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Amanda spent most of this last week (Sunday afternoon – Thursday evening) in Wisconsin on a photo shoot. I was able to keep myself sufficiently busy with things to do, which turned out to be a lot more fun than my original plan of sitting in an unlit room, rocking back and forth and whispering absurdities to myself until I fell asleep every night. Besides, there’s always the weekends for that.

However, I was pretty amazed by how quickly (and unconsciously) I reverted to some of my “bachelor” ways, particularly when it came to food preparation. On Sunday night, I made myself a batch of macaroni & cheese, which isn’t odd in and of itself. But then I plopped down on the couch with the cooking pot in my lap and ate straight from the cookery. No fuss, no mess. :)

And one other night this week I pulled out one of my true single-male favorites. It was late, and I didn’t feel like making a full meal, so I grabbed a cold hot dog out of the fridge, skewered it on a chopstick, and cooked it over the range. Then I just stuck it in a bun, covered it in spicy mustard and relish, and wolfed it down in three giant bites. Dinner took all of three minutes total.

I did try one ambitious meal last week: I made homemade rice and beans. I had a bag of dried black beans in the pantry, so I started them soaking when I went to work in the morning, then rinsed them and started them simmering when I got home. I flavored them up with some salt, garlic, and cilantro. Then I made brown rice – I sautéed some diced red pepper, jalapeño, garlic and onion in some olive oil until they were tender, then tossed the rice and water right on top. It wasn’t too bad in the end, but I think the rice could have used more flavor (that’s brown rice for ya), so I think I’ll be more heavy-handed with my peppers in the next go-round.

The only real bachelor thing I didn’t get accomplished this week was playing video games. I tried playing a couple, but every time I did, my computer would shut down after a few minutes. I think I have a component on its way out or something. Which is a little unfortunate, because I was hoping to start gaming a bit more, and I’m too cheap/poor right now to justify upgrading my PC. Life, it is hard.

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. :)