Nick Postagulous
Monday, December 13, 2004
Video Game Dronery
Those of you not interested in video games (dad) can skip over to the next part. Though I am not saying the next part will interest you either.
I'm currently playing Jak II which came out last year. It's been compared to Ratchet y Clank, and also GTA3. And oddly enough, it is like both of those. It's also very hard. If you are a gamer, and I mean not a casual gamer but one that plays games as an actual hobby and is good at these things, then this game rocks. I kick butt at most games like this, and this one I have to play each level around 10 times. Or, sometimes, when I think it's going to be hard, it's not and I breeze through it.
I think I'm 1/3 through right now. And even though I have a stack of games waiting for me to play them (Gladiator, Beyond Good and Evil, Ghost Recon, Kill.Switch, Mark of Kri, Splinter Cell, etc) I need to get Front Mission 3 back from my nephew Brad, who probaby isn't playing it or else he'd call me or email me telling me how good it is or asking how to do something. Front Mission 3 totally rocks. It's a PS1 game, so if you do pick it up used off Amazon/Half/Ebay, make sure to turn your PS2's texture smoothign on.
Accomplishing Saturday
While installing the new splash guards (aka mud flaps) and cleaning out the garage were things I wanted to do this weekend, instead I set up the ice maker for the fridge, painted the kitchen and dining area of the house, and...Hmm, something else. Oh, yeah, got my Bridgestone G009's installed on the Miata.
Documenting Nina
Alison really wishes she'd start a journal and keep track of what Nina does and her different little quirks. I have this blog, but I tend to flit around to what happens to catch me at the moment. So, here I'll document some of Nina's little things that are going on.
Sometimes Nina will pull one of her shoes off and then try to put it back on. However, the concept of shoe putting on is completely beyond her congnitive abilities. Not only will she sometimes try to put the shoe on the foot that already has a shoe, but she doesn't understand that, you know that big hole in the top of the shoe, yeah, that's where your foot goes.
Nina is currently in a fussy mode. Not a fussy mood, because she's generally very genial. But at any moment she might break into an stream of reaching or pointing at things and grunting for them. "Uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh!" But really, you can forget that exclamation point at the end, because it's never ending. Ditraction is better than compliance, as usually, Nina doesn't know what she wants, or wants something that in impossible. Such as, "Dad, I want the steering wheel. Hand it to me in my car seat here in the back seat."
One of the better car related things, and also a feeding thing, is that she'll now hold her own bottle in the car. I'm sure she could have done this long ago, but there are certain trust issues as far as throwing beverages in the car that I didn't want to deal with. But on Wednesday, Alison had to stay late for some hob-knobbing, elbow rubbing thing at her work. So, I had to babysit Nina for about 5+ hrs. (And really, babysit is the wrong word since I am, after all, her dad).
But on Wednesday, Nina and I went to church and Nina always gets a bottle on the way home from church. Especially on Wednesday, when we are 2 hrs past her bedtime. Since we were in the Miata, and it requires all my limbs to operate, she had to hold the bottle herself. She did wonderfully and then fell asleep before we got home. Alison was waiting for us and then hogged Nina, not letting me help get her ready for bed. And I'm really much better at Stealth Care for Infants than Alison is.
Nina understands a lot of what we say. In fact, if you say something in front of her, you better be prepared for her to understand it and remember it forever, because it's going to happen. It does not occur to her that she can talk, however. But her knowing what we're saying does help out quite a bit. We'll tell her where we are going, but I always choose not to mention how long it will be until we get there. And when dressing her, you can say "sleeve sleeve" to get her to put her arms through sleeves. Nina also totally ignores us if she's doing something more interesting at the time, like inspecting her cat block or just hopping around the couches with her hands in the air.
Nina's most confusing and confounding communication issue is when she rushes her answer and accedentally shakes her head No, when she means Yes. This causes more irritation on Nina's part than it does ours. To irritate us more, she needs to say Yes to something, and then, six seconds later when we've produced the sippy cup or tooth gel, she says No, that she's changed her mind. "Do you want" is a big phrase in the house.
Oh, and she's still using the toilet, but for the life of me, it seems that she only indicates she needs to go when we are in the car or at a store. At home, she's usually having too much fun and doesn't want to stop what she's doing, so she just wets her diaper. Slacker.
G009
The guy at Tirerack who indicated that the Bridgestone Potenza G009 had a soft sideway is pretty much spot on. They grip great however. Such great grip that I can tell they'll not last 20,000 miles, which is fairly irritating. I also got an overdue alignment, so the car handles much smoother, though I do miss the twitchy overreaction that I had earlier a little.
