Which Wiser, Older Man is to Take My Place?

OK, time to put on a Happy Face and pull myself out of the downward spiral! Honestly, when I give it a good think, I know I have far more to be thankful for than to complain about, so I think I'll just punch the Christmas blues in the teeth and move forward. Most of the things I feel compelled to complain about fit squarely under the "you made your bed, now sleep in it" category, so I have no room to complain.

That having been said, let me proceed...

Went to the mall today, just to get out of the house. I have NO IDEA what I was thinking. It was literally a mad house. I despise crowds to begin with - I have no clue why I thought today would just be a nice, mellow day at the mall, where I could grab a quick bite at the food court, perhaps a frap or macchiato at Starbucks, and browse around GameSpot and the Apple store for a while. My family was already there, so I went over, as if I had good sense. Mistake. A zoo! I lasted about 5 minutes before I ran screaming for the door... all I kept think while riding the crammed escalator was "I wonder how much of the air I'm breathing right now is other people's gas?"

I know, no one thinks stuff like that but me, I'm sorry. Hey, if I had one of those "pooter" things, I could have had some fun. Maybe next time...

My neck is out of whack. I figured I'd wait til after Christmas to go see my chiropractor. Wifey made the call for me, as I prepared to head for the car. I stopped when she said the recording claimed they'd be closed until January 4! Dang! I'll be living on ibuprofen until then, I suppose... it usually has to get pretty bad before I'll go to see him... because once the family hears I'm going, they all want to go too... then the visit goes from a reasonable $40 to a much less reasonable $160... it's not that I don't want them all to be all aligned and such - and it's not like the good doctor overcharges, he doesn't... he's worth every penny. But when pennies are tight, some things have to wait. Ah, well... sore necks suck, but there's worse problems.

Here's a cool gallery of Star Wars Lego pics...

The guy recreated several scenes from Empire using legos... from the last pic in the gallery, it looks like at least some of them were shot with the legos in a tank of water. Cool. The article is on Gizmodo, so it's good.

Here's another link to an article about a painter named Marc Simonetti, who has painted some awesome pictures based on GRRM's Song of Ice and Fire series. Here's one called Tyrion in King's Landing.

I know some of y'all are out to the movies this holiday season, seeing Avatar and/or Sherlock Holmes, and others I know nothing about. Good on ya, I wish I was going with you. Best I can do is post trailers, so here's one I'm sure you've all seen by now - Ridley Scott's Robin Hood, starring Russell Crowe. Looks good.



Did I post this clip already? If so, I apologize for redundancy. And while I'm at it, I should also apologize for redundancy...

Best Book I Read in 2009: The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss
Best Movie I Saw in 2009: The Fall
Best Song I Heard in 2009: Revelation by Third Day
Favorite Blog: Rememorandum
Favorite Procrastinated Project of 2009: The camp slideshow
Favorite Christmas Present: Beatles Remastered Collection (thanks mom!)
Favorite Game of 2009: Torchlight

Speaking of Torchlight, you all now have no excuse not to buy it from Steam... they lowered the price to $4.99 until January 3! You MUST buy this game!

I kinda miss going snowboarding in Tahoe. Maybe some year we'll resurrect the trip again, when enough years pass to help us forget the hassles that go along with it, and all we remember are the good things...

But I have the upcoming LAN party to look forward to! It's going to be epic, especially if I can see to it that everyone is hooked up with Left 4 Dead... great game. That, and Warcraft 3 and UT3 should set us up right. I *think* we're also going to get some console gaming going, which means other people can pop in and join the partay for a while, if they wanted... normally, in order to attend, you need to bring a PC... but if there's a console there, then that opens things up a bit more. We'll see. It would be awesome to get some Rockband going...

I think that's it for me for the day.

Hey, what was your favorite Web Feature of my blog this year? Let me know, and I'll try to do it again before the end of the year. Do any of you remember the video blogs I used to make, about favorite movie scenes of mine? That was fun. Maybe the web comic. Or the Todayve In History. Or the Movie Quote contest? Or something else...? The fiction bits, perhaps? The poetry (lol)?

I'm done. Thanks for your friendship(s) and your encouraging words. Until tomorrow, remember, sometimes I do what I want to do. The rest of the time, I do what I have to.