I did not enjoy my commute home tonight. I made it out of work just in time for the 4:30 commuter bus. The wind was pretty harsh but luckily I was bundled up including a second pair of pants to keep my legs warm. The bus seemed to be running a little late so I cracked open the DS for a bit of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney.

After a couple of cross examinations I checked the time and noticed it was coming around to 5:00. That’s strange, it looks like the 4:30 bus must have been canceled for some reason. Since the next one was due any minute I just kept playing my video game.

More time passes and my feet are starting to really feel the cold. Worn out Blundstones are not meant to deal with the cold weather. I check the time again and it’s 5:25! What the heck is going on here?!?

That makes two absent buses on one of the coldest nights in recent memory. I have been waiting in the cold for over an hour and there is no way I can make it downtown by 6:00 for my arnis class. I am cold, annoyed, hungry and tired; not a happy camper in the least. Still the next commuter bus is scheduled to come after 5:30. I have waited here long enough, I can tough it out a few more minutes, right? Right!

Wrong.

5:35 and no bus in sight. Completely defeated, I start to walk up to the closest major street so I can take the regular local bus back to the subway. The walk helps warm my feet but the cold has already penetrated my layers of clothing, literally chilling me to the bone. It is only a 10 minute walk up and the regular buses are pretty frequent. I should have done this when I missed the first bus but I was too caught up into my game to notice the time flying by.

Then as I hit the main road I see it; the commuter bus. It is turning around the bend and is heading towards the bus stop behind me. As it passes I raise my arms in a sign of frustration and let out a choice expletive or two. I don’t attempt to run after it though, I don’t even look back. From where I am the bus stop is too far away and I know it. All that is left for me to do is to hang my head low and catch the next local bus.

The lesson to take away from this is simple: Go find yourself a copy of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. It’s great game play and witty dialouge is good enough to risk frostbite over. Take it from me!

Normally when I get home one of the first things I do is turn on the computer. For the majority of the evening you’ll find me there; surfing the web, reading my RSS feeds, watching a video podcast, playing one video game or another.

Tonight I am going to try and stay off the computer as much as possible. Not for the entire week, just for tonight. If it works out I’ll try it again next Tuesday. Who knows, I might eventually manage to keep Tuesdays my “offline evening” for the week.

I’ll admit, coming home at 8:30 because of my Arnis Class helps. Things would be really different if I decided to do this on Sundays when I have all the free time in the world. But, it’s best to start out small and work your way up to bigger things.

Although I’m not quite ready to give up the DS tonight as well … like I said, baby steps.

I am currently sitting in front of the computer trying to stop myself from downloading the new Operation Anchorage addition to Fallout 3. I have read some horror stories of how hard it is to download and it is too late for me to start mucking through the snow/muck/radioactive goo/what have you.

I am also trying to stop myself from playing the next chapter in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. I know this game came out four years ago but I finally managed to get my hands on a copy and I am loving it. The game has humor, tension, great Anime style graphics and very interesting gameplay. Once I’m done with this game I am going to have to scour the used bins for the other games in this series.

Finally L is sitting in her chair watching The Bourne Supremacy while knitting. Since my back is to the screen I am trying to piece together what is going on from just the sound track and I have a feeling I am mixing up parts of this film with The Bourne Ultimatum. It is sort of fun in a “exercise your brain and imagination” sort of way.

Oh, now she’s watching the extra features on the DVD and as you know I’m a sucker for that stuff. Gotta run!

Just another evening at the Tripledoubleyoudotcom abode.

Not much to say today. Unfortunately most of my evening was spent doing some overtime work. I would have preferred to spend the evening either:

• Continuing my second play through of Fallout 3 with my “Scoundrel Gunslinger” character (Speech and Small Firearms FTW!)
• Looking up potential wedding band designs online
• Snuggling up with L on the couch to re-watch The Bourne Supremacy
• Doing a bit of a workout to make up for missing sparring class this morning

Unfortunately none of these fates were in the cards tonight. In the absence of anything else to say I’ll leave you with this:

The big news event today was the Inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States of America. While I didn’t watch the proceedings, I listened in while my co-workers were streaming it to their workstation. I have to admit it was a great speech and it is hard not to get caught up in the excitement and hope that everyone is sharing.

So I celebrated the new President in my own little way. Soon after Obama took his oath I checked change.gov and discovered they were already pointing people to the new White House Website. I was pretty impressed how up to date the site was even with all the stately celebrations going on.

I also took a look at the Inaugural Luncheon menu but I was kind of turned off at the food selection. I’m okay with their dessert selection and the seafood stew sounds nummy-yummy but I am not a big fan of duck myself. I do think it is neat that they decided to use replicas of the plates Lincoln used during his time in office. It’s all about the little details.

Finally, not that I wish the new president harm, but I did wonder just how far down the line of succession Hillary Clinton is now that she’s the Secretary of State. It turn out that she is holding the forth spot down just after the President pro tempore of the Senate (which was a position I didn’t even know existed). The Speaker of the House and the Vice President round out the number two and one spots naturally. Thanks Wikipedia!

If you’ve just finished putting lotion on your dry hands, do not attempt to pick up your coffee mug full of black lychee tea. While coca butter does wonders for rough skin it does not provide adequate traction against a rounded ceramic handle.

Now if you’ll excuse me I have a bit of a mess to clean up.

And we’re back! Having internet in your home really helps with the whole “blogging outside of work hours” thing. I’ve spent the better part of the past two weeks moving into a new apartment with my Fiancee. We’re almost unpacked and the place is starting to feel more like home.

Our only problem now is that we need some houseplants to cover up the smell of cigarette smoke.

Neither of us smoke, but our neighbor does. He smokes in his apartment from what I can tell and there’s nothing I can do about that as there’s no rules against it in our building. Unfortunately there is a creeping stench of stale smoke coming from his door and leaking into our place. It’s heavy and it sits there around the front door so we always run into it when we’re walking from our living room to the kitchen.

We’re hoping to find some sort of house plant that will eat up the foul smelling cloud. They should also be relatively easy to take care of for a couple of green thumb novices. Our new place gets plenty of sunlight in the afternoon so that should open up our choices.

I’ll keep you updated as to which green leafy friends join our new home. Heck that’s what a blog is for: updating strangers on the state of your house plants. For now I am open up to any suggestions you might have. Put them in the little comment box below, thanks!

When you are standing on a streetcar, subway or bus using a sparing ready stance really helps keep your balance. This involves standing with one foot slightly infront of the other, slightly larger than shoulder width apart, with your toes facing forward. Your back foot is is pointing forward but also angled off to the side. Knees should always be slightly bent and your weight should be on the balls of your feet, not the heel.

Standing like this is very stable and gives you enough balance to cope with any hard stops or steep turns your mass transportation may encounter. You may get some dirty looks for having such a big stance, but you can keep your bag/backpack between your legs to give you an excuse (but you should be doing that anyway instead of wearing it on your back and hitting people with it!)

And as an added bonus, if another commuter looses their balance and ends up falling on you, your stance will give you more than enough stability to support them and keep yourself from falling as well. A great way to leave a good impression on that cute but clumsy someone someone. Or if some punk kid feels like muscling his way through the commuter masses he’ll be in for a big surprise when he tries to shoulder past you and your stable base.

That one has happened to me before, and the thug bounced off me and spun around like a top. The look on his face was priceless.

I was late for work this morning because I slept through my alarm. I blame Spore for that.

This morning I was dreaming that I was aboard Geestark, experiencing the Space stage of the game first hand. My crew of Geeplorks and I were working on terraforming a series of colonized planets where a buzzer went off.

“Oy, it’s those dumb mustached banana people again.” I thought to myself, “They’re always bothering me when I’m in the middle of something.” Not even bothering to receive their message, I continued to muddle around with the atmosphere levels of the planet Altras.

The Geestark continues on to the next solar system looking for more planets to colonize. Meanwhile the buzzer is still going off in the background and I begin to wonder what all the fuss is all about. As I open up the communication lines to check in with my yellow peel allies reality takes over and I realize that buzzer I was hearing was my alarm clock!

No more Spore before bedtime for me.

During my daily commute I often find myself standing next to someone who has their headphones set so loud I can clearly hear the music they are listening to. Often I catch myself entertaining the idea of dancing or singing along to the music they are listening to, just to see what kind of reaction I could get from them.