Three till Seven

Well, Todd left for Ireland last night, and he should’ve arrived there sometime very early this morning, at least by Eastern Standard Time. I won’t see him for eleven days now, and I’m already kind of sad and missing him. My biggest worry whenever someone dear to me travels is that they’ll get hurt or killed, because I’m just an optimist like that. If I don’t think about that possibility, then I’m fine because I know I’ll see them again before too long.

Yay, so according to Nintendo’s web site, my Wii has been shipped back to me. I checked its tracking and yesterday it was in New York. I don’t know why it made a pit stop in New York on the way to Kentucky from Washington state, but there you are. It’s supposed to arrive Monday, which kind of sucks because I’ll be at work, and UPS always tries to deliver packages during the day when both me and Jessica are working. I have yet to receive a UPS package, even stupid rinky-dink things that ought not require an in-person signature, that I haven’t had to drive across town to pick up myself. They should just save me the trouble of calling to have it held for pickup and ship it to their place to begin with.

I just noticed that I’m really bad about starting new paragraphs with word-comma, so now for something completely different! (Didja catch the Monty Python quote?) Guess who got a Wii Fit the other day? Just guess! No, it wasn’t the pope, at least not that I’m aware. No, it wasn’t Jack Nicholson, though he could certainly use one nowadays. It was me! Well, me and Jess: we went halfsies (halvsies? halvesies?) on one. I never expected to find one this early because they’re always sold out. A coworker of Jessica’s had somehow put his name down to get one in Target’s next shipment, and then that shipment was delayed a day, so they emailed him to let him know he could pick his up. He told Jess and Jess told me and I called Target and, lo and behold, they still had some so I reserved one myself. When I picked it up that afternoon (for $89 + tax, much better than the $140+ they’re going for on eBay), I asked the clerk if they had been selling them pretty fast: “Oh yeah.” I asked if they had any left besides the reserved ones: “Oh no.”

So I got my Wii Fit and the sad condition is that I have a Wii Fit but no Wii, at least not till Monday, or probably even Tuesday after UPS has tried to deliver once, failed because no one was home and Nintendo’s bound to require a signature, and I’ve called to have them hold the stupid thing and stop trying to deliver it to an empty household. Honestly, I don’t know how that works for anyone, since most people work in the 8-4 or 9-5 range when UPS delivers. Anyway, I tried out the Wii Fit at Todd’s place that afternoon since his Wii has yet to die due to a lightning storm. My first Body Test, which tests your balance, had the little Balance Board on the TV asking me if I tripped much while I walk. No I don’t, thank you very much Mr. Balanc–whoop! Did anyone else see that lump in the sidewalk? Jeez, you could break an ankle around here… Ahem, right, so I also tried hula hooping and got 2 out of 4 stars, then yoga and got 3 stars, then lunges and got 4 stars, which really had me feeling good, but that was all laid to rest when I tried the ski slalom and got 1 star. Man, do I suck at balancing, apparently!

The Wii Fit also told me I was fat, which I already knew, and oh how sad it was to see my little skinny Mii go to having a ring of belly fat when it calculated my weight and BMI. I do have much hope of slimming down again, though, what with my better diet, 5-day-a-week elliptical machine bouts, and Wii Fit to keep me entertained while I exercise at home. Todd gave me the added incentive that when I get down to my goal weight, he’ll take me out and buy me a nice dress to show off my they’d-damn-well-better-be-skinny-by-then legs.

I’m hanging out at Todd’s parents’ house, where I’ve been since Friday. I took a three-day weekend this week to spend more time with Todd, since he’s leaving for an eleven-day trip to Ireland this weekend. He and Brent are going just for a vacation, and I’m so jealous because they’re going to visit all over the country and take lots of alcohol-related tours, I think including Guinness and Jameson.

I didn’t mention it last time, but I sent my Wii off to Nintendo on Monday because its disc drive doesn’t work. It’ll either not load a disc at all, or it’ll load but then crap out with an error message in the middle of a game. It did this for Wii and Gamecube discs, and I think it was due to a recent thunderstorm because my cable modem also got wiped out at the same time. The Wii is still under warranty, so it’s getting repaired free of charge; Nintendo even covered the shipping with UPS by mailing me a shipping label. The DS Lite has been very nice because I’d probably be going through withdrawal symptoms without some form of Mario in my life. :P I’m still chugging away at Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time (I’ve progressed a lot in it, actually) and Super Princess Peach, but then yesterday I bought The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass.

I had read on IGN that Phantom Hourglass is an awesome game, and so far I’ve really enjoyed it. This is only the second Zelda game I’ve ever played, the first being Twilight Princess on the Wii, and so I’m not used to seeing Link as a little boy, instead of sexy!Link in Twilight Princess. It’s neat because I get a ship that I get to route around the ocean, avoiding traps and docking at islands. One really cool DS-specific feature that’s used is the touchscreen, not just for ordinary movement and combat, but also to make notes on my maps. For example, I’ll go into a dungeon and I’ll make notes on my map about where a treasure chest is, or where I entered the dungeon, or where I’m supposed to take some key. Another cool use of the DS is with the microphone:

• There was a lady behind a door, and to get her to open the door, I had to call out to her via the mic.
• There were some candles and to solve a puzzle, I had to blow them out by blowing into the mic. That caused Link to blow them out in the game.
• I got a dusty sea map and had to blow the dust off.

I just find it really clever when a game causes me to interact like that, translating my real-life actions exactly into the game.

While I do enjoy the swordfighting in Phantom Hourglass, all this stylus waving is making me miss the Wii’s Twilight Princess because, with that, I got to wave around the Wiimote and it felt more like I was waving an actual sword. I just need to restart that game because it’s been so long since I played through the majority of it (seriously: I got down to the last area where I was going to fight the boss soon, and just got tired of playing; enough frustrating timing puzzles and discovering the Magic Armor at the very end, after I’d already absorbed all the bug-money, will do that to you). I still have my friend Chris’s copy and he’d probably like that back at some point…

So I have a job for the fall, huzzah. I’ll be working [again] at Lexmark, this time back in my old department in the commercial division. I’m excited because 1) I’ll be working in Linux again and 2) I’ll be programming in Ruby again. This new area I’ve worked in this summer has been okay, but I’ve had to work in Windows, programming Windows applications, and I’ve had to do it in Visual Studio. Gag me, please. My absolute detest of Windows and Microsoft hasn’t reduced any, and I’m anxious to get back to an operating system that doesn’t piss me off just by its existence.

This fall, I’ll be working as an AYPT student: Academic Year Part Time. That means I’ll work 15-20 hours (probably 16 for me: two eight-hour days) per week while taking a full load of classes. I’m taking a couple of non-major classes, though, so I’m hoping the class load won’t be that rough. The two non-majors are Asian philosophy (counts for a Cross Cultural requirement) and astronomy (counts for Natural Sciences).

After this fall, I’ll be left with a requirement of 7 more hours to meet the minimum number required to graduate, and of that 7, I need only one particular class: senior design for computer science. I’ll finish off my undergraduate career in spring of ‘09, probably taking more than 7 hours just to get in a few more enjoyable classes before I graduate. Then it’s on to a career for me, and repayment of my ever-increasing student loans.

Just a short note to say that I bought a Nintendo DS Lite on Monday and have been enjoying the heck out of it since. I’ve bought two games so far: Mario and Luigi Partners in Time, and Super Princess Peach. Partners in Time has been my favorite because it’s like the first two Paper Mario games in that it’s turn-based, and it’s also very cute. I’m running around with baby versions of Mario and Luigi, plus there’s a baby Peach, a baby Bowser, and a younger Toadsworth. I’m currently on Yoshi Island putting out fires by 1) letting baby Mario drink spring water, causing him to get all round and squishy, then 2) having baby Luigi whack baby Mario with a hammer, causing Mario to spit out some water onto a fire. It’s completely adorable and I’ve been enjoying spitting up everywhere.

Super Princess Peach is also enjoyable. It’s like an old-school Mario sidescroller, but Peach doesn’t die upon being touched by an enemy, which I always thought was more frustrating than enjoyable; instead, she has three hearts that diminish when she gets hit. She has different moods you can invoke that trigger different things. For example, you can make her angry and she gets so mad that a fire starts, allowing you to burn obstacles and enemies. You can make her really happy such that she flies, allowing you to gather extra goodies in the air. It’s a ridiculously girly game, what with Peach squealing and running around with her yellow parasol Percy (or is it Perry?). Percy-Perry is tougher than he looks, though: if you’re holding an enemy and duck under the parasol, the parasol “absorbs” the enemy to refuel Peach. “Absorbs,” my ass! I see Percy licking his lips after Peach stands back up; I hope she never gets on his bad side.