A great birthday

My birthday is normally not much of an event these days. I have also always had trouble trying to find something I really wanted to do that I would enjoy. This year I put a little thought into it. I don't really have a favorite resturant or type of food that I gravitate to. So when asked where I wanted to go I thought about it for a while and said I'd like to eat at a home style italian resturant where I could get a Calzone, Pizza or pasta that was home made and not some food chain style dish. So I did a bit of looking and decided on a place we hadn't been to in years, a great family italian resturant that had what I was looking for. I ordered the Calzone which was $20 and Chris had Eggplant Parm. We both had a glass of italian wine. I suspected the Calzone would be big at the price and figured I'd be taking it home but I didn't expect it to be HUGE. I ate about 1/3 of it and took the rest home. It was great food though. We then went to our new Century Movie theater at the Mall and saw Grand Torino with Clint Eastwood which was VERY good. Went home and watched TV and fell asleep on the couch.

It was a great birthday. One of the best in a few years. I guess it goes to show that a little thought about something and some planning can sometimes help make an otherwise normal day turn into something you really enjoy.

I'm not that much into music

Never have been probably never will be. Not sure why. But I got a crazy reminder of it when Chris and I went to a Play this month called The Seafared by Conor McPherson at Artist Repertory Theatre. The play, which is about 4 Irish men, drinking, gambling and the devil, has an odd line in it from the fellow who apparently is "The" Devil. Someone turns the music on and he cringes and says he can't really hear it and that it annoys him and he asks if someone could just turn it off. Which made me wonder, am I the Devil?

Now I don't really think that music anoys me or that I can't hear it, well most if it anyway. I'm mostly just indifferent. I don't own an iPod and the CD's of my music would fit in a shoe box. I only have 2 points in time that my musical tastes come from. The first is when I was 10 (1973) and it was what my parents were listening to on records and the radio and again when I was a teen (1976-1981) in a small town that didn't have a record store or local radio station. What filtered into our small Oregon logging community was always years behind the trend. So I like the beatles, Peter Paul & Mary, Simon & Garfunkle, Harry Chapin, Jim Croce, Carol King, Elton John, and John Denver. I also like Kenny Rodgers, Cher, Don McLean, a few others that had hits in those years.

Most of the time I prefer silence to music. I listen to the car radio with top 40 hits from the past as background music most of the time. Once in a great while some song will come along that grabs me and I listen to it for a while but then I always go back the silence. I'm just not a music culture person. I prefer movies and television as my cultural interest I guess?

Of course I can read!

I read all the time. I read blogs, internet news, technical specs, web comics, emails, and tons of other stuff on the computer. I just don't read much on paper. I have 3 or 4 unfinshed books lying around the house. I have a HUGE stack of books I intend to read. I used to read my favorite authors books all the time and whenever a new one would come out I'd pick it up and read it right away. Now I don't even pay attention when new stuff is out. I was a big fan of Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Robin Cook. I did read all the Harry Potter books though. In fact that might be the last book I have read? So I have been thinking that maybe I ought to look into one of those digital book readers? I am so used to reading on the computer maybe this would get me back to reading the paper books again? Plus I LOVE gadgets. Only thing is that it is out of range of the current budget right now. Oh well, somthing to save for I guess?

Xbox 360 the gift that keeps giving

One of the problems with owning a gaming console is that there are a LOT of accessories that you end up buying plus the games you need to keep buying in order to enjoy the whole thing. So recently I have been on a used game buying spree. Thank goodness for Game Crazy. I bought Orange Box so I can play Portal on the Xbox. I bought Overlord which is a great adventure style game like Fable but with evil minions. I got Laura Croft Legend which has great graphics and fun puzzles. I got Burnout Paradise so I can crash stuff in HD. I also got Legos Star Wars since the Indiana Jones game was so fun. I have ordered a replacement for Indian Jones Legos which should be here soon. I just need to get a copy of Halo 3 and Fable 2 and I will be set for a while. I think I will stick with buying used games and returning ones I don't want anymore for credit for buying more games.

I exchanged my new copy of EndWar for a rechargeable controller battery and one extra and a charger.

I got a Dlink wireless client that I can connect to the XBox 360 to download demos and free stuff. It also installed a whole new interface that is pretty cool.

I need to get another controller so I can play along with someone else on some games.

Hopefully there are no other parts I will need or upgrades to purchase for a while.

A new toy for Christmas

I got a Xbox 360 over the Christmas holiday. It came with 3 games. A two pack that had Indiana Jones Legos and Kunfu Panda. Both were fun. The other game was Tom Clancy's EndWar a RTS that uses the headset to give commands to move your players around. Not my type of game and haven't spent much time with it.

I ruined my Legos game by leaving it in the Xbox while moving the box and then turning it back on. The disk was off center and spun and made a racket and when I took it out it had a HUGE scratch in it that made it unplayable. Darn I was only about %25 through the game. I did play Kungfu panda all the way through though. Jack Black is always funny.

I rented Fable 2 so Chris and I can play together. We liked Fable on the Xbox. Since I have been sick since Christmas Chris bought me a used copy of Gears of War which I have partially played on the PC. It is a graphic war game that is intense and a lot of fun to play.

I love the graphics of the Xbox 360 on my new 42" LCD TV. I am going to get a wireless connection hooked up soon so I can download demos etc.

Where is my watch?

For as long as I can remember I have worn a wristwatch. I think it started when I was about 10 when my parents gave me my first watch as a gift. My Dad showed me how to wear it on my left wrist since I am right handed and wearing on my right hand would get it much more banged up. Not sure if that was lifelong advice or just what you tell a kid that you want to have the watch you just gave them to last longer than a few months. From that day on for over 40 years I wore my watch all the time. I took it off when I went to bed and put it on when I got up. I took it off to take a shower and put it on when I got dressed. I felt naked when I didn't have it on my wrist. I had many a summer with a watch tan.

Most of my watches lasted for a long time. I usually had 2 watches at any given time. My nice watch and a working watch. I wore my nice watch when I wasn't doing physical labor or things that could mess up the watch. The work watch (usually a much cheaper watch that I replaced more often) was one I didn't care about as much. I have had calculator watches, cheap digital Casio watches, nice Seiko watches and several other nice brands. Nothing expensive just functional.

Well recently since my last watch I bought (with a JC Penny gift certificate from my Grandmother over 10 years ago) had the batteries run out I stopped wearing my watch. Since I started working from home a few years ago I always started carrying my cell phone with me everywhere I go and when I was home I am surrounded by clocks (at the computer and all over the house) so I never needed a watch. Sometimes though I don't bring my cell phone with me and I find myself looking at my bare wrist. I need to get my watch fixed or buy another, I'm just not used to having nothing on my arm and knowing at any given moment what time it is or how much time I have left. I know it is supposed to be freeing to be unleashed from our time pieces but for me it is a part of me that seems missing.

By the way this watch is WAY to big but it sure is cool!

Interesting way to get out of the house

A friend of mine who shall remain unnamed. Uses Dial-up for Internet access (I know, can you believe it!). He says that when he needs the bandwidth he takes his laptop to a hotspot and uses the free Internet. I should probably mention that my friend is also VERY cheap. To his credit though he is much more financially secure than I will ever be. Me and money have this love/hate relationship. I love to spend it and hate it when I never seem to have any.

Anyway, my friends comment of using a public wireless access point for broadband internet made me think that would be a great way to get out of the house more often. I have been cooped up here for a couple of months hardly leaving once a week if I am lucky. If I loaded all my work on a nice laptop I could go to a different public space each day and work all over the city. From Starbucks in the morning to public buildings and other fun areas in the afternoon. I could even meet people and become a regular at certain spots. Problem is I don't drink coffee or tea (never acquired a taste for either). I'd probably spend too much money at all the locations out of guilt for using their free internet. There goes that whole money issue again. Still sounds like a cool idea. Of course I'd have to buy a laptop beefy enough to do my work on first?