It was a nice relaxing weekend, especially Saturday, which was nice as we both had the week from hell at our respective jobs. Robyn was supposed to do some work over the weekend but it didn’t really work out like that as she slept in on Saturday, we then watched the Georgia vs. Florida “Cocktail Party” game which was pretty entertaining, especially when Georgia scored first and then laid a beat down on Tim Tebow for the rest of the game.
That evening we watched Transformers and Ratatouille on our TiVo… This will probably get me hounded out of the TiVo Community board, but the TiVo Desktop app works pretty well at converting movies for TiVo consumption, it also means our dream of on-demand movies is a reality at much smaller file sizes than the old rip DVD/rename .VOB to .MPG method we used before… The picture quality was excellent, I didn’t notice any issues even during the fast cuts on Transformers. Anyways, both get two thumbs up from me, Ratatouille especially. I’m a sucker for Pixar movies.
Sunday was a day of rock, as shown before, I went and got Guitar Hero III for the Wii, and talk about fun, fun, FUN! I’ve never played it before, except maybe a few shocking seconds in Best Buy with a right handed guitar on a song I didn’t know, but sitting at home with my little white Gibson Les Paul controller, I felt awesome before even pushing a button.
But you can’t play it, you’re left handed
That was the cry from Robyn as I set everything up… No matter, I had read the instructions and gave myself the lefty switch. So after sitting through the tutorial I proceeded to play Cream’s “Sunshine Of Your Love” and, well, let’s just say if Clapton was dead, he’d be rolling in his grave… No matter, I was enjoying myself immensely. I’ll be honest and say I flat out suck, but I’ve only played it for a few hours thus far.
Robyn was also ridiculing the way I looked, playing this little guitar, saying the usual stuff like”
Why not just play a *real* guitar?
The cry of Guitar Hero widows everywhere? So I gave it to her to play, and before long she was nailing the first gig in the career level, even getting the encore of Kiss’ “Rock and Roll All Nite” at a nice 91%. Before long she was pulling guitar faces, rocking the whammy bar for extra points and all that jazz. It’s safe to say we both like this game, but we’ve got a long way to go…
And last night we went to see They Might Be Giants at the Neighborhood Theater in NoDa, but I’ll get back to that later once pictures are uploaded to Flickr.
While I swear up and down I’d never be one to do that whole “sorry about not posting, but…” I’ve done it in the past, so why would now be different?
It’s been one of those lacklustre periods where stresses were high, relief was immense and the comedown was hard. To cut a long story short, we finally sold our Atlanta condo at the end of last month, not for as much as we’d like, but with the current subprime crisis, I’m just glad we made some kind of profit. To celebrate we had a party that ended at 9pm as we literally collapsed, the stresses of the weeks leading up to closing day was not anything I’d like to go through again. At one point we were literally questioning why we moved to Charlotte and if we should move back to Atlanta to ride the crisis through to a more favourable outcome.
Following on the heels of that is the untold stress of trying to find a good series of flights to the UK for next year, we’re cashing in our Delta SkyMiles to (hopefully) get sweet seats to and from, but it ain’t easy, especially flying with someone like me… As I mentioned before, I hate takeoffs, so obviously a flight with multiple layovers is out the question, but getting decent flights is hard, one option we were looking at was Charlotte to Detroit to Paris to Edinburgh, with a 7 hour layover in Paris (after a long ass trans-Atlantic flight, no thanks). So we’re still trying to get this settled.
On the social side, we hosted Phillip and Katie a few weekends ago as they came up to live the NASCAR experience at the Bank of America 500. We also showed them around the quaint little neighbourhood we live in and got them lost in a corn field (as you do from time to time). It was cool seeing old faces again, we’ve been meaning to go back to Atlanta for a weekend and catch up but it never works out, and now we don’t have a place to crash. So we’re trying to persuade people to come up here. Please come visit us, we’re lonely.
On the media side, I’m loving some old-ish music in the form of a couple of U2 DVD audio rips of the Zoo TV and PopMart tours, which is crazy as I now need to see which live version of “Where The Streets Have No Name” is being played, Zoo TV? PopMart? Elevation? Vertigo? I also forgot how immensely awesome the PopMart tour was (and indeed how underappreciated Pop was/is). I’m also a cheap skate as I bought the new Radiohead album for a measly £1.45. It’s ok, I still prefer The Bends though… And OK Computer, of course.
On a truly nerdy note, TiVo has finally re-enabled TiVo-To-Go (TTG) and TiVo-To-Come-Back (TTCB) on our TiVo HD, so we finally watched The Simpsons Movie last night, Robyn’s working over the weekend, so I can watch Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. We’re also going to see Robyn’s favourite band in the history of recorded music, They Might Be Giants, on Sunday night, should be good. She’s had to educate me in the ways of the Johns these last few weeks, I won’t tell you she nearly squealed when Olive and Vivian sang Birdhouse In Your Soul on Pushing Daisies, and we love the new song, The Mesopotamians.
And don’t even get me started about work…
Rangers produced a terrific, disciplined performance to earn a valuable Champions League point against a wasteful Barcelona at Ibrox. Listening to the game was not a good idea, too many near misses from both sides raised my heart rate to dangerous levels. Still, 7 points from 3 games, and it’s been a surreal 3 months for Scottish football, long may it continue… And hope we don’t get the smack laid down on us at the Nou Camp in a few weeks time
Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen won his first Formula One drivers’ championship as Lewis Hamilton’s bid came to a dramatic end in the Brazilian Grand Prix. It’s a shame as Lewis has been hyped as the best thing since sliced bread, it’s also funny as everyone was talking about Hamilton and Fernando Alonso, but Kimi snuck in the backdoor to top both of them
Stephen Colbert has announced his candidacy for president. “I shall seek the office of the president of the United States,” Colbert said on his Comedy Central show “The Colbert Report.” Colbert said he planned to run in South Carolina, “and South Carolina alone.” The state, one of the key early primaries, is also Colbert’s native state.
Injured Buffalo Bills player Kevin Everett has been able to walk to some extent as part of his rehabilitation after suffering a severe spinal cord injury during the team’s season opener. Doctors in Houston are optimistic that once Everett completes his rehab he will regain his ability to walk independently. Everett was injured making a tackle at home against Denver on September 9th and Doctors initially said there was little chance Everett would walk again, but that prognosis was revised after he showed quick progress in the days after the injury.
The top 10 rap songs white people love. Sure, it’s mostly late 80′s/early 90′s stuff, but you’ll be nodding your head in no time at all…
It started off innocently, triple digit weather in early August now we’ve had about 2 days of rain in the last 3 months (a mere 0.5 inches in the whole of September) and we had 32 straight days of 90° that ended at the end of August, now things are getting serious. This is the worst drought in the Carolinas on record, Charlotte is currently about 14 inches below it’s yearly average and things aren’t looking good. Most of North Carolina are in an exceptional drought area.
I mean, it’s the 9th of October and it’s currently 90° outside, it’s supposed to be 94° today… The average high is meant to be 75°. The daily temperature swing is around 30°, I drive to work in the morning when it’s in the high 60′s with the heater on and drive home in the 90′s with the AC blasting. And it’s taking it’s toll on the water supply, nearby Lake Norman is way below it’s average levels, we have water restrictions on the go, how long until it’s water rationings? Judging by the 3 month water level trend, not long…
This is just killing me, our electricity bill is through the roof with the AC going near enough non-stop… I long for the day we can crack open the windows and turn it off. We were able to for a few days last month, but it didn’t last anywhere near long enough. Luckily it should cool off this weekend, but even then it’s only a 10%/20% chance of rain. I never thought I’d actually want it to rain…
Formula One superstar Lewis Hamilton is to move to Switzerland to escape the excessive public and media attention he has had in Britain over the last year. Nothing to do with the taxes in Switzerland, hmmm?