Weekend Intelligence: Nomage For Your Brain

I took a week off from blogging to catch-up on some life things left over from vacation and taking it easy. Contemplating whether or not I want to keep this blog, as the resolution that started this blog was to keep it for a year... Yeah, I guess I'll keep it. ^^ But then that means I have some catching up to do... So, in typical weekend intelligence fashion, here are the highlights.

House and Home:

First, thanks for your thoughts and prayers for DeAnn and her family's loss. I didn't blog about it, or several other major life stressors that have been going down the past month or so, but needless to say, we've been run down pretty ragged. It only gets better from here, though, and my wife and I are stronger for it.

Following the Holidays, we got the Wii set up and online on our new entertainment system. The way the extra content works on that system is you buy up blocks of points, and use those points to buy classic games, new games and added Wii content. We ended up buying Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life As King. That game is crack. Absolute crack. While they make the game easily playable in 10 minute "days", they don't tell you how your previous day went until the next one, making for a very addicting play experience. We also purchased Zelda II (since D had never played it before), MegaMan 9, the Internet and Aquarium channels and a WiiFit. The WiiFit is nice for tracking our weight loss goals, but the aerobic games are somewhat light until you grind them out over and over again to unlock harder modes. Having DDR'ed for so long, the pace feels too slow, but I'm sure it's exactly what some people need. Personally, I can't wait to get back on DDR, as soon as the XBox gets back out of the shop, which should be pretty soon.

I also had one of those birthday things this past weekend... 27... >.<; I feel old. Anyway, I wanted to go to Benihana, but the wait was over an hour, and we have a two year old. >.>; Instead we went to a relatively new place called Kobe Grill. I've been wanting to try the place out for a while now, and I'm glad I did. The wait staff was very attentive, and very Japanese in their waiting style. Unlike Benihana, or really any other restaurants, the servers excused themselves or apologized each and every time they needed to interrupt our dinner to fill glasses, bring/take plates and deliver the check. They gave slight bows each time they came and left. When Clara pitched a fit while waiting for the appetizers, they gave her a little glass dog to look at and play with. I gave it a 60% chance of ending up in a billion little pieces on the floor, but I really appreciated the gesture. The chef made sure that she would be OK with the fire tricks, and was sure to cook things that the kids would eat first so he could move them to a cooler part of the grill while the other things were cooking, making them not quite so scalding hot when the meal met little mouths.

As for how the kids did... Well, Clara was Clara. She wanted her food NOW and threw a fit pretty early into the visit. At least that cooled her off for the rest of the time. She loves sushi, and even told us "Sushi, yummy, mmm." Wasn't too hot on the soup, though, which was a surprise because she usually loves soup. Colin actually tried some new things while he was there. No sushi or soup or salad, but he did eat his rice, a good portion of his meat, and even had a bottle of Japanese strawberry soda, even though he was unsure if he'd like it. A very pleasant experience, and a great birthday dinner. ^^

In Game:

We really didn't do much in game worthy of any note in the past two weeks. Seriously. I led a short and unsuccessful Promyvion - Mea run for my social shell, and we got some experience on our Beastmasters in the Boyahda Tree, but didn't even level. There's just too much going on in our lives lately to really have time to invest in game. Hoping things will cool off a little in the upcoming weeks.

So the blog lives on!