Twitter is down.

How do I tweet about this?

Post from Phone (this may not work)

The Lovely Jenny is on vacation all week, so I've been on my own here. Some quick thoughts:

Pro: I can stretch out in the middle of the bed!
Con: I'm the only one in it.

Pro: I can leave my stuff lying around upstairs without worrying about it being moved ('cleaned up').
Con: I have to clean it all up.

Pro: All the string cheese is mine!
Con: I'm almost out of string cheese.

Pro: I know how to take care of the fish now.
Con: I don't think they like me. They don't say much, but I can tell...

Con: I didn't get to sit on the beach with her, watching the ocean all day.
Pro: I visited my grandma on her 90th birthday after work, and she was surprisingly lucid and upbeat.

I won that last one.

*Edited in-browser next day, because I can't leave well enough alone.

Gaming.

So my newly upgraded PC has led me astray from LotRO and into other games that I didn't think I'd realistically be able to run... in my lifetime. My PC budget is basically $zero, so I was lucky to pick up our friend Haley's old PC for $150, which is more than $zero, but still a good buy. This PC killed not one, not two, but three hard drives, so I'm expecting a crash at any time, but I can live with that.

I actually gutted that computer, along with my old one and the lovely Jenny's, and used all the bits to cobble together two new computers. I'm now running an Intel Quad-core at 2.5GHz with, somehow, 3.25GB RAM and my ATI HD 4870. Jenny is now running, in a different case, basically what was my old rig. An AMD 4000+ with a Gig of RAM and the NVIDIA whatever-it-was video card from Haley's comp. I'm no good with NVIDIA. Dunno what it was, but it was a massive step up from the ATI 1350 she had before, as is the RAM and CPU.

So now I can finally run games like Assassin's Creed II and GTA IV, and she can finally play games like Spore and The Sims 3, and can max out LotRO. And let me tell you: Assassin's Creed II alone was worth the upgrade. Seriously, that game is fucking amazing. I'm pretty much done with it now, in that all that's left to 100% completion is finishing all the annoying races, and I'm thinking about starting a new game to play it all over again. I've been playing GTA IV at the same time, but fuck that game. So far, it's not as fun as GTA San Andreas. Massive disappointment. I mean, it's good, but nowhere near as good as I expected. Instead of diving into it after finishing AC2 before returning to LotRO, I'm probably going to go back to LotRO and keep playing GTA on the side. I miss my Champion...

Never pay full price.

Steam is in the midst of a summer sale, and this is what I wait for. I can't remember ever paying full price for a PC game, except for the occasional retail bargain, like a boxed Painkiller trilogy or Half-Life 1 compilation. This week I nabbed the Grand Theft Auto IV complete pack for ten bucks, Assassin's Creed II for less than seven, and Bully for three and change. That's three full AAA games plus two expansions for the price of four Arby's value meals. I win.

I've got something like sixty games on Steam now, all but a handful purchased while on sale for a deep discount. Risen, a game I really, really want, is on sale today at 66% off. That still puts it at a little over ten dollars, so I passed. Discipline is the name of the game with Steam.

In other news, the lovely Jenny got a job with my company today, and she starts tomorrow. This is awesome. We'll be on the same sleep schedule now, and can carpool, saving tons of money on gas I won't spend on my 19-year old Explorer, since we'll take her Accord. And we can eat lunch together every day (double bonus points). Well, every day that I'm not out of town or on a PM, which is most days (minus 50% on double point bonus). Still, it will up our combined income hugely (financial stress level minus 60%). And I won't have to sweat in the heat all day and then drive home in a truck without air conditioning that's been sitting in the sun all day long (endurance level increased 50%).

On the downside, it's critical that we get her Accord serviced ASAP for all the warning lights that have been coming on lately, and I have no idea what repairs they might require. But that should be an affordable expense once she gets settled. Probably.

New mouse. This is big news.

About a month ago my mouse died. I loved that mouse. I even blogged about it. I bought it on my birthday, three years ago. Since its untimely death I've been using this cast-off, HP-branded piece of shit I dug out of a bin full of old computer cables. I hate it. I mean, it works, but its DPI is incredibly low, it's uncomfortable, it's ugly, and its cable is too short. Well, today is a new day.

I bought this thing tonight at Kmart. At $20, it's clearly the cheapest laser mouse you can possibly buy at retail. But it was there, so I bought it. And it ain't half bad. I mean, it's slightly too small for my hand, and somehow the DPI toggle button below the wheel keeps getting hit even when I don't actually click it, but I've had far worse mice. It's relatively comfortable, looks sharp, and the nicely clicky scroll-wheel glows red all the time. They had a purple one, but I went with red, because that's how I roll, motherfuckers.

You see, this is what Twitter has done to my blog. I'm on Twitter constantly now, so there's not much left to blog about. Twitter.com/Maladhros, for the record.

Another family crisis (getting good at this).

Just when things seemed to be getting back to normal, it's another trip to the hospital. My dad called me from work Friday afternoon with severe abdominal pain. He's still trying to recover from Miller-Fisher syndrome, an incredibly rare neurological disease that almost killed him last October, so I had no idea what to think, I just dropped everything and drove to midtown.

Wheeled him in an office chair to the car, because he couldn't stand, and drove to the ER. Turns out he had an "incarcerated inguinal hernia." Rushed to emergency surgery. Lots of doom-and-gloom, worst case information from the surgeon. Imminent-death sort of talk. Scariest two hours of my life. Then he came out of surgery with a best-possible outcome. The next morning he was cleared to go home. My personal life expectancy dropped one month due to stress.

The Lovely Jenny went above and beyond this weekend. She was there for my dad, and she was there for me. Genuinely my personal hero. In less than a year, I've dealt with my mother having multiple surgeries, including a double-mastectomy and the complications that arose from that, my dad being ambushed by Miller-Fisher and almost dying from it, and now this severe hernia. Jenny has helped me and my parents through it all. And meanwhile, her own aunt died of cancer and both her grandparents have been hospitalized, for a stroke in one case. She is officially the best person who ever lived.

Bored. Uploading screenshots.

Kwali and Arahwen farming at night. The sun is overrated.

Fendic arrives at Elrond's pad. Took a nap, moved on to Eregion.

Aurrok is trying, but Nalshara appears to be pointing at a distant rock.

Double flirt! Maethur and Ahryslan share a moment between kills.

I'm more online. That's a thing now.

So I'm on Twitter now. I still have absolutely no interest in creating a Facebook account, so I might as well do this Twitter thing. I found myself following multiple people/organizations on Twitter, so I figured it would be easier to just make an account and follow them so I can track everything at once. This is mostly regarding sports, particularly the Memphis Grizzlies and Tigers. But it also allows me to enter Turbine's Twitter LotRO contests, and gives me a link when commenting on Casual Stroll to Mordor articles, so I made my Twitter account LotRO-centric. My name on there is Maladhros, my main character's name.

So, whatever. Follow me at twitter.com/Maladhros. Or don't. I don't have any followers, which is fine. I just want to reply to people and track tweets. I hate that I just wrote that, but really, you kinda have to these days. I have a basic (meaning slow) data plan for my cell phone now, and that's where Twitter really shines when I'm trying to keep up with what's going on, particularly when I'm at work.

In other me-centric news, I went the whole weekend without logging into LotRO. I wanted a break from the complexity of all those characters with all that stuff to do with all those people in my new kinship, so I re-downloaded Call of Duty: Modern Warfare on Steam and spent my spare weekend time shootin' at crap instead of swingin' axes at crap. Really felt a need to get back to my FPS roots. And I was busy this weekend. Mowed the front yard, did an epic amount of laundry, went shopping like three times. Watched The Matrix. So it was easier to just jump into an FPS and kill dudes for a few minutes. LotRO is fantastic, but you have to set aside more than just a couple minutes here and there to play it.

That's really one of my only major criticisms... Well done, Turbine.

Busy elf.

In lieu of doing any actual leveling progression in LotRO this week, I've been taking my level 50 elf Champion Maladhros out to grind some deeds. I killed 150 trolls in the Lone Lands, all in one go, for Troll Slayer 1 and 2. The next night, I did the whole Quick Post run and Shire Brewmaster to complete Shire quests. Then I traveled to the North Downs and killed 70-something goblins in Dol Dinen for something I don't even remember, and found three or four points-of-interest for two more deeds.

Delivering what is probably really unimportant Hobbit-mail

I also completed two tiers of sickle-fly slaying in the Bree-lands and three deeds in the Old Forest: found all those Ent-wife flowers, finished the POI deed, and killed 40 Huorns. Quick aside: I still have Head-butt traited and slotted on my level 33 Dwarf Guardian Aurrok, and I always try to finish off trees with it. Just so I can head-butt a tree to death. Also, even with the map, I still get lost in the Old Forest all the time. I think it's great.

Bears like glowy, blurry areas. I learned that watching Survivorman.

Next night, I rode back to the North Downs and killed 50 Drakes and something like 260 Worms. I was going to just work a little on Worm-slayer, but I got carried away and finished it and went ahead and did Enmity of the Drakes*. In all, I leveled up six or seven virtues (three slotted) and earned one race trait, plus I finished two class traits in the process, even though I was only fighting grey mobs.

Added bonus: I looted absolutely everything. Vendored the trash I picked up in the Drake/Worm run alone for just shy of 2 gold. That'll help offset the 5G I spent on the Mathom Society horse last week. And the 5G I spend on the same horse for my level 47 Hunter, Maethur. And the 4G I spend on the Bree rep horse for Aurrok. It's a lot of money for just horses, but I want all four of my active characters to have a 250-morale mount. Kwali, my 41 Rune-Keeper, got his 250-morale goat through the Ale Association last year during the Fall Festival.

Then I bought the Steed of Night for Mal, so. Yeah. I did. I still like the Mathom horse, but I wouldn't have bought it if I'd known I was weak enough to buy that stupid damn Steed of Night. Jenny bought one, too. We actually had to buy points (double bonus point sale) for her to afford it. So well done, Turbine. You put it on sale before pulling it from the store again, and we spent twenty bucks on points to afford it. Are you happy now?

Anyway. My only other character is a level 23 Hobbit Burglar. I'm not leveling him because I don't like the class and I'm hanging onto him for the name until I roll another Hobbit. But he isn't totally inactive. I've been fooling around with him, swimming rivers from border to border, killing low-level mobs for cosmetic drops, stuff like that. Just running around Middle Earth goofing off, because I don't have anything to really do with him.

Has anyone ever farmed here? I mean, ever?

So I decided to do something really fun. I rode, on his slow starter pony, from Celondim in Ered Luin to the Last Bridge at the edge of the Lone Lands. The plan was to see if I could get him to Moria. But first I think I'm going to send him some silver, ride him back to Hengstacer Farms, and buy a standard mount (+62% speed, I don't want to try this on the old +32% slow pony). Since he's a burg, it'll obviously be the bay pony.

*Going back to the race trait slayer deeds... Drakes? Really? Race of Man has wights, hillmen, and wargs. Not too difficult. Dwarves have goblins (not orcs... goblins), trolls, and dourhands. Even easier. Hobbits have to kill wolves, spiders, and goblins. That's a walk in the park. But elves? What the fuck, man? Goblins, orcs, and drakes? We have to kill friggin' dragons? I don't care if the ones in Ram Duath were grey, those big ones beat me up. I didn't die or anything, but I had to stalk them and get them away from the worms before attacking them. Took forever, and that was only for Enmity of the Drakes ONE.

/rant

It was a fun couple of days, really, and I'm not finished. Still two or three left in the Shire, and then I start on Evendim and the Trollshaws. See you on Meneldor.

Beyond Black Mesa

This is just something all Half-Life fans have to see. It's a short film based in the Half-Life world, after the Black Mesa incident but before the events of Half-Life 2. It's eleven minutes of awesome.

Over the years, Valve has continually turned down offers to buy the film rights to their signature franchise, and with good reason. I think of this as just a glimpse of what could be made if the film was in the hands of people who really cared.

I'm not going to embed it here. Hit the link, and watch it full-screen at 720.

http://beyondblackmesa.com/

Blake Griffin might be Superman.

I'm not kidding. This is getting ridiculous. I'm not a Clips fan, I mean, who is (really)? I mean, there's this video. There are several dunks in this reel that I have never seen anyone do before, ever. And it's only from the first two months of his career.

Now I want you to watch this one. It's his 47-point on 24-shot humiliation of the admittedly-terrible Pacers.

Total number of dunks: one. On a team rebound broken play (ok, Griffin broke it, he got stripped). Point is, he doesn't have to kill you in the no-charge zone. He can kill you on fade-aways and wild, double-clutch layups, just about anything but three-pointers.

Don't even call him Blake Griffin anymore, you might as well start calling him Clark Kent.

Opposites attract.

Tonight Jenny came home from school all wound up, for some reason, like a Jack Russell on speed. I'm trying to wind down. As she was (rapidly) talking, I leaned back in my chair and started this song:

She paused, and said, "We're like complete opposites right now."

Can't really argue with that, but I wouldn't change it for the world.

I'm in pain.

Like the title says, I'm in pain. My teeth hurt, and I can't do anything about it. It's actually pretty bad. Painkillers are running through my system, as are about eight beers, so I can only imagine how bad the pain really is. It's a combination of wisdom teeth that should have been pulled ten years ago and just plain old broken, rotting teeth. It happens to all of us, but most of us, these days, have either extra income or dental insurance to take care of this kind of thing. I don't. In Galapagos, Kurt Vonnegut asked, "What chain of events in evolution should we thank for our mouthfuls of rotting crockery"?

It's a good question. Our mouths just don't work properly, do they? Even with all our knowledge of tooth care and modern dentistry, orthodontics, periodontics, and other -dontics that I'm not aware of, we all end up toothless, eventually. Our teeth are evolutionary casualties of all the other stuff we upright bipedal primates got right. We have binocular vision, we have opposable thumbs, we can walk upright for, well, our whole lives, we can reason and empathize and invent civilization (and, eventually, Civilization, the digital simulation of civilization). But we're stuck with teeth that fall, inevitably, inexorably, into a painful fucking mouthful of rotting crockery.

I only read Galapagos once, when I was on a Vonnegut bender a few years ago, and I barely remember the book. But that one phrase, "rotting crockery," lodged itself into my head. It's just the perfect description, isn't it? It floats back into my consciousness whenever my teeth start hurting again, which is fairly often.

Look, I'm no martyr. I want to get 'em fixed, but I don't have the means. The extra money we just don't have, we're paycheck-to-paycheck around here. We have insurance at work, but it's a group plan. We needed one more person for it, for at least a little coverage. $1,000 per year for something like $20 per 90 days. But my retard roommate Richard (who I work with and is in fact the way I found out about the job in the first place two years ago and I don't know to this day if I should be grateful or burn him in effigy for putting me at that place) didn't want to pay it, because he gets his own dental work done at a local fucking dental college for a bargain. And then he wants to gripe -- endlessly and repeatedly -- about how awful they are and how long it takes.

This is my life.

So I'm sitting here unable to sleep on Thanksgiving night because my teeth feel like they're trying to wrench themselves free of my skull to do, I don't know what, put on a musical production about making me miserable and unable to enjoy my turkey (had no problem with dressing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, or green bean casserole) or something equally fucking stupid.

I'm going to watch another episode of Dexter and try to ignore the pain for another hour. Then I'll watch another one. Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Please give thanks for all your loved ones and whatnot, and be thankful your rotting crockery has a professional looking after it. I wish mine did.

Here's a belated movie review.

So tonight I finally got around to watching Zodiac, which I've put off for a couple weeks. I'm normally pretty vigilant about clearing out our one-disc Netflix queue, but the last few weeks have been hectic, to put it mildly. With my mom in and out of the hospital (mostly in), my schedule has been all kinds of fucked, and I'm a creature of routine. It's a long movie, and I didn't want to commit to it.

Anyway, I finally watched it, and yes, it's very long. Overly long, in fact. Like all David Fincher movies, I liked it, but good god, it is long. 158 minutes long. Like the actual Zodiac investigation, the film sort of peters out from a great start and goes nowhere for awhile. Then is does some stuff, which you think will go somewhere (again, like the true story), but it doesn't. Then some things kind of start to happen, but don't really, and then it's over. Finally. There's historical accuracy, and there's entertainment, and the two don't mesh when you make sure your movie is as dull as the fifteen years the case it's based on was dead.

Again: very good and entertaining for about an hour. After that, not so much. I love Fincher's movies, but I haven't seen the even longer Benjamin Button, or that new Facebook movie that I just realized this afternoon he directed (why didn't I know that? He's one of my favorite directors...). But this is not a good precedent. Zodiac is highly recommended by the Flyer's Chris Herrington, who I consider a go-to local reporter for both film and Griz news, but he must have much more patience than I if he didn't mourn the death of the nearly three hours of his life he spent waiting for Zodiac to reach its inevitable, unsatisfying end.

Oh, okay, I'll find something positive here. The acting is uniformly excellent, with a lot of "hey it's that guy" actors turning up and doing a fantastic job. Jake Gyllenhaal (I had to look him up to spell that fucking name right), Mark Ruffalo, and Brian Cox were, as usual, fantastic. Anthony "Stop calling me Goose" Edwards turned up unexpectedly, and was terrific despite the awful, awful wig they put on him. The Howard Shore score is so low-key that I didn't even notice it, but the more memorable soundtrack was perfectly selected. And they did a great job setting the film in the late sixties/early seventies. I'm getting nostalgic about the seventies in my old age (I just turned 34; holy shit I'm 34 now), and I love movies set or, even better, filmed in the seventies and early eighties. It was a weird time with weird fashions and decor. I want my future kids to know how bizarre my childhood was compared to today.

So, on a scale of Buy, Rent, or Don't bother, Zodiac gets a Rent. That's what I did.

Your mom's birthday is coming up.

The Lovely has gone berserk with the crafting lately, digging through her boxes and boxes of beads, strings, jewels, and whatnot. Suddenly she has dozens of hand-crafted jewelery... things. I don't know how she does it, I'm just sitting here playing Half-Life, and I look over and boom! Three more pairs of earrings or a necklace or bracelet or something.

The best part is, she's made a new blog where you can see it all and even friggin' buy it! Want a jade colored necklace with a genuine bone Shiva carving? She's got it. Suddenly realizing that you need some silver and black earrings for... baseball practice or whatever? No problem. Jenny's hand-made jewelery is perfect for any occasion: court hearings, Christmas, Civil War reenactments, grocery shopping, Arbor Day, she has you covered.

Check out River Rock Jewelry and buy some kickass custom jewelery today. You'll find something you like, or my name ain't Nathan Arizona!

LeBron James says "ME!" really, really loudly.

I hope the Miami Heat miss the playoffs for the next decade or so. And I hope they win an NBA Championship exactly one year after James, Wade, Bosh, and Riley retire.

See, I have nothing against the Heat or their fans. I just really, really hate it when a bunch of players individually decide to join up on some random franchise solely to win a title or three. It's the absolute antithesis of team sports. They don't give a good goddamn about the Miami Heat any more than Bosh gives a shit about Canada. If Memphis had better winter weather and a larger television audience (and tons of salary cap space) they would have signed here. It would have had nothing to do with the Grizzlies, it would only be about where these three egos could go to win themselves some rings. The team doesn't matter.

It's the same reason I was sickened when Malone and Payton took, on their scale, pennies to play with Bryant and O'Neal in Los Angeles a few years ago. They weren't just bandwagon-jumping, they were influencing the balance of the league for self-advancement. Karma caught up with them by pointing a sniper rifle at Malone's knee during the playoffs, and the league was turned right-side up. I was thrilled.

Now it's happening again, only worse. These aren't aging stars trying to add a championship to their already-Hall of Fame legacies. It's three superstars in their prime, aided by a prima donna GM/coach, forming a Velvet Revolver-esque supergroup just to fuck with everyone else in the league. Well, fuck you, too.

Dynasties aren't supposed to be born this way. The New York Yankees way. That's fucked up. It's why everyone is screaming for MLB to do something, anything, to restore parity before baseball turns into the NHL, which, slowly but surely, it is. Dynasties are traditionally born of franchises with passionate fans who build teams the right way for years and years. They recruit players who want to be great and who believe in A. the team, and B. the franchise. Players who want to contribute to the legacy of, say, the Celtics, the 49'ers, the Packers, whoever.

Evidently that's not how it works anymore. Now, we have players who believe most of all in the overwhelming need to advance themselves and their individual agendas. Players who buy hour-long infomercials on ESPN to showcase... what, exactly? Themselves? Yes. Themselves. "Look at me! I'm going to win a championship! What? Oh, in Miami. Why, does that matter?"

I still remember my Blogger password. Neat!

It's Father's Day, but I'm broke so I called my dad to tell him I'll take him out for dinner next weekend when I'll have a small amount of disposable income. But he didn't hear the phone ring, so I left a message saying, basically, gimme a shout. He did a few hours later, and I'm going to pick him up after work next Sunday to go get some awesome Italian at Garibaldi's. It's basically a neighborhood joint near the U of M, but it's friggin' sweet. He loves it, I love it, I took The Lovely Jenny there a couple weekends ago and she loves it, it's just all-around a very cool place to get a pizza or a nice plate of ravioli while watching the Tigers on TV. Can't wait for next weekend.

What else. It's been hot here, like Africa hot (Biloxi Blues reference FTW). Well over 90 degrees every damned day for weeks. The only break I've had from it at work has been driving out of town, and those jobs have been scarce. Last Wednesday I drove out to a prison a stone's throw west of Reelfoot Lake with Richard to install a new forklift battery and bring back the old, scrap battery. That was a decent day of air-conditioned truck cab, brief, beautiful views of a soon-to-be-gone lake, and random talk of our addictive MMO's (LotRO in my case, WoW in Richard's).

Tomorrow I may be sent to another prison in something called Able, TN, which is apparently a town a little ways past the Tennessee River, to do the same job. That's going to be an all-day trip, and as easy as that will be for me, I don't want to do it. Driving east on I-40 is like hypnosis for me. It's two lanes, straight as an arrow, for hours. The most boring drive on earth. Nothing to look at but lines of identical trees on both sides of the road, for mile after mile after soul-sucking mile. No curves, no hills, no nothing. Hopefully, I won't have to go alone. I could do the job alone easily. But I tried to convince my boss that another person is necessary, so I don't have to drive all the way out there and back as well. I'd rather ride back, so I can read a book and not fall asleep and plow off the road into a fucking tree.

What was I talking about?

Look, I'm going to pretend it hasn't been four months since my last post. Are we all okay with that? Yes? Good, moving on.

Today we had some hellfire and brimstone-style storms blow through the city, and because of reports of widespread flooding in Raleigh, I drove Jenny to work in my truck for her three hour shift. I decided to spend the time shopping at Poplar Plaza rather than driving back home, and that was not a great idea. Walked into Spin Street and immediately found $20 special editions of Serenity and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which I really, really wanted. I didn't need them, but it was close. I settled for a couple of used CD's. First, Live's Throwing Copper, one of those seminal Gen-X albums that I always meant to own but never got around to picking up. Sure, I could download it, but that's not the point.

Second is Lewis Black's classic live CD, The White Album. Ten years ago, when I was living in Germantown with a couple guys I worked with, we Napster'd this record, and spent night after night laughing at it while we Quake III'd the night away. I've tried to find it a number of times recently, both in record stores and with things like Soulseek. Never came close, but today there it was, for $7.99. Money well spent, my friend. I'm going to rip this fucker and put it on my cell phone so I can inappropriately laugh my way though a few days of boring, grinding work on industrial battery chargers.

So after spending a few bucks at Spin Street I spent a few more at McAlister's, where I got to meet Jenny's new manager and get a very good lunch. Then I went to Bookstar and forced myself not to buy at least a dozen books I really wanted. I've become so used to randomly finding cool books for next to nothing at places like Goodwill and Salvation Army and that used bookstore in Millington (latest buys: Band of Brothers, Life on Earth, and Harry Potter 5), that I forgot what it was like to find exactly what I want for full price. I won't list all the stuff I had to make myself put down, but the last one, Hell Hound on his Trail, was a real struggle. I stood there and read the entire first chapter. I'm not kidding.

What else. Oh, I'm loving this Netflix thing. Jenny talked me into it a couple months ago, and damn if it isn't worth the nine bucks a month. Even setting aside the fucking awesome instant, unlimited streaming of all kinds of movies and TV shows whenever we want, I'm just hooked back into renting movies again. I'd slipped into a mode of selectively buying cheap DVD's that I really wanted, which severely limited what I got to see. Now we're throwing whatever seems interesting into the queue, and with a 2 to 3-day turnaround, even getting just one disc at a time is plenty. Right now I'm watching The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Two days ago we watched Where the Wild Things Are. Next up will be Kindergarten Cop and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. It just makes having esoteric tastes for movies so simple to satisfy, and it comes wrapped in the convenience of never having to go out in public to rent something. Okay, that was a joke, since there's nowhere within 20 miles of here you can actually go to rent something in person. Seriously, every Blockbuster, Cinemagic, and Hollywood I was aware of is shuttered now, excluding the Blockbuster outlet store on Summer. That would really suck if I didn't have a Netflix subscription, which is why they're all closed in the first place. Is that good or bad?

Anyway I'm off to my new obsession, The Lord of the Rings Online. Wait. Fuck. It's three in the morning. Okay I'll play all day tomorrow. Wait. I have to go to Aldi, the awesome low-price grocery store for 70% of the stuff you need from a regular grocery store. Right, so I'll spend an hour doing that, then it's LOTRO for the rest of the day. If you need me I'll be on the Meneldor server. Don't look for me. I'll find you (creepy, but true).

Oh the weather outside is... winter.

It's been a strange Christmas season. It never really felt like Christmas for me. There's a certain Christmas feeling, that of anticipation, excitement, a lovely rosy feeling connected to light displays, well-worn songs, and the smell of pine and candles, that I never had this year. I can't explain it, because I know it's deeply connected to my childhood. But it never really clicked in me this year that it's Christmas time. It's happened before, but not for awhile.

Sure, we hung lights on the house, and yes, I had the entire week off work (using nearly all of my vacation time), and hey, it sure is cold outside. But it just felt like another week, only with giving and getting of stuff and lots of unusually heavy traffic at the grocery store. Something is missing here, and I don't know why or how I missed it.

Still, Jenny and I had a much better than average Christmas holiday. Because I took the week off and The Lovely Jenny only had to work two days of my off time and didn't have to go to school, we had ample, rewarding "us" time. I have been reminded many times over why I'm so in love with her, and didn't bother to correct my nephew Nicholas today when he said he was waiting to start a video for when my wife came back to the room. She is my wife, that's how I think of her. Just not legally, not just yet.

Also, we shopped a lot, for our friends, family, and each other, and we received even more than we bought. Tomorrow we're driving out to Tipton county for her family's Christmas deal, but even now here's our swag count:

• A big, bad Black & Decker food processor
• A whole mess of socks (his and hers)
• $650 cash*
• A $150 Walmart gift card**
• Two winter shirts for me
• An autographed Dick Vitale book (sweet!)
• Season 3 of Venture Brothers on DVD (hell yeah!)
• 600 classic cartoons 6-DVD set***
• Wireless home phone w/ answering machine and call-ID***
• Box of chocolate cordial cherries
• Refillable diffusion aromatic scent kit

* Used for new 2.1 speakers for both of our PC's, clothes for Jenny, bills, etc.
** Used for a Griz fitted cap, Star Trek 2-disc DVD, make-up, etc.
*** I bought for Jenny

It more than offsets all the stuff we bought for other people this year. It was really satisfying to be able to go out and shop for gifts without worrying too much about the cost. Easily our most giving Christmas, monetarily, in years. Here's the give list:

• Framed mini-poster for an '88 rock concert
• Tinkerbell earrings
• A home bar/mixed drinks accessory set
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince 2-disc DVD
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail special edition 2-disc DVD + extras
• Jeremiah Johnson DVD
• Good Night and Good Luck DVD
• Steamboy DVD
• A custom-made bracelet (by The Lovely)
• A big wall-hanging, bronze-looking star thing
  
• A specially selected sew-on patch

After I wrapped our gifts, Jenny hand-made awesome ribbons, bows, and tags. It doesn't mean too much to the people gleefully tearing off the paper, but it means a lot to me to know how we made their gifts look so festive. I even took a picture, and this wasn't all of it:


So, no, it didn't feel like the Christmas season I remember as a kid. But it was a good Christmas nonetheless, and it reminded me over and over of why I fell in love with Jenny. Christmas is supposed to be a special time that reminds you of all the people you care about; it's about family, and it reminded me of the little family that Jenny and I will soon be starting. And I can't wait.

O.J. to Marc.

This is the greatest pass since the invention of handing things to people.