Animal Crossing

I've not been online much lately because I've been spending much of my free time playing Animal Crossing: City Folk on the Wii. If you played either Animal Crossing for the gamecube or for the DS then you know what to expect from the Wii version. If you have not played it before, it probably doesn't sound like the sort of game that would appeal to adults. In the Animal Crossing games, you play as a character that moves to a town inhabited by animals. There's no real end goal to the game, except those that you set for yourself. There are lots of fish and bugs to catch, a museum to stock, and errands to run. Plus hundreds of items to collect and lots of neighbors and special visitors to interact with and befriend. It sounds like a game for children, but it is strangely addictive.

One of the best things about the game is that things happen in real time. After I post this I'll get back to Krakatoa (our town on the game; you name your town yourself) so that my character, Skurvy, can do some fishing. I want to sell a few more fish tonight before the town store closes. Plus, one of our villagers thinks he lost his keys in the river and needs me to find them so he can get back into his house. On Thursday afternoon we'll be fighting over the Wii so we all have the chance to steal utensils to give to a nervous turkey in exchange for furniture. (We will try to each collect the whole set, but whatever pieces we don't get Thursday we can't get until next Thanksgiving!)

I had never even considered getting the Gamecube version until my sister and brother in law gave it to us for Christmas a few years ago. We weren't too sure about it but tried playing it anyway, and then we played it every day for a year. We bought the Wii the day it came out just so we'd be sure to have one when Animal Crossing Wii finally was released. We've really enjoyed this one so far, and the addition of Wii Speak is a nice touch. Now when friends visit our town to fish or deliver fruit we can talk instead of having to type at each other.

This is just one of those games that can't be adequately described - you really have to play it to understand the appeal. Be warned, though - if you do play you may also become addicted.

(For any of you that are playing - Send me your friend codes! Our native fruit is Pears, though we now have a few orange, peach, and apple trees. So far our cherry trees keep dying and we don't have coconuts, though I might be getting a couple later this evening.)

Have a good Thanksgiving

This time of year always makes me nostalgic. This year, especially, I find myself thinking of old friends - partly because I'm starting to reconnect with some of them thanks to Myspace and Facebook. I had lost track of many of my friends from high school and college, and I'm glad to be getting back in touch with them again. (That means you, Jack!! )

One friend that I always think of at this time every year is Fred. In addition to being one of my best friends during high school and even during college, Fred was also my first boyfriend. We dated off and on throughout high school. In college we each moved on to other serious relationships but we stayed close friends. It was Fred who encouraged me to date Caradorn after I found out that Caradorn was divorced - I had always said I wouldn't get involved with someone who had been married, but Fred saw that I loved Caradorn and convinced me to give the relationship a chance.

I thought that Fred and I would be friends for the rest of our lives.

I still consider him a friend, but we don't talk anymore. We haven't for years. Fred's wife, Ann, doesn't like me . . . but of course I don't really blame her. As much as I like to say that Caradorn should keep in touch with all his old friends, I would probably be uncomfortable if he still had a close friendship with one of his exes. Still, if Fred and I had wanted to be together we wouldn't have been dating other people, so I hoped that eventually Ann would accept my presence in Fred's life. I hoped that eventually Ann and I would become friends. I hoped that Fred would refuse to cut me out of his life if Ann made him choose between us. I chose to end a relationship with a guy who objected to my friendships with Fred and a few other guys, and hoped that Fred would value our friendship enough to do the same if necessary.

And of course I was to blame, too - the nail in the coffin of our friendship, I think, was the fact that I didn't tell him I was getting married until after the fact. He knew I was engaged, but I didn't tell him when the wedding was because we were only having family there . . . he found out that Caradorn and I were married from a classmate that went to Caradorn's church. Not the right way for a friend to hear that kind of news!

It's been years since we had any contact, though I do see his parents occasionally. We were always better friends than "significant others" and I often wish we had never dated, because then maybe we would still be friends today. This time of year I always sort of wish that we could revive our friendship again. After all, Thanksgiving saved our relationship once before.

We had a volatile relationship in high school. We were constantly arguing and breaking up, only to get right back together again. After a particularly ugly breakup, we didn't speak for quite a while. I thought he owed me an apology and he thought I owed him one and neither of us would bend. It was just before Thanksgiving vacation, and I was lugging my stuff out of the band room after school, when we passed in the parking lot. And even though I am horribly stubborn most of the time, I just couldn't take the silence between us any longer and I missed him terribly and so as I passed him I said "Have a good Thanksgiving".

It wasn't much but apparently that was enough, because he called me a few days later and we were best friends - and dating - again. We still had our arguments, and of course we ended up breaking up for good, but for the most part we stayed friends for years after that.

It's been years since we spoke last, and I do still think of him. When I heard that the Ventures had been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame my first thought was that I had to tell Fred - they were one of his favorite groups. Every time I go see Aerosmith I think of him, because we used to go see them together. And every year when I hang my Snoopy ornaments on the tree I am reminded that he gave me my first one because I used to call him "Snoopy".

Caradorn only knew Fred for a little while, but he liked him. I think they would be good friends now if Fred and I had stayed friends. When I am reminded of him I often wonder if things would be different now if we had never dated. I would gladly give up having dated him if it meant we could have kept our friendship. I would much rather still have him as a friend.

So Fred - if you're out there. . . I hope you and your family are well, and happy. I hope that your life so far has turned out the way you wanted it to.

And I hope you have a good Thanksgiving.

The Bermuda Triangle of Socks

I do not understand where all the socks in this house go. The Kidd has a band concert tonight and has to wear black socks, and they are gone. All socks seems to disappear around here. I know it isn't the washer or dryer eating them, because I saw the socks in question just the other day. They were with the other clean clothes, and I remember setting them with The Kidd's other clothes to put away. Now they are gone.

Half of my socks have also vanished. The ones I can find are usually mismatched, which is especially odd because I normally buy the same kind and yet they somehow seem to have been replaced by socks that are different but similar.

Caradorn doesn't seem to be losing his but he has way more than we do so maybe he just doesn't realize that he has fewer than before.

Maybe one of the animals is dragging them away somewhere and someday we'll find a giant nest of socks hidden behind some piece of furniture. Darth does constantly attempt to drag blankets away somewhere, and socks are much easier to carry off, so maybe I need to keep a better eye on him.

Now I have to go buy more black socks before tonight, and I have too many other things to do! I have to find and charge the video camera, clean the guest room since my parents will be visiting, make the kitchen look a little less like it should be condemned . . . plus so many other things that there is no hope that I will finish it all. These socks may be the last straw- I might have some kind of breakdown and spend the rest of my life just staring blankly and muttering about missing socks. Either that or I'll start carrying them with me everywhere so they can't wander off. Or something. I'll figure it out tonight, if I make it through the rest of the day. Wish me luck!

Accentuate the Positive

The XM channel switch happened at a minute before midnight (eastern time). It was sad listening to the channels that were being killed off - they were all playing songs about endings - "Closing Time", "Last Dance", "My Heart Will Go On", "So Hard To Say Goodbye to Yesterday", "Sing Me to Heaven" . . .you get the idea. Except for the few that were angry, and they were sort of funny (in a sad way), especially the one that played "How to kill a Radio Consultant".

I got concerned for a second when the 40s went silent, but then it came back. The first song they played after the switch was "Accentuate the Positive". :) Sirius didn't have a comparable channel, so I am really hoping that they will keep channel 4 the same as it has been. Most of the other merging channels are switching to Sirius DJs and playlists. It's hard to tell, so far, if the 40's on 4 will change much, but I'll be listening often so hopefully I'll get an idea soon of whether it's changed. They are already doing the "XM/Sirius" station identifications instead of just XM. I know lots of DJs and programming people were let go, which I hate. I just hope the music on the channels I like doesn't suffer.

Cinemagic changed from channel 27 to 76. The screen says that 76 is indeed Cinemagic, but apparently it's off the air right now. I hope that's sorted out by morning. I'm anxious to hear if it still sounds like Cinemagic! (ETA- No Cinamagic until January 2! They're using the bandwidth for a Christmas channel. I'll have to wait till then to see how it's changed.)

The first Christmas channel, Holly, has started. I do love Christmas music but I won't listen to it till Thanksgiving. I am glad they brought it back. There will be several other Christmas channels starting soon, and I am looking forward to seeing if they bring back all of the ones that they had last year. There was one that mostly had weird/humorous Christmas songs, and I heard a couple of songs from the Adventurers Club on there last year, so I am especially hoping that one returns.

There are a few new channels available now that I am interested in (like "Radio Margaritaville" and "Siriusly Sinatra"), but overall I much would rather have XM back instead of XM/Sirius. Still, I'll give it a chance. If the channels I love have changed too much then I will just cancel my subscription. I hope it doesn't come to that, though. Even though I love my Ipod I listen to XM most of the time. I always find new songs to download to my Ipod by listening to it, and I would hate to lose that.

They just did a "Savoy Express" identification on the 40s channel, which makes me feel better. . . it's a really good sign - I was afraid they would have stopped calling it that. Hopefully by this time tomorrow I'll have a better feel for whether it's still the same channel I love. I hope it is!

Where I get my daily dose of humor

There are a few sites that I check daily when I get online. I discovered a couple of them fairly recently and I've enjoyed them, so I thought I would share. So here are a few of my daily reads:

Cake Wrecks- http://www.cakewrecks.blogspot.com/ - A site that shows what happens when cakes go horribly wrong. Some of them aren't that bad, but the ones that are more than make up for it!

I Can Has Cheezburger - http://icanhascheezburger.com/ - Lolcats and other funny pictures.

Failblog - http://failblog.org/ - Pictures of epic fails.

Engrish - http://www.engrish.com/ - Unfortunate (and sometimes bizarre) translations.

Star light, star bright. . .

I love looking at the stars, but I am not great at identifying most constellations. There is one that I can almost always find, though. That was a bad thing, years ago, but now I always have to smile when I see "my" constellation.

I am very interested in outer space in general. That's a good thing, living here in Rocket City - there's a big emphasis on space here. Occasionally they will announce something on our news like a meteor shower, or a time the International Space Station will be visible, and so we'll run outside to peer into the sky to try to see whatever it is. I recently discovered a neat site that forecasts space weather, and I find it completely fascinating.

We can see the stars fairly well from our yard. Certainly much better than you can in most larger cities. We were a bit spoiled by living in Tucson, though. There is a fairly major observatory on a mountain overlooking Tucson, and so the entire city kept it's lights dim at night. It was sort of shocking at first - it seems so dark there. We did eventually get used to it, and we loved being able to see the stars so clearly. During the summer they would set up a telescope at the Desert Museum and we enjoyed being able to see the rings of Saturn and other details much more clearly than we ever could when we were growing up in Tennessee. We have a telescope now, though we rarely use it. I would like to start using it more often - I think The Kidd would really enjoy it.

When I was growing up, the only constellations I really knew about were the Big and Little Dippers. When I got to high school I learned more about the different constellations in physics class, and at the end of the unit about outer space we had to do a photography project. I still remember the assignment. To get full credit, we had to work with a partner to take pictures of the following: The circumpolar constellations, the moon rising, and any ten constellations (which we had to identify).

It was freezing the night that my then-boyfriend Fred and I set out to take all of the pictures we needed. We had to wait for a clear night, of course, and in Tennessee the clearest nights are always the coldest. We had an old camera that my dad had picked up while he was in Vietnam - we couldn't use just any camera, because we had to be able to control the shutter speed. We set the camera up on a tripod and tried to use the attachment that allowed us to take pictures without shaking the camera - but it promptly broke. We spent what seemed like forever soldering it back together and then started taking our pictures.

We did the moon first - we had to take multiple exposures in the same frame to show the moon rising over the course of the evening. Next we did the circumpolar constellations. Finally we started taking pictures of every constellation we could see. We were freaking out by this time, because it had gotten really late and we had reserved the darkroom for the next day so we had to finish the project, no matter what. By the end we were frantically taking random pictures of the sky. We were sure that between all of the pictures we had taken we would easily have far more than ten good shots of different constellations that we could identify.

The next day we went to the darkroom to develop our pictures. Neither of us had ever used a darkroom before and I was horribly afraid that we would somehow ruin our film, but it went surprisingly well. We had planned to only develop the pictures we needed for the assignment but we ended up doing them all. When the picture were finally ready we went home to identify them and choose the ones to turn in. The moon picture turned out great, and so did the one of the Circumpolar Constellations circling just above the horizon. We also had several great shots of Fred's dog, Foxxy. Plus one picture of the two of us that I didn't even remember taking and one picture of Fred's dad.

All the rest were constellations. We identified the first one quickly - it was Cassiopeia. The next one was, too. The third one was harder to figure out - until we turned it sideways and realized it was also Cassiopeia. I still remember taking the pictures . . . we took pictures in every direction, of every part of the sky we could see. I still can't understand how it happened, but every single constellation picture was of Cassiopeia. We didn't get one picture of any other constellation except the ones in the shot of the Circumpolar Constellations, and since that picture was of them in motion it was worthless as a specific constellation shot.

Fortunately we weren't the only ones who had that problem, though we were the only people who got Cassiopeia. There was a booming black market trade in pictures at school the next day. Thanks to lots of trades we ended up with all the pictures we needed, and if our instructor ever noticed that everyone seemed to have the same pictures of some of the constellations she never said anything about it.

These days the only constellation that I can always find and identify is Cassiopeia. If she's visible at all, I see her almost as soon as I step outside. It irritated me at first that I couldn't seem to remember all the other constellations. Even the ones I can identify on paper or in pictures I can't always find in the sky, but I know that I can almost always count on seeing Cassiopeia if I look up into the night sky.

No Matter Who Wins Today

I voted this morning. I expected to have to spend a long time in line, but even though there were long lines at our polling place we did not have to wait long. We were in and out of there in fifteen minutes. Now we just have to wait to hear the results. I'm interested in several of the local races, but of course I am most anxious to see who will be our next President.

This election has been far uglier than I have ever seen before. People have been downright hateful about the candidate that they don't support - and about the people who do support that candidate. There have been cries of racism, sexism, and lots of other "-isms". Some people have been saying that they'll be glad when it's all over tomorrow. I think that's naive. I think there's a good chance that things will get even uglier before they finally get better. The aftermath of the last two elections was prety horrible, and given the hideous lead-up to this one I think it's a safe bet that the aftermath of this one will be even worse. There will be gloating and complaining, and insults will fly. It will be quite a while before people are willing to put all this behind them and unite as one nation again.

I hope that the candidate that I chose to vote for will be our next President, but I realize that he might not be. Regardless of who wins, we will have a new President in January. I may or may not agree with him, I may or may not believe he was a good choice, but I will respect the fact that he holds the highest office in this country. If I don't agree with his politics then I will work harder to see that his opponent is elected in 2012. If he does or says things that I disagree with while he is in office I will feel free to express my opinion about that. I will argue the issues, but I will not insult the person himself. I may not like or respect the person who is elected today, but I have a great repect for the office of President of the United States. I think whoever holds that position deserves to be treated with respect while he is in office. If you hope that he is defeated in the next election, if you disagree vehemently with his politics, even if you want to see him impeached, he still deserves to be treated with the respect that is due the office. Disagree with him all you want, as vocally as you want, but be polite about it.

Tomorrow, if my candidate is not the winner, I will respect the fact that a large part of this country wanted his opponent to be our next President. I will disagree with their choice, but I will still respect it. I may argue the issues with them over then next four years, but I will not insult them personally. I will not insult the man they selected to lead our nation, though I may argue against the choices he makes.

I hope if my candidate is the victor that the supporters of his opponent will show me, and my candidate, the same respect. I hope that they will respect my choice just as I will respect theirs. Regardless of the outcome tonight, I hope that we can unite as one nation in January as our new President is sworn into office.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that

On Friday Caradorn sent me a text that said "Joe Perry came out today." I just sat there looking at the phone trying to make the words make sense. First I thought maybe I was thinking of the wrong Joe Perry, that there was some other Joe Perry somewhere that I ought to have heard of that would have come out.

Finally I decided that he must actually be talking about the Joe Perry. I love Aerosmith - I go see them in concert every chance I get. I turn into a silly fangirl when they first come out on stage, jumping up and down and squealing. It's really sad, but I'm sure they're used to that sort of thing.

Other celebrities I like have come out before, and it doesn't really matter to me. Unless it's someone I'm actually romantically interested in I figure it doesn't matter who else they'd be interested in. So when Neil Patrick Harris and T. R. Knight came out I didn't consider it big news. I wasn't terribly surprised about either of them, though.

Joe Perry, on the other hand, is another story. I kept looking at the text and trying to figure out how I could have had no idea that he was gay. I just didn't believe it at all.

Finally I got the next text from Caradorn, which said " . . . in support of John McCain."

I found that almost as shocking as the first text. Aren't all those rocker types supposed to be all liberal? But at least he's still interested in girls, so the crush I had on him years ago wasn't a completely lost cause.

I'm somewhat relieved. Now I can still threaten to run off with Joe Perry someday if I catch Caradorn eyeing some redhead. :)