Sunday, May 17, 2009

Nostalgia

I did quite a bit of cleaning and rearranging this afternoon; I spent about six hours cleaning, with a few intermittent breaks here and there. Come July, we'll have lived here for six years, and in all that time, we still haven't properly unpacked.

We live in a three bedroom house, and one of the bedrooms is used as strictly a storage room. There are boxes everywhere. And then there are even more boxes down in the laundry room which is in the basement. Today, I spent time condensing the boxes and throwing away a lot of garbage and stuff that's been damaged and what not over the years.

During the day today, I found a lot of old stuff from my childhood that I've been searching for for quite some time. I finally found my old Gameboy and a few games. It was buried beneath a ton of junk at the bottom of a box that was also buried behind more boxes. No wonder I hadn't found it in so long.

I removed it from the haphazard mess and examined it with beaming pride and nostalgia. I wiped a thick layer of dust from the screen that had collected over the years. Honestly, how the hell does dust find its way all the way to the bottom of a box?

Pokemon Red was still in the cartridge slot from whenever the hell I played it last. I flicked the on-switch hoping it would play, but it obviously did not. The batteries have long since failed.

The big kid in me put down the Gameboy and continued to rummage through the chaotic remnants from a time in my life I had long forgotten. I found several old report cards from grade school. I even found some old report cards from when my dad was in grade school. I made sure I saved all of those.

As I continued to dig, I came across an adapter to plug my Gameboy into the wall.

NO BATTERIES REQUIRED.

I eagerly turned on the Gameboy to hear the familiar *ding* of the Nintendo logo. I adjusted the old contrast wheel to get a picture, only to find that the logo was scrambled and the game had frozen.

ANGRY FACE!

I switched off the Gameboy and removed the cartridge and blew into the cartridge slot, only to have more dust cloud into my face!

Seriously... how the hell does dust find its way into such tight places?

After finally getting the game to work, I began playing the file I had abandoned so long ago. I wish there was a date on the save option so I could see the year. Memories came rushing back as I played through a few areas. I spent so much time as a kid playing that damn thing.

After about five minutes I become bored with it. Seriously, I don't understand how I was so captivated by that game as a child. By today's standards, I guess, it just hasn't aged well.

So here I am, typing this at exactly 11:11 PM, feeling all nostalgic and sneezing my head off from all the dust I breathed in today.

I may have looked to the past a lot today, but all my attention has yet again been focused on the future.

Nine more days...

Friday, May 15, 2009

Death's Waiting Room

For the last month or so, I've been having some tests done at the doctor's office. There's nothing wrong, but I just wanted to make sure of that. I'm somewhat of a hypochondriac, at times.

Last week when I went to see him, he took about six or seven vials of blood and he told me that if one of his nurses hadn't contacted me within two weeks, to call them and make an appointment to go over my results.

Easy enough.

A week and a half goes by, so I assumed everything was just fine. Not so much. I woke up this morning and my mom told me that the doctor's office had called, but didn't leave a message. "Terrific," I thought. So I called them back and they told me they needed me to come in and see the doctor and that they couldn't give me my results over the phone.

Immediately after hanging up, I started thinking about it. "Oh fuck, I've got cancer," I thought to myself. I went upstairs, got dressed and immediately headed out the door, because honestly, I didn't want to spend any more time convincing myself I had leukemia or some shit.

I waited in the waiting room with an old couple that looked like they were late for an appointment with the Grim Reaper and a really hyperactive little boy and his young - presumably single, presumably on welfare - single mother.

Hooray for me.

When I met with the doctor, he asked me how I was, to which I replied with, "That depends doc." He handed me a piece of paper that read as follows:

Vitamin D .............. 42 .............. 75 - 200

I looked at him confused, and said, "Vitamin D? Seriously?" And basically, he told me I lack vitamin by quite a bit. So, despite my preconceived, self-diagnosed non-cancer, I'm actually quite healthy, aside from being a paranoid hypochondriac and vitamin D-lacker.

But really, come on. They scared the shit out of me! You don't call somebody in for their blood test results because of a vitamin D deficiency. That's something I would've gladly waited another week to hear from him.

Oh well, I'm just glad I'm a healthy boy.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

A Lesson in Hyperbole

Okay, so I finally got around to actually picking a layout I intend on keeping. I have a terrible habit of changing my layout a thousand times a week.

Hyperbole FTW!

I decided to choose this layout because it's minimalistic as all hell, and I like that. Plus, all the other pre-made templates I've seen are being used by tons of people, so I figured I'd just use a simple one and mod it to my own taste. For instance, the original code of this template had yellow everywhere... and I dislike yellow. Quite a bit, actually.

So yeah, kudos to Dante Araujo for making this template.

My last post is from two months ago, and I said I intended on updating here regularly.

FAIL.

But, I really do think I'll update this thing at least once a week from now on. Really. No, really!

I'm headed to Toronto in about two weeks, which I'm ecstatic about. Expect a picture update after I return in June. Mandy and I are planning on sightseeing the second day we're there. I haven't been to Toronto since my eighth grade field trip, which was about eight years ago.

I'm planning on scoring some tickets to see The Hour, a Canadian late-night talk show, akin to that of The Tonight Show, except it's funny. We'll probably also see the usual hotspots like the CN Tower, Air Canada Centre, hockey hall of fame and the Ontario Science Centre.

It's definitely going to be fun.