Saving the Universe

I've been playing Mass Effect 3 a lot lately. It is a FUN game, although I am not looking forward to having my character's life end, which is the rumored outcome. This is a character I took through Mass Effect AND Mass Effect 2 before this, so I have known/been this 'person' for 5 years.

Anywho, its just a lot of fun tooling around the galaxy in your own spaceship, shooting stuff and just generally being awesome. The cast is ALSO really cool...your pilot is voiced by Seth Green, the sometimes pro-, sometimes antagonistic Illusive Man is voiced by Martin Sheen, your liaison/girlfriend is Yvonne Strahinsky (from Chuck), and so on. Good times. I love having to build my team, collect various resources, coordinate efforts, and have elements of puzzle solving and roleplaying at the same time you have massive amounts of shooting and blowing of stuff up.

In other news, the house I grew up in is sold and my parents have to be out by the middle of next month. Sixty-six years in the family, 31 of which I was there for, and now its going to be someone else's. It creeps me out in a 'just lost a tooth' kind of way. I haven't lived there for almost 4 years now, but it was important still knowing it was there. And now it won't be...just in photographs and memories. I believe the people who bought it are going to treat it well, but you never know.

I guess its just hard to cut ties when they run that deep, you know? I have one brother still living in the area, but he's all there is of our immediate family there now. And considering our family has been in that area for like, 200 years, that's saying something. My parents are looking at moving to Lancaster, Charles is already in the Westminster area, and Jean is in Virginia Beach.

Looking forward to new horizons, but will equally miss the past times. Maybe I'll submit a 'dear photograph' next time we're anywhere near there.

Sage Advice

My little baby brother is getting married in about 2 months, and recently my father asked me if I had any advice to pass on to him, given my vast 3 and a half years of experience. I gave some glib answer, as I recall, but after thinking about it for awhile, I did have some advice. Here's what I've come up with:

1. Get used to being late for things.

2. Never EVER forget a birthday, anniversary, or significant holiday. I always keep a gift or good gift idea on hand in case it gets down to the wire.

3. You can be 100% right, prove it, back it up with hard evidence, and still lose an argument.

4. Your greatest fear will become anything bad happening to her.

5. There will be blood, sweat, and tears. But it will be worth it.

6. If you can agree on how to squeeze the toothpaste, what type of pet to own, how to re-spool the toilet paper, and at least two TV shows, any arguments you may have should be minimal.

7. Do your best each day to work on the marriage, provide and care for her, love her, and to improve yourself. If you don't do your best, you're not worthy of her. That's all there is to it.

8. Say your sorry even if its not your fault, or you didn't do anything wrong. Be the bigger person.

9. Getting along with her mother is required. Getting along with her siblings is optional.

10. Being willing to die for her is easy. Any fool can go out and get himself killed. LIVING for someone is infinitely more difficult. You've got to be willing to give up everything else for the next 50 or so years and dedicate your life to doing this one thing.

11. That outfit NEVER EVER EVER EVER NEVER EVER makes her look fat.

Closure

So I started reading the Wheel of Time series in 1992. Twenty years ago now. At that time, there were four books in the series, or the 5th one was in hardback, but being a poor high school freshman, I wasn't going to shell out the bucks for it. Anyway, the series has STILL not been finished yet, and won't be until next year sometime. Its on book 14 now. One story, 14 volumes, 20 plus years. Which has me asking questions like, how will it end? Having invested this much of my life to reading, rereading, and waiting for closure, when it finally happens, what then? Will my life be different?

Perhaps I am reading too much into it. Pun works either way.

Just bored at work today. We've had a lot of slow days recently, and I am running low on webcomics to read. I literally have hundreds that I've read and keep fairly up to date on.

Guilty admission: on Monday there was a 'Cutting Edge' marathon. They showed it 4 or 5 times back to back. I watched it twice and STILL DVRed it. Oddly enough, I've only seen the first 30 minutes of the movie maybe 2 or 3 times...I usually just stumble across it on TV once its already started and watch it. I love this movie, and I have no logical reason why...its one of my romantic comedy Achilles' heels, I guess.