24

I love video games. Let's just get that out of the way right now in case you're reading this blog for the first time and you don't know me personally. I am an avid gamer and have been since my brother Phil first introduced me to the NES in the really early 90's. At least those are my first gaming memories; the first games I remember are sports games (Tecmo Bowl and Mike Tyson's Punch Out!), which is a little funny since I don't play those sort of games too much now.

Video games are fun, of course, and that is the main reason I play them in my adult life, but there are other reasons. They are diverting, which is nice when I am stressed and need to think about something other than work or interpersonal drama for a while. In the game world, if I lose a battle I have the opportunity to play it over again as many times as I need to until I progress, but of course in the real world I have to be able to have the right answer and response to every situation right away. Although I am frustrated by having to do something over while I am absorbed in the game, sometimes the repetition is good to take my mind off of things.

My favorite type of game would have to be the Role Playing Game (RPG) genre, like Final Fantasy. The typical formula has the protagonist gradually learn of their part in a larger destiny and they usually lead the fight against a great threat or evil against the world/universe. At the beginning of many of these games a lot of these protagonists are lost, like they are waiting for something. I think a lot of us feel like that sometimes; I know I do.

I turned 24 last Thursday, which in itself is not particularly impressive, I know. However, I have really had the chance to think about my life thus far and tried to ask myself if I would have done anything differently. One of my favorite exercises as a writer in coming up with plot points is looking at alternate universes from my own life and following them, like if I'd never been born or if I'd moved to Oregon instead of Mesa.

Most people make New Years' resolutions, but I decided I would make a few birthday resolutions. I want to do a few things better at 24 that I was dissatisfied with at 23.
1) I want to be a lot better about staying in touch with people.
2) I need to do more writing (including this blog).
3) I should work harder on my schoolwork. It will only get more intense soon and
I know that I can't afford to waste any time.
4) I have to take better care of myself by going to the gym and eating better.
5) I want to start learning the guitar again.
These are the things that nag at me and I'm always thinking "I need to work on that." I want to be better in all my relationships and be generally happier. I want to learn some new things, and eventually (I know it won't happen in the next year) get my degree. It doesn't necessarily matter that I don't yet know what specifically I want it for; I have a good feeling that I will find out along the way.

I do know that I am happy right now (although I am definitely in need of the vacation we're about to take), and Abigail and I have made a great life together in the past three years. I want to improve some things in myself just as Abigail and I want to change things in our life together (having a baby, for instance). One of the things I have thought about is that it's okay to be unsatisfied and still happy; they're not mutually exclusive. Constantly wanting to improve your life and going after something more is a very good thing, but only if you are able to be happy with what you have.

Abigail is in the habit of putting thematic songs in her blogs, so I will put one here that's been on my mind. We won a CD while we were at Family Camp, Third Day's "Revelation," and the very first track is called "This Is Who I Am."

I'm a son of a good man
I'm the child of an angel
I'm the brother of a wild one
And I'm looking for direction
I'm the lover of a beauty
I'm the father of blessings
I'm a singer of a love song
But is that all I'm good for

Chorus
This is who I am
This is who I am
So take me and make me something so much more
This is who I am
This is who I am
So change me and make me someone better than before

I'm a saint and a sinner
I'm a lover and a fighter
I'm a true believer, with great desire
I'm a preacher of grace, prophet of love, teacher of truth
I've fallen down so many times
But here I stand in front of you

Chorus

Take me as I am
But please don't leave me that way
'Cause I know that you can make me better than I am today

Chorus

I believe God has a plan for me, and if it's to be a great, famous writer or psychologist then that's awesome. If I'm just supposed to be a good man, and somehow that helps someone, then I'm okay with that too. That will be hard enough for anyone to do anyway. :-)

Weekend Recap

This was a busy, fun weekend! Friday I came home straight from work and took Susan and Abigail to see a movie called "Fireproof" that they had both been wanting to see. It was actually pretty good as far as chick flicks go, and not as cheesy as Christian movies can be.

Saturday I had a bunch of errands to run, but I got to sleep in which was awesome. I picked up Abigail's anniversary (October 21st) present, so let's see how long it takes her to notice this post! Then Saturday night I went to a preseason Coyotes (hockey) game with Matt, my dad, and Angela's brother Jeff. It's been a while since I had a proper guy's night out and I definitely enjoyed it. We were in row six, which curiously made it all seem smaller. Matt stayed until the wee hours of the morning playing Soul Calibur IV with me, which definitely got him in trouble with the wife but it was fun times nonetheless. Lesson learned: even if your wife is asleep, send her a token text message at least so she'll know where you are!

Sunday was my birthday celebration at mi casa. We had a lot of people show up, and so good times were had by all, possibly excepting the cats who are scared of balloons (yay Dad!). Hopefully pictures are forthcoming; I have none yet that I know of. We had 13 people total, I believe, so that was: Matt & Angela, our parents (4), 3 of our siblings, Andrew, and Nate. If I forgot anyone let me know! I made off with some great swag, including the new 360 from my wife and a few games for that and the PSP, as well as some movies (including two copies of Iron Man, LOL). Andrew got me an interesting board game called "Alibi" that we had too many people to play, but rest assured we shall some time. Thank you to those of you who texted or called, you rock!

I'm doing a separate post for health/WW stuff, should be up in a few minutes...

Scott is tired!

So yes, I really did have special plans on Sunday; I wasn't being flippant. I went to church, then came back and took on a project of monumental proportions if I do say so myself. I decided since my wife has been working so hard on finals and such that I would do something nice for her so I (with some unexpected help from my mom and my sister) shampooed pretty much all the carpet in the house (minus the bedrooms, which no one but us sees anyway). That required moving a lot of furniture, and I don't mind telling you I am still pretty sore. I'm not used to exercise anymore, so I was tired by the time we were done. Luckily that was still over an hour before Abigail came home. I also managed to do quite a bit of other cleaning as well so when she got here I was rather pleased with myself, as was she.

Matt and Angela came over that afternoon (just before Abigail, actually) and we had good times. Matt began a weight loss competition at work last week that involves measuring his total loss of poundage as well as body fat, so he is unofficially doing Weight Watchers as well as exercising. He went through how it's going with me and showed me how he is doing it, so I decided Monday would be Day 1 of my new diet. While I failed miserably (I had a cheeseburger at our restaurant, and regret nothing), I have taken to the project with much enthusiasm. I designed an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of everything, and so I've decided that in lieu of going to the meetings I will be posting the results here once a week. This is Day 2 (which has gone astronomically better, by the way), and I am really excited about it. The problem is Day 3 is my birthday, and Day 8 is my birthday party, so those two days I'm pretty much screwed. Oh well...

Anyway, it's the end of the month (EOM) at work so I have been super busy and stressed. I ended up getting off at 6:45 today, eep! Hopefully this will get better as the week goes by. My boss had talked about taking us to the movies tomorrow in honor of my birthday (and his 3 free movie passes that we gave him for HIS birthday last week) so we'll see. I'm still not sure we're going but it's a nice thought. I'm not planning on making a big deal about the day at work, but I don't know if it will be up to me. We'll see...

Blaaaaaaaaaaaaarg.

I hate being sick. While it is nice to be home in the middle of the week, the fact remains that all I want to do is just curl up into a ball and not live. I have the cold that many people at work as well as my sister and my friend Matt all got. On the bright side, I am here on my couch writing in my blog instead of at work writing some report. Go germs!


I had to give Matt his X box back, so while I still have the PSP and the Super Nintendo, my video game experience has been cut down by a lot. I have a big screen TV so even when I don't feel well it's not too bad to play the 360, but playing the PSP would give me a headache. I don't feel like leaving my comfy couch at the moment to go upstairs (where the Nintendo is). I spent the first few hours of this morning browsing randomness on the net. I love my random Wikipedia searches. :-D


So anyway, we had a good weekend. I hung out with Matt for a while on Saturday, and then Abigail and I celebrated her mom's birthday with her parents, her brother, her grandpa, and his friend. Good times. Sunday was similar except I hung out with Chris (my brother) and my dad, and then we all got together and celebrated my sister's birthday. I lent Chris TFU on that day; he's already beaten it as of yesterday afternoon (he took yesterday off sick). It's a rough life; playing video games all day. (sighs)

Anyway, check out my updated links to see pictures in my Picasa album. I know there must be a way to use them here but so far I am having issues. Nonetheless I am sure I will triumph eventually. That's how I roll.

New stuff

All right, good times. You may notice a couple of little changes. Hopefully there will be more tomorrow, time permitting, but the most important thing is I found out I can put my Gamertag on here! Yay!!! I've created a few albums on Picasa, but I still haven't quite figured out how to link them to here yet and I have more pictures to put up anyway so that should be tomorrow.

Right now my 360 is probably FUBAR so I have spent the last couple weeks playing off of other people's consoles when they didn't need them. My brother lent me his one week, then Matt lent me his last week when he was otherwise occupied. The next couple of weeks should be "dry" weeks, which makes me sad, but at least I managed to beat The Force Unleased last night. Abigail kinda freaked out last night when I explained I had already finished the $59.99 game, but apparently she does not understand replay value well. :-)

So I had my first day as a reservations person on Friday, but my boss's birthday is today so he decided to take Friday, a payday, off. What I didn't know was that would by default leave me stuck helping people distribute paychecks and paperwork, as well as giving change to every single employee (or so it seemed to me) of the hotel! I had come in early since I had two meetings to prepare for that day, so I went from 8:30 until about 2:45 before I was finally able to take a lunch break. Sheesh. All things considered it was actually a good day, and I got to learn a lot of things that I will get to apply next week. I ended up working until 6:45 and probably could have gone much later, but I ended up having the opportunity to have dinner with my friend Andrew which is something that had not occurred in some time.

Friday was also my little sister's 17th birthday. Today is my boss' (as mentioned above) as well as my friend Matt's mom's birthdays, and tomorrow is Abigail's mom's, although we celebrated it today. We will be celebrating Susan (my sister)'s tomorrow (Matt will be doing the same with his mom, strangely enough). My birthday is the next one in my family, I think, so mark your calendars for October 1st, people! (LOL)

Okay, so be excellent to each other, and party on dudes!

Well, this is weird...

"Normal" for the accounting position is a 40 hour week, roughly 9 to 5. The hours are somewhat flexible, but the amount of them was definitely 40 unless I needed to take off for a doctor's appointment. So when we hit slow season this summer, I still had 40 hours while other departments were getting cut...until about 6 weeks ago. Now I get 32 hours a week if I plot for it, but at least I get Fridays off.

So I'm going into work today to help out with a weird scheduling conflict. I'm working a mid shift in my old position but at my current pay (score!), which means I don't get the extra day off but I will get the normal paycheck (pretty much). With my birthday coming up and The Force Unleashed coming out sooner than that, a little extra cash is not a bad thing to be had. I don't buy my own gifts, but my wife has a list. :-) Hey, she asked for one!

My friend Aarik was one of the front office managers in my hotel, and he died on his birthday this year, so it will be really weird to go back to work on a busy day without him there. He was one of those people that energized the room whenever he was in it, and we still get repeat guests asking about him. I guess I'm just preparing myself for a weird day in general because it will be essentially the same job but with an entirely different group of people.

Anyway, gotta get ready!