Short version: uneventful.

Long Version: Went to work this morning. This, in and of itself, is an unexpected success.

After I posted yesterday I went off to play card games with some friends. By “card games” I don’t mean Hearts or Spades. I mean, Yetisburg. A fighting card game based on the civil war. With Yetis. There was a steep learning curve and we just barely finished one game when more people showed up and we decided to eat and watch MST3K. Then I went home.

Once home I straightened up the house a little more and sat to watch The Strangers. I got about 15 minutes in, and decided watching scary movies late at night was not a good idea. Not that I’d get too scared, but more that I’d fall asleep, and no one wants to wake up to people in creepy hoods murdering people. That’s no fun at all.

And now back around to this morning. I tried something new today. I shaved using my face soap, rather than shave cream, and found it to be surprisingly nice. When you only shave once a week, it takes almost 7 times longer to perfect the art. Imagine if you will that I am a 17 year old boy just getting the hang of not bleeding out by the end of each shaving session. Also, the bald spot I accidentally shaved into my goatee has finally filled back in. That was an embarrassing three and a half months.

Anyway, work was work. I’ll appreciate the lack of privacy on the internet and leave it at that.

Got off work late and went back to Juan’s to once again battle the North with my powerful yetis. Finally getting the swing of things we played through a couple games with an even win/loss record. It’s always good to end that way, lest there be slap fights.

I retired early to head home and spray paint air vents, so I can finally cover the two gaping holes in the living room wall. My plan to use the rest of the can to coat a 4′ x 4′ piece of plywood was shortsighted to say the least.

And that leads us right back to hear. I sign off right as Lily Allen’s “Smile (Mark Ronson Version)” which makes me want to get up and clean like a montage in a girly 80′s movie. Slightly sped up goofy scrubbing/dance sequence to follow.

Good night and good luck.

Filed under: entertainment, movies, rambling by tonybullard
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Thomas and Friends:
There’s an event in town, and all the kids are waiting for it. One train is assigned to carry the load of puppets, fireworks, ice cream, etc. Another train is jealous. Jealous train acts like a jerk and ends up wrecking. Jealous train learns lesson. The end.

You’ve now seen every episode of Thomas and friends. Congrats.

Sesame Street:
Teresa told me about this, but today I saw it with my own eyes. Theme song starts, Noah gets up to dance. He starts yelling, “Bike! Bike!” Just then, Elmo appears on a bike. Few seconds pass and he starts yelling “Car! Car!” Just then, the Grouch appears in a cab. Then it’s “Ball! Ball!” and a boy appears bouncing a ball. Noah has memorized the opening sequence of Sesame Street. he claps along with ll the kids on TV when it ends. Then he sits in his chair, and smiles for the next hour.

Not sure if this is cute, or a bad sign.

Filed under: entertainment, family, television by tonybullard
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Last weekend I watched one of my favorites movie, The Princess Bride. If you haven’t seen it, you should. The cover makes it looks like a film for 8 year old girls, but I assure you, it’s fun for all ages. And you’re missing out on some big pop culture references (My name is Inigo Montoya…)

For those of you who have seen it, you’ll know it has awesomely cheesy music, which fits the film perfectly. But with it, it has a great love theme that reappears throughout the film. but there’s a downside to this love theme.

A big downside.

Last weekend I decided to watch through the credits, to hear more of this love them, only to be greeted by these horrendous lyrics.
Come my love Ill tell you a tale
Of a boy and girl and their love story
And how he loved her oh so much
And all the charms she did possess
Now this did happen once upon a time
When things were not so complex
How he worshipped the ground she walked
And when he looked in her eyes he became obsessed
My love is like a storybook story
But its as real as the feelings I feel
My love is like a storybook story
But its as real as the feelings I feel
Its as real as the feelings I feel
This love was stronger than the powers so dark
A prince could have within his keeping
His spells to weave and steal a heart
Within her breast but only sleeping
My love is like a storybook story
But its as real as the feelings I feel
My love is like a storybook story
But its as real as the feelings I feel
Its as real as the feelings I feel
Now he said, dont you know I love you oh so much
And lay my heart at the foot of your dress?
She said, dont you know that these storybook loves
Always have a happy ending?
Then he swooped her up just like in the books
And on his stallion they rode away
My love is like a storybook story
But its as real as the feelings I feel
My love is like a storybook story
But its as real as the feelings I feel

These are some terrible lyrics. Worse is when you hear them to the music, where, in some cases, he has to rush the phrasing to fit all the syllables into place. Nothing ruins a good melody like trying to crush 9 words into a place that only fits 4. And while I’m not totally stuck on rhyme scheme…you should at least make the lyrics appear to be in song form.

Oh well. No movie can be perfect, and I imagine there are worse things than having the lyrics in the end credits be terrible. Say for instance, aliens that are allergic to water.

Filed under: entertainment, movies, music by tonybullard
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It’s finally happened. The greatest woman alive has become perfect. She already had intelligence. She’s already had personality. We all know she already had the looks. Now, why wonderful wife, has rounded out all these traits with the final piece of the puzzle. Now she plays video games.

I’ll start from the beginning.

Last week Valve Software announced that they would be selling “The Orange Box.” It’s a combination of three upcoming games from Valve. Half-Life 2 Episode 2, Team Fortress 2, and Portal. It also includes the previous two games from The Half-Life Series. With this pre-order, game “Peggle Extreme,” a fanciful game with unicorns and fireworks, mixed in with familiar characters from the Half-Life Series. It was an odd, awesome mix. Made me think of Burger King and Skittles commercials.

So I played through this limited version of thew game, and found myself agreeing whole-heartedly with the reviews that stated it was “one of the most addictive games ever made.” It wasn’t long until I noticed the “duel” portion of the game. I called Teresa into my room and had her sit down and play a little. At first there was the expected “this is silly” kind of comments. At the end of each level it gives you the option to play another level. I clicked it the first three times, but after the fourth game, I sat there, and waited to see what she would do. There was a second or two or silence, and then she grabbed the mouse and it “play random level.” My heart leapt.

We played for a good 45 minutes. We finally stopped and Teresa brushed it off like a one time occurrence. Then we played for another 45 minutes the next night. It quickly bought Peggle Deluxe, the full, unlimited version of the game. 10 bucks for finally being able to play video games with my wife isn’t too bad at all. We now play it nearly every night. We’ll play to whoever can get to 1 million points first. She beat me last night, I beat her tonight. The war wages on.

My only complaint about the game is that Duel Mode only lets you play levels randomly. Considering we have started to play it regularly, it would be much nicer for us to play it through the levels in order, progressing past what I’ve unlocked with single player. Other than that, it’s a solid game with plenty of replayability for only 10 bucks.

Filed under: entertainment, family, video games by tonybullard
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So let’s see what’s happening on the Noah progress meter:

He’s started training to roll over. There’s no better word for it than training. He’s not playing around, and it’s not by accident. You lay him on his rain forest play mat, and he gets this determined look on his face, shifts his weight to his left and then rolls hard to his right, getting all the way up onto his side. Then he rolls back onto his back, and does it again. He will conquer this challenge. You can see it in his eyes.

Or maybe he already has. Teresa tells me on Tuesday morning he did just that. Now, I’m of the “if it’s not on film, it didn’t happen” school, so we’ll see.

He’s begun to play with toys. We have this ring/rattle thing that he use to just hold onto, but now he will actually bring it up to his face and look at it. He stills refuses to chew on anything but his fist. Here’s hoping he doesn’t end up with lobster hands or something.

So today is the first day of our second weekend on our own together. With Teresa back at work, he’s all mine from 6:30am ’til 8pm. All I can say is, thank God we switched back to Netflix, with it’s streaming online movies. Last weekend I watched three movies a day. Thus far today we have one down. Once he feeds again I’ll throw him in the car to run some errands, and then we’ll go to the park. I’m trying to not just sit on the futon all day watching movies. But it’s tough to do much of anything with a 15 pound needy man beckoning you every few minutes. I’m very much looking forward to the days when we can actually go out and do something more than me sitting him in the stroller and imagining he’s enjoying himself.

Which reminds me of the lesson I learned: while the park that’s fifteen minutes away is super awesome, the kid sleeping in the stroller doesn’t care, and so it’s probably better to just go to the one that’s 2 minutes away.

Filed under: entertainment, family, movies, rambling by tonybullard
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American Gladiators is coming back. I remember when watching it as a kid, swearing I could do everything on there better and faster than the people competing. Perhaps now I’ll get my chance.

Filed under: entertainment, television by tonybullard
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Juan, my ever present partner in crime has gotten himself into a Smashing Pumpkins video! He’s the large Cuban guy in the black jacket and beard, “playing” guitar, often on the right side of the screen. Wait till the end for extra awesome Juan solo goodness! The player’s size kinda messes up my site. But who cares.

I’m so proud of my boy!

Filed under: entertainment, family, music, video by tonybullard
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But sort of similar: ZOMBIES!

The guys from Shaun of the Dead (and more recently Hot Fuzz) made this little Zombie Survival Guide for a show on the BBC. It’s almost half an hour, but it’s hysterical.

Filed under: entertainment, movies, video, zombies by tonybullard
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I’ve mentioned a few times by outright lust for Guitar Hero. Well, it was only made worse when my buddy Juan got GH2 for the Xbox 360. We’ve since spent at least 8 hours together making our way through the songs, getting perfects in every song on medium difficulty. By the way, Hard, is hard.

But then I come home, lay in bed awake, in a cold sweat. My fingers itch, my right hand twitches back a forth in a strumming motion. When I do finally fall asleep, I dream of buttons coming at me steadily like an army of musical bliss.

But then, from out of the darkness comes hope. An answer to those of us without expensive consoles and disposable income. Enter, Frets On Fire.

Frets on Fire is an open source Guitar Hero, well, clone really. You play it by holding your keyboard like a guitar. You use F1 through F5 as the fret buttons, and you tap the Enter key to strum. The graphics are much more basic, and the song selection is limited to what the community provides (which is actually quite a lot) but as far as relieving the jonesing…yeah, it works.

You can find Frets on Fire here. It’s only 30Megs, and comes with three songs so you can see what it’s like before having to search out more song material. It’s awesome for a completely free game.

Now I just have to figure out haw to get a strap on my keyboard.

Filed under: entertainment, internet culture, music, video games by tonybullard
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You know how when you were a kid, you’d have a friend or someone who had broken a leg, or sprained an ankle, and they had to walk around with crutches? You’d ask them if you could try them out, and you wished a little to yourself that you could have cool crutches. Well, one day that will come back to haunt you.

Today it got me in the form of a strained tendon in my left foot. I was doing something like this, only it turned out something more like this. Well, my mistake was a little more graceful, but a lot less kind to my foot. So now I’m on crutches for “5 to 7 days” according to the doctor. This’ll be fun. Can’t wait till they start picking on me at work.

On a completely other note, I had posted before about switching from Netflix to the Blockbuster Total Access Plan. So now that we’ve had it for a while, I have to say, I like it. I have a Blockbuster near by, so it’s really great. I pay for the two movies in the mail, and I get two free when I return them through the store, yeah yeah, everybody knows that. But as far as I can tell, you can get away with almost anything on this plan. Last week Strangers on a Train was like, 4 days late, so I reported it missing. Today I got two copies of it in the mail. I already had one free rental from the Blockbuster store out, but when I took the two, same movie, into the store, I got two more movies for free, and didn’t even have to bring back the other one that I had out. So today in Total, I had five movies from Blockbuster. Call me crazy, but I like this thing.

Filed under: entertainment, movies, parkour by tonybullard
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