a while a go. 2000 maybe?
I'm rambling.
Anyways, we rooted around in the $3 CD and $1 record bins. I ended up with a Walter (Wendy) Carlos album where s/he covered various, random things that supposedly people requested... everything from Tchaikovsky to the Beatles. I also ended up with two double albums of music from some older MGM musicals. I'm not exactly sure why I bought them right now. I'm sure they will be among the first things to be put into the 'gone' pile when I finally get all the records in the house and start purging that collection. Maybe it's cause I felt bad about only spending $1. I like Used Kids. They have a crap load of crap there and that place has been an institution on campus since... who knows when (probably either in late 60s or early 70s). With the resurgence in vinyl, I guess I feel like making sure they place stays open for people to rediscover music from way back when vinyl wasn't just a 'retro-cool' thing but one of the main forms of distributing music.
-= Part 2: Addiction =-
So, after I got back from hanging out with Ian, I played with the kids and ate some dinner. Both of them had been up since early that morning, so by 7:30pm, they were both in meltdown mode and we put them to bed. Luckily, both of them went down somewhat nicely. One of them was convinced that we absolutely HAD TO go outside to hunt for treasure and repeatedly told us so for about 20 minutes before she was informed it was ABSOLUTELY time for bed. She whined and cried and hen crashed in a matter of minutes.
So, I went downstairs and rummaged through a couple more boxes.
And then I played my new addiction. A game called "The Movies". It's from 2005. I got it for $5 from Half Priced Books. You basically run a movie studio; hiring actors and directors, building movie sets, maintaining the studio grounds, trying to keep the actors and directors egos in check, trying to make sure that they all dont become alcoholics (seriously, that's part of the game). It was widely anticipated but from what I understand, people were disappointed with the game play or something. Anyways, most people now use it for making these weird movies that you can actually make in the game (something called Machinima. I was thinking about buying it for the wife when it first came out, since she's a big movie buff, but at the time her computer would have pretty much melted down if I would have tried to install this game on it.
Anyhoo... after I bought it, it took a few weeks to finally install it. On my machine first, of course. At first, I had a hard time... but I didn't read the directions either. D'oh. After I figured it out, I was off. After dorking around with it for THREE HOURS the first night. I came upstairs and told the wife how much fun it was and then declared 'that game is a such time sucker'. To me, that means it's a game that you can sit down with every intention of playing for 'just a few minutes' and the next thing you know it's 3 hours later. That's kinda what happened last night. It was 8:30 and I was going to just play a little while also working on another project from the wife. The next thing I know, it's 11:30 and my mouse clicking figure is stuff and my eyes are burning because I've been so intently watching the screen. It didn't help that I just hired a whole mess of actors/actresses and directors, had like 3 movies in production at one, and they were all getting bent out of shape and drinking and complaining that their entourage wasn't big enough or their trailer wasn't nice enough and blah blah blah and red lights going off everywhere and.... you get the picture.
It's a time sucker. And I enjoy it. I had a hard time, even at midnight, getting to sleep because my brain was actively thinking about what strategy I could use on my next game. I haven't even finished the first one yet! Actually, the game is open ended, but I figure when the year 2000 rolls around (It starts in the 20s... I'm currently in the late 70s) I'm sure that I'll probably start anew at that point. Maybe I'll hire fewer people and concentrate on building more sets (a current problem is movies using the same sets and blocking each other). Maybe I'll be 'Actor-land' so that I can keep track of the trailers better (currently they are strewn all about and it's nearly impossible to find a star's trailer when they need to be put into time out). Maybe I need to focus more on their entourages. Maybe I should use the custom scrip writing office earlier in the game and that could help me avoid issues with the same sets being used over and over again.
Anyways... that's all I have to say about that.
No comments:
Post a Comment