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So for a while now I’ve wanted a videogame system. I don’t really know why, other than the fact that I’m male, in my mid-twenties, and have more than 30 seconds a week free time. I’m pretty sure that’s all it takes. Besides, I haven’t had a system since the original NES I got for Christmas some 18-or-so years ago, and frankly, that’s too long.

I’ve been watching the new systems coming out and had pretty well decided on the Wii, seeing as how it was relatively cheap, interactive, and I thought I could possibly get the girlfriend to play it (which means game time also counts as girlfriend time. Bonus!). But you know what? I wasn’t sure how often I would honestly play the thing, and that made me a little more cautious. Sure, the Wii is only $250, but it’d be closer to $300 after taxes and a second controller are thrown in, and $360-$400 after I bought 2-3 games. And that’s a decent amount of money to spend on something I’ve never played before and don’t know how much I’ll play in the future. And of course there’s also the problem that the Wii is still pretty tough to get in this area. I’ve yet to see one on a shelf.

So I thought about it some more, and I said to myself, “Self? Do you really need one of the newest generation consoles?” And you know what? I don’t. I decided that the last-generation graphics were perfectly okay with me. Plus, the systems are cheaper now, and there are already tons of games out for them. Heck, I could even buy a used system and get one even cheaper still! And if I got something interactive and fun, I might still get the ladyfriend interested.

And at that, I decided to stake out Ebay for a while and see what I could find. I decided early on that I wanted a Playstation 2, because there are literally over 1,000 games out for the system, they’re relatively cheap despite the high demand, and it doesn’t count as supporting Sony since I’m buying it used and they don’t see any of the money. ;)

At first, I was watching the package deals closely… the ones with a system and a bunch of games. They were going for $170 or so for the midrange collections, plus around $25-$40 more for shipping. But you know what? I could never find a collection that had several of the games I wanted. Usually there’d be one game I’d be quasi-interested in, and five or six that I’d never touch. And I didn’t see the point of that. So I decided to piecemeal it.

So piecemeal is what I did. I bought a gently used PS2 (with 2 controllers and a memory card) from Half.com, a pair of brand new Dance Dance Revolution pads (2004-style interaction, baby) from a seller on Ebay, and four used games I really wanted (Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, God of War, Madden 06, and DDR Max) from various sellers on Amazon. And no, I didn’t make my purchases through Extra Life, because I decided that seemed a little immoral. ;) You, however, should feel welcome to make such purchases. *wink wink*

In short, assuming none of the sellers are horribly misrepresenting their wares, in a week from now I should have a nice Playstation 2, two controllers, four games, and two dance pads. The grand total? Just over $170 after shipping. Not bad, eh? That’s about $100 less than a Wii would be after taxes, not including of the more essential extras. I think I did alright. :)

Note: I know that getting DDR makes me a bit of a geek. ;) However, I decided to do it anyway for several reasons. First, if I’m playing DDR, I’m getting a significant amount of exercise, which will make me feel less guilty for owning/using the system. Second, DDR (nerdy or otherwise) is a great interactive game that people honestly tend to enjoy once they play it. And third, Amanda got excited when I mentioned the idea in passing, so hey. Bonus. :)

The Chicago trip went pretty darn well. We didn’t see all that we had hoped to see due to adventure-related time constraints, but we’re already contemplating a trip back in the early summer, so that should take care of that little problem.

What? You wanted more detail? Fine…

We left a little later than I was hoping for on Friday (around noonish), but since it was mostly because Amanda was fighting her way through a migraine I can’t complain too much (or at least, complain too much and keep my girlfriend). The drive out wasn’t too bad. The only real snag was we hit Chicago right at rush hour, so there was some sloooow going for a while. It would have been worse, but it seems the majority of the traffic is trying to leave the city around that time. Go figure.

We checked into the hotel without any problem. And the room was very pretty! Almost exactly as the pictures made it out to be. We had a king-size bed in a wheelchair accessible room (read: no tub but a giant bathroom/shower) on the 8th floor. Very nice all around.

We spent our first night walking around Evanston a bit, getting a feel for the local scene. We had dinner at a place called Bar Louie. I had a ~really~ nice blue cheese bacon cheeseburger cooked just the way I like it. Go them. After dinner, we walked around a bit more before heading back to the hotel. We hung out in the Indigo Lounge for a couple of hours and had a couple of too-expensive drinks, then turned in.

Saturday was adventure-filled. Well, Saturday contained an adventure, at any rate. We took the train into the city, but I discovered all too late that the system wasn’t quite as simple as I thought it’d be. According to the map/schedule I looked up right before we left, we had to transfer trains at the north end of downtown from the Red line to the Green line at State in order to get to the Art Institute. So we got off the red line at Chicago/State. Only then did we discover that there was more than one stop under State street (we were in the subway). So we waited for the next train and continued south into the city a bit. After ten minutes and six stops on the train, we decided we must’ve gone too far somehow. So we got off, studied the map in the subway (we were looking for State/Lake, according to the map), and caught a train going the other way. And then we almost missed the stop a THIRD time because they only announced it as Lake. They left off the State part entirely (never mind the fact they only call it State online).

So we were at Lake, but we couldn’t figure out how to transfer. It wasn’t particularly obvious. There were no “board Green line here” signs. Eventually, we figured out that while the Red line was a subway at this stop, the Green line was an elevated train. So we had to leave the subway, go around the corner, and take a flight of stairs to get to the green line. And then when we did, we discovered there were two freaking Green lines, and we didn’t know which we wanted. After watching both go by, (as well as two Orange and two Pink line trains in between) we decided we wanted the second one, so we grabbed it when we made another pass. We finally made it to our stop, only to discover that the Orange and Pink trains stopped there as well. Sigh. All told, our supposed 45-minute ride into the city took nearly 2 hours, which pretty well decided for us that we weren’t going to hit more than one museum. And Amanda’s bladder was very nearly a casualty of war, I think. However, we ~did~ get to spend nearly four hours walking around the Art Institute, which was a lot of fun. I saw all sorts of cool stuff I didn’t get a chance to see on my last pass through in March of 2001.

After the museum, we walked around Millennium Park (Amanda wanted to visit the giant bean… see above) and the surrounding downtown area a bit. Then we saw via Doppler that it was going to start snowing any minute, so we caught a train back to Evanston.

And boy was it snowing/sleeting/blowing hard when we got there! The walk back to the hotel hurt something fierce, even though we only had a block and a half to go. And then what did we do? We decided we needed to go try a brand new sushi place we’d saw the night before as we were leaving Bar Louie. So we looked up Louis’ location on a map, put on our brave faces, and headed back out.

Turns out the map sent us in the completely wrong direction (NW instead of SE), so we spent waaay too much time out in the elements. But when we got there, we got a table despite not having reservations, and OMFUG! The sushi was fantastic! If you’re ever in Evanston and have a taste for sushi, do yourself a favor and check out Kansaku (located here, despite what other maps may say). They had great food, decent prices, and friendly staff. We tried the eel, salmon, and tuna. All verrah good.

Then we headed back to the hotel to the Globe Café and got trashed. Really trashed. We bought two pitchers of Goose Island Honker’s Ale, and it was slow enough that the bartender also gave us a couple of really high quality Long Island Iced Teas on the house. It was awesome, but more than enough alcohol. ;)

The next morning we woke late (but relatively hangover-free), walked around the Northwestern University campus, got breakfast, and headed home. The drive back was an adventure in itself. It started snowing about half an hour outside of the city and kept going fairly well the entire way back. The closer we got to Des Moines, the worse the roads got. We counted 32 cars in the ditch on the way, though it’s a safe bet we missed a few. #26 was by far the most exciting. We were in the left lane, passing a MidAmerican Energy truck, when the truck suddenly lost control, slid right across our path (I hit the brakes as fiercely and delicately as I could), and ended up in the median beside us. That got the adrenaline pumping, lemme tell you.

So that was the Chicago trip, in 1,200 words or less. I made exciting purchases today I wanna share about, but that will have to wait until tomorrow. Amanda’s coming over and we’re going to make salmon for dinner. Nummy.

I totally forgot to mention that I wasn’t going to be in town this weekend! I bet you were wondering, too, werencha?

This Friday is a random corporate holiday called Cabin Fever Friday. Basically, I think the CEO decided there were no good holidays between New Year’s and Memorial Day, so he threw an extra one into the mix so we could take a day off. I have no idea why we didn’t just get MLK Day or President’s Day or something off, but whatever.

To celebrate this unofficial holiday, Amanda and I will be driving out Friday morning for a long weekend in Chicago, home of the second best damn football team in the United States (or the first worst, depending on your preferences). We’ll be staying in Evanston (a northern ‘burb) about three blocks away from Northwestern University at the lovely Hotel Orrington (random bedroom photo of which posted above). We were hoping to get a hotel downtown, but it seems there’s some sort of massive convention going on in Chicago this weekend (I heard 30,000+ attendees), and the hotels downtown are pretty well full up.

We plan to spend Friday night relaxing and hanging out in Evanston, eating at one of the metric trillion nearby restaurants, having a few drinks, and whatnot. Lots of whatnot. On Saturday, we’ll take the L into the city (there’s a stop conveniently a block and a half away) and do the Chicago thing. We don’t really have a definite plan, but our indefinite ones suggest we’ll be hitting the Field Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, possibly the Museum of Contemporary Art, and pretty much any other little thing that catches our fancy, because we have no itinerary and that’s not such a bad thing. :) We’ll have dinner in the city, and then probably head back to Evanston for some good, old-fashioned college town bar action. Sunday, we’ll wake up late, have a nice breakfast, and get ready to head back to Des Moines.

It’s a short trip, to be sure, but I think it’s a nice way to make the most of a long weekend. And it should prevent me from doing any more damage to the house. :)

It’s been a busy ten or so days since we’ve last spoke. So busy, in fact, that I haven’t even gotten around to purchasing a replacement flag. That’s the route I’ve decided to take, by the by. I plan to buy at least two flags: one pirate and the other foreign (but not Middle Eastern (I’ve nothing against the middle east, but I bet some of my neighbors do, and I’m looking to annoy, not incite violence or vandalism)). I appreciate all the comments, by the by. Good conversation in there. :) I’ll keep you updated as to the status of my pole. If you catch my drift.

Somewhere amidst the great flag debacle, Valentine’s Day happened. Amanda and I had decided we wanted to do something rather simple to celebrate. Somewhere along the line, though, simple got tougher. :p I decided I wanted to make her dinner, so we had pot roast (avec potatoes, baby carrots, onions, garlic, soy sauce, numminess), fresh baked bread, a nice bottle of wine, and cherry pie a la mode for dessert. Amanda has a thing for pie; she claims them better than cake, which I personally claim is signs of mental instability. But I digress.

Really, the cherry pie was the only tough part - my newly purchased crock pot took care of the worst of the roast, and the bread machine turns out nice whole wheat loaves regularly now (I haven’t bought bread from the store in months). But the pie made up for the others. I decided I wanted it to be wholly homemade, from the crust right down to the filling. And so it was. There were only a couple of problems with this plan. First, there was a slight difficulty in rolling out the dough, largely stemming from the fact that I don’t own a rolling pin. Instead, I used an empty wine bottle covered in saran wrap. It worked okay, but not as well as a nice wooden rolling pin (or even a full wine bottle, methinks) would have. The result being, the crust was a little too thick. And then I didn’t to all to hot a job sealing up the crust at the edges, so it looked a little slapdash when I was done, and had pulled away from the edges of the pan in a few places. And then, I think I ended up using too many cherries in the filling, so the whole thing ran over into the oven (and under the pie), stinking up the house and gumming up the pie. It tasted pretty good in the end, though, and I guess that’s what matters most. ;)

So that was V-Day. The evening after, we went out to Taki for a surprise birthday dinner with Sara (the birthday girl), her boyfriend Chuck, Anne, and Hannah. The food was awesome (I had rare steak and rare eel in one night, which is pretty tough to beat), and the company was good, but the waitress was a bit of a choad. Rude, anyways. But yes. Night otherwise = good.

Friday was pretty darn dull, really. Amanda and I both worked late, we had a frozen pizza for dinner, watched some TV, and had fallen asleep on the couch by a little after 10pm. I guess we’re getting old.

We made up for it on Saturday, though, lemme tell ya. First off, I decided a bit randomly Saturday morning that I was finally annoyed enough with the living room carpet to do something about it, so Amanda and I spent from 10am - 4pm or so tearing up my living room carpet. I now have hardwood floors! Of course, they’re not in the best of shape. In another month or so, we plan to sand them down and refinish them. Mostly, we want it to be warm enough we can open windows for ventilation without then dieing of exposure as a consequence. Also, I think some of the furniture will have to go out the front door to refinish the floor. To tear out the carpet, we just moved the big pieces to one side of the room, tore everything up on that side, and moved them back.

After the carpet was out, we headed up to Ames for a lunch/dinner/gorging at King Buffet. We both had been missing the place. ;) At one point, I had chicken, beef, shrimp, and frog all on my plate at the same time (I guess steak and eel isn’t that tough to beat after all). After dinner, we headed back down to Des Moines and went out to the bars (newly opened 101 Lounge (it was okay-ish) and Hessen Haus) with the same group as from Thursday night and proceeded to get trashed. Chuck, bless his heart, gave us a ride home.

And now you’re caught up, more or less. I’ll spare you the sordid tales of IHOP for breakfast/lunch (onion rings and pancakes, mmm…) and taking out the trash in my robe and fuzzy slippers (leaping snowdrifts in a single bound!). Hmm… you know what? Now that I think about it, both of those topics would have made for better posts than this one. Ah well. No turning back now.

I’ve been living in my new neighborhood for right around four months now, and I have to say, it isn’t a bad place to live. The neighbors generally stay out of my way, and I theirs. In four months, three of them have spoken to me, one of them has waved as I jogged past, and one even cleared my sidewalk the first time it snowed and I wasn’t around (I got a chance to return the favor on the next snowfall). In short, I haven’t really had a problem with the neighbors. Until yesterday.

I was home sick yesterday. I got a bit of a bug from… well, I don’t really know where (Justin or Amanda, is my guess), but somewhere. So I was already having a bit of a crummy day. Then, I go to get my mail, and I see that I have a letter. An honest-to-God, handwritten letter. I haven’t received a handwritten letter (not counting postcards) like this in years (2000, I would guess), so I was pretty excited. It was addressed to “Neighbor” at my house number, with no return address. I tore open the envelope and started to read. It started with a “thank you,” which I thought was sweet. Until I read on, of course.

I’ve left the letter at home, but here’s a generally accurate version:

Thank you for FINALLY, FINALLY doing something about that poor, TATTERED flag in your front yard that had ended up on the ground. Don’t put another one up until you are willing to show some respect for our flag.

Not a very nice letter, in the end. Please note the emphasis was in the original, in the form of dozens of deep and angry underlines under each of the emphasized words.

I know what some of you are thinking, and yes: I let an American flag get tattered and then touch the ground, which I’m pretty sure is blasphemous since God invented America and all. Let’s try to look past that to the bigger picture here.

Here’s a bit of background: There was a flag in the front yard of the house when I bought it from my parents in October. I’m not much of the Star-Spangled Yard Decorations type myself, so I mentioned to my mom that I was planning on taking the flag down. She sounded a bit hurt at the idea, and mentioned my dad had spent a lot of time putting up the flagpole himself, it meant a lot to them, blood-sweat-tears et cetera, and so I let it be. The flag stayed. It wasn’t like I had a better idea for the spot, since it was October and I couldn’t plant anything there for another six months regardless.

(And no, I’m not suggesting this is my parents fault/problem/whatever. And am I suggesting that the person who sent the nasty letter should have intuited this information and considered their response accordingly? Nope! I’m suggesting they should have minded their own damn business in the first place)

And then a storm came through one weekend and tattered the end of the flag pretty good. I noticed, after a while (I’m very, very rarely home during winter daylight hours), and thought maybe I should just take the thing down. I didn’t get around to it, though. And then another storm came through recently and knocked the flag down the pole, nearly to the ground. When I noticed, I… well, I guess I personally didn’t fix it. ;) I left a note for my brother last Wednesday to fix it, since he was coming over to do laundry that afternoon and I wasn’t planning on being home for a while. And fix it he did, folding it up nicely and putting it in my basement so I could dispose of it properly later.

So that was last Wednesday, and the whole flag-thing was taken care of. I thought. Until yesterday, this Wednesday, a whole freaking week later, when I got an entirely sarcastic, downright rude, and frankly hurtful letter from one of my neighbors. And worse yet was the absolute anonymity of it all. They didn’t even have the cajones to say these things to my face, or to attach their name to the letter. And that changes things. Because you know what? I wasn’t even planning on putting another flag up. As I said before, I don’t feel the need to advertise my country in my front yard. I live 1,000 miles from the nearest other nation — I don’t think anyone’s going to get confused as to where I live. But now, I simply cannot Let This Go Unanswered.

I mentioned this incident to the people at work today, and with their help, we’ve come up with a few ideas for what to do with my unadorned (and apparently insulting) flagpole. Here are a few of the best:

• Fly the flag of another country instead. My current favorite is South Africa; their flag is rather pretty, what with all the bright colors and all. That, or Greece, because I like the blues. Or maybe I could fly the Jolly Roger, to strike fear into the anonymous letter-writers of the land. I could also just get a UN flag, because really, aren’t we all just one big happy family? ;)
• Run a pair of my old boxer shorts up the pole. This idea has the benefit of being rude, crude, and delightfully juvenile in an eat-my-shorts sort of way, while still ensuring the fundamental point is made: My flagpole, not yours, and it’s best not argue the point any further.
• Buying a set of international signal flags. Use them to spell any number of crude and inappropriate messages that still manage to look rather cheerful. The best part of this idea is I could change the message to say different things as I got bored (or drunk, I suppose).
• Instead of replacing the flag, use my outdoor speakers to blare Toby Keith singing “Proud to Be an American” into the neighborhood at all hours of the night. Who’s the True Patriot now, biatch?! I’m more American than Jesus!
• Send an anonymous letter to all of my neighbors asking the offender to step forward and accept the responsibility. As an incentive, include photos of a puppy and a hammer in each envelope. Insinuate that the puppy and the hammer might get into a bit of a pounding match if Anonymous Nosy Neighbor does not respond quickly.
• Get a flag printed (we have cloth printers here at work, I have learned) featuring my face, looking rather stern. Perhaps surround my head with the phrase “Don’t Tread On Me.” I might also need a tophat or a gun for the photo.

So those are a few of the ideas generated. The first one is mine; the others came from friends and colleagues. And I’ve decided to rule out any that involve property damage. Or desecration of the American flag, for that matter, since it’s not the flag I’m angry at. ;) I’ll probably follow through with the first one, since it’s not aggressive so much as poking fun at the whole idea. I might do the second idea, though, until my new flag arrives. ;) I have a ten-year-old pair of Simpsons boxers somewhere that should do the trick nicely.

Have any other, better ideas? I’d love to hear them. Comment away. :)