Time Hole

Once again, a huge gap in writing.  What gives?  What could possibly be more important than writing down every errant thought I have about every shiny thing that catches my eye?


Nothing.  Sometimes I just don't feel like blogging.  Also, sometimes the act of actually doing stuff prevents the documentation of that same stuff.  You know how it is.  Or maybe you don't.  You might not...  That would be sad.

Now the muse is back upon me and I have a little lunch time in which to write, so here we go again.  Here is a shotgun summary of the past month or so:

Read three books (well, nine if you count kids' books, and 11 if you count kids' e-books).  The grownup books were Snuff by Terry Pratchett, Worldwar: In the Balance by Harry Turtledove, and The Official Red Book: A Guidebook of United States Coins.

The Pratchett book was OK, not great (Night Watch sets the bar pretty high, you see).  Also, it looks like someone bought him a Word-a-Day calendar and challenged him to use every page.  I am glad my Kindle has a built-in dictionary. The second book was an alternate history story that had aliens attacking Earth right in the middle of WWII.  It started off very exciting but the action died in the middle so suddenly and dramatically it felt like the author decided to make the novel into a series half-way through. That's too bad...  I won't be getting the second one. I read the coin book as part of researching a question my father-in-law asked me about pennies.  I will post on that soon. 

I am currently reading nothing.

Music: I added a few more songs to my iPod, including a new montage song: Uprising by Muse.  Why is it a montage song?  Video below.

Asking my iPod for its Genius Recommendation based on that song results in a new playlist I'd like to name "Music for a Dangerous Loner to Write His Manifesto By", but due to space limitations I just call it my "Watchlist Mix".

Started and finished Mafia II, Osmos, Contre Jour, Water, Scribblenauts Remix, and most of the new Angry Birds levels. 

If you have the means, get Osmos.  The physics-based gameplay is very well done and the whole thing is utterly beautiful to look at and to listen to.  Very relaxing.

Scribblenauts is awesome because you have the power to call into existence virtually anything in order to solve an on-screen puzzle.  For example, if the puzzle was to help your hero Maxwell rescue a man trapped in a snow cave you could say FIRE and *poof* a roaring fire appears, making him nice and toasty.  Alternatively, you could summon a FLAMETHROWER or an ANGRY DRAGON, which also results in him getting nice and toasty albeit for a much shorter period of time than he probably would have liked.

Started playing around with Rocksmith, and now I can't get Nirvana's In Bloom out of my head.  Having a lot of fun with this game even though I can't shake the feeling that the virtual people who came to see me play guitar in what looks like a smoke filled middle school cafeteria are just there to make fun of me.  At best, I would gauge the crowd's reaction to my performance as "bemused and pitying".  Same as my wife's reaction to basically anything I do, now that I think about it.

Started gussying up the sidebar some more.  Added a new link to the blogroll: OVZombie.  It's a site dedicated to tracking and reporting on the off-putting and possibly illegal shenanigans of one of my friend's neighbors.  I guarantee you will love it. Unless you are my friend's neighbor, of course.

Made a new puzzle for Halloween.  I will post the answer once it slips off the bottom of the page. Here it is. It's cinchy. If you know the answer, leave a comment.

My body has healed enough to where I am actually running on the treadmill occasionally.  I will most likely miss my "5K" resolution goal.  I have no excuse for missing the other goals.  I need to get on the stick...  Or quit trying things... Meh, something will come up and I will rock one of the things out.  Maybe my Mafia II experience can be applied toward my handgun qualification...  Who knows?

Finished building the Red Box Treasure Chest kit with my 3-year-old son and father-in-law.  It looks great and it is his new de facto piggy bank.  He is very proud of it.  An unfortunate side effect is that he is now constantly grubbing for spare change.  I'm all like "Get a damn job, hippy" and he's all like "Moooommm!  Dad said a bad word!" Then I'm like "He's lying! Here's a handful of pennies shuddupwoodja."

He and I also built a McDonald’s out of Lego.  This resulted in an alien vs. ghost gun battle and helicopter crash when the waiter heard that a patron's grilled cheese sandwich was "very very very bad".  These things can get out of hand quickly.  As far as I know this rarely happens in real life.

But all play and no work makes Jack an utterly intolerable man-child so...

Nearly finished resealing the deck.  As of this Sunday it will have taken four weekends to complete but even now it no longer looks like a ticked-off Jackson Pollack impersonator with ADHD begrudgingly did the job as part of his community service for his repeated Painting While Intoxicated offenses.  I would like to thank my wife for her patience and support while I dealt with this self-created disaster. 

For those newbies out there thinking of sealing your deck using a pump sprayer (cuz the can says you can) and not thinning the pigmented sealant (cuz the can says you're not sposedtuh) just suck it up and use a 3 or 4 inch brush instead. Please trust me on this - it will take forever but you will be a lot happier with the results.  Also, mix the sealant way more than you think is remotely necessary.  After all, that 5-gallon drum may have been sitting there on the floor at Lowes for a very long time...

That's about it for now.  Go in peace and junk.