Weekend Wrap-up

Amy and I spent most of our relaxing weekend in Union Pier, Michigan. We spent time sitting on the beach, riding our bicycles around the area, and lounging in or outside of our room. We had a balcony, so if we were at the house in the evenings we could sit outside and look at the night sky.

I really did not want to come home on Monday, but come home we did. Once we returned, we spent most of yesterday cleaning the kitchen out in preperation for its demolition tomorrow. Tonight we will cover the living room furniture in plastic to stave off some of the inevitable dust. The electrician will also begin work tomorrow afternoon. If all goes smoothly, the cabinets will all be installed next Tuesday. I'll be taking pictures of the transformation, so hopefully, if you are interested, I can send the collection when the project is done.

Finally, we had the opportunity to see a couple of movies over the weekend, Three Extremes and Dark Days, both of which I can recommend.

Bucket of Bolts

The car repair bill has gone from being a drop in the bucket of our expenditures this month to a full-blown, recognizable percentage of them. On my way to pick Amy up from the Cubs game last night, I was driving on Devon when a flapping noise began eminating from under the hood. I knew immediately that it was one of the belts. As I began to smell something burning, the racket quickly got worse until it sounded as if whatever belt was flapping was literally tearing itself away from the pulleys. It eventually stopped making noise, but while there was no obvious repercussions from the hardware failure that took place, I knew it should be checked quickly.

So, I took the car back to the garage this morning. They examined the situation further and determined that the harmonic stabalizer needs to be replaced. Of course, the part itself is over seven hundred dollars. They'll give us a break on the labor since we've been faithful customers so that won't amount to more than fifty dollars. Still, I can't help being at least a little resentful that the unit picked now to fail out of all the possible times available. Plus, I'm not sure how long they will need to fix the problem. We're supposed to have the cabinets delivered tomorrow, so I need the car to be able to get home quickly to meet the deliverers. We'll figure something out, but this could be going much more smoothly if this automotive failure had not occurred.

Kountdown to a Kitchen

In a perfect kind of synchronicity, our car has decided that it needs some service mere days after we poured thousands of dollars into a remodelling project. The bill is only a tiny drop in the bucket of the cost of the new kitchen, but I'd still be happier if we didn't have to spend anything at all. At the very least, we will see some of the fruits of our expenditures as the cabinets arrive on Friday. We have also finalized our choice of electrician and my mind is at ease knowing that he comes so well referred from Jordan. I am excited to see this project commence, knowing that we should be in a brand new kitchen by the first half of June. The pictures will be coming shortly but not to this site. I will send them via email to those of you who actually wish to see them.

I have been yearning for some new music recently and have been pointed in the direction of two bands that are new to me, one contemporary and one very old. Yonder Mountain String Band is a blue/newgrass outfit that I had not heard of before this week. They are not as influenced by jazz as, say, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, but I have noticed that they will open for BFatF as part of their tour schedule. I have also been pointed towards Cannon's Jug Stompers. You can grab one of their most successful songs in mp3 format here. You might recognize it.

Speaking of old things, I turn 31 on Saturday. I know I'm getting older when some of those around me don't get the pop culture references I make. Time to get the black socks out and sit on my front lawn with the hose. Also, the Green has officially been around for two years. I can stick with some things as long as they're pointless.

No Wii Puns Here

As the five out of seven of you who read this blog probably know, Nintendo recently shed the Revolution alias of its next gaming console meanwhile unveiling the true moniker of the machine: Wii. Pronounced "Wee", the name has unleashed a veritable Katrina upon the internet, drowning most logical people in a flood of childish puns and cries of anguish from many people who call video games their hobby. But, while I can't say that I haven't laughed at some of the puns, I have read in full every text that has opined upon both the name and the system that I have encountered and I have come to only one conclusion about what it all means. The Wii is not for me.

Basically, I am the kind of consumer that Nintendo is trying to avoid because I and my ilk play games already. We are comfortable with dual analog sticks controlling avatar motion and viewing angle simultaneously. We are comfortable memorizing and practicing long strings of button combinations in order to pull off that one uber, game-winning move. But, there are less of us in the world than there are people who really don't give a rip about any of that. Those people just want to have fun. The Wii is for those people and the name of the machine is Nintendo's ultimate declaration of its shift in market focus.

Nintendo is setting itself apart from its two primary competitors by neither making a direct reference to games a la the Playstation 3 nor a half-hearted attempt, as is the Xbox brand, at creating an "extreme" image by putting as many 'X's or 'Z's as possible into the name. While I don't see Wii as being a label that is going against current marketing trends in names for technological devices, it does what I believe it is intended to do which is to set itself apart from the direct competition. Wii is after all, a simple, rather friendly name despite the fact that it takes a whole paragraph of text to explain itself.

In the end, I am still interested in the machine and what it will be able to do. Despite the fact that it is "not for me", I still want to belong to what it stands for, that is, a different way of thinking about games. Viva la Wii.