Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Grand Theft Time

We rode over to Enterprise last night and picked up GTA: IV and Mario Kart: Wii. We had a good time. Bryan had traded in some games after hearing my success story so he and Adrienne went with us. We had dinner at Ruby Tuesday's and then went and picked up the games.

We didn't get back home until about 9:00 but of course we fired up GTA and drove around for a bit. DeAnne played for a little while and once she had caused enough mayhem she handed over the controller and I started my game. I played through about three missions and so far it seems like a souped-up version of the old GTAs. It's definitely pretty and it has some very cool features in it, but I'm hoping that after the intro missions I'll start really being blown away.

I haven't had a chance to mess with Mario Kart yet. I'm not going to let it gather dust though. Hopefully I'll get it fired up tonight or tomorrow.

Since we were in Enterprise and didn't get back til late, I didn't get to see American Idol. We have it DVR'd, but I don't know if I'm that worried about seeing "Neil Diamond Night".

It's Wednesday already. Yay!

--Paul

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

lolBlog

So the picture of the squirrel comes from a website call "I Can Has Cheezburger". They take pictures of animals, mainly cats and dogs, and put funny captions on the picture. The caption is normally made of words that are horribly misspelled. You may have heard them called lolcats or loldogs. I've just recently started reading the site. I subscribed to their feed so in the future, I may put some of them in the shared items section. The "Say Anything" squirrel just struck me as really funny though, so I put him up on the main blog section. If you ever find yourself bored, I would highly suggest that you check out the site and flip through their archives. I've seen some that will make you really LOL.

We going over to Enterprise this afternoon to pick up Mario Kart: Wii and GTA: IV. I can't wait. All the reviews for both games have been really positive. GTA: IV has especially been getting high praise from the game industry press. Everyone agrees that it's just as offensive and controversial as the previous GTA games, but that the story and production are about the best a game has ever had. I'm looking forward to seeing what all the fuss is about.

Tuesday, here we come.

--Paul

Monday, April 28, 2008

Once Again...

Once again I find myself unable to think of a good title. Sorry.

We had a good weekend this past weekend. It was a little more low-key that the last few have been and that was nice. Friday night we just stayed in and watched a movie. We watched "Atonement". It was alright. I think I liked it more than DeAnne did. It leaned more towards the artsy side of movies. I guess by now we should know that if something gets nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, it's going to be some crazy, thought-provoking movie that's not just your average here to entertain you movie.

Saturday night we hung out at Chris Ossenfort's house. He was in town helping Trey move back from Dallas and had a little get-together. It was really cool. We ate burgers, had a bonfire and played music for a while.

I want to point out the newest shared item. It's about the release date for part one of "Deathly Hallows", the last book in the Harry Potter series. They've split the book into two movies. I'm excited that they've started working on the last two movies and that they've got a release date planned for the first one, but I'm also sad that it's not coming out until 2010. I was really hoping that they would go ahead and get cracking on it as soon as they finished "Half-Blood Prince" and get the first one out next year. Oh well. They also announced the director for the two Lord of the Rings prequels, so it seems that work is going to get going on those pretty soon. Who knows when the movies will make it out though.

I'm out of time so tomorrow I'll explain the picture of the squirrel that I posted on Friday.

--Paul

Friday, April 25, 2008

Say Anything...Your Friday Movie Moment

humorous pictures
see more crazy cat pics

Woo!!!

Lost was awesome last night. This year has got to be one of the best seasons yet. It just keeps blowing me away episode after episode. Anyway, I just had to get that out of my system.

It's Friday which is always a good thing. Just a few more days to go to the release of Mario Kart and GTA. I've been splitting my time between Super Mario Galaxy and Gears of War. They're both really good games and I'm really enjoying both of them. I think the Gears single-player campaign is going to prove to be a little short but that's okay. I'll try out the multiplayer sooner or later. Probably later the way things are going with game release schedules here lately.

DeAnne and her class had a good trip to the zoo. She was pretty tired when she got home, but she said they all enjoyed it.

That's all I've got. I hope you all have a good weekend and I'll see you back here on Monday.

--Paul

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Finally

Lost is finally coming back on tonight after a month long hiatus. I'm just glad that they decided to make a few more episodes after the writers strike ended. DeAnne is even more excited than I am though. She watches Lost along with Ugly Betty and Grey's Anatomy, of which all three are coming back on starting tonight. Now if we could just get them in high-def. We can't get a good signal with an antenna and dish doesn't carry the Montgomery locals in HD yet. Hopefully they'll add them before the end of the year though. They just added Mobile and Huntsville yesterday and they already had Birmingham, so that just leaves the Montgomery market without HD locals.

That's really about all that's going on. Church got back to the normal Wednesday night routine last night. We had two weeks off from AWANA. Last week was spring break and the week before that we had revival.

DeAnne's class is going to the Montgomery zoo today for a field trip. I think she's really looking forward to it. We went to the zoo to see the Christmas lights when we first started dating, but we haven't been since then. Hopefully she'll enjoy it.

Have a good Thursday.

--Paul

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Sharing Is Fun

I wanted to talk about the new shared items I put up yesterday.

The cat5 wedding rings are just about as geek awesome as you can get. They were just to cool not to put up.

Rock Band released their first full album yesterday. I don't care that much about Judas Priest though. I'll probably get "You Got Another Thing Coming" and leave the rest.

Also, in case you didn't turn on your TV or surf the internet at all yesterday, it was Earth Day yesterday. CNet had a series of pictures released by NASA that I thought were pretty awesome. I think that most every media outlet on the face of the earth was pushing the "green" thing yesterday. I know that saving the planet is important and all, but I mean, come on. Enough is enough. Maybe one day all the hippies can elect Al Gore their president and start a colony on another planet. Then the rest of us can go back to living our lives without someone trying to make us feel guilty for walking around.

Sorry, I got off on a bit of tangent there at the end. Anyway.

I just checked and Hillary won Pennsylvania last night. I'm glad. The longer those two fight it out with each other, the better off the Republicans are. If they can make it to the DNC without a nominee, then there's no telling what kind of ugliness we'll see. Hopefully, they'll do enough damage to each other so that once there's only one of them left, McCain won't have to do much to win.

Enough of that. I better quit before I get myself into too much trouble. Have a good Wednesday.

--Paul

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

One Other Thing...

...happened this past weekend that DeAnne reminded me of last night. We were home Saturday night watching TV in the living room when we heard what sounded like screaming outside. So we both get up and go outside and start looking around and we notice that one of the cats has something in her mouth. Somehow, she had caught a young rabbit and had brought it up to the house. DeAnne got the rabbit away from the cat and it seemed to be alright, so we drove down to the end of the road where there aren't any houses and put it out in the field. After we got turned around and were coming back to the house, we spotted him running across the road a little farther up the road from where we let him out. The whole thing lasted maybe 15 minutes, but it made for a wild night.

--Paul

Monday, April 21, 2008

Another Weekend Gone

We had another good weekend and are officially sad to see it end. DeAnne is especially sad to see it end as it means that she has to go back to work after being off for a solid week. She only has a month left till summer though, so that should be some comfort to her.

On Friday we just did the usual. We got up with Bryan and Adrienne and went out to eat and then just hung out and watched movies.

Saturday was a little more interesting. Gamestop is running a special where if you pre-order either Mario Kart Wii or GTA: IV, you get a 20% bonus on anything you trade in on them. I decided that since I sold the PS2 a while back, I would trade in the majority of my PS2 games and see if I couldn't come up with enough to get GTA; IV without having to pay any cash for it. I also took a few Gamecube games I haven't played in forever and 3 Wii games that I beat and then haven't thought about since. It turns out that bringing the Wii games was a good idea because they were also offering a 20% bonus on trade-ins when you brought in 3 or more Wii games. I also signed up for their membership program which gave me another 10% bonus on my trades. So after it was all said and done, I got an extra 50% on my trades. It also turned out that a lot of the games I took were worth more than I thought they would be. When it was all over, I had $170 in store credit. I walked in just hoping to get close to $60. So I pre-ordered GTA: IV and Mario Kart Wii and got a used copy of Gears of War, which I've been wanting ever since I got the xbox. All totaled, I had to pay $20 in cash and got 3 games. I was pretty excited to say the least. I played about an hour of Gears yesterday and it was pretty amazing. I'm glad I got it.

Last night Josh and I played guitar for the evening church service. I think it's the first time I've played publicly in nearly six years. It went really well considering we had only practiced twice. I had a good time and everyone seemed to enjoy the change of pace. Hopefully we can keep playing all along.

Well, that's about got it for today. Have a good Monday and I'll see you back here tomorrow morning.

--Paul

Friday, April 18, 2008

More Randomness

Still nothing major going on to talk about. Of course, that could be a good thing. Who knows? Either way, it means that you're going to be treated to more random thoughts today.

I got back to playing Super Mario Galaxy last night. I think I'm about 1/4 of the way through. At the end of each level you get a star. I've got 24 stars now and I know that there's 120 total in the game, but I've heard that you only need 60 to be able to beat the game. I'm guess that if I keep going like I am, then I'll finish with more than 60, but I know I'm missing one or two hidden stars in each stage. I would like to be able to finish the game by the time GTA: IV comes out in a couple of weeks, but I don't know if I'll make it. It's a really good game and I don't want to rush through it just to be able to say I beat it.

I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but Butch Walker has a new live album and dvd out called Leavin' the Game on Luckie Street. You can actually download the album for free from his website or you can get it for less than $10 on amazon or itunes. Every time he puts something out, it just blows me away. I'd give anything to see him live, but it seems like Atlanta's as close as he ever gets to us and it's always on a Tuesday or something like that when we can't go. He's also a part of 1969 which just put out their album. I haven't gotten it yet, but I'm sure it's good too.

We're getting to go on vacation in June. We watched a Rainbow vacuum demo last summer and they gave us a 3 day vacation for watching it. We're going to Daytona the weekend after our anniversary. It's a long way to drive for just 3 days, but it was the closest beach site that they had. It'll be nice though to get away for a little while. We're not going to be able to afford to do much this summer and we haven't been on a vacation since we went to Utah a little over a year ago and I don't think we've been to the beach since our honeymoon. Two surgeries in two years kind of puts the hurt on your summer plans. We're pretty excited to say the least.

It's Friday once again, so I hope you all have a good weekend and I'll see you back here on Monday.

--Paul

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Junkin'

I don't have anything specific to talk about today, so I'm just going to ramble.

The country girl finally got kicked off American Idol. She had gotten better the last couple of weeks, but I still didn't like her and she definitely wasn't the strongest singer left, so I think it was the right time for her to go.

I and another guy, Josh, have been asked to play guitar for services on Sunday nights at church. We practiced for about an hour yesterday afternoon. I'm a bit nervous to be honest. It's been 6 or 7 years since Small Town Oddities called it quits, so I haven't played in front of anyone in a long, long time. The songs are fairly easy though, so everything should go fine. It'll be interesting though, that's for sure.

DeAnne's trying her best to get sick (sarcasm). The return to cold weather all of a sudden has done a number on her sinuses. Hopefully she can beat it back before it gets bad.

It's hard to believe that it's Thursday already. Having Monday off has really made the week fly by. Too bad we can't have a three day weekend every week.

--Paul

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

The Hilarity Continues

Sunday morning, we went to church and afterwards, the girls did a little shopping and Edwin and I played a little rock band. When the girls got back we worked on a project that Edwin hasn't finished up yet. I'll tell you more about that when the time comes.

Later, Courtney's sister, Jessica, and her friend Josh came over and we had dinner and played some rock band (of course), but we also played Cranium (Pop 5 Edition). We played girls versus boys, 2 teams with 3 members. I hate to say it, but the we blew the girls out of the water. It was like leading lambs to the slaughter. This is where yesterday's blog title comes from. Two of the things the boys had to guess were "We Built This City" and "Charlie's Angels". With Charlie's Angels, all Edwin and I had to go off of were two words: "Babes" and "Tactical". The girls couldn't believe it. Even with the crushing defeats, the girls had a good time and so did the boys. There were several moments where we were all laughing to the point of tears.

Good times.

--Paul

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

We Built This City on Charlie's Angels

I'm running a little late this morning, so I don't know if I'll make it to the story that will make the title make sense, but it will eventually make sense to everyone, I promise.

We had another great weekend in Mobile with Courtney and Edwin. We can't thank them enough for letting us stay with them again and for showing us such a good time. Let me start at the end with the doctor's report. He didn't have the labs from my doctor here in Andalusia, but judging by the feel of my thyroid and my answers to his questions about symptoms, he seems to think that if it is hyperactive, then it's not to the point where it needs any kind of treatment. He ordered some more blood work and wants me to come back in 6 months. So all in all, a good report.

Going back to Saturday, we got to Mobile about lunch. Edwin had cooked his world famous meatloaf, so we had lunch with Courtney and Edwin and just caught up on news and chatted for a while. About 5:00, some friends of Courtney and Edwin's started showing up for what was deemed a "Rock Band Party". We had a blast swapping out instruments and having a good time and just generally being silly. We met some great people, ate some good pizza and rocked the house.

And I'm going to have to stop there for today. Tomorrow I'll explain the title of today's post. It's a good one, I promise. See you then.

--Paul

Friday, April 11, 2008

WooHoo!!!

One more day at work and then Mobile, here we come! DeAnne and I are both pretty excited about the upcoming weekend. Not only do we get to get away and have an extended weekend after our busy week this week, but we get to spend it with our good friends Courtney and Edwin. We're both pretty excited. I'm pretty sure DeAnne's look forward to having all of next week off. After she gets back from spring break, she'll have about 5 weeks of school left, so she's counting the days now.

On a programming note, since we'll be in Mobile on Monday, there won't be a blog that morning. I'll return to writing on Tuesday and will catch you up on how the weekend went and what the doctor said. I'm going to see about my thyroid. My last couple of blood tests have come back showing it boarder-line hyperactive and may family doctor decided he wanted me to see a specialist. I'm not sure what the specialist is going to do or say though. I'm not symptomatic and the blood test number was a couple of tenths of a point to the good side of the hyperactive threshold, so who knows. I guess we'll find out on Monday.

I hope you all have a good weekend and like I said, I'll see you back here on Tuesday.

Oh, also, the Australian got robbed.

--Paul

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Gettin' Closer

Just two days to go till the weekend. I say that like it's been a bad week, but really it's been a great week. It's been a busy week, but still, it's been a great one. Things are going good at work, I've been working all week on the yard, but I'm finally done with that, and then there's Revival. We had another amazing night last night. It was "teenager night" and there were more teenagers there than we've ever had before. They had a pizza dinner for them before services and they counted 64 teenagers present. With all those teenagers there plus the good turnout of adults, it looked like Easter Sunday had come on a Wednesday night, the church was so packed. Last night was supposed to be the final night for Revival services, but it's been going so good that they've extended it one more night. Unfortunately we're not going to be able to make it. DeAnne's mom is having a birthday party for DeAnne's step-sister tonight and we're already committed to being there.

Have a good Thursday everyone. See you all tomorrow morning.

--Paul

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

DeJa Vu All Over Again

Well, I didn't get the grass finished yesterday which means the chore continues this afternoon. I got the front cut, so today I've got to cut the back and do the weed-eating. Really, I shouldn't have to be out there for too long.

Last night was another incredible night at Revival. It's just amazing how powerful and moving it's been. You can really tell that something special is happening. Tonight's the last night of Revival services, but I think (and hope and pray) that this spirit continues for a long, long time.

American Idol was a stinker last night. I don't know that I really liked any of them except maybe the Aussie, and he went first. I think it's great that they're doing the charity thing and trying to "give back", but that doesn't mean the contestants have to pick such hum-drum songs does it? I mean come on. Inspired was the last thing I was last night watching that show. Bottom three should be country girl, diva girl and anybody else. They were all pretty bad in my book.

--Paul

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Hard At It

Still going full force today. I can't remember having a week this busy in a while but it's still been a good one.

Revival was incredible last night. The men's fish fry was great. The food was really good and Bro. Terry really hit home for me with his message. Then regular service was even better. I don't know the exact number of people we've seen get saved, but it's been a lot, and we've only had three services.

So Revival continues tonight. I'm going to have to come home and get straight on the lawn mower. Hopefully I can get the entire yard cut tonight, but I may just have to settle for the front half and do the back tomorrow. Then the plan in to get the last flower bed done on Thursday. Then the yard should be in good shape for us to be gone this weekend.

I know it's short, but that's all I've got today. Have a good one.

--Paul

Monday, April 07, 2008

Rain and Then Some

So much for doing any yard work this past weekend. I was hoping for rain. I had prayed for rain. Other people were praying for rain. Boy, were our prayers answered. I would tell you exactly how much I got, but my gauge only goes to 4 inches and it was topped off, so I'm sure I got more than that. The only bad thing about it is that my yard already needed to be cut. Now it really needs to be cut.

With it raining all weekend, we decided to just lay around and in general do nothing. We watched "Dan In Real Life" on Saturday and it was really good. It was a good balance of funny and touching. It was a good "date" movie. We also made our weekly excursion to Wal-Mart on Saturday. You would think that with the weather like it was, people wouldn't want to get out and go anywhere. Well, that may have been true for some stores, but not for Wal-Mart. It's like everybody in Andalusia said "Hey, it's raining. Let's go to Wal-Mart.".

Yesterday our Revival kicked off at church. We had two really great services and I'm really looking forward to the rest of the week.

I seem to be running a little behind this morning, so I'm going to go ahead and sign off. I'll see you all back here tomorrow morning.

--Paul

Friday, April 04, 2008

Friday's Are Wonderful

It's Friday already and you won't hear me complaining. The only bad thing about it is that I'm on call for the weekend.

As for the weekend, I foresee more yard work in my near future. The grass needs cutting but it shouldn't be any thing near as bad as it was the last time. We've also got the other flower bed to finish re-doing and that one last set of bushes to trim up. All in all, it shouldn't be too bad, really. The new washer and dryer have made laundry much easier. So much so, that we've already done most of what we would normally spend all day Saturday and Sunday doing. So we won't have the laundry to worry about.

I finished Marvel: Ultimate Alliance last night. I really enjoyed it. There's a part of me that misses reading comic books, so things like the game and any comic-related movies that come out usually really appeal to me. I wish I could still read some, but it seems to have gotten to the point where the companies (DC and Marvel) do nothing but run stories that cross through 10 different titles and if you don't buy them all then you have no idea what's going on. You can't just buy the new issue of one title each month and expect to be able to follow what's going on and I just can't see spending the money to try and keep up.

With the points from Ultimate Alliance, my gamerscore is up to almost 1300. I've really become addicted to the idea of the gamer points system and the achievements. If I didn't want to move on and play some of the other games I've got so bad, I would probably go back through Ultimate Alliance just to pick up the achievements I didn't get. Like I've mentioned before though, I really want to try and get through some more games before the end of the month. I think I'm going to start on Super Mario Galaxy next. DeAnne was a pretty good ways into it before we got distracted by Rock Band, and judging by what I saw of her game, I don't think it'll take long to beat it.

I hope you all have a great weekend. See you Monday.

--Paul

Thursday, April 03, 2008

Nothing Really New

For the first time in a while, I really don't know what to talk about this morning. Nothing new really happened yesterday and there's not anything coming up this weekend out of the ordinary. Wait, I got it now.

While watching American Idol Tuesday night we saw the ads for the season finale of "Moment of Truth", the show where they ask people really personal questions and see just what they'll admit to to get money. We've never watched it, but they showed the preview so much that we decided to record it last night. We watched it when we got home from church and I think it has to be about one of the worst shows I've ever seen in my life. I don't even know what else to say about it other than it was terrible. I know I don't care about ever watching it again, that's for sure.

The one good thing about watching Moment of Truth was that it allowed us to record American Idol so that by the time we were done with Moment of Truth, AI was almost over and we were able to skip over the entire show other than when they tell people if they're safe or not. I have to admit, I was a little surprised with Brooke (I remembered someone's name!) being in the bottom three, but I think they put popular ones in there sometimes just to make it more dramatic. I was pretty happy with the results. Country Girl better pull one out next week though or she can wave good-bye. From where I sit, she's low-man on the totem pole now.

--Paul

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Wii Fit

After reading my latest shared item, I'm really excited about Wii Fit. It's already out in Japan where this guy lives and he's been working with the "game" for 7 weeks. He lost 10 pounds but what's really amazing is the way he looks. Be sure to click through to the original article and check out the pictures. It's a pretty dramatic change.

--Paul

Wednesday Already?

Man this week is flying by. I don't know what's going on, but it just seems like it shouldn't be Wednesday already. Hopefully the weekend doesn't go by as fast as the week has.

I tried out the Army of Two demo last night and it was alright. The demo was multiplayer only and DeAnne didn't want to go through it with me so I had to play with a stranger from Live. Which was fine except that he had been through it before and knew what to do, so I felt like the hold-up the whole time. All in all it didn't grab me enough to make me want to buy it and I'm glad I got to play the demo because I'd probably be disappointed if I had bought it.

I was pretty disappointed with American Idol last night. I don't know who picks the themes for each week, but they really need to let someone else do it. Dolly's great and all, but not for a pop music singing competition. At this point it's obvious who the top three should be: Irish tattoo girl, the rocker David, and the folk-y blond that played Let It Be. Any one of them could win and it would be fine. The rest are just there to be eliminated in my book.

Only 2 days till Friday.

--Paul

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Army of Two

I wanted to address my latest shared item real quick. There's a demo up on Xbox Live for Army of Two. From what I've read, it's great fun if you have someone to play it with (imagine that from a game called Army of TWO) but that the single player game leaves a little to be desired. The game still intrigues me though, so I'm glad to see the free demo come up.


--Paul

I Gave It Some Thought...

and after the posts I made yesterday, I just don't think I can come up with anything else to talk about. In fact, I read back through the March posts and they're so terrible that I'm just going to delete the whole blog. Thanks for reading.






















April Fools!!!!!!!

Sorry, I couldn't help myself.

I haven't talked about games much lately, so I'm going to spend some time on that this morning. I finished guitar on hard on Rock Band the other day. I started on expert and I'm about halfway through and the songs are starting to get really, really hard. I'm not sure, but I think I can beat it. I would really love to. I know Rock Band is easier than Guitar Hero, but I'd still feel pretty good about it if I could beat it on expert. Even more so, since I can't sit at home and practice all day like the 6 year old kids you see in the youtube videos playing the hardest songs on expert.

I haven't played Rock Band as much lately though. I've been focusing on Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. I'm fairly close to the end of it and I really want to go ahead and beat it and get it out of the way. I also want to get back to the Wii and finish Super Mario Galaxy.

There's a perfect storm brewing at the end of the month for video games and I'm trying to push through as much as I can of what I have so that I'm ready. First up is Mario Kart: Wii. Then two days later Grand Theft Auto IV hits. Then two weeks after that Wii Fit comes out. Followed closely this summer by Guitar Hero: Aerosmith and then Star Wars: Force Unleashed. I don't know if I'll ever get to actually play all of those, but I sure would love to. Maybe the fall and winter will be slow for games that I'm interested in and I'll have time to catch up. Who knows.

I better get going. Hope you get April off to a good start.

--Paul