Category: Life

Uh Oh Nintendo

I just came across the International Geek Girl Pen Pals Club, and I totally had to sign up. I’m actually surprised I didn’t hear about the site sooner. But then, I’m not your typical geeky girl. I’m more of an 80s-cartoons, The Sims, and Fallout kind of geek. I likely would have been more of a gaming geek, had my mom not taken the Nintendo…

When I was maybe 10 or so, some of our cousins gave us their old NES and a couple games. My sibs and I had never had a gaming console, so even though it was pretty old by that time, it was quite a big deal to us. We LOVED it. If we weren’t jumping up and down with the Super Mario Bros, we were likely running in place with World Class Track Meet (that is, until my brothers figured out they could just sit on the floor and use their hands), or expressing our utter frustrations with the stupid whirlpools in Muppet Adventure: Chaos at the Carnival. Yeah. Those were our games. We also had good ol’ Duck Hunt, but Mum didn’t like that game much. I think you could also shoot skeets instead of ducks, but that didn’t matter.

In fact, Mum didn’t seem to like the Nintendo much at all. She had several rules about it, including not playing on Sunday WHATSOEVER. It sucked. A bunch of kids. At home most of the day except for the few (painful) hours of church. Too hot to go outside. And we couldn’t play our games. What else were we supposed to do on a Sunday? Get three-degree burns outside? Take turns mailing each other to India? Volunteer at a soup kitchen? (To this day, I don’t think there even is a soup kitchen within 40 miles of my hometown.) Since there really wasn’t much to do, we tended to just sleep, or fight. I hated Sundays.

And then the worst possible thing happened – our Mom got rid of the Nintendo. She didn’t put it aside for a while, or say we had to earn it back by being the perfectest of children. No. She simply just threw it out. I’m sure gamers everywhere are cringing and face-palming right now. If she hadn’t trashed it, it would probably still work today – those things were the Toyotas of the gaming world. But she did. And why?? She said we fought about it too much.

Now if that were the case, I could probably understand why she’d want to be rid of it. No one wants to deal with a horde of warmongering children. But that wasn’t true at all. We fought when we couldn’t play Nintendo (such as on Sunday, bloody Sunday), not when we were playing it. In fact, some of my best getting-along-with-the-sibs time involved that old NES. It was a family game. Even Dad tried to play it once or twice. (He didn’t get far – the whirlpools got him.) We actively played and watched the fun, (or relatively stupid) games as a team, and cheered each other on. Not one of us ever got to finish Super Mario Bros. Not a single one.

Sometime later, the same cousins offered us their old Sega Genesis, this time with SEVERAL games. Mum threw it out before we even got to attempt setting it up. The Genesis apparently involved fighting.

So that’s why I’m not much of a gaming geek. Not that I didn’t have the potential – I didn’t have the consol.

Butt Hurt

I’m not completely sure what “butt-hurt” means figuratively, but I’m speaking literally anyway. So my neighbor apparently didn’t like bicycling much, because he put a stationary bike out on the sidewalk with a big “free” sign taped to it. I’d kind of been wanting such a torture device (I have a little pedal cycle, but you have to sit on just the right chair to be able to use it, the tension constantly loosens, and the metal gets so hot I’m surprised the plastic parts haven’t melted yet), so I got my husband to snarf it.

I used it yesterday after attempting to douse the squeaky parts with sewing machine oil because I couldn’t find the WD40 in the garage and kept running into spider webs, which was really creeping me out (spider webs = there’s got to be a spider or two somewhere). In hindsight, it might have been the piecing screech the bike makes that prompted the neighbor to dispose of it. Maybe said neighbor wanted me to take the bike. Touché, neighbor.

So I cycled on the bike through two episodes of American Dad!, sweating like a pig and feeling pretty self-congratulatory for doing so. I also did some arm exercises with free-weights until it became too difficult to balance on the bike whenever the pedals got stuck, the wheel screeched to a halt, and my arms were out to my sides like I was trying to imitate a freaking bird. A very uncoordinated bird with heavy wings. Maybe an ostrich, or something like that.

I figured I had done pretty well for a first try. And though I knew my arms would probably hurt the next day, I was quite satisfied with my effort and told my passive aggressive body to go ahead, bring on the pain. But then I got to work this morning, sat down at my desk, and discovered that, although my arms were still just fine, sitting there in my not-too-bad-but-definitely-not-that-great office chair, my butt hurt.

No joke, it really hurt. And the worst part was that I didn’t know why. A mysterious ass-pain is no laughing matter. I searched my brain for a reason for such pain in such a strange place, and the only explanation that really came to mind suggested alien abductions and anal probes. I didn’t like that theory much. I really don’t care for aliens at all except for old Marvin. You know, the funny little Martian with the Romanesque helmet?

Anyway, I eventually (to my relief) figured out that it was the ear-splitting stationary bike that had caused my buttocks to protest every time I sat down. And though it’s not nearly as satisfying as the lovely pain in my arms that has since settled in, I figure my ass could probably use a workout too. So thanks, neighbor and little, blue bike, I now know what butt-hurt truly feels like.

Karma

Driving home from work today, a woman in a truck cut me off. This same vehicle kept weaving around, cutting others off and nearly causing an accident trying to get somewhere apparently very important in a hurry. It didn’t get her any farther, however, since I ended up right behind her at a stoplight. And then I noticed her license plate said KARMAS (I assume meaning belonging to Karma). So, it looks like Karma really is a bitch.