It's Saturday in... Charlotte??

This past weekend, we went up to Charlotte, NC for the baby shower with the wife's family. Her parents, aunts, cousins, and sister were all there. I took Friday off of work (HELLO BENEFITS, I LOVE YOU) and we drove up. After farting around (literally...) in a fabric store looking for stuff for the baby's room, we got ready to have dinner. Only.. the power suddenly went out. Whaa? Turns out a tanker truck went off the road and took out a telephone pole with power lines attached to it. The accident ended up knocking out power to a fairly LARGE area of Charlotte for over 5 HOURS. Admittedly, I've never lived in a big city before. Athens is the largest place I've ever lived.. but it seems to me that losing power for that long in a major city like Charlotte is a pretty big deal. Naturally, we were unable to cook dinner (pork tenderloin, oh how I missed you), so we took to the streets in search of a eatery that still had power. At this point, we didn't know power was out across the city. Traffic lights were out, and very few people were obeying the traffic laws. It was pretty hilarious seeing all these city folk get REALLY angry at one another. After driving for about 15 minutes, we made it to a powered part of town and ate at Showmar's. I had a chicken gyro that was awesome! Everyone else got fish. They suck.

(this is fish. fish is gross. that is all.)

Naturally, dudes are not really *wanted* to be at the actual baby shower, nor do dudes generally want to be there themselves. So me and the dad-in-law went to a sports bar just around the corner from where we were staying. Dad-in-law is a huge fan of the Ohio St. Buckeyes, which is natural seeing as how he is an alumni. The bar we went to, Murphy's, is an Irish pub that also serves as the home base for Ohio St. alumni in the Charlotte area. So we watched tOSU defeat Troy University. While we watched, we chowed down on some pretty good Perogis. Of course, after we finished them, the guys next to us ordered this huge plate of nachoes and dad-in-law gave me the evil eye. Man likes him some nachoes.

We also watched a bit of the Florida-Tennessee game... which wasn't so much a game as a MASSACRE. Ugh, Tennessee is horrible. I was hoping they would give His Holiness, Tim Tebow, a run for his money.. but no. Then again, I hate any team that wears orange. So I guess I can't be too upset.



(I hate orange.)
So anyway, after the ladies had their baby shower, we mighty men made out way back for the post-shower cookout. Much good food was had by all. Much good conversation was had by all.. until 8:00 that is. Then it was time for Georgia vs. Arizona State on national television. The game started off a little shaky, but it didn't take long for the Dawgs to settle into a good rhythm. Highlight of the night?



(Eagles don't soar. They ride on Knowshon's back. Also, check out the cheerleader's face.)

All in all, a very good weekend. Lots of driving.. but good times.

Also, today, I cut the crap out of my thumb helping my coworker move around stuff in his office. It needs TWO BandAids. I want my mommy. WORKER'S COMP!!!!

Bad boy!

As with almost every blog ever started, I went on a break. It wasn't really intentional- I just stopped writing. I've continued to play games and such of course, and life has really swung into gear.

Wife and I found out in late May/early June that she was pregnant. She called me at work and told me that she had bought a home pregnancy test and it turned out positive. I don't remember much of our conversation, but I'm sure it consisted of quite a bit of silence and "Uhhhhh..."s and "REALLY?!"s. I do distinctly remember getting tunnel vision and not being able to focus my eyes on anything in front of me. Good thing I was sitting down when she called. We went to the University health center where they did a more thorough test which confirmed the at home test's result. Wife and I looked at each other- "Holy crap, we're gonna have a baby."

The past few months have been very babyrific. We've completely reorganized the office by getting rid of my old college futon and college entertainment center(to sister-in-law), my N64 and wall length desk (to Slamin), and a bunch of stuff to Goodwill. We needed even more room, so we started selling books on Half.com. I had no idea how many books we had, or their worth! In about 2 months, we sold well over $450 worth of books. Heck. Yes. The office is currently in the process of being turned into a nursery. Other than a daybed to replace the futon, we haven't really gotten any big pieces of furniture yet. But there will be a crib, dresser/changing table, and other assorted goodies.

Football has started up again, and the Dawgs are 2-0 and are ranked #2 in the country. Their first two games (against Georgia Southern and Central Michigan) were pretty much blowouts. The second game featured this incredible display of athleticism.

HOLY CRAP!

Up this weekend is an away game against the South Carolina Gamecocks. Can't wait!

In gaming news, I'm going to try and list some games I've been playing recently. Upon learning that I am going to be a daddy, we looked at ways to start saving money. I decided that I would go ahead and cancel my Gamefly subscription. I really enjoyed the number of games I was able to play that I probably wouldn't have had a chance to check out had it not been for the service. Thanks Gamefly, I'll probably be signing back up again in the future.

Madden 09 - played the demo and thought it was awesome. So I traded in some games and got this puppy.
Grand Theft Auto IV - lots of fun, though I'm beginning to tire of it. It is easily the most beautiful game I've played, and the technology behind almost every facet of it is mind blowing. I still have fun clipping people in the leg with a car to see the realistic way they react. However, beyond just a couple of modes, the multiplayer is not very engaging. And I am not a person that enjoys collecting things, so feel no compulsion to hunt through the city for 200 freaking birds.
Condemned 2 - Got this through Gamefly. Pretty fun little game, and creepy as hell. I played this a few times at night with the lights off, and there was more than one time I screamed.

The next few weeks are going to get pretty crazy. Next weekend is our first babyshower, being thrown by the wife's family. After that, my weekends are full of either football games, work, more baby showers, and camping. I'm pretty excited. While the weekdays are filled with the doldrums of work, the weekends should be pretty exciting. Huzzah!

If you don't Knowshon...

So, the other day, I was bored. Real bored. And I was in the mood to photoshop something. I racked my brain, trying to think of something I could create. My mind eventually worked its way back to a conversation I had w/ my boss Deuce about making a Knowshon Moreno wallpaper. He has a collection of football and basketball wallpapers on his personal laptop, but they are all mainly pro sports (chiefly, Brett Favre and the Green Bay Packers). Anyway, I decided to go forward with the idea of a Knowshon background. Probably the most difficult part of the job initially was actually finding a hi-res picture of Knowshon that didn't have a watermark on it. After searching for probably about 30 minutes, I finally found one on someone's personal photography site. Since I don't plan on making any money off of this thing, I figured it wouldn't be a big deal to use it.

So here is the finished product:

(click to see it full screen)

I'm pretty happy with it. I might go back and change the text around a bit, but other than that, I love it!

Brown chicken brown cow!

So, I now have one of these.



And Moxa is letting me borrow this.






All is right in the world! Also some other great news is that the Dawgs finally put a beat down on the Gators. A very exciting game - even being objective! GO DAWGS!






I finished GUN last night. Overall, it was a pretty fun game! It wasn't too deep, and therefore I could play it every couple of days and not feel like I missed out on much. But the gameplay was fast and fun, and you really do get to feel like a hardcore gunslinger. Shooting a rival cowboy off of his horse at 100 yards with a rifle bullet to the gut, and seeing him drop to the ground and roll across the dirt... sweet.