I love Jay, I really do, but seriously, he managed to perfectly demonstrate why Twittering is stupid.

“there’s a weird bug crawling on the ceiling above my head. ewww 1 hr ago”

Do I need to know this?  Does ANYONE need to know this?  The way I see it, a maximum of two people need to know this.  1) Jay does.  And he doesnt’ need to be acutely aware of it, either.  He should be vaguely aware that the creepy bug is not laying eggs above him while he’s eating his sandwich.  But probably, even he doesn’t need to know this.  2) In the case that this bug might be weird because he’s spewing lethal toxin from his mandibles, then maybe a guy from Terminix needs to know.  The question is: do the guys at Terminix use Twitter in the hopes to find business?

Nothing but love, Jay, but I may have to stop reading your blog unless you start twittering that you need someone to write you a play. 

So the game is mercifully done.  I shouldn’t be so harsh on it – it’s not the worst game in the series.  But I already outlined a few of my issues.  Ones I’d like to add:

- It’s comically easy.  I found out a way to level up extremely fast with the Yeti, and by the time I was at the end palace, I was killing bosses before any of my party had attacked twice.

- It gets pretty mundane by the end.  And worst ending in any FF game.  Seriously, 1 had a better ending and it was text-based.

- The end place itself is stupid.  While I like the idea of dividing up into three groups, it is too “thinky” with the whole ‘this group needs to step on this switch to enable this other group to pass by’.  Seriously, what bad guy designs a lair like that?  To get to the highest floor (where he apparently just hangs out, playing with his endless power), he’d have to bring a group of lackeys with him at all times.

Anyway, let me dwell on some of the good points.

- First off, it has the best character in any FF game, and that is the Yeti, who I named YETI!! because, really, he is.  I could watch him hurl my party members around all day long.  Major props go to Ash who noted, “He’s just like the Beserker [from FFV]“  HUH!?!?  She forgets the due date of our baby at our preggers class, yet she remembers a character from a different game altogether, one that she only watches to ridicule?  Muy sexy.

- There is plenty of non-essentials to do.  In fact, too many.  My quest of course was to do everything in the game.  From collecting all of Dr. Tom’s rages (I stopped when I realize I didn’t even fight one or two of the enemies in the WoB and therefore could never do it), to amassing Shoe!!’s lores (again, I missed one that was only available in one boss because I beat him before he could do a move) to fighting everything in the Colusseum.  I didn’t have the planning to do them all, but I did get all the Espers and fought all the enemies, are far as I know (at least I fought all the bosses)

- The Colusseum in general.  Cool idea.

- Getting General Leo to join my party (that ought to rile up the purists)

- The fact that they got away from the Light Crystals idea.  This was a vast departure storyline-wise. I don’t paricularly like the avenue they picked, but A for trying.

- Despite saying the game was pretty simple, I did die twice in the final place when a regular enemy used Blaster on my entire party, wiping them out in one fell swoop.  I only put it on the ‘cool’ list because, though it absolutely pissed me off, it’s good to keep me on my toes, I guess.

So this bugger only took me 38 hours, but I suspect that’s untrue.  I noticed a ‘glitch’ with the clock.  I would play for exactly one hour (real time), and it logged me for about 48 minutes.  I don’t know whether that’s because it doesn’t save loading time (and there’s plenty of it), or it cheats so kids can tell their parents that they weren’t playing as long as they were.  But there you have it.

Total, I’ve logged about 210 hours in this quest, which is half done.  I might be able to finish VII before Smacky’s born, we’ll see.  As much me time as I’m trying to take, I’m also trying to balance that with Ash time, and baby time.  Onto VII, another non-favorite of mine.

And we move on.  Having been in good ole’ Nevada for two months, I fully expected to acculturate myself.  Oh who am I kidding?  I don’t know the lyrics to any Clint Black songs and the only boots I own are hiking boots.  But January started off how 2007 ended: with snow.  More unseasonal snow came down, as I smiled quietly at the thought of me forgoing buying a shovel.  Thankfully, I lived in a complex that did all my shoveling for me.  Speaking of natural wonders, I also got my first experience of a pogonip, a rare Northwest phenomenon which coats everything within a small circumference with beautiful ice crystals.  The circumference itself is surrounded by a dense fog donut, completely isolating it.  I took some wonderful pictures, which I’m undeniably too lazy to repost.

Some of Ashley’s friends from San Jose picked this month to go snowboarding. I’m always up for a trip, although I wasn’t exactly up for paying for another $90 to rent the equipment.  So I showed us as the plucky comic relief and the guy who had the hot water boiling for everyone when they got back.  It was a good weekend to play Apples to Apples (a fun game for justification if ever there was one) and further cement my status as a GUITAR HERO!  That status is now no longer in cement, but sort of a flimsy saran wrap type thing, only without any adhesive properties.  I digress.

January also featured some of the best accidental television in history.  With the writer’s strike at full swing, most television consisted of reruns and reality TV.  NBC and its affiliates more or less forced their shows back on without the writers, leaving three of my favorites, Conan O’Brien, Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert, to fend for themselves.  What followed was some of the best inter-show rivalries that would have made Andy Kaufman envious.  I don’t have links.  That’s what Google’s for.

Probably more significant, I entered the realm of disdaining politics slightly less by showing up at the first Caucus.  Yup, a large contingent of white people and I headed to the middle school to stand in lines.  Well, I originally stood for Edwards, so I stood in a small four-or-five sided shape with the scant few others who weren’t voting for Clinton or Obama.  I ended up going to Obama when my line disbanded.  Yay for politics.  *sigh*

I reneged on my first New Years Resolution at the end of January: posting a blog every single day in 2008.  I haven’t counted, but I doubt I’ve even done 100 yet, and it’s almost November.  There would be more where that came from.

Finally, the month was capped off with my first major trip back east for work.  This bled into February, and it wasn’t exactly noteworthy, except I got to (sorta) surprise Susan for her 30th birthday.  Feliz Navibirthday, Suds.

So I’ve been looking for an MP3 (or WAV) file of McCain’s “And I couldn’t agree with them more…” blunder.  I think it would make a lovely ringtone, and I use a site that will make it a ringtone.  But I can only find it in video form, not in an audio clip.  Can anyone dig this up for me?

I just got back two days ago, and have been pretty nuts about getting things put away.  It might have something to do with me not being to find my checkbook or my headlamp, but I digress.  In cleaning today, I saw a flyer for a small social for our apartment complex with “door prizes”.  We had an hour after I found it, so we went.

It was a police program promoting safety, and our apartment complex has been involved.  Our complex rules, by the way.  If anyone wants to move out here, let me know and I’ll refer you.  They gave away about 10 prizes, the big one being $100 off a month’s rent.  And guess who won that!?  We rock!  Maybe we actually get dinner out this month. 

So I was super-excited to get back to Warwick State Park, probably the best overall course in America (there, I said it). My last time here was less than stellar, so I wanted a little revenge, plus I wanted to have one good last tournament.  And, like when I played FDR (after traveling via plane from the west coast), got hit with a pretty nasty cold.  It happens every time I travel it seems, but seems to be worse when I have a tournament.  So, heavily drugged up, I headed out after being picked up by Obiwankaneobi (THANKS MAN!!!)  This was easily the toughest field I’d played against in over a year, possibly two, and with me feeling sick, I was really only hoping to not embarrass myself.

Round 1: Playing the “new” Blue-Layout (they have added/altered three holes), I played four practice holes and kicked major patoot, including some super putting.  I started on hole 4 (old hole six), and started with 8 pars in a row.  Considering how I felt, I was pretty happy with that.  There were some birdies I missed, but also some 3s that I am not unhappy walking away with.  My putting was helping.  My first bogey came on the first new hole, which I didn’t have the fortune of playing in practice, and actually it was just an unlucky kick and a real close putt that gave me the 4.  On holes 13 and 15, I couldn’t get out of the gap, and 4′d.  By the end of the back 9, I had 5 bogeys staring me in the face, and no birdies (unacceptable), but still felt I was playing more solidly than I felt.  I managed a birdie on hole 1, and parred out.  I finished at +4.  Probably around my normal skill level, but certainly better than I should have.  Solid putting, solid driving (for the most part), and my normal crap up shots.  I was 7 out of first, and only four out of last of 22.

2nd Round: After lunch and some rejuvination (the east actually keeps their lunch to a humane length), I started at the bottom of the 3rd card (of 5) and was playing the Blue-Silver layout.  I started bogeying hole 3, which is admittedly difficult, but I had a killer drive and just sucked on my upshot.  I parred for a while, then 4′d hole 8 which is also admittedly tough, but like hole 3, it was a PERFECT drive with a terrible upshot and a missed putt (I missed 5 putts within 50′ on the left side this round, most within 30′).  Bunch more pars until the first new hole, hole 11.  I had never thrown this hole, and everyone in my group was throwing this left-to-right under-the-trees kinda shot.  I felt like there was a good S-shot over the OB creek and right at the pin.  I threw my Q-Sentinel and damn-near aced.  Drop in deuce.  +1 after nine holes.  I bogeyed 13 (not great drive, TERRIBLE up shot… see a pattern?), 3′d the VERY difficult hole 14, 4′d hole 15 (great drive, terrible shot), but finished strong.  I 3′d 17 (pretty tough), 3′d 18 (the hardest 3 on the course), deuced 1, and 3′d hole 3 to finish (not absolutely tough, but I’d never seen the hole before).  All in all, I finished with a 56, certainly a reputable score.  In fact, it was only 3 off the hot score.

What killed me was my lack of birdies, no doubt.  I have a feeling not too many people in the whole tournament had less 4s than I did – only 9 on the whole day, and some of them were on holes that were par 4s.  But I had a ROUGH time upping, and my putting didn’t hold up on Round 2.  However, it was enough to sneak into the cash against a field where I was 3rd lowest in ratings at the start.  It was only my money back, but it felt so good.

It was great to see ole Warwick and some good friends for what could be the last while (certainly the last time in a great while)

New York just has a unique brand of crazy that other cities (most notably Reno) just don’t have.  In Reno, your crazy people are more along the lines of destitute, angry white trash people.  Those are your crazy people.  Sometimes rants, but usually quiet brooding.  New York, by contrast, has the “composed rambling about nothing in particular while peeling a crate full of carrots” crazy.  There are some nice perks of coming back east.

Up next in my retrospective look at the past year is December.  The snow continued to fall at a rate completely inappropriate for a desert town, and continued to melt at a rate of not at all.  Since I have an additional 1000′ of elevation over Ash and her family in Sparks, I had plenty of snow in my backyard on Christmas morning to constitute a White Christmas.  She did have a small pile of snow in the shadow of a big tree, so I guess that’s a close to a White Christmas as I’m going to have in Reno.  And remember, she warned me that I wouldn’t need a shovel because of how little it snows.

Speaking of Christmas, it was my first Christmas without any family (technically, as they are not officially my family yet) so I got to enjoy it at Ash’s house.  It was surprisingly not much different from ours Xmas’, especially since recent times have seen us doing a Secret-Santa type thing since we’re all broke.  I got my first practice basket (thanks ASH!!!) and a gift certificate to a murder mystery dinner, which we just used a week ago (thanks Ash-rents!), as well as a few smaller things.  It was a great time, and my first real large Christmas since the folks moved away.

In this month, I tried snowboarding for the first time.  After two uneventful trips down the bunny slope utilizing the go sideways and lean back zig-zag method (read: not correct, but safe), I was ready for bigger slopes.  By my fifth run ever, we were already off the bunny slopes, and I was learning to snowboard normally, with one foot actually in front of the other.  I could turn “backwards” (leaning backwards) – but once I needed to zag “forwards”, I would end up straightening myself out and just pick up so much speed that I was afraid to turn.  I found out that the human body comes with built-in brakes: the face.  That will slow you down if you land squarely on it.  A great, yet achy, time.

Less than a full two months here, I went back east for my first work trip.  In fact, there was not one single month that I was NOT in NYC since moving until June, I believe.  But that was refreshing, being able to see people I hadn’t seen in a month and thinking “Wow, it’s been FOREVER!” Also seeing black people again.  It was nice.

I got to know the Reno police a little better when they investigated my apartment after a neighbor called them because my front door had been open all night (and it was DECEMBER).  They were infinitely cooler than Elmwood Park police.  And the year ended up with a visit from Cyrus, and we finally concluded during the Moist Towelette Experiment that no, a towelette will not stay moist if unopened for 10 years.  Onto a brand new year!

So I’m borrowing an idea from Jeff, who borrowed my idea of daily-posting, and will build up to an event with a short stroll down memory lane.  I moved to Reno almost a full year ago, and I’m going to do something of a retrospective of that year, month by month.  Let’s have at it, shall we?

I left New Jersey on Halloween of ’07, prepared to make the cross-country trip myself in four days.  Along the way, I stopped at various disc golf courses, numerous gas stations (gas prices were approaching, but not quite at, the highest they’ve ever been), and took note at how uninteresting the majority of this country is.

I did manage to accommodate a short trip to Marsha and Mitch’s house, which is unduly nice and offered probably the coolest basement I’ve seen in ages, replete with midget storage.  It wasn’t a long stop-off, but certainly enjoyable.  Moving westward certainly has its perks in terms of who I’m able to see more often.

I made it to Reno earlier than expected, surprising both Ashley and Lexi, her neice, but more importantly surprising the apartment complex I was supposed to stay in, who mixed up my move-in date.  One day later, I was in my own apartment, hanging up my New Jersey flag and displaying monkeys.  I was in a new time zone and a new state, one without rain or black people.

Before the month was out, I made my first road trip with Ash out to San Jose to play paintball with some friends of hers.  One war wound and tons of achy joints later, I realized exactly how old 29 is, and more importantly, how banged up I am. I was also able to have my first Cyrus and Corey sightings, which would be the first of still not enough.

Near the end of the month, an unseasonbly early snowfall made landfall, dropping more than two feet of snow.  This is the same area that had gone 8 straight years at one point without any snow.  This would only start a year-long trend of all sorts of records being broken the year I move here. Ash’s family is convinced I altered the jetstream.

Truth be told, November was spent doing nothing, and enjoying it.  I had my own apartment really for the first time, and a girlfriend who was truly busy with work and school.  I played lots of video games, watched some TV, and enjoyed stasis for the first time years, especially after the turmoil of doing the Fringe over the summer.

Most importantly, Ashley and I were getting to see each other, in person, whenever we wanted.  And slowly I was beginning to realize that my spur-of-the-moment decision to change my entire life was the correct one.